LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 PAPERS RELATED TO THE WORK 
 OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 PAPERS RELATED TO THE WORK 
 OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES 
 
 ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK, Ph. D. 
 
 • • 
 
 THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 1920
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The author of these papers began his service in 
 librarianship in April, 1895. He celebrates his silver 
 jubilee by gathering them into a single volume. Be- 
 fore becoming a librarian he had worked for many 
 years as teacher, editor and journalist, and the use of 
 the pen having become second nature, he took it up 
 in behalf of libraries and librarians, somewhat 
 sooner, perhaps, than experience would warrant. 
 However, the papers reflect to a certain extenl the 
 progress of library work during the past quarter 
 century. A. E. B. 
 
 415918
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Pains and Penalties in Library Work - - - 3 
 Read at the Magnolia Conference of the 
 American Library Association, June, L902. 
 \ A. L. A. Proceedings, L902, p. 29-34 | 
 
 How Librarians Choose Books 17 
 
 (Public Libraries, April, 1!M>: , », p. 1.I7 11 i 
 
 The Work of the Small Public Library - - - 29 
 (Library Journal, August, 1903, p. 596-600) 
 
 Lay Control in Libraries and Elsewhere - 39 
 Read before the Trustees' Section of tin- 
 American Library Association, at the Niag- 
 ara Conference. (A. L. A. Proceedings, L903, 
 p. 199-202) 
 
 The Whole Duty of a Library Trustee: prom 
 
 a Librarian's Standpoint 4!) 
 
 An address before the Trustees' Section of 
 the American Library Association. (.1. /.. I 
 Proceedings, 1906, p. 40-4) 
 
 The Day's Work: Some Conditions and Some 
 
 Ideals -> !> 
 
 Presidential address before the New York Li- 
 brary Association, Lake Placid, September 
 21, 1903. (Library Journal, October, 1903, 
 p. 704-7) 
 
 Library Statistics 69 
 
 (Library Journal, January, 1904, p. 5-8)
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 Old Probabilities in the Library — His 
 
 Modest Vaticinations 79 
 
 Read before the Pennsylvania Library Club, 
 Philadelphia, May 9, 1904. {Library Jour- 
 nal, October, 1904, p. 517-23) 
 
 The Love of Books as a Basis for Librarian- 
 ship 97 
 
 Read before the New York Library Associa- 
 tion, Twilight Park, September, 1906. {Li- 
 brary Journal, February, 1907, p. 51-5) 
 
 The Library as the Educational Center of a 
 
 Town ' HI 
 
 {Public Libraries, May, 1907, p. 171-4) 
 
 The Librarian as a Censor 121 
 
 Presidential address before the American Li- 
 brary Association, Lake Minnetonka Confer- 
 ence, June, 1908. {Library Journal, July, 
 1908, p. 257-64) 
 
 How to Raise the Standard of Book Selection 141 
 Read at the meeting of the Library commis- 
 sions of the New England States, Hartford, 
 Conn., February 11, 1909. {Public Librar- 
 ies, May, 1909, p. 163-7) 
 
 Library Circulation at Long Range - - - 221 
 {Library Journal, July, 1913, p. 391-4) 
 
 Conflicts of Jurisdiction in Library Sys- 
 tems 231 
 
 Read before the round table of branch librar- 
 ians at the Washington conference, May 28, 
 * 1914. {Library Journal, August, 1914, 
 p. 588-91)
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 Three Kinds of Librarians 241 
 
 Read before the Missouri Library Associa- 
 tion, Sedalia, November 18, 1914 . (Public 
 Libraries, January, 1915, p. 1-4; February, 
 1915, p. 47-50) 
 
 School Libraries and Mental Training - - 255 
 (School Review, June, 1915, p. 395-405) 
 
 The Library and the Business Man - - - !_'<;<+ 
 A luncheon address to the Advertising Clul> 
 of St. Louis. (Library Journal, April, 1917, 
 p. 259-64) 
 
 System in the Library 153 
 
 Read before the Missouri State Library Asso- 
 ciation, Columbia, Mo., October 28, 1909. 
 (Library Journal, November, 1909, p. 476- 
 
 82) 
 
 The Exploitation of the Public Library - - 171 
 Address before the American Library Asso- 
 ciation at the Pasadena Conference, May 19, 
 1911. (A. L. A. Proceedings, 1911, p. 60-5) 
 
 Service Systems in Libraries 183 
 
 (Library Journal, June, 1912, p. 299-304) 
 
 Efficiency Records in Libraries l!>!» 
 
 (Library Journal, March, 1913, p. 131-3) 
 
 Mal-Employment in the Library - 205 
 
 Read before the Iowa Library Association. 
 (Iowa Library Quarterly, October, 1912, 
 p. 247-52) 
 
 Cost of Administration -1" 
 
 Report to the American Library Institute. 
 (Public Libraries, December, 1912, j». 416-18)
 
 s 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Poets, Libraries and Realities 283 
 
 An address at the opening of the new build- 
 ing of the Indianapolis Public Library. (Li- 
 brary Journal, December, 1917, p. 944-50) 
 
 The Church and the Public Library - - - 299 
 (Homiletic Review, June, 1918, p. 435-9) 
 
 The Future of Library Work 309 
 
 (A. L. A. Bulletin, September, 1919, p. 50-7) 
 
 Popularizing Music Through the Library - - 325 
 Read before the National Association of 
 Music Teachers and reprinted from the pub- 
 lished Proceedings for 1918. 
 
 Two Cardinal Sins 341 
 
 A Message to Beginners - - 357 
 
 Luck in the Library 373 
 
 The Library as a Museum 393 
 
 The Library and the Locality 409 
 
 Index 429
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 PAPERS RELATED TO THE WORK 
 OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES
 
 PAINS AND PENALTIES IN LIBRARY WORK* 
 
 In somewhat the sanm way as Irving makes Died- 
 rich Knickerbocker begin his history of New York 
 with the creation of the world, so we may open a dis- 
 cussion of this subject with a word on the theory of 
 punishment. We all know that neither moral phil- 
 osophers nor penologists are agreed in this matter. 
 Do we inflict punishment to satisfy our eternal sense 
 of justice, to prevent further wrong-doing on the part 
 of the person punished, as an example to others, or 
 to reform the delinquent? So far as the justicial the- 
 ory goes, it is unnecessary here to discuss whether 
 it is founded merely on the old savage feeling of re- 
 venge, which having done its part in ensuring pun- 
 ishment to the wrong-doer in the uncivilized past, 
 should now be put aside. As a matter of fact the 
 rule, "Let no guilty man escape," is a very good one 
 for practical purposes, whatever its theoretical im- 
 plications. W T hy should it be necessary to proceed 
 according to any one theory in administering pun- 
 ishment? Practically in the home, at school, and in 
 the courtroom the simple administration of justice 
 does very well for us, and when we go a little farther 
 into the matter we see that each of the other elements 
 enters into consideration. Certainly it is so in the 
 library. 
 
 Penalties for the infraction of our rules should be 
 so inflicted that future wrong-doing both on the part 
 of the culprit and on that of the remainder of the 
 
 •Read at the Magnolia Conference of the American library 
 Association, June, 1902.
 
 4 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 public becomes less likely than before. Whether we 
 always do this in the most satisfactory way may be 
 queried. 
 
 Punishable acts committed in a library may be 
 divided, according to the old ecclesiastical classifica- 
 tion, into mala prohibita and mala in se; in other 
 words, into acts that are simply contrary to library 
 regulations and those that are absolutely wrong. To 
 steal a book is wrong anywhere and does not become 
 so merely because the act is committed in a library; 
 but the retention of a borrowed book for fifteen in- 
 stead of fourteen days is not absolutely wrong, but 
 simply contrary to library regulations. 
 
 The keeping of books overtime is a purely library 
 offence, committed against the library and to be pun- 
 ished by the library; and with it may be classed 
 such infractions of the rules as failure to charge or 
 discharge a book, loud talking or misbehavior below 
 the rank of really disorderly conduct, such injury 
 to books as does not constitute wilful mutilation, 
 the giving of a fictitious name at the application 
 desk, etc. 
 
 For all these strictly library offences the favorite 
 penalties seem to be two in number — the exaction of 
 a fine and exclusion from library privileges — tempo- 
 rary or permanent. The former is more used than the 
 latter, and I venture to think unjustly so. From the 
 sole standpoint of punishment the great advantage 
 of a fine is that it touches people in their most sensi- 
 tive point — the pocket. But this is a ganglion whose 
 sensitiveness is in inverse proportion to its size; in 
 one case the exaction of a cent means the confiscation 
 of the possessor's entire fortune; in another the de- 
 linquent could part with a hundred dollars without 
 depriving himself of a necessity or a pleasure. Of 
 course this lack of adaptability to the conditions of
 
 PAINS AND PENALTIES 
 
 the person to be punished is not confined to this one 
 method. Imprisonment, for instance, may be the rum 
 of a life to the hitherto respectable person, while to 
 the tramp it may simply menu a month's shelter and 
 food But in the case of a money penalty the lack of 
 adaptability is particularly noticeable, and hence 
 wherever it is exacted a Large portion of the public 
 comes to forget that it is a penalty at all. Instead of 
 a punishment exacted in return for the commission 
 of a misdemeanor and intended to discourage the rep- 
 etition thereof, it is looked upon as payment for 
 the privilege of committing the misdemeanor, and it 
 in fact becomes this very thing. Thus, in states 
 where there is a prohibitory law, and periodical 
 raids are made on saloons with the resulting fines, 
 these fines often become in effect license fees, and are 
 so regarded by both delinquents and authorities. 
 Where a municipality provides that automobiles 
 shall not be speeded in its streets under penalty of 
 a heavy fine, the wealthy owners of motor-carnages 
 too often regard this as permission to speed on pay- 
 ment of a stated amount, and act accordingly. So m 
 the library, the fine for keeping books overtime is 
 widelv regarded as a charge for the privilege of keep- 
 ing the books longer than the formal rules allow, be- 
 ing so regarded, the fine loses a great part of its pun- 
 itive effect, and largely becomes in fact what it is 
 popularly thought to be. Thus we have a free public 
 library granting extra privileges to those who can 
 afford to pay for them and withholding the same 
 from those who cannot afford to pay-an extremely 
 obiectional state of things. 
 
 In making this characterization I am aware that 
 the sale of additional facilities and privileges by a 
 free library is regarded as proper by a large number 
 of librarians, and that the extension of systems of
 
 6 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 which it is a feature is widely urged. It is found in 
 the St. Louis plan for fiction, which has been so suc- 
 cessful, and still more in Mr. Dewey's proposed li- 
 brary bookstore. That all these plans are admirable 
 in many ways may be freely acknowledged. In so far 
 as they may be adopted by endowed libraries they 
 are certainly unobjectionable. But in spite of their 
 advantages, it seems to me that their use in an insti- 
 tution supported from the public funds is a mistake. 
 The direct payment of money to any institution so 
 supported, even if such payment is logically justifi- 
 able, is open to so much misconstruction and is so 
 commonly misunderstood or misinterpreted, that I 
 would hold up as an ideal the total abolition of all 
 money transactions between the individual members 
 of a public and institutions supported by that public 
 as a whole. 
 
 The present subject evidently does not justify 
 further discussion of this point, but its mention here 
 is proper because if library fines have become in 
 many cases payments for a privilege, that very fact 
 should lead those who agree with what has been said 
 above to strive for their abolition. 
 
 Another objection to the fine, which is, curiously 
 enough, also the chief reason why it is almost hope- 
 less to look for its abolition, is the fact that wherever 
 fines have been applied they have become a source 
 of revenue that cannot well be neglected. In a village 
 not far from New York the receipts from bicycle fines 
 at one time nearly paid the running expenses of the 
 place. Agitation in favor of substituting other meth- 
 ods of punishing the cyclists who ride on the side- 
 walks and fail to light their lamps at sundown would 
 evidently be hopeless here. In the same way receipts 
 from fines have become a very considerable source of 
 income in large libraries, and are not to be neglected
 
 PAINS AND PENALTIES 7 
 
 even in small ones. This is apparent in the following 
 table* : 
 
 Income Fines 
 
 Boston $309,417.52 $4,62X45 
 
 Chicago 285,951.22 7.I3I.I9 
 
 Philadelphia 141,95445 2,385.52 
 
 Brooklyn 105,081.19 4,013.26 
 
 N Y C F L 91,613.12 4,646.98 
 
 Buffalo 87,946.85 2,951.21 
 
 Milwaukee 7i.J28.8o .,295.99 
 
 San Francisco 6 ^ 3 i ?^!5 
 
 Newark 43,7o6. 3 6 1,905.17 
 
 Evidently the abolition of fines in these cases 
 would mean a reduction of income that would make 
 itself felt at once. 
 
 Now, of course, the knowledge that the detection 
 of wrongdoing is financially profitable to the detec- 
 tor results in increased vigilance. So far, that is a 
 good thing. But it goes farther than this: it makes 
 the authorities strict regarding technicalities; it may 
 even lead to the encouragement of infraction of the 
 law in order that the penalties may reach a larger 
 amount. In the town that is supported by bicycle fines 
 we may fairly conclude that no resident calls the 
 attention of the unwary cyclist to the warning sign, 
 past which he wheels toward the sidewalk. To do so 
 would decrease the village revenue and raise taxes. 
 So too, what librarian would wish to adopt any 
 course that will certainly reduce the money at his 
 disposal for salaries and books? 
 
 Supposing, however, that this loss can be made up 
 in some way, is there anything that can be substi- 
 tuted for the fine? It has already been stated that 
 suspension from library privileges is in use as a pen- 
 alty to a considerable extent, and there seems to be 
 no "reason why this should not be extended to the 
 case of overdue books. There might, for instance, be 
 a rule that for every day of illegal retention of a 
 book the holder should be suspended from library 
 
 •Figures for 1901.
 
 8 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 privileges for one week. The date of expiration of the 
 suspension would be noted on the holder's card, and 
 the card would Dot be returned to him before that 
 date. 
 
 This plan would probably have interesting re- 
 sults which there is not time to anticipate here. But 
 as long as books cost money and librarians refuse 
 to work altogether for love, financial considerations 
 must play a large part in library changes. The only 
 way in which fines can be abolished without decreas- 
 ing income is to make the abolition a condition of an 
 increased appropriation, which, of course, could be 
 done by the appropriating body. The making of such 
 a condition is extremely unlikely. Hence, if we agree 
 that fines are undesirable w r e must regard their ab- 
 olition as an unattainable ideal. We may, however, 
 treat them so as to minimize their bad effect, and 
 this, I believe, may be done in either or both of the 
 following two ways : 
 
 (1) We may emphasize the punitive value of 
 the fine and at the same time increase its value as a 
 source of revenue by making it larger. This would 
 doubtless decrease the number of overdue books, and 
 the exact point where the increase should stop would 
 be the point where this decrease should so balance 
 the increase of fines as to make the total receipts a 
 maximum; or, if this maximum should greatly ex- 
 ceed the revenue received from fines under the old 
 arrangement, then the rate could be still farther in- 
 creased until the total receipts fell to the old amount. 
 The practical method would be to increase the fines 
 by a fraction of a cent per day at intervals of several 
 months, comparing the total receipts for each inter- 
 val with that of the corresponding period under the 
 old arrangement; and stopping when this sum 
 showed signs of decrease.
 
 TxVINS AND PENALTIES 9 
 
 (O) We may give the librarian the option of sub- 
 stituting suspension for the fine whenever, in Ins 
 judgment, this is advisable. This is the course pur- 
 sued by the law when it gives to the trial judge the 
 option of fining or imprisoning an offender Lucases 
 where a fine is no punishment at all, and where books 
 are kept overtime deliberately, suspension from li- 
 brary privileges would probably prove salutary, a 
 variant of the second plan would be to allow the cul- 
 prit himself to substitute suspension for his fine, ins 
 in effect is what the offender in the police court does 
 when he avows that he has not the money to pay his 
 fine and is sent to jail to work it off. At present 
 when a library offender is manifestly unable to pay 
 his fine there is usually no alternative but to remit 
 it or to denv the culprit access to the library until 
 it is paid— in many cases an unreasonably heavj 
 
 punishment. .. 
 
 Of course there is no reason why all these modifi- 
 cations of existing rules should not be made together. 
 According to this plan fines would be raised and sus- 
 pension would he substituted in any ease at tie- libra- 
 rian's option and in all eases where the person fined 
 avows that he is unable to pay his tine. The rates ran 
 be so adjusted that under this plan there is no de- 
 crease of revenue, but rather a net increase 
 
 Of course the adoption of such rules would be re- 
 garded bv a large portion of the public as a curtail- 
 ment of privileges, but such an outcry as it would 
 probablv raise ought not to be (.bject.onabh- as it IS 
 a necessary step in the instruction of the users of a 
 library regarding the proper function of penalties 
 for infraction of its rules. These rules an- for the 
 benefit of the majority and the good sense of that n.a- 
 joritv ought to, and doubtless would, come to the 
 rescue of the library authorities on short notice.
 
 10 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 As long as the library fine is a recognized penalty, 
 numerous petty questions will continue to arise re- 
 garding its collection, registration, and use. Any ex- 
 haustive treatment of these is impossible in the limits 
 of a single paper and I have chosen to neglect most 
 of them in order to dwell on the question in its larger 
 aspects. It is the exaction of the fine, after all, that 
 is the library penalty— the money is part of the li- 
 brary income and its collection and disposition are 
 properly questions of finance. One point, however, 
 regarding the disposition of the fines bears directly 
 on what has been said. In municipal public libraries 
 like that of Boston, where the city requires that the 
 fines shall be turned directly into the public treasury 
 and not retained for library use, the substitution of 
 a different penalty would presumably involve no dim- 
 inution of income. From ordinary considerations 
 of equity, however, it seems to me that this disposi- 
 tion of the fines is objectionable. If the fines are to be 
 turned into the city treasury they should be placed 
 to the credit of the library appropriation as they are 
 in Brooklyn. 
 
 Regarding the collection of fines there are one or 
 two points that bear directly on their efficiency as a 
 punitive measure. First, shall fines be charged? It 
 seems a hardship to refuse a well-known member a 
 book because he does not happen to have with him 
 the change to pay a 15 cent fine. This point of view, 
 however, loses sight again of the element of punish- 
 ment. When the delinquent who is fined a dollar in 
 the police court does not have the money with him, 
 does he request the magistrate to charge it and send 
 in a bill for the month's penalties all at once? The 
 true method, I am convinced, is to insist on cash pay- 
 ment of fines, and if this is done promptly their 
 character as penalties will be more generally recog- 
 nized.
 
 PAINS AND PENALTI] - 11 
 
 Another point in regard to the collection of fines 
 is their effect on the assistants themselves. In every 
 library a stream of money passes in at the desk in 
 very small amounts. This must all be accounted for, 
 and we have the alternative of requiring vouchers 
 for every cent or of simply keeping a memorandum 
 account and seeing that the cash corresponds with it 
 at the close of the day. 
 
 This latter plan, in some form, is usually adopted. 
 To misappropriate funds under these circumstances 
 is not difficult, and I submit that it is not right to 
 place a large number of young girls in a situation 
 where such misappropriation is easy and safe. In 
 spite of Mark Twain, who prays that he may be led 
 into temptation early and often, that he may get ac- 
 customed to it, I do not believe that this is a good 
 general policy to pursue. We all know of cases where 
 assistants have fallen into temptation, and we should 
 not hold the library altogether blameless in the mat- 
 ter. But on general principles such a plan is not good 
 business. Every one who is responsible for money col- 
 lected must show vouchers that he turns over every 
 cent that has been given to him. Why should the li- 
 brary assistant be an exception? I look to see some 
 form of cash register on every (barging desk in the 
 ideal library of the future, nor can I see that its use 
 would be a reflection on the honesty of the assistants 
 any more than the refusal of a bank to cash an im- 
 properly endorsed cheek is a reflection on the honesty 
 of the holder. 
 
 This is on the supposition that we are to retain 
 the tine as a penalty. Such considerations, of course, 
 weigh down the balance still more strongly in favor 
 of its abolition. 
 
 I have devoted so much space t<> the penalty for 
 keeping books overtime because the rule on this 
 subject is the one that is chiefly broken in a free
 
 12 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 public library. Other offences are usually dealt with 
 by suspension, and very properly so. For the loss or 
 accidental injury of a book, however, a fine is again 
 the penalty, and here, as the offence is the causing 
 of a definite money loss to the library, there is more 
 reason for it. The money in this case, indeed, is to 
 be regarded as damages, and its payment is rather 
 restitution than punishment. Even here, however, the 
 argument against money transactions with a free 
 institution seems to hold good. There is no reason 
 in the majority of cases why he who loses or destroys 
 a hook should not give to the library a new copy in- 
 stead of the price thereof, and for minor injury sus- 
 pension is surely an adequate penalty. 
 
 Here we may pause for a moment to ask : What 
 right has a library to inflict any penalties at all? I 
 must leave the full discussion of this question to the 
 lawyers, but I am quite sure that libraries, like some 
 other corporations, often enact and enforce rules 
 that they have no legal right to make. To cite an in- 
 stance that came under my own observation, the 
 Brooklyn Public Library's rules were for more than 
 a year, according to good authority, absolutely in- 
 valid because they had not been enacted by the Mu- 
 nicipal Assembly, and that library had no right to 
 collect a single fine. Yet during this time it did col- 
 lect fines amounting to several thousand dollars, and 
 not a word of protest was heard from the public. In 
 this and similar cases we are getting down to first 
 principles — the consent of the governed; which, 
 whether based on ignorance or knowledge, is what 
 we must rely on in the end for the enforcement of law 
 in self-governing communities. I am afraid that it 
 is this general consent, in a good many instances, 
 that is enabling us to enforce our regulations, rather 
 than any right derived from positive law. To take a 
 related instance, it is by no means certain that libra-
 
 PAINS AND PENALTIES 13 
 
 ties are not breaking the law of libel every time they 
 
 send out an overdue postal notice. The courts have 
 held that a dun on a postal is libellous, and our over- 
 due cards specifically inform the person to whom they 
 are addressed that he owes money to the library, and 
 
 threaten him with punishment if the debt is not paid. 
 Yet although occasional delinquents remark that the 
 
 law is violated by these postals, public libraries ... 
 all parts of the Cnited States continue to send then. 
 out by thousands daily with few protests. This seems 
 clearly a case where the public consents to a puni- 
 tive measure of doubtful legality, and approves it for 
 
 the public j;ood. 
 
 The second of the two classes into which we haw 
 divided infractions of library rules consists of those 
 that are also contrary to statute law or municipal 
 regulation. How far shall these be dealt with purely 
 from the library standpoint, and when shall they be 
 turned over to the public- authorities? If a small boy 
 veils at the desk-assistant through door or window he 
 is a disturber of the peace; if he throws at her some 
 handy missile, such as a vegetable or a tm can, as 
 occasionally happens in certain sections of unregen- 
 erate New York, he is technically committing an as- 
 sault; shall he be handed over to the police? 
 
 Of course one must not treat trifles too seriously. 
 Yet probably libraries have been somewhat too timid 
 about dealing with petty offences. There is an un- 
 willingness to drag the libraries into the pohce im- 
 ports that seems to be a relic of the days when all 
 libraries were haunts of scholarly seclusion. 
 
 The modern public library cannot afford to W 
 considered an -easy mark- by those who wish to in- 
 dulge in horse play or commit petty misdemeanors, 
 and in some cases it is in danger of getting this rep- 
 
 ntation. . , ,• 
 
 When we come to more serious offences, th< U-
 
 U LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 brary's duty is clearer. Theft, wilful mutilation of 
 books, or grave disorder must of course be punished. 
 In many cases, however, the detection of the first two 
 offences is very difficult. Theft from open shelves is 
 easy. For the thousands of books lost yearly in this 
 way hardly a culprit meets punishment. I have 
 known a professional detective to confess that the 
 open shelf baffled him. "If you will only shut the 
 books up," he said, "I can find out who takes 'em ; 
 but here everybody is taking out books and walking 
 around with them." When the professional acknowl- 
 edges himself beaten, what shall the librarian do? 
 Mutilation is even harder to detect. In both these 
 cases the offender has simply to wait his opportunity. 
 Sooner or later there will be a second or two when 
 no assistant is looking, even if the man is under long- 
 standing suspicion, and in that brief time the book 
 is slipped into the pocket or the leaf is torn out. Even 
 when the offender is caught in the act, the magis- 
 trate may not hold, or the jury may fail to convict. 
 A persistent mutilator of books in one of our branch 
 libraries escaped punishment last winter because the 
 custodian of the reading-room where he was caught 
 did not wait until the leaf on which he was working 
 was actually severed. The man asserted that the 
 sharp lead pencil that he was using to separate the 
 leaf was merely being employed to mark a place, and 
 thus by confessing to a minor defacement he escaped 
 the penalty of the more serious offence. 
 
 For a library that is thus forced to appeal con- 
 tinually to the law to protect its assistants, its users, 
 and its collections, a manual of library law would be 
 useful, and I am not sure that the appointment of 
 a committee of this Association to take the matter 
 in charge would not be eminently justified. 
 
 It is the misfortune of this paper that it has been
 
 PAINS AND PENALTIES 15 
 
 obliged to dwell on the darker side of library work. 
 It is hardly necessary to remind an audience of libra- 
 rians that this is not the prominent side. All users 
 of a library are not delinquents or law-breakers, and 
 the assistants have other and better work than to act 
 as fine-collectors and detectives. The sombre effect 
 of what you have just heard should have been dis- 
 pelled by a paper on "Rewards and delights of libra- 
 ry work," but this the Program Committee has seen 
 fit to omit, probably because it is not necessary to 
 emphasize the obvious.
 
 I row UISKAKIAXS CHOOSI-; HOOKS 
 
 The form in which this Bubject is stated remoi 
 it from tli«- region of ethics and brings it down to the 
 hard realms of fact I am nol to tell you how libra- 
 rians onghl to select books, but how they do selecl 
 them. I shall assume, however, that yon do not cur.' 
 to have this paper filled with instances of abnormal 
 and unprofitable selection, bnt that you wish to hear 
 of the normal and the unobjectionable. Booksellers 
 tell us that many buyers of hooks are governed in 
 their (dunce by the color of the covers, and I have 
 suspected that some librarians are influenced in the 
 same way. Some librarians appear to object to works 
 that are less than one century old; others are on rec- 
 ord as discouraging the purchase of fiction less than 
 one year of age. Some librarians have a prejudice 
 against certain (dasses of hooks and an inordinate 
 
 love for others. 
 
 The only things that should be considered by the 
 librarian in buying books for his library are the 
 aeeds of the community that he serves, the capabil- 
 ity of the various books under consideration to 
 satisfy those needs, and the financial ability of the 
 library to secure what is needed. 
 
 1 shall take up these points in order. First, the 
 needs of the community. These are aot necessarily 
 to be measured by its demands, otherwise the libra- 
 rian's labor would be considerably lightened Unfor- 
 tunately, when a community needs a given class of 
 books very desperately it is often serenely uncon-
 
 18 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 scious of the fact. To the librarian falls the task not 
 only of determining what the need is and of filling 
 it, but also of arousing a wholesome consciousness of 
 it. In this educational work he may be, and often is, 
 aided by the teacher, the clergyman, or even by the 
 users of the library themselves. Hence the impor- 
 tance of getting in touch with all the agencies that 
 may do work along this line. There is nothing that 
 calls for more tact. With the children it is compara- 
 tively easy to point out a deficiency, but a direct 
 attempt with a self-respecting adult may end in dis- 
 aster, and a season or two of well-meant effort may 
 result in weakening the librarian's influence or even 
 in losing him his position. But one can rarely teach 
 tact to the tactless, and tact is something that every 
 librarian must have, so that this lopping-off process, 
 after all, may simply be regarded as a phase of na- 
 ture's elimination of the unfit. One way of ascertain- 
 ing the proportional demand for various classes of 
 literature in a community, is by examining the class- 
 percentage of circulation. By comparing these with 
 the corresponding volume percentages we may see 
 whether the demands of the community are being met, 
 and by comparison with the percentages of an ideal 
 library we may see whether such demand ought to 
 be met or not. Of course, the ideal is somewhat in- 
 definite. One may accept the suggested proportions 
 in the A.L.A. catalog, or average those of several li- 
 braries of high class; or one may construct an ideal 
 of one's own. In any case, the ideal proportions wdll 
 evidently vary with conditions of place and time. To 
 show how this test may be applied, consider the per- 
 centage of science circulated last year in the New 
 York Public library. This varied from 3 to 28 per 
 cent in the various branches, and was 9 per cent 
 for the whole library. The percentage of science on
 
 HOW' LIBRARIANS CHOOSE BOOKS L9 
 
 the shelves similarly varied from 6 to 18 per cent, 
 
 and was also it for the whole library. In our Library 
 sociology and philology arc included in the science 
 report, and the percentage of these three classes com- 
 bined in the old ALA. catalog is 17. If this is to he 
 taken as the standard, therefore, tie- library as a 
 whole falls below it, though individual branches ap- 
 proach or even exceed it. As a whole, however, the de- 
 mand and the supply balance pretty well. There is 
 no doubt, however, that in this and most other Libra- 
 ries the demand in this class is too small ami w 
 stimulation. Of course, this is broughl up merely as 
 an instance of how fertile this comparison of per- 
 centages is in information, and how valuable in as- 
 certaining whether the demands of a community are 
 supplied, and whether they ought to be supplied, 
 along any given line. 
 
 We will assume that either in the ways indicated, 
 or in some other, the librarian has satisfied himself 
 that he understands what his community needs. Efow 
 shall he find the hooks that will satisfy that need, 
 and when they are found lor, still more, when they 
 obtrude themselves on his notice I how shall he know 
 that they arc what they claim to he? 
 
 In order to find what he wants, the Librarian nat- 
 urally turns at first to such classed bibliographies 
 as he has at hand, including publishers' trade lists. 
 Unfortunately, books vevy rapidly become out of 
 print, and if his bibliography or list is even two or 
 three years old he cannot he sure that his work of 
 selection is not in vain. The value of the A LA. cat- 
 alog has been much impaired by its inclusion of out- 
 of-print hooks, and as, now that it is several years 
 (dd, the number of these is Increasing daily, its use 
 has become more and more vexatious, both to Libra- 
 rians and publishers. It is to he hoped that in the new
 
 20 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 edition now preparing the out-of-print books will be 
 omitted. Fortunately we now have at our disposal 
 yearly alphabetical lists of in-print books. Such are 
 the index to the Trade list annual and the United 
 States catalog for American editions, and the Index 
 to the reference catalog of current literature for 
 British books. 
 
 If the needs of your library require that some one 
 • lass should be largely replenished, you may call in 
 expert knowledge. Some teacher or student who is 
 a specialist in that subject is generally not hard to 
 find, and his advice will be of the greatest value. Spe- 
 cial bibliographies are valuable in inverse ratio to 
 their length — a complete list of works on Egyptol- 
 ogy, for instance, is hardly more valuable to the ordi- 
 nary small library than a full, unclassified list of 
 books in-print on all subjects. 
 
 The majority of the small library's purchases are 
 books as currently issued. For these the Publishers' 
 weekly is indispensable. Some librarians prefer to 
 look at every book before purchasing, and arrange 
 with publishers or booksellers to send large numbers 
 of books weekly or even daily on approval. This, if 
 there is sufficient time, is a good plan, but it is cer- 
 tainly wasteful. There are many books which we can 
 surely reject or accept from the author and title en- 
 try in the Publishers' weekly as well as if the actual 
 book were in hand. If a mistake is made it will be, 
 or should be, discovered as soon as the book is re- 
 ceived, and the volume can then be exchanged. Only 
 the doubtful books need be asked for on approval, 
 and these will generally be found to constitute a rela- 
 tively small percentage of the whole. 
 
 The data on which the librarian may rely to ac- 
 cept or reject from a mere list of books are: 1) the 
 author's name; 2) the title, with such brief annotation
 
 How LIBRARIANS CHOOSE BOOKS 21 
 
 as may follow it: 3) notices in the hook magazines; 
 4 i the publisher's name. The author stands for much 
 — the style, method of treatment, the fitness to print 
 of what he has to say, the readableness of his book, 
 
 and so « »n. We all know that there arc ant hops whom 
 
 wc can absolutely rely (mi in these respects, either for 
 acceptance or rejection. It is thus necessary that the 
 librarian may knov the uniformly good author and 
 the uniformly had ones; bul experience must be his 
 guide, as this lies somewhat without the scope «»f 
 the present paper. The title should tell us something 
 about the contents of the book, but, unfortunately, 
 the aim of the title-maker is too often not to give in- 
 formation but to stimulate curiosity. In some cj 
 this is carried so far that the title of a hook Leaves 
 ns in absolute ignorance as to whether it is sociology, 
 travel, or fiction. One is, therefore, generally obliged 
 to refer to some kind of descriptive note to get the 
 desired information. Such notes are of ten appended 
 to lists and the Librarian does well to remember that 
 they are generally not intended to be critical. For 
 criticism we must go to the reviews, and here I have 
 always felt, and still feel, that the librarian has a real 
 grievance. The hook periodicals are many, and every 
 daily paper has its critical page. This mass of matter 
 is made accessible through the recently issued Index 
 to hooks reviewed. Yet with it all there is not One 
 place where the Librarian may Look for brief notes 
 on current hooks, telling him just what he wants to 
 know and no more, and with the confidence that the 
 information is quite free from bias. In saying this 
 I am quite ready to give credit to our best boob re- 
 views for their many good qualities. "What I mean is, 
 that the reviews are written lor the reader or the 
 bookseller, never for the Librarian. In making use of 
 those at his disposal the lihrarian most learn t«» dis-
 
 22 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 criminate, to weigh authorities, and to pick out the 
 occasional sharp needle of valuable criticism from 
 the haystack of discursive talk. 
 
 Lastly, the selector may rely on the name of the 
 publisher. This may tell him much or little, but it 
 may at any rate guarantee good paper and type, and 
 it may also assure him that the book contains no im- 
 proprieties. Unfortunately, it cannot insure against 
 dullness — publisher's readers are but mortal, and 
 the best will occasionally reject a pearl and take in 
 a pebble. 
 
 When all is said and done, of course the intelli- 
 gent man who has read a book carefully knows more 
 about it than he could have found out by reading all 
 the annotations and reviews in the world. The libra- 
 rian of a small library can read every book under 
 consideration. The head of a large library cannot do 
 this; the larger his daily or weekly order, the more 
 he must rely on the recommendations and opinions 
 of others, and even the books that he orders on ap- 
 proval he cannot read himself. 
 
 Here, perhaps, is the place to note that not every 
 librarian is his own selector. The responsible deci- 
 sion in these matters rests, of course, in most libra- 
 ries, with a committee of some sort; but if the libra- 
 rian is one in whose judgment this committee has 
 confidence (and no other should hold the position at 
 all ) he will have a practically free hand. For decision 
 in regard to doubtful books, especially current fic- 
 tion, some libraries have special reading committees, 
 often composed of ladies, but it can hardly be said 
 that the results arrived at in this way are satisfac- 
 tory. It is vastly better for the librarian to select a 
 few persons, either on his staff or outside of it, on 
 whom he can rely to give him information, after read- 
 ing a book, on specific points regarding which he may
 
 HOW LIBRARIANS CHOOSE BOOKS 2-i 
 
 require it. Especially in considering current fiction 
 should the reader be able to distinguish between mere 
 outspokenness, such as we find in the Bible or 
 Shakespeare, and immoral or degrading tendency. 
 The ordinary woman reader, especially the young wo- 
 man, will often condemn a hook for frankness when 
 its tendency is decidedly good, and pass a clever, 
 pleasant tale whose influence on many persons is bad, 
 though conveyed entirely by indirection, of course 
 the librarian or the committee may make a general 
 rule to exclude frankness, which, personally, I think 
 is a mistake, though I am free to acknowledge that 
 there are boundaries beyond which even a well-mean- 
 ing writer should not be allowed to go. 
 
 Of course, I can say but a word here on the trash 
 question in fiction. But be not, I pray, too stern a 
 censor. When selecting for a free public library judge 
 books largely by their fruits. If a story sends a boy 
 out with a pistol to play robber — somewhat too much 
 in earnest — it is surely bad; if it makes him love jus- 
 tice and incline to pity, it cannot be altogether out 
 of place in a library though it may be unreal and in- 
 ane. Its characters may be wooden puppets to you, 
 while to the young reader they are heroes, full of 
 the divine qualities of courage, sympathy, and tender- 
 ness. As the reader thinketh so is the book — not as 
 you, wise critic, in your plentitude of knowledge, 
 would have it to be. 
 
 The third consideration that must govern us in 
 our choice, though I have put it last, is really the con- 
 trolling one. Unless there is something in the trea- 
 sury we may choose books all day, and our selection 
 is as unavailing as the street child's choice of jewels 
 in a shop window; and the more money one has at 
 one's disposal, the easier it is to spend it. I must 
 speak of the library's finances here, however, only as
 
 24 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 they affect the librarian's choice of books. Given a 
 specified book appropriation, the librarian must 
 often have to decide upon the best way to spend it, 
 and upon the proper distribution of expenditure over 
 the year. 
 
 All these things influence his choice more or less. 
 From one point of view it seems well to expend the 
 greater part of the amount as soon as it becomes 
 available, especially if a large number of pressing 
 needs have been waiting for satisfaction. The trouble 
 is that one cannot foresee what needs will also press 
 for satisfaction during the coming year. Another 
 plan is to distribute the expenditure pretty evenly 
 without making any too strict rule in the matter. 
 
 With the first arrangement the librarian will be 
 apt to buy a good many of the larger and more ex- 
 pensive works — and, perhaps, be sorry for it after- 
 ward. With the latter he will purchase more cur- 
 rent literature and satisfy his readers better, though 
 the general quality of his purchases may not be so 
 high. 
 
 Perhaps a compromise may bring the best re- 
 sults. He who decides at the outset what reference 
 works he can afford to buy during the year, and how 
 much he must spend at once on replacements and 
 duplicates, and after deducting these fixed charges 
 from his appropriation divides the remainder into 
 weekly or monthly portions for current purchases, 
 will not go far wrong. 
 
 To the financial section of this discussion belongs 
 also the question of editions. Shall the librarian 
 choose the best or the cheapest? Which is the best 
 and which is the cheapest for his purpose? In the 
 first place, we may exclude the extremes. Editions de 
 luxe have no place in the ordinary free library, and, 
 on the other hand, we should not think of offering
 
 HOW LIBRARIANS CHOOSE BOOKS 
 
 to a self-respecting reader books printed od bad pa- 
 per with worse type, simply because thej can be pur- 
 chased at a phenomenally low figure. But between 
 
 these two there are many grades of beauty and dur- 
 ability. Here, as elsewhere, there is safety in the gold- 
 en mean. As far as bindings of exceptional durabil- 
 ity go, the question of paying extra for them depends 
 
 on the use that is to be made of the book. If it will 
 circulate so little that the ordinary binding will hist 
 twenty years. why spend money for anything strong- 
 er? Again, if it get such hard treatment that it must 
 be replaced in a year's time, why put on it ;i binding 
 that would outlive ten years of such vicissitudes? 
 Still again, with current books of popular interest, 
 the library cannot wait to have them put into special 
 bindings, but for standard, popular works, which 
 will have steady but not hard use, and which can he 
 ordered three months before they are to be used, 
 money spent on special bindings may be economy in 
 the end. Here, however, we are drifting a tittle way 
 from our subject. 
 
 _ The three points that we must take into consider- 
 ation in selecting books, namely, the community's 
 need, the determination of what books will satisfy 
 it, and the consideration of how far the library's fi- 
 nancial condition will allow it to go in that direction, 
 have been treated separately, but it must be evident 
 that they are in reality so closely connected that they 
 act and react on each other. No one of them can in 
 practice be considered apart from the others. Thus 
 the first necessity of the library may be books on 
 music, and a secondary need may be hooks on water 
 supply. It may so happen, however, that a complete 
 and up-to-date work on the latter subject, we will 
 say, has just been issued at a moderate price, while 
 the works on music most needed are expensive. Tli«;
 
 26 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 result would be quite different from that reached by 
 a consideration of the first point alone. Again, we 
 will take the case of a large library with a book ap- 
 propriation large enough to buy practically all that 
 it wants in current literature. This fact drops point 
 third out of consideration entirely and modifies both 
 the others considerably. If the library wants both 
 music and hydraulics, and has money enough for 
 only one, we most consider carefully which can best 
 be spared; but if the funds are at hand for both, all 
 this thought is not needed. In like manner, even if 
 there are funds for both, but only for one or two 
 books on each subject, we must select the books we 
 need most, which we need to do if we have money to 
 buy all we want on both subjects. In short, the work 
 of selecting is more difficult, as has been said, with 
 a few books than with many, but the consolation 
 must be that the result is better. The temptation, 
 when one has plenty of money, is to let selection go 
 by the board altogether and to garner in wheat and 
 tares alike, trusting to the public to do the sorting. 
 
 We may be almost alarmed to learn from the 
 physiologist of the complicated vital processes that 
 go on within us, of which the cessation means death, 
 and yet of which we remain in daily ignorance. These 
 things often regulate themselves. The selection of 
 books, like the inflation of the lungs, may be per- 
 formed almost automatically, yet with substantial 
 success. It is instructive to see how nearly the class 
 percentages in the ordinary library approximate to 
 the average without any conscious regulation by the 
 librarian. The community is apt to get about what 
 it needs in fairly good quality and without running 
 its library into debt. Yet there can surely be no 
 harm in analyzing a little the work of selection, nor 
 can there be any objection to supplementing by con-
 
 HOW LIBRARIANS CHOOSE BOOKS 27 
 
 scious action work that has gone on, however welL 
 chiefly in the combined subconsciousness of a libra- 
 rian and the community. 
 
 Especially is this desirable in making the distinc- 
 tion, already emphasized at the opening of this pa- 
 per, between what the community wants and what 
 it needs. The fever patient who needs acid some- 
 times cries for a pickle, and thus cures himself in 
 spite of his nurse; but it is more commonly the case 
 that the patient's need is masked by souk- abnormal 
 desire, and that he cries for pork-chops or lobster, 
 or something else that would kill him. We can hard- 
 ly give up the nurse, therefore, provided she knows 
 her business, and part of that business is to realize 
 the difference between a mere want and a vital need. 
 
 So with the librarian, the nurse of the reading 
 public. Left altogether to themselves her patients 
 may kill themselves with pork or lobster; it is her 
 business to see that such an untoward event does not 
 occur. 
 
 Those of us to whom this duty has been intrusted, 
 whether we are librarians, trustees, or the members 
 of book-committees, deserve both the good-will and 
 the sympathy of the public; and, like the western or- 
 ganist, I pray that we may not be shot. We are do- 
 ing our best.
 
 THE WORK OF THE SMALL PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 We cannot too often remind ourselves of the fact 
 that a circulating library is a distributing agency, 
 and as such has points in common with other such 
 agencies. The whole progress of civilization is de 
 pendent on distribution — the bringing to the indi- 
 vidual of the thing he wants or nerds. The library's 
 activities are, therefore, in the same class with com- 
 merce, and the tendency of modern changes in the li- 
 brary is to make the analogy closer and closer. To 
 recognize this fact is by no means to degrade library 
 work. All workers fall into the two great classes of 
 producers and distributors. Civilization can get 
 along without neither; we must have the farmer to 
 grow the wheat and the railway to market it; we 
 must have the author to write the book and the pub- 
 lisher and the bookseller and the Librarian to place 
 it in the hands of those who can use it. The librarian 
 is not a producer; he takes the product of other peo 
 pie's brains and distributes it ; and his problem is 
 how to do this most effectively. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. There have been some 
 recent protests against treating the library as a com- 
 mercial instead of an educational institution. The 
 free library is not a commercial institution, but it 
 an agency for distributing something, and there are 
 also hundreds of other agencies for distributing other 
 things. The objects and the methods of distribution 
 are various, but certain laws apply t<> all kinds <>f 
 distribution. Hence we may learn a good deal about
 
 30 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 library work by examining to see what it has in com- 
 mon with other kinds of distribution and in what re- 
 spect it differs from them. 
 
 Now, the prime factors in any kind of distribu- 
 tion are: 1, the products to be distributed; 2, the 
 persons to whom they are to be distributed; 3, the 
 distributors and methods of distribution. I know no 
 better way of laying the basis of an efficient and suc- 
 cessful distribution than the brief study, in order, 
 of these three factors.. 
 
 First let us consider the things that we are to dis- 
 tribute, namely, books. And at the outset let us re- 
 member that although these things are apparently 
 material, as much so as butter or hats, they are much 
 more than this. They are the vehicles for conveying 
 ideas, so that a library is a concern for the dissemin- 
 ation of ideas. This brings it in line with another 
 great intellectual and moral distributing agency — 
 the school. In the school the distributor is more of- 
 ten a producer than in the library, especially in the 
 universities, where the discoverer of new facts or 
 laws himself imparts them to his students. Yet the 
 school is essentially a distributing rather than a pro- 
 ducing agency. In the school, however the means of 
 distribution are not limited, while in the library they 
 are pretty strictly confined to the printed book. I 
 know that there are some people who believe that 
 the library is growing out of such restrictions, and 
 that its mission is to be the distribution of ideas 
 through any and all mediums — the spoken word, in 
 lectures ; the pictures, in exhibitions of art ; the mus- 
 eum specimen; and so on. We should welcome all 
 these as adjuncts to our own business, and when we 
 have mastered that business thoroughly perhaps we 
 may take them up each on its own account. Those 
 who love books, however, will want to see the distrib-
 
 THE SMALL PUBLIC LIBRARX ;;i 
 
 ution of books always at the head of the library 
 tivities. 
 
 And it may be kept there, provided we make 
 everything else in the library serve as guide-posts to 
 the printed records on the shelves. A picture bulle- 
 tin, for instance, may be both beautiful and useful, 
 but it should never he an end in itself. It is the bait, 
 if we may so speak, for tin- list of books that accom- 
 panies it. The pictures excite the Interest of a child 
 who sees them and he wants to know more aboul 
 them. The list tells him where he can find out, and 
 the result is increased use of the library. In like man- 
 ner if you have a lecture course, or a loan exhibition 
 in your library, see that it is made a means of stim- 
 ulating interest in your hooks. 
 
 I have said that in distribution we bring to the 
 individual what he wants or what he oeeds. That 
 sounds a little tautological, but it is not. A man of- 
 ten wants whiskey when he doesn't need it at all, 
 and conversely a boy sometimes needs a whipping 
 but he doesn't want it. So with the reading public. 
 They often want fiction of a class that they do not 
 need, and have no longing for hooks that would real- 
 ly benefit them. Here we may note a difference 
 tween the free library and all merely commercial s 
 terns of distribution. As the purpose of the latter is 
 to make money, wants are regarded rather than 
 needs. But even with a store there are limitations. 
 If any one wants an injurious article for instance, 
 a poison or an explosive— the law steps in to prohib- 
 it or regulate. And even outside the limits of such 
 regulation, the personal sense of responsibility t<» tin- 
 community that governs the actions of an hoi 
 merchant will prevent his attempting to satisfy cer- 
 tain wants that he believes would better remain un- 
 satisfied. So, too, certain hooks are without the pair
 
 32 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 of the law— *they would be confiscated and the libra- 
 rian would be punished if they were circulated. Be- 
 yond these there are many books that we do not cir- 
 culate simply from our sense of general responsibil- 
 ity to the community. 
 
 The difference between our work and that of the 
 merchant in this regard lies chiefly in the more ex- 
 tended scope left for our own judgment. No libra- 
 rian thinks of circulating illegal literature; his only 
 care is to exclude such of the allowable books as he 
 believes should not, for any reason, be placed on his 
 shelves. Here, sometimes, popularity and usefulness 
 part company. The librarian may yield entirely too 
 much to the wants — the demands — of the community 
 and neglect its needs. His aim should be to bring 
 the wants and the needs into harmony so far as pos- 
 sible, to make his people want what will do them 
 good. This might be dubbed "the whole duty of a li- 
 brarian/' Few, I am afraid, attain to the full mea- 
 sure of it, and too many fail even to realize its desir- 
 ability. Of course if you can bring the full force of 
 a reader's conscience to bear on his reading — if you 
 can make him feel that it is his duty to read some 
 good book that strikes him as stupid, you may make 
 him stick to it to the bitter end, but such perfunctory 
 reading does little good. The pleasure one gets in 
 reading is a sign of benefits received. Even the smile 
 of the boy who reads George Ade is a sign that the 
 book is furnishing him with needed recreation. The 
 pleasure experienced, we will say, in reading Shake- 
 speare is of course of a far higher type ; yet I venture 
 to say that if that pleasure is absent, the benefit is 
 absent too. Nine-tenths of the distaste felt for good 
 standard books by the average reader is the result 
 of the mistaken efforts of some one to force him to 
 read one of these books by something in the nature
 
 THE SMALL PUBLIC LIBRARY 33 
 
 of an appeal to duty. There is no moral obligation 
 to read Shakespeare if you do not like it. and if a 
 friend persuades .you of such an obligation yon are 
 apt to end by rightly concluding that he is wrong. 
 But with this conclusion comes an unfortunate dis- 
 taste for good literature; a conviction thai standard 
 works are all dull, and that the only kind of pleasure 
 to be had from reading is the most superficial kind. 
 The moral for librarians is: cultivate in your readers 
 a taste for good literature; get them into 1 1 1 * - frame 
 of mind and the grade of culture where they like 
 Shakespeare and then turn them loose. No injunc- 
 tions will be necessary; they will not cease to read 
 until they have devoured the utmost Bentence. 
 
 But how shall this taste be cultivated? I wish I 
 knew. I wish I could give you a formula for causing 
 the flower of literary appreciation to unfold. The 
 rule is different in every case. First and foremost 
 there must be something to cultivate. Yon cannot 
 go out into the desert with watering-pot and raise 
 strawberries or asparagus. But you can take a poor 
 little spindling plant and dig about it and fertilize 
 it until it waxes into a robust tree whose branches 
 are laden with big, juicy ideas. If you are skilful 
 enough to find out what intellectual germs there are 
 in your reader's mind you can cultivate them little 
 by little, but if you throw Shakespeare and Milton 
 at the heads of all alike they will be likely to fall 
 on barren ground. The golden rule for making your 
 library both attractive and useful (the two thin- 
 hand in hand) is to adapt your hooks to those apti- 
 tudes of your readers that need and will hear cultiva- 
 tion. 
 
 This means that in selecting books for your libra- 
 ry you must not disregard the demands and requests 
 of vour readers. It also means that yon must have
 
 34 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 the acuteness to detect what they ought to request. 
 It may be, for instance, that near your library is the 
 home of some great industry employing large num- 
 bers of intelligent mechanics who would gain both 
 enjoyment and benefit by reading some of the techni- 
 cal literature bearing on their work. Only it has 
 never occurred to them to think that this literature, 
 much of it perhaps expensive or inaccessible, can be 
 obtained at the public library. It is your business 
 to get it, if you can, and to let them know that you 
 have it and that they are welcome to read it. 
 
 Remember, too, that he gives twice who gives 
 quickly. Much of the ephemeral literature of the 
 day, which is purchased for recreative purposes, is 
 rightly and properly read for curiosity. People like 
 to read the latest book and talk to each other about 
 it. We are all embryo critics. This desire to read 
 the last thing out, just because it is the last, has had 
 anathemas piled on it until it ought to be crushed, 
 but it is still lively. I confess I have it myself and I 
 cannot blame my neighbor if he has it too. Unless 
 we are wholly to reject the recreative use of the libra- 
 ry or to accept it with a mental reservation that the 
 public shall enjoy itself according to a prescribed 
 formula or not at all— we shall have to buy some of 
 these books. I am afraid that otherwise some future 
 historian of literature may say of us in parody of 
 Macaulay's celebrated epigram on the Puritans and 
 bearbaiting, that the twentieth-century librarian con- 
 demned the twentieth-century novel, not because it 
 did harm to the library, but because it gave pleasure 
 to the reader. Now, if we are going to buy this ephe- 
 meral literature, we must get it quickly or not at all. 
 The latest novel must go on your shelves hot from 
 the presses, or stay off. And this is true of much 
 other literature that is not ephemeral but that de-
 
 THE SMALL PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 pends for its effect od its timeliness. It. will certainly 
 lose readers if it is not on your shelves prom] 
 and if it deserves readers, as much of it does, the net 
 result is a loss to the community. 
 
 So we come next t<> the question of* readers. Bow 
 shall we get them? What kind do we want, and how- 
 shall we reach that kind? In commercial systems 
 of distribution the merchant gets qustomers in two 
 ways: by giving good quality ami good measure and 
 by advertising. Some kind of advertising is general- 
 ly essential. Even if your community is a very small 
 one it is right that yon should occasionally remind 
 it of your existence and of what yon have t<> offer. 
 Legitimate advertising is simply informing people 
 where they can obtain something that they are likely 
 to want. The address of your library should be in 
 your railway station; in the schools; in the drug 
 store. Your latest accessions should be announced in 
 the local papers and bulletined in the same pla 
 When you have an item about your library that 
 would interest the reader send it yourself to the pa- 
 per. There is nothing undignified about this. Do 
 not forget that you are in charge of certain articles 
 that the public needs and desires and that it is your 
 business to let the public know it. The new-comer 
 to your town cannot know intuitively that your li- 
 brary is at such and such an address: the old resi- 
 dent who likes to read Howells cannot ascertain by 
 telepathy that you have just received the hist volume 
 by his favorite author. You may even send a ape 
 cial card of information to a reader who yon know 
 will be glad to get it. 
 
 One would think that if there was anything dis- 
 tinctive about our systems of distribution, commer- 
 cial or otherwise, it was the great degree to which 
 we advertise and the money that we spend in >•> do
 
 36 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ing. But with it all, this feature in its misdirected 
 energy and lack of method is the weak point of the 
 whole system. Much of the money spent in adver- 
 tising is devoted to attempts to get people to buy 
 what they do not want. Any one knows that when 
 he desires a very special or definite thing it is often 
 impossible to find it, though it may be next door. In 
 our library work, so far as readers are concerned, our 
 weak points are two : first, failure to make known 
 our presence and our work to all who might use the 
 library; second, failure to hold our readers. These 
 things are both serious. We ourselves see so much 
 of libraries that we find it difficult to understand 
 how large a proportion of any community is ignor- 
 ant of them and their work. In large cities, of 
 course, this is more likely to be the case than in 
 small towns. Yet if you will compare the number 
 of names on your registration list with the popula- 
 tion you serve, even making allowance for the fact 
 that each book withdrawn may be read by several 
 persons, and deducting young children who cannot 
 read, you will be surprised at the discrepancy. There 
 are many people who do not know of your library's 
 existence or who do not realize what it means. Your 
 first duty is to find some way of giving them the in- 
 formation and of seeing that they shall not forget it. 
 Regarding the second failure, you may get some 
 idea of that if you will compare the growth of your 
 registration list with that of your circulation. The 
 circulation never grows as fast as the membership. 
 It may even be stationary or decreasing while new 
 users are coming in daily. The fact is, of course, 
 that former users are all the time dropping off. Why 
 do they drop off? It is your business to find out and 
 to keep them if you can. The librarian in a small 
 community has a great advantage in this respect, for
 
 THE SMALL PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 she can know her constituency personally and keep 
 track of them individually. 
 
 But the personal relations of the librarian and 
 her assistants with the public belong as much in the 
 third section of our subject as in the second. The 
 importance of them cannot be exaggerated. I am 
 not sure that I should not prefer a sunny-faced, 
 pleasant-voiced, intelligent, good-tempered assistant 
 in a tumble-down building- with a lot of second-hand, 
 badly arranged books, rather than tin- latest Car- 
 negie library stocked with literary treasures it' these 
 had to be dispensed by a haughty young lady with 
 monosyllabic answers and a fatigued expression. 1 
 know of no more exasperating duty than that of con- 
 tinually meeting a library public— and I know of no 
 pleasanter one. For the public is just yon and 
 me and some other people, and like you and me 
 it is various in its moods. The mood of the pub- 
 lic in a library is often a reflection of that of the 
 librarian. The golden rule here is direct personal con- 
 tact; and don't forget the last syllable — tact. Don't 
 force your services or your advice on people that 
 neither wish nor require them, but don't forget that 
 you may have pleasant, intellectual intercourse 
 without offering either aid or advice. When an 
 aged man who knows more of literature than yon 
 dreamed of in your wildest visions wants "The Dolly 
 dialogues," don't try to get him to take "Matins the 
 Epicurean" instead. But if yon get into the habit 
 of talking with him it may make the library seem 
 pleasant and homelike to him, and, besides, he may 
 tell you something that you do not know— that is a 
 not remote and certainly fascinating possibility. 
 
 I need not say that no library can be useful or 
 attractive unless it is properly arranged and cata- 
 loged, and unless it has a simple and effective charg 
 
 41591 8
 
 38 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ing system ; and unless the public is admitted directly 
 to the shelves and allowed to handle and select the 
 books. But I do need to say — because some of us are 
 apt to forget it — that these things are not ends in 
 themselves, but means to an end, namely, the bring- 
 ing together of the man and the book, the distribu- 
 tion of ideas. Do not assume that for some occult 
 reason you must classify and catalog your library 
 precisely like some large public library with which 
 you are familiar. Do not assume, if you are a trained 
 cataloger, that there is any virtue, for instance, in 
 subject cards. One subject heading that brings the 
 book in touch with your public outweighs a dozen 
 that do not affect it. To bring together man and 
 book break all rules and strike out in all kinds of 
 new directions. Your particular locality and your 
 particular public may have special requirements that 
 are present nowhere else. Rules were made for the 
 aid and comfort of the public, not for their confusion 
 and hindrance. Methods are the librarian's tools, 
 not his handcuffs and shackles. To do anything well 
 we must do it with method and system ; but these, 
 like a growing boy's clothes, need frequent renewal. 
 If your library has stopped growing and has reached 
 senility, then the same suit will fit it year after year, 
 but premature old age is not a good goal to strive for.
 
 LAY CONTROL IN LIBRARIES AND 
 ELSEWHERE* 
 
 The system by which the control of a concern is 
 vested in a person or a body having no expert techni- 
 cal knowledge of its workings lias become bo common 
 that it may be regarded as characteristic of modern 
 
 civilization. If this seems to any one an extreme 
 statement, a little reflection will convince him to the 
 contrary. To cite only a few examples, the boards 
 of directors of commercial or financial institutions 
 like our manufacturing corporations, our railways 
 and our banks, of charitable foundations like our 
 hospitals and our asylums, of educational establish- 
 ments like our schools and colleges, arc dow qo1 ex- 
 pected to understand the detail of the institutions 
 under their charge. Their first duty is to put at the 
 head of their work an expert with a staff of compe- 
 tent assistants to see to that pari of it. Even in most 
 of our churches the minister or pastor — the expert 
 head — is employed and practically controlled by a 
 lay body of some kind — a vestry, ;i session or the like. 
 Government itself is similarly conducted. Neither 
 the legislative nor the executive branch is expected 
 to be made up of experts who understand the techni- 
 cal detail of departmental work; all this is h-ft to 
 subordinates. Even the heads of departments often 
 know nothing at all of the particular work over 
 which they have been set until they have held their 
 position for some time. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that this system of 
 
 •Read before the Trustees' Section of th. An 
 Association at the Niagara Conference,
 
 40 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 lay control is of interest to us here and now, because 
 it obtains in most libraries, where the governing body 
 is a board of trustees or directors who are generally 
 not experts, but who employ a librarian to superin- 
 tend their work. 
 
 To multiply examples would be superflous. Lay 
 control, as above illustrated, is not universal, but I 
 postpone for the present a consideration of its antith- 
 eses and its exceptions. It looks illogical, and 
 when the ordinary citizen's attention is brought to 
 the matter in any way he generally so considers it. 
 In certain cases it is even a familiar object of satire. 
 The general public is apt, I think, to regard lay con- 
 trol as improper or absurd. 
 
 With the expert and his staff, who are concerned 
 directly with the management of the institution in 
 question, the feeling is a little different. It is more 
 like that of President Cleveland when he "had Con- 
 gress on his hands" — a sort of anxious tolerance. 
 They bear with the board that employs them because 
 it has the power of the purse, but they are glad when 
 it adjourns without interfering unduly with them. 
 
 Are either of these points of view justified? 
 Should lay boards of directors be abolished? Or, if 
 retained, should those without expert knowledge be 
 barred? 
 
 Now at first sight it certainly seems as if the ulti- 
 mate control of every business or operation should 
 be in the hands of those who thoroughly understand 
 it, and this would certainly bar out lay control. I 
 believe that this view is superficial and will not bear 
 close analysis. 
 
 The idea that those who control an institution 
 should be familiar with its details appears to orig- 
 inate in an analogy with a man's control of his own 
 private affairs, when his occupation and income
 
 LAY CONTROL IN LIBRARI] n 
 
 make it necessary that he should attend to all those 
 affairs personally. The citizen who digs and plants 
 his own garden must understand some of the details 
 of gardening. The man who does his own "odd jobs" 
 about the house must be able to drive a nail and 
 handle a paint brush. This necessity vanishes, how- 
 ever, as the man's interests become more vari<M] and 
 his financial ability to care for them becomes greater. 
 At a certain point personal attention to detail be- 
 comes not only unnecessary but impossible. To ex- 
 pect the master of a great estate to understand the 
 details of his garden, his stable, his kennels, as well 
 as the experts to whom he entrusts them, is absurd. 
 He may, of course, as a matter of amusement, busy 
 himself in some one department, but if he tries t.. 
 superintend everything personally*, still more to un- 
 derstand and regulate matters of detail, lie is wast- 
 ing his time. 
 
 We must seek our analogy, then, both for lay con- 
 trol and for the attitude of the ordinary citizen 
 toward it in that citizen's management of his private 
 affairs. He knows his own business — or thinks he 
 does— and he finds it hard to realize that tie- details 
 of that business could ever grow beyond his persona] 
 control. 
 
 But, after all, this progress is one towards the 
 normal. Attention to details in the ease of the pour 
 man is forced upon him. Except in rare cases, he 
 does not really care to shovel his own snon ; he 
 would prefer to hire a man to do it, and as soon as he 
 can he does do so. So long as his sidewalk is proper- 
 ly cleared he is willing to leave the details to the man 
 who clears it. He does not care whether that man 
 begins at the north or the south end, or whether his 
 shovelfuls are small or la rue. 
 
 Here, if we examine, we shall find a common
 
 42 LIBRAEY ESSAYS 
 
 characteristic of those kinds of work where laymen 
 are in control — the persons for whom the work is 
 done care very much about results; they are careless 
 of methods so long as those results are attained. And 
 in a very large number of cases the persons for whom 
 the work is done will be found to be the public, or 
 so large a section of it that it is practically a group 
 of laymen so far as the particular work in question 
 may be concerned. 
 
 A lay board of directors or a lay departmental 
 head, then, is simply and properly a representative 
 of a greater lay body that is particularly anxious for 
 results and not particularly anxious about methods. 
 Lay control is thus not illogical, but is the outcome 
 of a regular and very proper development. But, as 
 has been said, it is not the only method of controlling 
 a great institution. An institution may be managed 
 by a graded body of experts. So were the old guilds 
 of craftsmen managed. So are many ecclesiastical 
 bodies, notably the Roman Catholic Church. We 
 may call this method of control hierarchical. It has 
 some advantages over lay control and some disadvan- 
 tages. We may imagine such a system applied to 
 libraries. All the libraries in a state, we will say, 
 would then be managed by the state librarian, and 
 all these officers would be subject to the orders of 
 the librarian of the national library, who would be 
 supreme and accountable to no one. Without going 
 into detailed discussion of this extremely supposi- 
 titious case, we may say that the objection to it would 
 be that the persons who are especially interested in 
 the results of the work done are not represented in 
 the controlling hierarchy. Where the persons inter- 
 ested are all experts, as in a guild of craftsmen, there 
 can perhaps be no objection to control by experts; 
 though even in this case we are leaving out of consid-
 
 LAY CONTROL IX LIBRARI] 3 } .: 
 
 eration the persons, generally laymen, for whom the 
 
 craftsmen do their work. 
 
 In fact, any trouble that may arise from the lay 
 control of a body of expert workers lies just here- 
 in the failure either of the controlling authority or 
 
 the trained subordinates to recognize and keep with- 
 in their limitations. It should be the function of the 
 supreme lay authority to decide what results it 
 wants and then to see that it gets them— to call at- 
 tention to any deviation from them and to replace 
 those who cannot achieve them by others who can. Ir 
 should be the part of the expert stair of subordinates 
 to discover by what methods these results can best be 
 reached and then to follow out these methods. 
 
 When the lay head attempts to direct the details 
 of method, or when the trained subordinate thinks 
 it his duty to influence the policy of the institution, 
 then there is apt to be trouble. 
 
 Such results are apt to follow, on the one hand, 
 the inclusion in a board of trustees of a man with a 
 passion for detail and a great personal interest in 
 the work under him, but without a keen realization 
 of the necessity for strict organization and disci- 
 pline in his expert staff; or, on the other hand, from 
 the presence in that staff of a masterful man who 
 cannot rest until he is in virtual control of whatever 
 he concerns himself about. 
 
 I say trouble is apt to follow in such cases. It 
 does not always follow, for the organization may 
 adapt itself to circumstances. The interested trus- 
 tee may play with ease his two roles, fitting into his 
 board as a lay member and becoming practically al- 
 so a part of the expert staff. The masterful subor- 
 dinate may dominate his board so as to become its 
 dictator, and thus do away for a time with his lay 
 control. We have all seen both these things happen,
 
 44 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 not only in libraries, but in banks, in hospitals, in 
 charitable institutions. In some cases it has been 
 well that they have happened. But although an oc- 
 casional stick is flexible enough to be tied into a knot, 
 it would be hazardous to try the experiment with all 
 sticks. Some may bend but more will break. 
 
 Is it not better to accept frankly the division of 
 labor that seems to have been pointed out by the de- 
 velopment of our institutions for the guidance ' of 
 their management? 
 
 Boards of trustees in this case would find it nec- 
 essary to decide first on the desirable results to be 
 reached in their work. This is a phase of library 
 discussion that has been somewhat neglected. What 
 is the public library trying to get at? Not stated in 
 vague terms, but in concrete form, so that the trus- 
 tees can call the librarian to account if he fails to 
 accomplish it? It is only fair to the librarian that 
 he should be informed at the outset precisely what 
 he is expected to do, and then it is only fair that he 
 should be left to do it in his own way. 
 
 This is an unoccupied field, and it would be an 
 eminently proper one for the Trustees' Section of 
 the American Library Association. We librarians 
 should be very glad to know just what you expect us 
 to accomplish, for on that depends our manner of 
 setting to work. Do 3 r ou wish us to aim at decreas- 
 ing the percentage of illiteracy in the community? 
 or the arrests for drunkenness? Are we to strive for 
 an increased circulation? And will an absolute in- 
 crease be satisfactory, or must it be an increase pro- 
 portionate to population? Is it definitely demanded 
 of us to decrease our fiction percentage? Shall we, 
 in any given case, devote our attention chiefly to the 
 home use or the reference use of the library? Shall 
 we favor the student or the ordinarv citizen? These
 
 LAY CONTROL IN LIBRARI] - 
 
 questions, of course, cannot receive a general answer- 
 they must be decided differently in different cases] 
 but at least we may agree on the type of qnestioE thai 
 it is admissible to answer at all and on the degree of 
 detail to which it is permissible to go in statin" a re- 
 quirement 
 
 For instance, is it admissible for a board to saj 
 to its librarian, "The results that we require you to 
 show include the following: A well-ordered collec- 
 tion of books classified according to the Dewey sys- 
 tem, bound in half duck and distributed with the 
 aid of the Browne charging system?*' I think it will 
 be granted that this would be an attempt to control 
 the details of method in the guise of a statement of 
 desired results. But where shall we draw the line? 
 How specific may be the things that a board may prop- 
 erly require of its expert staff? That is the ques 
 tion whose solution by this Section won 1.1 be an 
 inestimable benefit to all libraries and librarians. At 
 present there is wide difference of opinion and of 
 practice on this point, Many people would not agree 
 at all with the limitations that have just been laid 
 down; even those who do agree would differ widely 
 over their interpretation. 
 
 There is hardly time to anticipate and meet crit 
 icism. I shall be reminded, 1 suppose, that the funds 
 for carrying on the library's work are in the hands 
 of the trustees, and that one of the main objects <>f 
 their existence is to see that the money is honestly 
 spent, not stolen or wasted. Now can they do this 
 without close oversight of methods? To this I would 
 reply that this important function of the board is 
 distinctly the requirement of a result, that result 
 being the honest administration of the library The 
 method by which it may be administered most lion-
 
 46 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 estly is best left to the expert head. Naturally, if 
 evidence of peculation or waste conies before the 
 board the librarian will be held to account as having 
 failed to achieve the required result of honest admin- 
 istration. In this and in other respects the necessi- 
 ty that the board should know whether or not the 
 desired results are being attained means that the 
 work of the executive officer should be followed 
 with attention. It must be evident, however, that 
 this does not involve control and dictation of meth- 
 ods. 
 
 It must also be remembered that what has been 
 said refers only to the administrative control of the 
 institution. The duties of trustees as custodians of 
 of an endowment fund, if such there be, or in solic- 
 iting and receiving contributions as well as other fi- 
 nancial considerations, are separate from this and 
 have not been considered. 
 
 Again, I shall be told that the head of the execu- 
 tive staff is not only a subordinate but also an ex- 
 pert adviser of his board. This is true; and as a con- 
 sulting expert it is his duty to give advice outside of 
 his own administrative field if he is asked for it. It 
 may even be his duty to give it unasked occasionally, 
 but this comes very near to the interference that I 
 have deprecated. He who would tread this border- 
 land must tread softly. On the other hand, the ex- 
 pert may and should ask the advice of members of 
 his board as individuals or of the board as a whole 
 when he needs it and when he feels that it would 
 give him confidence or strengthen his hand. In this 
 whole matter there is a clear distinction between the 
 advisory and executive function on one hand and on 
 the other. 
 
 In short, the view taken in this paper may be 
 briefly summed up as follows: Lay control in libra-
 
 LAY CONTROL IX LIBRABI] 
 
 ries and elsewhere is a logical and proper develop- 
 ment. It would not, on the whole, be well for one 
 who should wish to endow a library to make an ex- 
 pert librarian sok> trust,.,' for life with power to 
 lect his successor. That would be a One thing for the 
 librarian, but it would be neither desirable nor prop- 
 er. It is well that the trustees should be responsible 
 representatives of the lay public, for whose benefit 
 the library is to be conducted. But as the public is 
 interested chiefly in results, the trustees should con- 
 fine themselves largely to the indication and require- 
 ment of these results, leaving methods in the hand of 
 their expert staff of subordinates. And it is eminent- 
 ly desirable that librarians should hear from a rep- 
 resentative body of trustees some expression of opin- 
 ion regarding the extent of this limitation.
 
 THE WHOLE DUTY OF A LIBRARY TRUSTEE: 
 FROM A LIBRARIAN'S STANDPOO 
 
 At a former meeting of this section the present 
 writer had the honor of reading a paper in which he 
 made an attempt to show that the trustee <>I the pub- 
 lic library is the representative of the public and. as 
 such, interested especially in results as distinguished 
 from methods, which are the business of the librarian 
 as an expert administrator. In making this distinc- 
 tion I urged trustees to give particuar attention to 
 the formulation of such results as they should con- 
 sider desirable, that librarians on their part might 
 confine themselves more to the consideration of ap- 
 propriate methods for the attainment of these results. 
 So far as I know, however, this work remains to be 
 accomplished, and it is because I still think it desir- 
 able that I welcome this opportunity of restating the 
 situation and making some attempt to Illustrate it 
 and to indicate what may and should be done in the 
 premises. According to this view it is not only the 
 duty of a board of trustees to consider what should 
 be the results aimed at by its Library, to formulate 
 its conclusions, to communicate them to the librarian 
 and then to hold him responsible for their attain- 
 ment, but everything that the board may properly 
 do may be brought under this head: and to state it 
 broadly is therefore t<> s.-t forth comprehensively the 
 "whole duty of a trustee," which may serve as the 
 justification of my somewhat ambitious title. 
 
 The layman's influence, control exercised by and 
 
 * An address before the Trustees' Section of the American I-C 
 Association, N"arragansett Conferei
 
 50 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 through the viewpoint of the general public, is a 
 most excellent thing, however much the expert may 
 chafe under it. This is apparent in every art and 
 craft. The expert, the man who has made a study of 
 technique, of the way to do it, comes more and more 
 to think of the method rather than the result — to 
 elaborate detail and manner and to take keen joy 
 in their recognition and comparison. So it is with 
 the worker in art or in literature, and thus we have 
 what are called painter's pictures and musician's 
 music and poet's poems — works that interest and de- 
 light those whose business it is to produce them, but 
 which leave the general reader or hearer cold. It is 
 evident that these, no matter how valuable or inter- 
 esting they may be from one standpoint, are not the 
 highest examples of their class. Better are the 
 crude attempts of native genius which kindle enthus- 
 iasm and arouse the best impulses while breaking 
 every canon of art. Best of all, of course, are the 
 works where the technique and the result are both 
 admirable and where the technical resources of the 
 workers are brought to bear consciously, directly and 
 successfully upon the attainment of the result. And 
 to produce such works two forces must generally co- 
 operate — the trained skill and enthusiasm of the art- 
 ist and the requirement of the general public that his 
 work must appeal to them, interest them, take them a 
 message. Now this is of interest to us here and now, 
 because, just as we occasionally have "composer's 
 music" and "architect's buildings," so, it is to be 
 feared, we may have librarian's libraries — institu- 
 tions that are carried on with the highest degree of 
 technical skill and w 7 ith enthusiasm and interest and 
 yet fail of adequate achievement because the librarian 
 makes the mistake of regarding the technique as an 
 end instead of as a means — of thinking that if his
 
 DUTY OF A LIBRARY TRUSTEE 51 
 
 methods be precise, systematic and correct, good re- 
 sults must needs follow, instead of aiming directly at 
 his results and adapting his methods i<» their attain- 
 ment. 
 
