Library Science
Sym
[Reprinted from LIBRARY JOURNAL, January, 1919].
CHANGING IDEALS IN LIBRARIANSHIP
BY WILLIAM WARNER BISHOP
EVERY once in a while we hear some
one--usually a very youthful person-
making slighting remarks to the disparage-
ment of the "old-fashioned librarian."
This phrase is generally coupled with some
ungracious allusion to his supposed function
as a "keeper" of books. It is not uncom-
monly, also, the introduction to certain
highly laudatory reflections on the extent
to which "nous avons changé tout cela."
I often wonder whether these folk who so
glibly relegate the old-fashioned librarian
to the limbo of out-worn ideals ever stop
to think what their own chances for em-
ployment in modern libraries would be to-
day, had it not been for the devoted labors
of these same "old-fashioned" folk who
literally made possible modern library de-
velopment. These "old-fashioned" libra-
ri ns included such men as Ainsworth Rand
Spofford, Justin Winsor, Josephus Nelson
Larned, William Frederick Poole, Charles
Ammi Cutter, Charles C. Jewett, J. G.
Cogswell, Anthony Panizzi, Richard
Garnett, Henry Bradshaw, and a score of
others I might mention. Happy indeed the
generation which can claim such leaders!
Well may we honor them to-day! They
set a standard which won the reverence and
respect of the world of letters. They
They
made the name of librarian honored and
revered in places where his position had
been held somewhat above a mere clerk-
ship, somewhat lower than a school-mas-
ter's post. As "modern" librarians, with
our faces set toward the possibilities of
what we conceive to be a truly glorious
service to society, we may well pause to
pay tribute to their memory, and to inquire
a moment as to their distinguishing traits.
What strikes one first in studying the
lives of these men of the generation which
passed off the stage of library work about
1900 (or a little earlier) is that they were
one and all collectors of rare skill. They
all seem to have had an instinctive sense
of book values, an eye for treasures, a scent
P
*Read before the New York Library Association
at Lake Placid, Sept. 24, 1918.
ہے
University of Michigan
University Library
Library Science Library
for the permanently useful work. The li
braries which they headed were in most
cases actually brought together, built up,
strengthened, by their own labors. .How
many, many times have I had occasion at
the Library of Congress to echo my chief's
sentiment-"It's ill gleaning after Dr.
Spofford!" How often did I find that his
keen instinct had brought to the Library of
Congress exactly those books for which
scholars sought decades later. The Astor,
the Lenox, the Boston Athenæum, the
Boston Public Library, the Library of
Congress, the Buffalo Library, the Brook-
lyn Library were, in the old days, real li-
braries-not buildings almost empty of
books, with high sounding dedicatory in-
scriptions and the names of great authors
across their fronts-and few of their works
inside-but collections of strong and valu-
able books. The present eminence of two
of those I have named, the consolidated
New York Public Library, and the Library
of Congress, is due not to their palatial
buildings, not to their magnificently or-
ganized staffs-great as these are-but to
the foundation of books of worth laid by
their old-fashioned librarians thru fifty
years. "The successful librarian," accord-
ing to a somewhat apocryphal saying attri-
buted to Dr. Poole, "must be a good buyer,
a good beggar,—and (occasionally) a good
thief." To what an extent certain of his
compeers followed out all three of these re-
quirements more than one of our libraries
bear witness.
Moreover these men of the later nine-
teenth century-for we move so fast that
even these seem remote from our day-were
generally good conservators. They took
good care of good things. They understood
the difference between an original New
England Primer, or Poor Richard's Alma-
nac, or Shakespeare quarto, and the modern
reprint or text-edition. Sometimes they
took too good care of their treasures for
the convenience of the man in haste or the
busy reporter. But I observe that their li-
braries still own these same treasures, and
are holding on to them with a firmness
which is in no way different from that of
old. Perhaps they made all books a little
hard to get at in their zeal to save their
valuable ones. For this, however, the struc-
tural materials available in their day, the
types of buildings, and the physical limita-
tions and dangers imposed by mill construc-
tion, wooden cases, non-fireproof rooms,
and old-fashioned safes were fully as much
to blame as the spirit of the librarian. Few
people in library work realize the part
which the electric light, structural and sheet
steel, electric elevators, heavy plate glass,
and the like have played in revolutionizing
library methods. Much of our modern the-
ory and practice is due to the engineer and
inventor rather than to the librarian. In
fact many of the things which we do daily
and hourly our predecessors could not do
for lack of the means-telephone, for in-
stance.
