College and Research Libraries


By M U R R A Y L. B O B 

The Nature of Staff Reading 
Mr. Bob is librarian, General Informa-

tion Department, Free Library of Phila-

delphia. 

TH E D I S C U S S I O N of staff reading
1 which 

has appeared thus far in the pages of 
C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S has been 
primarily pragmatic. Certainly both Drs. 
M u l l e r and Burton are for the most part 
concerned with the formulation and im-
plementing of practical schemes to increase 
staff reading. M r . Yerke, on the other 
hand, deals to a larger extent with the 
premises and probable consequences of 
such programs. It is with the latter aspects 
of the problem that this paper too is con-
cerned. 

A number of fundamental although sub-
stantially unexamined assumptions recur 
throughout the discussion. In the order of 
their appearance in D r . Muller's seminal 
essay, they are: ( i ) "Well-read librarians 
seem to be in danger of becoming extinct." 
( 2 ) "This trend might be related to the 
widely accepted policy of not permitting any 
protracted library staff reading on paid li-
brary time. . . ." M r . Yerke derives the 
same tendency from different origins: ". . . 
much librarianship is changing to adminis-
trative and technical manipulation." ( 3 ) 
T h o u g h not perhaps neatly stated in so 
many words, the supposal that extensity of 
staff reading is a positive circumstance is 
implicit, if not central, to D r . Muller's 
point of view. 

1 Muller, Robert H . , " A Program for Staff R e a d i n g . " 
C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S , 1 4 : 2 3 5 - 2 3 9 , J u l y , 
1953. Yerke, Theodore B., " W h e n I s A Librarian W e l l -
R e a d ? " C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S , 1 5 : 210-21 I , 
April, I9S4. Burton, H o w a r d A . , " M a x i m u m Benefits 
f r o m a P r o g r a m f o r Staff R e a d i n g . " C O L L E G E A N D R E -
S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S , 15: 277-280, July, 1954-

T h e first and third points are almost in 
the nature of articles of faith for the librar-
ian. Nonetheless, or perhaps just because 
of this, they require close inspection. T h e 
contention that pre-Dewey librarians were 
never truly well-read, in D r . Muller's sense, 
may be advanced with some justice. For 
neither a wide reading background nor the 
urge to "keep up with the literature," both 
so typical of educated people, including 
librarians, in our own day, were generalized 
among the learned in former times. " W e l l -
read" meant something quite different then, 
to wit, a thorough grounding in that com-
mon core of knowledge designated as the 
classics. T h e delightful Franklin, who as 
much as any may be said to have sired the 
American library, wrote: "Read much, but 
not many books." There is a large amount 
of literary evidence to suggest that this neo-
classic attitude was the ordinary one among 
savants, persisting until relatively late in the 
19th century, although tempered toward 
the last by that taste for the exotic which 
was a mark of the burgeoning romanticism. 

T h e roots of the foregoing attitude were 
embedded in numerous classical dicta against 
attempting the unreasonable; and the 
frenzied effort to keep up with a snowball-
ing literature would have been accounted 
irrational. T o read or study2 only that 
which could be read or studied thoroughly 
was the sovereign intellectual receipt of the 
age. T h e consequence, insofar as D r . M u l -
ler et al., are concerned, is that there never 
was perhaps such a creature as the "well-

2 T h e two concepts w e r e more nearly interchangeable 
in a day when both pleasure and intellectual profit w e r e 
expected from every good book. I n our time, they tend 
to be dichotomized in separate literatures. 



read librarian," given the contemporary un-
derstanding of the concept "well-read." 

Even without historical antecedence, 
however, the notion of the positive value of 
extensive reading is worth investigation. 
D r . Burton, himself a proponent of this 
view, wrote: "It should be remembered that 
an understanding of ideas is the paramount 
purpose in reading . . . " U t i l i z i n g this 
criterion I would say that the minimum 
obligations of the librarian to culture are 
not defined by whether or not he has a 
broad knowledge of the outside or even the 
inside of books. Far more important is the 
existence of an operational acquaintance 
with the basic ideas of the humanities and 
sciences. 

It is impossible for the non-specialist 
(and the librarian may usually be accounted 
such in all fields save librarianship) to be 
aware of each empiric increment made to 
theoretic fundamentals. Therefore, the li-
brarian's general training ought to be identi-
cal with that of any educated non-expert. 
It should be sufficient to enable one to say 
that none of countless new data is in prin-
ciple alien to him. H e could become 
thoroughly familiar with the material were 
it necessary for him to do so, inasmuch as 
he would have a broad (not to be confused 
with superficial) understanding of the focal 
conceptions in all areas of learning. Such 
understanding would permit the profes-
sional to locate at least proximately in the 
spectrum of human knowledge recent find-
ings of whatever nature. In a word, the 
gulf which separates many a librarian from 
personal cultivation as well as from the 
serious reading public is one of ideas. 