 It is here that the trustee, as the official repre- 
 sentative of the general public, may applj a correc- 
 tive influence. In the ease of the artist or the writer 
 this influence is brought to bear generally in ;i finan- 
 cial way — by a wealthy patron who will order a pic- 
 ture or statue provided it accords with his own ideas 
 — by hostile criticism, public or private, that drives 
 away purchasers. In a public library, public opinion 
 rarely makes itself felt in this way; indeed, it could 
 do so only in cases where disregard <»(' the public 
 amounted to mismanagement and led to the reduction 
 of appropriations or the discharge of the librarian. 
 Public criticism, as in the press, might also affect a 
 librarian's course; it undoubtedly often th^-s. hut it 
 need not; and he may safely disregard it as a gener- 
 al thing. When, however, his hoard of trustees calls 
 him to account, he must listen, and when it tells him 
 what he is expected to do, it is then his business to 
 devise the best way to do it. 
 
 A rough classification and analysis of the results 
 that a librarian may he expected to accomplish ma\ 
 not he out of place here. We may treat them under 
 four heads: financial, educational, recreational and 
 social. 
 
 Financial results. — A library must show ;i good 
 material return for money expended. By this is 
 meant that its hooks and supplies must lie purchased 
 at fair rates, its salaries reasonably proportioned t<> 
 quantity ami quality of services rendered, its propel 
 ty economically administered. A board <»f trustees is 
 derelict in its duty if it does not require all this, ami 
 also hold its librarian rigidly to such requirement
 
 52 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 This means that it must, along the broadest lines, 
 know the ratio of expenditure to return in these var- 
 ious departments ; it does not mean that the librarian 
 should be hampered by the prescription of details. 
 It means, for example, that the expert administrator 
 should be called to account if his bills for lighting and 
 heating are excessive, and that he should be asked 
 to show cause why they should not be kept within 
 bounds ; it does not mean that he should be required 
 to use lights of a certain caudle-power or turn off the 
 light in a particular room at a given hour. In most li- 
 braries, the making of annual appropriations under 
 designated heads and the requirement that cause shall 
 be shown for a transfer from one of these categories 
 to another, are sufficient measures of financial con- 
 trol. 
 
 Among the financial results that have already at- 
 tracted the attention of the public and hence engaged 
 the interest of boards of trustees is the attainment of 
 a proper ratio of expenditure for books to the expense 
 of administration. This ratio is generally regarded 
 by the lay critic as abnormally small, but trustees 
 have generally acquiesced in the librarian's explana- 
 tion of the causes that seem to him to make it neces- 
 sarily so. It is undoubtedly the trustee's duty to 
 call his expert administrator's attention to this and 
 all other seeming discrepancies in expenditure, and to 
 make sure that they are not carrying the library too 
 far toward technical perfection at the expense of prac- 
 tical efficiency. 
 
 Educational results. — It is only right to require 
 that a library should be able to show that it is in- 
 creasing the educational content of the community, 
 or raising its educational standard, or at least that 
 it is exerting itself to do so, both directly and by co- 
 operation with other agencies, especially with the
 
 DUTY OF A LIBRARY TRUSTEE 
 
 53 
 
 public schools. A board of trustees is certainly justi- 
 fied in ascertaining by any means in its power wheth- 
 er this is being done, and if not, in asking ;m explana- 
 tion of its librarian. Does everyone in the commun- 
 ity know where the library is? Is everyone who 
 would be benefited by it making use of it? ]> it a 
 help to the schools, and do the teachers recognize this 
 fact? Does the community in general regard it as a 
 place where material for the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge is stored and discriminatingly given out? These 
 are questions that can be settled not so much by the 
 examination of statistics as by ascertaining the gen- 
 eral feeling of the community, it is much easier for 
 a trustee to find this out than it is for a librarian; 
 and trustees, both individually and as a body, should 
 continually bear in mind the value to them of infor- 
 mation along this line. Librarians an- apt to talk a 
 good deal about the educational function of the li- 
 brary as an adjunct and supplement to the school. 
 It is to their credit that they have made it an educa- 
 tional force not under pressure but voluntarily, :is a 
 recognition of the necessities of the situation, lint 
 where such necessities have not yet been recognized 
 or where their full import has been slow of realiza- 
 tion, the educational side of library work remains 
 undeveloped. Let the board of trustees notify its 
 executive officer that it expects him to look to this 
 feature of his work as thoroughly as to the condition 
 of his building or the economical expenditure of his 
 lighting appropriation, and all such institutions will 
 experience a change of heart. 
 
 Recreational results. Nothing is more important 
 to the physical and moral health of a community. ;is 
 of an individual, than the quality of the recreation 
 that it takes. The question of whether recreation is 
 oris not taken need not be considered. Evervone takes
 
 54 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 recreation; if means for the healthy normal variety 
 are not provided, the other kind will occupy its place. 
 And the healthy normal individual — child or adult- 
 prefers the first kind if he can get it. With the phys- 
 ical variety the library has nothing to do; but to pur- 
 vey proper intellectual recreation is one of its most 
 important provinces. Is this adequately done? Is it 
 done at all? Does the librarian exalt other functions 
 of his great machine and neglect this one? The large 
 amount of fiction circulated in most public libraries 
 is generally taken as an indication that the quantity 
 of its recreational content is considerable, whatever 
 may be said of the quality; but this is a very super- 
 ficial way of looking at the matter. There is educa- 
 tional material of the highest value in fiction and 
 nearly every non-fiction class contains books of value 
 for recreation. Moreover, what may be recreation to 
 one man may be the hardest kind of study to another. 
 The enthusiast in higher mathematics may extract as 
 pnre amusement from a book on the theory of func- 
 tions as his neighbor would from the works of "John 
 Henry." In short, it is very difficult to separate edu- 
 cation and recreation. Good work presupposes good 
 play. It is simply our duty to view the library as a 
 whole and to decide whether it contains the means of 
 satisfying so much of the community's demand for 
 recreation as is wholesome and proper. Whether it 
 does this may be judged from the freedom with which 
 the library is used for recreational purposes com- 
 pared with other agencies. A proper admixture of 
 physical and intellectual amusement is required by 
 everybody; is the library doing its share toward the 
 purveying of the latter form? I do not know any bet- 
 ter way of finding out than for the library trustees 
 to use their eyes and ears, nor any more effective 
 remedy for inadequate results along this line than
 
 DUTY OF A LIBRARY TRUSTEE 
 
 the pressure that they can bring to bear <m their li- 
 brarian. 
 
 Social results. — Under this head we may group a 
 very large number of results that arc apt to be over- 
 looked or taken for granted. They may perhaps be 
 summarized in the statement that the library should 
 take its proper place in the institutional life of the 
 community. What this is will depend largely on the 
 community's size and its social content. In many 
 small towns the library naturally assumes great so- 
 cial importance; in a city it may be relatively of less 
 weight, though perhaps its influence in the aggregate 
 may be even greater. Whether it is doing this part 
 of its work properly may probably be best ascer- 
 tained by comparison with the work of other institu- 
 tions that go to build up the social fabric — the church, 
 the home, the club, the social assembly. Docs the 
 dweller in the community torn as naturally to the 
 library for intellectual help as be does to the church 
 for religious consolation? Does be seek intellectual 
 recreation there as he seeks physical recreation at bis 
 athletic club or social entertainment at a dance? 
 And so seeking, does he find? Does he come to re- 
 gard the library as his intellectual home and the li- 
 brarian and his assistants as friends? What, on the 
 other hand, is the attitude of the library staff toward 
 the public? Is it inviting or repellent, friendly or 
 coldly hostile, helpful or indifferent? Here is a whole 
 body of results that are, in a way, the most important 
 that a library can produce, and x^t it is impossible 
 to set them down in figures; they can scarcely even 
 be expressed in words. The social status of ;i libra- 
 ry is like a man's reputation or bis credit; it is built 
 up by thousands of separate acts ami by an attitude 
 maintained consistently for years; yet ;i breath may 
 blast it. Of this position a board of trustees should
 
 56 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 be particularly proud and its members should do their 
 best to uphold it. If they realize by those many deli- 
 cate indications that we all recognize but cannot for- 
 mulate, that the library is failing to maintain it, the 
 librarian should hear from them. They should let 
 him know that something is wrong and that they ex- 
 pect him to right it. If he does not know how, that is 
 an indication that his personality and ability are 
 parts of the failure. 
 
 This, then from the writer's standpoint, is the 
 whole duty of a trustee — or rather of a board of 
 trustees — to see clearly what it wants, to give the 
 librarian his orders, and to require an accounting. 
 
 I am frequently struck with the attitude of libra- 
 rians toward their boards of trustees, not as shown 
 in their public acts, but as revealed in conversation 
 among themselves. A board is apt to be adjudged 
 good or bad, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, as it 
 takes a more or less passive part in the administra- 
 tion of the library. If it acts simply to approve 
 what the librarian does and to see that he gets the 
 necessary funds, it is regarded as ideal. All that 
 most librarians seem to want is to be given plenty 
 of money and then to be let alone. This is a view 
 of the whole duty of a trustee with which I do not 
 sympathize. On the other hand, it is not to be denied 
 that boards of trustees have done much to encourage 
 this attitude because when they are really active in 
 their interest their activity looks too closely to de- 
 tail. They are then apt to interfere in the regulation 
 of methods rather than to require results and after- 
 ward ascertain whether and in what degree these 
 results have been reached. 
 
 A board of trustees is the supreme authority in 
 a library. I would have this fact realized in its full- 
 est meaning by both trustees and librarian. And I
 
 DUTY OF A LIBRARY TRUSTEE 
 
 would have the board exercise its supremity id what 
 may be called the American manner. The people 
 constitute the supreme authority both in Great Brit- 
 ain and in the United States. In the former coun- 
 try, however, this authority is symbolized by the 
 person of a monarch, who reigns but does not gov- 
 ern; and the minutest details of administration are 
 attended to by the people in the persons of their 
 parliamentary representatives and of the cabinet, 
 which is, in effect, a parliamentary committee. In 
 this country, on the other hand, we entrust adminis- 
 trative details very largely to our chief magistrate 
 and his personally appointed advisers. We tell him 
 what to do and leave him to do it as he thinks best ; 
 and though Congress is disposed at times to inter- 
 fere in the details of administration, these usually 
 consist more largely of departmental decisions and 
 rulings than of definite provisions of a legislative 
 act. The President of the United States is the peo- 
 ple's general executive officer and administrative ex- 
 pert in precisely the same sense that the librarian oc- 
 cupies that office in his own library. Congress and 
 the board of trustees bear similar relations to these 
 officers. And although this may be carrying the 
 comparison of small things with great to the point 
 of absurdity, it shows clearly that the American idea 
 of delegated authority is to make the authority great. 
 and the corresponding responsibility strict. That 
 the best results have been attained in this country by 
 following out this plan in all fields, from the highest 
 government positions to the humblest commercial 
 posts, seems to be undoubted; and I believe that th - 
 library has been a conspicuous example. 
 
 Appoint a good man, then, as your administra- 
 tive expert; give him a free rein, but not in the sense 
 of following him to dictate the whole policy of your
 
 58 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 library. Decide for yourselves the broad lines of 
 that policy, relying on your own common sense to- 
 gether with his expert advice; require him to fol- 
 low out those lines to a successful issue, and hold 
 him responsible for the outcome. So doing you shall 
 fulfil, so far as the limited vision of one librarian 
 enables him to see. the whole duty of a trustee.
 
 THE DAY'S WORK: SOME CONDITIONS AND 
 SOME [DEALS* 
 
 What is the library for? What are we, who are 
 in charge of it, to do with it? What point are we 
 striving to reach, and how shall we get t here? 
 
 First of all, the library is a collection <»f hooks. 
 Books are to be used by reading them. The whole 
 machinery of the library, its buildings, its depart 1 
 ments, its regulations, its disciplined staff, are to 
 bring together the reader and the hooks. Whatever 
 auxiliary work the library may undertake, this must 
 be its first task. 
 
 Now to what end is this done? A hook from the 
 material point of view is so much Leather, paper and 
 printer's ink, but on the intellectual and spiritual 
 
 side it is a storage battery of ideas. To put a 1 k 
 
 into a reader's hand is to complete a mysterious cir- 
 cuit between the writer s and the reader's mind. This 
 charging of the mind with ideas is what we call edu- 
 cation. To the physiologist it is a mere modification 
 of brain structure; to the economist and the historian 
 it spreads further out; it is a modification of the in- 
 dividual's action toward the whole world; it is the 
 alteration of the world's present status and future 
 history. Education cannot be accomplished by hooks 
 alone; it can even be accomplished wholly without 
 them; but if they are used properly, there is do one 
 agent that can do more for education than these de 
 vices for the storage and transmission of ideas. Thar 
 the library is an educational institution is now gen- 
 
 ♦Presidential address before the New York Librarj lasoctfttloa. 
 
 Lake Placid, September 21, 1903.
 
 60 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 erally recognized. It is common to call it an adjunct 
 to the school, or to speak of it as continuing the work 
 of the school. That the school and the library should 
 work hand in hand where it is possible, goes without 
 saying. But I think we may properly object to any 
 phraseology that implies the subordination of the li- 
 brary to the school. The library stores books and 
 makes them available. Part of the school's work al- 
 so is to make available the contents of books. The 
 library may continue the work of the school; but so 
 in some cases may the school merely complete the 
 work of the library. Many a student has received his 
 first inspiration and instruction in the library and 
 has been thereby stimulated to enter a regular course 
 of study. It is better to let the library stand on its 
 own merits as an instructional agent. The difference 
 between it and the school, fundamentally, is that the 
 library's educational energy is chiefly potential while 
 that of the school is, or should be, dynamic. Yet 
 though the library is only a potential force — energy 
 in storage — the library plus the librarian may and 
 should be dynamic too. We then have in both school 
 and library the book and the teacher, with the differ- 
 ence that in the school the book is only the teacher's 
 tool, while in the library the librarian exists to care 
 for the book, to place it in his hands who needs it, 
 and to make it effective. 
 
 But when we have emphasized the educational 
 side of the library's activity we have by no means ex- 
 hausted its field. Its recreative function is hardly 
 less important. A very large proportion of the libra- 
 ry's users go to it for recreation or relaxation. They 
 obtain this, of course, in the same way that they ob- 
 tain education from books, namely, by the acquisi- 
 tion of new ideas or mental images. The recreation 
 comes in from the fact that these ideas temporarily
 
 THE DAY'S WORK HI 
 
 distract the attention from other ideas connected with 
 daily work and worry, and that they ease the brain 
 in the same way that a strained mnscle may lit- eased 
 by gentle exercise. Evidently it is impossible to draw 
 a line between these two classes of a library's actfo 
 ity. A zoological or a botanical gardeD is an educa- 
 tional institution, so is an art museum. Yet the large 
 majority of those who go to them do so for amuse- 
 ment, and the educational benefits obtained are in- 
 cidental. Those benefits, however, are none the less 
 real, and it would evidently be impossible to give sep- 
 arate statistics of those w 7 ho have made educational 
 and recreative use of the institution. Yet we find peo- 
 ple trying to do this very thing in the case of the pub- 
 lic library, which case is quite comparable with those 
 stated above. It is assumed, in the lirsr place, that 
 the use of fiction is purely recreative, while that of 
 non-fiction is educational; and, in the second place, 
 that the recreative use of the library is to be con- 
 demned or at least discouraged, in comparison with 
 the other. That either of these can be sustained is 
 very doubtful. The attempted subordination of the 
 recreative w r ork of the library to the educational is 
 at best invidious. Each has its place in the scheme 
 of things and comparison in this case is worse than 
 odious, it is misleading. Further, it is positively im- 
 possible to draw a line between educational and rec- 
 reative books. So far as motives go, one may read 
 Gibbon for entertainment and Madame de Stael'a 
 "Corinne" as an Italian guide book. So far as results 
 are concerned, the intelligent reader always acquires 
 new ideas as he reads; and in most cases the very 
 same idea may and does have both an educational 
 and a recreative function. But although we can draw 
 no line, it is quite possible to pick out books on the 
 one side and on the other, and to assert that these
 
 62 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 read chiefly for educational purposes and those for 
 recreation/ On which side shall the library throw its 
 influence? There are many good librarians who feel 
 that the popular tendency is too strong towards rec- 
 reation and that the library should restore the bal- 
 ance by throwing its weight on the other side. Others 
 see in the popular desire for recreative reading only 
 a hopeful reaction from the mental tension and over- 
 work with which, as a nation, we are doubtless 
 chargeable. Between these two points of view I be- 
 lieve that the equilibrium of the public library is safe, 
 and that it is in no danger of developing unduly either 
 on the recreative or on the educational side. 
 
 Personally I have never felt that the user of libra- 
 ries or any other type of the average American was 
 in danger from too much recreation. If there is any 
 use of a library that may have a vicious tendency it 
 is its use for pure pastime in the etymological sense— 
 the reading of books with absolutely no aim at all save 
 to make the time pass. Now to make time pass 
 pleasantly or profitably may be a most legitimate 
 object. Not that, and not any lawful aim is objection- 
 able. But aimlessness — the lack of an aim — the tak- 
 ing out of books to skim or to glance at, or to look at 
 the pictures, with no desire for amusement, or profit, 
 or anything else — that is certainly worthy of condem- 
 nation. There is more of it than we know, and it con- 
 stitutes a menace to our intellectual future. News] ta- 
 per reading fosters it, but not necessarily. Newspa- 
 per reading with an aim is far better than aimless 
 skimming and skipping of a literary classic, and I 
 should rather see a boy of mine reading the most sen- 
 sational dime novel he could lay hands on, with the 
 definite desire and intention of finding out how 
 Bloody Bill got his revenge, than lazily turning over 
 the pages of Scott with no idea of what the storv was
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 0'3 
 
 about. The first would be the case of a good reader 
 and a bad book; the second that of a good book and 
 a bad reader. The library can easily deal with the 
 book; it cannot so easily manage the reader, though 
 it may try to do so. In the case of the bad reader 
 the storage battery of ideas has lost its connection. 
 It would be well for some of us if we should forget 
 for the moment the difference between lid ion and non- 
 fiction and should try to mend this broken link. 
 
 And now a word about ourselves. What arc we, 
 who are engaged. in this work, laboring for? Why 
 are we working, and what do we expect to accom- 
 plish? In answering this question it will be better 
 for us to free ourselves entirely from the bondage of 
 words that mean nothing. Some of us— I hope very 
 many of us — are in the library work solely because 
 we love it and cannot keep out of it. Others are try- 
 ing with more or less success to persuade themselves 
 that this is their reason. Still others cannot truth- 
 fully say that they have had a "call to library work," 
 and some of these are conscientious enough to fear 
 that they are in the wrong place and that the work is 
 suffering thereby. To these I desire to address a word 
 of consolation and encouragement. The impression 
 is very general that the greatest work of the greatest 
 minds had no motive but the productive impulse. The 
 poet, according to this view, sings because he cannot 
 help singing; the artist paints solely to satisfy the 
 creative longing within him; the musician composes 
 for the same reason. Now the fact is that a man who 
 is capable of great work, or of ordinarily good work, 
 may produce it under a variety of impulses. Some 
 act more strongly on one man; others on another; or 
 the same man may be more susceptible to a given im- 
 pulse at one time or place than at another. Without 
 a doubt, many of our immortal works were the result
 
 64 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 of simple inability to keep from producing them. But 
 just as certainly, others were the work of men who 
 had to school themselves by long practice and then to 
 hold themselves to the work with iron determination. 
 "Genius"' says Oarlyle, "is nothing but an infinite ca- 
 pacity for taking pains." To which a modern critic 
 replies, "On the contrary, genius is an infinite capac- 
 ity tor' doing things without taking any pains at all." 
 Both are right. There are both these kinds of genius 
 —and many others. The writer who attempts to bind 
 down genius to rales and formulae will have a hard 
 task. And what is true of genius is also true of or- 
 dinarily good work— the work that you and I are try- 
 ing to do in our libraries. Some of us do it easily be- 
 cause we cannot help it; others do it with more or less 
 difficulty under the pressure of one or another need. 
 One. though the work itself comes hard to him, loves 
 the result to be accomplished; another, perhaps, is 
 toiling primarily to support himself and those de- 
 pendent on him. What of that? We have been 
 placed where we are, to secure certain results. We 
 want the help of every one who can contribute a share 
 of honest, intelligent work toward the attainment of 
 these results, and we shall not ask for motives or in- 
 quire into the exact amount of effort that was neces- 
 sary, provided the work has been done and done well. 
 I have the greatest sympathy for the conscientious 
 library assistant who feels that she ought to love her 
 work in the same way perhaps that she loves music 
 or skating, or a walk through the autumn woods, and 
 who, because she does not sit down to paste labels or 
 stand up to wait on the desk with the feeling of ex- 
 hilaration that accompanies these other acts, is afraid 
 that library work is not her metier. 
 
 Such workers should possess their souls in peace. 
 It is very common for routine work to pall upon him 
 who does it, and we are all apt to think that no work
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 65 
 
 but ours has any routine. Our weary eyes see only 
 the glorious moments of success in the lives of other 
 toilers; we are blind to the years of drudgery that 
 led to them. The remedy is to look forward. You 
 may not enjoy climbing the mountain step by step, 
 but the view from the summit is glorious. And if to 
 sustain yourself on the climb you think of the bread 
 and cheese that you have in your lunch basket, I can- 
 not see that there is aught to complain of. 
 
 All over the world there are workers who feel that 
 they are not worthy of their work. It is dull ; it palls 
 on them. But if their lot had only been different! 
 If their work had been that of the musician or the 
 artist! Then toil would become pleasure, and the 
 hours that now drag heavily would flit on wings. 
 Very little of this feeling is justifiable, and these dis- 
 satisfied workers will do better work if they are made 
 to realize that it is only the favored few who can 
 bring enthusiasm to the daily routine. The most that 
 we can ask of the average worker is a conviction of 
 the usefulness of Ms work and a determination to 
 make it as useful as possible. More : such a determin- 
 ation honestly lived up to is sure to beget interest — 
 that concrete interest in one's work that is worth 
 much more, practically, than an ideal love for it. The 
 woman who goes into slum work impelled only by a 
 a vague love for humanity is apt to give up after a 
 little when she discerns that humanity in the concrete 
 is offensive in so many ways. But if she forces her- 
 self to keep on, and to make herself as useful as pos- 
 sible, there comes the personal interest that will bind 
 her to her task and that will increase its usefulness. 
 So it is with library work; you need not love it ideal- 
 ly to succeed in it; you need only buckle down to it 
 until you feel the personal interest that will carry 
 you through triumphantly.
 
 66 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 And what is it all about? In the broadest sense, 
 as I have already said, we librarians are the pur- 
 veyors of ideas stored up in books. These ideas are 
 more to man than mere education — they are life it- 
 self. Life is growth, not stagnation — it involves 
 change and acquisition. "Life is change," says Cardin- 
 ;i I Newman, "and to be perfect, one must have changed 
 many times." To contribute the opportunity and the 
 stimulus for such change is our business. The child 
 cries out to his environment — "Give me ideas and ex- 
 periences; good and pleasurable if you can, bad or 
 painful, if you must, but give me ideas and exper- 
 iences." I 'art of this craving it is the duty of the 
 public library to satisfy. The craving may grow less 
 keen as we grow older, but it never really ceases to 
 exist. To satisfy that craving in legitimate ways and 
 to guide and control it if we can is our business, 
 stated in the broadest possible terms. That is what 
 we are aiming at. The librarian should be the broad- 
 est minded of mortals. He should be a man in the 
 widest sense — to him nothing human should be alien. 
 
 This is decidedly broad and correspondingly vague, 
 Being so, it may be interpreted by every worker in 
 the way that appeals to him most. To one, the edu- 
 cational work of the library will make the strongest 
 appeal; to another its recreational function. One 
 may prefer to lay stress on the guidance of children's 
 reading; another on reference work with adults. 
 These are all phases of one and the same general class 
 of acts — the imparting of ideas by means of books — 
 and there is no reason why each worker should not 
 gain interest in that work by and through the partic- 
 ular phase that appeals to him. 
 
 "I wish/' says one of James Lane Allen's charac- 
 ters, "that some virtue— say the virtue of truthful- 
 ness—could be known throughout the world as the
 
 THE DAYS WORK 67 
 
 unfailing mark of the American. Suppose the rest 
 of mankind would agree that this virtue constituted 
 the characteristic of the American! That would be 
 fame for ages." We librarians, in like manner, not 
 only wish but strive to make some one virtue charac- 
 teristic of our work— say the virtue of usefulness. 
 "As useful as a librarian," "As indispensable as the 
 public library"— these arc not yet, I am afraid, house- 
 hold phrases. But why should we not make them so?
 
 LIBRARY STATISTICS 
 
 It is a valuable exercise to examine into the origin 
 
 and uses of the things that we have I n accustomed 
 
 to take for granted and to regard almost as part of 
 the accepted order of nature. The result will often 
 be startling and it will always be salutary, if the ex- 
 aminer be sane and conservative. Therefore a very 
 good way to begin a discussion of statistics is to query 
 whether they are of present value at all, or whether 
 they are old fashioned rubbish and had better be dis- 
 carded. 
 
 Statistics are the numerical statements of results 
 or facts. Now thousands of individuals and thou- 
 sands of bodies — families, clans, associations, that ac- 
 complish much in this world, go on very well without 
 keeping any record at all of what they do. This is 
 indisputable. On the other hand we shall see that 
 as work is done well and carefully there is an increas- 
 ing disposition to make and keep a record of results; 
 and as the work extends in scope and complexity, 
 the record, too, becomes more complex. Take, for in- 
 stance, the record of so apparently simple a transac- 
 tion as the payment and receipt of money. The indi- 
 vidual who has little of it to receive and disburse may 
 go all his life without keeping so much as a cash ac- 
 count, much less a set of books. He may even spend 
 a considerable income in the same way, including the 
 maintenance of a household and the support of a fain 
 ily, and he may, on the whole, do it wisely and well 
 Yet of two men of the same means, one of whom 
 should conduct his affairs thus, while the other kept
 
 70 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 a rational system of household and personal accounts, 
 the latter would universally be regarded as pursuing 
 the better course. And as we pass from this to the 
 conduct of a business we recognize that the man who 
 engages in commerce without keeping proper accounts 
 is a fool and courts failure, and that the larger the 
 business and the more widespread the interests, the 
 more complicated and extensive must be the book- 
 keeping. A large commercial concern may thus em- 
 ploy a special department with a large staff of men 
 simply to keep record of its financial transactions. 
 This is probably the most ancient kind of statistical 
 record and the one whose usefulness is most general- 
 ly recognized. 
 
 In like manner another common and useful statis- 
 tical record — the inventory, or list of articles on hand 
 —although not commonly and regularly taken by the 
 individual, becomes absolutely necessary in the small- 
 est kind of business, and without it the merchant can 
 have absolutely no idea of whether he is conducting 
 his business at a profit or a loss. When we go on fur- 
 ther and examine the conduct of great commercial or 
 manufacturing concerns we find that the statistical 
 department becomes of increasing importance, the de- 
 tails collected by it multiply and the staff of persons 
 whose sole duty it is to collect and to discuss them 
 may be very considerable. That a great manufactur- 
 ing company would waste time and money on a task of 
 no value is inconceivable, and there is thus a very 
 strong presumption that statistics are worth some- 
 thing. Even where bodies of men have so little power 
 or corporate action that they cannot collect statistics 
 for themselves, it is generally deemed a proper ex- 
 penditure of the public money to do so at the common 
 cost, hence governments maintain great census bur- 
 eaus, whose duty it is not only to count heads every
 
 LIBRARY STATISTK 71 
 
 few years but to tell the farmer how much he raises, 
 the merchant how much merchandise he exports, and 
 so on. 
 
 Is the free public library an institution that will 
 be benefited by the collection, tabulation and discus- 
 sion of the results of its work, so far as they can be 
 numerically expressed? What are the objects of such 
 collection in the instances above enumerated? In the 
 first place, they are to satisfy mere curiosity. If such 
 curiosity is trivial, the collection of statistics is evi- 
 dently useless, and I am afraid that more than a little 
 of it, public and private, falls under this head. But 
 curiosity, even when it pies no further, may be per- 
 fectly legitimate. Especially is this so about ones 
 own affairs. When a man is attempting anything he 
 is naturally curious to know whether he has succeed- 
 ed or not ; and to find out, if possible, precisely how- 
 far he has gone in the desired direction. He may 
 have property enough to support him beyond all doubt, 
 but it is quite right that he should want to keep a 
 list of his stocks and bonds and to know whether 
 they have risen or fallen in value during the year. 
 Still further, curiosity about other people's affairs 
 may be legitimate, as, for instance, when one is re- 
 sponsible for their proper conduct in greater <>r less 
 degree. In the same way the trustees of a free public 
 library, representing the public at large, by whom the 
 library is supported and carried on, have a right to 
 know all possible particulars regarding the way in 
 which their librarian has carried on his work and the 
 results he has Peached in it, and the municipality in 
 turn should require of the trustees a strict, account of 
 the funds that they have administered. All this infor- 
 mation, as far as it can be stated numerically, con- 
 stitutes a mass of statistics, and this one reason am- 
 ply justifies its collection and would justify a much
 
 I- 
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 larger number of tables than is usually given in a li- 
 brary report, provided only that the information is 
 to the point and is or should be in public demand. 
 
 ~~But we cannot stop here. A free library, it is 
 true, is not a money-making concern, but it certainly 
 should be run on business principles. The public puts 
 into it a large sum of money and has a right to ex- 
 pect certain returns, which are none the less definite 
 that they cannot themselves be represented in dollars 
 and cents. The library statistic books are therefore, 
 in a way, the records of the business; they show wheth- 
 er it is being conducted conservatively or wastefully, 
 at a profit or at a loss. And as all these record books 
 are open, they enable us, or should enable us to make 
 instructive comparisons between the methods and re- 
 sults of one institution and those of another. 
 
 But even this is not all. It is a maxim of this 
 strenuous age that all things are good or bad accord- 
 ing to the results to which they lead, not in the nar- 
 row sense that "the end justifies the means," but in 
 the broader sense that we must know things by their 
 fruits. The man who said "I go, sir," and went not, 
 was judged by his acts, not by his words ; and no mat- 
 ter how much knowledge we store up and how many 
 tables of data we collect we shall be derelict in our 
 duty if we regard this as an end in itself. The state 
 of mind in which the Mahatma spends his life in im- 
 passivity, contemplating inward things and making 
 no outward motion, may have certain advantages, but 
 it is not consonant with the spirit of this age and 
 this land. By which I mean that when we have found 
 out something from our statistics we must do some- 
 thing with it. More; we must so direct our statisti- 
 cal investigations that they bear directly on a possible 
 course of action. This is done by the great manufac- 
 turing concerns that maintain statistical depart-
 
 LIBRARY STATISTS S 73 
 
 merits; but we all use statistics in this way. If a 
 boy wants to go to the circus he first looks through 
 his pockets to see whether he has enough cash. Here 
 is the germ of a statistical investigation conducted 
 for the specific purpose of getting information on 
 which future action is to be based. Here sometimes, 
 where the opportunity of collecting statistics is very 
 great, and expense is no object, is a good excuse for 
 gathering a greal deal thai would seem to be useless, 
 with the expectation that sonic of it may turn out to 
 be interesting and may suggest som<- line of work that 
 had not previously been thought of. To go as far as 
 this, the institution must be large and rich. 
 
 But how many of us do anything with our statis- 
 tics? Mow many collect statistics along special lines 
 to assist in deciding what we shall do along those 
 lines? flow many of us, rather, consider that, when 
 our statistics have been collected a disagreeable task 
 has been done, and put them behind us till the year 
 rolls round again? 
 
 Perhaps we have had enough now of the philos- 
 ophy of statistics. Let us sec what concrete kinds of 
 statistics are necessary and in what order of impor- 
 tance. 
 
 First comes an itemized account of receipts and 
 expenditures. This is so obvious that it is not gen- 
 erally considered as library statistics at all. But it 
 may and should he extended a little. Look at all your 
 other tables of statistics through financial spectacles. 
 Compare your receipts with your population. How 
 much does your town give per capita for library work? 
 Compare this figure with tin 1 same for other towns. 
 Compare your expenditures with your circulation. 
 How much has your library cost you per book cir- 
 culated? Compare your expenditure for books with 
 the number purchased and tell us the average cost of
 
 74 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 a book and how this compares with the cost in for- 
 mer years. Do this for a half-dozen other phases of 
 your work and put the result in as many brief, crisp 
 sentences. If you haven't room in your report, cut 
 out some of the platitudes; we all insert them in mo- 
 ments of weakness and, once in, it sometimes requires 
 an earnest search to detect and expunge them. 
 
 Next in importance comes an account of your 
 books — how many there are in the library, on what 
 subjects, and how many have been added during the 
 year in each subject; how many gifts you have had; 
 how many books have been lost. This involves tak- 
 ing a careful inventory at least once a year. You see 
 1 am putting this before any account of circulation. 
 A good many libraries take no inventory or take it at 
 too infrequent intervals, because they have no time. 
 You might as well say you have no time to keep a 
 c;ish account. This is business and comes first. Leave 
 off counting your circulation if you must, but keep 
 count of the public property in your care as conscien- 
 tiously as you keep count of the money in your cash 
 drawer. If you can do nothing else make a simple 
 enumeration of volumes without taking account of 
 classes, but do it thoroughly. The trouble with the 
 inventory is that, like the old-fashioned houseclean- 
 ing, it is usually done all at once and becomes an an- 
 nual bugbear. One way of making it easier is to 
 spread it over the year, counting and reporting one 
 class every month and treating it as a part of the 
 regular routine. In this category of statistical rec- 
 ords comes the list of your books, which you must 
 surely have in some form, even though you may not 
 have accession book, shelf list and dictionary cata- 
 log. For statistical purposes indeed, the last-named 
 may be left out of account. 
 
 Next in order of importance come statistics of
 
 LIBRARY STATISTICS 75 
 
 circulation. Yon should know how many books are 
 given out for home use every day and how these are 
 distributed among the classes. Do not adhere too 
 strictly to your classification. Subdivide and combine 
 your classes so that the results will be of interest to 
 your particular public. Always remember in discus- 
 sing these statistics that they are not so much a rec- 
 ord of work done as a rough proportional indication 
 of that work, and are therefore of relative, not of ab- 
 solute interest. You are not to attach any meaning 
 to the fact, taken by itself, that your circulation was 
 5280 for the month of May, but if you find that it was 
 only 3120 in the previous May you may justly con- 
 clude that the work of your library is increasing. 
 
 In the circulation category comes the record of 
 the hall or library use of books, the reference use, and 
 the books outstanding at any particular time. Hall 
 use is very difficult to keep in a free access library, 
 but an attempt should be made to do so. It is not 
 quite synonymous with reference use. If a man sits 
 down in your library and actually reads a novel with- 
 out taking it home, that is hall or library use, but not 
 reference use. If he merely refers to the same book 
 to find out about some character, that is reference use. 
 It is evidently hard to separate these and many libra- 
 ries do not attempt to do so. In others, where there 
 is a separate reference room, any us-' of books in this 
 room is recorded as "reference use." The number of 
 books outstanding should be taken at least once a 
 month, simply by counting the cards in the circula- 
 tion tray. This item is very easy to ascertain, very 
 accurate, and is interesting and useful in more than 
 one way. 
 
 Last in the list of the necessary items of statistics 
 comes that of readers or users of the library — the 
 most interesting in some ways, and the most disap-
 
 76 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 pointingly vague. Presumably your users fill out 
 some kind of blank form of application and have their 
 names entered in a book. It is therefore easy to give, 
 as is usually done, the total registration and its an- 
 nual increase. But this is evidently not the number 
 of actual users of the library. Who are the "actual 
 users'"? The expression itself is vague. To be com- 
 plete you should have the numbers of those who have 
 used the library within one, two, and three days, and 
 so on back indefinitely. There is no place where the 
 line may be drawn between "live" and "dead" cards. 
 But such statistics are too elaborate to collect regu- 
 larly, so that the ordinary library leaves this subject 
 in its pristine mistiness. There are some pretty vari- 
 ations of it, however, which may be gone into if there 
 is time. For instance, how are your users divided, 
 according to occupation? This you can ascertain 
 from your applications provided the applicant is re- 
 quired to state his occupation. Here again the result 
 is for registered users, not actual users. Again, how 
 are your users distributed topographically? The re- 
 sult of this inquiry may be shown graphically on a 
 map, and it is particularly valuable when one is 
 thinking of moving or of establishing a branch ; but 
 it takes more time than is at the disposal of most 
 librarians. 
 
 Here, I believe, ends the enumeration of necessary 
 kinds of statistics. In each kind the collection may 
 be reduced to a minimum; but the librarian must, if 
 the library is to be maintained at all, keep a cash ac- 
 count, count the books, and make some kind of a list 
 of them. Also, if at all possible she or he must be 
 able to tell how many books are circulated and how 
 many users' names are on the books. This is the mini- 
 mum; the maximum is fixed only by considerations 
 of time and usefulness. First among the kinds of
 
 LIBRARY STATISTICS 77 
 
 statistics that arc not absolutely necessary, but inter- 
 esting and often useful, is that of routine work done 
 — letters written, visits made, cards written. This 
 may easily be carried to excess. Then there is the 
 enormous class in which the data are obtained not 
 directly, but by comparison of other data. To this 
 class belong the financial comparisons already noted. 
 For instance, by comparing the circulation of sepa- 
 rate classes with the total we get class percentages — 
 a very useful type of statistics; by comparing circula- 
 tion with hooks on shelves we get the average circula- 
 tion of each book, etc. There is no end to the varie- 
 ties of this class of statistics, and they may be rated 
 all the way from "very valuable" to "useless'' or even 
 "nonsensical". The whole class would require a sep- 
 arate paper to discuss. 
 
 Let all these statistics tell the truth. Let them 
 be clear. Tell exactly what they mean. Otherwise 
 they will certainly mislead and are worse than use- 
 less. It is well to accompany every table with an 
 explanatory note telling exactly how the data were 
 obtained and whether they are of a high or a low 
 degree of accuracy, in case you do not know, for 
 instance, whether the word "juvenile" as generally 
 used means the entire circulation among children, or 
 the circulation in the children's room, or is merely 
 short for "juvenile fiction," decide what it shall 
 mean in your case and then state distinctly what 
 it means. Read over other library reports critical- 
 ly and when you find any statistics that are vague, 
 see to it that that particular kind of vagueness does 
 not occur in your own tables. 
 
 And after it is all over, ask yourself, Now what 
 shall I do with all this? In this paper only a few 
 suggestions can he made. Take first, the financial 
 data. If you find that your town is giving less per
 
 78 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 capita or less per book circulated than the average, 
 let it be your business to make it give more. There 
 is a task that will till up your spare moments. 
 If you are paying for books more per book than 
 other libraries, try to buy more cheaply. If your 
 inventory show* a great loss of books by theft, try 
 to reduce it next year by greater vigilance. If your 
 circulation is decreasing ask the reason why. Get 
 at it if you can and remedy it if possible. If your 
 circulation shows a sudden increase in a particular 
 class, investigate that and meet it, if proper, by in- 
 creased purchases in that class. If a class that 
 should circulate well has fallen,, try to find out 
 why. Is your collection in this class small and 
 poor? Make it richer and larger. Has interest in 
 the subject fallen off? Try to stimulate it. 
 
 In short, instead of regarding your work in con- 
 nection with statistics as done when they have been 
 collected, think that it has not yet begun. So far 
 as your own work is concerned, let them serve only 
 as an indication of the weak spots that must be 
 strengthened and of the promising growths that 
 must be encouraged. There are statistics and sta- 
 tistics. Some are dead; some are alive — vitalized 
 and vitalizing. Not all of the library's work can 
 be stated in figures. The largest part, the best part, 
 you cannot put into statistical tables at all. Yet 
 rightly used, your statistics may so guide and direct 
 you along the lines of least resistance, even in this 
 broader and finer work, that your energies may be 
 put forth in it to the best effect — that you may aim 
 right and that your shots may not go astray.
 
 OLD PROBABILITIES IN THE LIBRARY— HIS 
 MODEST VATICINATIONS* 
 
 "Don't aever prophsey onles ye know," says 
 Hosea Bigelow. 1 beg to call attention to the 
 that this means "Don't prophesy at all"— perhaps 
 it was so meant by the shrewd Hosea. We never can 
 know— and yet we continue to prophesy. The best 
 we can do, of course, is to estimate probabilities. 
 Probabilities! That is a good word. They have 
 dropped it from {he weather reports and call their 
 estimate a "forecast." I like the old word better. 
 Let us see, then, what some of the probabilities are 
 in library work. 
 
 "Everything flows," said the Greek philosopher. 
 Nothing in the world is stable; change is tin' oi 
 of the day. But note the word he uses. That which 
 tlows is in a state of orderly change in a definite di- 
 rection. Everything progresses; and the library and 
 its work are being borne along h, the general cur- 
 rent. Now the writers on hydro-dynamics, who are 
 experts on blow, tell us that there are two ways of 
 studying a current, which they name the "historical" 
 and the "statistical": In the former the attention is 
 fixed on a definite particle of the moving fluid whose 
 change of velocity and direction is noted as it j. ; i 
 along; in the latter a definite locality of the stream 
 is selected and the fluid's changes of form and densi- 
 ty at that particular place are observed. In like 
 manner we may si inly the library movement histori- 
 cally or we can select a definite point in its course 
 the present time— and note the conditions ami their 
 
 l904 Read before the Penn3 y lv a"i^ Library Club, Philadelphia ! I
 
 80 LIBBAKY ESSAYS 
 
 alteration. The latter plan, I venture to think, is 
 the more favorable one for the would-be prophet. 
 
 Let us, then, take a few of the salient features 
 of library work as they exist to-day and inquire: (1) 
 What is the present situation with regard to each; 
 (2) Is that situation changing; and whither and how 
 fast; (3) Is its rate of change altering, and (4) are 
 the conditions that affect it and its alteration, likely 
 to remain as they are. If we can answer all these 
 questions we can at least make an attempt at es- 
 timating the probable situation at a given future 
 time. We must bear in mind, however, that in the 
 library world, as elsewhere, there are sudden or 
 abrupt changes, or catastrophes, and that these gen- 
 erally defy prediction. And this is equally true of 
 unexpected aids or beneficient influences. The libra- 
 ry benefactions of Mr. Carnegie would have upset 
 the most careful and logical estimate of library prog- 
 ress made twenty years ago. 
 
 First let us take up the status of our stock in 
 trade — our supply of books. President Eliot warned 
 us two years ago that our books are piling up too 
 fast. His warning has met with scant heed because 
 experience has not brought it home to most of us. 
 Malthus warned us long ago that the progress of 
 population was toward overcrowding the world. We 
 laugh at him because there is still plenty of room 
 and means of utilizing it unknown in his time. Yet 
 population increases, and it will overcrowd the 
 world some day unless something occurs to prevent. 
 In like manner our stock of books increases faster 
 and faster. The ordinary American public library 
 is a thing of yesterday; small wonder that it does 
 not yet begin to feel plethoric. Our oldest large li- 
 braries are those of onr universities, and Harvard's 
 president has told us that to them the evil day is
 
 OLD PROBABILITIES 81 
 
 within sight. Librarians have not received with fav- 
 or President Eliot's plea for getting us out of our 
 future difficulty but this is neither here nor there. 
 To judge by our present attitude either our library 
 buildings must increase indefinitely in size or our 
 stock must be weeded out. It must be remembered, 
 however, that our books are perishable, and are grow- 
 ing more so. I do not regard this as an unmixed 
 evil. Rather than to make our books unwieldy for 
 the purpose of preserving them we prefer to make 
 them usable and to rely on reprinting for their per- 
 petuation. Thus what is not wanted will pass away. 
 Perhaps this will solve our problem for us. But in 
 any case it looks as if the future library building and 
 its contents were to be greatly larger than those of 
 to-day. 
 
 What are to be the style and arrangement of the 
 future library building? The present situation can 
 hardly be described in general terms. As in all 
 building operations, there is a strife between the 
 architect, representing aesthetics, and the adminis- 
 trator, representing utility. At present the architect 
 seems to be having his way outside and the librarian 
 his way inside. But why this contest? Is it not the 
 architect's business to make utility more beautiful 
 but not less useful? And should not the adminis- 
 trator wish his surroundings to please the eye? Ap- 
 parently the two are drawing a little closer together 
 of late. We are having fewer temples of art that 
 have to be made over to fit them for use as libraries 
 and fewer buildings that are workable but offensive 
 to the eye. The tendency seems to be toward simple 
 dignity, although we certainly have some surprising 
 departures from it. Probably the library of the fu- 
 ture will be a simple and massive structure of much 
 greater size than at present, with its decorations
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 largely structural, and combining ample open-shelf 
 and reading facilities with greatly increased capac- 
 ity for book-storage. 
 
 There is one particular in which the architect has 
 been specially out of touch with the administrator. 
 The open-shelf is now all but universal, but many 
 architects seem not to have heard of it. Many build- 
 ings, actually intended for administration on the 
 free access system, seem yet to have been planned as 
 closed-shelf libraries and opened to the public as an 
 afterthought. A library without a special stack- 
 room for book-storage is an unthinkable thing to 
 most architects. And yet in many small libraries 
 book-storage is not necessary, and in most branch li- 
 braries, where only books in general use are to be 
 1 daced, it will never be necessary. To get the maxi- 
 mum advantage from open shelves, with a minimum 
 of risk, the books should be placed on the walls as 
 far as possible and such book-cases as stand on the 
 floor should be as low as an ordinary table, so as to 
 be easily overseen. A stack-room, it seems to me, is 
 distinctly a closed-shelf arrangement. I believe this 
 is coming to be recognized and that in the future li- 
 brary the books will be on or near the walls. 
 
 But how about the open-shelf system itself? At 
 present there are few libraries that do not have it 
 in some form, and some of these are libraries that 
 continued strongly to disapprove of it even after it 
 had become well and widely established. The in- 
 dications are nearly all that it has come to stay. I 
 say nearly all; for there is still a feeling among 
 many people that it is not good administration to 
 abandon so large a percentage of our books to 
 thieves. In libraries in small communities where 
 the loss is small, this question does not arise; but in 
 New York, for instance, where we lost 5000 books 
 last year, it. is serious. We librarians mav sav and
 
 OLD PROBABILITY - 
 
 believe that the advantages far outweigh the disad- 
 vantages, hut trustees and municipal authorities are 
 hard to convince, in New York we have takeE what 
 many will consider a backward step, by partially 
 closing, as an experiment, the shelves of two of our 
 branches. So that although we may safely say that 
 free access has come to stay. I do nor look to see it 
 applied very generally to large collections, one 
 thin- seems to me (deai-. Library administration is 
 becoming increasingly business-like, and it is not 
 business-like to accepl a large annua] loss without 
 aB attempt to minimize i ( . We must ;it least inves- 
 tigate regularly and rigidly the sources and charac- 
 ter of this loss. 
 
 As for the other features that, we have become ac- 
 customed to regard as distinguishing the new libra- 
 ry era from the old— special work with children, co- 
 operation with schools, travelling libraries, etc. -i1 
 is evident that these, too. have come to stay. Their 
 spheres are widening and their aims are diversifying, 
 however, so that he who should venture to predict 
 their precise status in the future would lie rash. 
 
 In fact, the library idea itself is beginning to suf- 
 fer a sort of restless change that is quite distinct 
 from its orderly progress. The activities of the li- 
 brary are at present a g 1 deal like those of the 
 
 amoeba— stretching out a tentacle here, withdrawing 
 one there; improvising a mouth and then turning it 
 into a stomach; shifting and stretching about; some- 
 what vague and formless, yet instinct with life, ap- 
 petite and caution, and vitalized with at least the 
 germ ami promise of intelligence. Such a state is 
 an unpromising one for prophecy. Is this or that 
 new development of activity the beginning of an 
 orderly march in a straight line, or is it to be with- 
 drawn or reversed to-morrow? Is our work with 
 children to include much (hat now seems t<. belon<*
 
 8 4 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 to the kindergarten, the museum, and the art gal- 
 lery 7 Arc our travelling library departments to 
 sell books in the future as well as lend them? Are 
 we to deliver books free at our user's homes? Are 
 our Boards of Education to turn over to us the su- 
 perintendence of all such work as deals with books 
 and their use? Many questions like these would 
 have been answered in the affirmative yesterday but 
 in the negative to-day. I might be inclined to say 
 "yes" to some of them now, w T hen to-morrow would 
 prove them out of the qeustion. But there is one 
 assertion that we can make boldly. Whatever the 
 library has tried to do or to be, whether success or 
 failure has attended it, it has never ceased to be a 
 library — a keeper and purveyor of books. Whatever 
 else it may undertake, we may be sure that this will 
 continue to be its chief reason for existence, and 
 that its other activities, if such there be, will grow 
 out of this and group themselves around it. Is the 
 library to grow into a bookstore? I do not know, 
 but if so its commercial functions are likely to be 
 subsidiary. Certain libraries have already added to 
 their duties as free institutions the functions of pay- 
 libraries, and the commercial feature has thus been 
 introduced. It seems to be spreading, and it may 
 prove an entering wedge for a system of actual sales 
 to supplement that of paid loans. A powerful deter- 
 rent, however, will be the influence of the book-trade. 
 Following the line of least resistance, the activity 
 of the library as an aid to the ownership as well as 
 the reading of books is perhaps more likely to mani- 
 fest itself in advice than in actual trade. Some li- 
 braries are now making special effort to give their 
 readers information about book-prices, and about 
 places and methods of purchase; and it seems likely 
 that this kind of aid, since it can arouse no opposi- 
 tion, will Lncre
 
 OLD PBOBABILITJ - 
 
 The position in which we find ourselves, of op- 
 position to those w ho m ake and sell books, is unfor- 
 tunate. The sit iint ion has been growing more and 
 more tense and it may continue so to grow, perhaps 
 up to the point where nil discount will he withheld 
 from libraries and where new Legislation may dis- 
 courage importation, but ! do not believe that it will 
 keep on indefinitely. No one who Looks into the 
 matter closely can help believing that in the Long 
 run libraries advertise the book-trade and help it by 
 promoting general interest in Literature. This view 
 of the matter was taken by a majority of tin' New 
 York Booksellers' League at a recent dinner at 
 which the question was discussed. Even purely as 
 a matter of business, the library deserves special 
 privileges and it will doubtless continue in some 
 measure to receive them. 
 
 It does not, however, seem probable that the 
 average cost of books to a public library will ever he 
 as low again as it Avas, say. ten years ago. in fact 
 this may he said of all Library expenses. Salaries 
 are rising and ought to rise higher; our buildings 
 are larger and finer and demand more expensive care. 
 We are heating them with more costly apparatus 
 and lighting them with electricity. The library of 
 the future will doubtless cost more to maintain in 
 every item than the library of the past— but the pub- 
 lic will receive more than the difference. 
 
 As regards children's work there seem to be at 
 present two tendencies— one toward complete isola- 
 tion and one in the opposite direction. Will our 
 grandchildren, when they go to the public library, 
 he segregated in a separate room, perhaps in a sepa- 
 rate building; or will they be treated as a distinct 
 (dass only so far as may he absolutely necessarv for 
 good administration? Probably complete separation 
 is best for the library and best for the adults; 1 h, si-
 
 86 
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 tate to say that it is best for the children. After all, 
 childhood is but a stage and not a resting' state at 
 that— rather restless and progressive. Any special- 
 conditions that we provide for it must themselves 
 be subject to constant change. In our schools the 
 child passes from grade to grade. In our libraries 
 the grades are only two; let us not make the leap 
 from one to the other too great. I look to see special 
 library work for children increase in importance, 
 but with due recognition of the fact that some of the 
 needs and aspirations of a "grown-up" are present 
 in many a twelve-year-old and that it is better that 
 the clothes of a growing child should be a size too 
 large than an exact tit. 
 
 The travelling library deserves a special word, 
 because its success is indicative of the tendency to 
 bring the book and its user into closer contact. In 
 New York we began, only seven years ago, to eir- 
 culate a few hundred books monthly in this way 
 among half a dozen schools. Now we give out near- 
 ly half a million a year from nearly 500 different 
 points. We hear the same tale from all sides. And 
 the cost of circulation per book is surprisingly small. 
 In New York the circulation through travelling li- 
 braries is equal to that of three branches of the first 
 class, while the number of assistants employed is 
 about half the number required in one of those 
 branches. The cost of operating three large branches 
 in Carnegie buildings is about $40,000 yearly, where- 
 as our travelling libraries for the last fiscal year 
 cost us but |6400. Of course it must be remembered 
 that a very large amount of the work of circulation 
 in this case is done by volunteer assistants and that 
 the users of the books have not the facilities and re- 
 sources of a branch library — the number and vari- 
 ety of books, the pleasant surroundings, the trained 
 aid. Of course the travelling library can never take
 
 OLD PEOBABILITIES 87 
 
 tlie place of the fully equipped branch, but in supple- 
 menting branch work and i„ reaching thus,- who 
 Live m sparsely settled communities its capabilities 
 are great and it may be expected that its use will in- 
 crease. 
 
 The broadening of library work illustrated by 
 tin' successive appearance of the reference Library 
 the circulating library, the delivery station, the 
 branch and the travelling library suggests the 
 thought that this scries may be carried further in 
 the future by the addition of some working plan 
 that will brin- the book still closer to its user. Such 
 >[ plan would be the system in which books are de- 
 livered free of charge at the bouses of those who use 
 them, or the provision of a real library on wheels— 
 a van supplied with shelving lor a thousand books or 
 more from which selection can be made as it moves 
 about from house to house. It does not semi prob- 
 able that any such device as this will be generally 
 adopted for districts adequately provided with reg- 
 ular libraries, but for thinly settled regions they 
 may supplement or take the place of our present 
 travelling or home libraries. I believe for instance 
 that a moving library of 1000 books, calling once a 
 week at each house in a farming district would be 
 preferable to four travelling Libraries of 250 books 
 each, stationed at points in the same district, al- 
 though, of course, the cost would be correspondingly 
 greater. 
 
 The library's status as an educational institution 
 seems now to be well established. No one disputes 
 it. and as this appears to be the chief ground on 
 Which its support by public funds is justified we 
 may regard it as settled that the library is to con- 
 tinue to play its part in public instruction. This 
 parr, though not so definite ;uu\ positive as that of 
 the school, extends over a far longer period. While
 
 88 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 the library's work is parallel and supplementary to 
 that of the school in the case of those of school age, 
 it must continue its work alone after its users have 
 left school. Here it may settle its methods for itself, 
 but in its earlier work when it deals with pupils, it 
 has the teacher to reckon with. The necessity for 
 constant consultation and co-operation between the 
 authorities of two public institutions, whose work is 
 so similar and can so easily result in wasteful du- 
 plication or still more wasteful conflict, is obvious. 
 We need not be surprised that librairans and teach- 
 ers are getting nearer together and we may confi- 
 dently predict that the rapprochement will be closer 
 in the future. But although the school is ceasing to 
 look upon its younger sister as an interloper in the 
 pedagogical family, there is still plenty of room for 
 the definition of their respective spheres. And we 
 have no right to complain that the school is still do- 
 ing much library work, when we have ourselves 
 sometimes tried to do school work. I look in the fu- 
 ture for the definition of two clearly separated 
 spheres of activity, one filled by the library and the 
 other by the school, and for the closest co-operation 
 between the two that is consistent with confining 
 each to its own work. It is probably too much to ex- 
 pect that the school will give up the custodianship 
 of books. It must at least control its own text 
 books, and its collection of reference works should 
 be complete enough to constitute a thorough guide 
 and aid to proper study. But the distribution of 
 supplementary reading should be the part of the pub- 
 lic library. This and other related points are to be 
 settled, if at all, in the future by two kinds of mutual 
 understandings; namely, between the governing 
 boards of library and school and between librarian 
 and teacher. The due definition of spheres of work 
 can come only from an official agreement between
 
 OLD PROBABILITIES 89 
 
 library board and school board; helpful aid on both 
 sides can come only from an official agreement be- 
 tween library board and school board; helpful aid 
 on both sides can come only from personal contact 
 and acquaintance between teachers and library as- 
 sistants — such a degree of acquaintance between 
 teachers and library assistants — such a degree of ac- 
 quaintance that each comes to have a practical 
 knowledge of the other's problems, trials and limita- 
 tions. Most librarians have made more or less ef- 
 fort in this direction; some have met with dis- 
 tinguished success. We may safely predict further 
 progress along this line. 
 
 The lessons of the past and of the present all 
 point to the increasing use of the library as a great 
 engine of popular education, using the noun in its 
 broadest sense and emphasizing the adjective. The 
 library is more and more a great humanizing influ- 
 ence; if this is so, nothing human must be alien to 
 it. And much that is human and humanizing is 
 nevertheless ephemeral. With some the implications 
 of this word are wholly contemptuous. Of a day! 
 Does nothing valuable pass quickly away, having 
 done its little work? The day itself is a day only 
 and vanishes with the evening and the morning; yet 
 it has its part in the record of the years. So- with 
 "ephemeral" literature. As we have seen, a great 
 deal of what we are wont to consider as standard 
 and permanent will ultimately perish. Yet be its 
 life that of a year or a century, a book may play its 
 little part in the mental development of those who 
 read it. Just at present the favorite vehicle of liter- 
 ary expression is fiction. People put into stories 
 what they have to say of history, sociology and 
 ethics; they embody in romance their theories of 
 aesthetics, economics and politics. Then 4 is good 
 doctrine with a poor literary setting and there are
 
 90 
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 paste jewels in pure gold. But taking it by and 
 large the much decried deluge of modern fiction has 
 undoubtedly been educative in its tendency. This is 
 why 1 cannot yield to Logic and predict the gradual 
 disappearance of all but a small residuum of fiction 
 from the public library. There is a tendency in that 
 direction but there are some signs of a reaction. The 
 seer may hope, even if he dare not predict, that the 
 great public library that can afford to do so will 
 continue to purchase such fiction as will interest or 
 entertain the average person of education, even if it 
 is to stay on the shelves but a few months. 
 
 What will be the future distribution of libraries 
 in this country? At present their numbers are large 
 in the northern states and comparatively small in 
 the southern. Growth has been unexampled in its 
 rapidity and has been stimulated by large benefac- 
 tions. So far as this growth may be looked upon as 
 the direct result of Mr. Carnegie's gifts it may 
 doubtless be regarded as abnormal, although it 
 should be noted that every Carnegie building means 
 a present and future outlay on the part of the com- 
 munity in which it stands, of many times the amount 
 given by the donor. Primarily, library expansion is 
 the result of a popular conviction that the public li- 
 brary is a public necessity. Expansion has pro- 
 ceeded in proportion to the spread of that convic- 
 tion and along the lines of its progress. If there 
 are fewer public libraries in the South than in the 
 North it is because the need for them is not felt 
 there, even if it exists. Doubtless the race problem 
 is a powerful inhibitory influence. Two things are 
 certain; that library expansion is to go on for some 
 time, and that a time will come when it must stop. 
 When that time arrives, the library will have at- 
 tained its majority and we shall have an opportunity
 
 OLD PROBABILITIES 91 
 
 to address ourselves to problems that can not be at- 
 tended to during our period of growth. 
 
 Who will use our great library of the future? 
 Who uses the library of to-day? I have been asked 
 that question by reporters and have been puzzled to 
 answer it. For whose use is the public library in- 
 tended? It will be logical to answer "the Public, of 
 course," but there are a great many poeple who will 
 give this answer with mental reservations. With 
 them "the Public" means some particular pari of 
 the public. Some think that the libraries are for the 
 poor, or at any rate for those who cannot afford to 
 buy books for themselves. This is a survival of the 
 origin of some of our circulating libraries, which 
 were originally charities. But a public foundation 
 and a charitable foundation are two different things. 
 Our parks are free, yet we do not object to their 
 free use by the wealthy, nor do the wealthy classes 
 themselves seem to shrink from it. Some again 
 would limit the use of a library to students, or at all 
 events to those who do not care to withdraw books 
 for home use. These are people who do not believe 
 in the circulating library — and there are still such. 
 Others again would have the public library cater 
 only to those of educated literary taste. For these 
 reasons and for others it is a fact that our public li- 
 braries, even those with the largest circulations, are 
 not used by the entire public. Probably, however, 
 they are being used more and more freely. In a li- 
 brary that uses the two-book system it is impossible 
 to tell exactly from statistics, how many persons are 
 drawing from the library at one time. Assuming, 
 however, that the number is proportional to the num- 
 ber of books outstanding, we find in the New York 
 Public Library that it has been increasing a little 
 faster of late years than the circulation. In other
 
 92 L1BKAKY ESSAYS 
 
 words, individual reading has not increased, and the 
 great recent increase of circulation in our library 
 and presumably in others also, is due to an increase 
 of readers. The size of the library's public is there- 
 fore increasing and there is no reason to suppose 
 that it will not continue to do so. Of course there 
 must be a limit. For instance, certain sections of 
 the public will not use a library— as they will not 
 use a school — in conjunction with other sections. 
 This may be because of social or racial feeling, or 
 personal uncleanliness or offensiveness, even when 
 the latter is not carried to the point where the li- 
 brarian can properly object to it. In such cases the 
 lower element will drive out the higher. The remedy 
 seems to be sought in segregation. This may be 
 either open and acknowledged as in those southern 
 cities where the library has a separate department 
 for colored people, or it may be virtual, as where a 
 convenient lounging room with newspapers is pro- 
 vided for the tramp element, sometimes with the 
 privilege of smoking. In large cities the branch li- 
 brary system acts in the same way. The character of 
 the card-holders is determined by that of the sur- 
 rounding district and we thus get practically sepa- 
 rate libraries for separate sections of the community. 
 I look to see this separation proceed to a somewhat 
 greater degree, not perhaps systematically but auto- 
 matically and almost involuntarily. In spite of the 
 apparent concession to class feeling, it will certainly 
 increase the aggregate use of the library and thus 
 make it more truly a public institution. So far as 
 the branch system is concerned, of course, this is 
 only one of the ways in which it increases the size 
 of the library's public. Even in a section where the 
 population is perfectly homogeneous, more people 
 will always be served by two libraries than by one. 
 The number of branch library systems is rapidly in-
 
 OLD PROBABILITIES 93 
 
 creasing and the prospects are that the greatest pos- 
 sible use is to be made of them in the future. And 
 they will be made up of true branches. Delivery 
 stations have their uses, but they can never take the 
 place of buildings with permanent stocks of books 
 and all the conveniences of a separate library. Where 
 a branch building is also a delivery station, as it al- 
 ways should be, that is, where the users of a branch 
 are allowed to draw on the stock of the Central Li- 
 brary or of the other branches, it is found that the 
 branch use vastly exceeds the station use. In our 
 own library a branch that circulates 500 to 1000 of 
 its own books daily will give out only two or three 
 from other branches. This is sufficiently indicative 
 of the preferences of the public, and in a matter of 
 this kind public preference will ultimately govern. 
 These branch libraries will have limited stocks of 
 books, mostly, though not entirely, on open shelves, 
 and w 7 ill include small reference collections which 
 will be more important as the branch is farther re- 
 moved from the central library. These predictions, 
 it seems to me, are all warranted by present tenden- 
 cies. 
 
 How will the future library be governed and ad- 
 ministered? The governing body at present is al- 
 most universally a board of trustees who are men of 
 standing and responsibility but usually without ex- 
 pert knowledge. These are sometimes semi-inde- 
 pendent and sometimes under the direct control of 
 their municipal government. The present tendency 
 seems to be to minimize municipal control but to in- 
 crease the number of governing bodies subject to it. 
 In other words private libraries are doing more pub- 
 lic work than formerly under contract with munici- 
 palities, becoming thereby subject to the control of 
 the city or town but not so closely as to bring poli- 
 tics into the management. This state of things is
 
 94 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 so desirable that we may expect it to be multiplied 
 in the future. As regards the lay or iuexpert char- 
 acter of the governing' board, though it is looked up- 
 on by some as objectionable, it is shared by the libra- 
 ry with greal numbers of other public and semi-pub- 
 lic institutions. Such a board may be regarded as 
 representative of the great lay public, on whose be- 
 half the institution must be operated, and whose 
 members are interested in results rather than in the 
 special methods by which these results may be ob- 
 tained. That the members of such a board should 
 be mere figure-heads is certainly not to be desired; 
 that they should, either as individuals or collective- 
 ly, take part in the details of administration is 
 equally undesirable. There are boards that are do- 
 ing the one or the other of these things, but the ten- 
 dency is to lean neither in the direction of laxity nor 
 of undue interference — to require definite results 
 and to hold the librarian strictly responsible for the 
 attainment of those results, leaving him to employ 
 his own methods. 
 
 And the librarian of the future; who and 
 what will he be? The difference between the 
 modern librarian and him of the old school has 
 often been the subject of comment. The librarian 
 nowadays is less the scholar and more the man of 
 affairs. Is change to go on in this direction? There 
 are rather, it seems to me, signs of a reaction. Per- 
 haps reaction is hardly the word. The librarian, 
 while keeping in touch with the times, is reaching 
 hack for a little of the spirit of the old-time custo- 
 dian and incorporating it with his own. Is it too 
 much to hope that the heads of our future libraries, 
 will keep in the forefront of library progress, alert 
 to appreciate the popular need and to respond to it, 
 may yet have something of the sweet and gentle 
 spirit of the old scholars who used to preside over 
 our storehouses of books?
 
 OLD PROBABILITY 1> 95 
 
 Who are to be the assistants in om- library of the 
 future? At present our staffs are recruited from the 
 following sources: 
 
 (1) The library schools. The best of these have 
 supplied chiefly the heads of the smaller libraries, 
 and heads of departments or assistants of the higher 
 grades in the larger libraries. Few heads of the 
 large libraries are school-graduates and few lower- 
 grade assistants. There are, however, schools of the 
 second class whose graduates have -one into the 
 lower grades both in small and large institutions. 
 
 (2) Apprentice classes, generally formed to in- 
 struct untrained persons in the work of a particular 
 library, so that those who enter its lower grades may 
 be at least partially fitted for their work. The best 
 of these rise by promotion to the upper grades. 
 
 (3) Appointment of totally untrained persons. 
 If such persons are thoroughly well educated they 
 may enter the work in the higher grades or even as 
 the heads of libraries. If not they generally enter 
 at the bottom, although of course some obtain high- 
 er positions through political or local influence. 
 
 This, I believe, srates the situation fairly. What 
 are the tendencies? There can be no doubt that the 
 library school is growing in favor. The increasing 
 numbers of those who apply for sehool courses, the 
 raising of requirements, both for entrance am! for 
 graduation, the second class schools that have 
 sprung up in limitation of those of higher made, 
 making necessary the appointment of committees by 
 various library bodies to examine and report on 
 them — all point in this direction. At the same time 
 we have had numerous instances, of late, of the se- 
 lection of non-graduates to till high library positions 
 and at least one instance of frank statement on the 
 part of a librarian of acknowledged eminence, in 
 favor of taking college men of ability info the libra-
 
 96 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 iv immediately on graduation, instead of putting 
 them through a library school. The library schools 
 aim, and very properly so, at occupying the same 
 position toward the library profession that the medi- 
 i at and law schools do toward the medical and legal 
 professions. Statistics show that they have not yet 
 
 ■hed that position. Still, it is probable that they 
 will continue to approximate to it as a limit. In the 
 future, more and more of the higher library posi- 
 tions will doubtless be filled by library-school gradu- 
 ates — and so also will more of the lower positions. 
 When the demand for assistants in the higher grades 
 begins to slacken, proportionately to the supply, as 
 it is sure to do some day, the library school gradu- 
 ates will be willing to enter the library force in the 
 lower grade, and will thus crowd out the untrained 
 or partially trained applicants to some extent. They 
 may even make the apprentice class a superfluity, in 
 which case I am sure librarians will abandon it 
 without a sigh. 
 
 In these somewhat desultory forecasts the object 
 of the prophet has been not so much to impress up- 
 on others his own beliefs as to stimulate a taste for 
 prophecy — a desire to glance over the rail and see 
 Which way the current is setting. Without being 
 fatalists, we may hold that there are certain great 
 tendencies in human affairs, vast social currents, 
 against which it is well-nigh hopeless to struggle. 
 Those who desire to accomplish results must work 
 with these currents, not against them. Success has 
 almost always been won in this way. Even when a 
 few bold spirits have seemed to stem and turn back 
 the whole tide, it will generally be found that an un- 
 seen undercurrent was in their favor. Learn there- 
 fore to judge of the currents; so shall we avoid the 
 rocks and shoals and bring our craft safely to port.
 
 THE LOVE OF BOOKS AS A BASIS FOR 
 LIBRARIANSHIP* 
 
 Is the love of books a proper or necessary qualifi- 
 cation for one who is to care for books and to see 
 that they do the work for which they were made? 
 First, let ns ask a question or two. What is the 
 love of books; and whal is there in books that one 
 may love? The same question might be asked and 
 answered of the love of human beings; for between 
 it and the love of books there are curious analogies. 
 Of what, then, do man and book severally consist as 
 objects of interest and affection? 
 
 First of all there is the man himself, the ego, 
 the soul — which cannot indeed exist on this earth 
 without its material embodiment, but which most of 
 us realize is in some way distinct from that embodi- 
 ment. So the book has its soul. The ideas or facts 
 that it sets forth, though dependent for their influ- 
 ence on the printed page, exist independently of that 
 page and make the book what it. is. Next we have the 
 material embodiment; that without which the man 
 or the book could not exist for us; which is a neces- 
 sary part of him or it, but necessary only because it 
 is the vehicle through which man or book may be 
 known by the senses. The body of the book is thus 
 so much, and only so much, of its material part, its 
 paper and its ink, as is necessary to present the con- 
 tents properly to the eye. Lastly, we have the cloth- 
 ing of man and of book, having the function of pro- 
 tection or of decoration, or both; in the case of the 
 
 ♦Read before the New York State Library Association, Twilight 
 Park, September, 1906.
 
 98 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 book the protective cover, often highly decorated, 
 and so much of interior elaboration as cannot be said 
 to be strictly necessary to the presentation of the 
 idea. The "body" and the clothing of the book, let 
 it be noted, are not strictly separable as are those of 
 the man. The line between them may be drawn in 
 different places by different people. The same illus- 
 tration, we will say, may be considered by one read- 
 er ;m absolutely necessary part of the book — an or- 
 gan of its body — while to another it is but an orna- 
 mental embellishment — a decorative gewgaw. In 
 spite of this vagueness, however, there is here an un- 
 deniable distinction between those material parts of 
 the book that are necessary to its existence and those 
 that merely embellish it or protect it. 
 
 The book therefore, like the man, is made up of 
 soul, body and clothes. Which of these is the entity 
 that may be loved? Now there are many kinds of 
 lovers and many kinds of love. The belle of the ball 
 may be surrounded with admirers, but if clad in rags 
 and seated in a gutter she might excite no favorable 
 notice. Still more may a pretty face be loved when 
 it has no mental or spiritual qualities behind it. 
 Yet these types of affection are inferior — no one 
 would deny it. In like manner those who love the 
 book merely for its fine clothes, who rejoice in lux- 
 urious binding and artistic illumination, and even 
 those who dwell chiefly on its fine paper and careful 
 typography, are but inferior lovers of books. The 
 one loves his book for its clothes, and the other for 
 its bodily perfection; neither cares primarily for its 
 contents, its soul. 
 
 Now the true lover is he who loves the soul — 
 who sees beyond clothes and bodily attributes, and 
 cherishes nobility of character, strength of intellect, 
 loftiness of purpose, sweetness of disposition, stead-
 
 THE LOVE OF BOOKS 99 
 
 fastness of attachment— those thousand qualities 
 that go to make up personality. All these the Look 
 has, like the man or the woman- for is it not the 
 essence of its writer? Your true book-lover would 
 rather have a little old dog's-eared copy of his favor- 
 ite author, soiled ami torn l>y use. with binding gone, 
 and printed on bad paper with poorer typo and 
 worse ink, than a mediocre production that is a typo- 
 graphic and artistic masterpiece. 
 
 And yet we call the collector of fine bindings and 
 
 ran- editions a "book-lover," to t! xclusion of the 
 
 one who loves truly and devotedly. The true book- 
 lover wants to get at the soul of his book; the false 
 one may never see it. He may even refrain from cut- 
 tin- the leaves of the rare first edition that he has 
 just bought, in doing which he is like the ignorant 
 mother who sews her child np in his clothes for the 
 winter— nay, worse; for you cannot sew up the 
 child's soul. 
 
 Now let there he no misunderstanding. As the 
 true lover would have his unstress beautiful— nay. 
 as she is beautiful to his eyes, whatever she may be 
 to others, and as he would, if he could, clothe her 
 in silks and adorn her with gems, so the true book- 
 lover need not be and is not adverse to having his 
 favorite author sumptuously set forth; he would rath- 
 er than not see his books properly and strongly print- 
 ed and hound; his love for the soul need not interfere 
 with proper regard for the body and its raiment. 
 And here is where the love of the book has an advan- 
 tage over the affection whose object is a person. In 
 spite of the advertisements of the beauty doctors, a 
 homely face can rarely be made beautiful; but the 
 book may be embodied and clothed as we will; it is 
 the same, however printed and bound, to him who 
 loves it for its contents.
 