The old-fashioned librarian of any dis-
tinction was preeminently scholarly in his
tastes and habits. His equipment was usu-
ally such as to win the respect of the best
minds in his community. He could not
conceive what I sometimes hear called the
"library business." His attitude was dis-
tinctly that of the man of learning and at-
tainments. Need I call the roll again to
prove that the leaders in the past genera-
tion were men not of scholarship merely,
but of productive scholarship as well?
Even those who confined themselves more
particularly to librarianship were produc-
ers -witness Mr. Larned's series of books,
Dr. Poole's Index, Dr. Spofford's invaluable
Almanacs, C. A. Cutter's Expansive Classi-
fication, not to mention others. We may
well search our own generation for their
equals. One of our greatest perils is the
exaltation of executive ability over schol-
arly attainment. One of our greatest needs
is the development of scholarly executives,
men who while able to direct great libraries
in the modern spirit of service of the com-
munity, are yet in sympathetic touch with
the world of letters and with productive
research. Shorn of such sympathies and
abilities, our librarianship will surely degen-
erate into the common mold of "big busi-
ness." And what American libraries may
M
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become if bereft of the tinge of humane
letters, we may well shudder to consider.
On you who are younger in the practice of
our calling falls the duty and the high op-
portunity of combining the scholarly ideals.
of our former leaders with the energizing
zeal and skill of the modern director of
corporate activities.
But I have not yet exhausted the list of
enviable characteristics of our old-fash-
ioned librarians of distinction. Most of
them showed two other traits in a marked
degree—unselfish devotion to their work,
and high professional pride in their calling.
I could fill the remainder of this hour with
anecdotes showing both these traits. But
let me at least pause long enough to read
you the beautiful lines which Herbert Put-
nam wrote on the death of Ainsworth Rand
Spofford in 1908:
A. R. S.
1825-1908
The Epilogue
He Toiled long, well, and with Good Cheer
In the Service of Others
Giving his Whole, Asking little
Enduring patiently, Complaining
Not at all
With small Means
Effecting Much
He had no Strength that was not Useful
No Weakness that was not Lovable
No Aim that was not Worthy
No Motive that was not Pure
Ever he Bent
His Eye upon the Task
Undone
Ever he Bent
His Soul upon the Stars
His Heart upon
The Sun
Bravely he Met
His Test
Richly he Earned
His Rest
What nobler tribute has any librarian had―
or deserved?
It is, of course, true that professional
success in any line of work is never reached
without devotion and wholesome pride. But
when I recall the public spirit which in-
augurated and carried thru the various co-
operative efforts of American librarians, the
unselfish and lasting love for the work
which inspired men of high attainment to
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long and tedious labor without hope of per-
sonal reward, when I remember the willing-
ness to aid other librarians, the spirit of
mutual helpfulness which has been so long
a dominant note in our profession, I con-
gratulate you, and with you the ranks of
American librarians, on your entrance upon
such an heritage. More than the collector's
skill, or the custodian's zeal, more than
scholarship or learning, more than public
esteem or high honor, is that spirit of high
consecration to our calling and of willing-
ness to serve one another gladly which
form its best traditions. It was well and
truly said of old: "Other men have labored,
and ye are entered into their labors."
But highly as we may well think of our
leaders of an earlier generation, greatly as
we should and do esteem their ideals and
their traditions of professional attainment,
it remains true that their labors and their
aims were directed as a rule to but one por-
tion of the community. They served the
world of letters and the men and women of
literary tastes and interests. The scholar,
the research worker, the man of cultivated
tastes, the student (young or old), the book-
ish folk in the community-these were
their clientèle, and to the interests of such
classes they devoted the work of their
libraries. Libraries were for them-and
for their day-primarily the concern of
learning and its devotees, of books as ve-
hicles of instruction and of recreation.
None dreamed that a few years would see
almost a revolution in the conception of the
possible users of books, and of the library's
duty toward the community as a whole.