T h e remaining assumptions requiring 
critical examination are those offered in 
explanation of the circumstance that the li-
brarian is not well-read. D r . Muller, as 
noted previously, relates this to the fact that 
libraries do not generally permit other than 

professional reading on paid time. In order 
to advance the discussion it is necessary to 
substitute the phrase "well-educated" for 
the one heretofore employed—"well-read"— 
this, inasmuch as it is my contention that 
librarians never were well—that is widely 
—read. If the problem is indeed one 
of faulty education is it not more logical to 
place the blame for such a deficiency upon 
the more influential institutions of formal 
(the school) and informal (mass communi-
cation media) education than upon the 
library? T h i s is not just another way to 
pass the proverbial buck. Recognition that 
the causes of unawareness lie deep is simply 
realism. W h i l e the library should do every-
thing in its power to remedy staff inade-
quacies it cannot be held primarily respon-
sible for them. 

W h a t exactly can libraries do to raise 
staff level? T h e y can attempt to create a 
truly intellectual milieu at least within their 
own confines. If the professional's ordinary 
environment is to a certain extent hostile 
to culture all the more reason for his work 
environment to mother same. Such a 
milieu is produced by and compounded of 
many things which are interchangeably 
causes and effects of one another: a quality 
collection of books and serials; employment 
of a f e w librarians w h o are themselves 
scholars; service to scholarship; and—paid 
reading time. Be it noted that the last is 
only one of several (and not the most im-
portant) factors. 

M r . Yerke believes that cultural short-
comings in members of the profession are 
traceable to the increasingly administrative 
and technical character of librarianship. 
Yet, factually, less and less attention is 
being paid by the bulk of the profession to 
technical processes simply because the latter 
have improved to such an extent in the 
last few decades that they are now semi-
automatic. Technical improvement, far 

136 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



from constituting an obstacle to the cultiva-
tion of librarians, for the first time makes 
such personal development truly practi-
cable. T h a t administration encroaches 
on the librarian's time cannot be denied. 
T h i s is due to the increasing size of collec-
tions and of staffs necessary to service them. 
Technical innovation offers hope3 in this 
area, too, for it may soon render the more 
mechanical aspects of administration auto-
matic. Nevertheless, irrespective of the 
most sanguine expectations, the problem of 
the interference of administrative duties 
w i t h what are perhaps the more satisfying 
facets of librarianship still remains. 

In addition to the three major premises 
explored in the above, there were t w o 
minor though related assumptions venti-
lated in the previous articles which bear 
attention. O n e was D r . Burton's conten-
tion that rapid reading is good reading and 
s l o w reading the reverse. T h e r e is some 
validity to this principle, but it is hardly 
unexceptionable. W h i l e increased speed is 
undoubtedly of great value to the backward 
reader it does not necessarily have the 
same consequences for the good reader. 
T h u s w h a t w o u l d D r . Burton do w i t h the 
occasional book that requires many readings 
a n d / o r note-taking along the w a y for its 
f u l l value to be extracted? T h e rarity of 
such volumes is surely no index of their 
importance. Q u i t e the contrary: these are 
the very books which shape our mind and 
thought. T h e deliberate reader w h o reads 
w i t h pen in hand, jotting down reflections 

3 I n this connection it should be recalled that the 
large-scale application of technology to areas other than 
the industrial has only just begun. 

and conclusions as he proceeds, is really in-
dulging in a creative act. U n d e r such 
circumstances reading ceases to be merely 
a passive experience and becomes opera-
tional : ideas are fitted into frames of ref-
erence, and old frames of reference are 
bent to n e w concepts. T h i s is the most 
fruitful w a y to read—and I fear that the 
rapid reading that D r . Burton enjoins 
upon us would destroy both the taste and 
the possibility of developing the taste for 
such reading. 

T h e "cult of coverage" attitude is also 
implicit in D r . M u l l e r ' s statement in con-
nection w i t h the possibilities for his pro-
posed program of staff reading: ". . . all 
the most noteworthy n e w books could be 
read by even a relatively small staff pro-
vided that no t w o staff members w o u l d 
read the same book on library time." 
T h e r e is no better w a y to create a high-level 
universe of discourse between staff members 
than by shared intellectual experience. 
W h a t better w a y to foster a milieu of intel-
ligence than through mutual discussion, 
formal and informal, of important books 
and the ideas they contain? 

In summation, though paid reading time 
is not in and of itself objectionable, the 
motives from which it appears to spring 
("cult of coverage"), and the results ex-
pected from its promulgation alone (rais-
ing of the quality of library service) are 
subject to question. Paid reading time can 
contribute to elevating the level of the pro-
fession only if it is part of a larger program 
designed to generate and nourish an at-
mosphere of ideas in the library. 

Credit Due 
W e apologize for the omission of the names of those who worked so hard to gather the 

"College and University Library Statistics, 1953-54." These were compiled by the following 
members of the A C R L Statistics Committee, chairmanned by Dale Bentz, State University of 
Iowa: Group I by Dale Bentz; Groups II and III by Dan Graves, Municipal University of 
Wichita; Teacher College Libraries by Wendell Smiley of East Carolina College, Greenville, 
N . C . — E d i t o r ' s Note. 

APRIL, 1955 137