 100 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 Thus it will be seen that when I speak in general 
 of "a love of books'' I mean not a love of their typog- 
 raphy, their illustration, or their bindings, but of 
 their contents; a love of the universal mind of hu- 
 manity as enshrined in print; a love of the method of 
 recording ideas in written speech, as contrasted with 
 their presentation in the spoken tongue — a love of 
 ideas and ideals as so recorded. Such a love of books 
 is pre-eminently a characteristic of civilized man. It 
 is not synonymous with a love of knowledge — the 
 savage who never saw a book may have that; it is not 
 even the same as a love of recorded knowledge, for 
 knowledge may be recorded in other ways — in the 
 brain by oral repetition, in sculptured memorials, 
 in mere piles of stone. It is a love of the ideas of 
 men recorded in a particular way, in the particular 
 way that has commended itself to civilized man as 
 best. 
 
 The very existence of a library presupposes such 
 a love of books. No one who had not an affection 
 for the printed records of his race would care to pos- 
 sess them, much less to collect and preserve them. 
 It would seem, then, that a love of books should be 
 not only a qualification but an absolute prerequisite 
 for entrance upon librarianship. By inquiring how 
 and why it has come to be regarded as a non-essen- 
 tial or as of secondary importance, Ave may perhaps 
 learn something. 
 
 A young woman comes to me to ask for library 
 work; and when I demand sternly, "Have you train- 
 ing or experience?" she timidly answers, "No; but 
 I'm very fond of books." I smile; you all smile in 
 like case. Why do we smile? What business have 
 we to underrate such a fundamental qualification 
 and exalt above it mere technicalities? The ability 
 to acquire these technicalities exists in ten persons
 
 THE LOVE OF BOOKS U)L 
 
 where the ability to love books as they should l>c 
 loved is found in one. If the love so avowed is real, 
 even if it is only potential, not actual, our feeling in 
 its presence should be one of reverence, not amuse- 
 ment. It should prove the candidate fit, perhaps not 
 for immediate appointment, but for preliminary 
 training with a view to appointment in the future. 
 
 If it is real! Candor compels me to confess that, 
 like some other avowals of love, that of a love for 
 books does not always ring true. "What have you 
 read?" I once asked one of these self-styled book- 
 lovers. She fixed me with her eye and after a mo- 
 ment's impressive pause she replied "Dee]) thought!" 
 I mentally marked her as a false lover. Proud par- 
 ents relate how their progeny in childhood would 
 rather peruse E. S. Ellis than play and pore over Al- 
 ger than eat — this as irrefragable proof of fitness for 
 a library career. Consideration of cases like these 
 makes us wonder whether the smile is so much out 
 of the way after all. Does the true book-lover public- 
 ly announce' her affection in the hope of gain? 
 Does she not rather, like Shakespeare's maid, "never 
 tell her love?" It is to be feared that some of these 
 people are confusing a love of books with a love of 
 reading. They are not the same thing. Some per- 
 sons enjoy the gentle mental exercise of letting a 
 stream of more or less harmless ideas flow through 
 their brains — continuously in and continuously out 
 again — apprehending them one after another in lazy 
 fashion, and then dismissing them. The result is a 
 degree of mental friction, but no permanent intellec- 
 tual acquisition. How much of our own reading is 
 of this kind I shudder to contemplate. Ear be it 
 from me to condemn it; it has its uses; it is an ex- 
 cellent cure for wakefulness after a busy day; but 
 it no more indicates or stimulates a love for books
 
 102 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 than shaking hands with a thousand callers makes 
 it possible for the Governor or the President to 
 claim them all as intimate friends. 
 
 A real love for books, after all, is betrayed ra- 
 ther than announced; it shows itself in the chance 
 remark, the careless action, just as another kind of 
 love may show itself in a glance or a word. 
 
 1 believe this to lie the reason why a love for 
 books is so little considered among the modern quali- 
 fications of librarianship ; it appears in acts, not in 
 words; it cannot be ascertained by asking questions. 
 He who protests that he has it must needs be an ob- 
 ject of suspicion. And yet I venture to say that if 
 any librarian has made a conspicuous success of his 
 work, apart from the mere mechanics of it, he has 
 achieved that success primarily and notably through 
 love of books. This I assert to be the case down to 
 the assistant of lowest grade. 
 
 To be good, work must be ungrudging. And 
 though other things than love for one's task may 
 make one willing to do it and able to do it well, in- 
 telligent interest is always a prime factor in secur- 
 ing the best results. 
 
 And love of one's work becomes a very simple mat- 
 ter when there is love of the subject matter of that 
 work. Those who lament that they are doomed to 
 drudgery should remember that drudgery is subjec- 
 tive. All work consists of a series of acts which taken 
 apart from their relationships are unimportant and 
 uninteresting, but which acquire importance and in- 
 terest from those relationships. It is so also with 
 sports. Think how childish are the mere acts of 
 striking a ball with a racket or of kicking an inflated 
 leather sphere over a cross-bar! Yet in their proper 
 sequence with other acts they may be the object of 
 the breathless interest or enthusiasm of thousands
 
 THE LOVE OF ROOKS 103 
 
 of spectators. And if this may be the case with a 
 mere game, how much more so with an occupation 
 that is part of the world's life! To dip a brush in 
 color and draw it across a canvas is a simple act, yet 
 such acts in their sequence may produce a work of 
 art. Here the workman understands the position 
 and value of each act in the sequence; hence he is not 
 apt to feel it as drudgery. Drudgery is work in 
 which the elementary acts are performed unintelli- 
 gently, with little or no appreciation <>f their position 
 in the scheme of things, as when a day laborer toils 
 at digging a hole in the ground without the slightest 
 knowledge of its purpose, not caring, indeed, whether 
 it is to be a post-hole or a grave, lint to the man who 
 is searching for buried treasure the digging ceases 
 to be drudgery; he knows what lie is about, and every 
 shovelful as it is lifted brings him nearer to possible 
 gold and gems. To change drudgery into interested 
 labor, therefore, realize what you are doing; know 
 its relation to what has gone before and what is to 
 come; understand what it is you are working on and 
 what yon are working for. Learn to love that some- 
 thing; and all that you can do to shape it, to increase 
 its usefulness and to bring it into new relationships 
 will have a vivid interest to you. 
 
 What could be duller than the act of writing in 
 a book, hour after hour, certain particulars regard- 
 ing other books, the authors name, the title. the pub- 
 lisher, the size, the price? lint if you love those vol- 
 umes, individually or generically, and if you realize 
 that, what you are doing is a necessary step in the 
 work of making their contents accessible and useful 
 —of leading others to love them as yon have learned 
 t0 do— then and only then, it seems to me, does such 
 a task as accessioning become fall of interest. And 
 so it is with every one of the thousand acts that
 
 104 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 make up the daily work of a library assistant. I am 
 saying nothing new ; you know and we all know that 
 the laborer who does his work well is he who does it 
 con amove. The wage-earner may labor primarily 
 to support himself and his family, but he will never 
 really earn his living unless his work is of a kind 
 that can command his whole-hearted interest — un- 
 less he likes it and takes pride in doing it well. This 
 is why the love of books — an intelligent interest in 
 literature and in the world's written records — is so 
 fundamental a necessity for a librarian. 
 
 It should be emphasized that one may love books 
 even if some of the great masterpieces leave him cold, 
 just as one may love humanity though Alexander and 
 Ca?sar, we will say, do not happen to stir his enthu- 
 siasm. One may even, in a way, love books when that 
 love is expended on what is by nature ephemeral, so 
 long as it is lovable and excellent. Perishability 
 and excellence are not contraries by any means. 
 Indeed, I heard a painter once, indignant because his 
 art had been characterized as less permanent than 
 sculpture, with implied derogation, assert that all 
 beauty is of its nature perishable. If this be so, a 
 thing of beauty, instead of being a joy forever, is a 
 passing pleasure and the more evanescent as it nears 
 perfection. This thesis could hardly be successfully 
 maintained, and yet I conceive that it has in it an 
 element of truth. There are critics who refuse to 
 admire anything in art that has not in it the elements 
 of permanency. A sunset they will acknowledge to 
 be beautiful, though fleeting, but its artistic portray- 
 al, they say, must be lasting. An idea, a passion, 
 may be fine, even when forgotten in a moment, but 
 if enshrined in literary form it must be worth pre- 
 serving forever or they regard it as without value. 
 These people are confusing mere durability with
 
 THE LOVE OF BOOKS 105 
 
 beauty. "Is anything that doesn't last three years 
 a book?" asks Mr. Carnegie. We might as well re- 
 fuse to admire a flower because it fades over night, 
 or turn from our daily food because it is incapable 
 of retaining indefinitely its savor and nutritious 
 qualities. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that 
 a thing may possess beauty and usefulness in a high 
 degree to-day and lose them both to-morrow. That 
 is an excellent reason for discarding it then, but not 
 for spurning it now. What is cast into the oven of 
 oblivion to-morrow may to-day be arrayed, beyond all 
 the glories of Solomon, in aptness of allusion and in 
 fitness of application. 
 
 Much of the best that appears in the daily press 
 is of this kind. Along with a good deal that is wor- 
 thy of long life, there is a host of admirable mate- 
 rial in the ephemeral paragraphs that we are accus- 
 tomed to despise. We may despise them, but still we 
 read ; and nothing that is read with interested atten- 
 tion by fifty millions of people is really despicable. 
 The average newspaper writer may well be content 
 to toss off paragraphs for us; he need not care who 
 constructs our leading editorials. The influence of 
 the paragraph is incomparably the greater ; it has the 
 raciness of the soil, shrewd wit driven home with our 
 native exaggeration and the sting of the epigram. 
 And much of that which is bound between covers has 
 this peculiar aroma of journalism — its fitness to-day, 
 its staleness to-morrow. This sort of thing may be 
 badly done or it may be well done— inconceivably 
 apt, dainty and well-flavored. If it is of the best, 
 why may we not love it, though it be to-morrow as 
 flat as the sparkling wine without its gaseous bril- 
 liancy? 
 
 To those who have been accustomed to books from 
 childhood, who have lived with them and among
 
 10G LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 them, who constantly read them and read about 
 them, they seem to be a part of the natural order of 
 things. It is something of a shock then when we 
 awake, as we all must occasionally, to the realization 
 that to a very large proportion of our population, 
 supposedly educated, they are a thing apart — ped- 
 antic, useless, silly; to be borne with during a few 
 years of schooling and then east aside; to be studied 
 perfunctorily but never to be read. When the statis- 
 tics of reading are analyzed I believe we shall be 
 startled, not by the great increase in it, notable and 
 indubitable as this is, but at the enormous amount 
 of progress that still remains to be made before the 
 use of books by our people indicates any real general 
 interest in them and appreciation of them. An atti- 
 tude toward books that is very general is indicated 
 by a series of cartoons which has now been running 
 for several years in a New York evening paper — a 
 proof that its subject must strike a responsive chord, 
 for the execution of the pictures is beneath contempt. 
 It is entitled "Book-Taught Bilkins," and it sets 
 forth how on one occasion after another Bilkins re- 
 lies on the information that he finds in a book — and 
 meets with a disaster. This is a trifle, but it is one 
 of those straws that tell which way the wind blows. 
 A presumably intelligent man, a graduate of the pub- 
 lic schools, occupying a position under the city, re- 
 cently remarked to one of our library people that he 
 spent his holidays usually at one of the nearby rec- 
 reation parks. "Why don't you go sometimes to 
 one of the branches of the public library?" he was 
 asked. He laughed and said, "I've never read a book 
 yet, and I don't think I'll start now." How many 
 are there like him? W T e are educating them by thou- 
 sands. They leave school with no interest in books, 
 without the slightest appreciation of what books
 
 THE LOVE OF BOOKS L07 
 
 mean— certainly with no love for them. To these 
 people books are but the vehicles and symbols of a 
 hateful servitude. Perhaps this is inevitable; if it 
 is, all that we can say is that far from "continuing 
 the work of the schools,*' as we are often told is our 
 function, we may often have to undo a part of it, 
 which consists in creating an attitude of hostility 
 toward books and reading. Can this he done by those 
 who do not appreciate and care for literature? 
 
 I do not want to be considered pessimistic. This 
 lack of interest in books I believe to he noticeable 
 largely because we have changed our whole attitude 
 toward the relationship of literature to the people 
 Love for books used to be regarded as properly con- 
 fined to a class; that the bulk of people did not care 
 for literature was no more significant than the fact 
 that they had never tasted pate de foie gras. Now we 
 consider that every one ought to love books — and 
 the fact that vast numbers of people do not, no longer 
 seems natural to us. That these people are be^in- 
 ning to show an interest, and that the ranks of the 
 indifferent are growing slowly less, I firmly believe; 
 and it is my opinion that the public library is no in- 
 considerable factor in the change. Some, it is true, 
 are beginning to care for books by caring for poor 
 and trashy books. These, however, are on the rijjht 
 road; they are on their way up; it is our business 
 not to despise them, but to help them up further. 
 Can we do it without having ourselves a proper ap- 
 preciation of what is good in books? 
 
 But can a love for books be taught? To those who 
 have the aptitude for it, it certainly can. In other 
 cases if cannot. To those who have ii in them, how- 
 ever, appreciation for the beautiful may certainly 
 be awakened by precept and example. I have in 
 mind a farmer in the Virginia mountains, dwelling
 
 108 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 in a lovely region, but among a rural population 
 without the slightest appreciation of the beauties ol 
 nature. This particular man had worked for years 
 in and about a summer camp and had thus associated 
 with people from the city whose appreciation of the 
 fine prospects from cliff and summit was unusually 
 keen. In time he actually came to feel such appre- 
 ciation himself, and he would spend the whole of his 
 rare holidays on a rocky peak 4000 feet above the 
 sea, drinking in the beauties of the scene and eagerly 
 pointing them out to his tousle-headed children, all 
 of whom he took with him. None of that brood will 
 cease to love nature, I am sure, and their lives will 
 be sweeter and better for it, In like fashion, associa- 
 tion with people who appreciate good books will 
 awaken a similar love in many an unpromising mind. 
 Mere contact with the books themselves may do it, 
 and so our open shelves have brought it to thousands, 
 but the additional influence of a sympathetic human 
 mind will hasten it wonderfully. The busy assistant 
 at the desk may have a chance to say but a single 
 word. Shall that word relate to the mechanics of 
 librarianship — the charging system, the application 
 form, the shelf-arrangement — or shall it convey in 
 some indefinable way the fact that here is a body of 
 workers, personally interested in books and eager to 
 arouse or foster such an interest in others? 
 
 But how may one tell whether the true love of 
 books is in him? To detect it in another, as already 
 noted, requires more than a brief acquaintance. But 
 to test oneself is easier. What would the world be 
 to you without books? Could you go on living your 
 life, physically and mentally, even as you do now, if 
 the whole great series, from big to little, from old to 
 new, from the Bible and Shakespeare down to the 
 latest novel, were utterly wiped away? If you can
 
 THE LOVE OF BOOKS 109 
 
 truthfully say that such a cataclysm would make no 
 difference to you, then you certainly do not love 
 books. If the loss of them, or of some part of them — 
 even the least — would leave a void in your life, then 
 you have that love in greater or less degree, in finer 
 or coarser quality. Let us pity those who have it 
 not. And as for you who have it, you surely have not 
 only a fundamental qualification for librarianship, 
 but that which will make, and docs make, of you bet- 
 ter men and women. Let us perfect ourselves in all 
 the minutiae of our profession, let us study how to 
 elevate it and make it more effective, but let us not 
 forget the book, without which it would have no ex- 
 istence. Possibly the librarian who reads is lost, 
 but the librarian who has never read, or who, having 
 read, has imbibed from reading no feeling toward 
 books but those of dislike or indifference, is surely 
 worse than lost — he has, so far as true librarianship 
 goes, never existed.
 
 THE LIBRARY AS THE EDUCATIONAL 
 CENTER OF A TOWN 
 
 In using this expression it is not intended to im- 
 ply that the library is, or should be, the only place in 
 a town where educational processes are going on — 
 perhaps not even the principal place. The center of 
 a circle is not the whole circle; its area is zero, it is 
 simply a point so related to other parts of the figure 
 as to give it supreme importance. The center of a 
 wheel, through which the axle passes, is not the whole 
 wheel, but around it the whole wheel turns. So the 
 educational functions of a town library, while they 
 may not hulk large in a catalog, should be so related 
 to those of other institutions in the community as to 
 give it peculiar importance and authority. 
 
 It is Dot accessary here to remark that education 
 is what its name implies a drawing out, ;i develop- 
 ment of potentialities. Because it is this, and only 
 this, it will never make a Shakespeare or a Newton 
 out Of one who has it not "in him," as the idiom so 
 well runs, to become one or the other. Because it is 
 rhis. There are men who do have in them potentiali- 
 ties of usefulness, perhaps even of greatness, but who 
 for la<-k of it, die undeveloped; "mute" and "inglor- 
 ious." 
 
 Prom the moment when the new-born babe feels 
 the contact of the outer world, through his organs of 
 sense, that contact begins to develop his possibilities. 
 Here education begins, and it ceases only with the 
 Stoppage of all functions at death. When it has 
 gone on so far that a contact is established with other
 
 112 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 human minds, this development takes a special turn 
 that differentiates it from any training that the lower 
 animals receive — that makes it a link in the educa- 
 tion of the race. Still further is this accentuated 
 when the child begins to have access to the printed 
 refolds of the race in the shape of books. 
 
 Books, or no books, his educational development 
 goes on. at home, among his playmates, in his chosen 
 work in shop, farm or office, but the use of books 
 gives it a wider relationship — a broader outlook. 
 This relation of our formal intellectual records to 
 education which is emphasized especially during the 
 period of attendance at school or college, makes a 
 storehouse of books of peculiar value and importance 
 to a community. Especially should the existence of 
 such a collection direct the attention of every person 
 in the community to the fact that the use of books to 
 develop the mind and broaden the possibilities does 
 not properly end with the close of the school life. It 
 is the misfortune of the school, in too many instances, 
 that its work engenders a hatred of books instead of 
 a love for them. Play, we are told, is "work that you 
 don't have to do." It is the merit of the library that 
 there is no compulsion about its use. We dislike 
 what is forced upon us, but the study which is the 
 hardest of work in a school may become recreation 
 when one is free to follow the line of inclination 
 among the books of a well-made collection. In this 
 way the post-scholastic education, if we may call it 
 so, which lasts as long as the life, is kept in touch 
 with the written records, instead of casting those 
 records aside and proceeding haphazard wholly on so- 
 called "practical" lines. The teachers express this, 
 when they admit the public library at all into the 
 educational pantheon, by saying that it may "con- 
 tinue the work of the school." This is a one-sided way
 
 EDUCATIONAL CENTERS 113 
 
 of looking at the matter — as one-sided as it would 
 to say that the function of the school is to prepare 
 people for the use of the public library — a statement 
 
 no less and no more true than the other. The proper 
 way to put it is that the school and the library have 
 closely related educational functions, both em ploy ing 
 largely the written records of previous attainment, 
 
 but the school concentrating its influence on a short 
 period of peculiar susceptibility, with the aid of en- 
 forced personal discipline and exposition, while tie' 
 library works without such opportunities, but also 
 freed from these limitations. Tims the library uses 
 books as a means of development, not with the aid of 
 personal influence, but without taskmasters; not 
 without discipline, but without compulsion. During 
 the years of school attendance, it works with the 
 school, and it recognizes the fact that its use is a 
 habit best acquired early. This is the reason for our 
 separate rooms for children, with their special col- 
 lections and trained assistants, and also for our ef- 
 forts to CO-ordinate the child's reading with his s ■•' 
 work. We are not trying to set up a rival education- 
 al system, which by its superior attractiveness may di- 
 vert, the attention of the child from school; we are 
 merely seeing that our young people may become ac- 
 customed to use books properly, to love them dearly 
 and to look upon the place where they are housed as 
 in some sense an intellectual refuge through life. 
 
 This closeness of contact with a public collection 
 of books is largely a modern idea. In ancient times 
 the safeguarding and preservation of the individual 
 book was far more important than it is today. Great- 
 er public security, and especially the improvement in 
 methods of duplication, have now made such care 
 unnecessary, except in the case of volumes ken 
 curiosities, or for occasional use. Tic book
 
 114 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 does the most for popular education is uot kept be- 
 hind bars, but scut out broadcast for free use, short- 
 ly perishing in the flesh to be reincarnated in fresh 
 paper, type and binding. Sending out books for home 
 use lias added enormously to the educational value 
 of the library and to the good done by books — to the 
 number of points of contact of mind with mind. 
 Along the same line has been the development of 
 subsidiary centers of distribution — branch libraries. 
 traveling libraries, delivery stations. All these have 
 added to the tendency to look upon the public libra- 
 ry as a center of municipal education. In many 
 communities it is being looked to now as such a cen- 
 ter in matters having no direct connection with 
 books. It is a museum on a small scale; a lecture 
 bureau; the maker, sometimes the publisher, of lists 
 and bibliographies. In old times the local collector 
 of minerals or of prints turned over his crystals or 
 his pictures to the school; now, as likely ;is not, he 
 gives them to the library. It is better that he 
 should; for in the educational life of the individual, 
 the school comes and goes, but the library goes on 
 forever. 
 
 It is this capacity of the modern library to reach 
 out beyond its own walls in many different directions 
 that makes it proper for us to speak of it as a center. 
 In a similar way the physicist speaks of centers of 
 force. And as a body exerting attraction or repul- 
 sion — a magnetic pole, an electrified sphere, a gravi- 
 tating particle — is surrounded by a field of force 
 which is very real, though invisible, so there are in- 
 visible lines that connect such an intellectual center 
 as the library with ev^ry interest in the community. 
 We recognize this in our colloquial speech. Did you 
 never hear of a network of branch libraries? Yet on 
 a map they show merely a system of dots. The net-
 
 EDUCATIONAL CENTERS 115 
 
 work is formed of the commingling fields of force, 
 which together enmesh the community in a web of in- 
 tellectual influences. And as an ordinary force lias 
 two aspects, so the influences radiating from our li- 
 brary centers are directed both from and toward 
 them. The up-to-date library strikes out ((.ward every 
 member of the community and it strives to draw each 
 one to itself. It sends its books into every home, its 
 helpfu. aids to reading and to study, its library news 
 and gossip in the local paper: but on the other hand, 
 its cozy rooms, its well-stocked reference shelves, its 
 willing and pleasant attendants exerl on every man. 
 woman and child in the community an intellectual 
 attraction, and having let them taste of the delights 
 it has to offer sends him out again as a willing mis 
 sionary to lure in others. By such methods should 
 the library strive to be a center of mental develop- 
 ment in a community; by such methods is it succeed- 
 ing, for no other center can vie with it in the univer- 
 sality of its appeal, whether we follow the individual 
 from birth to death, or regard the various members 
 of a community as they exist at one specified time. 
 
 But there is another sense in which the library 
 should be and is able to serve as the intellectual cen- 
 ter of a community. A community's moral and in- 
 tellectual status is not simply the sum of that of its 
 component members. This is true of all aggregates 
 where the components are interrelated in any way. 
 In all such cases the properties of the whole depend, 
 it is true, on the properties of the components, but 
 not by simple addition. The taste of common salt is 
 not the taste of sodium added to that of chlorine; the 
 feelings, thoughts and acts of any aggregate of men 
 may be quite different from those of the men taken 
 individually. This is true whether the aggregate be 
 simply a body of spectators in a theater, mutually
 
 116 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 related only by the fact of their common presence in 
 the place, or an association, or the members of a mu- 
 nicipal community. The human aggregate is in all 
 cases less advanced than the individual; it is more 
 primitive in its emotions, its morals, its acts. This 
 might be expected, since the formal group, of what- 
 ever kind, began its evolution later than the individ- 
 ual. A community's moral sense is thus less advanced 
 than that of its members; it will lie, swindle and 
 steal, when they would hesitate to do so; it will re- 
 sort to violence sooner than th«y. Its intellectual 
 ability is also less; its business transactions are 
 looser; its appreciation of artistic values is inferior. 
 
 The education of a group of men, as a group, is 
 thus something different from the education of its 
 individual members. In the case of a loose group, 
 such as an audience, it could not be attempted; with 
 a group dwelling together and bound by ties of blood 
 and common interest it is not only possible but quite 
 worth while. 
 
 Of course it must be understood that whatever 
 educates the individual also helps to educate the com- 
 munity; but when, as is almost always the case, the 
 community lags behind, something may be done to 
 bring its ideals, feelings and acts nearer to the indi- 
 vidual standard, even without altering the latter. 
 
 Now we have already been reminded by Prof. Vin- 
 cent of Chicago university that the library may act 
 as the social memory; the town library should there- 
 fore be emphatically the municipal memory. And as 
 memory is the basis of our intellectual life, so a com- 
 munal memory of this kind will serve as the basis of 
 the community's intellectual life and as a means 
 through which it may be fostered and advanced. As 
 the individual looks back with interest on his own 
 personal history and refreshes his recollection by
 
 EDUCATIONAL CENTERS 117 
 
 means of family portraits, old letters, diaries, scrap- 
 books and material of all kinds, so the community 
 should retain consciousness of the continuity of its 
 own history by keeping in the public library full 
 records of similar import — files of all local publica- 
 tions, printed memorabilia of all kinds, material for 
 local history, even to the point of imagined trivial- 
 ity; even private letters, when these bear in any way 
 on the community life. The legal and political his- 
 tory, or, at last, its dry bones, is locked up in the of- 
 ficial archives or the town or city; we need, in addi- 
 tion, an intellectual and social hall of records out of 
 which the delver in local history may clothe this skel- 
 eton with flesh and blood. 
 
 A man with a memory has the basis for a mind and 
 a conscience ; so a community with this kind of a col- 
 lective memory is much more apt than another to 
 develop collective intelligence and collective morality. 
 It may be asserted, not as a figure of speech, but as a 
 cold fact, that a community whose citizens look back 
 upon an honorable history with records preserved in 
 an accessible place, ought to be much less likely to 
 sanction a trolley steal or to wink at official graft. 
 
 In a recent striking address, Prof. William James 
 has called attention to the importance of the things 
 that may serve to unlock stores of reserve energy. 
 When the runner's fatigue has increased up to a cer- 
 tain point he all at once gets, as we say, his "second 
 wind'' — something to enable him to draw on a re- 
 serve energy 7 . These reserves, Prof. James tells us, we 
 all possess, especially in matters of the intellect and 
 morals; they may be unlocked by ideas, sen time nts 
 or objects. The ideas represented by such phrases — 
 catchwords, if you choose to call them so — as love, 
 mother, home, liberty, church, the old flag; righteous- 
 ness, civic duty — have had a power in setting energy
 
 118 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 free and accomplishing results, that is beyond esti- 
 mation. In regarding the library as a center of mu- 
 nicipal education we make it a storehouse of objects 
 and records, with their associated ideas and senti- 
 ments, that are competent to act in just this way. A 
 man who feels that he is a "citizen of no mean city," 
 who has been made to realize it from earliest child- 
 hood, whose mind turns habitually to the storehouse 
 that lias done most to make him realize it, is a nobler 
 man, and the community of which he is a part is a 
 nobler community, than if such a place were non-ex- 
 istent, or if its records and associations were scat- 
 tered and unheeded. This is a most cogent reason 
 for making the library the intellectual center of the 
 town, as the town hall is the political and the church 
 the religious center; for seeing in it not alone a col- 
 lection of books, however good, that are given out to 
 those who ask for them but a means for guiding and 
 leading the town's intellectual progress, for turning 
 it from trivialities to what is worth while, caring for 
 the children's reading, stimulating public thought by 
 lectures, endeavoring by every legitimate means to 
 attract toward it the public eye in regard to all things 
 that contribute to individual and civic development. 
 The most important part of our education, says 
 Eniil Reich, we gain after Ave are twenty-five years 
 old. We cannot prevent the acquisition of such a 
 post-graduate education by every young man and 
 young woman in the town. The question is not: 
 Shall the mind be trained? Shall character be de- 
 veloped? It is rather, How and by what means shall 
 the development go on? Under what auspices shall 
 it take place and toward what end shall it point? 
 Shall it deal in trivialities and end in vacuity? Shall 
 it impart insincerity, dishonesty, uncleanliness?
 
 EDUCATIONAL CENTERS 119 
 
 Shall its product be a useless citizen, an indifferent 
 one, a positively harmful one? 
 
 The answers to these questions depend on the 
 home, the church, the school — a score, perhaps, of 
 minor ciyic societies. Let us at the very center of 
 the town's mental and moral life erect an institution, 
 which, having as its basal object the collection, pres- 
 ervation and popularization of the records of what 
 has been worth while in the past, may serve also as 
 a support to what is good in the present, and a lad- 
 der on which the community may mount to still bet- 
 ter things in the future. Is this too large, too serious 
 a view to take of the importance of the public libra- 
 ry? That will depend on what we choose to make of 
 it — a mere pile of books to be turned over by the 
 passerby, or a true center of municipal education.
 
 THE LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR* 
 
 "Some are born great; some achieve greatness; 
 some have greatness thrust upon them." It is in 
 this last way that the librarian has become a censor 
 of literature. Originally the custodian of volumes 
 placed in his care by others, he has ended by becom- 
 ing in these latter days much else, including a 
 selector and a distributor, his duties in the former 
 capacity being greatly influenced and modified by 
 the expansion of his field in the latter. As the li- 
 brary's audience becomes larger, as its educational 
 functions spread and are brought to bear on more 
 of the young and immature, the duty of sifting its 
 material becomes more imperative. I am not re- 
 ferring now to the necessity of selection imposed 
 upon us by lack of funds. A man with five dollars 
 to spend can buy only five dollars* worth from a stock 
 worth a hundred, and it is unfair to say that he has 
 "rejected" the unbought ninety-five dollars' worth. 
 Such a selection scarcely involves censorship, and we 
 may cheerfully agree with those who say that from 
 this point of view the librarian is not called upon 
 to be a censor at all. But there is another point of 
 view. A man, we will say, is black-balled at a club 
 because of some unsavory incident in his life. Is it 
 fair to class him simply with the fifty million people 
 who still remain outside of the club? lie would, we 
 will say, have been elected but for the incident that. 
 was the definite cause of his rejection. So there are 
 books that would have been welcome on our library 
 shelves but for some one objectionable feature, whose 
 
 ♦Presidential address before th«; American Library Association. 
 Lake Minnetonka Conference, June. 1908.
 
 122 LIBKARY ESSAYS 
 
 appearance on examination ensures their exclusion — 
 some glaring misstatement, some immoral tendency, 
 some offensive matter or manner. These are distinct- 
 ly rejected candidates. And when the library 
 authority, whether librarian, book committee, or paid 
 expert, points out the objectionable feature that bars 
 out an otherwise acceptable book the function exer- 
 cised is surely censorship. 
 
 May any general laws be laid down on this sub- 
 ject? 
 
 Let us admit at the outset that there is absolutely 
 no book that may not find its place on the shelves of 
 some library and perform there its appointed func- 
 tion. From this point of view every printed page is 
 a document, a record of something, material, as the 
 French say, pour servir; from a mass of such mate- 
 rial neither falsity, immorality nor indecency can 
 exclude it. I do not speak at this time, therefore, of 
 the library as a storehouse of data for the scholar 
 and the investigator, but rather of the collection for 
 the free use of the general public and especially of 
 collections intended for circulation. It is to these 
 that the censorship to which I have alluded may prop- 
 erly apply and upon these it is generally exercised. 
 I know of no more desirable classification of books 
 for our present purpose than the old three categories 
 — the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Those books 
 that we desire, we want because they fall under one 
 or more of these three heads — they must be morally 
 beneficial, contain accurate information or satisfy 
 the esthetic sense in its broadest meaning. Converse- 
 ly we may exclude a book because it lacks goodness, 
 truth or beauty. We may thus reject it on one or 
 more of the three following grounds; badness — that 
 is undesirable moral teaching or effect; falsity — 
 that is, mistakes, errors or misstatements of fact;
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 123 
 
 and ugliness— matter or manner offensive to our 
 sense of beauty, fitness or decency. The first and 
 third qualities, badness and ugliness, are often wrong- 
 ly confounded, and as I desire therefore to speak of 
 them together, we will now take up the second, 
 namely, falsity or lack of truth. Strangely enough' 
 among all reasons for excluding books this is per- 
 haps least often heard. Possibly this is because it 
 applies only to non-fiction, and apparently in the 
 minds of many non-fiction is desirable simply be- 
 cause it is what it is. Again, the application of this 
 test to any particular book can generally be made 
 only by an expert. The librarian needs no adviser 
 to tell him whether or not a book is immoral or in- 
 decent, but he cannot so easily ascertain whether 
 the statements in a work on history, science or travel 
 are accurate. This lack of expert knowledge is bad 
 enough when inaccuracy or falsity of statement is 
 involuntary on the author's part. But of late we 
 have in increasing numbers a class of books whose 
 authors desire to deceive the public— to make the 
 reader take for authentic history, biography or 
 description what is at best historical fiction. Again, 
 the increasing desire to provide information for "chil- 
 dren and to interest the large class of adults who are 
 intellectually young but who still prefer truth to fic- 
 titious narrative, has produced countless books in 
 which the writer has attempted to state facts, his- 
 torical., scientific or otherwise, in as simple, and at 
 the same time as striking, language as possible. Un- 
 fortunately, with some noteworthy exceptions, per- 
 sons with comprehensive knowledge of a subject are 
 generally not able to present it in the desired way. 
 Co-operation is therefore necessary, and it is not al- 
 ways properly or thoroughly carried out, even where 
 the necessity for it is realized. Proper co-operation
 
 124 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 between the expert and the popularizer involves (1) 
 the selection and statement of the facts by the for- 
 mer; (2) their restatement and arrangement of the 
 latter; and (3) tlie revision of this arrangement by 
 the former. It is this third process that is often 
 omitted even in serious cyclopedic work, and the re- 
 sult is inaccuracy. Often, however, there is no co- 
 operation at all; the writer picks up his facts from 
 what lie considers reliable sources, puts them into 
 eminently readable shape, dwelling on what seem to 
 him striking features, heightening contrasts here and 
 slurring over distinctions or transitions there. This 
 process produces what scientific men call contemp- 
 tuously "newspaper science," and we have as well 
 newspaper history, newspaper sociology and so on. 
 They till the pages not only of our daily press, but 
 of our monthly magazines and of too many of the 
 books that stand on our library shelves. It is unfair 
 to blame the newspapers alone for their existence; in 
 fact, some of the best simple presentations of valu- 
 able information that we have appear in the daily 
 press. Then there are the text books. Any librarian 
 who has ever tried to select a few of the best of one 
 kind — say elementary arithmetics — to place on his 
 shelves, knows that their name is legion and that dif- 
 ferences between them are largely confined to com- 
 pilers' names and publishers' imprints. In part they 
 are subject to the same sources of error as the pop- 
 ularized works and in addition to the temptation to 
 hasty, scamped or stolen work due to some publish- 
 er's or teacher's cupidity. This catalog might be ex- 
 tended indefinitely, but even now we begin to see the 
 possibilities of rejection on the ground of falsity and 
 inaccuracy. I believe that the chief menace to the 
 usefulness of the public libraries lies, not as some be- 
 lieve in the reading of frankly fictitious narrative,
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 125 
 
 but in the use of false or misleading history, biogra- 
 phy, science and art. Not the crude or inartistic 
 printing of toy money, but the counterfeiting of real 
 money, is a menace to the circulating medium. 
 
 Against such debasement of the sterling coin of 
 literature it is the duty of the librarian to fight; and 
 he cannot do it single-handed. Souk- things he should 
 and does know; he is able to tell whether the subject 
 matter is presented in such a way as to be of value 
 to his readers; he can tell whether the simple and 
 better known facts of history and science are cor- 
 rectly stated; he is often an authority in one or more 
 subjects in which he is competent to advise as an ex- 
 pert; but only the ideal paragon, sometimes described 
 but never yet incarnated, can qualify simultaneously 
 as an expert in all branches of science, philosophy, 
 art and literature. The librarian must have expert 
 advisers. 
 
 Nor are these so difficult to obtain. The men who 
 know are the very ones that are Interested in the li- 
 brary's welfare and are likely to help it without com- 
 pensation. And in the smaller places where the va- 
 riety and extent of special knowledge is Less compre- 
 hensive the ground covered by the library's collection 
 is also less, and the advice that it needs is simpler. 
 The advice should if possible be personal and definite. 
 No amount of lists, I care not who prepares or anno- 
 tates them, can take the place of the friend at one's 
 elbow who is able and willing to give aid just when 
 and exactly where it is needed. As well might the 
 world's rulers dismiss all their cabinet ministers and 
 govern from textbooks on law and ethics. The for- 
 mula, the treatise, the bibliography — we must still 
 have all these, but they must be supplemented by 
 personal advice. And competent advisers exist, as 
 I have said, in almost ev^ry place. The local clergy
 
 126 LIBKAEY ESSAYS 
 
 on questions of religion, and often on others, too; 
 the school principal on history and economics, the or- 
 ganist on music, the village doctor on science — some 
 such men will always be found able and glad to give 
 advice on these subjects or some others; and the place 
 is small indeed that does not include one or two en- 
 thusiasts, collectors of insects or minerals or antiqui- 
 ties, who have made themselves little authorities on 
 their pet hobbies and may possibly be the greatest or 
 the only living authorities on those local phases that 
 particularly interest the^ local librarian. It will do 
 the librarian no harm to hunt these men out and ask 
 their aid; possibly his own horizon will broaden a 
 little with the task and his respect for the community 
 in which he works will grow as he performs it. 
 
 But what if two of our doctors disagree? Then 
 follow the advice of both. It might be disastrous for 
 a patient to take two kinds of medicine, but it can 
 never hurt a library to contain books on both sides 
 of a question, whether it be one of historical fact, of 
 religious dogma, or of scientific theory. This may 
 not be pressed too far ; the following of one side may 
 be beneath our notice. It is not absolutely necessary, 
 for instance, for a small popular circulating library 
 to contain works in advocacy of the flatness of the 
 earth or of the tenets of the angel dancers of Hack- 
 ensack ; but it is essential that such a library should 
 make accessible to its readers the facts of the Refor- 
 mation as stated by both Catholic and Protestant 
 writers, histories of the American Civil War written 
 from both the southern and northern standpoints, 
 geological works both asserting and denying the ex- 
 istence of a molten core in the earth-s interior. An 
 impartial book is hard to find; it is a thing of value, 
 but I am not sure that two partisan books, one on 
 each side, with the reader as judge, do not constitute
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 127 
 
 a winning combination. Against violent and personal 
 polemics, of course, the librarian must set his face. 
 All such are candidates for rejection. It is fortunate 
 for us in this regard that we are supplying the needs 
 of all creeds, all classes and all schools. Each must 
 and should have its own literature while each pro- 
 tests against violent attacks on its own tenets. Such 
 protests, while often unjustified, are helping us to 
 weed out our collections. 
 
 So much for deficiency in truth as a cause for 
 rejection. Now let us consider deficiency in goodness 
 and deficiency in beauty; or stated positively, badness 
 and ugliness. These two things are confounded by 
 many of us. Is this because the great majority of li- 
 brarians to-day are of the sex that judges largely by 
 intuition and often by instinctive notions of beauty 
 and fitness? To most women, I believe all ugliness is 
 sinful, and all sin is ugly. Now sin is morally ugly, 
 without doubt, but it may not be esthetically so. And 
 goodness may be esthetically repulsive. Badness 
 and ugliness in books are both adequate grounds for 
 rejection, but they need not coexist. Some of the 
 worst books are artistically praiseworthy and would 
 be well worth a place of honor on our shelves if their 
 beauty alone were to move us. On the other hand, 
 some books that are full of impropriety or even of in- 
 decency are absolutely unimpeachable from a moral 
 standpoint. 
 
 Shakespeare and the Bible are often indecent 
 without being in the least immoral. "Raffles" is in 
 no wise indecent, but is dangerously immoral. Ber- 
 nard Shaw is often both indecent and immoral while 
 at the same time so astoundingly clever that we stand 
 gaping at him with our mouths wide open while he 
 tosses down our throats the most unsavory things. 
 
 What, then, is the distinction between badness
 
 128 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 and ugliness? For our present purpose I believe it 
 to be this: badness depends on immutable laws, while 
 ugliness, at any rate that of the kind which concerns 
 us here, is a matter of convention. Virtue, with all 
 due apologies to Mr. Lecky and to many other emin- 
 ent scholars, has certain standards that do not vary 
 with place or time. Let us grant that a given act 
 may be good to-day and bad to-morrow, good in Tas- 
 mania and bad in Pennsylvania; this is beside the 
 question. We have here to do with the classification 
 of this particular act in certain Sxed categories that 
 of themselves remain bad or good. The act of cutting 
 off a man's head may be good if the cutter is the pub- 
 lic executioner, and bad if he be a private citizen; 
 one may shoot an attacking highwayman but not an 
 innocent friend. The reason for these differences, 
 however, is that in one case the killing is murder 
 while in the other it is not; murder itself always was 
 and always will be bad. 
 
 Impropriety or indecency, on the other hand, is 
 purely arbitrary. Personally I am inclined to think 
 this true of all beauty, but it is unnecessary to ob- 
 trude this view here. Impropriety is a violation of 
 certain social customs, and although I should be the 
 last to question the observance of those customs, we 
 must grant, I think, that they rest on foundations 
 quite other than those of right and wrong. In fact 
 decency, instead of being on the same plane with 
 morality, comes nearer to being properly ranked with 
 those fixed categories mentioned above, which are 
 themselves always good or bad, but which may or 
 may not include a given act, according to circum- 
 stances. Murder is always bad, but whether the tak- 
 ing of life is or is not murder depends on the circum- 
 stances; it may depend entirely on motive. So inde- 
 ceucy is always bad, but whether a given act or object
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 129 
 
 is or is not indecent depends on circumstances; it 
 may depend not only on motive but on locality or en- 
 vironment. Objects and acts of the highest sanctity 
 in one country may be regarded as low and vulgar in 
 another— the standard varies from class to class, 
 from one occupation to another ; almost from family 
 to family. One may mention, in all innocence, that 
 which may bring a blush to the cheek of some listener, 
 simply because of this instability of standard in the 
 matter of impropriety. To this class of tilings par- 
 ticularly refers the celebrated dictum: "There is no 
 thing in heaven or earth, Horatio, but thinking makes 
 it so." This is unexceptionable Christian Science, 
 but it is not quite true. A higher authority than 
 Shakespeare has asserted that by thinking one can- 
 not make a. single hair white or black ; and this sure- 
 ly accords with the results of experience. Likewise 
 no one by thinking can make badness goodness or the 
 reverse. But whether a thing be improper or not 
 depends entirely on thinking. Thinking makes it so. 
 It is improper for a Mohammedan woman to expose 
 her face in public because she thinks it is, and because 
 that thought is an ingrained part of her existence. 
 But although the Persian sect of Assassins thought 
 with all their hearts that murder was good, it was 
 still very evil. Are we getting too far away from the 
 censorship of books? I think not. See the bearing 
 of all this. 
 
 If a book is really bad— if it teaches that evil is 
 good or that it makes no difference — it ought to be 
 rejected uncompromisingly, despite the fact that it 
 is void of impropriety or even artistically admirable. 
 But if it is morally unobjectionable and yet contains 
 that which is improper or indecent, it. is then proper 
 to. inquire whether the degree and kind of this inde- 
 cency is such as to condemn it. particularly taking in-
 
 130 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 to account the condition, the intelligence and the age 
 of those who would be likely to read it, and also the 
 time and the readers for whom, if it is an old book, 
 its author originally wrote it. With increasing civ- 
 ilization there arc certain things that become more 
 and more indecent, and others that become less and 
 less so, owing to the shifting of points of view. 
 
 Let us now take up more specifically moral bad- 
 ness as a cause for rejection. We occasionally meet 
 people who hold that the mention of anything moral- 
 ly bad in a book condemns it; while, on the other 
 hand, some would admit books whose atmosphere 
 reeks with evil; whose bad characters live bad lives 
 and speak bad thoughts, so long as the writer in his 
 own person does not commend evil or teach that it 
 is good. Both these extremes are to be avoided. 
 Surely we have outlived the idea that innocence and 
 ignorance are the same thing. "You can't touch 
 pitch/' says the proverb, "and not be defiled." 
 ( 1 ranted; yet we may look at pitch, or any other dirt, 
 and locate it, without harm; nay, we must do so if 
 we want to keep out of it. This is not saying that it 
 is well to seek out descriptions of evil, or to dwell on 
 them, in a work of fiction. Things necessary in the 
 study of medicine, folk-lore or law may be abhorrent 
 in a narrative intended for amusement, although the 
 advent of the "problem" novel — the type of fiction in 
 which the narrative form is often merely the sugar 
 coating for the pill — introduces confusion here into 
 any rule that we may lay down. But however foolish 
 it is to insist that the very existence of evil be con- 
 cealed from readers of fiction, since evil is a normal 
 constituent of the world as we find it, it is certainly 
 fair to object to a dwelling upon evil phases of life 
 to such an extent that the resulting impression is a 
 distortion of the truth. This distortion may be so
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 131 
 
 great as to make it proper to reject the book wholly 
 on the ground of falsity. A filling of the canvas with 
 lurid tints is apt to convey-or at any rate is often 
 so done as to convey-the idea that the existence of 
 the evil that the writer depicts is a matter of indif- 
 ference. A man need not stop to assert his belief that 
 theft is wrong whenever he tells the story of a rob- 
 bery, but it is quite possible to tell a tale of theft in 
 such a way as to leave an impression that it is a venial 
 offense and to weaken in the reader the moral inhibi- 
 tion that must be his chief reliance in time of temp- 
 tation And for "theft" here we may substitute any 
 form of moral dereliction that you may desire One 
 of the most potent vehicles of moral downfall of any 
 kind is the impression that "everybodv does it"— that 
 some particular form of wrongdoing is well-nio-h uni- 
 versal and is looked upon with leniency bv soeietv in 
 general. The man who steals from his emplover or 
 who elopes with his neighbor's wife is nine times out 
 of ten a willing convert to this view. A book that con- 
 veys such an idea is really more dangerous than one 
 which openly advocates wrong doing. There can be 
 little difference of opinion here. There mav be more 
 in regard to the policy of telling the whole truth re- 
 garding a state of things that is morally very bad It 
 may be fatal to a patient to let him know how ill he 
 is. And may it not also be injurious to a vouim- man 
 or a young woman to expose the amount of evil that 
 really lies before them in this world? There is plausi- 
 bility m this argument, but it is out of date. There is 
 much philosophy in the modern paradoxical slang 
 phrase: "Cheer up! the worst is yet to come!" And 
 indeed if there is any superlative badness ahead of us 
 it is better that we should know it, rather than culti- 
 vate a false cheerfulness, based on misinformation 
 with the certainty of disillusionment. The Egyptians
 
 13 2 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 were right when they set a skeleton at their feasts. 
 It was not to make the feasts gloomy, but to make 
 the skeleton a familiar object by association; to ac- 
 custom the feasters to think about death, how to avoid 
 it as Long as possible and how to meet it when in- 
 evitable. We should therefore welcome the truth in 
 any book, unless it is that "half truth," which the 
 poet tells us is "ever the blackest of lies," or unless 
 it is so stated as to violate the canons of decency, in 
 which case, as we have already seen, its rejection 
 must be based on different considerations entirely. 
 
 It is these canons of decency, after all, that give 
 
 the librarian bis sleepless nights, not only because 
 
 they are so frequently confounded with canons of 
 
 morality, but because, as we have already seen, they 
 
 are arbitrary and variable. Consider the one case of 
 
 French fiction. Mr. Wister has told librarians that 
 
 all subjects are "fit for fiction." This is interesting 
 
 as an academic thesis, but when the French proceed 
 
 to act upon it, the Anglo-Saxon catches his breath. 
 
 Books, like men, when they are in Rome must do as 
 
 the Romans do, and whatever may be proper in Paris, 
 
 an American public library is justified in requiring its 
 
 books to respect American prejudices. This is true, 
 
 at any rate, of books in the English language, even if 
 
 they are translations from a tongue whose users have 
 
 other customs and other prejudices. But how about 
 
 these books in the original? Can we assume that books 
 
 in the French language are for Frenchmen and that 
 
 our censorship of them is to be from the French and 
 
 not the American point of view? Or shall we hold 
 
 that they are to be read wholly or in part by persons 
 
 whose mother-tongue is English and whose ideas of 
 
 the proprieties are Anglo-Saxon? And shall we bear 
 
 in mind also that the reading public of a work of 
 
 French fiction excludes in France the "young per-
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 133 
 
 son" of whom the American library public is largely 
 made up? This is only one of the perplexing ques- 
 tions that confront the American librarian in this 
 field. Every one must struggle with it for himself, 
 having in mind the force and direction of Ids own lo- 
 cal sentiment; but few public libraries are treating it 
 consistently and systematically. Probably, however, 
 many librarians are placing on open shelves books in 
 foreign languages, whose translations into English 
 they would be inclined to restrict. In some cases, of 
 course, appeal to a wholly foreign group of readers, 
 with their foreign point of view, may be assumed, as 
 in the case of a Russian collection on the East Side of 
 New York; though even here it is a question of 
 whether this is not a good place to prepare these 
 readers for a change in library "folkways" — to use 
 Professor Sumner's expressive word. 
 
 Nor must we forget that our own ideas of pro- 
 priety are constantly changing. Take the single in- 
 stance of the use, in literature, of words regarded as 
 profane or vulgar. Most of us can recollect a time 
 when our acquaintances were likely to be shocked by 
 the occurrence in a book of the expletive "damn" — 
 that is, if it were spelled out. It was generally held to 
 be unobjectionable, or at least less objectionable, if the 
 second and third letters were replaced by a dash. 
 Evidently this is the purest convention. This and 
 worse words appear now, not without shocking some 
 persons, to be sure, but certainly without shocking 
 many of those who formerly would not have 
 tolerated them. On the other hand, it would not be 
 difficult to instance words formerly common in good 
 literature whose use would now cause something of 
 a sensation. There are also good people who will 
 read unmoved surprising words and expressions when 
 put into the mouth of a cowboy or a Klondike miner,
 
 134 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 but whose gorge would rise if the same words were 
 employed by a writer in propria persona. 
 
 What is true of words is true also of subjects. 
 That which could not be touched upon yesterday is 
 discussed freely to-day, aud vice-versa. No way of 
 dealing with the situation will fail to offend some 
 one, and the only approximation to satisfaction will 
 be gained by the use of common sense applied to each 
 case as it comes up. 
 
 Indecency, of course, is not the only offense 
 against beauty that a book may commit. It may be 
 trashy, that is. its subject matter or the manner in 
 which it is treated may be trivial and worthless. The 
 dust of the street is neither beautiful nor valuable, 
 although it may contain nothing injurious to health 
 or repulsive to the senses. The diction of the book 
 may offend against beauty and order by its incorrect- 
 ness; its paper, its typography, its binding, its illus- 
 trations may all be offensive to the eye. These last 
 are mere matters of outward show, to be sure ; it may 
 be necessary to disregard them. They are usually 
 reasons for excluding an edition rather than a book, 
 though sometimes the only obtainable edition offends 
 in so many of these ways as to make it unpurchasable, 
 even if otherwise desirable. So far as they militate 
 against the usefulness of the book rather than its 
 beauty, as in the case of the badly sewed binding or 
 paper that is comely but flimsy, they fall under the 
 head of badness rather than that of ugliness — they 
 are offenses against the Good and not against the 
 Beautiful. Such material grounds for rejection, 
 however, are not peculiar to books, and I do not dwell 
 on them here. Ugliness that consists in mere trivial- 
 ity or in incorrectness of diction has this in common 
 with impropriety — it is arbitrary and conventional. 
 With regard to language, this is obvious. The fact
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 135 
 
 that a certain combination of sounds means one thing 
 in France and another in England and is quite unin- 
 telligible perhaps in Spain, is a matter of jmre con- 
 vention, though the convention is sanctioned by long 
 usage. The fact that the double negative is very good 
 Greek and very vulgar English is equally arbitrary. 
 These conventions have become serious things with 
 us ; they are of prime importance in the consideration 
 of books, but it is desirable that we should classify 
 them correctly. 
 
 With regard to triviality the case is not so clear, 
 yet I feel strongly that it is a relative, not an absolute, 
 quality. The term should be classed with that other 
 misused word — superficiality. No book, of course, 
 and no mind is absolutely thorough, and the lesser 
 grades of knowledge are as important in their place 
 as the higher. What we should condemn is not that 
 a man, or a book, possesses a certain slight degree of 
 knowledge or of ability, but the fact that, possessing 
 it, he believes or represents it to be a higher degree. 
 A man desires, we will say, to memorize the Russian 
 alphabet, so that he may read the proper names on 
 book titles. Is he to be condemned because he knows 
 no more of Russian? Another wishes to wield a 
 hammer dextrously enough to drive a nail without 
 smashing his fingers. Is he "superficial'' because he 
 is not an expert cabinet-maker? Still another has 
 learned to play the piano well enough to amuse him- 
 self in his idle hours. Does his lack of skill lay him 
 open to the charge of "superficiality?" These people 
 may, it is true, think that they are respectively a Rus- 
 sian scholar, a skilled carpenter, and a good pianist; 
 then and then only are they culpable. The "superfi- 
 ciality," in other words, consists in mistaking a lesser 
 degree of knowledge for a higher or in thinking that 
 the lesser degree suffices for something that requires
 
 136 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 the higher — not in the mere limitation of the pos- 
 sessor. A superficial book is that which, skimming 
 the surface of the subject, persuades the reader that 
 he has gone into its depths; as for the skimming it- 
 self, that might be quite adequate and sufficient for 
 some purposes. So with "triviality."' Nothing is 
 trivial that has an aim and accomplishes it; as for 
 the gradation of aims from unimportant up to im- 
 portant, I leave that to others. Who shall say wheth- 
 er the passing of an idle hour or the addition of a 
 few facts to one's store of knowledge is the more im- 
 portant? The idle hour may be the recreation per- 
 iod of a hard-working mind, without which it might 
 break down from over-pressure, leaving to less compe- 
 tent minds the completion of its useful labor. The 
 few facts might be quite unfruitful. This is why we 
 should hesitate to condemn a trivial book that has 
 beauty of form or some other positive virtue to com- 
 mend it. Triviality is objectionable only when it 
 masquerades as importance. Perhaps it would be 
 better to say : a book that pretends to excellence along 
 any line where it is really valueless is a dangerous 
 book. This brings us back to Truth as a criterion of 
 excellence, for such a book is a hypocritical or false 
 book, as much as if it definitely asserted as a fact 
 that which is untrue. 
 
 When a book, therefore, comes up as a candidate 
 for omission from the purchasing list, or perhaps for 
 exclusion after it has actually been placed on the 
 shelves, the librarian's first duty is to inquire whether 
 it is objectionable because of falsity, of evil morality 
 or of impropriety. The first question may be deter- 
 minable only by reference to an expert. If the second 
 is alleged, it is well to inquire whether the supposed 
 immorality of the book be not in fact simply impro- 
 priety, and if impropriety is the only objection,
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 137 
 
 whether it is of kind and amount likely to be properly 
 offensive. If the charge of immorality is sustained I 
 see no place for the book on the shelves of a public 
 circulating library. 
 
 What has been said may seem to need rounding 
 out with specific illustrations and instances, but it 
 is particularly desirable to avoid here anything in the 
 nature of purely personal opinion and prejudice. It 
 might be possible of course to define the content of 
 certain well-known works by their conformity or non- 
 conformity with the canons above laid down, without 
 attempting to settle the question, at the moment, 
 whether the degree of non-conformity, if it exists, is 
 high enough to make exclusion from a public library 
 desirable or necessary. From this point of view 
 Othello, we will say, is a play teaching a 
 moral lesson, in doing which it discusses sin, but 
 never with approval, expressed or implied. The 
 author uses words and expressions not in accordance 
 with modern standards of propriety, although not 
 contrary to those of his own time. In like manner 
 BoccacuVs "Decameron" may be characterized as a 
 collection of short stories connected by thin narra- 
 tive, often telling of wrongdoing in a manner clearly 
 implying that it is usual and unobjectionable, with 
 use of words and incidents frequently contrary not 
 only to modern ideas of propriety, but also to those 
 of the author's time, except in the dissolute circles 
 for which the tales were originally written. Some of 
 the stories, however, teach morality, and the literary 
 style and method are beautiful and commendable, 
 while the pictures of society are truthful. The im- 
 plications of customary vice are simply reflections of 
 life as the author knew it. "Gil Bias," by Le Sage, 
 continuing in this vein, we may call a tale of adven- 
 ture in which everything is set down as it happens,
 
 138 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 good, bad and indifferent; important and trivial, with 
 a hero who is somewhat of a rogue, although the 
 wickedness is incidental and is described in such a 
 way that the reader never mistakes it for virtue even 
 when the writer tells it with a relish. The implica- 
 tion that wrongdoing is common, though undoubtedly 
 conveyed, leaves the impression only that it is com- 
 mon among the people and under the circumstances 
 of the tale, which is undoubtedly correct. 
 
 It would greatly aid the library censor if he could 
 have annotations of this sort on all bo^ks intended 
 for promiscuous public circulation. For this purpose, 
 in fact, all literature should be evaluated by the light 
 of this one color of the critical spectrum. The two 
 or three books just noted possess at least some of the 
 elements of greatness; yet good people differ regard- 
 ing the extent to which they should be made freely 
 accessible to the general public. I have tried to set 
 down regarding them data on which all may agree, 
 for the purpose of impressing upon you the fact that 
 disagreement is not so much regarding the data as 
 regarding the application to them of principles which, 
 if they have been stated correctly, are few, simple 
 and readily accepted. 
 
 We have been lightly skimming the surface of a 
 subject vital to all who have to do with the produc- 
 tion and distribution of books — to authors, editors, 
 publishers, booksellers, and above all to us librarians. 
 The ranks of readers are swelling to-day; it is our 
 boast that we are doing our best to swell them. They 
 are recruited from classes whose literature — if we 
 may so extend the term — has been oral rather than 
 written, whose standards of propriety are sometimes 
 those of an earlier and grosser age, whose ideas of 
 right and wrong are beclouded by ignorance and dis- 
 torted by prejudice. And at the same time hosts of
 
 LIBRARIAN AS A CENSOR 139 
 
 our people, with little background of hereditary re- 
 finement to steady them, have become suddenly rich, 
 "beyond the dreams of avarice." The shock has up- 
 set their ideas and their standards. Riches have come 
 so suddenly and so vastly even to the educated, 
 to those whose culture dates back for generations, 
 that it has overturned their ideals also. Our litera- 
 ture is menaced both from below and from above. 
 Books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that 
 teach how to sin and tell how pleasant sin is, some- 
 times with and sometimes without the added sauce of 
 impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting the 
 author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, 
 the booksellers to exploit. Thank heaven they do not 
 tempt the librarian. Here at last is a purveyor of 
 books who has no interest in distributing what is not 
 clean, honest, and true. The librarian may, if he 
 will — and he does — say to this menacing tide, "Thus 
 far shalt thou go and no farther."
 
 HOW TO RAISE THE STANDARD OF BOOK 
 SELECTION* 
 
 If a man is to improve himself, he must first realize 
 his own deficiencies; in other words, he must know 
 what he ought to be, and hoAV and in what degree he 
 falls short of it. 
 
 First, then, what are the best books; and do we 
 get them? 
 
 "Best" here as always is a relative term ; what is 
 best for one may not be best for another, or for all. 
 We hear "good books" gravely recommended to people 
 who will not read them, and who con Id not extract 
 the good from them if they did read them. When 
 the book fits the man, provided he is a good man, it 
 is a good book, ipso facto. 
 
 You remember the tale of the rural parish priest 
 at dinner with his bishop. The host, desiring to poke 
 a little quiet fun, asked him whether it were lawful 
 to baptize a man in soup. "I should make a distinc- 
 tion," calmly answered the priest; "if it were good 
 thick soup, I should say not; if it were wishy-washy 
 stuff like this we are eating, it would be quite prop- 
 er." 
 
 So long as we do not realize that the same literary 
 consistency is not adapted both to nutrition and to 
 immersion we shall not be able to decide on what are 
 the best books. 
 
 But is there no general line of division between 
 bad and good books? 
 
 I can give but a few, but I venture to lay down 
 
 * Read at a meeting of the library commissions of the New England 
 States, Hartford, Conn.., February 11, 1909.
 
 142 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 one or two simple rules for testing. My tests would 
 be— 
 
 (1) The test of language. No book can be good 
 that is not written in correct English. By this I 
 mean, of course, that the author himself must speak 
 correctly; his characters may be ignorant persons 
 and he will naturally make them talk accordingly. 
 
 (2) The test of simplicity and clearness. No book 
 can be good whose author expresses himself in words 
 that are too large for his subject or in sentences that 
 are so involved that they cannot be easily understood. 
 
 (3) The best of good taste. No book can be good 
 whose author uses words or expressions that would 
 not be used by cultivated people. 
 
 (4) The test of truth. No book can be good whose 
 subject matter is false; or, in case of fiction, whose 
 manner of telling is such as to make it seem absurdly 
 improbable. The plot of the book may, it is true, 
 lack probability. It may be frankly improbable like 
 a fairy tale, but the author must not seem to lose 
 faith in it himself, and no matter how impossible his 
 foundation the structure that he builds on it must 
 hold together. 
 
 I venture to say that if a book survives these 
 tests — if it is simply and clearly expressed in good 
 English and in the best taste and is consistently put 
 together — it cannot be a bad book so far as style goes. 
 
 So far as the subject matter of the book is con- 
 cerned, my test would be simply that of its effect on 
 the reader. If a book makes the reader want to be 
 mischievous, foolish or criminal — to be a silly or bad 
 man or woman, or if it tends to make him do his 
 daily work badly, it is a bad book and all the worse 
 in this case if it is interesting and fascinating in style. 
 But even here the trouble is largely in the manner of 
 treatment. A book may tell of crime and criminals
 
 STANDARDS OF BOOK SELECTION 143 
 
 in such a way as to make the reader detest both or 
 feel an attraction toward both. In this case, as the 
 scripture says, "Ye shall know them by their fruits." 
 If a book sends a boy out to be a burglar, it is bad; 
 if it impels him to take a crying child by the hand and 
 lead it home, it is good. And here let me say that 
 this compelling power, this effective result of a book 
 should speak in its favor though all other tests be 
 against it, Musicians tell us that a great composer 
 may write a work that breaks every rule of harmony 
 and yet be a work of genius. Genius knows no rules. 
 
 So much for the general line of cleavage. Hut the 
 special may for the moment exclude all the claims of 
 the general. A community may be in crying need of 
 books on a given subject — pottery or rowboats or hy- 
 giene. This need may or may not be realized by the 
 community, but its existence makes a special class 
 of books the best, for the moment, for that commun- 
 ity. To buy a good collection of minor poets for a 
 town that clamors, or ought to clamor, for books on 
 the electric industries, is to get bad books. 
 
 Now do we, under our present system, or lack of 
 system, in selection, get these best books — best both 
 in the general and in the special sense? 
 
 What is the matter with the books in the average 
 small library? The trouble is not generally that the 
 books are bad, but that they might easily be better, 
 and by "better' 1 it must be borne in mind that I mean 
 more closely adapted to the legitimate needs of the 
 community. If we go over the shelves of the average 
 small library we shall generally be able to note the 
 following facts: 
 
 (1) A considerable portion of the books have not 
 been taken out in long periods. This can easily be 
 ascertained by examining the book-cards or dating- 
 slips. Of course, the non-use of a book does not mean
 
 144 LIBRAEY ESSAYS 
 
 that it should not be in the library. The fault may 
 be with the readers, not with the book. Non-use, 
 however, does mean that something is the matter. 
 Either the library public has bad taste or is not prop- 
 erly guided, or else a mistake was made in providing 
 it with this particular book. 
 
 1 2 1 A considerable number of standard books 
 whose reading should be encouraged will not be found 
 on the shelves. These books are almost always part of 
 the collection, but there are not enough duplicates 
 to supply the demand. At the>ame time it will be 
 found that the library is adding current books of 
 doubtful value. 
 
 (3) I>ooks on large local industries — shoemaking- 
 pottery, agriculture — are often lacking. In such cases 
 there is generally a lack of demand; but this is be- 
 cause the persons who would read such books have 
 learned by experience not to look for them in a pub- 
 lic library. 
 
 (4) Books in the languages spoken by industrial 
 colonies of foreigners in the neighborhood are usually 
 conspicuous by their absence. 
 
 (5) The collections in classes where some technical 
 knowledge is necessary for selection, such, for in- 
 stance, as the sciences, the arts, or history, often show 
 a lack of intelligence, or, at any rate, a lack of sys- 
 tem. There are badly written books and books full 
 of errors; there is lack of uniformity in grade — an 
 advanced mathematical work on electricity, for in- 
 stance, and very elementary ones on light and sound. 
 
 ( 6 i In particular, controverted subjects are rep- 
 resented in a one-sided way ; there may be no way for 
 a reader to get at the Catholic story of the Protestant 
 reformation, or the southern view of the civil war, or 
 both sides of the spelling-reform or the woman-suf- 
 frage movements. Socialism, vivisection, anti-vac-
 
 STANDARDS OF BOOK SELECTION 145 
 
 cination, the negro question, prohibition, the tariff 
 — all these and a hundred others are represented 
 only in a partisan sense 
 
 (7 ) There is too much care about the outward gar!) 
 of decency and too little about the pervading atmos- 
 phere of morality. Books that describe in decorous 
 language ingenious methods of shop-lifting are given 
 place, but you look in vain for works of lofty moral 
 tone couched in diction that is occasionally coarse. 
 
 How far are these faults due to methods of book 
 selection? One of the troubles seems to be that the 
 book-selecting body does not avail itself of expert ad- 
 vice as much as it ought. The librarian is learning, 
 to be sure, to use lists and printed aids more and 
 more, though they are rarely used with discrimina- 
 tion; but supplementary to such lists as these, es- 
 pecially since they so largely lack the personal ele- 
 ment, we need the personal advice of experts. If tin' 
 lists and reviews. will leave us in the dark about the 
 man who advises us to buy books on engineering or 
 art, we must go to someone who we know under- 
 stands these subjects, at least knows a little more of 
 them than we do ourselves. There are, in general, 
 two grades of expert advice. The first is that re- 
 ceived from the man who is personally familiar with 
 the current literature of his specialty, who watches 
 the books as they appear and who sends to the library 
 the titles that he thinks it ought to have. This grade 
 of expert service is very difficult to obtain. 1 have 
 found few men in my experience who are able and 
 willing to give it. Those who have the good-will and 
 the time have usually not the knowledge; those who 
 have the knowledge are busy men who cannot give 
 the time. 
 
 The second grade of expert aid is that which pro- 
 nounces on concrete cases, which decides whether a
 
 146 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 given book (either from inspection of the mere title 
 or of the volume itself) is suitable for the library. 
 This kind of aid is not difficult to obtain, and there 
 are persons in almost every place qualified in some 
 degree to give it. It requires, however, a preliminary 
 selection and generally the obtaining of books on ap- 
 proval, which is easier in a large place than a small 
 one. 
 
 The library is only one of various institutions 
 that must use expert aid of this kind. The same 
 limitations apply to all. Take, for instance, the work 
 of reference, the cyclopedia, we will say. Its editor 
 cannot write of his own knowledge the articles on 
 Venezuela, and open-hearth steel, and Plato. He 
 must rely on the information, direct or secondhand, of 
 experts. But he cannot allow his experts to write his 
 cyclopedia. Some cyclopedias are written very near- 
 ly in that way, and they are not the best. The ex- 
 pert must be coached before he does his work and the 
 work must be edited when finished. It is on the prop- 
 er combination of expert and editorial work that the 
 value of the finished volumes will depend. So it is 
 with library selection. The librarian is the editor of 
 a big cyclopedia of thousands of volumes. He must 
 have expert aid in selection, but he must not allow 
 his experts to select the library uncontrolled. They 
 must be instructed beforehand, and their advice must 
 be carefully considered after it has been given. It 
 must, in short, be edited. This brings us to the con- 
 sideration that we have ultimately to face in discus- 
 sing any phase of human activity — the question of 
 personality. If the librarian and the book commit- 
 tee are incompetent and believe themselves to be 
 competent— then the collection, in spite of all efforts, 
 will reflect their faults— it will be intolerant, or triv- 
 ial or ill-balanced.
 
 STANDARDS OF BOOK SELECTION 147 
 
 Much, therefore, depends upon the actual book 
 selector for the library. Should this be the librarian, 
 or a committee of the trustees, or the board itself, or 
 an advisory committee of outsiders? Probably the 
 best results are obtained through a preliminary selec- 
 tion made by the librarian with the aid of lists and 
 the advice of individual experts — not committees — as 
 suggested above, and then submitted to sonic person 
 or committee representing the Board of trustees. 
 This places the final responsibility where it belongs 
 — on the trustees; but with a satisfactory librarian, 
 the duties of the reviewing committee would consist 
 chiefly of deciding on matters of policy — rarely of 
 considering individual titles. It would decide, for in- 
 stance, on how closely fiction is to be censored, on 
 how far the library is to go in the purchase of recent 
 fiction, on the extent to which foreign languages are 
 to be recognized, on the purchase and duplication of 
 text-books, on the policy of the library with regard to 
 denominational religious works or of controversial 
 books generally — and so on. 
 
 Going back for a moment to the question of ex- 
 perts, probably the most difficult advice to procure, 
 with any degree of satisfaction, is regarding fiction, 
 whether in English or in foreign languages. It has 
 been said that one may approve a book simply on the 
 author's name, or even on that of the publisher, and 
 this is still true in isolated cases, but in these days, 
 when both author and publisher are continu- 
 ally trying experiments, continually varying stand- 
 ards and style, each book must be dealt with 
 individually. I do not see how one can decide 
 whether a given novel should or should not be bought 
 for a library without reading it through from cover 
 to cover or hearing a report from someone who has 
 so read it and who understands the wants and limita-
 
 148 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 tions of the American public library. This is a line, 
 it seems to me, along which great improvement in our 
 selection is possible; but I confess I do not see my 
 way t<> an immediate solution of the problem. Pos- 
 sibly this is a good opportunity to say a word for a 
 method of testing the adequacy of one's collection 
 which lias scarcely been used as it deserves. One of 
 the most difficult things for a librarian to ascertain 
 is whether his collection is properly distributed 
 among the different classes, and by this I mean, as 
 before, distributed in accordance with the legitimate 
 requirements of the community. It is not possible to 
 find by a statistical method exactly what people need, 
 but it is possible to find out what they want, as in- 
 dicated by the kind of books that they read. The 
 statistical record of this will be found in the class 
 percentages of circulation. Whether or not the libra- 
 ry is equipped to supply this need is indicated by the 
 class percentages of books on the shelves. A com- 
 parison of these two percentage tables is always most 
 interesting to the book selector. It does not enable 
 him automatically to select books, but it does indicate 
 points for fruitful investigation. To take some actual 
 cases, I find a library with four per cent of history 
 and six per cent of literature on the shelves, whereas 
 the corresponding circulation percentages are five and 
 seven. This is prima facie evidence that the collec- 
 tions in those two subjects are used rather more than 
 the others and could well be increased. In cases 
 where it is not desirable to encourage circulation in 
 a given class, such an indication should evidently 
 meet with no response. The circulation of fiction al- 
 ways runs far beyond its proportion, and it is neither 
 proper nor desirable for the library to try to keep up. 
 Thus in three libraries where the percentage of adult
 
 STANDARDS OF BOOK SELECTION 149 
 
 fiction on the shelves is 20, 19 and 17, respectively, 1 
 find the corresponding circulation percentages to be 
 
 34, 35 and l'7. What, let us ask ourselves, are library 
 statistics fop? Is all the labor concerned iu their col- 
 lection and assemblage to result simply in a table that 
 is to he glanced at for a moment with more or less 
 interested curiosity, or do we intend to do something 
 with them? It sometimes seems that the foreign re- 
 proach that we Americans care only for money, which 
 we are properly disposed to resent, is partly justified 
 by the fact that the only statistics that appear to 
 mean anything to us are financial. When a man 
 learns that he is living beyond his income or that he 
 is getting a smaller per cent for his investments than 
 his neighbor, or that the man at the desk next to him 
 is receiving a larger salary for doing the same work, 
 he does not sit still and say, "Ah: how interesting!" 
 He gets up and does something about it. I Jut statis- 
 tics that convict him of all sorts of incompetency and 
 foolishness along lines other than monetary ones, he 
 regards simply as objects for intellectual absorption. 
 
 These percentages, of course, are not the only in- 
 dications by which a librarian may adjust the propor- 
 tions of the (lasses in his collection. If his library 
 has the reserve system, for instance, the call for books 
 in circulation is an unfailing index of the popular de- 
 mand. If that demand is one that should be heeded, 
 the number of copies in the library may well lie pro- 
 portionate to the number of names on I lie reserve list. 
 
 But a librarian who keeps in continual touch with 
 
 the public by contact with users at the desk needs 
 none of these somewhat mechanical indications. it 
 is the inestimable privilege of the librarian of a small 
 library in a small community to know her public, its 
 wants, its needs, its abilities and its limitations in a 
 way that is denied to custodians of huge collections.
 
 L50 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 In closing, let me suggest the following- "Don'ts" 
 for selectors of library books: 
 
 (1) Don't buy hooks that are intellectually far 
 above vour readers, in the hope of improving their 
 minds; a man may walk up stairs, but he can't jump 
 from the sidewalk to the roof. 
 