For we have "changed all that." The li-
brary-whether we like it or not-(and
with some of us it goes a bit hard!) has
become socialized in its aims and in its
practice. Its directors have gone out into
the highways and by-ways and compelled
folk to come in. The work of the New
York Public Library to-day would seem to
James Lenox a far cry from the uses he
expected would be made of his endowments
-but I believe he would rejoice greatly
in it, could he see it in the full sweep of
its noble service to the great city he loved
so well. Without going into it historically,
without stopping to trace the steps by which
the old-fashioned library of 1850 has be-
come the modern public library, we may,
perhaps, profit by a brief survey of the
present library situation.
First and foremost we note the great
increase in public libraries, an increase both
in their number and in their size. Whereas
in 1850 there were but few public libraries,
in the modern sense, to be found in our
country, now no considerable city is with-
out one. More significant still is the great
size of certain of our libraries. There are
well over one hundred libraries hav-
ing over two hundred thousand volumes
each, and we have a growing group of the
million class, including the Library of Con-
gress and New York Public with over two
million each, Harvard and the Boston Pub-
lic Library with a million and a half each,
Brooklyn and Yale in the millionaire class,
and doubtless others which have attained
that rank faster than the figures can be
compiled and published.
Along with this growth in great libraries
has gone an even more significant spread-
ing of the public library over the entire
country. There are in the aggregate vastly
more books in small libraries in the United
States than in the big ones. The one dis-
tinctly American feature in the library
"movement" is the small town or city li-
brary. Nowhere else is there anything
quite similar to it. Big libraries are pretty
much alike the world over. But our small
American libraries are a class apart, and
a very large class, too.
In fact I have often found that Euro-
pean librarians had no conception of the
function in our communities of the smaller
public libraries. Collections of ten, twenty,
thirty, fifty thousand volumes in small cities
and large towns, tax-supported, reaching
many sides of the town life, contributing to
the working efficiency of democratic com-
munities, are as hard for, say, our French
colleagues to understand, as are their more
purely museum or research libraries strange
to many American librarians, accustomed to
a more popular service. It is just this
element in our American library gather-
ings, eager, helpful, full of plans for im-
provement, for uplift, for reaching folk
with books and papers, which chiefly dis-
tinguishes American library meetings and
programs from those abroad. The service
of the people-all the people-of the town.
and county with books thru the medium of
the public library, is the goal-more or less
well attained-of our town libraries. This
effort knows little-perhaps too little-of
the scholar's labors. Its speeches and pa-
pers do not smell offensively of the lamp,
as Aeschines said of Demosthenes' speeches.
But they do bear witness of a spirit of
service which is the best trait of the smaller
American libraries. When all is said and
done these libraries form our distinctively
American type; they are wholesome, clean,
useful, inspiring. They are our contribu-
tion to popular education, following in the
wake of the public school, and, like the
school, capable of immense improvement—
and of a mighty social service. We should
rejoice in them-even with all their limit-
ations-for faulty service is more eloquent
of future good than no service at all.
Whatever may be said by pessimists in the
profession or out of it, to the disrepute of
our small American libraries, they are at
least very much alive.
Paralleling this spread of the small li-
brary over the country has been the growth
of the branch library idea in cities. I re-
member well visiting a branch library for
the first time in Cleveland in 1896. Had
I been a prophet, or the son of a prophet,
I might have foretold how branch libraries
would dot the maps of our large cities,
while delivery stations and the like would
surpass any and all predictions of library
development. Not the large cities only,
but the small towns now have branches.
Even my own modest university town boasts
not alone a public library-but two
"branches" as well. Every effort is now
being made with a well defined purpose to
bring books home to people, to afford con-
venient service, to give (as Life might say)
no man, woman or child a chance to escape
the book.
With this physical development—and that
has cost millions on millions of the taxpay-
ers' money, helped out by Mr. Carnegie, to
be sure-with this physical development of
libraries has come a conscious effort at ex-
ploitation. This effort on its best side is
4
magnificent in its possibilities for increased
and increasing usefulness. The modern
idea is to seek out every avenue of serv-
ice, to do all the work that books can do
when directed and interpreted by sym-
pathetic and intelligent librarians. It is
this conscious effort to bring good books to
play in the service of mankind which has
given us many of our modern forms of li-
brary works, such as all our work with
children, with the schools, with clubs of
various sorts, highly organized reference
work, extension work, traveling libraries,
and so on almost without end. In short we
librarians are convinced that all printed
matter is our province-not necessarily lit-
erature alone in the old sense-and that it
is our business to get things in print into
the hands of every one who can profitably
use them-whether he knows it or not.
It is this intense conviction which
lies back of the present agitation for pub-
licity and advertising for libraries. It is a
wholly natural and legitimate conviction.
Books and printed things are worth while,
and should be known to thousands who suf-
fer from lack of the help they can have for
the asking. But, remembering whence we
sprang, and whose heritors we are, let me
urge you by all you treasure not to adver-
tise until you are sure of your wares. Be
sure to use modern slang-you "have the
goods" before you push them into the light
of "pitiless publicity." It is perhaps not
wholly without significance that some of the
most ardent advocates of advertising for
libraries come from libraries notoriously ill-
equipped for service.
Another phase of this conviction of the
universal value of printed things is the
growth of the so-called "special" libraries.
Business men have found that they have
hourly need for information found only in
print. Professional men, engineers, doc-
tors, lawyers, insurance men, bankers, man-
ufacturers, now are gathering their own li-
braries, organizing them on the most mod-
ern lines, stealing some of our best people,
even as the "movies" have stolen the best
actresses from the "legitimate" drama.
This movement-which has always existed
-is only in its infancy. We are going to
see print (not necessarily books) in the
service of business and the professions to
an undreamed-of degree. We see it even
now in the service of legislation as no one
even fifteen years ago supposed possible.
And all this development means more—
and better-librarians.
Contemporaneously there has come a
standardization of library technique.
If
you learn how to do any library process in
one place, you can generally do it success-
fully in any other. This was not true
even twenty-years ago. How well I remem-
ber the common (and true) remark about
library school graduates in the days when
they were few. "You have to teach them
first to unlearn most of the things they
have learned in the library school." That
day is past, altho our library schools have
yet much to learn about both teaching and
librarianship. There has come about a
great amount of centralization of library
work. The Library of Crongress and the
American Library Association are now do-
ing all sorts of things for all the libraries.
which twenty years ago each one did―more
or less well-for itself. We are gradually,
but surely, developing a body of library
doctrine which can be taught, and which
all novices will be required to learn. To
this result, moreover, the library schools.
have contributed in no small degree.
To sum up our survey: This is a day of
thoughtful planning of library work, a day
when we are trying to use all our plant all
the time, or at least to make it all count
all the time. It is a day when the use of
slight, of even purely ephemeral, material—
clippings, pamphlets, leaflets, broadsides,
pictures-is being organized and made a
part of regular library work as truly as
ever were solid folios and stout quartos.
It is a day of big libraries in every city,
and big libraries largely made up of little
libraries of duplicates. It is a day when
the countryside has its books-or soon will
have them as well as the town and the
city. Every school, every club, every
church, and almost every factory and shop
will soon have its small, special collection,
the larger ones with trained librarians in
charge. The book-using art is bound to
grow, and our failure or success in leading
and directing its growth is going to be the
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 04155 4851
measure of our ability to rise to our oppor-
tunity.
Now all this enormous growth has not
come about without some grave conse-
quences. In fact it is not too much to
say that we stand at a crisis in library
affairs. There is on us a very real con-
flict between quality and quantity, between
loyalty to our professional ideals, what we
know to be good service, and the pressure
of an ever-increasing demand. Never have
we seen so many things to be done, or felt
so keenly our own call to serve. There
is a disquieting disposition to spread our
energies over too great a number of things,
to take on too much work, and to advertise
far beyond our ability to perform. It is a
very insidious temptation, and I believe it
assails the heads of small libraries even
more subtly than their colleagues with
greater and heavier demands and resources.