 (2) Don't bur tine editions of books that need 
 rather to be extensively duplicated; better two good 
 souls than one fine body. 
 
 (3) Don't buy McGrath and McCutcheon when you 
 have reserves on file for Dickens and George Eliot. 
 
 (4) Don't buy biography in excess because you are 
 fond of it yourself, when a comparison of percentages 
 shows that your supply of travel or applied science 
 is not up to the demand. 
 
 (5) Don't buy books in flimsy bindings that will 
 give out after the first issue ; work should not be done 
 in gauzy garments. 
 
 (6) Don't buy books in very strong bindings when 
 their use is to be light and small; overalls are not 
 suitable for an afternoon tea. 
 
 (7i Don't buy "sets" and "libraries;" they are 
 adulterated literature, coffee mixed with chicory. 
 
 (8) Don't buy subscription books of an agent at a 
 personal interview; it is the agent's game not to let 
 you think ; stand up for your rights and think it over. 
 
 (9) Don't estimate public demand by its effect on 
 your own patience; one persistent old gentleman often 
 bulks larger than a crowd of quiet but deserving per- 
 sons without either push or pull. 
 
 (10 j Don't buy books of wdiich you are not in im- 
 mediate need, when you are morally certain that 
 copies in good condition will be thrown on the mar- 
 kets as remainders at one-quarter the original list 
 price
 
 STANDARDS OF BOOK SELECTION 151 
 
 (11) Don't buy costly "new editions" of reference 
 books without assuring yourself that the newness Is 
 more than nominal. 
 
 (12) Don't buy novels because you see them ad- 
 vertised in the trolley cars. 
 
 ( 13) Lastly — and this is the most important thing 
 of all — don't get discouraged. Our methods of se- 
 lecting books, and their results, doubtless need im- 
 provement, but so do those of all the other libraries 
 we know. Let us try to realize our deficiencies, and 
 then try to make this year's book list just a little bet- 
 ter than the last. If we can succeed in this, the stand- 
 ard will take care of itself.
 
 SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY* 
 
 It has been said by Mr. W. H. Mallock that what 
 we call labor-organizations are mis-named, because 
 their object is, in most cases, the organization not of 
 labor, but of idleness. This somewhat cryptic state- 
 ment may be understood to mean that trade unions 
 have endeavored usually not to improve the meth- 
 ods and results of labor, nor to make its output larger 
 and more satisfactory, but rather to improve the con- 
 dition of the laboring man; to make his life more 
 comfortable and his task easier, to shorten hours and 
 lessen output, and often, as a result, to make that 
 output of lower grade. 
 
 This will be regarded as a base slander by many 
 people, and it is doubtless exaggerated; yet there is 
 an amount of truth in it that cannot be overlooked 
 by any worker or any combinations of workers — 
 which is the same as saying that it interests almost 
 all of us in this country ; for the only Americans able 
 to work who do not work are tramps and a very few 
 millionaires. We shall try to consider its bearing on 
 library workers, but before doing so, it will be well 
 to look at it a little longer in its more general aspect. 
 
 Those who desire to improve the worker's condi- 
 tion will justify themselves very properly on economic 
 grounds by saying that to do this is also to improve 
 the methods of work and the quality of the prod- 
 uct. No one can do good work who is ill-housed, un- 
 derfed, improperly clothed or overworked. This is 
 true; but it is not also true that if we make it our 
 
 * Read before the Missouri State library Association. Columbia, 
 October 28, 1909.
 
 154 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 primary aim to see that the worker is as comfortable 
 as possible, to lift from him all the difficulties and 
 burdens of his task, we shall also improve his output 
 proportionally. Rather should we do away with that 
 output altogether. We should simply be "organizing 
 idleness." We may consider, as an analogy, the dif- 
 ference between a tariff for revenue and one for pro- 
 tection. The total abolition of import duties is im- 
 possible, Ave are told. They are necessary for revenue. 
 Even England, the world's greatest free-trade coun- 
 try, has import duties. Very true, but the amount 
 of the duty and the objects on which it is laid will 
 differ absolutely according to its purpose. Again, 
 we will suppose that the same company owns an ele- 
 vated railway and a surface trolley line. They will 
 naturally, if left to themselves, adjust fares, speed 
 and stops on the former so as to induce a larger pro- 
 portion of people to travel by the slower surface line, 
 which is less expensive to operate. If the surface line 
 were owned by a rival company, there would be an 
 entirely different schedule of fares, speed and stops 
 on the elevated road, intended to crowd it with pas- 
 sengers and to derive the largest possible revenue 
 from it alone. 
 
 In like manner, we must doubtless look out for 
 the worker ; and he must doubtless look out for him- 
 self. His conditions of life and work must be made 
 such that he will perform his task as well as possible. 
 But those conditions will be adjusted quite differently 
 if we regard the comfort of the worker as the prime 
 object from what they will be if we regard the excell- 
 ence of the output as the prime object and the work- 
 er's comfort as a means to that end. 
 
 This will bear statement in still another way. 
 We are put into this world to do our appointed tasks, 
 and it is our business to do them as well as we pos-
 
 SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY 155 
 
 sibly can. This means that we must take the proper 
 amount of rest, eat good food, keep happy and con- 
 tented, and all the rest of it. But he who regards his 
 work simply as a means of furnishing him the where- 
 withal to be happy, to take expensive vacations, live 
 in a fine house, and so on, will neither do his best 
 work, nor will he enjoy the good things of life as he 
 ought. 
 
 Our friends, the Socialists, whose propaganda is 
 receiving more attention from thoughtful men to-day 
 than it did a few years ago, both because of the truths 
 that it presents and the menace that it offers to our 
 present civilization, are making the mistake of dwell- 
 ing upon the importance of the worker's comfort 
 rather than that of the worker's improvement. They 
 promise us that we shall all be in comfortable circum- 
 stances and will have to work only three hours a day. 
 Incidentally, the output is to be better. But by put- 
 ting the matter thus, instead of the other way about, 
 they have appealed to the element of laziness that ex- 
 ists in all men — they have held out the prospect of 
 idleness instead of labor. 
 
 I have not lived west of the Mississippi long 
 enough to know whether the same conditions obtain 
 here as in the East; but there, comparing things to- 
 day with what 1 remember of my boyhood, I seem to 
 see an increasing tendency among all workers to put 
 self first and work second. The policy of "ca' canny," 
 as they call it in Scotland — of "go easy" — doing as 
 little as one can and still keep his job — is creeping 
 in and has secured a firm foothold. It is increasing- 
 ly difficult to get any kind of work, manual or men- 
 tal, done really well — so well that one feels like say- 
 ing, "Well done, thou faithful servant." And yet the 
 shirkers are all anxious to get to the top; and they 
 wonder why they do not. They comfort themselves
 
 156 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 by saying that success nowadays is solely a matter of 
 pull. But it is not so. Look around you and you 
 will see, for the most part, men in charge of large 
 enterprises who are efficient, and who have put work 
 before self — men who are engrossed in what they are 
 doing, who love it and therefore do it effectively. 
 
 There never was a baser slander than the common 
 assertion that we Americans love money. If we 
 loved the dollar for itself alone, we should never 
 sling it about as we do. We love the excitement and 
 the fun of making money. Look at our working mil- 
 lionaires! They want no more money; they can not 
 use what they have. They enjoy the task of owning 
 and running a great railway system, of organizing 
 and managing some great industrial combination. 
 We may find it necessary to clip their wings a little, 
 but we can not call them lazy and inefficient — they 
 make the job too hard for us. There is no "go easy" 
 policy here, and those who favor it will never get to 
 the top. 
 
 Let us hope that this pernicious idea that self is 
 worth more than work will never find a foothold in 
 the library. We see it here and there, but I believe 
 that, taken by and large, library workers love their 
 tasks and that they are efficient in proportion to that 
 love. 
 
 As our libraries are growing larger, our organ- 
 izations more complex, it is, I know, growing harder 
 to take a live personal interest in the work, so much 
 of it is specialized routine ; one feels like a mere cog- 
 wheel in a great machine. Th assistant who pastes 
 labels or addresses postal cards in a big library, finds 
 it harder to realize that she is doing something in- 
 teresting and useful than the librarian of a small li- 
 brary who not only performs these tasks but all the 
 others— meets her public, selects and buys her books,
 
 SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY L5T 
 
 plans in one way and another for the extension and 
 betterment of her work. Yet the rapid, accurate and 
 
 efficient performance of the lesser task is as impor- 
 tant as that of the greater. A label pasted awry 
 may ruin the library's reputation in the eye of a cas- 
 ual user; a mis-sent card may cause trouble to dozens 
 of one's fellow-assistants. Routine work is dull only 
 when one does not understand its purport. Dullness 
 is in the worker, not in the work. 
 
 Are libraries, indeed, introducing too much organ- 
 ization into the work — is it becoming too machine- 
 like? Now, it should not be forgotten that there is 
 in a machine something akin to personality — individ- 
 uality, at any rate, is not too strong a word. Every 
 locomotive has tricks and characteristics that its en- 
 gineer knows and sometimes loves. He pats its back 
 affectionately and speaks of it as "she." The idea 
 that to be part of a machine excludes personality and 
 individual work is all wrong. One can not go career- 
 ing about eccentrically and unsystematic-ally ; the 
 very purpose of organization is to stop all that; but 
 within the limits of motion and action assigned to 
 a person as his part in the larger motion and action 
 of the machine, there is still room for moving well or 
 ill, for helping on the greater work or antagonizing 
 it and throwing it out of order. If a cog-wheel thinks 
 that it is manifesting its originality in some merito- 
 rious way by making the whole machine creak ami 
 wobble and turn out an inferior product, that cog- 
 wheel has power to do just this; but it should not 
 complain if the machinist throws it into the BCrap 
 heap. 
 
 Now', in the library, the parts of our machine are 
 workers of all kinds; their connection ami relation- 
 ship are conditioned and limited by customs, rules 
 and orders. To test the desirability of these or of
 
 158 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 any change in them there is just one question to be 
 asked; first, last and all the time, namely — is this 
 for ourselves or for our work? Is it merely to make 
 things easier for the assistants or will it improve the 
 work and benefit the public? 
 
 The asking of this question and its thoughtful 
 consideration will puncture many a bubble. We will 
 take, if you please, the question of vacations. Any 
 one who has tried to make out a vacation schedule in 
 a large library knows that, next to making out a reci- 
 tation schedule in a large school or college, it is the 
 most vexatious task of the kind that is given to man 
 to do. Everyone must have a vacation, and every- 
 one wants to have it at some time when the efficiency 
 of the library will be impaired by it. Everyone wants 
 to go away at once, and there are times when no one 
 wants to be absent. Any possible arrangement means 
 dissatisfaction, heartburnings, a feeling that favor- 
 itism or prejudice has been at work. Into the mind 
 of most librarians has, I am sure, crept the sugges- 
 tion : What is the use of all this? Why not close the 
 library for a month? Is not that done by the schools : 
 and are not we, too, an educational institution? 
 
 The fact that librarians do not yield, in this case, 
 to the suggestion of a change that would benefit 
 them and all their assistants, is, of course, due to the 
 obviousness of the other fact that it would be bad for 
 the public. 
 
 This test of the public advantage may be applied 
 to the whole question of system in the library — of 
 how much system is good, and what kind and how it 
 shall be determined and applied. When a man comes 
 in contact witli a library rule that incommodes him 
 personally, he is apt to deride it impatiently as "red 
 tape." When he finds absence of a rule where he 
 would have benefited by it. he concludes that the libra-
 
 SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY 159 
 
 ry is in "chaos"' or "confusion." Now. there should 
 
 evidently be neither one nor the other of these, al- 
 though we cannot allow the personal convenience of 
 a single user to be the test — our system should not 
 exist for itself alone, nor should we try to get along 
 without system altogether. There should be just so 
 much and of just such a kind as will result in the 
 maximum degree of service rendered to the public. 
 
 The individual user is quite wrong, of course, in 
 condemning a regulation that annoys him personally, 
 for this reason alone; but if we should find that it 
 annoyed all other users as well without other advan- 
 tage than the saving of some trouble to the library 
 assistant, he would, I conceive, be quite right in call- 
 ing it ''red tape." This term is applied primarily to 
 annoying official restrictions that have no use what- 
 ever, but we may well extend it to restrictions that 
 benefit the administrator without improving the ad- 
 ministration. Rules, customs and manners of pro- 
 cedure in a library, whether they say "thou shalt" or 
 "thou shalt not" are of two kinds — those addressed 
 to the library staff and those addressed to the pub- 
 lic. Both, however, are intended to enable the pub- 
 lic to get more good out of the library. The mem- 
 bers of the staff are told to do certain things and not 
 to do others, because this will make it easier for the 
 users of the library to get what they want. The lat- 
 ter in turn are bidden to do this and forbidden to 
 do that — not, as some of them seem to think, to make 
 the librarian's work easier or to save him trouble — 
 but to throw the library open wider tit their fellows. 
 System of this kind may bear very hard on the in- 
 dividual user; he may chafe, for instance, at any 
 restriction in the number of books that he is allowed 
 to borrow — but if no such restriction existed, the 
 privileges of his fellow borrowers would be curtailed
 
 1G0 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 thereby. He may grumble because the time limit on 
 his book has expired before he has finished reading 
 it, unmindful of the fact that some of his fellow 
 readers are anxiously waiting- for it, But if the book 
 in his possession is not wanted by anybody; if there 
 are other such unused books in the library that he 
 wants, should he not have and keep them? Assuredly. 
 Every library should make arrangements whereby 
 none of its books should be kept from use to stand 
 idly on the shelves. Our test of public usefulness 
 declares as decisively for this as it does for the parti- 
 tion of privilege in the case of more than one anxious 
 borrower. 
 
 To return to that part of the library machine that 
 affects the library staff, I have many times heard 
 assistants complain of incidents of organization and 
 systematization that seemed to them too much like 
 those in vogue in commercial institutions. Now it 
 may be freely admitted that there is a difference be- 
 tween the library and the store or the factory, or 
 more generally between any institution for the Dub- 
 lic good and one for private gain. In the former the 
 public advantage is the prime object, and to attain it 
 we must often consult the comfort or convenience of 
 the administrators. In the latter, the advantage of 
 the administrators is the prime object, and to gain 
 it thev are generally forced to consult the comfort 
 and convenience of the public. The primary and sec- 
 ondary elements are reversed, but they exist in each. 
 Both the department store and the library must look 
 out for the public. It is the library's business to do 
 so, and it is in the store's business advantage to do 
 the same. 
 
 It is hard to see, therefore, why any kind of sys- 
 tem that will make a store work better is not worth 
 looking into by a librarian. The systematization in
 
 SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY 1G1 
 
 the staff of an up-to-date, modern business organiza- 
 tion, and in its work, is a continual surprise to him 
 who has not looked into such things for a score of 
 years. The stores and the factories are ahead of li- 
 brarians in this respect, and we may as well admit it. 
 After all, this is natural. What is to one's business 
 advantage is always done better than what is mere- 
 ly one's business. But there is no reason why we 
 should not study these better methods and imitate 
 those that arc worth copying. 
 
 Take one little example. In a factory the raw 
 material is followed statistically from its purchase 
 to its sale as a finished product; and even after its 
 sale its performances are watched. The owner can 
 find out, when he wants to do so, whether that par- 
 ticular article made or lost money for the firm, and 
 how much, and why; whether it gave satisfaction to 
 the purchaser, and if not, why not; to what its ex- 
 cellence or deficiencies were due, whether to the qual- 
 ities of the raw material or the methods of manufac- 
 ture. How many librarians can similarly ascertain 
 whether the purchase of a given invoice of books was 
 profitable to the library or not, taking into account 
 the number and duration of their issues, the time 
 lost and the money spent in mending and re-binding 
 them, and so on? How many can tell you whether 
 those books gave satisfaction to the users, in their 
 bindery, typography, and paper; whether the reader 
 found them hard on his eyes, easily soiled, difficult 
 to hold open — and whose fault it was, the publisher's^ 
 the binder's or the mender's? This, too. is merely 
 the material and physical side of the question — all 
 that the manufacturer or the merchant needs to con- 
 sider. We librarians say we are on a loftier plane; 
 we purvey ideas. So we do. How many of us then 
 can say what was the mental and moral effect on our
 
 L62 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 community of the books added last year, as compared 
 with those added the year before? How many of us 
 know even whether the readers liked the books of one 
 year better than those of another? Again; the in- 
 dividual worker in a good factory, the travelling 
 salesman in a good mercantile house, is watched sta- 
 tistically. Ilis employers can tell just how profitable 
 his work is to them. If the failure of an operation, 
 or the loss of custom in a town, is due to him, they 
 know it, and if his service continues unprofitable, he 
 is replaced. How many librarians watch the work 
 of individual members of the staff with such detail? 
 Suppose at the end of six months' service, an assistant 
 were confronted with statistical evidence that she had 
 mischarged ten books, made eight bad mistakes in 
 accessioning, written twenty catalog cards that had 
 to be replaced and caused four complaints by her 
 bearing at the desk? Suppose she were thereupon 
 given notice that she must do better or go; what 
 would she say? I think I know. She would say that 
 the library was run just like a department store. 
 And she would be quite right; only, instead of being 
 derogatory to the library as it would be intended, her 
 remark would be a compliment. It is time that we 
 should carefully discriminate between what is com- 
 mercial, in commercial institutions, and what simply 
 makes for orderliness and efficiency. 
 
 Now, we may consider three things, belonging to 
 a given institution, that every employee of that insti- 
 tution has in his care. If they are properly con- 
 served the institution will be efficiently administered, 
 and the visible machinery for conserving them con- 
 stitutes system. They are time, property and reputa- 
 tion. A large part of the system under which any in- 
 stitution is conducted has for its object the utiliza- 
 tion of every bit of time. We Americans, with all
 
 SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY 163 
 
 our hustling are great wasters of time. Workers do 
 nothing, not so much in periods of actually shirking 
 or laziness as in getting started, in passing from one 
 task to another, in fruitless pottering about, in en- 
 deavoring to decide some unimportant question of de- 
 tail and in one or another of a thousand different 
 ways when they seem to themselves to be at work, 
 while they really are doing nothing useful. As for 
 talking, it is the bane of many different icinds of work. 
 I am inclined to think that all work should be done 
 in silence. Possibly, however, this would be a mis- 
 take, for an occasional word keeps workers alive and 
 in good humor where absolute silence is not neces- 
 sary. It is, however, difficult to stop with a word. 
 Words group themselves into phrases, phrases into 
 sentences and sentences into conversation, and the 
 workers who assert convincingly that they get on 
 exactly as well while they are talking, succeed in cut- 
 ting in half, not only their own sum total of useful 
 achievement, but that of the annoyed toilers any- 
 where within earshot. System surely requires close 
 conservation of valuable time; by promptness, by 
 quickness, by keeping the cobwebs from one's brain, 
 and above all, by silence, relative if not absolute. 
 
 The property that the librarian is expected to con- 
 serve consists of books — the material in which he 
 works and with which he is expected to produce his 
 effects, and of money and objects — buildings, furni- 
 ture and utensils — intended to aid him in handling 
 the books properly and in getting them and the users 
 together. The Philadelphia alderman who proposed 
 to do away with the buildings, furniture and staff of 
 the library altogether, spend the money for books, 
 dump these on the city-hall floor, and let the public 
 choose, may have been somewhat crude in his ideas; 
 but he at least understood that books are the basis
 
 164 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 of a library and that librarians and buildings are but 
 subsidiary. His attitude was vastly more intelligent 
 than that of some persons who appear to think that 
 a good librarian in a fine building ought to produce 
 satisfactory results without any books at all. The 
 librarian, then, must provide above all for the care 
 and preservation of the books. If his library is on 
 open shelves it must assure careful watch against 
 thievery; it must insure, by an adequate charging sys- 
 tem, the due return of borrowed volumes; it must see 
 that the physical structure of the book is protected, 
 and repaired when needful; it must watch and count 
 the books at intervals to see that they are all on the 
 shelves. This last means the taking of a regular and 
 careful inventory — the bane of the average librarian. 
 Yet how can he shirk it? Books are valuable prop- 
 erty entrusted to his care. If he were custodian of 
 money or funds he would not be let off year after year 
 with the statement that the labor of ascertaining how 
 much remained in his possession Avas greater than it 
 was worth. One may omit to inventory his private 
 collection, just as he may omit to count the mone}' in 
 his purse, if he chooses, not that of others. And if 
 it is his duty to see that the quantity of his collection 
 remains unimpaired, it is equally so to see to the 
 quality. A library system that counts the books 
 carefully, but esteems a torn and filthy volume as 
 good a unit as one in proper condition, will no longer 
 pass muster. 
 
 There are dirty books on too many library shelves. 
 Such libraries are deficient in the kind of system that 
 preserves prorjerty efficiently. As for the mechanical 
 plant of the library, the building that houses it, with 
 its fittings and furniture, a proper system, of course, 
 requires that these be kept constantly in good condi- 
 tion. Now, we Americans are impatient of detail :
 
 SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY L65 
 
 we like to do things in a large way and then let them 
 lake care of themselves. While the Frenchman or 
 the Englishman watches his roads or pavements day 
 by day and never allows them to get out of repair, we 
 build expensive roadways and leave them alone until 
 they are in disgraceful condition— whereupon we 
 tear them up and rebuild them, While the foreigner 
 builds his cities, stone by stone and street by stl 
 so that t hey are picturesque and beautiful, we lei oui > 
 spring up as they will, slum jostling palace, and fac- 
 tory elbowing church, until finally we form grandiose 
 projects of reconstruction, cutting avenues here and 
 making parts there — projects which may be carried 
 out and may remain on paper. So I have seen taste- 
 ful and expensive library buildings allowed to grow 
 grimy and dilapidated day by day through lack of a 
 systematic plan for renovation and re-pair. Some 
 day the authorities will wake up and there will be 
 reconstruction and redecoration in plenty — to be fol- 
 lowed by another era of slow decay. 
 
 The third entity that an efficient system must 
 enable the librarian to conserve is evanescent and 
 almost indefinable. It is difficult to bring system to 
 bear upon it at all, and yet its preservation is of the 
 very highest importance of all, because without it 
 the librarian cannot do the work in his community 
 that every good Librarian is trying to do. Reputa- 
 tion is a tickle thing, indeed. Gained sometimes in 
 a happy moment, it may persist for long years, suc- 
 cessfully defying all assaults; achieved elsewhere by 
 decades of strenuous application and scrupulous ob- 
 servance, it may vanish in a day as the result of 
 some petty act of forgetfulness or of the stupidity 
 of a passing moment. None the less is it the duty 
 of the head of every great institution to strive con 
 tinually to attain and maintain it.; to increase it if
 
 166 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 possible and to guard it jealously. There he is in 
 the hands of his subordinates and such system as he 
 may bring to bear may and should be directed toward 
 creating and keeping alive within them a proper 
 esprit de corps. The library that succeeds in creat- 
 ing a public impression that it and all connected with 
 it are honestly trying to be of public service, to win 
 public esteem, and to gain a place in the public heart, 
 has two-thirds of its work done already. Its burden 
 is rolled down hill instead of up. 
 
 We boast that in our country public opinion is 
 all powerful; but we are often apt to regard public 
 opinion as we do the weather. Its balmy gales and 
 its destructive vortices, its gentle dews and its devas- 
 tating torrents, are alike, we think, beyond our power 
 to regulate. Yet, though public opinion may be un- 
 just or capricious, it is usually level-headed. So the 
 library that covets that good reputation which pub- 
 lic opinion alone can give it, must so act as to de- 
 serve that good opinion. And as one broken cog will 
 throw a whole machine out of gear, so one assistant 
 who does not realize his or her responsibilities in this 
 matter may mar a library's reputation, otherwise 
 well-earned. It is hard luck, indeed, that a libra- 
 rian, who with the majority of his staff has striven 
 long and well to earn the public good-will, should 
 see it forfeited by the thoughtlessness or ill-temper 
 of some one of his staff. This, however, is the way 
 of onr world with its multiple connections. None of 
 us may live for himself alone; we stand or fall with 
 others, and the smallest bit of orange peel may bring 
 down the mightiest athlete to the pavement. 
 
 How may the librarian, or anyone else, bring sys- 
 tem to bear on such an evanescent thing as this? It 
 is a hard matter, indeed. But can it be denied that 
 a well-oiled library machine, one that is quickly res-
 
 SYSTEM IN THE LIBRARY 167 
 
 ponsiye to direction and control, one whose parts are 
 
 as perfect in themselves and as perfectly connected 
 as may be, is least likely to suffer from unfortunate 
 accidents? A librarian whose bad judgment — or 
 whose kindness of heart, perhaps — has misled him 
 into admitting into his machine one false cog may 
 find to his sorrow that this will slip at the critical 
 time, betraying both him and the whole engine that 
 he had hoped to wield for good. Here no one kind of 
 system, no particular detail, alone suffices, but every 
 detail, every series, every combination renders the 
 whole fabric of reputation more solid and more se- 
 cure. I sometimes think that we Anglo-Saxons are 
 in greater need of the inspiration and aid that we get 
 from records of past intellectual achievement than 
 are some other races. For our intellectual heritage 
 does not come at all from our physical ancestry. We 
 are the intellectual heirs of the Greeks, the Romans 
 and the Hebrews, not of our own Teutonic fathers. 
 We can, therefore, not only rely on heredity to main- 
 tain our intellectual level ; we must continually drink 
 from the same fountains through which our fathers 
 drew inspiration. We sometimes think a little con- 
 temptuously of what, we call the veneer of modern 
 civilization that the Japanese have put on, forgetting 
 that our own civilization is in great part also ac- 
 quired, although the acquisition is of earlier date. 
 Moreover, the Japanese have, and retain, intellectual 
 ideals and achievements of their own. having learned 
 from the West hardly more than its mechanics and 
 engineering. On the other hand, our mechanical 
 achievements are our own, our Intellectual and es 
 thetic standards are borrowed. Our intellectual 
 status may thus be compared to the electrical condi- 
 tion of the trolley wire, which in order that it may 
 furnish its nsefnl energy to the motor below must it-
 
 168 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 self be supplied at intervals with this energy from an 
 adjacent feed wire communicating directly with the 
 source of electrical power. The feed wire in our case 
 is the library — a collection representing the intellec- 
 tual energy of all past ages, springing directly from 
 the powerful brains of the masters of mental achieve- 
 ment throughout the centuries. Unless we supply our 
 minds from this, we shall not maintain our intellec- 
 tual position. Is this the reason why the popular li- 
 brary has attained with us a development that it has 
 never reached in Latin countries, whose inhabitants 
 possess through heredity many of the mental stand- 
 ards of value that our ancestors borrowed and that we 
 must borrow ever and again from the records of the 
 past? We may be sure that this is at least a possi- 
 bility ; and we may be equally sure that the adoption 
 of system, both external and internal, will facilitate 
 both this and all other functions of the library. The 
 statement that "the letter killeth and the spirit giveth 
 life" was never intended to mean that we are to neg- 
 lect formal and systematic methods of work. The 
 letter kills only when it is spiritless, with the spirit 
 to give it life it does well its part, ensuring that the 
 institution to which it applies shall produce its re- 
 sults, surely, quietly and effectively, with a minimum 
 of noise and effort and with a maximum of output. 
 Let no one, then, deride or decry the formation or 
 the operation of a library machine ; we live in an age 
 of machinery — of machines formed by effective hu- 
 man co-operation, as well as by interlocking gears and 
 interacting parts. Rudyard Kipling makes his Scotch 
 engineer see in the relentless motion of his links and 
 pistons something of that "foreknowledge infinite" in 
 which his Calvinistic training had taught him to be- 
 lieve and trust. So may we see in library machinery 
 an aid to the accomplishment of that "far-off divine
 
 SYSTEM IN Till: LIBRARY 169 
 
 event" toward which our whole modern library crea- 
 tion has been and is still silently, but no less power- 
 fully moving — the bringing into intellectual relation- 
 ship of each living human brain within our reach 
 with every other companionable or helpful human 
 brain, though physically inaccessible through death 
 or absence. This is the comprehensive ideal of the 
 librarian; no machinery thai may work toward its 
 attainment is superfluous or inept.
 
 THE EXPLOITATION OF THE PUBLIC 
 LIBRARY* 
 
 Two and a half years ago; or, to be more exact, 
 on January 22, 1909, in an address at the dedication 
 of the Chestnut Hill Branch of the Free library of 
 Philadelphia, the present writer used the following 
 words : 
 
 "I confess that I feel uneasy when I realize how 
 little the influence of the public library is understood 
 by those who might try to wield that influence, either 
 for good or for evil ... So far there has been no con- 
 certed, systematic effort on the part of classes or 
 bodies of men to capture the public library, to dictate 
 its policy, to utilize its great opportunities for influ- 
 encing the public mind. When this ever comes, as it 
 must, we must look out! . . . 
 
 "Organizations . . . civil, religious, scientific, polit- 
 ical, artistic . . . have usually let us severely alone, 
 where their influence, if they should come into touch 
 with the library, would surely be for good . . . would 
 be exerted along the line of morality, of more careful 
 book selection, of judicial mindedness instead of one- 
 sidedness. 
 
 "Let us trust that influences along this line . . . 
 if we are to have influences at all . . . may gain a foot- 
 hold before the opposite forces . . . those of sordid 
 commercialism, of absurdities, of falsities, of all kinds 
 of self-seeking . . . find out that we are worth their 
 exploitation." 
 
 There have been indications of late that the pub- 
 lic, both as individuals and in organized bodies, is 
 
 • Address before the American Library Association at the Pasadena 
 Conference, May 19, 1911.
 
 172 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 beginning to appreciate the influence, actual and po- 
 tential, of the public library. With this dawning ap- 
 preciation, as predicted in the lines just quoted, has 
 come increased effort to turn this influence into the 
 channels of personal or of business advantage, and it 
 may be well to call the attention of librarians to this 
 and to warn them against what they must doubtless 
 expect to meet, in increasing measure, as the years 
 go by. Attempts of this kind can hope for success 
 only when they are concealed and come in innocent 
 guise. It is extremely hard to classify them, and this 
 fact in itself would indicate that libraries and libra- 
 rians have to deal with that most ingenious and 
 plausible of sophists, the modern advertiser. 
 
 But in the first place I would not have it under- 
 stood that the use of the library for advertising pur- 
 poses is necessarily illegitimate or reprehensible. If 
 it is open and above board and the library receives 
 proper compensation, the question resolves itself into 
 one of good taste. The taste of such use may be be- 
 yond question, or it may be very questionable indeed. 
 Few would defend the use of the library's walls or 
 windows for the display of commercial advertising; 
 although the money received therefor might be sorely 
 needed. On the other hand, the issuing of a bulletin 
 paid for wholly or in part by advertisements inserted 
 therein is approved by all, though most librarians 
 doubtless prefer to omit these if the expense can be 
 met by other means. Under this head come also the 
 reception and placing on the shelves of advertising 
 circulars or catalogs containing valuable material of 
 any kind. Here the library gets considerably more 
 than its quid pro quo, and no librarian has any doubt 
 of the propriety of such a proceeding. 
 
 Again, where the advertising takes the form of a 
 benevolent sort of "log-rolling," the thing advertised
 
 EXPLOITATION OF THE LIBRARY 173 
 
 being educational and the quid pro (/no simply the 
 impulse given to library use by anything of this na- 
 ture, it is generally regarded as proper. Thus most 
 libraries display without hesitation advertisements 
 of free courses of lectures and the like. When the 
 thing advertised is not free, this procedure is more 
 open to doubt. Personally I should draw the line 
 here, and should allow the library to advertise 
 nothing that requires a fee or payment of any kind, 
 no matter how trifling or nominal and no matter how 
 good the cause. 
 
 These things are mentioned only to exclude them 
 from consideration here. The library is really ex- 
 ploited only where it is used to further someone's per- 
 sonal or business ends without adequate return, gen- 
 erally with more or less concealment of purpose, so 
 that the library is without due realization of what it 
 is really doing. Attempts at such exploitation have 
 by no means been lacking in the past. Take if you 
 please this case, dating back about a dozen years: An 
 enterprising firm, operating a department store, of- 
 fered to give to a branch library a collection of sev- 
 eral thousand historical works on condition that 
 these should be kept in a separate alcove plainly la- 
 beled "The gift of Blank Brothers." Nothing so un- 
 usual about this. Such gifts, though the objections 
 to the conditions are familiar to you all, are frequent- 
 ly offered and accepted. In this instance, however 
 the name of the branch happened to be also the name 
 of the enterprising firm. The inference would have 
 been overpowering that the branch had been named 
 after the firm. The offer was accepted on condition 
 that the books should be shelved each in its proper 
 place with a gift label, to be of special form if desired, 
 and that the donation should be acknowledged on the 
 bulletin board. These conditions were not accept-
 
 174 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 able — a .sufficient indication of the real object of the 
 gift. Other cases might be cited, to say nothing of 
 the usual efforts to induce the library to display com- 
 mercial notices or to give official commendation to 
 some book. 
 
 Several cases of the more ingenious attempts at 
 exploitation having come to my notice during the 
 past few months I set myself to find out whether any- 
 thing of the kind had also been noted by others. 
 Letters to some of the principal libraries in the coun- 
 try elicited a variety of replies. Some librarians had 
 noted nothing; others nothing more than usual. One 
 said frankly that if the people had been "working" 
 him he had been too stupid to know it. But others 
 responded with interesting instances, and one or two, 
 in whose judgment I have special confidence agreed 
 with me in noticing an increase in the number of 
 attempts at this kind of exploitation of late. 
 
 I may make my meaning more clear, perhaps, by 
 proceeding at once to cite specific instances which 
 must be anonymous, of course, in accordance with a 
 promise to my informants. 
 
 A photographer offered to a public library a fine 
 collection of portraits of deceased citizens of the 
 town. This was accepted. The photographer then 
 proceeded to send out circulars in a way that ren- 
 dered it very probable that he was simply using the 
 library's name to increase his business. 
 
 A commercial firm, which had issued a good book 
 on a subject connected with its business, offered to 
 print for various libraries, at its own expense, a good 
 list of works on this subject on condition that it 
 should be allowed to advertise its own book on the 
 last page. Submission of a proof revealed the fact 
 that this advertisement was to be printed in precisely 
 the same form and with the same kind of heading as
 
 EXPLOITATION OF THE LIBRARY 175 
 
 information about the library given on the preced- 
 ing page. The reader's inference would have been 
 that the matter on the last page was an official libra- 
 ry note. Of the libraries approached, some accepted 
 the offer without finding any fault with the feature 
 just noted ; others refused to have anything at all to 
 do with the plan; still others accepted on condition 
 that the last page should be so altered that the reader 
 could see clearly that it contained advertising matter. 
 A lecturer gained permission to distribute through 
 a library complimentary tickets to a free lecture on 
 an educational subject. When these arrived, the li- 
 brarian discovered that the announcement of the free 
 lecture was on the same folder with advertisements 
 of a pay course. The free tickets were <jiven out, but 
 the advertisement was suppressed. Efforts of this 
 kind are perhaps particularly noticeable in connec- 
 tion with the use of library assembly-rooms. There 
 is no reason, of course, why libraries should not rent 
 out these rooms in the same way as other public 
 rooms, but it is usual to limit their use to education- 
 al purposes and generally to free public entertain- 
 ments. Some efforts to circumvent rules of this kind 
 are interesting. 
 
 Application was made to a library for the use of 
 an assembly-room for a free lecture on stenography. 
 On cross-examination the lecturer admitted that he 
 was a teacher of stenography who desired to form a 
 class, and that at the close of his lecture lie intended 
 to make announcement of his courses, prices, etc. 
 He was told that this must be done outside the libra- 
 ry- 
 It is very common, where the exaction of an 
 
 admission fee is forbidden, to take tip a collection 
 before or after the lecture. When told that this is 
 inadmissible, the lecturer sometimes takes up his
 
 176 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 collection on the sidewalk outside. There have been 
 cases where employees of a library have embraced 
 this opportunity to gather contributions. A colored 
 janitor of a branch library was recently admonished 
 for standing outside his own assembly-room door 
 and soliciting money for a pet charity. Another 
 janitor made a pilgrimage to the central library to 
 collect from the staff. A classic instance of this kind 
 is that of the street gamin who for several hours 
 stood at a branch library door and collected an ad- 
 mission fee of one cent from each user. The branch 
 was newly opened and its neighbors were unused to 
 the ways of free libraries. 
 
 An example of the difficulty of deciding, in mat- 
 ters of this kind, whether an undoubted advertising 
 scheme may or may not legitimately be aided by the 
 public library is found in the offer, with which all 
 of tou are familiar, of valuable money prizes for es- 
 says on economic subjects, by a firm of clothiers. 
 The committee in charge of the awards is composed 
 of eminent economists and publicists; the competi- 
 tors are members of college faculties and advanced 
 graduate students; the essays brought out are of per- 
 manent value and are generally published in book 
 form. Under these circumstances many libraries 
 have not hesitated to post the announcements of the 
 committee on their bulletin boards. Others regard 
 the whole thing as purely commercial advertisement 
 ^ind refuse to recognize it. One library at least 
 posted the announcement of the competition for 1910, 
 but refused to post the result. It would be hard to 
 tell just how much altruism and how much selfish- 
 ness we have here and the instance shows how subtle 
 are the gradations from one motive to the other. 
 
 Advertising by securing condemnatory action of 
 some sort, such as exclusion from the shelves, has
 
 EXPLOITATION OF THE LIBRARY 177 
 
 also not been uncommon. This requires the aid of 
 the press to condemn, abuse or ridicule the library 
 for its action, and so exploit the book. The press, I 
 grieve to say, has fallen a victim to this scheme more 
 than once and has thereby given free use of advertis- 
 ing space ordinarily worth thousands of dollars. A 
 flagrant instance of this kind occurred in one of our 
 greatest cities about ten years ago. The work of a 
 much-discussed playwright was about to be put upon 
 the boards. A wily press agent, in conversation with 
 an unsuspecting librarian, obtained an adverse 
 opinion. The aiding and abetting newspaper, which 
 was one of ostensible high character, proceeded at 
 once to heap ridicule and contumely on the library 
 and the librarian for their condemnation and exclu- 
 sion of the play (which really wasn't excluded at 
 all). The matter, having reached the dignity of 
 news, was taken up by other papers and for a week 
 or more the metropolitan press resounded with accu- 
 sation, explanation, recrimination and comment. The 
 gleeful playwright cabled objurgations from London, 
 and the press agent, retiring modestly into the back- 
 ground, saw advertising that would have cost him 
 1100,000, at the lowest estimate, poured into his will- 
 ing lap by the yellow, but easy, press of his native 
 burg. It is possibly unfair to cite this as an attempt 
 to "work" the library— it was the public press that 
 was ingeniously and successfully exploited through 
 the library. 
 
 The fact that the mere presence of a public libra- 
 ry is an advantage to the neighborhood in which it 
 stands has led to numerous attempts to locate libra- 
 ry buildings, especially branches, in some particular 
 place. These are often accompanied by offers of 
 building-lots, which, it is sad to say, have occasional- 
 ly appealed to trustees not fully informed of the
 
 178 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 situation. I recall several offers of lots in barren 
 and unoccupied spots — one in an undeveloped region 
 whose owner hoped to make it a residence park and 
 another in the middle of a flourishing cornfield, whose 
 owner considered it an ideal spot for a branch libra- 
 ry — at least after lie had sold off a sufficient number 
 of building lots on the strength of his generous gift. 
 These particular offers were declined with thanks, 
 but in some instances members of boards of trustees 
 themselves, being only human, have not been entirely 
 free from suspicion of personal or business interest 
 in sites. Here it is difficult to draw the line between 
 the legitimate efforts of a particular locality to cap- 
 ture a branch site and those that have their origin 
 in commercial cupidity. Both of course have nothing 
 to do with the larger considerations that should gov- 
 ern in such location, but both are not exploitation as 
 we are now using the word. 
 
 A curious instance of the advertising value of the 
 mere presence of a public library and of business 
 shrewdness in taking advantage of it, comes from a 
 library that calls itself a ''shining example of efforts 
 to 'work' public libraries for commercial purposes." 
 This library rents rooms for various objects connected 
 with its work, and finds that it is in great demand 
 as a tenant. Great effort is made by property own- 
 ers both to retain and to move quarters occupied for 
 library purposes. The board has recently refused to 
 make selection of localities on this basis. 
 
 There is another respect in which the public libra- 
 ry offers an attractive field for exploitation. In its 
 registration files it has a valuable selected list of 
 names and addresses which may be of service in var- 
 ious ways either as a mailing-list or as a directory. 
 Probably there are no two opinions regarding the 
 impropriety of allowing the list to be used for com-
 
 EXPLOITATION OF THE LIBRARY L79 
 
 mercial purposes along cither line. The use as a 
 directory may occasionally be legitimate and is 
 allowable after investigation and report to some one 
 in authority. I have known of recourse to library 
 registration lists by the police, to !iu<l ;i fugitive from 
 justice; by private detectives, ostensibly on the same 
 errand; by ;i wife, looking for her runaway husband; 
 by persons searching for lost relatives; and by credi- 
 tors on the trail of debtors in hiding. Where there 
 is any doubt, the matter can usually be adjusted by 
 offering to forward a letter to the person sought, or 
 to communicate to that person the seeker's desire and 
 let him respond if he wishes to do so. One thing is 
 certain: except in obedience to an order of court, it 
 is not only unjust, but entirely inexpedient from the 
 library's standpoint to betray to anyone a user's 
 whereabouts against that user's wishes or even where 
 there is a mere possibility of his objection. If it 
 were clearly understood that such consequences 
 might follow the holding of a library card, we should 
 doubtless lose many readers that we especially de- 
 sire to attract and hold. 
 
 Of course the public library is not the only insti- 
 tution whose reputation has exposed it to the assaults 
 of advertisers. The Christian ministry has foryears 
 been exposed to this sort of thing, and it is the be- 
 lief of Reverend William A. Lee. who .writes on tie- 
 subject in "The Standard," a Baptist paper published 
 in Chicago, that in this case also increased activity 
 ,s to be noted of late. Persons desire to present the 
 minister with a picture on condition that he mentions 
 the artist to his friends; to give him a set of books 
 or a building-lot that his name may be used to lure 
 other purchasers; they even ask him for mailing-lists 
 of his parishioners' names. "I am constantly being 
 besieged," says .Mr. Lee, "by agents of divers sorts,
 
 180 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 and of divers degrees of persistency, for indorse- 
 ments of patent mops, of 'wholesome plays,' of cur- 
 rent periodicals, of so-called religious books, of 'helps' 
 almost innumerable for church-workers and of scores 
 of other things which time has charitably carried out 
 of memory." 
 
 It is refreshing to find that the kind of library 
 exploitation most to be feared seems not yet to have 
 been attempted on any considerable scale or in any 
 objectionable direction. I refer to interference with 
 onr stock and its distribution— an effort to divert 
 either purchases or circulation into a particular 
 channel. My attention has been called to the efforts 
 of religious bodies to place their theological or con- 
 troversial works on the shelves of public libraries. 
 When the books are offered as donations, as is usually 
 the case, this is hardly exploitation in the sense in 
 which we are considering it, unless the library is so 
 small that other more desirable books are excluded. 
 A large library welcomes accessions of this kind, just 
 as it does trade catalogs or railroad literature. At- 
 tempts to push circulation are occasionally made, 
 but usually without success. 
 
 But up to the present time it is the glory of the 
 public library that it knows neither North nor South, 
 Catholic nor Protestant, Democrat, Republican nor 
 Socialist. It- shelves and circulates books on both 
 sides of every possible scientific, economic, religions 
 and sectional controversy, and no one has raised a 
 hand to make it do otherwise. We should be proud 
 of this and very jealous of it. As we have seen, there 
 is some reason to think that newly awakened inter- 
 est in the public library as a public utility has led to 
 increased effort to gain its aid for purely personal 
 and commercial ends. Naturally these interests have 
 moved first. It is comparatively easy to steer clear
 
 EXPLOITATION OF THE LIBRARY 181 
 
 of theni and to defeat them. But attempts to inter- 
 fere with the strict neutrality of the public library 
 and to turn it into partisanship in any direction, if 
 they ever come, should at the earliest betrayal of 
 their purpose be sternly repressed and at the same 
 time be given wide publicity, that we may all be on 
 our guard. We may legitimately and properly adopt 
 a once famous and much ridiculed slogan as our own, 
 in this regard, and write over the doors of our public 
 libraries "All that we ask is. let us alone!"
 
 SERVICE SYSTEMS IN LIBRARIES 
 
 1 should be understood better, perhaps, if I said 
 "Civil service in the library"; but the civil service is 
 so called merely in distinction to the military ser- 
 vice, and there can be no military service in the li- 
 brary, although the uniform of certain janitors and 
 messengers may appear, at first sight, to give me the 
 lie. Every library, of course, must have some plan 
 of service, more or less systematic This may or may 
 not be subject to the regulations of the state or city 
 civil service. I have no desire to dwell here on the 
 question of the desirability of such connection; but 
 I cannot refrain from saying, at the risk of losing all 
 of my civil service-reform friends, that I regard the 
 present methods of bringing about appointment for 
 merit only as makeshifts, well designed to defeat the 
 efforts of politicians and others who wish to see ap- 
 pointments made for other reasons, but necessary 
 only so long as those efforts are likely to continue. 
 1 shall doubtless be told thai they are likely to con- 
 tinue indefinitely, and therefore that T have given 
 away my whole case. To show that this is not so, we 
 have only to point to a large number of libraries in 
 connection with which there is no such effort, and in 
 which safeguards against, it are absolutely unneces- 
 sary. I do not know why politics has not invaded 
 these institutions, but I know that it has not. Dur- 
 ing the past sixteen years 1 have been connected 
 with four large libraries, and I am in a position to 
 say not only that no political appointment was made 
 in them during my connection, but that no such ap-
 
 184 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 pointment was ever attempted or suggested. There 
 is absolutely no reason why the protection of "civil- 
 service" regulation should be thrown over these 
 libraries, and every reason why they should be free 
 from the harassing and embarrassing' petty annoy- 
 ances and restrictions that are inseparable from such 
 regulation. 
 
 Much as 1 honor the advocates of civil-service re- 
 form, and applaud what they have accomplished in 
 the way of furthering a real merit system, I submit 
 that a further step in advance may be taken when 
 we have heads of municipal departments as unlikely 
 to make political appointments as the average libra- 
 rian is, and as free from pressure to make such ap- 
 pointments as are the librarians of a large number 
 of our best institutions. I regard that as the best 
 system, therefore, in which an appointing officer or 
 body, sincerely desirous of making appointments for 
 merit only, is perfectly free to make such appoint- 
 ments in any way that seems proper; and as only the 
 second-best system that in which the appointing 
 power, unwilling to make appointments for merit, is 
 forced to do so, as far as may be, by the supervision 
 and control of a body created for the purpose. So 
 long as we have unwilling municipal officers, we 
 must endure this second-best plan, of course; but li- 
 brarians are rarely of this kind, though they may be 
 unfortunately in the power of those who are. It has 
 been my good fortune to formulate a scheme of ser- 
 vice for each of the four libraries to which I have 
 referred, and these schemes, with necessary modifica- 
 tions, are still in satisfactory use. The first, for the 
 New York Free Circulating Library, was made in 
 1896; the last, for the St. Louis Public Library, in 
 1910. Some were hampered by the necessity of 
 adapting them to municipal regulation, while others
 
 SERVICE SYSTEMS IX LIBRARIES L85 
 
 were quite free; and other local conditions Imposed 
 differences upon them, but they depended, in the 
 main, on the same principles and were carried out 
 
 in much the same way. 
 
 I have numerous requests for information on this 
 
 subject and for advice upon methods of grading li- 
 brary staffs, with regulation of promotions, Lncre - - 
 
 of salary, etc. Possibly the best way to answer these 
 may be to give a brief account of the way in which 
 the work was done in these four cases. 
 
 It has been assumed by some that, as every good 
 librarian desires to have these matters systematically 
 regulated, regulation by a city civil service commis- 
 sion will be as good as any, and that a man who 
 wishes to have a system of his own and keep it under 
 his own control is unreasonable ami foolish. A non- 
 professional body, however, cannot, even with pro- 
 fessional expert advice, satisfactorily regulate the 
 employment of profession;) Is for professional work. 
 This point has been so often insisted upon and elab- 
 orated that those, who do not now appreciate its val- 
 idity will never do so. Every good librarian will 
 wish to create machinery to put the right man in the 
 right place in his force, and to drop him out if he 
 goes wrong; but it must be his own machinery, not 
 that of someone else, and must he designed to aid 
 him, not to hamper him. 
 
 My attention was drawn to the necessity of a 
 more systematic plan of service in the New York 
 Free Circulating Library on assuming charge in 1895. 
 The library had been hampered by insufficiency of 
 funds and had been obliged to supplement assistants 
 of ability and experience with others who had been 
 employed simply because they could be obtained at 
 low salaries. Promotion, where it was distinctly in-
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 dicated, was for merit, ascertained simply by the li- 
 brarian's opinion ; and salary increases were made 
 very largely for length of service. An effort was 
 made at the outset to regulate admission to the force 
 and advancement within it. Tin* features of examina- 
 tion and of grades distinguished by letters were bor- 
 rowed from the Boston Public Library. A depart- 
 ment bead, who had been giving private instruction, 
 had by the board's permission placed some of her pu- 
 pils in the library for practice work This seemed 
 an excellent opportunity to train future assistants; 
 so the private class was turned into a library train- 
 ing class and the pupils into apprentices, their teach- 
 er being retained as such and properly compensated. 
 The library force was divided into three grades, A, B 
 and C, to which a fourth, D was afterwards added. 
 The first two were indicated by the fact that the li- 
 brary consisted of six coordinate branches, each with 
 its librarian-in-charge ajnd her first assistant. All 
 the former Mere graded as A and the latter as B. 
 ''lass A thus necessarily became limited in number, 
 depending on the number of branches, and B would 
 have been similarly limited if it had not been made 
 to include also all the high-grade assistants — all cap- 
 able of assignment at any time to the work of a dep- 
 uty librarian of a branch. (Mass C was then a re- 
 mainder class, including all other members of the 
 library staff. It soon appeared, however, that the 
 line of demarkation between those members of < "lass 
 B who were first assistant librarians and those who 
 were not was much more distinct than that between 
 B and < '. \\ was accordingly limited to first assis- 
 tants; the remnant was called C. and the old T be- 
 came I). The old feeling that seniority should be 
 considered Mas deferred to by arranging for auto- 
 matic increases of salary within the grades at speci-
 
 SERVICE SYSTEMS IN LIBRARIES 
 
 Bed intervals. Janitors and messengers remained 
 quite outside this arrangement. 
 
 It was provided that no one should be promoted 
 from grade to grade without the passage of an 
 animation; but that passage simply placed the suc- 
 cessful candidate on a list of eligibles, and promotion 
 from this list was made l>v considering personal fit 
 oess, character of work and immediate conditions. 
 Qualifications for the different grades differed, but in 
 quantity and advancement, rather than in quality, 
 all coming under the heads of literature, langui 
 genera] information and library economy. 
 
 This plan was formulated in consultation with 
 the library committee, and was adopted as part of 
 the rules of the library by the board. The committee 
 differed somewhat on the seniority increases within 
 grades, which were finally retained, and considered 
 it of great importance to emphasize work and person- 
 al fitness. .Methods of including marks for these in 
 the final standing of the candidate wore considered, 
 but the difficulty of doinii' so led to the adoption of 
 the plan as stated. 
 
 It was decided to give every member of the staff 
 the right to demand an examination for promotion 
 on the expiration of three years' service in one grade, 
 and to admit others by special order. Advancement 
 proved to be necessarily so rapid, however, that no 
 one who had any chance of passing tiie examination 
 ever remained three years in a grade, ami this clause 
 proved practically inoperative. 
 
 Of course, many passed and were placed on the 
 
 eligible list for promotion who had no chance <>f ad- 
 vancement for reasons connected with work or per- 
 sonality. This caused dissatisfaction which it was 
 sought to mitigate by recognizing presence on the 
 eligible list by increase of salary to the grade limit.
 
 188 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 provided this had not been already attained. Even 
 so, however, it continued to exist. 
 
 The alternative was considered of examining only 
 those selected for promotion and of making promo- 
 tion conditional on the passage of such examination, 
 but was rejected, although a perfectly possible and 
 logical plan. I>ut objectionable in many ways as all 
 examinations are, they foster a feeling that everyone 
 is having a chance, and previous selection, no matter 
 how good, is open to the same objection as the selec- 
 tion alone would be, without any test at all. 
 
 It would also have been possible to make the ex- 
 amination competitive, placing the names on the list 
 in the order of passage and promoting in that order, 
 or grading the names in order of seniority, as in most 
 city systems. But both these plans are open to ob- 
 vious objections, and I still think it best to form an 
 eligible list whose names shall not be considered in 
 any order at all, the appointing officer being quite 
 free to make his choice among them. 
 
 The application of this system of grading to the 
 staff, as it existed, involved discrimination at only 
 one point — that separating Classes B and C, or as 
 renamed later, C and D. The line was drawn partly 
 on the basis of the salary list as it stood, and partly 
 by duties, and there was little dissatisfaction. 
 
 I have said that this system was formally adopted 
 by the board. This is not necessary, nor is it the 
 best plan. A system of this kind is best regarded 
 simply as an aid to the librarian in making recom- 
 mendations for appointment or promotion. In mak- 
 ing such recommendation, the librarian must, of 
 course, satisfy himself that his candidates are fit, 
 and it is proper that he should adopt any system that 
 commends itself to him for ascertaining that they 
 are so. The board is, of course, the final authoritv.
 
 SEEVICE SYSTEMS IX LIBRARIES 189 
 
 It could override any system that it might adopt, 
 just as easily as it could go over the head of the li- 
 brarian's recommendation ; and it is better for its own 
 dignity that a departure from the system should take 
 the latter form, rather than the former. 
 
 I regard it as quite sufficient, therefore, when a 
 librarian grades his stall', that he should simply re- 
 port to his board that he is about to make certain 
 dispositions and require certain tests to aid him in 
 making proper recommendations for appointment 
 and promotion, and that his recommendations in fu- 
 ture will be guided by these arrangements. The au- 
 thority of the board and its ability to reject his 
 recommendations have not been touched, and its dis- 
 position to trust him and accept his advice will be 
 surely increased as it sees that he is adopting plans 
 to improve that advice and give it force. 
 
 This grading of the New York Free Circulating 
 staff has been dwelt on at length, although very 
 simple, because it formed the basis of the other grad- 
 iugs, now to be described. 
 
 The application of a similar system to the staff 
 of the Brooklyn Public Library took place early in 
 1899, at a time when, owing to a crisis in the affairs 
 of the library, it had temporarily ceased to do work. 
 It had only four library assistants, and yet the prob- 
 abilities were strongly in favor of an immediate and 
 rapid expansion, such as actually did take place not 
 long after. Expediency, therefore, pointed to the or- 
 ganization of the staff on the supposition that it 
 would soon be of considerable size. 
 
 The grading was precisely similar to that just 
 described, except that Classes C and I> were com- 
 bined and called Class C, and the letter 1) was used 
 to designate members of the training class. The prin- 
 cipal interest in the scheme as then adopted lies in 

 
 190 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 its relations with the city civil service. The New 
 York Free Circulating Library was a private institu- 
 tion, charitable in its origin, but broadening rapidly 
 out into real public work. It bad no relations with 
 the city, except to apply annually for its subsidy and 
 receipt for the monthly instalments thereof as paid 
 over. There could be no question therefore of city 
 civil service jurisdiction. The ease in Brooklyn was 
 different. The members of the Board were appointed 
 by the Mayor, and the library was recognized as a 
 city institution, although exactly what this meant 
 had not yet been definitely determined. The scheme 
 of service was adopted at first on the supposition that 
 the board was to be as free in the matter as though 
 it had been an entirely independent body . The ques- 
 tion might never have arisen, but was precipitated by 
 the city auditor's holding up the payroll on the ground 
 that it had not been certified by the municipal Civil 
 Service Commission. The question went at once to 
 the Corporation Counsel for an opinion, and after he 
 had decided that the city civil service regulations 
 covered the library force, there Avas a further dispute 
 with the state Civil Service Commission, exacerbated 
 by a difference in political complexion between the 
 two bodies. This held up the payroll for some time, 
 and did not tend to reconcile any member of the staff 
 to its new status. Matters having been settled, the 
 commission promptly certified the payroll as it stood, 
 in order to terminate the embarrassing situation, and 
 then ensued a series of conferences with the librarian 
 on permanent grading. It was decided that the li- 
 brarian and assistant librarian fell within the exempt 
 class, and that other members of the staff could be 
 divided into senior and junior assistants, the latter 
 including only members of the training class until 
 properly appointed to permanent positions. What-
 
 SERVICE SYSTEMS IN LI BR ABIES L9I 
 
 ever grading the library might choose to make within 
 the senior assistant class (A, B and C) was therefore 
 its own affair, the commission taking cognizance of 
 
 it only so far as it involved increase of salary. The 
 point of conflict came at entrance to Class C, or on 
 appointment to permanent position in the library. 
 The commission at first insisted that it should make 
 its own eligible list, graded in accordance with its 
 own examinations, although it agreed to admit no 
 others except members of the training class to such 
 examinations. At least one examination of the kind 
 was held, the questions evidently being written by 
 some outside librarian on general principles, and with 
 little reference to our needs and conditions. Ultimate- 
 ly, however, the commission agreed to let us hold the 
 examinations and to accept our rating, although, 
 when the eligible list had once been formed, we were 
 bound by it rigidly. In regard to persons outside our 
 graded force, such as janitors and messengers, we 
 were held strictly to civil service rules, selecting our 
 men from the first three on the list submitted to us 
 by the commission. An unsatisfactory person could 
 be summarily rejected after trial for a specified 
 period, and as many such were on the list, there was 
 rapid rotation in office in this part of the force. In 
 the graded staff, also, although it might seem that 
 the commission had almost abdicated its powers in 
 our favor, we felt the restriction that bound us to 
 select from the top of the list. Even though we had 
 originally made the ratings, it often happened that 
 for the particular vacancy in question the sixth 
 name might be that of the best-qualified person, and 
 we had the disagreeable alternative of taking one 
 who was not our first choice, or of appointing on 
 trial and rejecting until the proper name had been 
 reached — a process much in vogue in city depart-
 
 192 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 incuts, but tiresome to the appointing authority and 
 ignominious to those who were thus rejected and who 
 might be better qualified than the person desired for 
 another kind of position. 
 
 In 1901 the New York Free Circulating Library 
 became the Circulation Department of the New York 
 Public Library, under circumstances that gave it a 
 separate governing body, responsible to the trustees 
 of the Public Library, and a separate staff, whose 
 organization was not necessarily the same as that of 
 the reference staff. The annexed staff, of course, 
 brought its own organization with it, and this, with 
 some modifications, became that of the present Cir- 
 culation Department. The principal changes were 
 the limitation of Class C to three times the number 
 of branch libraries and the almost total abolition of 
 salary increases for length of service within grades. 
 The former prevented unlimited promotion from D 
 to C, and made necessary a selection from the wait- 
 ing list to fill actual vacancies, and the latter, while 
 not doing away with a difference of salaries in the 
 same grade, made it possible to give the increases as 
 a reward for good work. The designation of the 
 grades by letters was objected to by some members 
 of the board, on the ground that it meant nothing, 
 so that alternative names were adopted for C, D and 
 E, the two upper grades having already the names 
 of librarian-in-charge and first assistant. Members 
 of C were named second assistant librarians; D, as- 
 sistants, and E, attendants. 
 
 When the Free Circulating Library grading was 
 made, there were neither children's rooms nor chil- 
 dren's librarians in New York, and very few any- 
 where. The former arose first and were served by 
 persons assigned for the purpose, usually from Grade 
 C. The organization, later, of a separate children's
 
 SEBVICE SYSTEMS IX LIBBABIE6 
 
 department, with jurisdiction over all children's 
 rooms, made it necessary to place children's libra- 
 rians in a separate class; but that they might Dot 
 feel "out of the running" for branch librarianships, 
 they were allowed to take examinations and advance 
 from one regular grade to another, in addition, if 
 they so desired. Catalogers were still graded regu- 
 larly, however, although these might have been easily 
 treated in a similar way. The special nature of their 
 work, however, was recognized by a variation in the 
 examination. The test for the children's grade was 
 not an examination, but a series of periods of prac- 
 tical work in selected branch libraries, with observa- 
 tion and report and a final thesis. Candidates were 
 specially selected by the supervisor of children's 
 work, and so jealously has entrance into this grade 
 been guarded that even now not more than half of 
 the forty or more assistants in charge of New York's 
 children's rooms are members of it. 
 
 In later years a thesis also has formed part of 
 the examination for Class A. This is written on an 
 assigned subject, and the successful ones are some- 
 times, although not always, printed. 
 
 One of the difficulties connected with the grading 
 in the Circulation Department of the New York Pub- 
 lic library was the assignment to proper grades of 
 the staffs of the different institutions that consolida- 
 ted with that library from time to time. There were 
 altogether about half a dozen of these, with staffs 
 varying in Dumber perhaps from live to forty or fifty 
 persons. It was decided to leave the assignment en- 
 tirely to the authorities of these libraries, who prac- 
 tically graded their staffs on a plan corresponding 
 with ours before consolidation, so that there was no 
 change of grade afterward. The responsibility was 
 thus thrown upon bodies of men with whose authority
 
 L94 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 (In 1 new staffs were familiar and which they would be 
 inclined to accept. The assignments were made with 
 varying degrees of care and validity, but were, on the 
 whole, just, and there was little complaint with then;. 
 Too low an assignment was corrected by the next ex- 
 aminations for promotion, and a person graded too 
 high never at all events, rose any higher. The smooth- 
 ness with which these consolidations took place, even 
 sometimes against the will and with the dismal fore- 
 boding of the dispossessed authorities, and the rapid- 
 ity with which tin 1 entire staff became homogeneous, 
 both in feeling and in quality of work, are sufficient 
 justification of this particular policy, which was typ- 
 ical of that of the library in regard to other features 
 of these consolidations. 
 
 In the year 1910 it was decided to grade the staff 
 of the St. Louis Public Library. The principal dif- 
 ferences between the problem here and that in the 
 cases that have been described depended on the fact 
 that this was an old library, with a comparatively 
 large staff, having traditions of its own and justly 
 proud of its achievements and of its library reputa- 
 tion. There had even been a feeling, at some time in 
 the past, on the part of some members of the board, 
 that a graded staff was not a good thing, as it would 
 hamper freedom.of control. The staff, however, had 
 reached such a size that some kind of classification 
 appeared inevitable, and the proper method of hand- 
 ling it seemed to be that indicated above as prefer- 
 able, namely, as purely an administrative matter 
 under the librarian's control, to aid him in making 
 recommendations for appointment, promotion and 
 increase of salary. This was explained to the board, 
 and there being no objection, a notice was at once 
 inserted in Staff Notes, the medium of communica- 
 tion between the librariau and the staff, that the force
 
 SERVICE SYSTEMS IX LIBRARIES 
 
 would be shortly divided into grades, "the object be- 
 ing to represent definitely the exact position occupied 
 by each one, and to fix the maximum salary belong- 
 ing to each grade." There was some additional pre- 
 liminary explanation and a request for suggestions 
 and opinions. After a lapse of about six months, dar- 
 ing which the plan became familiar to all by discus- 
 sion, both informal and in the weekly meetings of the 
 heads of departments, the grading was announced by 
 the publication in Staff Notes of the principles on 
 which it had been made, with explanations in consid- 
 erable detail. The names of those assigned to the 
 different grades were not given, but each member of 
 the stall' was notified separately of his own grading, 
 unless this was obvious from the published explana- 
 tion, as in case of branch Librarians. It was an- 
 nounced that the grading was not an act of the Hoard, 
 but "simply a schedule expressing the formal man- 
 ner in which . . . recommendations will hereafter he 
 made to the board." 
 
 This scheme was more thoroughgoing than any of 
 those previously noted, in that it provided a place 
 and designation for everyone in the library's employ. 
 The force was divided into three sections — regular 
 grades, special grades and ungraded occupations. 
 The former were classified practically as in New 
 York; the special grades were made to include cata- 
 logers and children's librarians, with any special 
 positions of enough importance to be placed there; 
 the "ungraded occupations" were those of janitors and 
 their assistants, messengers, elevator men, binders 
 and other miscellaneous employees. In the regular 
 grades A and B were limited, and while C and D 
 were not formally so, it was announced that they 
 would not be indefinitely increased. It was provided 
 that, those in special grades might qualify also for
 
 196 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 regular grades and might also be transferred thereto 
 if desired. 
 
 In assignment of members of the staff to grades, 
 existing conditions were recognized as far as pos- 
 sible, with no immediate attempt to remedy faults 
 that might exist therein. Statement was made that 
 all persons who might consider themselves wrongly 
 graded would have early opportunity to show their 
 lit! less for the grade above, either in the regular w T ay 
 or in some other, if it could be devised. It was stated 
 that the qualifications that would gain the librarian's 
 recommendation for promotion from grade to grade 
 ( which, it will be remembered, consists merely in an 
 increase of salary, so far as the board takes cogniz- 
 ance thereof) would in general be of three kinds — 
 educational, to be ascertained by certificate or di- 
 ploma, or failing these, by examination ; special, to 
 be ascertained in some cases by examination, in 
 others by mail, in others by certified experience; and 
 personal, to be ascertained by personal knowledge. 
 
 In connection with the scheme, the training class 
 was much extended in scope and its course broadened 
 and made to cover an educational year. 
 
 Here, as in New York, the scheme is entirely dis- 
 tinct from the municipal civil service, but for a dif- 
 ferent reason. In New York the library is a private 
 institution, occupying city property and doing public 
 work by provision of a contract which does not pro- 
 vide for extension of the city civil-service rules over 
 the library force; in St. Louis, the merit system has 
 not been introduced at all among city employees. 
 Should it be introduced in the future, and should it 
 be decided that the members of the library staff are 
 strictly employees of the city, we might have here 
 the Brooklyn experience over again, as detailed above. 
 For purely selfish reasons, therefore, the St. Louis
 
 SERVICE SYSTEMS IN LIBRARIES 107 
 
 Public Library should be well satisfied with the 
 status quo. 
 
 Iu concluding-, it may I)*' well to call attention 
 again to the fact that such schemes as these are de- 
 signed to aid an appointing body or officer, not to con- 
 trol him. They would he of little value to a munici- 
 pality desiring to limit a political mayor's power for 
 evil, or to a mayor wishing to keep his hoard of libra- 
 ry trustees within bounds, or to a board anxious to 
 curb its librarian's propensity to appoint personal 
 favorites. Such a plan pre-supposes that appoint- 
 ment and promotion for the good of the service are 
 desired, and it serves to bring this about so far as it 
 may. A board, or a librarian, could depart from it 
 or violate its provisions in a dozen ways. What, 
 then, is the use of it? In a small staff, it has no uses. 
 It would lie as silly to grade such a staff and make 
 rules for its promotion as it would be for a house- 
 keeper with a cook and one maid to call the former 
 Class A and the latter ("lass B, ami draw up rules 
 for their appointment and promotion. But as soon 
 as the size of the staff exceeds that at which the officer 
 in charge can know each member and her work with 
 intimate personal knowledge, then something of the 
 kind becomes imperative. The members of such a 
 staff are better satisfied that they are being treated 
 with uniform justice, and that merit is properly 
 recognized, if it is done in some systematic way like 
 this, and the officer on whose recommendation ap- 
 pointments and promotions are made runs much less 
 risk of making mistakes. Every librarian should, I 
 believe, examine himself to make sure that his present 
 scheme of service, whatever it may be, is sufficient 
 for these purposes and adapted to secure their attain- 
 ment smoothly ami satisfactorily.
 
 EFFICIENCY RECORDS IN LIBRARIES 
 
 In the foregoing article the present writer gave 
 the result of his experience in formulating and es- 
 tablishing systems of service in four Large libraries, 
 and, incidentally, stated his conclusion that such sys- 
 tems should always remain in the control of the li- 
 brary authorities. 
 
 While the plans therein described work satisfac- 
 torily from an inside standpoint, they are defective 
 in one particular — that of complete record. This is 
 most important in case of investigation by competent 
 authority. While direct control of a library service 
 system by an outside body, such as a municipal or 
 other civil service hoard, is objectionable, there can 
 certainly be no objection to the requirement, by muni- 
 cipal charter or state law, that the library service be 
 organized and operated on the merit system, which 
 requirement presupposes occasional inquiry to ascer- 
 tain whether, and in what degree and form, this is 
 the case. Now, in the event of such investigation, it 
 will usually he easy to produce the records of ex- 
 aminations, with marked papers, tabulated marks, 
 and the action based thereon. When it comes to per- 
 sonality and efficiency, such records are not easy to 
 get. Even where libraries assign marks in these sub- 
 jects and combine them with the results of the writ- 
 ten tests to obtain a final mark on which promotion 
 is based, there is nothing to show how the marks 
 were obtained, and the investigating authority might 
 not unnaturally conclude that here was an opportun- 
 ity to nullify the merit system. Evidently all data
 
 200 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 on which appointment or promotion is based should 
 be matters of record, otherwise a perfectly well-or- 
 dered merit system cannot be demonstrated to be such 
 to one who has a right to know; and, of course, in 
 the last analysis, every citizen has this right in the 
 case of a public institution. 
 
 What appeared to be needed was some regular re- 
 port on the efficiency of every employee, which should 
 be taken into account in assigning marks or in some 
 other way, in making promotions, made in such per- 
 manent form that it could be filed as a record. Such 
 reports are, of course, constantly made orally and 
 acted upon, without any record being preserved. 
 They are occasionally made in recordable form, per- 
 haps most often in the case of apprentices or mem- 
 bers of training (lasses. In some cases derelictions 
 or unfavorable reports alone have been recorded, but 
 a complete report on personality and work made reg- 
 ularly and filed permanently is a thing that has not 
 come under my observation, although, of course, it 
 may exist. 
 
 Having decided to adopt some such form of re- 
 port in the St. Louis Public Library, the librarian 
 laid the matter before the weekly conference of de- 
 partment heads and branch librarians. Had the 
 question been the advisability of the adoption of such 
 a form, the sentiment of the meeting would probably 
 have been against it, but the announcement was 
 simply that the librarian had decided to require reg- 
 ularly thereafter, in shape suitable for filing, infor- 
 mation regarding the efficiency of assistants that had 
 hitherto been received irregularly and by word of 
 mouth. A staff committee was appointed to draft a 
 form of report, and the reports of progress of this 
 committee, with the incidental discussions and con- 
 ferences, occupied nearly a year, during which time
 
 EFFICIENCY RECORDS 201 
 
 everyone on the staff became thoroughly familiar 
 with the plan and either agreed with the librarian 
 regarding its advisability <>r had some reasonable and 
 well-considered ground of opposition. 
 
 The librarian had in mind a short form, containing 
 a few important data. The committee brought in a 
 long one— somewhat longer than that finally adopted, 
 which is given below. Their reason, as stated, was 
 that it is easier to answer a large number of <| u, ' s - 
 tions that require hardly more than the words "yes" 
 and "no" in reply than a few. each of which calls for 
 the writing of an essay, however brief. This reason 
 appealed to all and finally prevailed. It means prac- 
 tically the presentation of the information required, 
 ready-made, and its adoption or rejection by the per- 
 son making the report. Discussion in the meeting 
 was chiefly on the more personal items of informa- 
 tion, such as those about neatness of dress, etc.; also 
 about others whose propriety or clearness wak-qiies- 
 tioned, such as that regarding loyalty to the library. 
 Pome of these were finally stricken out, but most 
 were retained. It was also noted that in many cases 
 the information asked for could not ordinarily be 
 obtained. A department head, for instance, may be 
 intimate enough with one of her assistants to know 
 whether she has a real appreciation for literature, 
 but in most instances this would not be the case. 
 Many such questions were retained on the ground 
 that answers, if possible, would be of value, and, if 
 not, could simply be omitted. 
 
 After the forms had thus been put into shape 
 they were duplicated and a copy was given to each 
 department head, with instructions Jo show it to all 
 her assistants, discuss it with them and report at 
 the next meeting. The reports showed that tic re- 
 ception of the form had depended chiefly on the de-
 
 202 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 partment head, either through manner of presenta- 
 tion or through personal influence. In some depart- 
 ments the plan seemed to be viewed with equanimity, 
 while in others there was a considerable amount of 
 suspicion, distrust and dislike of the whole scheme. 
 It was next announced that anyone on the staff desir- 
 ing to discuss the matter with librarian would be 
 given an opportunity to do so at a specified meeting. 
 This was well attended, and it appeared that much 
 of the feeling was due to misunderstanding. It was 
 explained that no new method of making promotions 
 was contemplated, and that personality and efficiency 
 would be taken into account neither more nor less 
 than before, but that the reports from which the 
 librarian derived his information on these points 
 would be required in writing, thus safeguarding both 
 the appointing officer and the appointees. There 
 seemed to be a strong feeling on the part of some 
 that personal feeling might actuate some department 
 head to make a false report, and that while, of course, 
 such report might be made even more effectively if 
 rendered orally, it would be a pity to have it per- 
 manently on record. There was no answer to this ex- 
 cept that the likelihood of such a misleading report 
 would probably become known to the librarian, who 
 could reject or modify it. 
 
 In due course of time, a sufficient number of 
 blanks were distributed, filled and handed in. They 
 were then discussed again at a meeting, and ques- 
 tions that had come up in the practical rendition of 
 the reports were brought up and settled. A filled re- 
 port regarding the work of every classified assistant 
 in this library is, now on file in the librarian's office. 
 