In fact, if I were disposed to play the
role of an unfriendly critic-which I am
not-I think I should have to say that as a
profession we have not successfully re-
sisted this temptation, this pressure to ex-
pand beyond our powers of faithful and
efficient performance. In one sense medi-
ocrity may be said to be the key to the
library situation in America at the present
day. We have few really strong libraries,
few very fine collections, few wonderfully
expert librarians. We have numbers-large
numbers of fair buildings, fairly good col-
lections, moderately successful librarians
and assistants. This state of affairs is bal-
anced to a great extent by our spirit of
service, by our standardized technique, by
our very effort to keep abreast of the best
thought in the profession. But the ugly
facts remain that the demand for exten-
sion in the way of branches has seriously
handicapped the development of strong,
well-equipped central libraries; the need
for all sorts of new work has drawn off too
many able people from the regular lines
of service; the supply of trained librarians
is by no means equal to the demand. There
is a woeful tendency to imitate in service,
and, worst of all, there is a great dearth
of good books in very many of these new
lines of publication. The trash which is
being published to-day on various phases
of business, and which is going on our li-
brary shelves, is but one illustration of that
tendency to mediocrity-and worse-of
which I am regretfully speaking. There is
no doubt about the fact-quantity lords it
over quality in too many phases of our
work to-day.
May I, then, in view of all I have just
said, venture on some seasonable advice to
my younger colleagues? Before everything
let no man deceive you by saying that this
is a day of great movements, of blind forces
beyond the individual's power to control.
It is not so. No man can escape his age.
But in no age or time has personality
counted as it does now. We come back
to the man, to the woman, every time.
Here in all this welter of the modern com-
plex is your chance, your own chance, to
make yourself count.
One of your greatest assets will be an
ability to say "No"-and to say it very loud
and clear. The peculiar temptation of wom-
en librarians seems to be to take on more
than they can carry out. As Kipling once
said, they are "over-engined for their
beam." Poise in library work-as in all
other work-comes from a
from a serene self-
knowledge, and that includes a knowledge
of one's limitations as well as of one's
possibilities.
You will not succeed unless you do some
one thing supremely well. It is perhaps too
early to say what that may be.
But re-
member, the future in library work is one
of specialization within the profession.
When you find a line which you follow
with ease, with pleasure, with eagerness,
stick to following it. So will you find and
do your best work. And finally, I beg you,
do not enter on your work with any small
view of the possibilities of our calling.
This is a day when the nation's call to
service rings in our ears. Library work is
service. It cannot be anything else. In it
are no great rewards of money or fame.
But there are great things to be done.
The work calls for devotion, for learning,
for character, for service.
One service especially has been now laid
on us with an ever-growing heaviness. We
have-perhaps lightly-assumed the bur-
den of supplying the reading of our soldiers
6
and sailors, at home in training, abroad on
service or in hospital. The librarians of
the country thru the American Library
Association in the summer of 1917 volun-
teered to conduct special library work for
the new armies soon to assemble. We went
to the American people in the fall and asked
them for money. They gave it, generously,
freely. Amid a thousand perplexities such
as beset any new effort on a huge scale our
War Service Committee organized our
forces, brought thousands, yes, millions, of
books and of dollars to effective use in
camps, in hospitals, on our ships. The
Library War Service of the American
Library Association stands to-day a living,
active, moving proof of the vitality and
power of American library ideals.
But proud as we are of what has been
done there yet looms large before us a
greater task. We need the best effort of
every librarian, of each library trustee.
What we have done has not been accomp-
lished easily. There has been much hard
work, much sacrifice-both of ease and of
cherished conviction and opinion. The
work ahead of us calls for more, and yet
more people. It calls for you!
I said the admirable work we have done
had not been accomplished easily. There
have been earnest and sincere differences
of opinion. There at first were delays-
heart-breaking delays-and difficulties. De-
cisions have had to be made-with the mili-
tary ends of the army and navy always in
view-which have not pleased some very
earnest and very loyal folk among us.
There will be more differences, and more
difficulties. But what do these things mat-
ter?
It is the work, our work, the best
work librarians ever did, which counts. To
it I beg you all to rally with but one pur-
pose, one aim, one resolve. Support the
War Service! Get behind it! Work for
it! Make it better! Let every camp and
hospital librarian, every volunteer at dis-
patch office, on the transports, at Headquar-
ters, in France, feel your interest, your de-
termination. We are not going to fail our
men! They need books and our best brains.
If librarianship has any force, any ideals,
if it means anything, then we must forget
all our differences, and go forward together.