 The conditions under which these reports are 
 made and held are as follows : 
 
 Every question must be answered or the reason 
 for not doing so must be stated.
 
 EFFICIENCY RECOR] 203 
 
 The reports are to be made out regularly od the 
 first of each year, or oftener at the librarian's request. 
 Each is accessible only to the librarian, to the re- 
 porting officer and to the assistant reported on, except 
 when a transfer is to he made, when the head of the 
 department to which the assistant is to be transferred 
 may also consult the record. 
 
 Since the reports were made out only about half 
 a dozen assistants have requested to be shown their 
 records. Some others were allowed to see them he- 
 fore they were handed in. Sueh excitement as there 
 was regarding the matter has now abated, and the 
 matter has been relegated to its proper plane in the 
 scheme of library things. This is due, probably, very 
 largely to the plan of conducting the whole mat- 
 ter on a free and open hasis, in consultation with the 
 staff at every point, and also to the length of time 
 that was allowed to elapse between steps. Publicity 
 and deliberation are the two accessary things in a 
 procedure of this kind, and both are commended to 
 librarians wishing to adopt this kind of record. 
 
 There is no doubt in my mind thai some efficiency 
 record is necessary and valuable, and that a full 
 record, including the usual high percentage of good 
 things with the possible proportion of bad ones, is 
 preferable to a mere blacklist, on which only the 
 bad is recorded. 
 
 The blank, as finally adopted, is reproduced here- 
 with. 
 
 ST. LOUIS PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 Record 01 Efficiency 
 
 Name 
 
 (Inverted, in full) 
 Branch or Department. 
 
 Length of service in dept. or branch. 
 Present grade of assistant. 
 Entered the library
 
 L>04 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 A. Personal qualities. 
 
 1. Physically strong enough for the work? 
 
 How much time lost while in department and why? 
 
 2. Knowledge of books. 
 Improving in this? 
 
 3. All around information? 
 
 4. Appreciation for real literature. 
 
 5. Resourceful? Systematic? 
 
 6. Self-possessed in a rush or emergency? 
 
 7. Executive ability ? Decision ? 
 
 8. Accurate? Quick? Adaptable? 
 
 9. Industrious? Careless? 
 
 io. Obliging to fellow-workers? 
 
 11. Punctual? Times tardy? Excusable? 
 
 12. Forgetful ? Inclined to gossip? 
 
 13. Neat and appropriate in dress? 
 
 B. Relations with the public. 
 
 1. Uniformly courteous? Dignified? 
 
 2. Inclined to entertain personal visitors?. 
 
 3. Effective in work with adults? 
 
 4. Effective in work with children? 
 
 C. Grade as excellent, good, fair, or poor. 
 
 1. Library hand. 
 
 2. Printing. 
 
 3. Typewriting. 
 
 4. Shorthand. 
 
 D. Did the assistant improve while with you? 
 
 In what way? 
 
 In what did she fall short? 
 
 E. If the assistant had weak points, did you call her attention to 
 
 them ? 
 
 F. What did you especially like about the assistant? 
 
 G. Do you consider the assistant fitted or unfitted by personality, 
 
 education and practical efficiency to work in any one of the 
 following departments? Grade her work as excellent, good, 
 fair or poor, stating also length of service at each kind of 
 work. 
 
 I. An all-around branch assistant in this library? 
 
 2. A children's librarian? 
 
 3. A reference department assistant? 
 
 4. A catalog department assistant? 
 
 5. A desk assistant? 
 
 6. A clerical assistant? 
 
 7. An assistant in other lines? (specify) 
 
 If you do not consider the assistant so fitted, give particular 
 reasons. 
 H. Is the assistant loyal to the library? 
 I. Has the assistant enthusiasm in her work? 
 J. Would you be satisfied to have the assistant in your (Branch) 
 
 (Dept.), not considering the fact that you might prefer some 
 
 one else? 
 L. Remarks. 
 
 Signature 
 Date Title
 
 MAL-EMPLOYMENT IX THE LIBRARY* 
 
 Students of the labor problem have given a vast 
 amount of attention to the unemployed, but compar- 
 atively little to the mal-employed. It troubles them 
 — and very properly — that there should be large num- 
 bers of persons who are doing no work, who are con- 
 tributing nothing toward the operation of the world's 
 machinery; they do not seem to be so greatly bothered 
 that there are persons hard at work to no purpose or 
 with evil result — whose efforts either do not help the 
 world along or actually impede it or hold it back. 
 Serious as is the case of those who are not employed 
 at all, it is as nothing compared with those who are 
 employed badly. 
 
 One reason for this neglect — which is at the same 
 time a reason why it should no longer exist — is that 
 the burden of unemployment bears most conspicuously 
 on the individual, while that of mal-employment is 
 predominantly civic. It is true that unemployment 
 works civic injury, and that mal-employment, espe- 
 cially if it be criminal, is recognized at once as a 
 possible harm to the individual. But what I mean 
 is that the unemployed person, unless he is one of 
 the idle rich, is greatly concerned about his lack of 
 employment, which touches his pocket directly. He 
 does all that he can to get back into the ranks of 
 4he employed, but once there it does not occur to 
 him to ask whether what he is doing benefits so- 
 ciety, or is of no value to it. or actually harms it. 
 Even if he does so inquire, he is not likely to give 
 up a job that pays him well simply because what lie 
 
 • Read before the Iowa Library Association.
 
 206 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 is doing is injurious to the world's progress. ,The 
 injury done is social and civic and we must look to 
 increased social and civic consciousness for its abate- 
 ment. 
 
 I owe this word mal-employment, in its contrast- 
 ed use with unemployment, to William Kent, a mem- 
 ber of Congress from the city of Chicago. In a re- 
 cent interview, Mr. Kent gives it as his opinion that 
 the sin of the day is waste — the expenditure of effort 
 for naught or for positive ill. Of course, when we get 
 down to details there is difficulty or even impossibil- 
 ity in deciding whether or not a given man is mal- 
 employed — we may leave out of consideration here all 
 persons engaged in criminal occupations. For in- 
 stance, Mr. Kent considers that the small army of 
 men engaged in the manufacture of champagne are 
 all mal-employed. Whether we agree with him or not 
 depends somewhat on our predispositions and our 
 points of view. Many parents, in earlier days, 
 thought that when children were at play they were 
 mal-employed; most persons now regard this form of 
 employment as necessary and beneficial, although Dr. 
 Boris Sidis thinks that the same interest now em- 
 ployed in aimless play may be used to carry the child 
 onward in the path of individual progress and devel- 
 opment. How about the vast number of persons oc- 
 cupied in amusing or trying to amuse the public — 
 employes of theatres, recreation parks, and so on? 
 Many are well employed; some are doubtless mal- 
 employed. Among persons that we should all agree 
 are mal-employed are all those writing books or plays 
 that are morally harmful, as well as those concerned 
 in publishing such books or producing such plays, 
 and, for the moment, all who are reading or witness- 
 ing them; persons engaged in manufacturing or dis- 
 tributing useless or harmful products; all who do
 
 MAL-EMPLOYMENT IN LIBRARY L'07 
 
 work of any kind so badly that inconvenience or harm 
 results; unnecessary middlemen whose intervention 
 in the process of distribution only impedes it and adds 
 to its expense. Anyone may add to the list by taking 
 thought a little. If all these mal-employed persons 
 should suddenly lose their positions the result would 
 be beneficial to society, even if society had to support 
 them in idleness; if they should all turn their atten- 
 tion from mal-employment to beneficial uses, how in- 
 calculably great a blessing they would bestow upon 
 mankind! It is every man's business, it seems to me, 
 to inquire whether he is well employed or mal-em- 
 ployed, and if the occupation in which he is engaged 
 is generally beneficial to society, then whether all 
 those under his orders are well employed in carrying 
 out its purpose. 
 
 Let us, as librarians, take up this civic task for a 
 few moments. And first, let us not hastily conclude 
 that we are necessarily well employed simply because 
 we are librarians. A library may do harm; I have 
 personally known of harm done by libraries. A group 
 can be no better than its constituents; a collection of 
 harmful books is assuredly itself harmful. More, a 
 chain is no stronger than its weakest link; a fleet is 
 no faster than its slowest ship; and we may almost 
 say that a library is no better than its worst book. 
 And we must not forget that a book may be bad in 
 three ways: it may give incorrect information, teach 
 what is morally wrong, or use language that is unfit- 
 ting, h may be necessary that a library should con- 
 tain any or all of these, but if they give it its atmos- 
 phere and control its influence as an educational insti- 
 tution, even nn wittingly, it is anti-social and those 
 who administer it are mal-employed. I have in mind 
 ;i pseudo-scientific book for children that abounds in 
 misstatements combined with beautiful illustrations;
 
 208 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 :: book of travel full of ludicrous misinformation; a 
 work intended to teach Italians English, whose Eng- 
 lish is screamingly funny. The library assistant who 
 hands one of these to a reader is mal-employed. I 
 can make a list (and so can you) of books that teach, 
 directly or by implication, that what is universally 
 acknowledged to be wrong is right — at least under 
 certain circumstances; that theft is smart and that 
 swindling is unobjectionable. The library assistant 
 who circulates these is mal-employed. All of us can 
 easily also place our hands on books whose only fault 
 is that their language is objectionable— incorrect, 
 silly or vulgar. They may be otherwise unobjection- 
 able, yet I venture to say that the distribution of 
 these books is also mal-employment. How about the 
 librarian who administers such a library, and the 
 staff who assist him? They are all mal-employed. 
 No matter how well and how conscientiously the 
 cataloguer may perform her task, no matter how 
 clean the janitor may keep the front steps, they are 
 only aiding to keep up an institution that dissemin- 
 ates falsehood, teaches unrighteousness, encourages 
 vulgarity; and they are all mal-employed. This is 
 what I mean when I say that a library may be no 
 better than its worst book. If its output is bad, all 
 exertion to accomplish that output is also bad. And 
 as for the output itself, it may be that the good done 
 by a thousand good books may not outweigh the ill 
 done by a few r bad ones. 
 
 A person is always mal-employed when he is leav- 
 ing a more important thing undone, to do a less im- 
 portant one. The degree of mal-employment in this 
 case is measured, of course, by the difference in value 
 between the two things. Mr. E. L. Pearson, in one of 
 his library articles in the Boston Transcript, calls 
 attention to what he names "side-shows' 1 in libraries, 
 and asserts that the chief business of a library, the
 
 MAL-EMPLOYMENT IN LIBRARY 209 
 
 proper care and distribution of books, is often neg- 
 lected that other things may be attended to, and that 
 money Deeded for books is often diverted to these 
 other uses. This is undoubtedly true in many cases, 
 and in so far as it is true some librarians and library 
 assistants are tnal-employed. The scope of library 
 work has broadened out enormously of late and li- 
 braries are doing all soils of things that are sub- 
 sidiary lo their main work — things that will make 
 that work easier and more effective. This is as it, 
 should be, provided that these numerous tails do not 
 wag the dog. To take an extreme instance we will 
 assume that a small library is in great need of books 
 and that a small gift of money, instead of being ex- 
 pended for these is put into material for picture bul- 
 letins. We should have no difficulty in concluding 
 that the person who makes the bulletins is mal-em- 
 ployed; and in so doing we should not be condemning 
 picture bulletins at all or saying that money spent 
 for them is wasted. Take again a case specially noted 
 by Mr. Pearson, which is bothering the heads of some 
 of our library trustees at this moment — the acceptance 
 and preservation of full sets of the printed catalogue 
 cards of the Library of ( 1 ongress. There can be no 
 doubt of tin 4 value of such depository sets to certain 
 libraries, and as they are given free of charge the only 
 expense connected with them is the cost of an assis- 
 tant's time in filing them, amounting perhaps to an 
 hour or two a day, and that of cabinets in which to 
 keep them. Whether this cost is far outweighed by 
 the usefulness of the collection to the library and its 
 patrons, or whether that usefulness is practically nil, 
 making the outlay wasteful, no matter how small it 
 may be, must be answered by each library for itself. 
 In some cases, labor expended on the tiling of L. C. 
 cards is undoubtedly mal-employment 
 
 Certain kinds of work which were either not m i!
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 employment when they were adopted, or were not 
 recognized as such, have become so by reason of a 
 
 age, either in the conditions of the work itself or 
 in the way in which it is regarded by those who are 
 doiug ir and by the public that benefits by it. 
 
 Take, for instance, Labor performed under an age- 
 liinit rule for children, such as nearly all libraries 
 once possessed, and such as is still enforced in some 
 places. If it is true that the library ought not to be 
 used by children below a specified age, work done in 
 ascertaining their ages and in excluding those barred 
 out by the rule is necessary and valuable. If this is 
 not true; if the exclusion of such children may be 
 actually harmful to the community, it follows that 
 all such work is the most flagrant kind of mal-employ- 
 nieiit. 
 
 lint there may also be mal-employment in the 
 course of work of undoubted advantage to the library 
 ami its public. If in the course of such work some- 
 thing is done that sets it back instead of helping it 
 «>n. or that injures the library in some other way more 
 than it helps by what it directly effects, labor expended 
 on that thing is mal-employment. This is a more 
 fundamental and elementary thing than lack of effi- 
 ciency. If an assistant is cataloguing books well, but 
 much more slowly than she ought, she is not efficient- 
 
 nployed, but aeither is she mal-employed, for she 
 is doing nothing that directly injures the work. If 
 she were To stop, the library would be injured, not 
 benefited, lint if she is making egregious blunders 
 in her work, causing undue labor in revision or mak- 
 
 the catalogue confused or misleading in case her 
 cards should get into it, it might be better for the li- 
 
 y if she were to stop work, and she is surely mal- 
 employed. 
 
 The public is apt to gi ' om insufficient
 
 MAL-EMPLOYMENT JN LIBRARY 21] 
 
 data. The user who is treated rude];, or sullenly at 
 the desk just once does not say, "I will make a record 
 of this and of my subsequent experiences and 
 whether it is a usual thing or an abnormal one." Not 
 at all. He or she at once reports in conversation that 
 the public library assistants arc continuously rude 
 and disagreeable, and the machinery is forthwith - 
 in motion that makes or mars reputation. We may 
 chafe at this; we may try to disregard it. but in tin- 
 end we shall have to accept it as a fact of human na- 
 ture. The public institution that wants to acquire 
 that valuable asset, reputation, whether it is a repu- 
 tation for kindliness, for helpfulness, for common 
 sens.-, for scholarly acquirements, will have to make 
 up its mind to be kind, helpful, sensible, and scholar- 
 ly, not fifty per cent or seventy-live per cent of the 
 time, but one hundred per cent of the tine-. 
 
 Hut entirely apart from such serious intervals of 
 mal-employment as this, is it not probable that ail of 
 us are mal-employed for some little part of our time".' 
 Is it not probable, in other words, that our work 
 would he improved if we should omit certain parts 
 of it and do nothing at all instead? It is certain, for 
 one thing, that no one could work continuously, day 
 and night, without serious or fatal mal-employment 
 That is the reason why our working hours are limit- d 
 to seven or eight in the twenty-four. Doubtless some 
 workers are over worked and thus mal-employed in 
 their hours of overwork — the sleepy railroad engineer, 
 for instance, who misses a signal and sends a hundred 
 passengers to eternity. We are doubtless free in the 
 library from just this kind of mal-employment, ex- 
 cept so far as it is forced upon us by assistants who 
 work or play too strenuously outside of working hours. 
 To go hack to the assistant who is - or cat' 
 
 ;ii hour every day: it is quite possible that -
 
 212 L1IJRARY ESSAYS 
 
 in no condition for working during that hour; and 
 this is not because the library hours of work are too 
 long, but because she does not take needed rest out- 
 side of those hours. Sometimes this cannot be helped; 
 often it is distinctly the workers fault, and it is sure- 
 ly putting the library in a false position to make it 
 overwork its staff to their detriment and its own, just 
 because the assistant puts in her best and freshest 
 hours in work, or more often in amusement, outside 
 the library. 
 
 Let me pause here to say that the reason we take 
 vacations is to avoid the chance of this kind of un- 
 employment. The theory of the vacation is widely 
 misunderstood. Some take it to be a period of amuse- 
 ment granted for services rendered. "I think I have 
 earned a vacation," they say. Others look upon it as 
 play-time wrung from an unwilling employer — the 
 more they can get the better off they are. Few real- 
 ize that it is, or ought to be, simply an incident in 
 the year's work, an assignment to special duty, with- 
 out which mal-employment would be more apt to re- 
 sult. 
 
 The mal-employed intervals of an otherwise valu- 
 able worker are often due to ignorance of conditions 
 or sheer inability to meet them. In an interesting 
 study of bricklaying one of the modern school of effi- 
 ciency engineers found that most bricklayers kept 
 their bricks too far from the point on the wall where 
 they were to be laid, and that a long and wasteful 
 carrying movement resulted. If the time occupied by 
 this lost motion could have been eliminated and 
 simply given to resting, even without doing any work, 
 good would have resulted; these x>eriods were hence 
 intervals of mal-employment. The engineer eliminat- 
 ed them easily and simply by bringing the pile of 
 bricks within a few inches of the wall. It is easy to
 
 MAL-EMPLOYMENT IN LIBRARY 213 
 
 say, "Why, of course, any one would think o* that'" 
 only no one ever did think of it A Large proportion 
 
 of the most valuable inventions and discoveries have 
 been of this character. Some one has remarked that 
 hi the earliest stage of an invention people say -It 
 won't work:- later they say, "It may work, but it 
 Won't he of any use." Finally: when it is usefully 
 running, they say. "What of it? Everybody has al- 
 ways known about it!" We don't do these obvious 
 things because they are elements in a scries of acts 
 that have grown to he habitual. We take care of them 
 subconsciously. Also, they take up so little line- in- 
 dividually that at first thought it seems foolish to 
 try to improve or eliminate them. Suppose one does 
 a useless, or even an injurious thin- that lasts hut 
 three seconds? If he does it just once and thru stops 
 it would doubtless he folly to change it. If, however, 
 like the bricklayer's useless and tiresome motions, it 
 is repeated hundreds and thousands of times, the mat- 
 ter stands on quite a different footing. It is prob- 
 able that all of ns are habitually doing certain things 
 in ways that involve, without our realizing it, ele- 
 ments of this kind, either mechanical or mental. 
 Many things that we are doing by laborious repeti- 
 tion, wearying ourselves and using up valuable mate- 
 rial, might be made to "do themselves" if we only 
 knew how to utilize tendencies and forces that are all 
 about us, unsuspected. One of the forces, for in- 
 stance, is the desire of every person to do that which 
 will give him pleasure. If the things we want done 
 can be done in accordance with that desire, we can 
 get others to do them for ns. The classical example 
 of the boys who whitewashed Tom Sawyer's fence for 
 him will occur to all. There is deep philosophy in 
 this. I have known librarians to exhaust themselves 
 by trying to get newspapers to publish what newspa- 
 pers never would publish, while the reporters besiege
 
 2 1 i LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 others for items whicb they know will be just what 
 they want. The rales of some libraries — both those 
 for their public and those for their own assistants 
 —all seem to run up hill— to "rub everyone the wrong 
 way," while those of others seem to get themselves 
 obeyed without any trouble . 
 
 Sometimes the substitution of a mechanical ap- 
 pliance for brain-work is what we want. What, for 
 instance, is the use of tiring one's brain and impair- 
 ing its usefulness for other needed work by forcing 
 it to perform such a mechanical operation as adding 
 a column of figures? Every library that can afford 
 to own an adding machine ought to have one. The 
 ones that can not afford it usually do not need it, 
 
 While we are discussing the lnal-employment that 
 docs its harm by tiring out the worker, physically or 
 mentally, and making him unfit for other work, we 
 must not neglect to say a word about unnecessary 
 talk. Nothing is so tiring to the brain as talk. I 
 sometimes think that if we were all forced to do our 
 work in silence we would get along more rapidly even 
 if we had to communicate with each other in writing. 
 
 If a man were in charge of a piece of complicated 
 machinery, and if he feared that something had got 
 into it to clog it, while his knowledge of its elemen- 
 tary parts was still so slight that he could not tell 
 which particular bit in all the moving mass was help- 
 ing it on and which was hindering it, what would 
 he do? He could remove the pieces, one by one, and 
 watch the effect. If the machine refused to run with- 
 out a certain piece, he would conclude that it was an 
 absolutely necessary part; if it still ran, though with 
 difficulty, he would conclude that the part, though 
 not necessary, still promoted efficient operation; if 
 removal resulted in no change at all, the piece was 
 evidently either an unnecessary part, or an alien piece
 
 MAL-EMPLOYMENT IX LIBBAEY 215 
 
 not so placed as to interfere with action. If the ma- 
 chine worked decidedly better after removal, the re- 
 moved element must, have been a clog— was, in fact, 
 mal-employed. 
 
 How many of us feel like submitting to this test? 
 If yon should stop your work, would the library ma- 
 chine run along quite as usual? Or would ii limp? 
 Or would it refuse to run at all? Or would It— 
 distasteful thought! w«»uid it jump ahead and func- 
 tion with greater speed and smoothness? 
 
 I believe in vacations; and yet 1 rather like to 
 feel that the absence of an assistant on vacation makes 
 a difference. And if every one in her department 
 looks forward with fond expectation to lier return 
 and greets her with looks of satisfaction and sighs of 
 relief, I cannot help feeling that she is a more integral 
 part of the library machinery than if her return were 
 generally regarded with indifference or were dreaded 
 as a sort of calamity. When every one feels that she 
 can work much better when Miss Blank is away, I 
 am forced to inquire whether in truth .Miss Blank is 
 not a clog in the wheels instead of a cog, and whether 
 a permanent vacation would not be the proper thing 
 for her. 
 
 And how about your library as a whole? Suppose 
 it should be leveled by a tornado, or swallowed up by 
 an earthquake, or swept away by ;i flood? What ef- 
 fect would this have on the life of your town? Would 
 the passer-by point to the ruins, or to tin' In le in the 
 ground where once your library stood, with the sum,' 
 kind and amount of interest that he would show 
 when viewing the stump of an old tree or the frag- 
 ments of a blasted boulder? Or would i'm^vy man, wo- 
 man and child led the loss? Would th 
 in vain for aid, the merchants for information, 
 workmen for data of use to them in their daily task
 
 216 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 In other words, is your library of such definite 
 use in the community that it would feel your loss as 
 it would that of a school house, a church, the railroad 
 station, the principal retail store? Or would its loss 
 affect thai community only like the destruction of the 
 monument on the green, or the fence around Deacon 
 Jones' pasture? 
 
 If we are to make the library a vital influence in 
 the community ,we must so conduct it that its loss 
 would be felt as a calamity — that it could be spared 
 no more than the postoffice could be spared, or the 
 doctor, or the school. And we must do our best so to 
 carry "on every part of its work, every element that 
 goes to make up its service to the public, that this 
 part or element is contributing toward that service 
 and not injuring it or delaying it. It is better for 
 the community that we should be unemployed than 
 mal-employed, and if the community should ever find 
 out that we are the latter, we may be assured that un- 
 employment will shortly be our condition, whether 
 we like it or not.
 
 COST OF ADMINISTRATION* 
 
 The possibility of deducing a general method for cal- 
 culating the probable cost of operation of n library. 
 
 The problem of ascertaining how the cost of ad- 
 ministration of a library is related to the various con- 
 ditions and factors that affect it is the problem of 
 finding a formula in which, by simple substitution 
 of numbers representing or corresponding to these 
 conditions, a reasonable or approximate cost may be 
 obtained. The data obtainable are the conditions 
 and actual cost in a limited number of cases. The 
 obstacles are the difficulty of stating certain of the 
 conditions numerically and the difficulty of deciding 
 on the form of the formula, which must be done in 
 advance. 
 
 We must first agree, of course, that the legitimate 
 cost of administration of a library should bear some 
 relation to its conditions of work. Probably no one 
 would quarrel with this, but the first thought of one 
 who considers the subject is generally that a large 
 number of the conditions could, by their very nature, 
 not be susceptible of numerical statement. Such fac- 
 tors as size of circulation, number of cardholders, 
 size of building, and so on, may be stated directly in 
 figures, and many such influence the cost of adminis- 
 tration; but how, for instance, shall be stated numer- 
 ically the character of the locality — whether foreign 
 or native-born, wealthy or poor, etc., which ;ilso in- 
 dubitably affects the cost? In this particular case 
 this factor exerts its influence through others that 
 
 * Report to the American Library Institute.
 
 218 LI BRAKY ESSAYS 
 
 may be numerically stated. So far us it necessitates 
 purchase of foreign books, a foreign population acts 
 to increase cost; so far as the demand for certain 
 classes of books is concerned, cost might be increased 
 or decreased; but size of book collections and circula- 
 tion arc both numerically determinable. It is pos- 
 sible that all conditions which would seem at first 
 sight not to be numerical might reduce in this way, 
 to various numerical factors. Kegarding the form of 
 the function to be used for the formula, mathema- 
 ticians tell me that its determination might prove a 
 great obstacle. Personally, it seems to me that it is 
 probably ''linear," that is, involving only the first 
 powers of the quantities concerned, never their 
 squares, cubes, etc. Thns, all other things being 
 equal, increase of book collection increase of circula- 
 tion, increase of staff, etc., would approximately nieau 
 increase of cost in direct proportion; or, at any rate, 
 not in any way involving powers above the first, I 
 should try at the outset therefore, a simple linear 
 formula, such as 
 
 Ax plus By plus C: plus Du equals K 
 
 in winch ./• might be circulation, y number of books, 
 z number in the staff, u cubic feet in the building, 
 and so on. It would then be required to find values 
 for A, B, C, D, etc. This would require, of course, 
 as many equations as there are of these coefficients. 
 To get each equation we select a library that we are 
 willing to accept as being conservatively and proper- 
 ly operated, and substitute for ./•, y, etc., its reported 
 circulation, number of books, and so on, putting in 
 place of K its total cost of administration. Solution 
 of this system of equations gives the coefficients, A, 
 B, C, etc., and furnishes the working formula re- 
 quired. Thereafter when we wish to see whether a li- 
 brary is run as conservatively as the typical ones se-
 
 cost OF ADMINISTRATION 211) 
 
 lected, its statistics would be used to substitute for 
 •/•, //. :. etc., and the value of R thus obtained would 
 be compared with the actual cost. 
 
 The labor of reducing the system of equations 
 would depend on their number, which must equal 
 that of the conditions. This would doubtless be great 
 — possibly twenty or twenty-five, but the work 
 amounts simply to doing a great deal of figuring. 
 
 I believe that this thing is worth trying, and I in- 
 tend to try it myself as soon as I can secure the tieces- 
 sary help in doing the work of figuring, which in any 
 <-ase would not be nearly as great as that done to cal- 
 culate a comet's orbit. Physicists and astronomers arc 
 daily doing work of this kind, and doing it. too. on 
 subjects regarding which there is quite as much rea- 
 son to doubt the applicability of the method as in the 
 present case. Why not try it? It admits of satis- 
 factory "proving," for if applied to two groups of li- 
 braries with absurdly different results, it would at 
 once be shown to l»e faulty as so applied. 
 
 I believe that we librarians use the experimental 
 method too infrequently. When it is proposed to 
 make some change <>r other, 1 constantly hear the ob- 
 jection, "That wouldn't result at all as you expect; 
 it would do so-and-so." But why not try it? Try it 
 and see what happens. That is the only real test. 
 Of course, if trying will cost a large sum. or involve 
 some serious risk, we must count the cost, but in 
 nine cases out of ten nothing is involved hut a little 
 extra work. 
 
 In this case we are toying our experiments daily 
 — we can't help it. We have libraries running under 
 all kinds of conditions and we have statistical reports 
 of those conditions and of the resulting cost. It is 
 surely worth while to see if we can not connect these 
 costs and these conditions in some useful wav.
 
 220 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 I venture to close with a parable. At a national 
 meeting of civil engineers there was a discussion of 
 the advisability— and possibility— of ascertaining the 
 exact distance between New York and Chicago. In 
 the course of the discussion it appeared that numer- 
 ous measurements had already been made for various 
 purposes by different parties and under divers condi- 
 tions. No two of the results agreed precisely. It 
 was suggested by a speaker that some method of com- 
 bining the results might be found so as to arrive at 
 a practical working estimate of the distance. Objec- 
 tion was at once made by various members. To many 
 the very idea of such a proposal seemed a bit of 
 pleasantry, and they greeted it with smiles. One 
 speaker poked fun at the idea of treating so practi- 
 cal a question by abstract mathematical methods. 
 Another pointed out that the measurements had been 
 made with various objects in view; some for railroad 
 purposes, others by government topographers ; that in- 
 struments of varying makes had been employed and 
 that the surveyors possessed differing grades of abil- 
 ity. He did not see, therefore, how there was any 
 possibility of taking all these into account. Still 
 another thought that the best way to get at the real 
 distance was to send out a questionnaire to persons 
 who had traveled from New York to Chicago and find 
 out their opinions. 
 
 It seemed to be the consensus of belief that we 
 should never ascertain the exact distance from New 
 York to Chicago, and that it was extremely doubtful 
 Whether there really was any such distance. Prob- 
 ably it varied from time to time, which would ac- 
 count for the varying measurements. 
 
 Is it conceivable that engineers would ever talk 
 in this way? It is not. 
 
 But we have all heard librarians do so. Why?
 
 LIBRARY CIRCULATION AT LONG RANGE 
 
 Is there still a place for the delivery station in 
 the scheme of distribution adopted by libraries, large 
 or small? This question is pertinent not so much 
 because the use of the delivery station is being dis- 
 continued, but because of a general feeling that any 
 system of book distribution that dors not admit of 
 seeing and handling the books is interior to a sys- 
 tem in which this is possible. 
 
 It will thus be noted that the question of the de- 
 livery station pure and simple, as opposed to the de- 
 posit station and the branch — a question once hotly 
 debated — is at bottom simply that of the closed shelf 
 versus the open shelf. The branch has won out as 
 against the delivery station, and the open as against 
 the closed shelf. It will also be noted, however, that 
 none but small libraries find it good policy to place 
 all their books on open shelves. There is and always 
 will be a use for the closed shelf in its place, and the 
 larger the library the more obvious does that place 
 become. 
 
 Now circulation through a delivery station is 
 nothing but long-distance closed-shelf issue — circu- 
 lation in which the distance between eharging-desk 
 and stack has been greatly multiplied. And a legiti- 
 mate reason for closed-shelf issue of this kind is that 
 it is carried on under conditions where open-shelf 
 issne is impossible — about the only excuse for the 
 closed shelf in any case. Now no matter how many 
 books may be in branches or in deposit stations, it is 
 obviously impossible for the whole central stock to
 
 222 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 be at any one of them, still less to be at all of them 
 at the same time. And there are cases where it is im- 
 practicable to use any deposit at all, while delivery 
 from the central library is feasible and reasonably 
 satisfactory. There will always continue to be, there- 
 fore, some circulation from a distant reservoir of 
 books that cannot be seen and handled by the reader 
 for purposes of selection. 
 
 Under these circumstances it is interesting to in- 
 quire whether this type of service has any good points 
 to offset its obvious disadvantages; and it is consoling 
 to find that there are such — not enough to cause us 
 to select an unsupported delivery station deliberately 
 where a deposit or a branch would be possible, but 
 enough to satisfy us that a delivery station is worth 
 while if we can use nothing better and to induce us 
 to lay stress, if we can, on the particular features 
 that make it satisfactory. 
 
 For myself, after three years in a library with a 
 large station system, following an experience in insti- 
 tutions where there was nothing of the kind, I may 
 say that it has gratified and surprised me to find that 
 personal contact between librarian and reader is pos- 
 sible in such a system, to almost the same extent as 
 in an open-shelf library, although the * contact is of 
 quite a different quality. The quality of the contact 
 is related to that possible with the open-shelf pre- 
 cisely as mental contact by letter writing is always 
 related to that by conversation. It is superior, if any- 
 thing, to that usually obtained in short-distance 
 closed-shelf circulation, although possibly not to that 
 obtainable under ideal conditions. 
 
 The establishment of more or less personal rela- 
 tions of confidence between library assistant and 
 reader takes longer and is less complete when the 
 sole intermediary is written language. It is alwavs
 
 LIBRARY CIRCULATION 223 
 
 harder and requires more time to become intimate by 
 letter than by personal intercourse. In the former 
 case the contact is purely mental, in the latter it is 
 affected by personal appearance and conduct, by 
 facial expression and manner. All this is one of the 
 chief factors in the success of the open shelf. But 
 the advantages are not all on the side of the direct 
 persona] contact, as the correspondence schools have 
 been astute enough to find out. In tin- first place, 
 litera scripta manetj one may read the same written 
 communication several times, whereas the same 
 spoken communication is of and for the moment. 
 Then the very fact that the written message is purely 
 intellectual and has no physical accompaniments 
 may lend force to its intellectual appeal, when that 
 appeal has once gained a foothold. When this is the 
 ease the writer may take his time and may plan his 
 campaign of influence more carefully than the speak- 
 er. The effect of trivial circumstances, of unfavorable 
 persona] elements, of momentary moods, is obviated. 
 It may he, then, thai if personal relations between 
 librarian and reader can he set up through the writ- 
 ten word, there may he something of this kind even 
 in long-distance, closed-shelf circulation. This rela- 
 tion may be lacking, even when the circulation is at 
 short range. It is usually lacking at the closed-shelf 
 delivery desk, necessarily so in a rush, although at 
 quieter times there is no good reason why it should 
 not exist. I know that it sometimes does exist under 
 these conditions, though a counter between two hu- 
 man beings, whether in a store, an office or a library, 
 is not conducive to relations of confidence. It may 
 even he lacking in the open-shelf room, when assis- 
 tants on Moor duty have not the proper spirit and a 
 due conception of their own responsibilities and op- 
 portunities.
 
 224 LIRRARY ESSAYS 
 
 It may exist at long range. Rut does it? I can 
 answer for only one library; but I have no reason to 
 believe that our experience is by any means excep- 
 tional. Here are some instances, reported at my re- 
 quest from our own Station Department by Miss 
 Elsie Miller, the department chief : 
 
 " (1) A short time ago one of the patrons of Sta- 
 tion 27 sent in a slip asking to have his book renewed, 
 and requested that we send him information on peace 
 conferences. The latter was duly sent, but through 
 some error the renewal was overlooked. Consequent- 
 ly six days later an overdue postal was mailed. This 
 gentleman is always quite prompt in returning his 
 books, and evidently had never before received a no- 
 tice. So he was most perturbed, and wrote us a very 
 long letter explaining the mistake. He said that he 
 felt that the librarian should know that he was not 
 at fault, had not broken the rules, and had a clear 
 record. But in imparting this fact to the librarian, 
 he wanted it understood that the assistant committing 
 the error should not in any way be punished for it, 
 because she had helped him greatly in his work, by 
 sending the very facts on peace conferences that he 
 w;is looking for. He asked that the assistant be 
 praised for her good work rather than blamed for her 
 error. 
 
 " (2) Celia R , whom we have never seen but 
 
 all feel well acquainted with, tried in vain for some 
 time to borrow a certain little volume of Eskimo 
 stories, but succeeded only in getting substitutes. 
 About the middle of December she sent in with her 
 eard the following request: 'Please give me "Eskimo 
 stories," because it is Christmas and you never send 
 the right book.' 
 
 " (3) The cards of Mr. and Mrs. M , of Sta- 
 
 ton 54, come in with a slip, 'Please send a novel.' We
 
 LIBRARY CIRCULATION 225 
 
 know that the books musl be 7-day adventure stories, 
 and must have publishers' binding and an interesting 
 
 frontispiece or they will come back to us on the next 
 delivery unread. 
 
 " (4) At least one of the S family's cards is 
 
 reported lost each week. We immediately recognize 
 
 Mrs. S 's voice when she telephones, and ask 
 
 whether it is Ralph's or Walter's card that is missing 
 this time. In a tone of despair she probably says, 
 'No; it is Morris's.' We promise to look the matter 
 up thoroughly. Then we do no more about it. After 
 two days we call up and tell her we are xrvy sorry 
 Ave have been unable to trace the card. 'Oh, we've 
 found it here at home; thank yon so much for your 
 trouble,' siie answers. 'And, by the way, we have not 
 been able to find Nicholas' card all day. ' So we look 
 
 up Nicholas' card iu the same way. No S card 
 
 was ever known to be lost outside of the S house- 
 hold. 
 
 " (5) C39 of Station 6 has this note clipped to her 
 readers' index: 'Give overdue notices to Stations De- 
 partment.' We hold her notices a few days to give 
 tin' books a chance to come in, because she uses a. bi- 
 weekly station. Each time that she receives an over- 
 due notice, it costs her ten cents carfare to come to 
 the library to investigate, and it costs the library a 
 half hour of an assistant's time to pacify her. Our 
 new method works beautifully, and both library and 
 reader find it economical. 
 
 " (6) An old gentleman of Station 15 (at least we 
 have pictured him as old, for it is a trembling hand 
 that writes the titles) for a long time sent in a long 
 list of German novels which we marked, 'Not in cat- 
 alog: ' We were out of printed German lists at the 
 time, so selected a good German novel and sent it. to 
 him. It was immediately returned. We tried again
 
 226 LI BRAKY ESSAYS 
 
 — in vain. Then again! We sent liim everything 
 that the average German finds intensely interesting. 
 But the hooks always came back to us on the next 
 delivery. One day we substituted Mm Busch,' by Ger- 
 staecker. Be kept it two weeks, and then his card 
 came in with a list of Gerstaecker novels, copied from 
 the title-page of "Im Busch." He read all our Ger- 
 staecker books and then wanted more. We wrote him 
 that he had read all tin 1 books of this author and again 
 substituted. Then a fresh list of Gerstaecker came 
 in, and now he is reading all those hooks a second 
 time. 
 
 " (7) One of the station men watches our substi- 
 tutions and looks over them to get ideas for his own 
 reading. Once when we had substituted Leroux's 
 'Mystery of the yellow room' the station man ordered 
 a copy of that, book for himself, and finding it inter- 
 esting read all the Leroux books in the library. 
 
 " (8) Here is a letter from a youthful station 
 patron : 
 
 " 'Please send me the III Grade, The golden goose 
 hook ! Please do. Kisses. 
 
 xxx. 1 ' 
 
 These incidents, which of course might be multi- 
 plied indefinitely, show at least that the service ren- 
 dered by a delivery station is not, or at any rate need 
 not be, a mere mechanical sending of hooks in answer 
 to a written demand. 
 
 So much for the element of personal contact and 
 influence. Next let us consider for a moment that 
 of actual contact with the books from which selection 
 can be made. This of course does not take place in 
 any closed-shelf system — least of all in one at long 
 range, lint in certain cases this contact is of no spe- 
 cial advantage. In particular, if a reader wants one
 
 LIBRARY CIRCULATION 
 
 definite book and oo other, he may get it as bui 
 or be informed as reliably that he cannol get ir, and 
 why, at a delivery station as at a set of open shelves. 
 The only drawback in "long-range" work is that the 
 user must wait longer before lie can get his book, pro- 
 vided it is (»n the shelves. Against this wait must be 
 set the time and cost of a personal visit to the dis- 
 tant library building. 
 
 Of the "browsing'' contact there can lie none, of 
 course. This seems n more serious matter to me than 
 it would be to those who deprecate "browsing," or at 
 any pate discourage it. But there is no question that 
 the alternative between library and delivery station, 
 if squarely presented, should always he answered by 
 choosing the library. Here the alternative is between 
 the delivery station and no use at all. This brings 
 n\i another point : 
 
 May it not he, in some cases, that we really are 
 offering the reader an alternative between delivery 
 station and library and that through indolence he 
 takes the former? Doubtless this is often the case, 
 and it. should not be so. The location of every delivery 
 station should be studied from this standpoint, and 
 its continuance should be made a matter of serious 
 question. When all is said and done, there will re- 
 main some stations where a minority of users would 
 go to the library if the station were discontinued, and 
 would be benefited thereby at the expense of a little 
 more exertion. The fact that there are some real ad- 
 vantages in long-range circulation should enable the 
 librarian, in such a case, to strike some kind of a bal- 
 ance, satisfy himself that this particular station is or 
 is not of resultant benefit to the community, and act 
 accordingly, it is also possible, in some cases, to com- 
 bine the deposit feature with the delivery station.
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 •aid it goes without saying that this should be done 
 just as the delivery feature should be added to every 
 deposit and every branch, where it is feasible. 
 
 Finally, the long range circulation may be adapted 
 to the use of the busy by enabling them to kill two 
 birds with one stone. Libraries are always trying, 
 with doubtful success, to get hold of persons who are 
 busy about something else — factory workers, shop- 
 pers, and so on. A residential district is a better 
 place for a branch library than a shopping district, 
 although the number of different persons who pass 
 the door daily is larger in the latter, because there is 
 more leisure in the residence street — less preoccupa- 
 tion and bustle. But if it is made possible for the 
 shopper to use the library with practically no delay, 
 while he is shopping, will he not take advantage of the 
 opportunity? A recent experiment in the St. Louis 
 Public Library convinces me that he will. We are 
 now operating a downtown branch in the book de- 
 partment of a large department store, and we have 
 an hourly messenger service between the library and 
 this station. I believe this is the first time that such 
 frequent delivery service has been tried. This makes 
 it possible to leave an order at the beginning of a 
 shopping trip and to find the book ready at the close 
 of the trip. The interval would never be much over 
 an hour, and might be as little as fifteen or twenty 
 minutes. 
 
 There are two favorable factors here which it 
 might be difficult to secure elsewhere: The shopping 
 district here is near enough to the central library to 
 make frequent delivery possible, and the management 
 of the store where our station is located is broad 
 enough to see that the possibility of borrowing a book 
 free, from the library, even when presented as an im- 
 mediate alternative to the purchase of the same book
 
 LIBRARY CIRCULATION 229 
 
 from the counters of the store, does not, in the long 
 run, injure sales. 
 
 It is not absolutely necessary, of course, to operate 
 this scheme from a department store, neither is great- 
 er distance an absolute bar to frequent deliveries. I 
 believe that this kind of long-distance service is well 
 worth the attention of librarians. 
 
 And, in general, I believe that a realization that 
 all long-distance service has its good points may do 
 good by inducing US to dwell on those points and to 
 try to make them of more influence in our work.
 
 CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION IN LIBRARY 
 SYSTEMS* 
 
 At bottom, a departmental system in a large insti- 
 tution is simply an outcome of the fact that its head 
 requires aid in administration. At first, perhaps, he 
 can actually do everything with his own hand; next 
 he requires helpers, but he can oversee them all ; final- 
 ly, he must have overseers, who are the only ones with 
 whom he deals directly and for whom he naturally 
 classifies the work and divides it among them accord- 
 ingly. This is not merely a symbolical or fanciful 
 account of such a development. There are plenty of 
 heads of institutions, educational, commercial and in- 
 dustrial, who have personally seen every stage of it 
 
 who are now administering a complicated system of 
 departments where they once did everything them- 
 selves. In particular, there are now librarians, at the 
 head of great Libraries, who began library work by 
 performing, or at least overseeing directly, the ele- 
 mentary acts of which library operation may be taken 
 to consist, and who have watched such a simple sys- 
 tem of superintendence develop year by year into 
 something complex. 
 
 Such a development, as I have said, is naturally 
 based on some kind of classification. If one could sit 
 down and, foreseeing the growth of his institution for 
 years to come, settle upon the way in which that 
 growth should be cared for, his classification might 
 possibly be more logical and workable than most 
 classifications now are. The best of them are woful- 
 ly imperfect, as no one knows better than we libra- 
 
 coa!erencer f May tl 2S, "m"? ^^ ° f bran ° h ,ibraries at the Washington
 
 232 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 rians. And when division into classes proceeds pari 
 passu with growth, we are necessarily bothered with 
 that troublesome tiling — cross-classification. As our 
 institution grows, one direction of growth and a cor- 
 responding set of conditions and needs conies into 
 the foreground after another, and our basis of classi- 
 fication is apt to change accordingly. 
 
 In the library, for instance, territorial expansion 
 has frequently claimed the right of way. It has been 
 evident that wide regions within the municipality 
 were not reached by the library's activities; hence the 
 establishment of branches — practically classification 
 on a regional or territorial basis. Next, perhaps, some 
 other need is pushed forward — say, the necessity for 
 special care given to the children of the community. 
 Here is a non-territorial basis for classification, 
 founded only upon the age of the library's users, 
 These are not classes and sub-classes, but are entirely 
 different primary systems of classification, whose di- 
 viding lines cross and do not run parallel. A man 
 who should sit down and try to evolve, at first hand, 
 some sort of classification of library work, might 
 adopt one or the other, but not both. In one case he 
 might divide his city into districts, with district su- 
 perintendents and local librarians under each; in the 
 other, he might divide his users by ages and tastes 
 and have a superintendent for each. In neither case 
 would there be cross-classification, with its over-lap- 
 ping classes and consequent interferences of jurisdic- 
 tion. 
 
 But this is not the way that things work out. The 
 librarian finds it necessary to have his geographical 
 subdivisions and also those based on age, and he 
 adopts others also as they appear desirable, without 
 much regard for the logic of classification. If he does 
 take it into account, he feels that the troubles result-
 
 LIBRARY JURISDICTION 233 
 
 ing from conflicts of jurisdiction will be more easily 
 dealt with than those consequent upon a refusal to 
 respond to the present demands of the work. Also— 
 and this is an important factor— conflicts of juris- 
 diction, no matter how inevitable, are in the future, 
 and the present demands of the work look vastly 
 large* and press with insistence. Is there any wonder 
 that he does what lies immediately before aim and 
 lets the future take care of itself? 
 
 Unfortunately, the future always does take rare 
 of itself very well indeed, and presents itself to de- 
 mand a reckoning at the appointed time. The library, 
 for instance, that has its branches for different regions 
 -and its children's room in each .u'ets along well enough 
 so long as its cross-classification of work exists only 
 on paper. Hut the time comes when departmental 
 organization must begin, and this must be based on 
 the classification. There may be a superintendent of 
 branches and ;i superintendent of children's work, or 
 the branch librarians may report to the librarian 
 directly, or there may be other dispositions with other 
 duties and names. In any ease, a children's room at 
 a branch library necessarily finds itself in two depart- 
 ments, under two jurisdictions and under two heads. 
 If the branch librarian and the children's superin- 
 tendent are both yielding in disposition, the librarian 
 may never have the conflict of jurisdiction brought to 
 his attention. If either is yielding while the other is 
 masterful, there will also be no trouble. In one case 
 the branch librarian will run the adult end of her 
 branch and leave the other to the children's depart- 
 ment; in the other there will be one branch, at least, 
 where the children's supervisor has little to say — a 
 condition of things that may be tolerated, but is sure- 
 ly undesirable. But suppose that both heads are con- 
 scientious, assertive and anxious to push the work.
 
 234 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 fond of organizing administrative details and impa- 
 tient of interference. Here we have the possibilities 
 of trouble at once. 
 
 The first rumblings of the storm come usually in 
 the form of complaints of interference, on the one 
 side or the other. Then we have a demand from both 
 sides for a definition of their respective rights and 
 responsibilities. The librarian is asked, for instance, 
 in just what respects the children's librarian shall 
 take her orders from the branch librarian and in what 
 from the supervisor. This is a good deal like peti- 
 tioning the legislature to pass a law specifying- exactly 
 when a child shall obey his father and when the mayor 
 of the city. The librarian who enters on this plaus- 
 ible path will sooner or later be lost in the jungle. 
 He has only himself to thank. Either he or his pre- 
 decessor started the game and he must play it out to 
 the end. We librarians are all responsible for each 
 other's faults. Let us see how he may play it. 
 
 In the first place, his is the power. What is done 
 in any department is done by his orders or by the or- 
 ders of some one endowed by him with authority to 
 give orders. He has given two persons authority over 
 the same field at one point, and it is his business to 
 straighten things out. Here are some possible ways: 
 
 1. The authority of one head may be absolutelv 
 extinguished in the field where conflict exists. Here 
 we have legalized the state of things described above 
 as existing with a combination of one spineless de- 
 partment-head and one very spiny one. It works, but 
 at the expense of everything that tends to the effi- 
 ciency of the extinguished authority, and I do not 
 recommend it. 
 
 2. An attempt may be made, as noted above, to 
 draw a line between the two spheres of authority and 
 keep each in its place. This appeals to those who are
 
 LIBRARY JURISDICTION 235 
 
 fond of detail, for it can be done only by considering 
 and ticketing details. A line, denned by some one 
 
 clear principle, cannot be drawn in a field <»f this kind 
 between two things both of which logically cover that 
 field. It is logical that the children's librarian in a 
 branch should be wholly under the authority of the 
 branch librarian, since she is a branch employe like 
 the others. It is just as Logical thai she should be 
 wholly under the authority of the supervisor, of 
 whose department she is a part, If we are to define 
 the things in which she is to obey the one and the 
 other, they must be enumerated one by one. And then 
 other things will turn up that have not been thus 
 enumerated, and we are in trouble again. This plan, 
 as I have said, appeals to those who revel in regula- 
 tions and specifications, but I can recommend it no 
 more than the other. 
 
 3. One department may formally and distinctly 
 be set above the other. Or, what is the same thing, 
 the librarian may resolve, when a conflict arises, al- 
 ways to decide the matter in favor of one particular 
 department. This means, in the special case that we 
 have been using as an illustration, either that the 
 children's department shall be allowed to do nothing 
 in a branch library without the consent of the branch 
 librarian, or of the supervisor of branches, if there 
 is one; or that all questions involving the administra- 
 tion of a branch children's room must depend ul- 
 timately on the chief of the children's department. 
 
 This may seem to be the same as the plan by which 
 the authority of oik 1 department is absolutely done 
 away in the disputed sphere. It is of the same type, 
 but not so drastic. In the other plan one has not 
 authority to do anything; in this, one must ask per- 
 mission — not the same thing by any means. This 
 plan is practically in effect at some libraries; it
 
 236 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 would probably be regarded as equitable by most de- 
 partment heads — provided their own department 
 were put ahead of the other. The trouble is that it 
 involves an arbitrary subordination — one that does 
 not exist in the nature of the classification. And 
 this subordination is local and partial ; it cannot 
 hold good for the whole department. No one would 
 think of placing the branch department, as a whole, 
 under the children's department, or vice versa. And 
 the objections, although not so strong as those to the 
 extinguishment plan, are of the same kind. The ef- 
 ficiency of one department or the other is bound to 
 suffer, and for this reason I do not consider this the 
 best plan. 
 
 4. All department heads in conflicting spheres, 
 may be regarded simply as advisers of the librarian 
 and not as possessing authority in themselves to give 
 orders. A conflict is thus reduced to contradictory 
 advice from two sources. The librarian then pursues 
 whatever course seems good to him. This plan has 
 attractive features, especially to administrators of 
 the type that like to keep a finger in every pie. There 
 is doubtless danger in aloofness. The librarian must 
 know what is going on, but I see no advantage in re- 
 quiring him to decide questions of trivial detail at 
 frequent intervals, as he must do under this plan ; for 
 conflicts generally begin in questions of detail and it 
 is at the beginning or even earlier, in anticipation, 
 that they must be caught and adjusted. This plan 
 works, but it reduces the department head to a con- 
 sulting expert and burdens the librarian with detail. 
 It does not appeal to me at all. 
 
 5. The two conflicting departments may co- 
 operate, intelligently and courteously without sacri- 
 fice of authority or self -respect, under the advice and 
 orders of the librarian.
 
 LIBBABY JUBISDICTIOH 237 
 
 This is the plan that I recommend. It is the 
 most difficult of all, and no regulations <>r specifica- 
 tions can be formulated for carrying it out. For this 
 reason it will never be widely in favor. A wicked 
 
 and rebellious generation demands a sign, and in this 
 plan there is neither sign nor formula except that 
 general prinicple of helpfulness and willingness to 
 place the common whole above the selfish part that 
 is at the antipodes of both wickedness and rebellion. 
 It is a personal matter and it adds one important 
 qualification to those already accessary in depart- 
 ment heads — the ability to do team work. This quali- 
 fication, however, is so important, quite apart from 
 its necessity in connection with this plan, that we may 
 consider it an advantage, rather than otherwise, that 
 the plan puts it forward and insists upon it. On the 
 whole I think that a library witli mediocre depart- 
 ment heads having this qualification is better 
 manned, and will do more satisfactory work than one 
 with a staff of supremely able experts, cranky, self- 
 centered and all pulling different ways. The efforts 
 of members of a body like a library staff are not to be 
 measured arithmetically — they are what mathemati- 
 cians call "vectors" — directed quantities, like force, 
 velocity or acceleration. To know where a man will 
 bring up one must have not only his speed, but its 
 direction. The sum of two equal forces may be any- 
 thing from zero up to their double, depending on their 
 relative directions, and if the sum is zero, no matter 
 how large the components may be, the result is pre- 
 cisely the same as if those components are small, or 
 as if neither existed. It is this sort of thing that an 
 eminent employer of labor had in mind when he ad- 
 vised, "If two of your subordinates don't get along 
 together, discharge both of them, no matter how good 
 they are." In this man's estimation the relative
 
 238 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 value of team work evidently stands pretty high. I 
 should not follow ids advice, however, without giving 
 everyone a fair chance. I have known the opinions 
 of one department head about another and their 
 ability to work together to improve greatly on ac- 
 quaintance. 
 
 The part necessarily played by the librarian in 
 this scheme may be regarded by some as an objection. 
 1 have already referred to administrators who, like 
 the late Czar of Russia, prefer to regulate all the de- 
 tails of the kingdom by personal supervision. There 
 is also the precisely opposite type, who like to make 
 ■a good machine, set it going, and then let it alone. 
 The trouble is that machines will not run of them- 
 selves. They need oversight, oiling, cleaning and re- 
 pairing. The best require a minimum of all this, but 
 all must have some of it. Aud such machinery as 
 there is in this plan requires a maximum of over- 
 sight. It is, however, not the control of details but 
 rather the watching of general methods and results. 
 Is everything running smoothly, without "lost mo- 
 tion'' or "backlash," and turning out a satisfactory 
 finished product? If not, can the trouble be located? 
 Yes; these two cogs do not work smoothly together. 
 Let us find out which is at fault and adjust or re- 
 place it; but if our investigation is fruitless, possibly 
 the best plan is to discard both. 
 
 I trust I have misled no one by treating here 
 specifically of two departments. I might have substi- 
 tuted the names of a dozen others. All through 
 library administration, and especially in the admin- 
 istration of a system of branch libraries, these possi- 
 bilities of conflict occur. In branches they are gener- 
 ally between the branch administration and the cen- 
 tral departments — finance, supplies, cataloging, hook- 
 orders, reference and circulation.
 
 LIBRARY JURISDICTION 239 
 
 The handling of this whole mutter depends, of 
 course, on the librarian. II" it must be who is to de- 
 cide on general policies or go to his Board for a de- 
 cision in eases so important that he feels their ac- 
 tion necessary. If the work of departments overlaps 
 in some field where the library's policy has not yet 
 been decided upon and defined, lie has no one to 
 blame hut himself if the adjustment is difficult. And 
 if policies are defined in advance ami pains taken to 
 hiform department heads thoroughly of their ex- 
 istence and import, the likelihood of serious disagree- 
 ment will be considerably lessened. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, also, that the success 
 of any plan may be increased or diminished by skill, 
 or lack of skill, in handling it. 
 
 I am confident that any of the plans about 
 which J have spoken unfavorably above would work 
 better under a good librarian than the best would 
 work under a bad one. But I forget myself; we li- 
 brarians are like Kentucky whiskey— some are bet- 
 ter than others, but there are no bad ones!
 
 THREE KINDS OF LIBRARIANS* 
 
 The human eye is so constituted that it can 
 see clearly but a small part of the field of vision at 
 one time. We have Learned by habit to move it 
 about quickly ;ni<l comprehensively, so that unless 
 our attention is called to the fact we do not realize 
 this limitation; but it exists. In like manner, it is 
 difficult for the human mind to take a comprehensive 
 view of a subject. We are apt to fix upon some one 
 feature and ignore the rest. In recent times we have 
 been devoting our attention to the personal element. 
 We talk about the "man behind the gun" a good deal. 
 I would not underrate him or what he can do; but it 
 is surely necessary to have the gun itself before the 
 man behind it can be effective. In fact, the man per 
 se is about the most helpless of animals. His super- 
 iority to the mere brute lies iii liis ability to use tools; 
 his inferiority in the fact that he can do almost noth- 
 ing without them. A man with a gun is indeed for- 
 midable; a wildcat can do nothing with such a tool, 
 but then he is reasonably formidable without it. I 
 have yielded thus to the temptation to depreciate the 
 personal (dement, somewhat, at the beginning of an 
 address in which it is to be discussed, because this 
 defect of the human mind, that tends to fix it upon 
 one feature to the exclusion of others, has of late ap- 
 parently led many to think that a man is valuable in 
 himself and by himself, without anything to work 
 with or anything to work on. 
 
 A man is making a failure of his job; the first 
 
 •Read before the Missouri Library Association, Sedalia. No 
 18. 1914.
 
 242 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 thought is that he must be replaced. Nine persons 
 out of ten fail to inquire whether anyone at all could 
 have succeeded under the same conditions. Your 
 cook prepares an inedible meal; you rage and call 
 loudly for a new regime in the kitchen ; whereas all 
 the time your competent servant lias been struggling 
 with a faulty range, tough meat and bad flour. 
 
 Shall we, then, sit down and refuse to do any- 
 thing at all unless our tools and our materials are 
 of the best? By no means; one of the chief distinc- 
 tions between a capable and an inefficient worker lies 
 in the ability of the former to make the best of un- 
 promising conditions. No one can do as well with 
 poor tools and materials as with good ones; but the 
 good worker will turn out a better job with the for- 
 mer than the inefficient one will. 
 
 These things apply of course to the library worker 
 as to all others, especially to librarians in small 
 towns where tools and materials are apt to be not 
 of tlte best. Among tools we may reckon buildings, 
 books, and all kinds of library appliances. The 
 material is the community on which the librarian by 
 proper use of her tools, aims to produce a certain ef- 
 fect. 
 
 Now it is open to such a worker to view her task 
 from any one of three different standpoints — to 
 choose, we will say, from three different kinds of 
 librarianship. She may be a librarian of the day be- 
 fore yesterday, of yesterday, or of to-day. 
 
 The librarian of the day before yesterday is the 
 librarian of a part of the community. Not only does 
 she make no effort to encourage the use of her 
 library, but she distinctly discourages certain per- 
 sons, and certain classes of persons, from entering 
 it. This grade of librarian includes as many kinds 
 as there are persons or classes of tlte community that
 
 THREE KINDS OF LIBRABIANS 243 
 
 may be discouraged. Some, for instance, exclude all 
 the poorly-dressed, or all of inferior social status; 
 others welcome just these and exclude the well-dress- 
 ed and well-to-do. The philanthropic donor of a city 
 branch library building once waxed very wroth when 
 she saw a carriage standing in front of the building. 
 Her library, she said, was for the poor, not for "car- 
 riage people." 
 
 These ways of looking at things are sometimes an 
 inheritance from former conditions. A subscription 
 library turned into a free public library hesitates to 
 welcome, all at once, the lower strata 'that have so 
 long been banished from its doors. On the other 
 hand, a public library that has developed from a 
 charitable foundation regards these as its proper 
 users and looks askance at the well-to-do, as in the 
 case of the good lady with her "carriage people." 
 
 When I speak of the exclusion of a class of per- 
 sons, I do not mean that they are formally kept out 
 or even consciously discouraged; this is why it is so 
 easy to be a librarian of the day before yesterday. 
 That day was a comfortable day; an easy day to be 
 self-satisfied in; it had its libraries for the rich and 
 its libraries for the poor. Some class was always 
 named, even if some were always left (tut. 
 
 It may be that the exclusion operates through 
 features that are in themselves excellent. I have 
 seen, in a small community, a library building so 
 fine, with such an atmosphere «>f quiet good-taste and 
 so lady-like a librarian, that the great public no more 
 dared to enter therein than if a fierce lion had stood 
 in the doorway. I have known libraries, too, in 
 which the books were too good. Certain classes in the 
 community were not intellectually up to them. 
 
 I have also known libraries that were never used 
 by the foreigners in their communities, or by the
 
 244 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 colored people. These latter, strange to say, were 
 largely in the North. The South recognizes the 
 Negro and pays him much attention — in its way. It 
 settles his status and sees that it is observed. He 
 has the last four seats on the trolley car and he has 
 his separate library accommodations. In the North 
 he is on an equality with the white man — in every- 
 thing but reality. He is welcomed to the library in 
 theory and he does not use it in practice. I fear that 
 in this respect too many of us belong to the day be- 
 fore yesterday. 
 
 I trust that I have made it clear that the librarian 
 of day-before-yesterday is not a bad librarian. He 
 or she is just a librarian of day before yesterday — 
 that is all. 
 
 Now we will step into one of Mr. H. G. Wells' 
 "Time machines" and take a short spin ahead into yes- 
 terday. The librarian of yesterday excludes no one 
 at all from his library; for he is within one step of 
 being up-to-date. He discourages no person nor any 
 class of persons. He stands in his doors with out- 
 stretched arms and announces that his library is free 
 to all, that, it has books for all — rich and poor, old 
 and young, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free. The 
 selection of books is well thought-out and adapted to 
 the community in which it is. The accommodations 
 are ample and fitting. Everyone is welcome. What 
 more could you ask? Nothing at all; provided you 
 are still in yesterday. l r esterday this sort of library 
 was regarded as the last word in the popularization 
 of the book, and it is indeed a long step in advance 
 of day-before-yesterday. The librarian's material is 
 before him; he has good books; is more needed than 
 this? Yea, verily. One may have a nail and a ham- 
 mer to drive it; also an egg, and a pan to fry it, yet 
 one cannot frv the egg with the hammer. Some
 
 THREE KINDS OF LIBRARIANS 245 
 
 selective action is necessary before we can attain the 
 result that we want. A minister, presiding at a wed- 
 ding, in which several couples were to he united at 
 once, read the marriage service and then exclaimed: 
 "I pronounce yon men ami wives; now you can sort 
 yourselves.'" The trouble is that things will not "sort 
 themselves'*; they must have some one to sort them 
 — and this is what is the matter with the library and 
 the librarian of yesterday. They fail to make con- 
 nection between the man and the book, so that part 
 of the fine collection remains wholly or relatively 
 unused, and part of the community that it ought 
 to serve remains apart from the library, despite the 
 librarian's outstretched arms and his words of wel- 
 come. If he had read his Bible as his great-grand- 
 parents used to do, lie would have realized that i<» 
 fill the table at the wedding feast of literature and 
 life a simple invitation sufficeth not. We must go 
 out into the highways and hedges and compel them 
 to come in. The attitude of passive expectancy, of 
 ability and willingness to serve those who come, was 
 well enough for yesterday, but not for the new 
 library day that has dawned in these United States 
 of America. Apparently the library dawn moves 
 eastward as the physical day moves westward, for 
 over in the mother country only a few lofty peaks 
 are yet gilded by its sunshine. Even in our own land 
 there an 1 gorges where the dnsk lingers; there are 
 even grottoes where darkness will always be. But we 
 are mostly in the light. We realize that if we have 
 a book on the dyeing of textile fabrics and if there is 
 an unheeding man in our community who would be 
 helped by that book, all the complacent receptivity 
 that we can muster will not suffice to bring them 
 together. And with this knowledge conies an 
 awakening of conscience. Long ago we stopped cry-
 
 246 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ing out "Am 1 my brother's keeper?" We realize 
 that as members of the community we must bear our 
 share of responsibility for what is done in the com- 
 munity and that collectively we must take measures 
 for the community's welfare. Each of us is a Roman 
 dictator, in that it is our business to see that the 
 Republic suffers no harm. Thus the community ap- 
 points special officers to look out for the interests of 
 its members in certain directions. We public libra- 
 rians are such officers. We are proud of saying that 
 we stand on the same plane as the teachers in our 
 schools and the professors in our colleges; nay, even 
 a little higher, for the facilities for education over 
 which we preside are offered long after school and 
 college years are over. 
 
 Now the teacher does not stand in the doorway 
 and announce that she is willing and ready to instruct 
 all who may so desire in reading, writing and arith- 
 metic — that she has a well-equipped schoolroom, 
 blackboards, globes and textbooks for all who will 
 take advantage of them. Not so ; the community goes 
 out and compels its members to take advantage of all 
 these things. In like manner, also, the community 
 makes all sorts of laws for its own preservation and 
 betterment; it does not say "See, here are good laws; 
 come ye who will and obey them." On the contrary 
 it goes out into highways and hedges and sees that all 
 its members obey. 
 
 I would not push this analogy too far. No one 
 expects that the community will require that every 
 one within its borders shall use the public library so 
 many times a month, or, indeed that it shall be used 
 at all. The nature of the institution precludes such 
 compulsion. But it should require that every effort 
 be made to see that no section of the books on the 
 library shelves shall lie idle and that no section of the
 
 THREE KINDS OF LIBRARIANS 247 
 
 community shall fail to use books, either through ig- 
 norance or through doubt of a welcome. 
 
 The librarian should say: Bere is an unused 
 
 book. Is it without value in this community? Then 
 let it male place for a better. Has it value? Then 
 why is it not used? Somewhere, in this community, 
 is the man, woman or child, who, whether realizing 
 it or not, would derive pleasure or profit, or both 
 from reading it. It is my business to seek oul that 
 person. 
 
 Again: Here is a man who does not read books. 
 Is this because no book would appeal to him? Im- 
 possible! He may think so, but there lives no one 
 to whom the soul of some fellow man, speaking 
 through the printed page, will not bring a welcome 
 message. Is there such a book on my shelves? If so, 
 it is my business to get it into that man's hands; if 
 not, I must buy, beg or borrow it as soon as I may. 
 
 When the librarian has begun to talk in this fash- 
 ion, lo! the dawn is shining, he is a librarian of to- 
 day. The librarian of to-day frowns on no one, dis- 
 courages no one; and he stands not passively at his 
 door with open arms. He walks through his library; 
 he walks through his town. He knows the books in 
 one and the dwellers in the other, and he knows both 
 in their relationships, actual and possible. If there. 
 are disused books on his shelves or non-readers in his 
 community, it is not because he has made no effort 
 to bring them together; his failures are not those of 
 negligence. 
 
 The other day, sitting in a stalled trolley car, my 
 eye fell upon a street-cleaner, and I began to watch 
 him with interest. He was busy — apparently, I was 
 going to say, but that does him injustice. He was 
 really busy. While I watched him — and the ear was 
 delayed for some little time— he was constantly at
 
 248 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 work, pushing over the asphalt the broad scraper that 
 was intended to rid it of dust and refuse. And yet 
 lie did not clean the street, for he took no account of 
 the inequalities of its surface. These required in- 
 telligent adaptation of his movements at every in- 
 stant, and to this he paid no attention. He went 
 through the motions ; his actual expenditure of physi- 
 cal energy was probably as great as if he had mixed 
 a little brain-work with it, but it failed to accomplish 
 what it ought, simply from that lack. And yet it 
 would have been difficult for any overseer to give him 
 orders that w^ould have bettered the matter. It would 
 have been hard to point out at any given instant, his 
 errors of commission or of omission. The only w^ay 
 in which one could tell that he was not doing his 
 work properly was by the result. He was put there 
 to clean the street — and the street was not cleaned. 
 
 So with the librarians of yesterday and the day 
 before. They are hard workers, not idlers. They 
 have the tools, and they go through the motions. 
 They may tire themselves out with their labor. Their 
 library buildings may be attractive and clean; their 
 technique perfect, their books well selected and in 
 good order, their catalogs excellent, It is hard to 
 point to any one thing that they are doing incorrectly 
 or that they are omitting. And yet we must judge 
 their work by its fruits ; they are put into a commun- 
 ity of actual or potential readers in charge of a col- 
 lection of books. What are these for, if not to be read? 
 Yet many remain untouched. For what purpose have 
 the schools taught the townspeople to read? Thou- 
 sands of them make no good use of that knowledge. 
 To the librarian of to-day the non-realization of this 
 and the lack of effort to remedy it mean failure. In 
 order to make a little more definite our ideas of these 
 three kinds of librarians, let us consider one or two
 
 THREE KINDS OF LIBRARIANS 2i.) 
 
 very practical problems and see how each would prob- 
 ably view them and act upon them. 
 
 First. The Library circulates no hooks on plumb- 
 ing. For the librarian of the day before yesterday, 
 
 this is no problem at all. Probably his library has 
 no books on plumbing. His library is not for plumb- 
 ers, and he has never suspected that it could be. As 
 for the plumbers in his community, they too have 
 never considered the possibility that they might learn 
 something of their work from books in a public libra- 
 ry. They are therefore silent and uncomplaining. 
 Peace reigns and there is a general state of satisfac- 
 tion all around — the satisfaction of blissful ignorance 
 and of the day before yesterday. 
 
 The librarian of yesterday, on the other hand, sees 
 the problem clearly and is concerned about it. He has 
 good books on plumbing and nobody reads them. 
 Evidently the more advanced grade of the librarian 
 has not affected the plumbers — they still remain in 
 ignorance of the public library. But what is he to 
 do? Here is the library; here are the books; here is 
 the librarian, ready and willing to distribute them 
 to all who may come. If the generation — or any part 
 of it — is so wicked and perverse that it comes not, 
 what is there to do? What, indeed! And so library 
 and community remain in the twilight of yesterday 
 just before the dawn. 
 
 The librarian of to-day not only sees the problem 
 and is concerned about it, but he proceeds to do some- 
 thing. Just what he does or how he does it is of far 
 less consequence than the fact that he sees action in 
 the matter to be necessary and possible. He may go 
 personally and interview the plumbers; he may send 
 them lists; he may get permission to address the 
 plumbers' union; he may do one or many of a thou- 
 sand things to remedy matters, and although it is cer-
 
 250 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 tain that what he does will not be completely effect- 
 ive, it is equally certain that it will have some good 
 effect, which is the main thing. 
 
 Problem Second. Examination of the registry list 
 shows that there are practically no card holders in a 
 certain part of the town. As in the former case, this 
 is no problem at all to the day before yesterday libra- 
 rian. Its existence would in general not appear to 
 him, certainly not as the result of any kind of statis- 
 tical investigation. If he were informed of it he would 
 regard the fact with complacency. The library is for 
 readers, and if certain persons are non-readers they 
 had better keep away. Nothing could be simpler. 
 The librarian of yesterday, on the other hand, feels 
 that all is not right. It is certainly too bad that 
 when library privileges are offered free to all, so large 
 a portion of the community should fail to take advan- 
 tage of them. The library stands ready to help these 
 people, if they will only come. Why don't they? 
 
 The librarian of yesterday thus stops with a ques- 
 tion; the librarian of to-day proceeds to answer it. 
 He finds out why they don't come. . He may discover 
 one or more of any number of things; whatever may 
 be the causes, they are sure to be interesting, at least 
 to him, for the to-day librarian is a born investiga- 
 tor. It may be that the non-readers are literate, but 
 take no interest in books ; perhaps they say they have 
 no time to read ; possibly the library has not the kind 
 of books that they like; they may be foreigners, read- 
 ing no English, and the library may have no books in 
 their tongue. Whatever the trouble may be, the libra- 
 rian of to-day sets about to remedy it. He may not 
 succeed; but it is the diagnosis and the attempt at 
 treatment, not its success, that constitute him what 
 he is. 
 
 Problem Third. The reading done through the li-
 
 THREE KINDS OF LIBRARIANS 251 
 
 brary is trivial and inconsequential. The fiction 
 drawn is of low order, and there is little else read. 
 The way in which this will affect the three types of 
 librarian may be predicted at once. The librarian of 
 the day-bef ore-yesterday heeds it not ; the librarian of 
 yesterday heeds and perhaps worries, but does noth- 
 ing. The librarian of to-day finds out the trouble and 
 then tries to remedy it. 
 
 And so it goes : you may construct other problems 
 for yourselves and imagine their solution, or lack of 
 solution. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that thee arc great and evident 
 objections to being a librarian of to-day and corre- 
 sponding advantages in being one of the other kinds. 
 In the first place the to-day variety of librarianship 
 involves brainwork and it is always difficult to use 
 one's brain — we saw that in the case of the street- 
 cleaner. Then this kind of librarian must be always 
 looking for trouble. Instead of congratulating him- 
 self that all is going smoothly, he must set out with 
 the premise that all cannot be going smoothly. There 
 must be some way in which his books can be made to 
 serve more people and serve them better; and it is his 
 business to find out that way. Then the to-day libra- 
 rian must use his statistics. The librarian of the day 
 before yesterday probably takes none at all. The li- 
 brarian of yesterday collects them with diligence, but 
 regards any suggestion that they might be of use 
 somewhat as the lazy wood-sawyer did the advice that 
 he should sharpen his saw. "I should think I had a 
 big enough job to cut up all this wood," he replied 
 petulantly, "without stopping to sharpen saws." The 
 librarian of yesterday has trouble enough in collecting 
 and tabulating his statistics without stopping to use 
 them — to make any deductions from them — to learn 
 where the library machine is failing and where he
 
 - - LIBKAKY ESSAYS 
 
 should use the wrench or the oil can. All these things 
 and man}" others make it easier for the overworked 
 librarian to drop back into yesterday, or the day be- 
 fore. It should be borne in mind, however, that the 
 difference between the three types of librarian is not 
 so much difference in the amount of work done as it 
 is in attitude of mind. The librarian of to-day does 
 not necessarily expend more energy than the librarian 
 of day before yesterday — but it is expended in a dif- 
 ferent direction and with a different object. It is to 
 be feared that some librarians of small libraries al- 
 low themselves to become discouraged after reading 
 of the great things that have been accomplished by 
 large institutions with plenty of money to spend — the 
 circulation of millions of books yearly, the purchase 
 of additions by the tens of thousands, the provision 
 of exhibitions for the children, the story-telling by 
 professionals, the huge collections on special subjects, 
 technology, art or history. It almost seems as if suc- 
 cess were simply a matter of spending and as if with- 
 out money to spend, failure should be expected as a 
 matter of course. 
 
 On the contrary, all that the money does is to make 
 possible success on a large and sensational scale — 
 without the proper spirit and the proper workers the 
 result might be failure on a scale quite as sensational. 
 And an enthusiastic spirit, a high aim and unflagging 
 energy — these are tilings that no money can buy and 
 that will bring success on the small scale as on the 
 large one. 
 
 We are fortunate — we who have charge of libra- 
 ries and are trying to do something worth while with 
 them— that there is perhaps less of the spirit of pure 
 commercialism among us than among some other- 
 classes of workers. For this, in part, wehave to thank 
 our inadequate salaries. Persons who desire to work
 
 THREE KINDS OF LIBRARIANS 253 
 
 simply for the material reward will select some other 
 field. We are glad to get our reward — we certainly 
 earn it; but I venture to say that in the case of most 
 of us there is also something in the work that appeals 
 to us. And that something is the thing that, pushed 
 to its furthest extent, will bring the dawn of to-day 
 into the most backward library. It is not a very in- 
 spiring thing simply to sit down and watch a pile of 
 books — hardly more so, I should think, than to take 
 care of a pile of bricks or a load of turnips. Interest, 
 enthusiasm, inspiration, come with realization of the 
 t'aet that every one of those hooks has a mission and 
 that it is the librarian's business to find what it is 
 and to see that it is performed. In the large, wealthy 
 institution this duty may be accompanied by the ex- 
 penditure of vast sums, and may he performed with 
 the aid of things that only large sums of money can 
 buy; in the small library there may he but a single 
 librarian and only a few dollars to spend. But, just 
 as in the case of a city librarian with an ample salary, 
 she has open to her the choice of those three types of 
 lihrarianship— the day before yesterday, yesterday 
 and to-day. 
 
 And how about the librarian of to-morrow? Per- 
 haps it may he as well to leave him or her for future 
 consideration; but I cannot help saying just a word. 
 May it not be that in the days to come we shall have 
 enough civic pride to do whatever we may find to do 
 in our libraries or anywhere else, not with our eves 
 fixed only upon the work itself, important as that may 
 be, but with the broader viewpoint of its effect upon 
 the whole community? May it not be that, this libra- 
 rian of to-morrow will ask not, "Will it raise my cir- 
 culation?" or even "Will it improve the quality of my 
 reading?" but "Will it better the reading that is done 
 in this community?" That librarian will not rejoice
 
 154 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 that his library circulation of good novels has dropped, 
 when he realizes that twice as many bad novels are 
 bought and read outside. He will be pleased that the 
 children in his library have learned to wash their 
 hands, but chiefly because he hopes that what they 
 have learned may react upon the physical cleanliness 
 — and perhaps on the moral cleanliness, too — of the 
 community. Much as he will love the library, he will 
 love it as an agency for the improvement of the com- 
 munity in which he lives and works, and he will do 
 nothing for its aggrandizement, expansion or improve- 
 ment that involves a change of the community in the 
 opposite direction. We shall not see one library re- 
 joicing because it has enticed away the users of some 
 other library ; we may even see a library rejoicing that 
 it has lost its readers in Polish history, we will say, 
 when it becomes known that they have gone. to another 
 library with a better collection in that subject. 
 
 I confess that I am looking forward to the day 
 when we shall take this view — when the adage "Every 
 man for himself and the devil take the hindmost" may 
 be forgotten among institutions in the same town. 
 The policy that it represents makes for high speed, 
 perhaps, but not for solidarity. In a fight such as we 
 are waging witli the forces of ignorance and indiffer- 
 ence we should all keep shoulder to shoulder. This 
 is why the librarian should say : "I am a citizen ; noth- 
 ing in this city is without interest to me.'' That is 
 why he should be a librarian of to-day, and why he 
 may even look forward with hopefulness to the dawn 
 of a still better to-morrow.
 
 SCHOOL LIBRARIES AND MENTAL TRAINING 
 
 Is it more important in education to impart defi- 
 nite items of information or to train the mind so that 
 it will know how to acquire and wish to acquire? 
 To ask the question is to answer it; yet we do not al- 
 ways live up to our lights. 
 
 In the older methods the teacher, or rather his 
 predecessors, decided what it would be necessary for 
 the child to memorize, and then he was made to mem- 
 orize, while still without appreciation of the need of 
 so doing. We are perhaps in danger today of going 
 to the other extreme. We require so little memoriza- 
 tion by the student that the memory, as a practical 
 tool of everyday life, is in danger of falling into dis- 
 use. It is surely possible for us to exercise our pu- 
 pils' memories, to develop them, and to control them, 
 without giving them the fatal idea that memory is a 
 substitute for thought, or that the assimilation of 
 others' ideas, perfect though it may be, will altogether 
 take the place of the development of one's own. 
 There are still things that one must learn by heart, 
 but since they must be retained below the threshold 
 of consciousness, it is well that if possible they should 
 also be acquired below that threshold. The prob- 
 lem of consciously learning a quantity of items of 
 any kind and then relegating them to one's subcon- 
 sciousness in such a way that they will be available 
 at any given time is not, of course, impossible. Most 
 of us have at our disposal many facts that we have 
 learned in this way; but I venture to assert that most 
 of us have lost a large proportion of what we thus
 
 256 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 acquired. Now a man never learns by rote the names 
 of his relations, the positions of the rooms in his 
 house, the names of the streets in his town. He has 
 acquired them subconsciously as he needs them. 
 When the human mind becomes convinced of the need 
 of information of this kind "in its business," the ac- 
 quiring comes as a matter of course. In a language, 
 the paradigms may be learned unconsciously when 
 the pupil sees that they are necessary in order to un- 
 derstand an interesting passage; the multiplication 
 table and tables of weights and measures require no 
 conscious memorization; or at least such memoriza- 
 tion may be undertaken voluntarily as a recognized 
 means to a desired end. I say these things may be 
 done; I am sure that they are in many schools; I am 
 equally sure that they were unheard of in my own 
 boyhood; that is, as recognized methods in teaching. 
 Of course, in spite of schools and teachers and meth- 
 ods, a vast amount of information and training has 
 always been acquired in this way. I do not remember 
 ever "learning to read" as a set task. I am sure that 
 none of my children ever did so. We recognized the 
 desirability of knowing how. We wanted to learn, 
 and so we learned; that is all. Of course our teach- 
 ers and parents and friends helped us along. 
 
 Is not this what the school is for — to make the 
 pupil anxious to learn and then to help him? When 
 all schools are conducted on this principle, we shall 
 be very happy, but apparently it is not so simple as 
 it would appear. 
 
 What we should try to approximate, at all events, 
 is an emancipation from the thraldom of unwilling- 
 ness on the part of the pupil — to bring it about that 
 he shall desire to learn and will take what measures 
 he can to do so, gladly availing himself of what help 
 we can offer him.
 
 SCHOOL LIBKARJ. 257 
 
 I have said that what we need is to stimulate the 
 pupil's desire and then to satisfy it. I have known 
 teachers who were competent to do both — who could 
 take an ignorant, unwilling pupil and make of him an 
 enthusiast, thirsting for knowledge, in a few weeks. 
 We all know of the idea] university whose faculty 
 consisted of Mark Hopkins on one end of a log. I am 
 sorry the creator of that epigram put his teacher on 
 a log. There are plenty of logs, and, from this fact, 
 too many persons, 1 am afraid, have leaped to the eon- 
 elusion that there are also plenty of Mark Hopkinses. 
 I fear that one trouble with educators is that, hitch- 
 ing their wagons to stars, they have assumed the pos- 
 sibility that terrestrial luminaries also are able to 
 raise us to the skies. If we had a million Mark Hop- 
 kinses and a million boys for them to educate, we 
 should need only a sufficient quantity of logs; we 
 should be forever absolved from planning school- 
 houses and making out schedules, from writing text- 
 books and establishing libraries. As it is, we must 
 do all these things. We must adopt any and all de- 
 vices to arouse and hold the pupil's interest, and we 
 must similarly seek out and use all kinds of machin- 
 ery to satisfy that interest when onee aroused. Of 
 these devices and machines, the individual teacher. 
 with or without his textbooks, lectures, recitations, 
 laboratory work, and formal courses, is only one, and 
 perhaps in some cases not the one to be preferred as 
 the primary agent. Among such devices I believe 
 that a collection of books, properly selected, disposed, 
 and used can be made to play a very important part, 
 both in arousing interest in a subject and in satisfy- 
 ing it — in other words, in teaching it properly. 
 
 And first let us see what it may do to stimulate 
 a general interest in knowledge. Of late I have seen 
 cropping out here and there what seems to me a ped-
 
 258 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 agogical heresy — the thesis that no kind of training 
 is of value in fitting the pupil for anything but the 
 definite object that it has in view. We can, according 
 to this view, teach a boy to argue about triangles, but 
 this will not help him in a legal or business discus- 
 sion. We may teach him to solve equations, and he 
 will then be an equation-solver — nothing else. We 
 may teach him to read Greek and he will then be some 
 sort of a Greek scholar, but his reaction to other at- 
 tempts to teach him will not be affected. Anything 
 like a general training is a contradiction in terms. 
 If this is true, a great part of what I am saying is 
 foolish, but I do not believe it. Doubtless we have 
 exaggerated the effect of certain kinds of training. 
 The old college graduate who, having been through 
 four years of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, con- 
 sidered himself aide with slight additional training, 
 to undertake to practice law or medicine or manage 
 a parish, was probably too sanguine. Yet I refuse 
 to believe that a man's brain is so shut off in knowl- 
 edge-tight compartments that one may exercise one 
 part of it without the slightest effect on the others. I 
 cannot now write with my toes, but I am sure that 
 I could learn to do so much more quickly because I 
 know how to use my fingers for the purpose. 
 
 And it is indubitable, I think, that the best gener- 
 al preparation for mental activity of whatever kind 
 is contact with the minds of others — early, late, and 
 often. It tones up all one's reactions — makes him 
 mentally stronger, quicker, and more accurate. Some 
 children get this at home, where there is a numerous 
 family of persons who are both thoughtful and men- 
 tally alert. Some meet at home, besides members of 
 the family, visitors who add to the variety of their 
 contacts. Few get it in school, with much variety. 
 And it is futile to expect most of our children to get 
 it anywhere directly from persons. This being the
 
 school LIBRARIES 
 
 case, it is wonderfully fortunate that we have bo many 
 of the recorded souls of human beings between the 
 
 covers <»f hooks. With them mental contacts may be 
 numerous, wide, and easy. To interest a man in a 
 stretch of country take him up to a height whence he 
 may overlook it. There is a patch of woods, there h 
 hill, there is a winding stream. He will see in im- 
 agination the wild flowers under the trees, the wind 
 swept rocks behind the hill, the trout in the stream. 
 He will wonder, too, what unimagined things there 
 may be and he will long to find out. To interest a 
 pupil in a subject turn him loose in a room contain- 
 ing a hundred hooks about it. lie will browse about, 
 finding a dozen i hings (hat he understands and a hun- 
 dred that he does not. lie will get such a bird's-eye 
 view that his stimulated imagination will long for 
 closer acquaintance. And if you want to interest 
 him in the world of ideas in general, turn him loose 
 in a genera] library. The things that he will get are 
 not to be ascertained by an examination. They are 
 intangible, hut their results are not. 
 
 In an illuminating article on the events just pre- 
 ceding the present European war, Professor Munroe 
 Smith holds that it was precipitated chiefly by bring- 
 ing to the front at every step military rather than 
 diplomatic considerations. The trouble with military 
 men, he says, is that they, take no account of "im- 
 ponderables" — by which he means public opinion, na- 
 tional feeling, injured pride, joy, grief— all those 
 things, intellectual and emotional, thai cannot beex- 
 pressed in terms of men, guns, supplies, and military 
 position. I have been wondering whether some other 
 technically trained persons — educators, for instance. 
 do not tend toward a similar neglect of imponder- 
 ables, measuring educational values solely in terms 
 of hours, and units, and tin 1 passing of examinations 
 It is a fault common to all highly trained specialists
 
 260 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 The Scripture has a phrase for it, as for most things 
 — "ye neglect the weightier matters of the law — judg- 
 ment and faith." These, you will note, are to be 
 classed with Professor Munroe Smith's "imponder- 
 ables," whereas mint, anise, and cummin are commer- 
 cial products. 
 
 At least one noted educator, William James, did 
 not make this error, for he bids us note that the emo- 
 tional "imponderable" — though he does not use this 
 word — possesses the priceless property of unlocking 
 within us unsuspected stores of energy and placing 
 them at our disposal. "I thank thee, Roderick, for 
 the word," says Fitz-James in "The Lady of the 
 Lake" : "it nerves my heart; it steels my sword." One 
 would hardly expect to find educational psychology 
 in Scott's verse, but here it is. The word that Roder- 
 ick Dhu spoke (I forget just what it was, but I think 
 he called his rival a had name) unlocked in Fitz- 
 James an unexpected store of reserve energy, and 
 the result, as I recall it, was quite unfortunate from 
 the Gaelic point of view. We cannot afford to neg- 
 lect the imponderables; and it is their presence and 
 their influence that are fostered by a collection of 
 books. If you will add together the weight of leather, 
 paper, glue, thread, and ink in a book you will get 
 the whole weight of the volume. There is naught 
 ponderable left ; and yet what is left is all that makes 
 the thing a book — all that has power to influence the 
 lives and souls of men — the imponderable part, fit for 
 the unlocking of energies. 
 
 I would not have you think, although I believe 
 this to be at bottom a matter of principles, that it is 
 not possible to apply these principles very directly 
 and concretely in the daily practice of an education- 
 al institution. I desire to call your attention for a 
 moment to the testimony of one who has had great 
 experience and practice in the administration of a
 
 SCHOOL LIBEAKIES 
 
 collection of books in such an institution and in their 
 use for the purposes already outlined — Mr. Frederick 
 C. Hicks, assistant librarian of Columbia University, 
 New York City, from whose recent review article on 
 this subject 1 propose to quote a few paragraphs. 
 Mr. Hicks is writing primarily of college instruction, 
 but, as he notes in the first paragraph that I shall 
 quote, what he says applies with equal cogency to the 
 secondary school. He writes: 
 
 The general tendency in all instruction today, including even that 
 in preparatory and high schools, is from what may be called the 
 few-book method to the many-book method— a recognition of the 
 power of the printed page ior which librarians have always stood 
 sponsor. The lecture, note-taking, text-book and quiz method of 
 instruction is last passing away in undergraduate as well . 
 graduate study. Textbooks are still in use in undergraduate and 
 Master of Arts courses, but they have been relegated to a subordi- 
 nate position. Emphasis is laid on work done and the assimila- 
 tion of ideas gathered from many sources rather than upon 
 memorizing the treatise of one author. -Necessarily, references arc 
 chiefly to easily accessible works of secondary authority, and read- 
 ing instead of research is the objecti\e. 
 
 From the library point of view, the growth of the labor. • 
 or case method of instruction appears to be an independent phe- 
 nomenon. It should be noticed, however, that coincident with it is 
 the general tendency to adopt a policy of teaching each subject with 
 emphasis on its relations to other subjects. 
 
 Most universities now give courses for which no textbook is 
 available. For instance, Professor Frederick J. Turner, of Har- 
 vard University, announces in a syllabus of 116 pages that tha 
 no textbook suitable for use in his course on the History of the 
 West in the United States. He thereupon gives citations to about 
 2,100 separate readings contained in 1,300 volumes, and says that 
 his course requires not less than 120 pages of reading per week in 
 these books. Professor James Harvey Robinson's course in Colum- 
 bia University on the History of the Intellectual Class in Western 
 Europe has no textbook, and the reading for a class of 15b stu- 
 dents is indicated in a pamphlet of 53 pages, containing references 
 to 301 books. Illustrations could be taken from almost any sub- 
 ject in the university curriculum. 
 
 This is essentially a teacher's view. Listen now 
 
 to that of a public librarian, Mr. John Cotton Dana. 
 
 of Newark, New Jersey, lie says: 
 
 In our high schools we spend literally millions of dollars to 
 equip laboratories, kitchens, carpenter shops, machine shops, and 
 what not, to be used by a small part of the pupils for a smalt part 
 of the short school day. This is partly because so to do is the fash: 
 the hour, partly also because the products of work in th.»-,- shops,
 
 262 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 kitchens, and laboratories can be seen, touched, and handled, are 
 real things even to the most unintelligent. 
 
 For books, the essential tools of every form of acquisition, we 
 spend, outside of textbooks, a few paltry thousands. The things a 
 child makes we can see, and we are impressed by them; the know- 
 ledge he gains, the power of thought he acquires — these cannot be 
 made visible and are not appreciated by the ignorant ; they can only 
 be certified to by the teacher and demonstrated by the student's 
 words and deeds as he goes through life. 
 
 Mastery of print is mastery of world-knowledge. Our young 
 people do" not have it. Surely they should be led to acquire it, 
 and where better than in the high schools? To aid them in this 
 acquisition the high schools should have ample collections of books, 
 and these collections of books should become active teaching or- 
 ganisms through the ministrations of competent librarians. 
 
 Of all teaching laboratories, there is one which is plainly of 
 supreme importance — that of books. 
 
 I trust that you are with ine so far ; for I am about 
 to make a further advance that experience teaches me 
 is very difficult, except for librarians. I am going to 
 urge that your collection of books, when you have 
 made it, be put in charge of one who has studied the 
 methods of making the contents of books available to 
 the reader — their shelving, physical preparation, 
 classification, cataloguing; the ways in which to fit 
 them to their users, to record their use, and to pre- 
 vent their abuse. This means a trained librarian. 
 
 In all departments where expert knowledge and 
 skill are necessary it is difficult to explain to a non- 
 expert the reasons for this necessity and exactly in 
 what the expert knowledge consists. We are so ac- 
 cutomed to accept the fact in certain departments 
 that it passes there without question. Unfortunately 
 that is not the case with the selection and administra- 
 tion of a library. Most persons understand quite 
 well that special training is necessary before one can 
 practice law, or medicine, or engineering. No one 
 would undertake to drive a motor car or even ride a 
 bicycle without some previous experience; but it is 
 quite usual to believe that a collection of books may 
 be administered and its use controlled by totally un- 
 trained and inexperienced persons — a retired clergy-
 
 SCHOOL LIBRABIE8 203 
 
 man, a broken-down clerk, a janitor, perhaps. I 0HC6 
 asked a young woman who came for advice about tak- 
 ing up library work what had inclined her toward 
 that particular occupation. She was quite frank with 
 me; she said: "Why, my father and mother didn't 
 think I was good for anything else." This estimate 
 of the library is by no means confined to the parents 
 of WOUld-be library workers. And even where it is 
 recognized that some training and experience are ne- 
 cessary in administering a large public institution, 
 there is a Lingering feeling that a comparatively small 
 collection, like that in a school, needs no expert su- 
 pervision. The fact that there are in a school plenty 
 of experts in other lines seems to have been not with- 
 out its effect on this attitude. "Why, Professor Smith 
 is one of the best chemists in the state; Miss .Tom's 
 is an acknowledged authority on oriental history; do 
 you mean to tell me that either of them would not 
 make a perfectly satisfactory librarian?" Which is 
 something like saying, "Mr. Robinson is our foremost 
 banker; should he not be aide to superintend the dye- 
 ing department in a textile mill?" Or, "Rev. Mr. 
 Jenkins is our most eloquent pulpit orator; he can 
 surely run the 2:15 express!" 
 
 Are my metaphors too violent? I think not. We 
 are dealing here with imponderables, as I have said, 
 but the most imponderable thing of all, and the most 
 potent, is the human mind. To wield, concentrate, 
 and control our battery of energies we want a corre- 
 lated energy — one whose relations to them all are 
 close and one who knows how to pull all the throttles, 
 turn all the valves, and operate all the mechanism 
 that brings them into play. It takes two years of 
 hard work, nowadays, for a college graduate to get 
 through a library school, and it should not be neces- 
 sarv to argue that during these two Fears he is work-
 
 264 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ing hard on essentials and is assimilating material 
 that the untrained man however able, cannot possibly 
 acquire in a few month's casual association with a li- 
 brary or from mere association with books, no mat- 
 ter how long or how intimate. You will pardon me, 
 1 am sure, some further quotation from Mr. Hicks's 
 illuminating article. After calling our attention to 
 the fact that the effort to meet changing conditions in 
 instruction is purely technical, he goes on : 
 
 The librarian stands in the position of an engineer to whom is 
 presented a task which by the methods of his profession he must 
 perform. Numerical growth, expansion, addition of new schools 
 and new subjects, and the introduction of the laboratory method 
 by which books are made actual tools for use, all mean to the li- 
 brarian more books, larger reading-rooms and more of them, a 
 large staff specialized and grouped into departments, the super- 
 vision of a complicated system, and capable business administration. 
 These are all technical matters and are of sufficient magnitude to 
 require all of the time and strength of those to whom they are 
 entrusted. . . . 
 
 In a reference library, open shelves, whether in department li- 
 braries or in the general library, require much high-grade library 
 service. The reference librarian becomes a direct teacher in the 
 use of books and gives constant assistance not merely in finding 
 separate books but in dealing with the whole literature of a 
 subject. . . . 
 
 The whole development from the few-book method to the many- 
 book method presupposes a system of reserve books. By this ex- 
 pression is meant the placing of a collection of books behind an en- 
 closure of some kind from which they are given out by a library 
 assistant for use in the room. The reserve collections, continually 
 changing in accordance with the directions of instructors, are in 
 reality composite textbooks. . . . 
 
 The mere clerical work of maintaining an efficient reserve sys- 
 tem is large, its success being dependent upon intelligent co-opera- 
 tion between the teaching faculty and the library, but it involves 
 also a technical problem to be solved by the librarian. What rela- 
 tion does the number of copies of a given reserve book bear to its 
 use? To put the question concretely, how many copies of a book 
 are required to supply a class of 200 students, all of whom must 
 read thirty pages of the book within two weeks? 
 
 I like so much one of Mr. Hicks's expressions that 
 I desire to emphasize it at the close of what I am say- 
 ing. A library, used for teaching purposes in a 
 school, is indeed, "a composite textbook." It insures 
 contact with a composite instead of a single mind.
 
 B< BOOL LIBRARIES » 265 
 
 The old idea was that contact of this kind always r< 
 
 suited in ronfusion in mental Instability. There was 
 
 a time when the effort was to protect the mind 
 through life from any such unbalancing contact. The 
 individual was protected from familiarity with more 
 than oih' set of opinions -religious, political, social, 
 philosophical, scientific. He was taught facts as facts 
 and no emphasis was placed on the more important 
 fact that there are degrees of certainty and points of 
 view. The next step was to give the individual a []■<■<■ 
 head after i he formal processes of education had ter- 
 minated. Getting out of college was like escaping 
 
 from a box, where one had been shut up with Pres- 
 byterians and Free Traders and Catastrophists and 
 Hegelians— or their opposites, for the contents of all 
 the boxes were not alike. Now, we set the hoy free 
 when he enters college and we are beginning to give 
 him a little fresh air in the high school. Why not 
 go hack to the beginning? Why not. at any rate, 
 avoid the implication that there iv the same back- 
 ing behind all that we teach or tell? Some teachers, 
 and some parents, have made this plan succeed. One 
 of them is Mr. II. R. Walmsley. who writes in the 
 Volta Review (Washington, April, 1915), on "How 
 I Taught My Boy the Truth." Says he: 
 
 I pondered over these things, and determined that I would never 
 tell a falsehood to my child; that 1 would tell him the truth upon 
 every subject, and that I would not evade or refuse to answer anv 
 question. I kept my resolution and have obtained most excellent 
 results. The child doubted nothing I told him. He knew that as 
 far as I was able I would reply truthfully t< • any question he might 
 care to ask. In answering him 1 was always careful to qualify my 
 statements thus: "This is so," "I believe so," "It is believed to 
 
 "It is claimed to be, Hiose who should know say," etc So he 
 
 knew the basis from which I spoke. Throughout his life, when 
 he was told anything that looked doubtful, he would say, "I will 
 ask father." 
 
 This plan is practicable from the child's earliest 
 years. As soon as he learns to read we may begin t<> 
 supplement it by reference to original documents.
 
 it,.; LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 This means a library at the very beginning, and at 
 high school age it means a large library. It need not 
 all be in the school. In the smallest towns there are 
 now respectable public collections; the school may 
 routine itself to the subjects in its own curriculum. 
 But whatever we do, let us not teach the child, with 
 the implication of equal authority, that twice two is 
 is four, that material bodies are composed of mole- 
 cules, and that the Tories in the Revolution were all 
 bad. Tell him that there are other aspects, if they ex- 
 ist, and as soon as lie is able let him examine those 
 aspects. He will be able far sooner than some of us 
 are willing to admit. 
 
 We librarians feel someAvhat strongly on this mat- 
 ter because our own institutions possess by their very 
 nature that form of neutrality that exposes both 
 sides without advocating either. It seems to be as- 
 sumed by some persons that neutrality means igno- 
 rance. Of course, ignorance is one method of insuring 
 it. If a fairy story opens with the announcement that 
 the King of Nowaria is at war with the Prince of 
 Snmboddia, you cannot take sides until you know 
 something about the quarrel. The trouble is that we 
 do not live in fairyland. In my home city the school 
 authorities have been trying to cultivate this kind of 
 neutrality by cautioning principals not to discuss the 
 European war with their pupils. What is the result? 
 One of my branch librarians says in a recent report: 
 "I have been greatly interested by the fact that the 
 high-school boys and girls never ask for anything 
 about the war. Not once during the winter have I 
 seen in one of them a spark of interest in the subject. 
 It seems so strange that it should be necessary to keep 
 them officially ignorant of this great war because the 
 grandfather of one spoke French and of another, Ger- 
 man." With this I thoroughly agree. I am not sure
 
 SCHOOL LIBRARIES 267 
 
 that I do not prefer a thorough and bigoted partisan- 
 ship to this neutrality <»f ignorance. Better than both 
 is the opportunity for free investigation with en- 
 lightened guidance. The public library offers the op- 
 portunity for the fullest and freest contact with the 
 minds of the world. We try to give guidance, also, as 
 we can; l>nt we have not the opportunities of you 
 teachers. Guidance is your business and your high 
 privilege; and if some of you have in the past guided 
 as the jailer guides his prisoners — for a walk around 
 the prison yard with ball and chain — let us be thank- 
 ful that this oppressive view is giving place to the 
 
 freer idea of a guide as a counselor and friend. Such 
 guidance means intellectual freedom. Freedom 
 means choice, and choice implies a collection from 
 which to choose. This means a library and the school 
 library is thus an indispensable tool in the hands of 
 those teachers to whom education signifies neutral 
 training, the arousing of neutral energies, and a con- 
 trol of the imponderables of life — those things with- 
 out physical weight which yet count more in the end 
 than all the masses with which molecular physics has 
 to deal.
 
 THE LIBRARY AND THE BUSINESS MAN* 
 
 The electricians bave a word thai has always in- 
 terested me— the word and tlie thing it signifies. It 
 is "hysteresis," and it means that quality in a mass 
 of iron thai resists magnetization, so that if the mag- 
 netizing force is a moving one the magnetism always 
 lags a little behind it. We see this quality in many 
 other- places besides magnetic bodies the almost uni- 
 versal tendency of effects to lag behind their causes. 
 J like to watch it in the popular mind— the failure to 
 "catch on*' quickly— the appreciation that comes just 
 a little after the thing to he appreciated. Lag every- 
 where, in apprehension, in knowledge, in the realiza- 
 tion of a situation. Everywhere hysteresis, of 
 course, sometimes the lag is great and sometimes it 
 is slight. It may he affected by physical distance, as 
 when the European thinks that Indians camp in the 
 suburbs of Pittsburg and thai the citizens of [ndiana- 
 polis hunt the buffalo of an evening; or it may he a 
 function of mental distance, as when the \\';ill Street 
 financier fondly imagines that this country is still 
 populated chiefly by lambs, as it undoubtedly was 
 fifty years ago. I like to watch it as it affects the idea 
 of the public library as some people hold it. Now of 
 course, without progress, change, mol ion of some kind, 
 there could he no lag. In a permanent magnet there 
 is no hysteresis. If the Indians and the buffalo were 
 still with us, tlie European would he thinking the 
 truth. If we had not learned that the gold-brick and 
 
 the green goods were frauds, \\ e could still he fleeced. 
 
 And if libraries were still what they were titty years 
 •a luncheon address to tin Advertising Clul < St, Louis.
 
 270 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ago, there would be no lag in the ideas that some peo- 
 ple hold about them. Libraries have changed. Some 
 of you know it and some of you do not. Libraries 
 have changed in the kind of printed matter that they 
 collect and preserve; in the kind of people to whom 
 they make their appeal; in the way in which they trj 
 to make the former available to the latter. They have 
 utterly changed in their own conception of their status 
 in the community, of what they owe to the commun- 
 ity and how they ought to go about it, to pay the debt. 
 
 The old library was first and foremost a collection 
 of material for scholars ; the new is for the busy citi- 
 zen, to help him in what he is busy about, to make it 
 possible for him to do more work in less time. It has 
 taken some time for the library to see itself in this 
 light, but it lias taken the great body of our citizens 
 still longer to recognize and act on the change — else I 
 should not be talking to you to-day about the library 
 and the business man. The modern library is con- 
 cerned, much more hugely than the old, with contem- 
 porary relations, with what is happening and what is 
 just going to happen. It sympathizes with the men 
 who do things. It tries to let them know what is go- 
 ing on about them, and to assist them in what they are 
 attempting — whether it be to achieve a world-wide 
 peace or to devise a new non-refillable bottle. 
 
 The library has placed itself in a position where 
 it can do this better than any other institution, for 
 it is essentially non-partisan. Probably it is our only 
 non-partisan institution. Mr. Bryan's impartial gov- 
 ernment newspaper has not yet printed its first num- 
 ber. The school must take sides, for its deals solely 
 with children. The library alone can store up mate- 
 rial on all sides of every mooted question and offer it 
 to him who reads, without in any way taking sides 
 itself. It may run the risk of misconception. We
 
 LIBRARY AND THE BUSINESS MAN 271 
 
 had a bi^ exhibit of war pictures Last year. The Paci- 
 fists protested. It was very dreadful, they said, I i 
 sec a library encouraging the militaristic spirit. This 
 year we have a peace exhibit prepared by tin- Union 
 Against Militarism. The Preparedness people are 
 horrified. They hate to sec a library siding with those 
 who would drag our country in tin- dust of humilia- 
 tion. The trouble with all these good people is just 
 hysteresis lag. It may have been fifty years ago 
 that a portrait of a monarch in a library meant that, 
 tin- institution was for him, body and soul. Now it 
 means simply that he is an interesting contemporary 
 Display of ton representing Woodrow 
 
 Wilson doing something disgraceful um,-s not imply 
 on our part detestation of the president, but only a 
 willingness to let the public sec a good bit of draw- 
 ing or perhaps to show them how some part of the 
 community is thinking and feeling. It is all a part. 
 of our efforts at up-to-dateness- - our struggles to 
 brush <>([' the dnst "and sweep away the cobwebs of 
 medievalism. 
 
 As an incident of these struggles, we have 
 covered the existence of the Business -Man. We have 
 tried to find out what he is driving at and to help a 
 little — to stock the kind of information that he wants 
 and to help him get at it. An obstacle in the way 
 has been the fact that much of what he wants is i 
 obtained best from material that the older libraries 
 knew nothing of and would have despised had they 
 known it — partly, printed matter that had no exis- 
 tence in those days, like the huge trade catalog and 
 the informative railway folder; partly material that 
 was ignored because it had no connection with 
 scholarly pursuits time tables, statistical schedules, 
 directories, lists of names and addresses, commercial 
 publications, maps, information ling trade-
 
 272 LIBKAKY ESSAYS 
 
 routes and conditions, if the scholar of fifty years 
 ago wanted to be set right about a Greek preposition 
 or to find the color of Henry YII's hair, he knew 
 where to go: the library was the proper and inevitable 
 place for such data. He brushed the dust from a pile 
 of hooks and proceeded to look them up. i>ut if he 
 wanted to know the quickest way to ship goods to 
 Colombo, Ceylon, or the comparative exports of cereals 
 from Russia during the last decade, or the design of 
 the latest machine for effecting a given result, did he 
 go to the library? Remember that this is supposed 
 to be fifty years ago. I am afraid I must confess that 
 I don't know where he went. 1 fear that in most 
 cases he didn't go at all, for business men as well as 
 libraries have grown in the last half century— hut I 
 am quite sure that he went nowhere near the library. 
 The reason was that printed information of this 
 kind either did not then exist or was thought improper 
 for collection by a scholarly institution. If anyone 
 had asked for it I know what the librarian would 'have 
 said, for the same thing is occasionally still said by 
 librarians, and J hear it at department stores and 
 everywhere else where there is distribution of objects 
 necessary to our lives. They would have said— 
 "There has been no demand for it, so we don't need 
 to keep it," Demand for it! Of course not. Is there 
 any demand for fish in a sand-bank or for free- trade 
 arguments in a stand-pat Republican newspaper? 
 People go for things where they know the things are 
 to be found; and they knew well fifty years ago that 
 none of these things were to be found in a library. 
 The sad tiling is that altho the libraries have reformed, 
 hysteresis is still getting in its deadly work. There 
 is a lag of apprehension and appreciation among our 
 business men, many of whom think the library is still 
 the same old dusty, cobwebby institution of 1850.
 
 LIBRARY AND THE BUSINESS -MAN 273 
 
 Take niv word for it, it is not. It stocks all the thi 
 that the librarian used contemptuously to call biblia 
 abiblia— hooks that are no books city directories by 
 the hundred, trade maps, commercial information, 
 trade catalogs, advertising folders, railway announce- 
 ments, hundreds of things that will answer the ques- 
 tions t hat every business man wants, or ought to want, 
 to know. We, or any other library, may not have pre- 
 cisely what yon want. We are not yet perfect and we 
 have much to learn. Hut we are buying and putting 
 at the business man's disposal the kind of material 
 t hat will help him in his business. 
 
 The modern library is democratic, not autocratic. 
 It does not hand yon down a volume from a very high 
 shelf and tell you that is exactly what you want ami 
 you mustn't ask for anything else. It says: we are 
 the agents of a co-operative concern. For convenience 
 sake, just as in the ease of the public schools, you con- 
 clude ie tax yourselves to maintain a public collec- 
 tion of hooks, instead of having to form private col- 
 lections of your own, smaller and vastly more expen- 
 sive. We are in communication with every one of 
 you by telephone. The machine for which you have 
 paid is all ready to work— stoked and cleaned and 
 oiled. Why don't you press the button? Those who 
 don't are just suffering from hysteresis — lag of appre- 
 hension. They think the library is what it was in 
 L850. They are behind the times. 
 
 Am I not afraid that if nil the business men 
 should press the button at once, the library would 
 be swamped? There would be a little swearing at 
 first, I tear. But ultimately there would be a real- 
 ization that ;i library built and stocked and manned 
 to serve perhaps 50 business men at once cannot 
 serve 500 or 5000. There would he pressure on the 
 legislature; we should have the necessary funds and
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 in short order we should be serving our 5000 as 
 smoothly as we served our .*>(►. 
 
 Now let us get down to something concrete. Just 
 what information are we prepared to give to business 
 and industrial houses? Here are some actual ques- 
 tions asked lately and answered in our reference de- 
 partments — many of them by telephone: 
 
 The uses of lye in baking powder. 
 
 History and development of the plow. 
 
 Substitute for such commercial products as dyes, sealskin, ferti- 
 lizers, etc. 
 
 Receipts for preparing in the wholesale manner mustard and salad- 
 dressing, and for bottling olives. 
 
 Methods of installing a refrigerating plant. 
 
 Addresses of the manufacturers of toys in the United States. 
 
 How far from the curb may vehicles be parked in St. Louis. 
 
 Names of manufacturers of bottled buttermilk. 
 
 Dates of traffic legislation in England. 
 
 Names of the officers of the Wabash R.R. 
 
 How to calculate the depreciation in shop fittings in taking in- 
 ventory. 
 
 Change in prices in Wall Street for the last year. 
 
 History of speculation in the 16th century. 
 
 Examination of the State Board of Pharmacy relating to the laws 
 of the State of Missouri on the sale of narcotics. 
 
 Pictures for advertising posters, such as "a Pullman porter," 
 "Hops," used in a Bevo ad. 
 
 "Two dogs playing" for the title-page of a piece of music entitled 
 "Puppy love." 
 
 Designs for book-covers, posters, letter-heads, by the million. 
 
 I think I hear someone say — "Do you call that li- 
 brary work? One man at a telephone and a pile of 
 circulars at the other end?" Yes. I do; didn't I tell 
 you that libraries had changed? When Archbishop 
 Glennon first visited our new building', he walked in- 
 to the magnificent central hall and, looking' around 
 him said: "Where are the books?" The books were 
 all in their places, but they were not in the delivery 
 hall. The bocks in a library are quite as important as 
 ever. There could be no library without them. They 
 are the library. But we are laying more and more 
 emphasis on the man behind the book. In nine cases 
 out of ten he is a woman, and increasingly often lie
 
 LIBRARY AMi THE BUSINESS MAN 275 
 
 is :it the i'ii<] of a telephone wire. We find thai in- 
 formation slips over ;i t<*I«-j»Ii«»ii<- wire quite easily. 1 1 
 saves the business man an annoying trip and some- 
 times it saves our assistant from bearing ;ill about the 
 business man's last attack of sciatica. Not always; 
 for sufferers have been known to seek sympathy even 
 by telephone. The more they do it. the more trunk 
 lines we have to pay for, so the telephone company 
 doesn't mind. 
 
 But it is true thai in meeting the business man's 
 needs the library is assimilating itself more and more 
 to a huge information bureau. This is the case espe- 
 cially at our .Municipal Reference Branch in the City 
 Hall, where we have few books, properly so called. 
 many reports, pamphlets and clippings, properly in- 
 dexed, and a great deal of manuscript material, 
 gathered by correspondence in answer t<> queries and 
 waiting for more queries on the same subject. 
 
 It matters little whether what you want is 
 bound between covers, or slipped into a pamphlet case, 
 or slipped into a niauila envelope; it really matters 
 little whether it is printed at all, so hum as it is in- 
 dexed so that it can be found quickly. We may per- 
 haps look forward to the day when all the bound books 
 in the library will be for home use, and will give in- 
 formation at second hand, too late for the business 
 man to act promptly <»'i it. The real sources of up 
 to date knowledge will be, as they often are now, 
 manuscript letters, circulars, newspaper clippings 
 and trade catalogs. 'With their inevitable index they 
 form a huge encyclopedia, absolutely up to date 
 
 The printed cyclopedia in umpty-seven volumes is 
 lucky if it catches up with year before last: it may 
 do for your private library where the skilful agent 
 has induced you to put it. but it is worthless in the 
 Business Man's collection, except on the rare occa-
 
 276 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 sions when he wants the life of Epictetus or the loca- 
 tion of the Dobrudja. For the Business Man we 
 want this morning's material. Shall we deny it, col- 
 lectively, the name of a library just because the book- 
 binder has not been at work on it, and in many cases 
 will never get the chance? 
 
 Not that the Business Man may not read books 
 if he wants them — books on commerce, the industries, 
 transportation, salesmanship, advertising, accounting, 
 lie may have them sent to his home if he likes, with 
 no more trouble than sitting down again to his tele- 
 phone. We use Uncle Sam's n."ssenger service — his 
 parcel post. The only annoying thing about it is that 
 he will not deliver C. O. I), and we are accordingly 
 forced to ask for a postage deposit in advance — any- 
 thing yon choose, from the postage on one book one 
 way to several dollars. We will notify you when the 
 money is used up. This combination of telephone and 
 parcel post seems to me the ideal of library service 
 when yon can name the book you want and don't care 
 to be merely browsing along the shelves. If the book 
 is out, you will be put on the waiting list and will 
 get it automatically when your turn comes. Why 
 does not every citizen of St. Louis avail himself of this 
 easy service? Hysteresis, I suppose; thinking of the 
 old library of 1850 and neglecting that of 1917. Or 
 perhaps it is that provoking little advance payment. 
 Pay beforehand may be a poor paymaster, but those 
 who work with Uncle Sam have to make his acquain- 
 tance. 
 
 So much for the information to be obtained from 
 the library by business men. You are advertising 
 men. Your business is the dissemination of informa- 
 tion. Your boast is that it is your business to tell the 
 truth, and I believe it. How can the Library help 
 yon tell it? Well — I believe the Library to be the
 
 LIBRARY AND THE BUSINESS .MAN l'77 
 
 greatest publicity field in the world largely a virgin 
 field, for you men, like everybody else, have u (, t the 
 hysteresis — von arc suffering from brain lag not 
 brain fag. Yon think the library is hack where it was 
 in 1850, when it was the last place in the world wh< re 
 any sane man would go for publicity. It was a good 
 place to hide. They tell the story of a library in Phil- 
 adelphia, a beautiful old mausoleum, where ai 
 caped criminal once stayed in its public reading room 
 for three days before the police found him. We don't 
 covet thai reputation. The modern library, I repeat, 
 is the very best publicity field in the world. First, 
 as we have seen, it is absolutely non-partisan, [f you 
 gel your publicity material Into the library it is be- 
 cause the library thinks it is good for something, not 
 because yon have some kind of a pull. Next, the peo- 
 ple who frequent the library are intelligent. Public- 
 ity there is like that obtained from a high-class per- 
 iodical : it is gilt-edged. Last and not least, the pub- 
 licity given by the library is incidental. It accepts 
 your publicity material and makes it available, not 
 because it wants to boom your product at the expense 
 of some other, but because it thinks that your male- 
 rial contains something of value to the business man. 
 In most cases its publicity is general, not specific. 
 Von know that splendid Eastman ad — "There's a 
 photographer in your town." That makes a thrill run 
 down my spine whenever 1 see it, jnst as Tschaikov- 
 sky's Sixth symphony does or Homer's description of 
 Ulysses fighting the Cyclops; and for the same reason 
 — it is a product of genius. 
 
 Advertising is more and more bending this way. 
 Why couldn't we have seen it before? For the same 
 reason that we can't all write plays like Shakespeare's 
 or compose Wagner's operas. When two shoemakers, 
 Smith and Jones, had little shops opposite each other,
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 Smith's chief idea of advertising was to tell what 
 trash Jones was making, and Jones's to assure people 
 that nothing good could come out of Smith's store. 
 What was the result? The same that induced the 
 darky to say after he had heard the political orators: 
 "If bofe dese fellers tells de trufe, what a pair of ras- 
 cals they must be!" The net effect was to put people's 
 minds on the worthlessness of the product, instead of 
 its excellence. Nowadays Smith and Jones are get- 
 tin- together, even if they haven't been gobbled up by 
 the Trust, and art- assuring p ■<>;,],> that shoes are good 
 things to have — that we ought to wear more of them; 
 more kinds and Letter quality. The result is to tix 
 public mind mi the excellence <>f shoes and both 
 Smith and Jones sell more of them than under the old 
 method. The library is willing to boom shoes for you, 
 and labor-saving machinery, and food-products, ami 
 textiles and seeds, ami lighting ami heating devi s 
 It does this to some extent without your co-operation, 
 by the hooks that it places on the shelves; hut no one 
 who knows will go to a hook for up-to-date informa- 
 tion of this sort, if you want a description of the 
 very latest device for any purpose, go to the publicity 
 material of the concern that makes it. 
 
 We trust to yon ad-men and your campaign for 
 truth in advertising, that it is no fake. Here is wl 
 yon ran help us and help your clients by so doing. 
 We stock every hit of good, informative publicity 
 that we can find. We miss much of it. You can 
 help us get it all. Your clients will get more public- 
 ity and better publicity for nothing than they have 
 . bought for hundreds <>f dollars. Perhaps it is 
 another effect of hysteresis that makes as afraid of 
 anything that is offered free. Yon remember the story 
 of the man who all day long, on a bet, offered sover-
 
 LIBRARY AND THE BUSINESS MAN 
 
 eigns unsuccessfully in exchange for shillings <»n Lon- 
 don Bridge. 
 
 If we were allowed to charge for our privileg - 
 believe we could turn ourselves into a money-making 
 institution on this count of publicity alone. I believe 
 thai it would be profitable for publishers to pay us for 
 putting their hooks on our shelves. It' we charged for 
 the space Ave are giving to trade catalogs, circulars 
 and other publicity material the issuers, I am sure, 
 would not wait for ns to ask for what they print. We 
 have been trying for several years to get framed pic- 
 tures of Sr. Louis industries to hang in our Business 
 and Industrial Room. Ef we had asked |50 per, 
 the privilege of using space on the walls of a public 
 institution J am sure we could have had it. But since 
 we offer that space absolutely free of charge — a sov- 
 ereign for a shilling — we can't get what we want. 
 
 This is special publicity too, not general. There 
 are some other eases where something about a piece 
 of special publicity makes it so valuable to ns that « > 
 display it. letting the advertiser get his advantage as 
 a side issue. Within the last few years we have put 
 up boldly in our art room, big glaring poster ads of 
 beer, cigars and breakfast foods. I low much could 
 one of you have extorted fr.nn an advertiser if yon had 
 made him believe that yon had some kind of a pull 
 that would enable yon to placard his wares not on 
 Smith's fence or Jones's barn, but actually on the in- 
 side of the St. Louis Public Library? Now these post- 
 ers were displayed, of course, not as inducements to 
 smoke Fatimas or to drink Satanet, but because they 
 were goodand interesting commercial art. We belt 
 that more people see the art on the fences than that 
 in the Art Museum, and we want to do our part 
 toward making it good. It has made great strides of
 
 280 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 late, as I think you will acknowledge. But answer 
 me this: was not that valuable publicity for these 
 products? Will not the knowledge that similar pub- 
 licity may await the manufacturer who gets out a 
 good poster, work out to the advantage of all con- 
 cerned? 
 
 You know those articles in System, of course, tell- 
 ing what the writer would do if he were an under- 
 taker, or a druggist, or a farmer. Well, if I were 
 an ad-man I would get up an exhibition of 
 St. Louis-made commercial art, advertising St, Louis 
 products, and offer it to the Public Library. We will 
 display it, our only condition in each case being that 
 it is artistically worth display. Your clients will have 
 their products advertised gratis, in a place where 
 space could not be bought for a million dollars a 
 square foot. You will gain in reputation as a man 
 who puts over big things: we shall get an interest- 
 ing display of commercial art, and better than all else, 
 an impulse will have been given toward improved 
 quality in the poster art of St. Louis. This is only 
 one instance of the fact, which I believe to be a fact, 
 that there is almost no kind of advertising that can- 
 not be done in a live, modern public library, if one 
 only goes the right way about it. Many go about it 
 quite the wrong way, and do not succeed. 
 
 We do not assist Mrs. Smith to get piano pupils 
 by placing on our bulletin boards a scrawled an- 
 nouncement. We are not willing to distribute by the 
 million, small dodgers anouncing that Jones's clothes- 
 wringers are the best. We do not allow Robinson to 
 lecture in one of our assembly rooms in order to form 
 a class in divine healing from which he, and he alone, 
 will profit. 
 
 Publicity furnished by us must be incidental, as I 
 have said; or it must be general, but I believe it to
 
 LIBRARY AND THE BUSINESS .MAX -2*1 
 
 be all the more effective lor this, and I invite your 
 attempts to make more frequent ami better use of it 
 in such ways as 1 have suggested. Study the busi- 
 ness and industrial material in our Applied Sci 
 Room, or the commercial art material in our Art 
 Room. Examine the collection of travel folders on 
 display in our delivery hall. Sec our bulletin of daily 
 attractions in St. Louis, entered mouths ahead when 
 we can get the information -and see whether you do 
 not agree with me. 
 
 Now let me remind you that you are paying for 
 all this service, whether you make use of it or not. 
 You are members of the best club in St. Louis. 1 
 don't mean the Advertising Men's Club, good as that 
 is; 1 mean the Library Club. The taxgatherer collects 
 the dues: if you are not a taxpayer you pay just the 
 same, the burden being passed along to you in some 
 of the many ways familiar to economists. The dues 
 amount to about three cents a month for each inhab- 
 itant of St. Louis — not excessive. The club has the 
 finest club house in the city, the most comfortable 
 reading and study rooms, tiie finesl and most useful 
 books, the most intelligent and helpful attendants. 
 You may have to belong to other clubs that yon do 
 not use; this, at least it would be folly to negl
 
 POETS, LIBRARIES AND REALITIES* 
 
 We arc met to dedicate a temple of the Book on 
 the birthday of a man who did more than any other 
 American, perhaps, to bring the book to the hearts 
 
 of the masses. All poetry, all song, begins with the 
 people, in the months of humble singers. Elabora- 
 tion, refinement, unintelligent imitation, carry them 
 both away from popular appreciation, until finally 
 someone like James Whitcomb Riley brings them 
 hack. Great poetry is always about familiar things. 
 Homeric epics tell of the kind of fighting that every 
 Greek knew at first hand. The shepherds and shep- 
 herdesses of the earliest pastorals were the everyday 
 workers of the fields. It was only at a later day 
 the epic and pastoral grew artificial because the poets 
 did their best to keep them unchanged while the 
 things of which they told had passed away. Only 
 when the poets forget the stilted symbols which once 
 were real and discover that they themselves are sur- 
 rounded by realities worthy of verse does poetry again 
 become popular. It is this phenomenon that we are 
 witnessing today. 
 
 Kveryone who has had occasion to keep in touch 
 with popular taste will tell you that the increased 
 love for poetry shown in the publication of verse, the 
 purchase of it, the study of it, the demand for it at 
 public libraries, is nothing less that) astounding. 
 That this represents any sudden change in the pub- 
 lic, I cannot believe. The public has always loved 
 verse. The child chants it in his games; he drinks it 
 
 • Address at the opening of the new building: of the Indianapolis 
 Public Library.
 
 284 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 in greedily at his mother's knee. He begs for it, even 
 when he cannot understand it, just for the joy of its 
 rhythm, its lilt. But when the great poets go to the 
 abodes of the gods, or to regions as far away in esthet- 
 ics or metaphysics, for their subjects, they carry their 
 product beyond public appeal. When our great verse 
 is all remote and the familiar things are left to folk- 
 lore and rag-time, then folk-lore and rag-time will 
 monopolize public attention and fill the heart of the 
 people. It is this feeling, on the part of many poets, 
 that the familiar things of life are beneath their no- 
 tice, that has made poetry so long unpopular. The 
 feeling is quite unjustified. All the great elemental 
 things are also among the most familiar— birth, death, 
 love, grief, joy, in human experience : in the outer 
 world, day and night, winter and summer, storm, wind 
 and flood. And affiliated with these are all the little 
 everyday things of which Riley sings— the bathing 
 urchins, the ragged farm hand, the old tramp, the lit- 
 tle orphan girl with her tales of fright, the rabbit 
 under the railroad ties. When the modern reader 
 first read in verse about such things there was a rush 
 of red blood to the heart, with a recognition of the 
 fact that verse had come down from Olympus to earth, 
 and that after all, earth is where we live and that life 
 and its emotions and events are both important and 
 poetical. 
 
 I am not denying the poetry of romance, but we 
 should remember that this too, has its roots in reality. 
 Even the most imaginative works must be based, in 
 the last analysis, on the real. Take for instance such 
 works as Poe's. Poe despised realism. His best 
 work is about half imagination and half form. Yet 
 when he succeeds in rousing in us the mingled emo- 
 tions of fear and horror on which so many of his ef- 
 fects depend he is using for his purposes what was
 
 POETS, LIBRABIES, REALITIES 
 
 once a defensive mechanism of the human organism, 
 causing it to shrink from and avoid the real things — 
 wild beasts, enemies, the forces of nature — thai were 
 striving continually to overwhelm and destroy it. 
 Without the survival of this defensive mechanism of 
 fear and horror, Poe's tales would have no dominion 
 over the human mind. In fact, the main difference 
 between what we call realism and romanticism is 
 that while both have their relations with the real 
 facts of life, the facts on which romanticism depends 
 are unfamiliar, distant and distorted, while realism 
 deals with that which is near at hand and familiar. 
 Knights in armor, distressed damsels, donjon keeps 
 and forests of spears were once as everyday affairs ;is 
 aeroplanes are now, or gas attacks, or the British 
 tanks. These all have in them the elements of ro- 
 mance; and when they too have passed, as God grant 
 they may, they will doubtless take their place in the 
 equipment of the poetical romanticist. Not these re- 
 alities that pass, but those that are with us always, 
 are the ones that inspire verse like Riley's. 
 
 Those who love to study group-psychology, and 
 who realize that we have in the motion-picture audi- 
 ence one of the most wonderful places to observe it 
 that ever has been vouchsafed to mortals, may see 
 every night the hold that this kind of realism has 
 over the popular mind. Armed hosts may surge 
 across the screen, volcanoes may belch and catastro- 
 phe may be piled on catastrophe. The eyes of the 
 spectators may bulge and their mouths may gape, 
 but they remain untouched, lint let a little dog ap- 
 pear with his tongue out and his tail awag; let a 
 small babe lie in its cradle and double up its tiny 
 fists and yell, and at once you have evidence that the 
 picture has penetrated the skin of the house and got 
 down to the quick. Homely realities make an appeal
 
 286 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 that neither the knights in armor of the fourteenth 
 entury nor the tanks in armor of the twentieth are 
 able to exert. Gilbert, who wrote many a truth in 
 the guise of jest, never said a truer thing than when 
 lie made Bunthorne proclaim that in all Nature's 
 works "something poetic lurks" — 
 
 Even in Colocynth and Calomel. 
 
 That is the poet's mission — to show us the poetry 
 in the things that we bad never looked upon as within 
 poetry's sphere. They are all doing it now — Noyes, 
 Rlasefield and all the rest, and the public has risen 
 at them as one man. 
 
 1 f James Whitcomb Riley were here today I should 
 take him by the band and say, "Beloved poet, you 
 have known bow to touch the great heart of the peo- 
 ple quickly and deeply. That is what we must all 
 do, if we are to succeed. We librarians must do it 
 if our libraries are to be more than paper and glue 
 and leather. Teach us the way." 
 
 Our libraries are closer, far closer, to the people 
 today than they were fifty years ago. They can never 
 get as close as an individual voice like Riley's, for 
 they are a combination, not even a harmonious chor- 
 us, but a jumble of sounds from all regions and all 
 ages. Yet we must not forget that in every instru- 
 ment of music there is a potential mass of discord. 
 The skilled player selects his tones and produces 
 them in proper sequence and rhythm; and lo! a sweet 
 melody! So the librarian may play upon his mass 
 of books, selecting and grouping and bringing into 
 correspondence his own tones and the receptive 
 minds of bis community, until every man sees in the 
 library not a jumble but a harmony, not a promoter 
 of intellectual confusion but a clarifier of ideas. In 
 some such fashion it is allowed him to get close to
 
 POETS, LIBRARIES, REALITIES 287 
 
 the minds and hearts of his community as Riley did 
 
 to his readers. 
 
 We arc realizing today, we of the library world, 
 
 that it is u poor instrument thai yields but one tunc, 
 and a poor player who is aide to produce only one. 
 The librarians of the early days were of this kind; 
 so were their libraries. The tune they played was the 
 tune of scholarship a -rami old melody enough, and 
 yet with the right keyboard one may play not only 
 fugues and chorals but the waltz and even the one- 
 step. The scholar will find his refuge in this great 
 building, hut here also will he a multitude of func- 
 tions undreamt of in the early library day — the selec- 
 tion of literature for children and their supervision 
 while they use it. co-op,. ration with the schools, the 
 training of library workers, the publication of lists 
 and other library aids, helpful cataloging and Index- 
 ing, the provision of hooks and assistance for special 
 classes, such as engineers, business men or teachers, 
 a staff and facilities for all kinds of extension work. 
 filling the space around the library as a magnet's 
 field of force surrounds its material body. A modern 
 library is a city's headquarters in its strife against 
 ignorance and inefficiency; its working force is a gen- 
 eral staff — hooks, ammunition for the fighter and 
 food for the worker. 
 
 of the poet I have said that his ability to gain 
 the public ear and to reach the public heart is closely 
 hound up with the portrayal of realities. This is 
 true also of the library. Every step of its progress 
 from a merely scholarly institution to a widely pop- 
 ular one has been marked by the introduction of more 
 red blood, more real life, into its organism. The 
 frequenter of the older library went there to find 
 hooks on the pure sciences, on philosophy, in the
 
 288 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 drama, in poetry. These we of today in no wise neg- 
 lect, but we entertain also those who look for books 
 on plumbing, on the manufacture of hats, shoes and 
 clothing, on salesmanship and cost accounting, on 
 camping and fishing, on firsl aid to the injured, on 
 the products of Sonoma county, California. Our 
 assistants take over the telephone requests to furnish 
 the population of Bulgaria, the average temperature 
 of Nebraska in the month of June, plans for bunga- 
 lows not to cost more than f 1750, pictures of the Win- 
 ter Palace in Petrograd, sixty picture postals of Bal- 
 timore for a reflectoscope lecture, a copy of a poem 
 beginning "O beauteous day!" the address of the 
 speaker's uncle who left Salem, Massachusetts, for 
 the West twenty-six years ago. Everyone of these 
 queries throbs with the red blood of reality. Few of 
 them would have been considered within the library's 
 scope fifty years ago. Books are written nowadays 
 about all such subjects, whereas in the earlier day 
 the knowledge of these things and the ability to write 
 of them did not reside in the same person. So the 
 library's progress toward the realities is but the ex- 
 pression of that same progress in literature, using the 
 word in its widest sense to signify all that may lurk 
 between the covers of a book. The contemptuous 
 name of biblia abiblia — books that are no books — 
 which the earlier writers bestowed upon dictionaries, 
 directories, indexes, lists and the like, is disregarded 
 by the modern librarian. He prizes a list of all the 
 grocers in the United States ; he points with pride to 
 his collection of hundreds of telephone directories; 
 he has names galore in alphabetical array — indexes 
 to places, persons, pictures, events and books. All 
 these things are as much a part of his library as the 
 Iliad of Homer or the dramas of Calderon. 
 
 Put the librarian does not stop here. He con-
 
 POETS, LIBRARIES, REALITIES 289 
 
 ceives that it is his duty to deal not only with hooks 
 but with what we may call adjuncts to books— things 
 which may lead to books those who do not read- 
 things that may interpret hooks to those who read 
 but do not read understandingly or appreciatively. 
 Some of our brothers beyond the sea have critici 
 us American librarians for the freedom— nay, the 
 abandon— with which we have thrown our- 
 selves into the search for such adjuncts and 
 the zeal with which we have striven to make use 
 of them. It has been our aim of late years, for in- 
 stance, to make of the library a community center — 
 to do everything that will cause its neighbors to feel 
 that it is a place where they will he welcome, for 
 whatever cause and that they may look to it for aid, 
 sympathy and appreciation in whatever emergency. 
 If the life of the community thus centers in the lihra- 
 ry, we have felt that the community cannot fail ul- 
 timately to take an interest in the library's contents 
 and in its primary function. The branch lihraries 
 in many of our cities are such local centers. Here 
 one may find the neighbors round about holding an 
 exhibition of needlework, the children dancing, the 
 young men debating questions of the day, the wo- 
 men's clubs discussing their programs, the local musi- 
 cal society rehearsing a cantata, Sunday schools pre- 
 paring for a festival, the ward meeting of a political 
 party. In one of our own branch lihraries, in a well- 
 to-do neighborhood, the librarian said to one of the 
 young men at a social meeting, "I am curious to 
 know why you come here. You could all afford, I 
 know, to rent a larger and better hall: or you could 
 meet in your own homes." The young man looked 
 at her with surprise, "Why," he said, "we like this 
 place. We all .m-ew up in this library." I confess 
 that this anecdote sends a little thrill of satisfaction
 
 290 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 thru me every time I tell it. What could a librarian 
 desire more than to have his neighborhood "grow up" 
 in his library— to have the books as their room- 
 mates — to feel that they would rather be in that one 
 spot than any other? On what a point of vantage 
 docs this place him! How much more readily will 
 his neighbors listen to the good genius of a much- 
 loved spot than to the keeper of a jail! Just here, 
 of (nurse, is the strong point of the so-called Gary 
 system, which has so much in common with our mod- 
 em library ideas. Whatever may be its faults, it at 
 least makes of the school what we librarians have 
 long sought to make of the library — a place that will 
 be loved by its inmates instead of loathed. This once 
 gained there is hardly any result that we may not 
 bring about. 
 
 And now let us consider at least one thing more 
 that we may gain from this intimate contact with 
 the life of the community around us. 
 
 Formalism has been the death of art, of literature, 
 of science, in many an age. It has atrophied an en- 
 tire civilization, as it did in China. It paralyzed 
 Egyptian art; it would have paralyzed Greek art, if 
 the Greeks had not had the vitality to throw it off. 
 Art, literature and science are never sufficient unto 
 themselves. They must all drink continually at the 
 fresh springs of reality. To move up to date with our 
 metaphor, they must all get fresh current from the 
 feeders of nature if the trolley wire is to be kept "live" 
 and the motor running. Those perennial currents 
 that Ampere conceived of as chasing themselves round 
 and round the molecules of matter could keep going 
 only in the absence of resistance, and that is some- 
 thing that we may imagine or talk about, but that 
 does not really exist. Every electric current will 
 stop unless a continuous electro-motive force is behind
 
 POETS, LIBRARIES, REALITIES 
 
 it; every river will dry up unless fed by Living springs. 
 All art, all literature, all science, will shrivel <>wt of 
 
 existence, or ;it any rate out of usefulness, if those 
 who practice it think thai nil they have to do is to 
 copy some trick, some method, some symptom per- 
 haps of real genius, of their predecessors. Aristotle 
 was a real scientist, tho his outlook was not ours. 
 But those who kept on copying Aristotle for centuries 
 and would not believe what they saw with their own 
 eyes unless they could confirm it with .1 passage from 
 his writings — they were no scientists al all. We have 
 recovered from their formalism as Greek art re- 
 covered from the formalism of the lions of Mycenae. 
 
 Who shall say thai .lames Whitcoinb Riley did 
 not do just this when he chose to abandon the stock 
 in trade of the standard poets and put into verse 
 what he saw about him here in Indiana? It is not 
 beyond the possibilities, of course, that his own fresh 
 point of view may one day succumb to formalism — 
 that his little Qrphant Annies and his raggedy men 
 may become familiar to posterity through the work 
 of a school of copyists who prefer to write about an 
 Indiana that they never saw in a period when they 
 never lived, instead of going themselves to the fresh 
 inspiration of the realities about them. Now, of 
 course, the current or the river of art or poetry must 
 run a little while by itself; it cannot be all spring. 
 Only, the fresh inspiration must not be delayed too 
 long, lest the current or the river be dried. 
 
 In a recent article on current British novelists, 
 one of our own most gifted writers. Mrs. Gerould, 
 says with some truth that the stories of the younger 
 realists in England — Compton Mackenzie. Oliver 
 Onions. Hugh Walpole, Gilbert Caiman and their kin 
 — are so similar in subject, treatment and style, that. 
 they might almost be interchangeable, she wittily d *-
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 velops the idea of a syndicate — the British Novelists, 
 Limited— in which one writer is told to do the de- 
 scriptions, another the character-drawing and a third 
 the thrills. Mrs. Gerould is hardly fair here. These 
 young men are almost the first writers in the English 
 language to do just what they are accomplishing. 
 They are by turns engrossing and boresome, but they 
 are like the boy who lias, all by himself, picked out 
 a succession of chords on the piano. The harmony 
 thrills him, but he is in danger of keeping it up so 
 long that he will drive his hearers daft. When our 
 British realists have over- worked their new vein, 
 their sales will fall off and their publishers will see 
 that fresh ore is brought to light ere more of their 
 work reaches the public. How shall we ensure that 
 this new ore shall be at hand — the jungle cleared so 
 that there may be a fresh vista? 
 
 I may be taking too much upon my chosen profes- 
 sion ; hut I cannot help thinking that this is one of the 
 tasks with which Ave librarians shall have to grapple. 
 We have ourselves, as we have seen, come lately into 
 more intimate touch with the realities about us. Can 
 we not put into literature what we are taking from 
 life and so act as the feeders that shall keep civiliza- 
 tion from drying up or turning to stone? This is 
 perhaps a startling idea. A book is a record. In the 
 nature of things there is no progress in a record. 
 And we are the keepers of the records of civilization ; 
 how then shall we be also founts of inspiration? 
 
 In this way; records stand, but the things that 
 they record progress. We must go to the library to 
 find out where humanity stands on the road and what 
 lies before us. If our public comes to us naturally 
 to read these records and if our writers know this and 
 write for a public interested in reality, the library 
 has done its part. Before this linkage can function
 
 POETS, LIBRARIES, REALITIES 293 
 
 truly, we must, have authors who realize thai there 
 
 is a special library public and who write for it. We 
 ar<- told that the English publishers, before they a<- 
 cept a manuscript ask, "How many will the circula- 
 ting libraries take?" They mean the great commer 
 rial subscription Libraries like Mudie's and Smith's. 
 The patronage of these libraries is more Important 
 to them than that of the public at Large, or at any 
 rate, they feel thai they can rely upon it as an indica- 
 tion of \\ hat that of the public at Large will be. There 
 is a Library public that they recognize and respect 
 We have nothing in the United States to correspond 
 to .Mu<lie*s and Smith's, our great circulating libra- 
 ries are our free public libraries. Do authors or pub- 
 lishers or booksellers recognize the public library as 
 a force to be reckoned with, either apart from other 
 readers or as indicative of what other readers will 
 think or do? I once made an investigation of this 
 question and I was compelled to acknowledge, as I 
 am still forced to admit, that there is no such recog- 
 nition. Neither author nor publisher consciously 
 does anything different, because there are public li- 
 brary readers, from what he would do, if all our pub- 
 lic libraries were wiped off the face of the earth. My 
 hope for the future lies in a justified suspicion that 
 though neither is consciously affected, both do recog- 
 nize the library public unconsciously and indirectly. 
 Both would admit that their output has been affected 
 by the great extension of the reading public and its 
 consequent alteration in quality. A discussion of the 
 exact effect would lead us too far afield. The point is 
 that the literary product has been changed by a 
 Change in the numbers and quality of the reading pub- 
 lic, and that this change has been brought about 
 no small degree by the establishment and popularity 
 of public libraries. Possibly it is not too much to
 
 294 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 expect that this unconscious recognition will give 
 place to a conscious one, and that the producers' mu- 
 tual influence bring each other into more frequent 
 contact with reality. 
 
 Now, there may be some here who, wondering at 
 my classification of the Hoosier poet, are saying to 
 themselves, "Was Riley also among the Realists?" 
 And 1 ask in turn, why has Realism come to connote 
 a proportion of things that do not enter at all into 
 the lives of most of us? We have all known and 
 loved the old swimmin' hole; how many of us are 
 familiar with the man who commits suicide, not to 
 end an intolerable situation, not in a frenzy of grief 
 or remorse, but just to see what will happen? Yet 
 when a Russian writes about such anomalies as this 
 our critics say, "What wonderful realism!" If real- 
 ism is anything, it must surely be real. There is mor- 
 bidity in life; we cannot avoid it or overlook it. But 
 is there anything in life that corresponds to ninety- 
 nine per cent of morbidity? Not in my life, nor in 
 yours. For you and for me, Riley is a realist. God 
 forbid that he may ever be anything else. 
 
 Tli ere is something in the situation of this city in 
 which we are assembled, that encourages men to 
 look life straight in the face. Those who dwell amid 
 rocky heights and caverns may be excused for look- 
 ing behind them when they walk and for trembling 
 at shadows. The sailor between whom and eternity 
 there stands only a two-inch plank may live largely 
 among unrealities. But the man of the open prairie, 
 with God's solid earth stretching aAvay north, south, 
 east and west, and God's free air above and about 
 him, stands firmly and sees clearly. What interests 
 him is the present and its necessary relationships 
 with the future, with only so much of the past as is
 
 POETS, LIBBABIES, REALITH 295 
 
 able to consolidate these relationships and illumine 
 them. Here, as one would expect, is growing op a 
 school of representative artists, working some with 
 the pen and others with the brush, whose aim and 
 whose high privilege it La to record these relation- 
 ships on canvas and on the printed page, each in 
 his own fashion, of course, for a love for the outer 
 realities can never d<> away with that supreme Inner 
 reality, a man's own sell' that which looks out ap- 
 on the world and sees that world through its own 
 spectacles. It is the triumph of all art that faith- 
 fully as it may represent what it sees, its representa- 
 tions will still be, in large part, functions of the art 
 Ist's <>wii mood, so that the same scene, tin- same 
 event, portrayed by different writers or different 
 painters, may arouse in as emotions as varied as joy, 
 grief or mere restfulness. And of course, although 
 we may praise -lames Whitcomb Riley portraying 
 what he saw about him there would he little to praise 
 if he were not at the same time portraying -lames 
 Whitcomb Riley and if that portrayal were not worth 
 while. 
 
 1 like to think that what we librarians are doing 
 is in some measure akin to the work of the artists of 
 pen or brush, though perhaps in a secondary way. 
 The writer interprets reality; we interpret the writers 
 themselves. Here is a case where we cannot have too 
 many middlemen, for each, instead of piling up cost 
 to the consumer, piles up the value of the product 
 How many men could sit in a country churchyard 
 ;it evening and see unaided what Gray saw'.' Cray 
 in his Elegy records that churchyard and himself as 
 well. But how many men does Cra\ fail to reach? 
 How many, whom he would rejoice or comfort, never 
 heard him? And to Gray, in this query, let as add
 
 296 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 the Dames of all the good and great in literature. 
 Eere is where the librarian steps in. He presents 
 Gray and Gray's fellow artists in words, to his public. 
 
 Years ago the library was merely a storehouse and 
 the Librarian the custodian thereof. Today the libra- 
 ry is a magazine of dynamic force and the librarian 
 is the man who exerts and directs it — who persuades 
 the community that it needs books and then satisfies 
 that need, instead of waiting for the self-realization 
 which too often will never come. Does not the libra- 
 rian in some fashion interpret life and nature to his 
 public, through books in general, even as the writer 
 interprets them through one particular book? 
 
 This may seem fantastic, but I like to think that it 
 is true. The October air in these autumn days is 
 full of megaphonic voices, each insisting on its right 
 to be heard above all the others. We are urged to 
 enlist in the British army, to buy Liberty bonds, to 
 build huts for the Y.M.C.A. and the Knights of Co- 
 lumbus, to work for the Red Cross, to buy tobacco for 
 the soldiers, and at the same time to support all our 
 local charities and pay our club dues as usual, not 
 neglecting to respond to the calls of the tax collec- 
 tor. We librarians have ourselves used the mega- 
 phone to some purpose, having as you know, raised 
 a million dollars to establish and maintain camp li- 
 braries, giving our soldiers the same public library 
 facilities that they enjoy at home. 
 
 But in the midst of all this distracting chorus let 
 us not forget that our normal lives must function as 
 usual, despite the abnormalities that surround and 
 interpenetrate them. The opening of this noble li- 
 brary building ami the character of this assembly 
 a iv proofs that we intend to live as usual, even amid 
 so much that is unusual. 
 
 I see no limit to the usefulness of this building
 
 POETS, LIBRARIES, REALITIES 291 
 
 and of the institution whose home it is to be. The 
 house is new but its occupant has been long and favor- 
 ably known t<» your citizens, [ndianapolis has libra- 
 ry traditions, and is what we librarians call a "good 
 library town.'* Your library has had good leadership 
 and it is to continue, adding the force and freshness 
 of the new to the strength and experience of the old. 
 The memory of your dearly loved poet will be brought 
 to the mind of each library user -by the children's 
 room that hears his name, by the land that he gave 
 to enlarge its site, by this enduring portraiture — by a 
 thousand and one things, none th" less cogent for be- 
 ing intangible. I look to see this library, in the home 
 city of James Whitcomb Riley, grow into a place in 
 th" public heart comparable with that which was 
 attained by Riley himself. It should he loved for its 
 broad minded humanity, for its sympathy with man- 
 kind, especially with little children, for its readiness 
 to "rejoice with those that do rejoice and weep with 
 those thai weep," for its quick response to the personal 
 and spiritual needs of every reader, and above all for 
 its firm hold on the realities of life and its apprecia- 
 tion of life as something that is lived on the farm, in 
 the city street, in the office, the school and the club, 
 not in the clouds, not in fog and mist, not with the 
 improbable or the impossible. That it will do and he 
 all these things we may he confident Riley the well 
 beloved is gone. His memory lives on; let it live with 
 peculiar force and vividness in this library, in its at- 
 titude toward those whom it serves — in the affection 
 which they in turn feel toward an institution that 
 has long been, and will long continue to he a center of 
 literary, civic and intellectual force in the city where 
 Rilev lived and wrote.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 The years immediately succeeding the great \\ar 
 are- to witness great progress in team-work. The war 
 is teaching us to get together, and it is impossible to 
 believe that the lessons we are now Learning will be 
 suddenly and totally forgotten with the advent of 
 peace. The world is full of Institutions, associations, 
 corporate bodies of all kinds, founded on a knowledge 
 of what may be accomplished by the cooperation of 
 individuals; but the cooperation of these bodies them- 
 selves, one with another, has been faulty until recent- 
 ly. 
 
 The public library is cooperative in its very es- 
 sence. Its business is to help others. Were there no 
 public for it to serve, its very necessity for existence 
 would go. In the older days it merely sat with folded 
 hands, ready to serve. Of later years ii has become a 
 compelling force, peaching out into the community by 
 ;1 thousand tendrils and attaching them to whatever 
 individual, or body of individuals, seems to be in need 
 —often without knowing it— of library service. The 
 public library's relations with the schools, with tin' 
 business man, with the industries, with the milit 
 gervic* — you will find these all discus! over and over 
 again, not only in the technical magazines devoted to 
 library work, but in the public press. 
 
 Ami yet we look in vain for a discussion of the 
 public library's relations with the Church. Why is 
 this? The Church itself is in the cooperative class 
 with the library. It exists t<» help mankind. Without
 
 300 LIBRAE Y ESSAYS 
 
 a humanity to help, and a humanity weak and fallible 
 enough to need help, its mission would be over. In 
 studying this question I And an unaccountable timid- 
 ity on both sides. On the one hand, librarians and li- 
 braries seem to be shy of religion. They rarely pur- 
 chase religious books in any systematic way. They 
 are afraid of denominational literature, both books 
 and periodicals, apparently on the ground that those 
 presenting the view of one religious body might be 
 objected to by other bodies. Some libraries refuse to 
 subscribe for any denominational papers, but will ac- 
 cept them as gifts. Many libraries refuse to allow 
 the holding of religious meetings in their buildings, 
 probably for a similar reason. 
 
 On the other hand, the churches, as churches, seem 
 often to ignore the existence of the public library, 
 even when their members use it constantly. They 
 maintain libraries of their own in their Sunday- 
 schools, for their young people, and these libraries, I 
 am sorry to say, are often far below standard ! They 
 rarely show interest in the public library's collection 
 of books, not seeming to care whether the library does 
 or does not contain their own denominational litera- 
 ture. 
 
 There are some noteworthy exceptions. The Ro- 
 man Catholics are aware of the library and seem to 
 appreciate its value as a publicity agent and an edu- 
 cator. They are concerned when it contains books of 
 which they disapprove, and are anxious to put on its 
 shelves works that will interest their own people. Of 
 late they have published in several of our large cities 
 lists of books in the public library written by their 
 coreligionists, or, for some reason of special interest 
 to them. These lists have usually been prepared with 
 the assistance of the library staff and paid for and 
 distributed either by a special committee or by some
 
 CHURCH ANh LIBRARY 301 
 
 denominational body such as the Knights of Colum- 
 bus. Thai they have a sympathetic attitude toward 
 the library is shown not only by these facts, but by 
 the fact that libraries in several cities, organized spe- 
 cifically as church libraries, have been turned over to 
 the local public library as branches. 
 
 Another religious body thai appreciates the aid 
 of the public library is that of the < Jhristian Scientists. 
 This Church has committees specially charged with 
 seeing that public libraries are supplied, free of 
 charge, with its literature. 
 
 During the present Luther anniversary there has 
 been some activity on the part of the Lutheran 
 churches to see that libraries are supplied with mate- 
 rial bearing on their organization and doctrines. 
 With these exceptions I have not met. during my li- 
 brary experience of a quarter of a century with the 
 slightest interest on the part of religious bodies re- 
 garding the book-collection of a public library -either 
 about what it contained or what it did not contain. 
 Occasionally, however, a church library has been 
 transformed into a public library branch. In New 
 York there are three branches that began their exis- 
 tence as parish libraries of Protestant Episcopal 
 churches. Doubtless there arc instances in other 
 cities of which 1 have no knowledge. 
 
 1 am sure that more active cooperation between 
 the public library ami the various religious bodies 
 would benefit both and. through them, the public, in 
 the first place, the library should devote more atten- 
 tion to its collection of religious books, and it would 
 do so if those interested showed their interest active- 
 ly. There is much material of great value to teach- 
 ers in Sunday-schools that should find a resting-place 
 in the library. In a town where there are. say. a 
 dozen Sunday-schools, it may be quite impossible for
 
 302 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 each to buy several sets of commentaries, concord- 
 ances, works of travel and description, &c, but they 
 might well club together for the purchase of this mate- 
 rial and give it to the library or deposit it there, 
 where it would be at the service of all. In larger 
 towns, where the library fund is greater, united effort 
 on the part of the churches would doubtless result 
 in the expenditure of part of the book-money for this 
 purpose. Librarians are anxious to serve the public. 
 If they can be shown that tin 1 public wants books of 
 one kind rather than another they are only too glad 
 to respond. They do not like to buy books in the dark, 
 but the apparent indifference of the public often 
 forces them to do so. 
 
 Such works as these are of common interest to 
 all Christians. But in addition every library ought 
 to contain a certain amount of denominational mate- 
 rial. The library is not, except possibly for some oc- 
 casional reason, interested in propaganda, but facts 
 about the Methodists or the Baptists are surely of as 
 much value, and should be preserved witli as much 
 care, as facts about a constitutional convention in 
 Nebraska or the proceedings of a plumbers' associa- 
 tion in Salem, Mass. Every good library should have 
 one standard work on the history of each of the prom- 
 inent religious denominations, especially those that 
 are strong in its home town. It should include the 
 biographies of its principal divines and laymen. 
 There should be also its year-book, renewed annually, 
 its official confession of faith and statement of organ- 
 ization, its liturgy, if it has one, its official collection 
 of hymns. Its chief periodical should be on tile. 
 
 I do not know of any library that makes a special- 
 ty of obtaining this material and seeing that it is all 
 up-to-date. Most librarians would exclaim that their 
 meager funds would not stand the strain, ami that,
 
 CHURCH AND LIBRARY 
 
 besides, there lias never been The slightest demand for 
 such material. There is a demand for all the latest 
 novels by Barold Bell Wright, Roberl W. Chambers, 
 and Marie Corelli, and so these are purchased. Bere 
 is where the indifference of most of our religious 
 bodies toward what the library does or does not con- 
 tain is bearing legitimate fruit 
 
 I>o<s your public library contain reference-mate- 
 rial that is of interest, or ought to be of interest, to 
 your co-religionists? If not, whose fault is it'.' Ex- 
 tending our inquiry beyond reference-material, we 
 may next assert that there are many semipopular 
 hooks of a denominational character, sermons by a 
 favorite divine, advice to young people, words of com- 
 fort.to those in trouble, which it is to the interest of 
 Christian people to see more widely read. The libra- 
 ries will never waste their money in the purchase of 
 these if they are to remain idly on the shelves. They 
 will buy freely in response to a demand. Whose fault 
 is it that the demand does not materialize? 
 
 1 have said that such a demand might easily divert, 
 part of the library's book-fund now devoted to other 
 purchases. But tin- churches could afford to buy 
 these hooks and present them to the library if they 
 would erase to duplicate tie' library's work in direc- 
 tions where SUCh duplication is useless. Why should 
 
 a Sunday-school library buy stories. for old or young? 
 There was good reason for it in the day, now far dis- 
 tant, when the public library was non-existent and the 
 Sunday-school was the only general source of decent 
 hooks. Even in thai day the Sunday-school library 
 largely bought trash— the kind of wishy-washy, 
 mock-pious stuff turned out by hack-writers at the 
 rate of several volumes per day. 
 
 The rapid rise of the public library is doubtless 
 due, in part, t<> the neglect of its early opportunities
 
 304 LI BEAKY ESSAYS 
 
 by the Sunday-school library. But no one can say 
 that the public library has not risen to the occasion. 
 The very best part of its collection, the most careful- 
 ly selected, the most conscientiously distributed, is 
 that which contains its books for children. We have 
 schools for the training of children's librarians, and 
 we give their graduates special charge of rooms for 
 children in our library buildings. There is no reason 
 now why any church should maintain a library of gen- 
 eral literature for any purpose whatever. 
 
 I have alluded above to the library's value as a 
 publicity agent. As a matter of fact, both the Church 
 and the library are the greatest and most valuable 
 means of publicity that we have. Both are unpur- 
 chasable. Both reach selected elements of the com- 
 munity, partly the same, partly different. To have 
 an event announced from the pulpit, especially with 
 commendation, gives it a prestige that it could attain 
 in no other way. Similarly, to have something pub- 
 lished on the library's bulletin-boards, or on slips in- 
 serted in each circulated book, or in any one of a 
 dozen ways that have been practised by libraries gives 
 publicity of high value. Both the pulpit and the li- 
 brary utilize these methods for themselves and often 
 for outside bodies, but not often for each other. It 
 is rare for a clergyman to mention the public library 
 from his pulpit, altho it is occasionally done. It is 
 also rare, tho not totally unknown, for a library to 
 give publicity to a church in any of the ways that are 
 proper for this to be done. 
 
 In particular, every library, especially in a small 
 city where there is no local guide-book, should be a 
 repository of local religious information. Any one 
 should be able, not only to ascertain there the location 
 of any particular church, but to consult its litera- 
 ture, if it issues any; if not, to find on file authentic 
 information about it corresponding to that usually
 
 CHURCH AND LIBRARY 305 
 
 put into print — the Dames of officers, a list of parish 
 organizations, &c. Such things can be had for the 
 asking, and there is usually no one place in a town 
 where they are all assembled. There should be such 
 a place, and that place may well be the public library. 
 Large libraries quite generally collect this material; 
 the smaller ones should follow suit. They will be apt 
 to do so if the church people manifest an interest. If 
 the collection and continual "following up" of the 
 material involve more work than the smaller staff of 
 the library can do, it ought to be easy to divide it 
 among volunteers from the different congregations, 
 this being the church's part of this particular item of 
 cooperation. 
 
 It is safe to say that the Church and the public 
 library may help each other in at least six ways : 
 
 1. The substitution of the library's children's room 
 for the Sunday-school library in the purveying of gen- 
 eral literature. 
 
 2. The more careful and more generous provision 
 of religious books in the library, with increased in- 
 terest on the part of the church in the character of 
 this part of the collection. 
 
 3. The offer by the library of facilities for religious 
 meetings. 
 
 4. Utilization of religious gatherings in the church 
 to call attention to the library and its willingness to 
 aid and advise. 
 
 5. Publicity given in and by the library to the 
 churches and their work. 
 
 6. Publicity given in and by the Church to the li- 
 brary and its work. 
 
 As a basis on which cooperation of these and other 
 kinds is to rest there must be personal acquaintance 
 and confidence between tin 1 clergy and the librarian. 
 This is something of which increase will bring further
 
 306 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 increase, as in the accretions to a rolling snowball. 
 For instance, the pastor of a church must have a cer- 
 tain degree of confidence in the librarian's good-will 
 and ability to venture to recommend the purchase of 
 a book; the librarian must have the same to be will- 
 ing to entertain and act upon such a recommendation. 
 Hut the contact once made, the book once bought, 
 then' is ground for increased confidence and acquain- 
 tance and for additional advice, and so it goes. 
 
 It will be noted that this counsel lays a greater 
 burden on the librarian than on the clergy. It is no 
 great task for any clergyman to make the acquain- 
 tance of the librarian; it is quite another thing for 
 the librarian to do the same by each and every clergy- 
 man in his city. Tf the city is large and the clergy 
 of various denominations are numbered by thousands, 
 it is practically impossible. Recognizing this fact, the 
 clergy should take some steps toward making collec- 
 tive take the [dace of individual acquaintance. They 
 should invite the librarian to their meetings and he on 
 his part should be ready to attend and to address 
 them if requested to do so. 
 
 It should hardly be necessary to warn both parties 
 to such cooperation as this, that the obtrusion of con- 
 siderations of personal advantage, where this conflicts 
 with public service, will be fatal to its success. For 
 instance, a clergyman who is preparing an address 
 on gome rather unusual subject must not expect the 
 librarian of a small city to expend public money for 
 books which will aid him, and him alone, in his work. 
 Fortunately, this particular issue can generally be 
 avoided, owing to the growth of facilities for inter- 
 library loans. Altho the librarian might properly re- 
 fuse to buy these particular books, he won hi doubtless 
 offer to attempt to borrow them from some larger li- 
 brary, and this attempt would have a good chance of
 
 CHURCH AND LIBRARY 307 
 
 success, [nterlibrary service of this kind is bound to 
 increase largely in the future and offers a mosl 
 promising field for the rendering of aid by the smaller 
 libraries to the scholar, literary worker, ;in<l investi- 
 gator, including, of course, the clergyman. 
 
 The getting-together of public library ;m<l church 
 has possibly been hampered in the past by an idea, 
 common i<> both librarian and clergyman, thai re- 
 ligious bodies and their work ought to be ignored by 
 all public bodies, and that this is in sonic way ;i part 
 of our American system of government and public ad- 
 ministration. It is. of course, ;i feature of that ad- 
 ministration to treat all religious bodies with absolute 
 impartiality; hut that docs ool involve ignoring their 
 existence any more than treating all citizens with im- 
 partiality involves the ignoring of the individual. 
 One way of being impartial, of course, is to turn one's 
 hack equally upon all, hut that is not the only way. 
 One may treat one*s children alike by starving all of 
 them equally, hut our idea of impartial treatment 
 would he better satisfied by an equality of adequate 
 supplies. 
 
 It is time that the public library and the Church 
 stopt the starvation treatment and began to mete out 
 to each other a supply of the aid and good-will that 
 each has at its disposal. Each has its fight f<> make 
 against the forces of darkness; neither is in a position 
 to neglect an ally.
 
 THE FUTURE OF LIBRARY WORK 
 
 When a railroad train is on its way, its future his- 
 tory depends on which way it is heading, on its speed, 
 
 and on whether its direction and its speed will re- 
 main unchanged. With these premises, one may con- 
 fidently predict that a train which left Chicago at a 
 given hour on one day will reach New York at a given 
 hour on the next. Of course, something may happen 
 to slow the train, or to wreck it, or even to send it 
 back to Chicago, in which cases our predictions will 
 come to naught. This is what the weather man finds. 
 His predictions are based on very similar data. Our 
 weather conditions travel usually across the contin- 
 ent from west to cast at a fairly uniform rate. If 
 that rate is maintained, and the direction does not 
 change, and nothing happens to dissipate or alter the 
 conditions, we can predict their arrival at a given 
 place with a. fair degree of accuracy. Those who rail 
 at the weather man's mistakes are simply finding fault 
 with our present inability to ascertain the causes that 
 slow up storm centers, or swerve them in their course, 
 or dissipate them. When we know these things, and 
 know in addition what starts them, we can give up 
 making forecasts and write out a pretty definite 
 weather time-table — as definite and as little subject to 
 change, at any rate, as those issued by the railroads. 
 My business at this moment is that of a forecaster. 
 We know just where and what the library situation 
 is at present, and some of US think we know where it 
 is headed. If it should keep on in the same direction 
 and at the same rate, we ought to be aide to describe
 
 310 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ir as it will be, say, in 1950. Of course, it may get 
 
 headed in some other direction. It may slow down or 
 speed up; it may melt away or strike a rock and be ir- 
 recoverably wrecked. If 1 see any chances of any of 
 these things, it is my business to mention them. If 
 my forecast should turn out a failure no one can prove 
 it until 1950 arrives, and then I shall not care. 
 
 To begin with the necessary preliminaries of our 
 forecast— what and where are we now? I have said 
 that I know; probably you think that you do; but as 
 a matter of fact our knowedge is neither comprehen- 
 sive nor accurate. We need a general library sur- 
 vey. We have, as a sort of statistical framework, tin 1 
 figures now printed annually in tabular form in the 
 A. L. A. Proceedings, but probably no one would main- 
 tain that these do, or possibly could, give an adequate 
 idea of the character or extent of the work that our 
 libraries are doing. Those of us who think we know 
 something of it have gained our knowledge by experi- 
 ence and observation and neither is extensive enough 
 in most cases to take the place of a well-considered 
 and properly-managed survey of existing conditions 
 and methods. 
 
 In default of a survey, we must, ;is I have said, 
 fall back upon observation and experience. I can cer- 
 tainly claim no monopoly of these, and what I say in 
 this regard is, of course, largely personal. But it 
 seems to me that the distinguishing marks of library 
 work, as at present conducted, include the following. 
 As you will see, they are all connected and overlap 
 more or less. They are all growth-products. They 
 are: 
 
 i Size and expense. 
 
 2 Socialization 
 
 3 Professionalization. 
 
 4 Popularization. 
 
 5 Nationalization.
 
 FUTURE OF LIBRARY WORK 311 
 
 First, library work in our country to-day is large 
 and costly. Extensively ii covers a great territory 
 and reaches a huge population. Intensively it em- 
 braces a large variety of activities— many that on*? 
 would hesitate, on general principles, to class as "li- 
 brary work." 
 
 Secondly, a Large amount of ihis increase of activ- 
 ity has been of a kind that we are now apt to call "so- 
 cial.'' It deals with bodies or classes of people, and it 
 tends to treat these people as the direct objects of the 
 library's attention, instead of dealing primarily with 
 books, as formerly, and only indirectly with their 
 readers. In fact, the persons with whom the library 
 now deals may not be readers at all, except potential- 
 ly, as when they are users of clnb or assembly rooms. 
 
 Thirdly, librarians are beginning to think of them- 
 selves as members of a profession. At first sight this 
 may seem to be a fact of interest only to library work- 
 ers, and not at all to the public. Its significance maj 
 appear if we compare it to the emergence of the mod- 
 ern surgeon with his professional skill, traditions and 
 pride, from the medieval barber who simply followed 
 blood-letting as an avocation. Professionalism is a 
 symptom of a great many things — of achievement and 
 of consciousness of it and pride in it; of a desire to 
 do teamwork and to maintain standards; to make 
 sure that one's work is to be carried on and advanced 
 by worthy successors. 
 
 1'onrthly, libraries are now conducted for the 
 many ; not for the few. It is our aim to provide some- 
 thing for every one who can read, no matter of what 
 age, sex, or condition. We do not. even limit ourselves 
 to readers, for we provide picture books for those who 
 are too young to read. We are transferring the em- 
 phasis of our work from books to people. This charac- 
 teristic is closely connected with what 1 have called
 
 312 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 '•socialization,'* but it is not the same thing. An in- 
 stitution may deal with all the people without deal- 
 ing with them socially or in groups; and it may deal 
 entirely with groups without dealing with everybody. 
 The library now does both. 
 
 Fifthly, the library is now a national institution, 
 at least in the same sense as is the public school. It 
 is national in extent, national in consciousness, if not 
 national in administration. Our own association has 
 played its part in this development; the present war 
 has given it a great stimulus. Those who see no na- 
 tionalism without complete centralization and who 
 say that we are not yet a nation because all our gov- 
 ernmental powers are not centered at Washington, 
 will doubtless deny the nationalization of the library. 
 They take too narrow a view. 
 
 We may now combine two or more lines of in- 
 quiry. In what direction is the library moving in each 
 of these respects? Is it speeding or slowing up? Is 
 there any reason to look for speeding or slowing up in 
 the future? 
 
 As regards size and cost, our development has been 
 swift. We cannot, it seems to me, keep up the rate. 
 Twenty years ago the institutions now constituting 
 the New York Public Library circulated a million 
 books. They now circulate ten million. Does anyone 
 believe that twenty years hence they will circulate one 
 hundred million? There must be further increase, be- 
 cause we are not now reaching every person and every 
 class in the community, but it will not and cannot be 
 a mere increase of quantity. We must do our work 
 better and make every item and element in it tell. 
 We must substitute one book well read for ten books 
 skimmed. In place of ten worthless books we must put 
 one that is worth while. There are already signs of 
 this substitution of quality for quantity in our ideals.
 
 FUTURE OF LIBRARY WORK 313 
 
 Extension, as opposed to intrusion, has appealed 
 to many enthusiastic librarians as "missionary work." 
 Perhaps the term is well chosen. Some of it is akin 
 to the missionary fervor that sends funds to convert. 
 the distant heathen when nominal Christians around 
 the corner are vainly demanding succor, material, 
 mental and spiritual. We have too much of this in 
 the library; attempts to form hoys' clubs with arti- 
 ficial aims and qualifications when clubs already 
 formed to promote objects that are very real in the 
 members' minds are ignored <>r neglected; the provi- 
 sion of boresome talks on "Rubber-culture in Peru" 
 and on "How I climbed Long's Peak," when members 
 of the community would be genuinely interested in 
 hearing an expert explain the income tax; the pur- 
 chase of new books that nobody wants when an insist- 
 ent demand for old standards of sterling worth has 
 never been adequately met; all sorts of forcing from 
 the outside instead of developing from the inside. 
 This kind of thing, like charity, begins properly at 
 home, and the real missionary takes care to set his 
 own house in order before he j^oes far afield — to fill 
 the nearby demand, when it is good, before attempting 
 to force something on those who do not want it. 
 
 It is in this direction thai our promise of con- 
 tinued progress lies when we cannot, see grounds for 
 expecting great future increase of income. 
 
 This leads us naturally to discuss what I have 
 called our socialization, which is just beginning. It 
 is running strong, but there is room for a long course, 
 and that course. I believe, it will take. In the first 
 place, we are functioning more and more as commun- 
 ity centers, but. there is enormous room for advance. 
 We are straggling all along the line, which is one 
 sign of an early stage. Some of us have not yet 
 awakened to the fact that we are destined to play a
 
 314 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 great part in community development and commun- 
 ity education. Others are reluctantly yielding to 
 pressure. Others have gone so fast that they are in 
 advance of their communities. Take, if you please, 
 the one item of the provision of space for community 
 meetings, regarded by some as the be-all and the end- 
 all of the community center idea. It is really but one 
 element, but it may serve as a straw to show which 
 way the wind blows. Some libraries are giving no 
 space for this purpose; some give it grudgingly, with 
 all sorts of limitations; others give quite free- 
 ly. None of us give with perfect freedom. I 
 suppose we in St. Louis are as free as any. In 15 as- 
 sembly and clubrooms we house 4,000 meetings yearly. 
 Our only limitations are order and the absence of an 
 admission fee. I incline to think that the maintenance 
 of order should be the only condition. If an admission 
 fee is charged, part of it should go to the library, to 
 be devoted to caring for the assembly and clubrooms 
 and improving them. There are many community 
 gatherings that can be best administered on the plan 
 of a paid admission. These ought not to be excluded. 
 Most of our restrictions are simply exhibits of our 
 reluctance to place ourselves at the complete social 
 disposal of the community. A community is not a 
 community unless it has political and religious in- 
 terests. If we are going to become socialized at all, 
 why balk at these any more than we should exclude 
 from our shelves books on politics and religion? I 
 look to see socialization, in this and other directions, 
 proceed to such lengths that the older library ideals 
 may have to go entirely by the board. Some of them 
 are tottering now. I have said that I consider this 
 matter of the use of assembly rooms only one item in 
 what I have called socialization. It may all be summed
 
 FUTURE OF LIBRARY WORK :u:> 
 
 up by saying that we are coming to consider the libra- 
 ry somewhat in the lijjlit of a community club, of 
 which all well-behaved citizens are members. Our 
 buildings arc clubhouses, with books ami magazines, 
 
 meeting rooms, toilet facilities, kitchens — almost 
 everything, in fact, that a good, small club would con- 
 tain. If you say "then they have ceased to be libra- 
 ries and are something else," that does not affect in'- 
 any more than when you show that we are no longer 
 speaking Chaucer's language or wearing the clothes 
 of Alfred the Great. 
 
 When we were trying to explain to the architects 
 of the New York branch buildings exactly what we 
 wanted in those structures and met with the usual 
 misconception based on medieval ideas of a library, 
 one of the most eminent architects in the United 
 States suddenly sat up and took notice. "Why, these 
 buildings are not to be libraries at all," he said, "they 
 are to be reading clubs." He had learned in a few 
 minutes what many of us still see- through a glass 
 darkly. 
 
 An even more important manifestation of what I 
 have called socialization is the extension of occupa- 
 tion groups to which the library is giving special at- 
 tention and special service. The library has always 
 had in mind one or more of these groups. Once it. 
 catered almost entirely to a group of scholars, at first 
 belonging predominantly to the clergy. In later years 
 it added the teachers in schools and their pupils, also 
 the children of the community. These are definite 
 groups, and their recognition in the rendition of ser- 
 vice is a social act. Other groups are now being ad- 
 ded with rapidity, and we are recognizing in our ser- 
 vice industrial workers, business men, artists of var- 
 ious kinds, musicians and so on. The recognition of
 
 31G LIBEARY ESSAYS 
 
 new groups and the extension of definite library ser- 
 vice to them is progress in socialization, and it is go- 
 ing on steadily at the present time. 
 
 Just now the most conspicuous group that we are 
 taking in is that of business men. In adjusting our 
 resources and methods to the needs of this group we 
 are (hanging our whole conception of the scope of a 
 library's collection. As Mr. Dana has pointed out, 
 we now collect, preserve and distribute not books 
 alone, but printed matter of all kinds, and in addition 
 records of other types, such as manuscripts, pictures, 
 slides, films, phonograph discs and piano rolls. Some 
 of these of course are needed to adapt our collection 
 to others than the business group — to educators, art- 
 ists or musicians. We shall doubtless continue to dis- 
 cover new groups and undergo change in the course of 
 adaptation to their needs. 
 
 The recognition of special groups and the effort to 
 do them service has proceeded to a certain extent out- 
 side the pubic library, owing to the slowness of its re- 
 action to this particular need. The result has been 
 the special library. I am one of those who are sorry 
 that the neglect of its opportunity by the public libra- 
 ry has brought this about, and I hope for a reduction 
 in the number of independent special libraries by a 
 process of gradual absorption and consolidation. The 
 recent acquisition of some formerly independent mu- 
 nicipal reference libraries by the local libraries is a 
 case in point. There must always be special libraries. 
 The library business of independent industrial and 
 commercial institutions is best cared for in this way. 
 But every group that is merely a section of the gen- 
 eral public, set apart from the rest by special needs 
 and tastes, may be cared for most economically by the 
 public library. If its service is not adapted to give 
 such care, rapid and efficient adjustment is called for.
 
 FUTCIJI-: OF LinUARV WORK 317 
 
 In a library forecast made several years ago, Mr. 
 John C. Dana state*] his opinion thai the library, as 
 if is, "an unimportant by-product," is to be of im- 
 portance in the future, but will then have departed 
 from the "present prevailing type." Without neces- 
 sarily agreeing to our present insignificance, we may 
 well accept, I think, this forecast of future growth 
 and change. 
 
 Professionalization, too, has by DO means reached 
 its limit. As has been pointed out, it is a sympton, 
 rather than the thing itself. It is like a man's clothes, 
 by which yon can often trace the growth or decay of 
 his self-respect Pride in one's work and a tendency 
 to exalt it is a healthy sign, provided there is some- 
 thing back of it. The formation of staff associations 
 like that recently organized in New York is a good 
 sign, so is the multiplication of professional bodies. 
 The establishment of the A. L. A. in 1876 was the be- 
 ginning of the whole library advance in this country. 
 It was only a symptom, of course, but with the healthy 
 growth of libraries I look for more si^ns of our pride 
 in what wo are doing, of our unwillingness to lower 
 it or to alter its ideals. 
 
 The familiar question, "Is librarianship a profes- 
 sion?" reduces to a matter of definition. We are b ■- 
 ing professionalized for the purposes of this discus- 
 sion if we are growing sufficiently in group conscious- 
 ness to let it react favorably on our work. 
 
 One of the earliest developments of a feeling of 
 professional pride in one's work is an insistence on 
 the adequate training of the workers and on the estab- 
 lishment of standards of efficiency both for workers 
 and work. Here belongs a forecast not only of li- 
 brary school training, but of official inspection and 
 certification, of systems of service, etc. Standardiza- 
 tion of this kind is on the increase and is bound to b !
 
 318 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 enforced with greater strictness in the future. In our 
 professional training as in other professions the ten- 
 dency is toward specialization. With us, this special- 
 ization will doubtless proceed on the lines of facilities 
 for practice. An engineering school cannot turn out 
 electrical engineers if the only laboratories that it 
 lias arc devoted to civil and mechanical engineering. 
 A specialist in abdominal surgery is not produced by 
 experience in a contagious disease ward. Similarly 
 we ought not to expect a school remote from public 
 library facilities to specialize in public library 
 work, or a school in close connection with a 
 public library to produce assistants for the work of 
 a university library. Increasing professional spirit 
 among us will demand specialization according to 
 equipment. 
 
 Popularization, some may think, has already gone 
 to the limit, How can we be more of the people than 
 we are to-day? Are we not, in sooth, a little too dem- 
 ocratic, perhaps? Personally I feel that a good deal 
 of the library's social democracy is on the surface. 
 Any member of a privileged class will assure you that 
 his own class constitutes "the people" and that the 
 rest do not matter. The Athenians honestly 
 thought that their country was a democracy, when 
 it was really an oligarchy of the most limited kind. 
 England honestly thought she had "popular" govern- 
 ment when those entitled to vote were a very small 
 part of the population. A library in a city of half a 
 million inhabitants honestly thinks that a record of 
 100,000 cardholders entitles it to boast that its use 
 extends to the whole population. We cannot say that 
 we reach tin 1 whole number of citizens until we really 
 do reach them. The school authorities can go out to 
 the highways and hedges and compel them to come in ; 
 we cannot, Herein doubtless lies one of our advan-
 
 FUTURE OF LIBRARY WORK 319 
 
 tages. Our buildings arc filled with willing m 
 It is our business to universalize the desire to read as 
 
 the schools arc universalizing the ability. But we have 
 not yet done so, and popularization proceeds slowly. 
 I cannol say that I sec many indications of speeding 
 up in the rate, although our increase in the recogni- 
 tion of groups, noted above, may have an influence 
 here in future. As groups develop among that part 
 of the population that uses the library least, our op- 
 portunity to extend our influence over that pari will 
 present itself. One such group is ready for us hut we 
 have never reached it — that of union labor. The rec- 
 ognition of the unions by the library and of the libra- 
 ry by the unions has been unaccountably delayed, 
 despite sporadic, well-meant, but • ineffective efforts 
 on hoth sides. No more important step for tie- intel- 
 lectual future of the community can he taken than 
 this extension of service. 
 
 Nationalization has just begun. It is speeding up 
 and will go far, I am sure, in the next twenty years. 
 Our libraries are getting used to acting as a unit. We 
 should not like administrative nationalization and I 
 see no signs of it; hut nationalization in the sense uf 
 improved opportunities for team work and greater 
 willingness to avail ourselves of them we shall gel in 
 increasing measure. For instance, one of our great- 
 est opportunities lies before us in the inter-library 
 loan. It knocks at our door, hut we do not heed i! he- 
 cause in this respect we have not begun yet to think 
 nationally. Rut having begun national servio 
 various activities brought to the front by the war. we 
 shall not, I am sure, lag behind much longer. Tie' na- 
 tional organization of the A. 1,. A. has long provided 
 us witli a framework on which to build our national 
 thoughts and our national deeds, hut hitherto it has 
 remained a mere scaffolding, conspicuous through the
 
 320 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 absence of any corresponding structure. The war is 
 teaching us both to think and to act nationally, and 
 after it is over I shall be astonished if we are longer 
 content to do each his own work. Our work is nation- 
 wide, in peace as in war and our tardy realization of 
 this fact may be one of the satisfactory by-products 
 of this world conflict. 
 
 Now it is not beyond the possibilities that the li- 
 brary movement, headed right and running free, may 
 still fall because it meets some obstacle and goes to 
 pieces. Are there any such in sight? I seem to see 
 several, but I believe that we can steer clear. If we 
 split on anything it will be on an unseen rock, and of 
 such, of course, we can say nothing. 
 
 One rock is political interference. The library 
 has had trouble with it of old and some of us are still 
 struggling with it. It is assumed by those who put 
 their trust in paper civil service that it has now been 
 minimized. This overlooks the undoubted fact that 
 in a great number of cases the civil service machinery 
 has been captured by politicians, and now works to 
 aid them, not to control them. The greatest danger 
 of political interference in public libraries, now lies 
 in well-meant efforts to turn them over to some local 
 commission established to further the merit system, 
 but actually working in harmony with a political ma- 
 chine. 
 
 Another rock on which we may possibly split is 
 that of formalism. Machinery must be continually 
 scrapped and replaced if progress is to be made. It 
 will not grow and change like an organism. The li- 
 brary itself is subject to organic growth and change, 
 but its machinery will not change automatically with 
 it. If we foster in any way an idea that our machin- 
 ery is sacred, that it is of permanent value and that 
 conditions should conform to it instead of its con-
 
 FUTUBE OF LIBBABY WOBK 321 
 
 forming to them, our whole progress may come to an 
 
 end. 1 have called this a rock, hut it is ratlin- a sort 
 of Sargasso Sea where the library may whirl about in 
 an eternity (if seaweed. 
 
 Another obstacle, somewhat allied i<> this of for- 
 malism, is the "big bead" — none the less dangerous 
 because it is common and as detrimental to an insti- 
 tution as it. is to an individual. -lust as soon as a 
 person, or an institution, sits down and begins t«> ap- 
 preciate himself or itself, to take Mock of the ser- 
 vices he or it is rendering the community, to wonder 
 at their extent and value, those services are in a rail- 
 way to become valueless. The proper attitude is rath- 
 er that of investigation to discover further possible 
 kinds of service, with the exercise of ingenuity in de- 
 vising ways to render them effectively. 
 
 We have occasionally been accused of taking the 
 attitude of self-laudation, but 1 really do not think 
 there is great danger of an epidemic of this malady. 
 We do not receive enough encouragement. Once in a 
 while, to be sure, someone tells us, or tells the public, 
 what a great and valuable institution the public libra- 
 ry is but the treatment that we receive is generally 
 mildly humorous when it is not characterized by 
 downright indifference and neglect. Whenever a book 
 comes into my hands telling of some movement in 
 which 1 know that the library has borne an honorable 
 part I always turn first to the index and search for 
 recognition under the letter L. Generally it is not 
 there; when it is, it is almost always inadequate. If 
 we are attacked by the "big head," it will have to be 
 a case of auto-intoxication. 
 
 Exploitation is another possible POCk. I have al- 
 ready alluded to the danger of capture by a political 
 machine, but there are other interests more subtle 
 and quite as dangerous. Many a useful institution,
 
 322 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 intended to be nonpartisan, has been captured and 
 used by some interest or other while remaining non- 
 partisan on the surface. Our safety, so far, has re- 
 sided in the inability of most interests to see that we 
 are worth capture. When the drive comes, as I be- 
 lieve it will, our continued safety will lie, not in re- 
 sistance, but in an equal yielding to all — a willingness 
 to act as the agent for all isms, religious, economic, 
 political and industrial without exalting one above 
 another or emphasizing one at another's expense. 
 Something of this we are already doing, and in so far 
 as we succeed in it we are placing ourselves in a posi- 
 tion of vantage from which it will be very difficult to 
 dislodge us. 
 
 Assuming the truth of all this — and it is some- 
 thing of an assumption, I grant you — what then, is 
 our library of 1950 to be? An institution not very 
 much larger or more expensively operated than our 
 present maximum, although with a higher minimum, 
 carried on with a more careful eye to economy and 
 watching more jealously the quality of its output. It 
 will have two units of service, as at present, the book 
 and the citizen, but it will tend to regard the latter 
 as primary, rather than the former and will shrink 
 from no form of service that it can render him. The 
 higher quality of its work will be reflected in the 
 greater pride of the worker — in a spirit of profession- 
 alism that will insist on adequate training and proper 
 compensation and possibly will use organization to 
 enforce these ideals. It will reach out somewhat fur- 
 ther among the people than it does now, although not 
 so much that the difference will be notable. Finally 
 the teamwork between different libraries will be more 
 frequent and effective, assistants will be exchanged 
 freely, readers' cards used interchangeably and inter- 
 library loans will take place easily ami often.
 
 FUTURE OF LIBRARY WORK 323 
 
 What effect will these changes have on the desir- 
 ability of library work as a profession? The only 
 
 conclusion can be that it will be greatly increased. 
 By this 1 mean that it will be more interesting, more 
 likely to give pleasure to the worker as a by-product. 
 I do not mean that it will necessarily pay very much 
 better. The most interesting and pleasurable occupa- 
 tions are generally, I think, those thai do not pay well 
 in money. ( )ne should not expect lull payment in both 
 cash and pleasure. The exception is where the acqui- 
 sition of money is itself the feature of the occupa- 
 tion that gives the pleasure. I do not quarrel with 
 those who pursue this form of pleasure, but they cer- 
 tainly have no business to be librarians or teachers, 
 or artists or authors, or to engage in any occupation 
 which in itself constitutes to the worker the fullness 
 of life and its illumination. The library profession 
 will make its appeal in 1950, as it does today, to men 
 and women who like to work with and among and 
 through books; who also like to work with and among 
 and through people; who enjoy watching the inter- 
 play of relations between the man and the hook and 
 using them for the advancement of civilization. This 
 is an intellectual and spiritual appeal, and it is not 
 likely to be replaced by that which glitters on the 
 metallic face of the dollar. 
 
 In taking leave of our subject we may go back to 
 our opening simile of the railroad train. The flier 
 that reaches New York is the same train that left 
 Chicago; its passengers have not greatly changed, and 
 jet its environment is wholly different, so that the 
 outlook of those within it has totally altered. It. is 
 in some such fashion that the library of L950 will dif- 
 fer from that of today. It will be the same institu- 
 tion with the same staff, but it will have traveled far 
 on the rails of time. Its environment, its outlook will
 
 324 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 be different, and in its response to that variation it 
 musi needs do different things and render a different 
 service. May its motive power never fail, its machin- 
 ery he kept well oiled, and the crew maintain their 
 strength, intelligence and sanity!
 
 POPULARIZING MUSIC THROUGH THE 
 LIBRARY* 
 
 The purchase of music by a public library is jus- 
 tified by the assumption that its use is to be some- 
 what analogous to that of printed speech. The an- 
 alogy is, in fact, somewhat closer than most persons 
 realize, and its consideration reveals some mistaken 
 ideas about, the use of music in a library and may 
 give rise to suggestions for the improvement of that 
 use. A page of music, like a page of written lan- 
 guage, is a record of something whose primary ex- 
 pression is obtained through sound. Anyone who 
 understands the notation in either case may repro- 
 duce the sounds. Tn one case this is "reading 
 aloud'*; in the other it is a performance of the music. 
 In the case of the music the sounds may be made 
 with the voice, or with an instrument or with one 
 or several of both at once, but this is only an appar- 
 ent complication and does not affect the principle. 
 The reader, of course, may learn the language, or 
 the music, by heart and then dispense with the writ- 
 ten record. In practise there are important differ- 
 ences between the treatment of records of speech 
 and music. As sound is readily imagined as well 
 as actually produced, both speech and music may 
 be enjoyed by a reader without making a sound. If 
 the reader of a hook cannot do this, he is not re- 
 garded as at all skilled. Most ,,1' us. J think, do not 
 consider that ;i person knows completely how to 
 read when he is not. able t<> read "to himself", hut 
 
 * Read before the National on of Musi.- Teachers and re- 
 
 printed from tin- published Proceedings for 1918.
 
 o 2 6 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 finds it necessary to make the actual sounds of 
 speech, whether loudly, or only under his breath. 
 In the case of music, however, only the skilled mu- 
 sician, as a general thing, is able to read a page of 
 music "to himself", as he would read a page of writ- 
 ten language. This is especially the case with in- 
 strumental music and with music where there are 
 several parts. An accomplished musician, however, 
 may run over an orchestral score and hear the per- 
 formance "in his mind", with the quality of each 
 instrument brought out, the harmonies and the 
 shading of intensity. 
 
 We may go a step further as a matter of curious 
 interest. Language is not necessarily connected 
 with sounds at all. A deaf mute, who has never 
 heard a sound, and is incapable of understanding 
 what sound is, may nevertheless learn to read. He 
 is, however unable to appreciate a page of written 
 music, and I do not know how it would be possible 
 to explain to him what it is like, except the rhythm 
 of it, which may be made to appeal to the senses 
 of sight and touch, as well as to that of sound. In 
 general, however, the reader of music must at least 
 imagine the sounds represented by the notation be- 
 fore him. This is not the case with the reader of 
 speech. Anyone who can read fast and well enough 
 may, like the deaf mute, understand what he reads 
 without even imaging the sound of the words. One 
 may even read so fast that the mere speed forbids 
 any thought of the corresponding oral language. 
 Skilled readers may take in a sentence, a para- 
 graph, almost a page, at a glance. This is the sole 
 point of difference between reading language and 
 reading music; and it does not greatly concern us 
 here because all that it practically affects is speed 
 of appreciation.
 
 POPULARIZING MUSK 'S'27 
 
 Something that is of greater importance is the 
 difference of purpose usually found between those 
 who read words and those who read musical notes. 
 When we say of a child that he is studying music 
 
 we usually mean that lie is learning how to sing 
 or to play on some instrument with the special view 
 of being able to perform before some kind of aud- 
 ienee. A musie-teaeher in like manner is one who 
 teaches his pupils how to play on the piano or the 
 violin, or how to sing. 
 
 But when we teach a child to read we are nor. 
 primarily concerned with his future ability \<> read 
 aloud or to recite so as to give pleasure to an aud- 
 ience, what we are thinking of is his ability to read 
 rapidly to himself so as to understand what is in 
 books. Looked at in the same way the main thing 
 in musical instruction would be to teach rapid 
 sight-reading so that the reader should get the abil- 
 ity to become acquainted with as large a number of 
 musical masterpieces as possible. One learns to 
 talk by talking; one learns to read by reading; and 
 the same is true of reading music. And as the om- 
 nivorous reader of books always wants to express 
 his own thoughts in writing, so the omnivorous 
 reader of music will want to compose. Neither the 
 one nor the other may produce anything great, but 
 the effort will aid in mental development. As a 
 matter of fact, the child begins to put his thoughts 
 into words before he knows how to lead. lie is 
 encouraged to do so. No mother ever tried to stop 
 her baby from learning to talk because its first ef- 
 forts were feeble, halting and unintelligible. How 
 different h we treat the child's attempts at musical 
 expression — for that is the explanation of many of 
 the crude baity noises that we hear. As the child 
 grows, its expression in this direction is discouraged,
 
 :\-2S LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 and seldom is any effort made at encouragement or 
 development. Is it not a wonder that anyone suc- 
 ceeds in composing original music? How many great 
 poets or novelists should we have if every baby 
 were discouraged in its efforts to express itself in 
 words; if it were never taught to talk and never 
 to read? 
 
 By the time we librarians are able to exert an 
 influence on the reader, this period is past, but it 
 is still possible to do something. Our first job is 
 to disabuse the public of the idea, that enjoyment 
 of music has necessarily something to do with mas- 
 tering the technique of some musical instrument. 
 The phonograph has done good work in removing 
 this impression, but we should never be content 
 with the phonograph any more than we should con- 
 sent to do away with all printed books and rely 
 wholly on works "read aloud"' on the victrola. There 
 will always be pleasure and profit in doing one's 
 own reading, whether in speech or in music. One 
 must understand musical notation of course, just 
 as one must know the notation of written speech 
 before he can read books. He must also understand 
 a little of some instrument, preferably the piano; 
 though only enough for sight-reading, his object be- 
 ing to understand and appreciate the music him- 
 self, not necessarily to bring understanding and 
 appreciation to others. 
 
 I think I have gone far enough along this train 
 of thought to show the principle on which I should 
 select the music for a public library collection. I 
 should form such a collection in precisely the same 
 way as my collection of books. A very large pro- 
 portion of the books in a public library are proper- 
 ly intended for those who will read them for their 
 own delectation, enjoying and appreciating and
 
 POPULARIZING MUSIC 329 
 
 profiting personally by what they read. A much 
 smaller proportion arc books for study and research. 
 A still smaller number arc dramatic or other se- 
 lections intended principally for recitation or dec- 
 lamation. So, in selecting my music I would ac- 
 quire chiefly selections for reading. I do not mean 
 elementary reading — one does not limit liis lan- 
 guage books to primers. I should buy works of all 
 grades of difficulty, but I should have always in 
 mind the primary use of these for sight reading. 
 Comparatively few would he pieces written solely 
 for display— to dazzle the hearer or to show off 
 technique. Few would he pieces whose interest is 
 Chiefly historical or academic. I do not say tiiat I 
 should exclude either of these kinds, but I certainly 
 should not include them in greater degree than I 
 should include analogous material in buying ordin- 
 ary books. Hear in mind also that [ am speaking 
 of an ordinary public library, of average size, not 
 of a university library nor that of a music school; 
 nor a public library so Large that it may properly 
 have some of the functions of both of these. 
 
 Just as it is a conspicuous duty of the library 
 to raise and maintain the level of literary taste 
 in its community and to keep this fact in mind in 
 the selection of its books, so it is the business of 
 its musical collection to raise and maintain the 
 level of musical taste. 
 
 My own opinion, which some may regard as 
 heretical, is that taste can not be cultivated, in lit- 
 erature, or art, or music, to any considerable ex- 
 tent by study. The study of these things must 
 have to do largely with history and technique, and 
 while a knowledge of these is desirable it can not. 
 affect taste, although we may imagine that it does. 
 We may reduce this matter to its lowest terms by
 
 330 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 thinking for a moment of something that depends 
 on the uncomplicated action of an elementary sense 
 — physical t;ist<*. If one does not like an olive when 
 he eats one for the first time, that judgment can 
 not be reversed by studying the history of olive cul- 
 ture. If he dislikes cheese, it will be useless to 
 take him Into a cheese factory and explain to him, 
 or teach him the technical processes of manufac- 
 ture. The only way to make him change his mind 
 is to induce him to keep on eating olives, when one 
 of two things will take place — either his dislike 
 of olives will be confirmed, or it will disappear. 
 As most people like olives when they become accus- 
 tomed to the taste, the latter result, is to be expected. 
 Now suppose that someone does not care for Beetho- 
 ven's "Moonlight Sonata". My contention is that 
 he cannot be made to like it by studying the history 
 of music, or that of this particular selection, nor by 
 analyzing its structure, but that he may be led to 
 do it by listening to it repeatedly. As persons fa- 
 miliar with good music do generally enjoy this piece, 
 it is probable that this result will follow. 
 
 I know that I must now justify this comparison. 
 When I make it I am accustomed to indignant pro- 
 test on the part of some of my students. Is it not 
 unworthy to compare the music of the Moonlight 
 Sonata to a mere physical sensation like the taste of 
 an olive? Only as it may be considered unworthy 
 to compare the great and the small ; the complex and 
 the simple. Both the taste of the olive and the sound 
 of the sonata, have a. physical origin and impress 
 the brain through the agency of the sense organs. 
 And as a matter of fact I doubt whether the sensa- 
 tion of the music is much more complicated than that 
 of the taste. We know that an acoustic sensation is 
 a unit. When a chorus is singing with orchestral
 
 POPULARIZING MUSIC 331 
 
 accompaniment the result is not a hundred Bound 
 waves, Wut one; it strikes the ear drum as a unit, ami 
 that vibrates as a unit, so that the impression on the 
 brain, about whose mechanism we are ignorant, must 
 also be a unit. The popularity of the phonograph 
 enables us to illustrate this familiarly. Examine 
 with a microscope a record of a complicated musical 
 performance, with many voices and many different 
 kinds of instruments, and you will find a single 
 wavy line. When the needle causes the disk to vi- 
 brate by following this line, it vibrates as a unit, 
 just as the ear-drum does. There is hut. one disk, 
 yet its vibration enables us t<» pick out separately 
 the different voice parts, and to recognize the sepa- 
 rate quality of the stringed instruments, the wood- 
 winds and the brasses, with the drums, bells, and 
 what not. When we taste the (dive, we get a sort 
 of chemical effect. We do not know what happens 
 as definitely as we do in the case of a musical sound. 
 but the various atoms, each vibrating in its own 
 way, act upon the taste-buds of the tongue so that 
 a. sensation is transmitted to the brain— transmitted 
 as a unit, just as the sound is. I want to be fair, 
 so I will acknowledge that instead of comparing a 
 single sensation of taste to a sequence of sounds, I 
 should have likened it to a musical chord. To get a 
 taste analogy with a sonata we should have to use 
 a sequence of taste sensations, possibly that present- 
 ed by a course dinner. 1 submit, however, that this 
 does not affect my argument 
 
 bet me repeal my conviction, then, that art is 
 primarily a matter of the heart and not of the head 
 — of the feelings and not of the intellect, and that 
 the feelings are trained by personal experience, not 
 by study. One cannot learn to appreciate a poem, 
 or a picture or a piece of music by examining it his-
 
 332 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 torically or structurally, only by experiencing it and 
 others like it again and again, and also by exper- 
 iencing in life the emotions that the art is intended 
 to arouse. Of course I do not mean to say that 
 knowledge of history and technique is not interest- 
 ing and valuable. It is highly interesting to know 
 the recipe for the pie and to watch the cook make 
 it; but tli is does not affect the taste. 
 
 Knowledge obtained by study does affect ability 
 to reproduce or create. One must know how the pie 
 is made before he can make one himself. One can 
 not write a poem or paint a picture or compose a 
 song, without preliminary study. This should be 
 understood, but it is outside the pale of our present 
 discussion, which relates to the chief purpose of the 
 music collection in a library and of its chief uses. 
 My contention, to repeat, is that it is related to mu- 
 sical art precisely as the purpose of the book-collec- 
 tion is related to the art of literature. 
 
 Now the present status of the music collection 
 is precisely what that of the book collection would 
 be in a community where the percentage of literacy 
 was small, where a considerable number of persons 
 did not understand the language of the books, even 
 when spoken or read aloud, where those who knew 
 the language understood it only when spoken or 
 read and where readers were obliged to read aloud 
 before they could appreciate what they were read- 
 ing. A community, moreover, where teaching gen- 
 erally meant solely teaching how to recite or read 
 aloud acceptably to others, with only enough ability 
 to read to get the sense of an extract and enable the 
 reader to commit it to memory. A librarian set 
 down with a collection of books in such a community 
 would not be true to his vocation if he did not at- 
 tempt to better this state of things, while admitting
 
 POPULARIZING MUSIC 333 
 
 the elements of good that it contained. For instance. 
 the imaginary situation that I have described would 
 be quite comparable with a real appreciation and 
 love of good literature. 
 
 In the first place, the librarian would wish to 
 see thai all the members of his community wen- able 
 to understand the language of his hooks, if not to 
 read it, To remember our analogy for a moment, 
 he would practically tit his books to his people. If 
 they were predominantly French, for instance, he 
 would buy many French hooks. But one can not do 
 this with music, f<»r music is a language by itself. 
 for the most part untranslatable into any other. We 
 must assume that in the world to which our imagi- 
 nary community belongs there is but one language, 
 and that to understand the hooks those who do not 
 know that language must be taught it. School in- 
 struction in language is largely limited to reading. 
 Children who go to school understand and talk their 
 language already, having been taught it at home. It 
 is to the homes, therefore, that the librarian would 
 have to look for this instruction and he would have 
 to bring to hear on parents whatever influence might 
 be at his disposal to make them see its value and 
 uses. 
 
 Secondly, he would have to see that as many as 
 possible were taught to read the language. This 
 would he the function of the schools. 
 
 Thirdly, it would he necessary to see that facil- 
 ity in reading proceeded so far that readers would 
 not find it necessary to read aloud, hut could when 
 they desired, read rapidly "to themselves". It would 
 be necessary, of course, to show many of the teach- 
 ers and almost all of their pupils, that reading is 
 primarily not to enable the reader to recite to others, 
 but to make an impression on his own mental equip-
 
 334 IJ1JRARY ESSAYS 
 
 mt'iit. It is quite possible for one to learn to read 
 out loud after a fashion, in a foreign tongue, with- 
 out understanding a word of it, but so that listeners 
 may get a fair idea of it. The effect on the reader 
 in this case is absolutely zero. 
 
 .Musically, this kind of community is precisely the 
 one that public libraries have to deal with. Many 
 of our clients do not like or understand music at all, 
 or they care for only the most elementary melodies, 
 harmonies and rythms — comparable to the literature 
 that one gets in a child's primer. Of those whose 
 range of appreciation and love is fairly wide, com- 
 parative]}^ few are familiar with musical notation, 
 and can not read music. Of those who can read, 
 few can read rapidly and with assurance, and fewer 
 still can read without audible utterance; that is, 
 they can not read to themselves. It is common to 
 hear persons who can sing or play on some instru- 
 ment with a fair degree of success and taste say 
 "Oh, I can't read; I have to pick out the notes and 
 get my teacher to help me," This is exactly as if 
 someone who had just recited an oration or a poem 
 with some feeling should proclaim complacently: 
 u ()h, 1 can't really read. I had to pick out that 
 piece word for word, with my teacher at my elbow 
 to help me out.'' 
 
 In the face of such a situation the librarian 
 should feel and act precisely as he would feel and 
 act if the situation existed with regard to books, as 
 it has already been imagined and described. 
 
 First, he should try to influence the growth of 
 musical appreciation through the home, so that all 
 the children in a family shall come to understand 
 and use musi<;il language as they do the language of 
 the spoken word. 
 
 Secondly, he should try to influence the schools
 
 POPULARIZING MUSIC 335 
 
 go thai they shall teach the reading of musical nota- 
 tion as thoroughly as they do the reading of the 
 printed word, and to persuade teachers <>f music to 
 teach music really and no1 simply the art of per- 
 forming on some musical instrument. 
 
 Thirdly, he should point out to his musical cli- 
 ents thai music may be read "to oneself", just as 
 language can, and encourage them to try it, begin 
 ning with easy examples. Note thai reading to one- 
 self can be <lone only by those who already know 
 how to read aloud, and only by practise. Then- Is 
 no way in which it can be taught. 
 
 Fourthly, he should have in his library a a 
 t.ion of music picked out to a -rent extenl to further 
 the ends outlined above. Much of it should be for 
 readers, not for performers. His lists should he 
 made for readers and tie' comments on individual 
 titles should he for readers. Moreover, they should 
 at present he such as will help the beginner; tor a 
 verv large proportion of our musical readers are 
 beginners although they may he in the anomalous 
 position of the reader who knows and appreci 
 his subjed matter verv thoroughly, while he can read 
 about it only hesitatingly and haltingly. Imagine 
 a well-informed and intelligent student of history 
 who has completely forgotten to read, owing to some 
 concussion of the brain which 1ms not impaired Ids 
 knowledge in any other way, and you have the situ- 
 ation of many music-lovers. 
 
 There were doubtless poets before the invention 
 of alphabets, and one may appreciate a symphony 
 concert without knowing his musical alphabet or 
 being able to use it ; hut we are accustomed now to 
 considering thorough ability to read as a prerequi- 
 site to the requirement of a general education; and 
 I do not see why ;is complete an ability to read :
 
 336 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 should not be a prerequisite for such a musical edu- 
 cation as all persons ought to possess. 
 
 The analogy between the reading of music and 
 that of Language is very close, as we have seen, and 
 we may he guided by it largely; hut there is one re- 
 spect in which it fails. Music and poetry may both 
 he had in the sense that they are ugly, of faulty 
 construction, or trivial. But poetry may also be 
 bad because it conveys a bad moral lesson or causes 
 one to accept what is false. I can not see that it is 
 possible for music to do this, except by association. 
 A tune that has always been associated with improp- 
 er words may in time come to be considered as it- 
 self improper, but there can be nothing objection- 
 able about the music in itself. Again, music may be 
 improperly used. Anyone would say that a largo in 
 a minor key was out of place at a wedding, or a jig 
 at a funeral. Association may have, but does not 
 necessarily have anything to do with this; but here 
 again the music in itself is not objectionable. This 
 simplifies the selection of music for a library; for it 
 excludes at the outset almost all the problems of 
 censorship. Music is rejected usually for negative 
 reasons — because it is not worth buying; not for any 
 active evil influence that it is likely to exert. 
 
 This question comes up especially in connection 
 with certain adjuncts to a music collection— pianola 
 rolls and phonograph records. These are both of 
 great aid in assisting the public to understand the 
 language of music, which they must do before they 
 learn to read it. They may be profitably used, of 
 course in connection with reading, and yet the plea- 
 sure of following a piano player or a phonograph 
 with the printed score seems to be known to few. 
 Every library must judge for itself whether it can
 
 POPULARIZING MUSIC 
 
 afford to put money into these adjuncts but in most 
 cases it is unnecessary to do so. it being easj to get 
 the rolls and records by donation. In doing this at 
 my own library I have been struck with the trivial 
 or so-called "popular" character of most of the rolls 
 received. I am told, also that those who borrow 
 them (and they have gone out "like hot cakes") are 
 largely persons who have not visited the library be- 
 fore. 1 believe that this sort of music is popular 
 not because it is trivial or "trashy", but because it 
 is easy to understand. There is some music that 
 is both good and easy easy to understand and easy 
 to read. Schumann's Album for the young will oc- 
 cur to anyone. The compositions of Ludwig Schytte 
 are modern examples, lint tie- general impression 
 that good music is difficult both to rend and appre- 
 ciate — is "high-brow", in fact; and that easy music 
 is always trivial and poor, is a deduction, I am al'raid 
 from experience. It is certainly not in the nature 
 of things. However, so long as we want easy music. 
 both to hear and bo read, and a good deal of it is 
 trashy, I can see nothing to do but to use the trashy 
 music. With the music rolls triviality is all we 
 have to object to — the ceaseless repetition Of the 
 
 same phrases and harmonies. We must remember, 
 
 however, that these are not boresome to the begin- 
 ner. It takes a good deal of repetition to make one 
 tired of a musical phrase. And there is absolutely 
 no question of active badness here only of worth- 
 
 lessness. 
 
 When we come to phonograph records, however, 
 we encounter something different. So far as these 
 
 are purely musical, what has been said of the music 
 rolls applies to them also, but many of them are vo 
 cal, ami the words are often far below library stand-
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ard. When a record is rejected for its words, the 
 music, of course, must go with it, although as music 
 it may be quite unexceptionable. 
 
 The location of the music collection is affected 
 by the purpose for which it is maintained. A col- 
 lection for scholars alone should certainly be in a 
 separate room, with an expert custodian. But when 
 we regard the collection as a means of popularizing 
 music and of improving popular musical taste, the 
 matter takes on another aspect. A person who 
 comes to the library for the purpose of visiting the 
 music room will find it, no matter where it may be, 
 hut the reader who needs to have his attention 
 called to it or in whose case it must compete for 
 use with other hooks, will neve]- do so. Going back 
 to our analogy with general literature we may note 
 that when a librarian wishes to promote the circula- 
 tion of some special class of literature or call at- 
 tention to some particular book or books, the last 
 thing he would think of doing would be to set them 
 apart in a special room. What he does do is to 
 place them conspicuously in the most frequented 
 spot in his library. 
 
 This is, of course, only one side of the question. 
 No one can browze in a collection of books unless 
 he knows how to read; and so long as music readers 
 can not read "to themselves", the reading of instru- 
 mental pieces can not be done without the aid of 
 the actual instrument. Even when one can read 
 music to himself well enough to pick out what he 
 wants it may aid him to be abb' to perform the piece 
 on the instrument for which it was written. Now 
 the most frequented spot in the library, where 1 
 recommend that the music collection shall be dis- 
 played, is not the place for a piano or for its use. 
 This must necessarily be in a separate room.
 
 POPULARIZING MUSIC 339 
 
 These are not, however, absolutely Irreconcilable 
 requirements. It is not necessary thai the music 
 and the instrument should be in the same room. A 
 sound-proof or ;i distantly-located room, for tli«' in- 
 struments, may be used by those who wish in per- 
 perform pieces before selecting them, even if no mu- 
 sic at all is shelved in the room. This room should 
 preferably be as near us possible to the music shelves, 
 and if it is it must of course be sound proof. 
 
 Going back again for a moment to our analogy, 
 the provision of a sound proof music room corre- 
 sponds to the creation of a similar room for the ordi- 
 nary reader, where he may take bis hooks and read 
 
 them aloud to see how they sound. The mere state 
 
 ment shows us how far behind our ability to read 
 language is our ability to read music. 
 
 When I first began to present these ideas, which 
 seemed to me to be absurdly self-evident, it was grad- 
 ually borne in upon me that most people considered 
 them new and strange, both those who agreed with 
 me and those who disagreed. But without going 
 into the question of what music can and can not con- 
 vey to the human mind, it seems clear to me that 
 both music and language succeed in conveying some- 
 thing to the human organism, and do it principally 
 by sound-waves. In the case of both, there is a way 
 Of writing down what is to be conveyed, so thai the 
 record may be used by another person who wishes 
 to convey it by sound, or so that a person, sufficient- 
 ly skilled, may convey it to himself, without making 
 an audible sound. These facts seem to me to estab- 
 lish so complete an analogy that we ma\ treat music 
 in a library precisely as we treat ordinary hooks, 
 both in selection, distribution and use. if to com- 
 plete the analog} we must insist on certain changes 
 in the attitude toward music of both educators and
 
 340 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 readers, this kind of missionary work is after all 
 no more and no other than that which the modern 
 librarian, especially in America, is often called up- 
 on to do. 
 
 I am a believer in the mission of music. The 
 public library can do no more helpful thing to our 
 modern life than to assist the public to understand 
 and love it, The fact that it is not a representative 
 art makes it all the more valuable as a means of 
 detaching the mind from the things of this earth and 
 transporting it to a separate world. A beautiful 
 picture or statue or poem is anchored to the ground 
 by the necessary associations of its subject matter. 
 Music has no such anchor. It is free to soar, and 
 soar it does, bearing with it the listening soul into 
 regions that have no relations with the things of 
 every day life. It may rest or it may stimulate; it 
 may gladden or depress; but it does so by means of 
 its own, not by reminding us of the stimulating or 
 depressing things of our own past experience. 
 
 In the multifarious mission of the Public Library, 
 as we Americans see it, surely the popularization of 
 good music is to assume no unimportant place.
 
 TWO CARDINAL SINS 
 
 The sins of which I purpose to speak are Dupli- 
 cation and Omission. They arc peculiar t« one 
 
 class of persons, to do one business, profession or in- 
 stitution. They are ubiquitous and omnipresent. 
 Those who use the Book of Common Prayer acknowl- 
 edge them when they confess thai they have done 
 those things that they oughl doI to have dun.- and 
 have left undone those things thai they ought to 
 have done. This statement covers other sins, both of 
 commission and omission, than those that I have 
 specified above, but it includes both of them. The 
 peculiarity of Duplication and Omission is that they 
 are complementary so far ;is the labor and expense 
 involved in them is concerned. Their existence is 
 like that of a surplus and a debl in the same purse. 
 To bewail them is like complaining because von have 
 a thousand dollars that you know not how to invest 
 and at the same time because you owe a thousand 
 that you can not pay. The whole world is out of 
 joint because it is doing twice things that need to 
 be done only once, and at the same time is no! doing 
 at all things that ought to he done. The man with 
 the thousand-dollar surplus and the debt of the same 
 amount, may obtain quick relief by paying his indebt- 
 edness with his balance. The world will he relieved 
 when it takes the energy and the nioue\ now expend- 
 ed in wasteful duplication and puts it into tin' doing 
 of those things that are now left undone because 
 
 the energy and money necessary to do them are es 
 {►ended wasteful ly. It is very easy, is it not'.' \v
 
 342 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 easy as adding plus 10 to minus 10 and getting zero. 
 The surplus and the debt, the duplications and the 
 omissions, extinguish cadi other and neither of them 
 bothers us any more. Unfortunately there are prac- 
 tical obstacles that do not present themselves in the 
 case of the algebraic sum. These difficulties might 
 occur in the case of the man with the surplus who 
 owed money, if he could be supposed ignorant both 
 of his balance and of his debt, while suffering the 
 inconveniences due to both. This ignorance is the 
 rule, rather than the exception, in the case of ordi- 
 nary duplications and omissions. Either the dupli- 
 cation is not noticed, because at first sight it does 
 not appear to be a duplication, or when recognized 
 as such, its existence does not seem to be of any con- 
 sequence. Besides this, both duplications and omis- 
 sions seem to some to be part of the natural order 
 of things ordained for us and not to be disturbed 
 by the hand of impiety. 
 
 One hardly knows when to begin with illustra- 
 tions where there is such a wealth of material, 
 whether we seek it in civics, or history, or science, 
 or business or in domestic economy. As you have 
 doubtless surmised I intend to take the Public Li- 
 brary as my chief field of research, but I must main- 
 tain or at least justify my thesis of universality by 
 a preliminary trip through a much broader field. 
 
 First let us take the age-old universal grievance, 
 the unequal distribution of wealth, which from our 
 present standpoint we may simplify by saying that 
 one man has two dollars where he needs only one 
 and another has no dollars at all — omission in his 
 case where there is duplication in the other. I know 
 there are some people who fail to see two sins in 
 these simple and well-known facts, but most of us 
 nowadays are recognizing that it is at least an un-
 
 TWO CARDINAL SINS 343 
 
 satisfactory state of affairs. Where we disagree is 
 that some feel that however unsatisfactory it may be 
 there is nothing to be done about it; that others who 
 agree that it is unsatisfactory are unable to agree 
 on what they would consider satisfactory; and thai 
 even those who think they know this are unable to 
 get together on a method of attaining what tiny 
 desire. These various kinds and degrees of disagree- 
 ment constitute the reason why these two particular 
 sins of duplication and omission continue to be com- 
 mitted. 
 
 Now let us take a very big jump, from the gen- 
 eral theory of socialism down to the golf-clubs of 
 Middlefield, Mass.— a real place, though I have taken 
 the liberty to change its name. With a population 
 of about a thousand, this model village supported 
 until recently two of these institutions for no other 
 reason than the general tendency to wasteful dupli- 
 cation, already noted. The links on the West Side 
 ami those on the East Side had both their ardent 
 partisans. Each club considered the existence of the 
 other a shame and an outrage and each was only too 
 Willing to abolish duplication by consolidation, al- 
 ways provided its own particular links should be thr 
 ones to survive. 
 
 For years this small place supported these two 
 clubs, each with its club-house, grounds, dues and as- 
 sessments. Those who were not partisans had to 
 belong to both, to keep the peace. Meanwhile, the 
 town greatly needed a small social club where the 
 retired city merchants, professional men and artists 
 who largely made up its population could assemble 
 occasionally, have a game of pool or bridge and drink 
 a cup of tea. But their incomes were not large and 
 they had to keep up those two golf clubs. The sit mi 
 tion is so typical that I am enlarging on it a little.
 
 344 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 I wish that the outcome were typical too. That out- 
 come was that after years of discussion the clubs 
 were merged, one of the links was discontinued, and 
 the village now enjoys the little social club that it 
 needed. An omission has been filled by doing away 
 with a duplication. 
 
 The church history of many a small place is very 
 much to the point. We see three or four denomina- 
 tional bodies struggling with small congregations, 
 inadequate buildings aud general poverty when by 
 uniting they might fill all these lacks simply by sav- 
 ing what they are now spending on duplication. 
 Doctrinal differences are said to keep them apart; 
 but to the non-theological mind these differences are 
 not greater than these that must always exist between 
 thoughtful men in the same religious body. It is 
 pleasant to see an occasional lapse into sanity, shown 
 by the union of such churches and the consequent 
 strengthening and growth of a town's religious life. 
 Probably it is not too much to say that the whole 
 problem of Christian Units' is but a phase of this 
 general question of duplication and omission. 
 
 In the business world our two sins flourish like 
 green bay trees. Small villages have two groceries 
 and no hardware store; large cities may be overrun 
 with one trade while there is lack of another. These 
 things ought to adjust themselves, but they do not. 
 One can pick out duplication and omission in the 
 stock of a single institution. On asking for some- 
 thing at a department store recently I was met with 
 the remark. "Isn't that funny? You are the fifteenth 
 person who has asked for that in the last three 
 days!*' The fact was noted as merely curious and 
 interesting and there was apparently no intention of 
 remedying the omission, even by cutting out some of 
 the superfluous styles of neckties.
 
 TWO CABDINAL SINS 
 
 The most flagrant example I know of duplication 
 in the business and industrial world is the duplicate 
 telephone company. A telephone company is a good 
 example of a mutual enterprise; its value to any sub- 
 scriber depends on the existence <>f all the other sub- 
 scribers. If a man could afford to buy up the com- 
 pany and discontinue all the telephones but his own, 
 the value would disappear. Two companies are 
 simply a nuisance, involving duplication of plant 
 with no resulting convenience. The same is not true 
 of gas or water companies, because here one user 
 does not depend on the others. Von would get jnst 
 as good service if the electric company concluded to 
 serve yon, and yon alone. There is, to he sure, waste- 
 ful duplication in these cases also, hnt in the instance 
 of the telephone it is accompanied with necessary de- 
 terioration of service. 
 
 I suppose I need say little about the existem 
 our two sins in the household. We are honeycombed 
 with them from the rural dinner table where there 
 are no SOUp and three kinds of pie, to the housewife 
 who yields to the temptation to buy another evening 
 dress and "can not afford" an outing costume. What 
 we need everywhere is some kind of a Board of 
 Equalization, with autocratic powers, that will riu r - 
 ourously suppress all our duplication and with the 
 money saved supply our omissions for us. 
 
 We may learn something from the efforts that 
 have recently been made to minimize these two sins 
 in charitable work and social service. Every city 
 contains numerous charitable bodies, all trying to 
 relieve want and alleviate suffering. They are fre 
 quently the prey of unscrupulous persons who man 
 age to get their wants alleviated by three <>r foui 
 cieties at onci — by each, of course, without the 
 
 knowledge of the others. The result is that there
 
 346 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 arc no funds to relieve many worthy persons who ac- 
 cordingly suiter. The two sins in this case are be- 
 ing avoided by the simple establishment of a card- 
 index at a central point. When an application is 
 made for relief the index-office is informed by tele- 
 phone, the index is consulted, and if it is found that 
 the applicant is already receiving aid from some 
 other source his request is politely but firmly refused. 
 The present production of books gives us an in- 
 structive example of the existence of duplications 
 and omissions on a large scale; and the elucidation 
 of these will bring us a little nearer to the applica- 
 tion of our principles to the library, toward which 
 we are tending. 1 know not which is the more strik- 
 ing fact in connection with the publishing business 
 
 the continual issue of useless books— fiction and 
 
 non-fiction, or the non-existence of works on vital 
 subjects regarding which we need information. Of 
 course this is due partly to the fact that the men 
 who know things are also the men who do things. 
 They are too busy to write them down. It is also 
 due to the abnormal appetites of the semi-educated, 
 which create a demand for the trivial and fatuous. 
 The semi-educated person is intellectually young; he 
 has the peculiarities of the child. Foremost among 
 these is the love of repetition. The little one would 
 rather hear his favorite fairy tale for the hundredth 
 time than risk an adventure into stranger fields of 
 narrative. There is something admirable about this 
 when it leads to the adult's love of re-reading great 
 literature. But in the semi-educatd it appears as 
 an unlimited capacity for assimilating unreal fiction 
 with the same plots, the same characters, the same 
 adventures and the same emotions, depicted time 
 after time with slight changes in names and attend- 
 ant circumstances.
 
 TWO CARDINAL SINS 347 
 
 An African explorer told me recently thai Hie 
 events attending the southward progress of the 
 French through the Sahara and down Into Central 
 
 Africa were the most thrilling and the must Import- 
 ant, from the standpoint of world history, among 
 those of recent times. The story of them remains 
 unwritten, except for a few episodes in French that 
 have not been thought worthy of translation into 
 other tongues. Vet in this period how much trivial 
 incident, how much banal reminiscence, has been 
 thought worthy of enshrinemenl in bulky octavos. 
 Selling at four dollars each! The money spent in 
 putting forth the same idle stuff that has oppressed 
 tin' world for centuries would have supplied great 
 gaps in our catalogues of history, travel and science 
 and have given us vital literature that we may now 
 have lost forever. 
 
 In fiction, the sin of repetition is largely due 
 to the substitution of imagination for observation. 
 Xo two actual things are alike and no two events 
 happen in the same way. observation and accurate 
 description will never result in duplication. Hut 
 the semi-educated imagination sees always the same 
 things and sees them in the same way; and its use 
 in the writing of fiction results as we have seen. 
 
 Would that we had, to-day and here, realism like 
 that of Turgenief in his ".Memoirs of a Sportsman" 
 — the detailed account of everyday happenings; the 
 hardest thing in the world to write interestingly. 
 When we try it, which we seldom do, we seem to re- 
 vert at once to the dreary side of life, which doubt- 
 less exists but surely not to the exclusion of other 
 things. Turgenief's book helped toward the emanci- 
 pation of the serfs. I will not dwell on that, for Mrs. 
 Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin a very different BOrt of 
 hook, performed a like office for us. 1 will rather
 
 348 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 insist that Turgenief wrote simple, vital descriptive 
 literature; something that you will look far to find 
 in our modern fiction. 
 
 Our books of reference are full of duplications 
 and omissions. Search the commoner dictionaries 
 and cvclopedias on the library shelves and you will 
 find countless instances of items of information 
 given twice or thrice and others left out altogether— 
 of words entered under more than one form and 
 completely defined under each, while cross-references 
 lead the seeker to nothing at all. After working a 
 good many years on books of this kind I am con- 
 vinced that the art of making a perfect dictionary or 
 cyclopedia is the art of avoiding duplication and 
 omission. This can not be done until publishers are 
 willing to allow sufficient time to elaborate a plan 
 before beginning work on one of these books. This, 
 so far, has never been done, and the two sins con- 
 tinue to be committed, here as elsewhere. 
 
 It is doubtless time for our application of these 
 principles to the library. We have not to look far 
 to begin. 
 
 Take any city of average size and inquire how 
 many libraries it supports. Is there any necessity 
 in a town for more than one library? I am open 
 to conviction, but I doubt. There are excellent rea- 
 sons for the duplication in each case, I know, just as 
 there were for the two golf clubs in our little town. 
 The duplication in buildings, staff and books is very 
 costly, and the service, no matter how good it may 
 be, is not bettered by this duplication. The trouble 
 may be minimized by co-operation, but it still ex- 
 ists. Take, if you please, the one item of book-pur- 
 chase. I shall not speak here of private owners, 
 though they must bear their share of blame and of 
 punishment for our two sins; but add together the
 
 TWO CARDINAL SINS 349 
 
 book funds of the two or three large libraries — pub- 
 lic or subscription— and of the dozen small ones— 
 special, denominational, associational in a com- 
 munity, and Bee to what a considerable sum if 
 amounts. If it could be administered and expended 
 as a unit, is there any one who will maintain that 
 the precise books would be bought that actually are 
 bought? We find all these libraries buying copies 
 of the same hook when our copy is all that tin- com 
 niunity needs, each ignoring the others and each la- 
 menting the insufficiency of its funds. I have not 
 forgotten such conspicuous instances of co-operation 
 in book-purchase as that of the three large libraries 
 iu Chicago, but I also do not forget that it is rare, 
 and that even in Chicago it has been found difficult 
 to carry it out in the perfection in which it is t.. be 
 found on paper. If we add private purchasers to 
 the libraries I have little hesitation in saying that 
 the money spent on books in any community is quite 
 enough to buy all that the community needs. The 
 lacks are due to the fact that the sum needed t<. sup- 
 ply them is spent on useless duplicates. 
 
 I am not proposing plans, here or elsewhere, to 
 perform the addition of plus and minus quantities 
 that is so easy in pure algebra; I am merely point- 
 ing out their existence. From my point of view the 
 ideal situation in a community is the administration 
 by a single body of all its library activities, even 
 private owners co-operating to a certain extent. Let 
 us refresh our memories with a bit of library history. 
 There are at present a -feat nian.\ separate libraries 
 in greater New York. That is, from my point of view, 
 a bad thing, lint there were once a great man\ 
 more. New York and Brooklyn were full of small 
 circulating libraries denominational, charitable and 
 associational; and many of them had succeeded in
 
 350 LIBKAKY ESSAYS 
 
 obtaining small subsidies from the city. The sum of 
 these was considerable— or would have been consid- 
 erable had it been administered as a sum, instead of 
 in separate driblets. All the considerations noted 
 above applied in this case, but the Board of Equal- 
 ization for which we have been sighing actually ex- 
 isted here. It was the city government, which be- 
 stowed and controlled a large part of these institu- 
 tional incomes. A city comptroller with a business- 
 like mind saw all this and proceeded to act upon it. 
 The small libraries became branches of the public li- 
 braries of New York and Brooklyn. The city sub- 
 sidy, in a lump sum went to those institutions. If 
 there is any one who now wishes to return to the old 
 system of separate control and duplication of effort, 
 I am unacquainted with him; notwithstanding the 
 fact that 1 know many trustees of the consolidated 
 institutions who were filled with rage at the sum- 
 mary action of the city. That action was in the na- 
 ture of both a threat and a bribe— a threat to discon- 
 tinue the appropriation of city funds for a library 
 that should refuse to consolidate and a bribe in the 
 shape of a hint of additional favors to come if it 
 should not refuse. Mr. Andrew Carnegie's offer to 
 build branch libraries, coming at about this time, 
 made it possible to reinforce this hint very effective- 
 ly- 
 
 Our federal government is being held up as the 
 
 model for a future world federation, and its success- 
 ful operation confutes the fears of those who doubt 
 the workability of any such plan. In like manner I 
 beg to point to the library consolidations in New 
 York and Brooklyn as an evidence that such remov- 
 al of duplication elsewhere would enable us to sup- 
 ply omissions in library service. All we need is a 
 motive — if not the threats and bribes that forced the
 
 TWO CARDINAL SINS 351 
 
 New York consolidation, then something of equal ef- 
 fect But as I have said I am not proposing plans. 
 The abolition of this kind of duplication requires 
 pressure from an outside body or agreement among 
 those concerned; no one of us, acting alone, can do 
 away with it. But there dre duplications and omis- 
 sions in the work of every library that it is in the 
 power of the librarian to remedy. .Many of these 
 are the result of growth. I know of no profession 
 whose members are more continually and consistent- 
 ly looking for more work to do than thai of librari- 
 anship. This quest is rarely carried on cooperatively 
 in a library. The head of each department grasps 
 every opportunity to enlarge her sphere of influ- 
 ence, with the result that her sphere first touches 
 that of another department and then intersects it. 
 so that they possess certain parts of the field of ser- 
 vice in common. The departments concerned may 
 not know of this duplication, or they may realize 
 that it is going on and be unwilling t<> stop it for 
 various reasons. Each department-head, like the 
 golf-clubs mentioned above, may be willing to abol- 
 ish duplication by driving her fellow-worker out of 
 the field, but not otherwise; and her fear lest she 
 herself may have to be the one to retire may induce 
 her to keep silence. Sometimes the librarian him- 
 self, observing the interference, contents himself 
 with seeing that individual items of service arc not 
 duplicated, leaving the two departments to do, in 
 part, the same kind of work, though not in precisely 
 the same items. This is but a partial atonement for 
 our two sins. Although there is, perhaps, no longer 
 actual duplication of work, there is duplication of 
 administration, duplication of thought and plan- 
 ning. All this is waste of effort that should be de- 
 voted to doing some of the things that everv lihrarv
 
 352 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 leaves undone. I have elsewhere treated of what I 
 call "conflicts of jurisdiction" in libraries. This 
 comes under the same head, though there may be no 
 actual clash of authorities. 
 
 Sometimes we have cases resembling those of the 
 applicants for charitable aid from various sources. 
 Members of the public entitled to library service, the 
 amount of which has been limited by the rules to 
 ensure proper distribution and to prevent monopoly, 
 manage to get two or three times as much as they 
 should get, by applying to different departments, 
 or to the same department under different names. 
 There has been much removal of restrictions of late, 
 in libraries, with the intent to give fuller and freer 
 service to the public. There should be no restriction 
 that interferes with such service. But many restric- 
 tions are intended merely to check those whose ten- 
 dency is to hamper service; and removal of these 
 will evidently injure the public, not benefit it. Traf- 
 fic regulations are a great bother, but their removal 
 would not be in the public interest. Neither would 
 the removal of necessary regulation of library traf- 
 fic — the free distribution of books through the ap- 
 pointed public agencies. I sympathize with our mod- 
 ern desire to let Mr. A have as many books as he 
 wants and to keep them as long as he wants; but 
 this sympathy changes to indignation when Mr. A 
 proves to be a library hog, taking advantage of his 
 privileges simply to keep away from Mr. B and Miss 
 C the books that they want. Now and again we 
 find a reader who understands increase of library 
 privileges to mean taking a book away from some- 
 one else and giving it to him. There could be no 
 more flagrant example of the double sin of duplica- 
 tion and omission— giving A more than he can use 
 and thereby depriving B of what he needs. 
 
 The expenditure of time is a domain in which
 
 TWO CARDINAL SIN- 353 
 
 our two sins become especially noticeable. If one 
 lias plenty of money be may waste a good deal with- 
 out serious effects; but waste of time is different 
 The total extent of time is doubtless infinite, but not 
 its extent as available to the individual. lie has 
 only his three-score years and ten, and astronomical 
 happenings have chopped this up for him into years, 
 months, weeks and days, any one of which is largely 
 a repetition of those that have gone before. So many 
 of our duties, for instance, are daily that the average 
 man has only a few hours out of the twenty-four t<< 
 deal with emergency work, "hurry calls"and all 
 sorts of exceptional demands on his time. If he 
 gives ten minutes to something that requires but 
 five, he must often neglect a duty, and this consti- 
 tutes duplication and omission of time, to be rem- 
 edied by taking the unneccessary five minutes from 
 one task and bestowing it on another. Here again, 
 however, our algebraic addition is simple only on 
 paper. We are hindered not only by our own pro- 
 pensity to waste time but by those whose own is of 
 no value and who therefore insist on wasting ours 
 for us. 
 
 This is a subject on which most executive officers 
 can speak feelingly. Such officers are troubled 
 with two kinds of lieutenants — those who keep them 
 in ignorance of what is going on and those who in- 
 sist on putting them in continual possession of triv- 
 ial details — more omission and duplication, you see. 
 One special kind of time-waster is the assistant who 
 comes to her chief with a request. Foreseeing refus- 
 al she has primed herself with all sorts <>f arguments 
 and is ready to smash all opposition in a logical 
 presentation of the subject calculated t«» occupy 
 thirty minutes or so. But the request, as stated, ap- 
 peals to her chief as reasonable, and he grants it at 
 once without hearing the argument !><> von think
 
 354 LIIiRARY ESSAYS 
 
 the petitioner is going to waste all that valuable 
 logic? Not she! She stands her ground and pours 
 it all out, the whole half hour of it; and when the 
 victim has granted a second time what he had al- 
 ready granted without argument, she retires flushed 
 with triumph at her success. And while this dupli- 
 cator was duplicating, the other sinner, the "oinit- 
 tor", was performing some innocent and valuable ad- 
 ministrative act without her chief's knowledge, 
 causing him to give wrong information to a caller 
 and convict himself of ignorance of what is going 
 on in his own institution. 
 
 Time-wasting, of course, is by no means confined 
 to the library staff. Much of every one's time, in a 
 library, is consumed in fruitless conversations with 
 the public — the answering of trivial questions, the 
 search for data that can do no one any good, efforts 
 to appease the wrath of someone who ought never to 
 have been angry at all, attempts to explain things 
 verbally when adequate explanations in print are 
 at hand. All these things consume valuable time 
 and thereby force the omission of public services that 
 would otherwise be performed. Some of them are 
 unavoidable. We must always charge up a little 
 time to the account of courtesy, the avoidance of 
 brusqueness, the maintenance in the community of 
 that tradition of library helpfulness that is perhaps 
 the library's chief asset. This we can not afford to 
 lose. But without sacrificing it, can we not elimin- 
 ate some of the bores, cut down our useless services 
 for the sake of performing a few more useful ones, 
 and increase the amount of library energy usefully 
 employed without enlarging the total sum expended? 
 This is one of our most vital problems, did we but 
 realize it. 
 
 We have gone far enough, perhaps, to realize that
 
 TWO CARDINAL SINS 355 
 
 our two sins an* indeed cardinal and fundamental. 
 
 The authors of the Prayer Hook were right We 
 have done those things that we ought not to have 
 done and we have left undone those things that we 
 ought to have done; and we are all miserable sinners. 
 If I had nerve enough to add a new society to the 
 thousand and one that carry on their multifarious 
 activities aboul us, I should found a League to Sup- 
 press Duplications and Supply Omissions.
 
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS 
 
 History may be described as an account of the 
 conflict between the tendency of things to move and 
 efforts to fasten them down so that they will keep 
 still. Where they have been moving in the wrong di 
 rection these efforts have been praiseworthy; but 
 in to<> many instances motion has been resisted sim 
 ply because it is motion, quiescence being Looked up- 
 on as the supreme good . In his interesting "History 
 of Fiji*'. Dr. Alfred Goldsborough .Mayer notes thai 
 the difference between the savage and the civilized 
 man is not one of content of knowledge, for the s&y 
 age often knows far more than we do, hut is due to 
 the fact that the savage is hound hand and foot l>y 
 tradition — he is a slave to his imagination, and to 
 that of his forefathers. The conflict in his case has 
 ended definitely with the triumph of the fastening 
 down process. There is no more motion. He can 
 not fall back, but neither can he move forward, lb' 
 is locked in one position that of the particular gen- 
 eration, five, fifty or live hundred years ago, when 
 his fight for progress was lost. 
 
 With the civilized man the fight still goes on If 
 is not yet won nor lost and the story of it. as 1 have 
 said, is history. Head it in this light and it will is 
 sume for you new significance. Wars, revolutions, 
 changes of dynasty, racial migrations, linguistic 
 changes, the achievements of art, the triumphs of 
 
 science, the evolution of social systems, the develop 
 incut of justice, the rise of literature and the drama 
 — everything that marks the story of what lias I i
 
 358 LIBRABY ESSAYS 
 
 going on in the world— is but a phase of this age- 
 long struggle between forces and obstacles of whose 
 origins, at bottom, we know little. So far as the 
 obstacles have won, there are still savage elements 
 lurking in us; so far as we have thrust them aside, 
 we are advancing further toward civilization. The 
 one title that we have to call ourselves civilized is 
 the fact that no set of traditions or customs— no in- 
 st j t , lt j )m _l, a , s yet become crystallized into the fixity 
 that obtains with the savage races;— not the Church, 
 not government, not science, nor art nor literature. 
 All these are changing, despite efforts to pin them 
 down. Our language, our social customs are alter- 
 in-; our fashions of dress change from year to year. 
 Our old people, for a man often reverts to savagery 
 in his old age, pass away with words of regret on 
 their lips for the good old days of their youth, when 
 things were different. A savage has never to do this, 
 for the days of his youth and his age are precisely 
 the same — custom, speech, habit, observance, tradi- 
 tion, all are locked up into fixity. 
 
 The education of the savage is directed toward 
 perpetuating this fixity; that of the civilized man 
 should be a force in the opposite direction. Recog- 
 i nizing that change is the life-blood of civilization, 
 it should be devoted to controlling and directing that 
 change, leading the mind of the pupil to anticipating 
 and welcoming it and bracing that mind against all 
 feeling of shock due to the mere starting of the ma- 
 chinery of progress. I say this is what education 
 should be. I believe that it is tending in this way. 
 But a large part of it is still savage — an effort to 
 keep our customs, thoughts and actions to standards 
 set up by our ancestors. 
 
 The Public Library, we are fond of saying, is an 
 educational institution ; which kind of education
 
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS 
 
 shall it dispense? Shall it be a motor or a brake? 
 Shall it look back into the past or forward into the 
 
 future? 
 
 To many persons, the idea of a forward-looking 
 
 library seems absurd. It is essentially a repository 
 of records, and records are of the past. You will 
 find somewhere, unless oblivion lias overtaken it. an 
 address by your lecturer on "The Public Library as 
 a Conservative Force". Such it doubtless is and 
 such it should be but its conservatism is that of 
 control, not of stagnation. It is the skilled driver 
 who keeps the car in the road— not the ignoramus 
 who stalls it in the ditch. Records are assuredly of 
 the past ; but the past and its records may be looked 
 upon in either of two ways — as standards for all 
 time, or as foundations on which to build for the fu- 
 ture. The civilized man rejoices in foundations 
 lie builds them deep and strong, and erects upon 
 them some noble superstructure. The savage puts 
 up his great stone circle, mighty and wonderful per- 
 haps, but complete in itself and of no manner of use. 
 
 So I ask you, what is our collection of records to 
 be — a stone circle or a foundation? 
 
 Now the records themselves the books Can 
 never determine this any more than the great mono- 
 lith can determine whether it is going into a Sione- 
 henge or into the foundation of a Parthenon. It i^ 
 what, we do to the books — to and with them that 
 matters. 
 
 The world would never move on without records 
 of the progress thai had already been made. du>t 
 as surely, it would never move on by reliance on 
 those records alone. What we have accomplished 
 brings US merely to a mile stone in the path of prog 
 ress. To reach a given point, one must pass the 
 mile stones on the way, but they must be passed
 
 360 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 and left behind. We shall never get anywhere mere- 
 ly l>y sitting' down upon any of them. To make a 
 personal application to yourselves, you will never 
 make good librarians unless you master what good 
 librarians before you have learned and taught. But 
 just as certainly, you will never be good librarians 
 if you regard this as a definite stopping point. The 
 trouble with most of our education is that it is static 
 and not dynamic; it looks backward, not forward; 
 it teaches what has already been accomplished and 
 fails to equip the student for devising and accom- 
 plishing something further, on his own account. 
 
 I am warning you in the midst of a course intend- 
 ed to fit you for librarianship that the course alone 
 will not so fit you. But it will start you— and a 
 start in the right direction is of great value — nay, 
 it is indispensable. When the fielder throws the ball 
 directly into the baseman's hands there is a prelim- 
 inary motion of his arm. At the end of that motion 
 the ball begins its flight; its start has enabled it to 
 go straight, Your library course will be the throw 
 that enables you to go straight to the mark, but you 
 must not forget that the whole flight remains to be 
 made. My metaphor is a bad one. The ball has no 
 power to adjust or alter its course. You have that 
 power; you can better a good start, or you can nul- 
 lify it. You may even hit the mark after you have 
 been started in the wrong direction; but to say this 
 is by no means to recommend a wrong start. 
 
 All this is a series of platitudes; but to insist on 
 the obvious is often useful. There are so many ob- 
 vious things that we are apt to neglect some of the 
 most necessary, just as we may fail to see a sign on 
 a building because it is all plastered with signs. 
 Nothing is more common than to assume that a per- 
 iod of formal education, general or special, makes its
 
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS 361 
 
 subject "fit", either for life or fop a vocation. Sum.' 
 
 never get over tliis idea and f;iil in consequence; 
 some discover their mistake and blame their train- 
 ing because it does not do what it can not do and 
 was not intended to do. Formal training trains "in- 
 to start : it makes <»n<' tit to run tin- race. The pace is 
 not won when the training lias ended; it lias not 
 even begun. The man with ;> B. A. degree is not 
 ready to tackle the problems of life and vanquish 
 them. The graduate in law or medicine is not a 
 trained lawyer or physician, and when yon have com- 
 pleted your library course you will not lie trained 
 librarians. Von will have been started right, tin* 
 rest of your training will depend on your reaction 
 to the forces, the stimuli, that surround yon on all 
 sides. 
 
 What the executive officer is looking for all over 
 the world is initiative, guided by common sense; bur 
 it is rare. Possibly our education fails to develop it; 
 possibly no system of education con Id develop it. 
 But it exists; and we are all happy when we find it. 
 Throwing out of consideration the really lazy, ig- 
 norant or incompetent assistant, competent subordi- 
 nates may be of three kinds first, lie who has been 
 trained to do certain things in certain ways and con- 
 tinues to do only those things in only those ways. 
 not. realizing the possibility of change or improve- 
 ment; secondly, he who does realize this possibility 
 but. has been taught, or at any rate believes, that it 
 is not his place, but only his superior's, to take ac- 
 tive steps toward something more or better; and 
 thirdly he win* both realizes and acts, who does what 
 he can to see thai such steps as he can properly take 
 to improve matters are taken and that BUCh as he 
 can not take of his own accord arc suggested, in a 
 proper manner, to his superior. If I were asked to
 
 362 LIBKARY ESSAYS 
 
 sum up, in a few words, the things that differentiate 
 a well run from a poorly run institution I should say, 
 first, the existence of a staff composed of persons of 
 this third variety, and secondly a chief executive who 
 appreciates and uses them. A progressive executive 
 with a staff of assistants who faithfully obey orders 
 and do nothing more will not go far. His institu- 
 tion may make no mistakes; it may run like a ma- 
 chine, but it will have the faults of a machine — its 
 product will be machine made. With a live staff 
 and a poor executive there will be a maximum of 
 mistakes, absurd and ill-judged plans — a failure to 
 co-ordinate effort in different lines. With plenty of 
 initiative in the staff, and with an executive to se- 
 lect, restrain, encourage and control, we have an ap- 
 proach to the work of a single living organism, the 
 most perfect tool of evolution. 
 
 While this means the encouragement of sugges- 
 tion it also means rejection and selection. It means 
 that while the staff will have to bear disappointment 
 with good nature and without diminution of initia- 
 tive, the executive, on his part, must realize that a 
 hundred impractical suggestions do not disprove the 
 possibility, or even the probability, that the assist- 
 ant who makes them may ultimately offer some plan, 
 method, or device of great value. Some of the great- 
 est improvements in library service are due to per- 
 sons with an imagination and an initiative especially 
 prone to run wild in impractical suggestions. 
 
 I realize that I may be regarded as tossing a fire- 
 brand among you when I tell you to develop your 
 initiative. An unwise or uncontrolled initiative may 
 do harm, but I fervently believe that greater harm is 
 done every day by the lack of all initiative. Better 
 than any stagnant pool is a running stream, though 
 it break bounds and waste itself in foam and spray.
 
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNEBS 
 
 There may be those who will say: Let the student 
 first learn to obey without question; when he has 
 done this it will be time to talk to him about initia- 
 tive. Alas: that will also be the time when be has 
 lost the chance to develop it intelligently. No, the 
 accepted standards and the ways of progress must 
 be assimilated at one time. Rather than unquestion- 
 ing obedience to an order, a rule or a formula, let US 
 have appreciation of the reason for it and disobedi- 
 ence whenever a breaking of the letter may keep US 
 more closely to the spirit. 
 
 I can assure yon that yon will make Letter assist 
 ants if this is your temperament, that librarians are 
 looking earnestly for more of this kind, rejoicing 
 when they see the spark of life among the dead 
 wheels and cogs of the library machinery, determined 
 to give any one who shows it an opportunity to show 
 more of it, by promoting him to a place of greater 
 effort and of higher responsibility and service. When 
 such a promotion comes, perhaps over the heads of 
 others with better training and longer experience, 
 there is often wonder and a disposition to explain it 
 all by "favoritism". And viewed from the proper 
 angle, this is correct; every chief librarian has his 
 favorites; they are those on whom ii«- has learned 
 that he can depend, not only for solid and accurate 
 knowledge of facts and methods but also for quick 
 and ready response io the slightest change of condi- 
 tions — for appreciation of what is needed in a given 
 set of unusual circumstances and resourcefulness in 
 devising new methods or modifying old ones to meet 
 the emergency what I have already summed up in 
 the (me word initiative. 
 
 Every teacher, and every student knows that a 
 good arithmetician may fail ntt« rl\ when he comes 
 to state and solve problems in algebra. His sue*
 
 364 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 has been due to the memorizing of rules and their 
 application. When he is confronted with the neces- 
 sity of putting into mathematical symbols the fact 
 that A, B and C can do a piece of work in 3, 4 and 
 5 days, respectively, he is stumped because an entire- 
 ly different sort of demand is made on his intelli- 
 gence. And when his teacher explains how the state- 
 ment may be made, although he has learned how to 
 state that particular class of problems, he is just 
 as much at sea when he is confronted with the ques- 
 tion of how soon after 12 o'clock the hands of a 
 watch will again be together on the dial. 
 
 In other words, he has left the land of rules and 
 entered the region of common sense. If he is bright, 
 he very soon realizes that all mathematics is common 
 sense; that rules are very useful indeed, but only as 
 short cuts to mechanical processes. 
 
 So, at least so I trust, all the methods and tools 
 of library work are based on common sense — cata- 
 logues and charging systems and classifications are 
 very useful indeed, but only as short cuts to certain 
 results that would otherwise not be achieved or 
 would be arrived at too late or too confusedly. We 
 must learn all about these, but the time will come 
 when we shall leave the library school and enter the 
 library. Here no sort of rule, formula, method or 
 process will suffice for us, essential though they all 
 are; if we are to make good we must add common 
 sense, adaptability, resourcefulness, initiative. 
 
 Possibly you think that I have been applying the 
 principle of conflict between progression and stagna- 
 tion somewhat carelessly — now to your own train- 
 ing as librarians and again to the service rendered 
 by the library itself. In truth these are intimately 
 connected. Progressive assistants make a progres- 
 sive library. A staff that does its work mechanical-
 
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS 365 
 
 lv will operate a library without initiative If your 
 habit of mind has grown to be a habit of regarding 
 all the technical detail of librarj work as part of 
 nature's law, von will be Bhocked at a suggestion 
 that the library of which von are a part Bhould un- 
 dertake senile public Bervice that a library never un- 
 dertook before. 
 
 Yon may know already — yon certainly will know 
 soon — that this question of the extension or limita- 
 tion of library service is still a burning one in many 
 minds. Libraries to-day are .loin- ;i thousand things 
 that no one of them would have thought of doing 
 fifty years ago. That some of these things are fool- 
 ish or ill advised I have no doubt. We now occasion- 
 ally hear it said that there should be some authorita- 
 tive statement or agreement on what public libra- 
 ries, at any rate, ought to do and what they ought 
 not to do. But we Americans do not take kindly to 
 limitations of this sort, although they are familiar 
 in countries where service of all kinds is more stand- 
 ardized. We read in a recent magazine article of 
 the trials of Mrs. James Russell Lowell with English 
 servants, when her husband was American minister 
 in London. Wishing to have a loose corner of carpet 
 nailed down, she called on one after another of her 
 domestic staff, only to i><- told that tin- clearly-defined 
 duties of each did not admit of that particular item 
 of service. She finally lined them up on one side of 
 the room, tacked down the carpet herself and then 
 discharged every on.- of them. This sort <>f thing 
 does not seem to Americans like efficiency. If some 
 
 needed hit of service in an American town remains 
 undone, and church and school and library all look 
 the other way because it dors not fall within a care- 
 
 fully-limited sphere of duty which each has assigned 
 
 to itself, we shall connt them all Nameworthy
 
 366 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 pecially if it shall appear that one of them is equipped 
 to perform that particular service easily, cheap- 
 ly and well. The church and the school have both 
 taken this view, and the modern extension of the 
 library's functions shows that it has been doing like- 
 wise. It has gone further than either of the others, 
 probably, because it finds itself in many ways better 
 equipped for the doing of civic odd jobs. It is re- 
 lated of a railway manager that an employe whose 
 work was over once asked him for a free ticket home. 
 The manager refused, saying: "If you had been work- 
 ing for a farmer you would hardly expect him to 
 hitch up and drive you home, would you?" "No", 
 said the man, "but if he had a rig already hitched 
 up and ready to start, and he was going my way, I 
 should call him darned mean if he didn't take me 
 along." 
 
 In many eases the library has been hitched up 
 and standing at the door when the necessity has 
 arisen, and it has been "going the same way" — in 
 other words, the need of the community is nearly 
 related to the work that the community's support has 
 already enabled it to do. Under these circumstances 
 it is in the position of Coleridge's Wedding Guest — 
 it "can not chuse but hear". 
 
 "When we look at the library's recent history, we 
 shall see that it is in precisely this way that it has 
 taken on all its additional functions. The old libra- 
 ries lent no books. But home use of books seemed 
 presently desirable. After experimenting with sepa- 
 rate institutions for this kind of service, we have all 
 come around to considering it a legitimate function 
 of the Public Library. Libraries gave no attention 
 to children. When this became necessary, another 
 function was added. These and other duties were 
 very closely related to the library's older functions.
 
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS 367 
 
 Soon there was a further step, in making which the 
 library took over services whose connection with its 
 primary business was not so clear. To draw an ei 
 ample from what is most familiar to me at present, 
 in the St. Louis Public Library von will find a room 
 Cor ait exhibits, collections of post-cards and textile 
 fabrics, a card index to current Lectures, exhibitions 
 and concerts, a public writing-room with free note 
 paper and envelopes, a class of young women, study- 
 ing, like yourselves, to be librarians; meeting-pla 
 for all sorts of clubs and groups, civic, educational, 
 social, political and religious; a photographic copy- 
 ing machine, placed at public disposal at the cost of 
 operation; lunch-rooms and rest-rooms for the staff; 
 a garage, with automobiles in it. not to speak of an 
 extensive telephone switchboard, a paint-shop, ;i car- 
 penter shop, and a power-plant. Not oi f these 
 
 things, I believe, would von have found in a large 
 library fifty years ago, and yet ihe\ are probably all, 
 in one shape or another, to be found in all Large mod 
 era American libraries. They are extensions of func- 
 tion; in many eases ir would be hard to justify them 
 on general principles. Why should a library alio* 
 young people to dance, or men to hold a political 
 meeting or the neighbors to exhibit local products, 
 in its building? Our English friends hold thai it is 
 the heighl of absurdity to do so. Doubtless we 
 should be absurd if we should attempt to formulate 
 a principle about what cognate activities might prop- 
 erly be admitted to the library and should include 
 such things as these, lint that is not the way in 
 which it .ill came about. There was some group of 
 citizens, anxious to engage in some activity, benefi- 
 cial to themselves and to the community. They 
 wanted a place to meet. Church and school, for one 
 reason or another, real or imaginary, were out of
 
 308 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 the question, and they came to the library. The Li- 
 brary had an unoccupied room, heated and lighted. 
 It had the choice of locking out citizens of the com- 
 munity that were supporting it out of the public 
 funds, or of admitting them. Put in this way the 
 library's duty seems clear enough. But there is a 
 step further still. Some demands for help are so 
 old that the knocking at the door has passed out of 
 the consciousness of both those who knock and those 
 who hear. In this case it becomes necessary for the 
 library to undertake what a recent scientific writer 
 calls the "re-education of its attentive control". 
 When an institution reaches the conclusion that it 
 is doing all that it can, or all that the community 
 can properly ask of it, the chances are that it is los- 
 ing its ability to concentrate. Its duty is to fix its 
 attention on one element of community life after 
 another and ask itself whether it is not overlooking 
 some really insistent demand for help. 
 
 I well remember when, in the New York Public 
 Library we used complacently to explain our failure 
 to purchase Hungarian books for circulation by say- 
 ing that there was no demand for them. But the time 
 came when we put in a few hundred books in that 
 tongue. At once it became evident that we needed 
 not hundreds but thousands. Hungarians came to 
 us from far distant parts of the city only to find 
 empty shelves. This overwhelming demand had been 
 present all the time; only it was latent. It lacked 
 active expression, simply because our lack of Hun- 
 garian books was a well known fact. Since then 
 when librarians tell me that their libraries have no 
 books in Kuthenian, or on sanitary plumbing, no out- 
 of-town directories or no prints for circulation, be-, 
 cause "there is no demand for them", I am inclined 
 to smile. No matter how near you may be to dying
 
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS 
 
 of thirst, you will not be Likely to visit an obvio 
 *]ry Band-bank in search of water. 
 
 The intelligent search for these latent demands 
 
 requires the kind of interested ability that I have 
 already spoken of as one of the library's chief needs 
 The library must keep on growing if it is to live. It 
 must take on new functions, and when it assumes 
 some new duty, sonic group in the community must 
 exclaim "Of course*! that is just what we have been 
 wanting all tin* time". And nt the same time there 
 will always he some outworn function that may If 
 dropped oil' quietly to make room for the new. 
 
 Only the librarian must not mistake unintelligent 
 imitation for initative. Imitation in itself is unob- 
 jectionable. Il'what someone else has devised is ob- 
 viously the very thing you have been looking for to 
 solve your problem, you would only waste energy 
 in trying to devise something else. But if you think 
 you can create in your community a library as good, 
 we will say, as .Mr. Dana's in Newark, or .Mi'. Brett's 
 in Cleveland or Mr. Jennings' in Seattle, simply by 
 copying every detail of those institutions, you are as 
 foolish as if you thought you could make yourself 
 look like your well-dressed friend simply by borrow 
 ing his clothes. The library must tit the community ; 
 also, in sonic respects, the librarian. I have recently 
 visited Miss llewins' office in the Hartford Public 
 Library. 1 think it is the most fascinating office a 
 librarian ever occupied. But I certainly shall not 
 go home to St. Louis and try to make mine look like 
 it. 
 
 This warning applies particularly to the added 
 
 functions of which we have been speaking above. 
 
 They should be assumed in response to a demand 
 expressed or latent. The demand may be obvious 
 and insistent in one library and non-existent in an
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 other. If yon suspect a latent demand, experiment 
 will generally reveal or disprove its existence, just 
 as those few hundreds of Hungarian books brought 
 out the demand for the present thousands. We have 
 on the east side of our library a broad terrace, bal- 
 ustraded, elevated above the street, paved with brick 
 and stone. It is shady on summer afternoons, and 
 swept by the south breeze. What an ideal place to 
 read in the open air, instead of in the stuffy build- 
 ing-! We equipped it with tables and chairs, relaxed 
 the rules to make it easy to take books and maga- 
 zines there, did everything in our power to encourage 
 terrace leaders. The public press saw and approved. 
 Everything worked well, except that nobody came! 
 A failure, do yon say? Not at all. We had tried 
 our experiment, tested for our possible latent de- 
 mand and found that there was none. We had asked 
 our question and received our answer. There are no 
 1 ables and chairs on that terrace to-day, but we are 
 not discouraged: why should we be? A real experi- 
 ment never fails: you always get your answer — yes 
 or no. Of course if your experiment is a sham, and 
 you have assumed that the answer is to be the one 
 that you want, you may be disappointed. 
 
 It is always a pleasure to watch things grow, to 
 be able to keep them on and guide their growth in 
 useful directions. A library is no exception to the 
 rule. Even growth in size — the simplest kind — has 
 its satisfactions, but extension of service is still more 
 interesting. It is well that there should be a little 
 mystery between the librarian and his public — a con- 
 sciousness of problems yet to solve, of service yet to 
 be rendered. It is well that he should be on the look- 
 out for latent demands — those hungers and thirsts 
 that he knows must exist somewhere and that he is 
 eager to satisfy; it is well that his community should
 
 A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS 371 
 
 regard the library as a place with opportunity and 
 willingness for service yel anrevealed as ;i reservoir 
 of favors yel unbestowed. This is a living relation, 
 not one of mere juxtaposition. I never envied the 
 
 kind of service that old Atlas did the world, in stand- 
 ing eternally with it on his shoulders. Thai was an 
 image of dull, burdensome despair. How much bet- 
 ter our modern vision of a spinning globe, circling 
 through space, with all its brother and sister gl< 
 dancing around it! And however miraculous 
 seems, we know that whenever we get up and walk 
 across the room there is a tiny adjustment of bala 
 throughout the whole vast system. There are social 
 balances, too, as well as celestial, and when the li- 
 brary puts out its foot to take a forward step, i 
 lieve that they all respond. 
 
 These things that libraries are doing have their 
 part in the vast social adjustments in the midst of 
 which we live. Some day a social historian will arise 
 to describe them and set them in their place. I am 
 frequently disappointed when 1 take ap some book 
 describing a movement or an application of en 
 in which 1 know that, the library has borne a part, 
 to hud that its share has been absolutely without 
 recognition; that the word "library" is not even in 
 the C0pi0US index. We have been busy doing thi 
 
 — here in the seclusion of the library family we may 
 
 that they have been things worth the doing. 
 Some day we. too. shall have our Homer or our .Mil- 
 ton. 
 
 Let me remind you that this has ;ill been illue 
 the of my principle that library service, like even; 
 Other kind of mundane activity, is ;i phase <-t' the 
 eternal struggle hetwe-a keeping still and getting 
 somewhere else. At tie 
 
 the most thoughtful of current English writers, Mr.
 
 372 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 -I. 1>. Beresford; states the issue thus (I quote from 
 memory) : "Virtue is only continued effort; a boast 
 of success is really a confession of failure". Of 
 course, continuance of effort, virtuous though it may 
 be, will be of little avail without ability, intelligence, 
 common-sense — at least a modicum of those quali- 
 ties whose complete combination makes up that 
 wholly impossible creature, the Perfect Librarian. 
 Training will not give you these — the Almighty be- 
 stows them at our birth — but it will develop such as 
 you have already — and none of us lacks all of them. 
 Keep on moving, then, and when you score a 
 point, rejoice only because it proves that scoring is 
 one of your possibilities, and that you are likely to 
 score many others before your race is run.
 
 LUCK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 "It is better to be born lucky than rich'', says 
 the old proverb. "Is he lucky?'* Nap.. icon used bo 
 ask when anyone was recommended to him. Litera- 
 ture is full of allusions to luck; history is full of the 
 belief in it and of the influence of that belief on the 
 course of events. Do I believe in luck? Most as- 
 suredly, if you will allow me to frame my owe def- 
 inition. One of the most important and fascinating 
 branches of modern mathematics — the theory of 
 chances or probabilities, deals with what may be 
 called luck, and with its laws. Chance, we are told, 
 is "the totality of unconsidered causes". When an 
 event is conditioned entirely by chance we say that 
 it came about by "luck", though the unconsidered 
 causes are there just the same. A tyrant, we will 
 say, stakes his victim's life on the cast of a die. 
 Whether he perishes or not is solely a matter of 
 good or bad "luck". When a basket contains ten 
 marbles, of which five are black and five are white 
 we know that in the long run the number of black 
 and while marbles drawn at random tends toward 
 equality, and we express this by savin- that the 
 chance of drawing either black or white is one in 
 two, or ' ... Whether black or white appears at any 
 single drawing is purely a matter of luck. In this 
 sense, luck confronts us at every turn, and no one 
 can deny its existence. Now let us go a little further. 
 May chance happenings lie ail.-, ted h\ circumstances 
 that have no apparent connection with them? Doubt- 
 less; but so far as they are they are no longer BUD-
 
 374 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ject to the laws of chance. It is because we know 
 this that we are able to study nature by experiment 
 If in a long series of drawings, from a basket con- 
 taining an equal number of black and white marbles, 
 we draw chiefly black, we recognize at once the fact 
 that some cause, distinct from the mass of slight and 
 unconsidered causes whose combined action we know 
 as "chance", is acting. We try at once to get at that 
 cause by varying the conditions. If we find, for in- 
 stance, that by plunging the hand deeper into the 
 basket we get white balls as well as black, we con- 
 clude that the white balls were heavier and so 
 settled to the bottom when the mass was shaken. So 
 it may be that a particular series of happenings may 
 be affected by locality, by personality or by season. 
 So far as this is true, chance or "luck" has ceased to 
 act and we must look for the cause. These, how- 
 ever, are precisely the circumstances in which many 
 persons are accustomed to invoke a luck of higher 
 grade and more potent qualities, a luck that clings 
 to person, place, or time. If in a series of happen- 
 ings more turn out to the advantage of a particular 
 person than pure chance would warrant, he is said 
 to be "lucky". In other words, the necessity of as- 
 signing a cause is recognized, and it is easier to call 
 this cause "luck" than to search for it and to identify 
 it. I am not sure that we are right in objecting to 
 this procedure. We do not object to lumping to- 
 gether the totality of unconsidered causes and call- 
 ing them "chance". It is legitimate to do so when 
 it is impossible to discover and treat them separately. 
 In like manner it may be considered proper to call a 
 man "lucky" when the causes of his success evade 
 detection, though we may be sure that they exist. 
 It is in this sense that it is better to be born lucky 
 than rich. This was what Napoleon meant, I have
 
 LUCK IX THE LIBRARY 
 
 no doubt, by his question, "la lie lucky?" Be might 
 
 have said, "Is he uniformly successful, for peas 
 that do not lie on the surface? If so, we must as- 
 sume the existence of causes, though we cannot de 
 tect them. Doubtless he will continue to succeed, 
 even if we can not always tell why. That is the kind 
 of man that I prefer." 
 
 Just a little philology here may throw additional 
 light on our subject I have said that Napoleon's 
 question was, "Is he lucky?" Now of course Napo- 
 leon did not use these words, because they are Eng- 
 lish words, and he spoke in French. What he said, 
 doubtless, was "E%t-il Keureux?" We translate heur- 
 eux in two ways, "happy" ami "fortunate", but they 
 are really the same, for happy means "of good hap", 
 or good fortune. When we say "by a happy chance", 
 we go back to this primitive meaning. The word 
 heureux is derived by the French lexicographers 
 from the Latin cmgurium, so that its basic meaning 
 is "of good augury." I think you will agree with me 
 that there is something more here than mere chance 
 The augur's business was to ascertain the will of the 
 gods, and all through we have the idea of some im- 
 pelling force that makes things turn out as they do 
 If this force, whatever it was, was on the side of the 
 candidate, Napoleon wanted him. 
 
 As for our word "luck" itself, it is purely Teu- 
 tonic and our lexicographers do not trace it beyond 
 
 earlier forms, it should be noted, however, thai 
 in many of these, as in the modern German gliick, it 
 means happiness ;is well as chance. This wide .1^ 
 sociation of ideas may be taken to mean that happi- 
 ness was regarded by our forefathers as always the 
 sport of chance; but I prefer to regard it as an • 
 dence that a life in which everything is for the 
 — where no mistakes are made and where all is
 
 376 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 sailing and successful outcome, is dependent on some 
 fundamental cause. 
 
 These "lucky devils", that we see all about us — 
 the ones who "always fall right-side-up' — the men 
 whose touch turns everything into gold— the college 
 students who pass examinations because the ques- 
 tions happened to be the very ones they knew— all 
 these are people whose "luck" can usually be depend- 
 ed on to last. It is all right to explain their success 
 by calling them "lucky", so long as we do not forget 
 that this is merely a word to cloak our ignorance of 
 the real causes. 
 
 The trouble is that this is what we do often for- 
 get. We have been forgetting it since the dawn of 
 civilization, and we inherit our forgetfulness from 
 the twilight of ignorance that preceded it. If the 
 cause of a man's success was not immediately appar- 
 ent, he must, it was concluded, have effected it by 
 magic or sorcery, or he was in league with the Devil, 
 or Fortuna or some other goddess guided his hand. 
 If he was a consistent failure, someone had hoodooed 
 him, or blasted him with the evil eye, or worked up- 
 on him some magical charm, or the fickle goddess 
 had turned her back on him. Nowadays we simply 
 say "lucky dog !" or "unlucky dog !" and let it go at 
 that; but the words carry with them the meaning 
 that something occult is at work — a meaning quite 
 as unreasonable as the specific supernatural causes 
 assigned in earlier days, and possibly still more ob- 
 jectionable. 
 
 I am quite willing to recognize that Jones is 
 "lucky". His success is due to something that I can 
 not detect; in fact, he seems to me rather an ordi- 
 nary young man. He may possibly not understand, 
 himself, why he gets ahead so fast. He may believe 
 that there is something occult about it. Plenty of
 
 LUCK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 successful men have believed in their "stars" and 
 trusted them, and this worked well until it encour 
 aged them to be reckless. Luck and stars are all 
 very well as symbols; but they will not perform im- 
 possibilities. 
 
 So far I have not openly mentioned the public 
 library, but I have been thinking of it a good deal, 
 and I hope that you have also. It is one of the beau- 
 ties of public library work that the points at which 
 it touches life in general are many. He who ia given 
 the honor of addressing librarians, as I am doing ar 
 present, may talk about pretty much what he plea 
 when he begins, serene in the confidence that its ap- 
 plication to library work will not only be reached in 
 good time, but will even obtrude itself prematurely 
 on his hearers. 
 
 In the first place, I believe we librarians should 
 ponder that question of Napoleon's — "Is he lucky?" 
 and should make it part of our tests for employment 
 and promotion, asking it in substance of the can- 
 didates themselves, of their sponsors and of the in- 
 stitutions where they gained their training and <\- 
 perience. 
 
 Extending Shakespeare a little, we may say with 
 Caesar, "Let me have men about me who arc fat" 
 fat with achievement. Those who are lean and hun- 
 gry with failure are not for me. Where the cause of 
 achievement or failure is obvious, this attitude needs 
 no defense. I believe that it is justifiable where tie- 
 success or failure is generally attributed to "luck" 
 The general feeling that an "unlucky devil" will 
 probably continue to be unlucky is founded on the 
 idea that his ill luck is due to something more than 
 chance. Whatever it is, it is something that we must 
 and should reckon with, whether it is visible or not 
 even whether it is thinkable or not — certainly wheth-
 
 378 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 er the person concerned is responsible for it or not. 
 He may be in no sense responsible for his "bad luck" 
 any more than he is for a physical defect such as 
 blindness or one-leggedness ; but all these things 
 must be weighed in estimating the probable value 
 of his work. 
 
 I am conscious that such an attitude as this may, 
 in theory, do serious injustice to the man whose "ill 
 luck" is really due to pure chance, just as in the case 
 of the man who throws tails ten times in succession 
 after betting on heads. Such a run as this may hap- 
 pen; it does happen in fact on an average once in 
 1024 trials. The fact that there are 1023 chances 
 against it justifies us in neglecting to take it into 
 account very seriously. I suppose that the chances 
 against a man's persistent "bad luck 1 ' being due to 
 pure hazard are very many millions to one. I am 
 not going to waste any tears over the injustice that 
 I or you or anyone else might do in this way. 
 
 I once heard a man of great intelligence, the ex- 
 president of a small college, firmly maintain that if 
 one had a basketful of letters of the alphabet, writ- 
 ten on cards, and dumped them all out on the floor, 
 it was absolutely impossible that they should be 
 found so arranged, we will say, as to spell out Mil- 
 ton's "Paradise Lost". Now such a happening is ex- 
 tremely unlikely, but the chance that it should oc- 
 cur can be calculated mathematically and expressed 
 in figures. The arrangement in which "Paradise 
 Lost" is spelled out, however, is no more unlikely 
 than any other possible arrangement, and some one 
 of these arrangements is bound to occur, no matter 
 how unlikely any particular one is beforehand. No 
 one of them, therefore is impossible, including Para- 
 dise Lost. Rut J admit that where chances are so ad- 
 verse, we may use the word "impossibility" in a
 
 LUCK IX THE LIBRAKY 
 
 rough sense, and so I use it in asserting that it is 
 impossible for persistent "bad lack" to be due to 
 
 pure chance. 
 
 Just here we may consider whether ;i man may 
 rise above ill-luck, may conquer it, may turn it into 
 good fortune. The ancients evidently believed that 
 
 he could; that is why they represented Fortuna's 
 wheel as turning. Its rotation may not only "lower 
 the proud", as Tennyson puts it, but may also elevate 
 the humble — change a run of ill-luck into a "lucky 
 strike". The Psalmist ascribes both these functions 
 to the Almighty himself. "Depoauit potentes de 
 sede, et exaltavii humiletf'. All this was occult to 
 them of old time; it need be 80 to ns only in the smis.' 
 that occult means "hidden". If the hidden causes 
 of a man's ill lack may be revealed to him, wholly or 
 partially, by study, or even if he can make a plausi- 
 ble guess at them, and if he finds that they are with- 
 in his control, he can of course mitigate them or per- 
 haps abolish them. 1 greatly fear that in most cases 
 of this kind they are beyond his regulation, either 
 because they are congenital or because they are due 
 to habits so ingrained that changing them is impos- 
 sible. The wry fact that he attributes his failures 
 to ''luck" shows that he has made some effort !" _ I 
 at the cause and has failed in that, as in other thinu> 
 The use of the word "hick" enables him to keep his 
 self-respect. It does not, however, make him a more 
 valuable assistant, and his superiors must not fail 
 to take it into account in an estimate of his work. 
 
 I believe that some inquiry into possible physi- 
 cal causes may repay as. Teachers tell ns of cases 
 where incredible stupidity turned out on examina- 
 tion to be due to deafness. 1 personally knew of i 
 maid servant whose apparently idiotic actions were 
 caused by near-sightedness. She did not know
 
 LIBRAKY ESSAYS 
 
 girl— that her eyes were not perfectly normal. In 
 all such cases treatment of the physical cause, if 
 it is treatable— alters the "run of luck" at once. All 
 of our libraries should have medical officers, as the 
 New York Public Library has, and the members of 
 the staff should be periodically inspected. There 
 should be a rigid physical examination on entrance. 
 I ask you to consider, in this connection, the. 
 career of Ulysses S. Grant, which has always seemed 
 to me one of the most remarkable in our history. As 
 I walked down the Gravois Road in St. Louis the 
 other day, along- which Grant used to drive his loads 
 of wood from the farm, to sell in the city, it seemed 
 as if I could see the stumpy figure clad in its faded 
 army overcoat seated on the load and urging his 
 slow-going mules toward St. Louis, then far away. 
 If there ever was a man who was "down and out", 
 it was Grant at this time. He had been uniformly 
 "unlucky". He had had his chance — a good one — 
 and had passed it by. Opportunity, which we are 
 falsely told knocks only once at a man's door, had 
 sounded her call and he had made no adequate re- 
 sponse. A graduate of West Point, with creditable 
 service in the Mexican War, with good connections 
 by birth and marriage, here he was, living in a log 
 cabin on a small farm, hauling wood to city custom- 
 ers. Yet just three years later this man's name was 
 the best known in the country and had gone around 
 the world. He was a victorious general in command 
 of armies. A few years more and he was President 
 of the United States. He was uniformly "lucky". 
 His "luck had changed". What made it change? I 
 can not find that Grant the successful military com- 
 mander was a different man in any way from Grant 
 the farmer and teamster. He was supremely fitted 
 for military command under a particular set of condi-
 
 LUCK IX THE LIBRARY 
 
 tions. When those conditions arose, his genius took 
 the line of least resistance. Such m career is not 
 unique. We learn from it that ill link may be simply 
 negative — due, not to active causes ili.it force one 
 back, but simply to the absence of the conditions un- 
 der which alone one may move forward. Vocational 
 guidance may help us here — or it may not. It would 
 not have helped Grant. If he could have been sub- 
 jected to some miraculous series of tests that would 
 have brought out the fact that, failure as he was. he 
 could achieve brilliant success at the head of an army 
 what would that have availed? There was no army 
 for him, and there was no war in which it could fight 
 If the question ''Is he lucky?" is to be answered "No 
 —but he might become SO, if he were at the head of 
 the U. S. Steel Corporation". I am afraid that the 
 result Avould be the same as without that qualifying 
 statement. 
 
 When a librarian was leaving a large field of en- 
 deavor to enter upon a still larger one, his office-boy, 
 hearing some speculation regarding his successor, 
 was heard to say, "I could hold down that job my- 
 self. I've watched everything he does and there 
 isn't a thing I couldn't do". What he had watched 
 were the motions and they looked easy. Hut we 
 should not laugh at this kind of confidence. An old 
 stager said to me once "Oh, these young men! They 
 think they can do it all ; and t he trouble is that 80nu 
 times Hi'// arc right." A young man is a neutral in 
 luck. His good or bad fortune is yet to be revealed 
 The complete vocational test would be one that could 
 tell whether the office boy were really titled t«» he li 
 brarian, and if he were, would see that he ultimately 
 became librarian. Now we must rely not only Ofl 
 the boy's own ability to estimate his powers but on 
 his lighting strength to realize his vision. And then
 
 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 is more to it than this. A worker may have the abil- 
 ity and may know that he has it, and yet he may dis- 
 trust his own estimate and so fail to follow it up. 
 This is one of the saddest varieties of "ill-luck". We 
 often hear it said "He can do that, if he would only 
 realize it". Too often, however, the man or the wo- 
 man does realize it perfectly well; his self estimate 
 of his powers may be quite high enough; it may even 
 be too high. Talk with him and you may discover 
 to your surprise that lie thinks highly of himself. 
 But at the critical moment he loses his nerve. 
 Doubts arise in his mind. Is he, after all, as able to 
 rise to the emergency as he has always thought him- 
 self? He hesitates; and he is lost. His "ill luck" 
 has again been too much for him. 
 
 Somewhat similar to failures of this sort are 
 those that arise from lack of initiative. Here I think 
 our training is somewhat at fault. I can almost pick 
 out at sight the library assistants whose training has 
 been in schools where obedience has been the chief 
 thing inculcated, the following of rules and formulas, 
 the reverence for standards and authority. They are 
 of the greatest value in certain positions, but they 
 can not advance far. They are afraid to go beyond 
 the beaten path — to take chances, not, as in the case 
 just considered, because they distrust themselves or 
 their judgment, but because they have been trained 
 not to adventure. Now adventuring is the only way 
 in which mankind has ever got anywhere. There 
 are conditions in which chance-taking is criminal, as 
 it usually is when much is staked for little. The en- 
 gineer who risks the lives of a train-load of passen- 
 gers in order that he may avoid losing a minute on 
 schedule time, is a criminal chance-taker. He may 
 have done it once before with success, and the belief 
 that he is "lucky" may induce him to do it again.
 
 LUCK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 The trouble with the over-cautious worker is thai be- 
 cause he feels that this kind of adventuring is wrong, 
 it is also wrong for him to stake his personal com- 
 fort against a possible great advance in the quality 
 of service that he is doing. Perhaps I have put it 
 awkwardly. [1 so much personal comfort that 
 
 is at stake, though that is an element, as the feeling 
 that doing things well "in the way that we have al- 
 ways done them" is Letter than disorganizing them 
 for the purpose of shuffling them into a better com- 
 bination. 
 
 I have on more than one occasion, in Library 
 School lectures, urged this point of view, and 1 have 
 advised more stimulation to venturesomeness. less 
 pointing out of old paths and more opportunities to 
 break new ones. No one ever reached a new place 
 by following an old path. The path-breakers may be 
 ''lucky" or "unlucky"'. I agree that the "unlucky" 
 the congenital blunderers— ought to be kept out of 
 the adventuring (hiss— but how shall we tell who 
 they are except by trying? I have thought, possiblj 
 Without justification— that I have detected a slight 
 attitude of disapproval on the part of Library School 
 authorities when such advice as this lias been given. 
 "Let tie- student first learn the standards, t<> do 
 things by rule, to obey authority- then he can 
 branch out into initiative.*' But can he? -My ; 
 somewhat justified by experience, is that he can not. 
 The standards must be taught. The rules must be 
 known and followed, but if along with this tier.- is 
 no stimulation to initiative and the continual in- 
 stilment of a feeling that progress depends on the 
 divine curiosity of the explorer we Bhall be training 
 only routine workers and for our advances we shall 
 have to depend on those whom we stigmatize as on- 
 trained. They will be the "lucky ones'".
 
 384 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 Here are cases where luck is a function of atti- 
 tudes of mind and may be reversed if a change can 
 be made in that attitude. There are other such. 
 Take for instance the case of the grouchy man — the 
 man who has a quarrel with the world. He is sure 
 that he is unlucky — and sure enough, he is ! He does 
 not expect to be advanced, and no one would think 
 of advancing him. His attitude and its natural re- 
 sults react on each other until he becomes a con- 
 firmed misanthrope. Then there is the man without 
 interest in what lie is doing. Who would be so fool- 
 ish as to intrust an important task to a man who, 
 it is quite evident, does not care whether it is done 
 well or ill, or whether it is done at all? These per- 
 sons betray their lack of interest in ways that are 
 familiar to us all. They utterly lack initiative, but 
 for other reasons than the persons whose cases have 
 been discussed above. They have no objections to 
 adventure, but a venture presupposes interest. No 
 one ever set out to find the North Pole who was ut- 
 terly indifferent to its location or the character of its 
 surroundings. All true success is built on a founda- 
 tion of lively interest. Hence persons of this sort 
 are peculiarly unlucky. They watch subordinates and 
 newcomers pass them in the race, and they are per- 
 fectly certain that this is due to favoritism, or to 
 luck. They themselves are unlucky, and of course 
 they will always remain so, unless they can alter 
 their neutral attitude. 
 
 In thinking over the lack of initiative of which I 
 have complained above and, the failure of our train- 
 ing to supply it, it occurs to me that we carry this 
 lack over into our work. We are apt to complain of 
 the difficulty of finding persons who are fitted for 
 positions of command and responsibility. What do
 
 LUCK IN THE LIBBAB? 385 
 
 we do to elicit the qualities that make one fit for 
 
 such posts? 
 
 We have in our own library a system of efficiency 
 reports, which are filled out by department-heads 
 yearly, one for each assistant. These give Deeded 
 information about the work of members of the staff, 
 and they also sometimes reveal quite clearly the 
 state of mind of those who make them out. 
 
 Two of the questions are, "In what did the 
 sistant fall short?" And "What did you like most 
 about the assistant?" It strikes me. on running 
 over these reports, as I have just done, that the qual- 
 ities most valued when present and most Lamented 
 when absent, are those of a ^ood subordinate— the 
 assistant who goes quietly, efficiently and quickly 
 about doin^ what she is told to do, is pleasant about 
 it and does not shirk. Here are some of the things 
 that our department-heads like best: 
 
 "earnestness, industry and intelligence" 
 
 "alertness; readiness to take suggestion" 
 
 "excellent standards of work" 
 
 "close application to business" 
 
 "absolute dependability" 
 
 "persistence'' 
 
 "excellent worker; steady; reliable" 
 
 "enthusiasm and eagerness to learn" 
 
 "close attention to business'" 
 
 "tenacity and faith in herself" 
 
 "minds her own business" 
 
 "fine spirit in work" 
 
 "obliging, willing and ready service" 
 
 "industry and intelligent 
 
 "general information" 
 
 "calm, cheerful nature" 
 
 "honesty of purpose"
 
 386 LIBRARY ESSAYS < 
 
 "patience under criticism" 
 
 "politeness and willingness to oblige" 
 
 "loyalty, faithfulness and goodness" 
 
 "accuracy and systematic methods" 
 
 "neat and ambitious" 
 
 All these things are fine, I agree, but there is not 
 one of them that suggests the possibility of advance- 
 ment to a position of command where administrative 
 ability and initiative will count. I do not suggest 
 that these qualities are absent, but I think the record 
 shows that we are not on the lookout for them and 
 possibly do not value them as we ought. Only once 
 in a while do I find a suggestion that a tendency 
 toward such qualities is of interest, as when, one as- 
 sistant is commended for "independence and good 
 judgment'' and another for "resourcefulness". 
 
 And when we come to the "weak points" report- 
 ed, the same facts stand out. Here are some of 
 them : 
 
 "lack of accuracy and system" 
 
 "too sensitive" 
 
 "too reserved" 
 
 "often thoughtless" 
 
 "not sufficiently painstaking" 
 
 "too deliberate" 
 
 "tries to work too fast" 
 
 "lack of poise" 
 
 "rather slow" 
 
 "hesitates to ask for needed help" 
 
 "lack of system" 
 
 "impractical and idealistic" 
 
 "not very responsive" 
 
 "so eager that she is a bit aggressive at times" 
 
 Here, too, the deficiencies reported are predom- 
 inantly those that would make a bad subordinate;
 
 LUCK IX THE LIBRARY 
 
 although here and there we may detect one of the 
 
 other kind ; for Instance, 
 
 "does not know how to find and develop 
 in her assistants" 
 
 "not self-reliant" 
 
 "disinclined to assume responsibility" 
 These are all faults of poor executive 
 
 We shall never be able to pick good officen if we 
 <lo not know how to deteel in our privates the quali 
 ties thai would lit them to command and ln»w to en- 
 courage the development of such qualities when there 
 is anything on which to base it. 
 
 Luck may not only be "in" but "of" the library 
 The whole institution may be in the Lucky or unlucky 
 (dass. I think yon have known both kinds. The for- 
 mer seem to prosper, to do good and to win 
 golden opinions by the very fact of their existence. 
 The latter have small appropriations, a poor standing 
 in the community, and are finally destroyed by fire. 
 Now personal ill-luck is and remains personal, but 
 the ill-luck of an institution may be of various kinds. 
 It may reside in a person or persons, or in a system, 
 or in a building — <>r in all three. If the Jonestown 
 Public Library is unlucky, the ill-luck may he that 
 of its Librarian, or of his staff, or he may he operating 
 an unlucky system, or his building may he unlucky 
 
 I am an especial believer in unlucky buildings Some 
 
 there are in which it appears to he ;is impossibl 
 run a successful Library as it would he to grow i 
 
 tahles in an ash-hin. Sometimes one can pick out 
 
 the trouble with half an eye, although the same de- 
 gree of astuteness seems to have been beyond the ;ir 
 ehitect. or the board, or the lihrarian who co-oper 
 ated to produce it. lint in many cases we know the 
 
 trouble only by its fruits; its roots are bidden, and
 
 388 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 the best we can do is to recognize that the library's 
 ill-hick comes from an unlucky building, and leave 
 
 it at that. 
 
 There are so many sources of this kind of general 
 library ill-luck, that it is a wonder we do not see 
 more unlucky libraries. There are not so very many 
 lucky ones either, except so far as this proceeds from 
 the possession of a staff whose members are individ- 
 ually lucky. 
 
 The statistician knows that the way to eliminate 
 chance is to multiply instances. The insurance ac- 
 tuary does not know when you will die, but he knows 
 that of a million men of your age, very nearly so 
 many will die within the next year. It is because he 
 deals with a large number of cases that he can put 
 his system on a business footing. There may be only 
 one white ball in a bushel of black ones; you might 
 conceivably draw that white ball at the first trial, 
 but if you did you would properly refer to it as 
 "luck'\ If, however, you could multiply the number 
 of trials, you would bring up the white ball sooner 
 or later. There may be only one good way of accom- 
 plishing a result among thousands of bad ones. If 
 you should hit on the right one at the first trial you 
 would be "lucky", but, luck or no luck, you will get 
 it if you keep on long enough. Patience is always a 
 winner in the long run. 
 
 This is the way in which much of our knowledge 
 is collected. Edison found the right substance for 
 his first carbon filament by sending for all sorts of 
 materials from all over the world, carbonizing them, 
 and trying them out. The right one proved to be a 
 kind of bamboo. If Edison had hit on this at the 
 first trial it would have been so "lucky" a chance as 
 almost to be counted a miracle; as it was, he elim-
 
 LUCK l.\ THE LIBRARY 
 
 inated chance by multiplication. Nothing annoys 
 an executive so much as to he told thai the adoption 
 of this or that course will result in a specified way 
 when no one has ever tried it This was a common 
 attitude in the time of Galileo, when the idea that 
 anything could be found out by observation 01 
 periment was regarded as a public scandal. That 
 was the time when a man refused to look through 
 the newly-invented telescope for fear that he might 
 sec something contrary to the teachings of Aristotl • 
 These people are not all dead by any means. I have 
 heard them assert thai a proposed change would 
 ruin the library and then object to trying it because 
 they were afraid the result would be contrary to 
 their own predictions. The medieval philosophers at 
 least had Aristotle to fall hack on: their modem sm- 
 cessors would appear to be posing as Aristotles them- 
 selves. 
 
 A housemaid recently said to her mistress "I've 
 told everybody to-day ye weren't at home; now don't 
 sit in The window and make me a liar." No discovery ; 
 no falsehood, you see. s,» if we librarians ran be 
 prevented from trying experiments, the false predic- 
 tions of some of our advisers will not be false in their 
 own eyes, simply because they will not be exposed. 
 
 My advice to librarians, and to everyone else is 
 to keep «»n trying experiments. If yon gel a sa 
 factory result the first time, yon may slop, and as 
 
 cribe it. if you please, to your g I lurk. if tie- re 
 
 suit is unsatisfactory, however, yon i d not staud 
 
 pat on your ill luck. 
 
 "If at first you don't succeed 
 
 Try, try again". 
 There is more philosophy in that than in .11 .\ri-» 
 totle. It is also a practical exposition of the loc
 
 390 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 trine of chances. Somewhere is the combination that 
 you want. Yon will find it, if you only keep on long 
 enough. 
 
 Libraries that are afraid of being victimized by 
 chance, or, as we may put it, becoming martyrs to 
 bad luck, should ponder somewhat more closely the 
 possibilities of relief from insurance. Of course 
 here I am using the word "luck" in its simpler mean- 
 ing of unforeseen occurrence. Take the case of the 
 library that suffers from the fact that an influential 
 member of the committee that fixes the amount of 
 its annual appropriation lias eaten something indi- 
 gestible for breakfast. Such an unforeseeable oc- 
 currence, such a "piece of bad luck", might cost a li- 
 brary anywhere from two to twenty thousand dollars, 
 according to the usual size of its appropriation. 
 
 Equally injurious might be the illness of the pres- 
 ident of the Board, throwing upon an incompetent 
 member the duty of presenting the library's claims 
 and needs. It is surely unjust that a public-service 
 institution should be at the mercy of such trivial 
 chances. In some states, including my own, the li- 
 brary is removed from such ill-luck as this by a sta- 
 tutory provision fixing its public income, subject to 
 proper checks and taking away the ability of an in- 
 dividual's illness or indisposition to lower it. But 
 where this ill-chance is still in its baleful working 
 order, why should not the library be protected 
 against it by insurance? Such protection would be 
 analogous to the corporation insurance taken out by 
 large industrial companies to offset the loss likely to 
 result from the death of an officer on whose adminis- 
 trative ability much of the company's earning power 
 depends, or to the payment of death duties by insur- 
 ance, now being advocated by many companies, and 
 adopted on a huge scale by Mr. J. P. Morgan. Insur-
 
 LUCK IN Till; LIBKARY 
 
 ance is the great equalizer; it multiplies u 
 enlarges the field of possibilities and abolishes ill-luck. 
 We are availing ourselves of it incase of possible 
 damage by fire or storm, or of loss through our Lia- 
 bility .is employers. We may in future ose it to cut 
 out chance and luck in other fields also and to make 
 our resources so dependable that we may devote to 
 the extension and betterment of service the u 
 uity now often spent solely in devising means "to 
 get along". 
 
 I am afraid that yon win compare this address 
 vevy unfavorably with the celebrated chapter on 
 snakes in Iceland, because whereas the author of that 
 was able to announce the non-existence of his sub- 
 ject in six words, it lias taken me a good many thou- 
 sand. You will do me an injustice, however, if yon 
 think that I have simply been demonstrating the non- 
 existence of luck. I believe that when we say a man 
 is lucky, we mean something definite, and that thing 
 surely has an existence. It may not be the Goddess 
 Fortuna, or her modern successor, I. nt it is very real 
 and it is worth investigating and taking into account 
 If you are told that one of your assistants is "lucky", 
 do not laugh it away. Find cut the facts, and' if 
 they indicate that she is unusually successful in what 
 she undertakes, be thankful that yon have a lucky 
 person on your staff. Cherish her and promote her. 
 And if yon can find such a person outside of VOUT li- 
 brary, with the other necessary qualifications, prefer 
 him, or her. in making an appointment, to one of the 
 "unlucky" variety, h is of the lucky kind that the 
 world's geniuses are made inventors like Bell, Edi- 
 son and .Marconi, captains of industry like Carnegie, 
 Rockefeller and Henry Ford, soldiers like Napoleon, 
 Grant, and Moltke, statesmen like Lincoln, Glad- 
 stone and Bismarck, poets like Shakespeare] Dante
 
 392 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 and Goethe. We have had too few of these in the 
 library profession. They were all lucky and what 
 we need, especially in the present emergency, is 
 plenty of "Luck in the Library".
 
 THE LlliliAliY AS A MUSEUM 
 
 Boundary regions are always interesting. Close 
 to the line separating two regions of fact or of 
 thought cluster the examples that fascinate us. Blip- 
 ling's stories of India arc s.» interesting because they 
 tell of the meeting points of two civilizations— the 
 boundary along which they come into contact, inter- 
 act and fuse. The same is true of all talcs of the 
 White man and the red Indian, of the stories of early 
 explorers, of the narratives of Spanish conquistadori 8 
 in the south and French Jesuits in the north. The 
 student of mathematical physics will tell yon that 
 it is not in homogeneous regions, but along boundary 
 lines that the application of his equations becomes 
 difficult, and at the same time interesting. Our 
 whole human life is conditioned by boundaries. lr 
 is possible only on a surface separating the earth's 
 mass from its atmosphere. It is limited by narrow 
 conditions of temperature, nourishment, light, and 
 so on. So we need not be astonished when we find 
 that two related subjects of any kind acquire new 
 vitality and new interest when we study tin- region 
 along the line where they touch. This is especially 
 true of the library and tie- innscnm. 
 
 I do not intend to dwell on the case where the 
 books in a library are themselves treated ;is museum 
 
 objects, although possibly this is the one that ma\ 
 first occur to the mind in this connection. Hooks 
 that are curiosities on account of their rarity or for 
 other reasons are limited nsualh to very large libra- 
 ries. The Lenox Library in New York, now part of
 
 394 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 the Public Library, was almost entirely a book-mu- 
 seum and was so intended by its founder. The pri- 
 vate libraries of great collectors, such as J. Pierpont 
 Morgan, or the Huntingtons, are often largely book- 
 museums, and in general, a book that brings a high 
 price, brings it for its value as a curiosity, not as a 
 book. The freer a book is the more value it has as 
 a book; the more restricted it is the greater its value 
 as a curiosity. Of course, even a small library may 
 have one or two books that are worth display as cur- 
 iosities, because they are old, or rare, or have inter- 
 esting local associations either through the author, 
 or the owner, or in some other way. The Hawthorne 
 and Longfellow room in the Bowdoin College Libra- 
 ry is an example of this latter case. But a book, or 
 anything else, owned and displayed as a mere cur- 
 iosity, is of not much real value, no matter what 
 price it may bring at auction. The things that make 
 a good museum what it is are not curiosities at all, 
 in the vulgar sense. They illustrate some science or 
 art and make its study easier and more interesting; 
 they throw light on geology or history or sculpture. 
 Once in a while w r e see a museum collection of books 
 made for this object, to illustrate the art of binding 
 or the history of printing, or the depredations of 
 book-eating insects. The value of specimens like these 
 has nothing to do with their rarity. Sometimes the 
 smallest library may have books or pamphlets that 
 may be displayed with this object, especially where 
 the subject is local. It may for instance gather a 
 collection of early pamphlets from local printing of- 
 fices, or of books once the property of some eminent 
 citizen. 
 
 These things belong to a museum pure and simple, 
 which is the reason why I am mentioning them at 
 first, to get them out of the way before treating my
 
 LIBRARY AS A MUSEUM 
 
 real subject, which is the debateable -round between 
 library and museum. There is nothing debateable 
 about a book-museum any more than about any other 
 kind of a museum— a collection of historical or 
 logical specimens, for instance, thai often finds place 
 in a library building, not because ii is a library, but 
 because it is a convenient place, or because it baa 
 been thought best to build a library and a museum 
 under one roof, as has been done in Pittsburgh. 
 
 There is however a real debateable ground be- 
 tween library and museum, with somewhat hazy 
 boundaries which I believe thai either is justified in 
 overstepping whenever such an acl supplies an omis- 
 sion and does not duplicate. In other words, there 
 is a boundary region between library and museum 
 that may he occupied by either, but should aot be 
 occupied by both. 
 
 I shall try briefly to define this region and indi- 
 cate how the library may occupy parts of it without 
 legitimate criticism when the necessity arises. 
 
 Descriptive and illustrative material is to be 
 found in both library ami museum. Speaking gen- 
 erally, the former is of primary importance in tin- 
 library and the latter in the museum. Many books 
 consist of descriptive text alone, without pictures or 
 diagrams, and on the other hand a museum might 
 contain specimens without labels, although they 
 would not be of much use. In general, text with il- 
 lustrations belongs in a library and specimens with 
 labels in a museum. The mere Statement of the dis- 
 tinction as it has just been given, however, si 
 that it may be xevy difficult to draw a line between 
 the two kinds of collections. A museum has been de- 
 fined as "a collection of good labels accompanied by 
 illustrative specimens." Here tie value of the 
 scriptive text is emphasized, even in the museum <■<>]■ 
 lection. When descriptive treatises are shelved in
 
 396 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 connection with the specimens, as in some modern 
 museums, we have an expansion of the label into the 
 book; and the museum, in this one particular at 
 least, crosses the dividing line between it and the li- 
 brary. No one would blame it for so doing. 
 
 Similarly the library may occasionally cross the 
 line in the other direction without incurring blame. 
 Let me repeat that both library and museum may 
 contain descriptive and explanatory text and illus- 
 trative material. In the museum the text is usually 
 in the form of labels, attached to the specimens, and 
 these are generally material objects. In the library 
 the text is in book form and the "specimens," if we 
 may so call them, are plates bound into the book. 
 
 The first step taken by the library toward the line 
 that separates it from the museum is when the plates, 
 instead of being bound into a book, are kept sepa- 
 rately in a portfolio. The accompanying text, corre- 
 sponding to the "labels" of museum collections, may 
 be on the same sheet as the plates (often on the re- 
 verse side) or on separate sheets, which may be 
 bound into a book even when the plates are separate. 
 
 In the St. Louis Public Library about a thousand 
 volumes, forming one third of the collection kept 
 regularly in our art room, have separate plates. 
 These are of course not usually on display but are 
 in the cases ready to be used in the room on demand. 
 They thus correspond, not with museum material 
 displayed in cases, but with specimens packed away 
 in such manner that they may easily be secured for 
 study by those who want them. One may imagine a 
 whole museum equipped for students in this way, 
 with nothing on display at all — no popular exhibi- 
 tion features. Probably no museum was ever so ad- 
 ministered, as an entirety ; and as you know the 
 large museums are making more and more of fea- 
 tures adding to the attractiveness of the collection aa
 
 LIBRABY AS A MUSEUM 397 
 
 a popular spectacle. The public visits the Museum 
 of Natural History in New York, much as it turns 
 the pages of the National Geographic Magazine 
 just to look at the pictures. This treatmenl of mate- 
 rial is justified because it increases popular into res! 
 in the subject-matter and brings people to the mus- 
 eum who would not otherwise enter it. Also, it pre- 
 disposes public bodies to more generous support of 
 the museum. This is true again of such institutions 
 as botanical and zoological gardens, which have al- 
 ways been show-places for the public as well as lab- 
 oratories for the student. The library can not af- 
 ford to neglect such an opportunity of attracting the 
 public and of stimulating interest in its own subject- 
 matter — hooks. It can not continuously display any 
 great part of its separate prints, as a museum does 
 with its specimens, but it can exhibit them (Tom time 
 to time, so that one or another of them is always dis- 
 played in this way. Simple screens can be cheaply 
 made and the prints fastened thereto with thumb- 
 pins, taking care not to injure them by perforating 
 with the pin, but letting the edge of the head lap 
 over the edge of the print to hold it. and using sheets 
 of transparent celluloid for protection, where neces- 
 sary. After beginning such displays in our own li- 
 brary, we found them so popular with our readers 
 and so helpful in our own work that we are now 
 holding thirty or forty yearly, sometimes two or 
 three at once in different parts of the library, sup- 
 plementing our own material with loans from inter- 
 ested friends. 
 
 The value of exhibitions of plates is so highh • - 
 timated by some librarians that they are breaking up 
 valuable volumes so that the plates may be used sep- 
 arately. This is a second step toward the museum 
 use of the library. I have heard a well-known libra 
 rial) assert that if permitted by his Hoard he Would
 
 398 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 dismember every art book in his library, in this way. 
 Most of us, especially if we are interested in the ex- 
 hibition side of library work — which is distinctly a 
 museum side — will be inclined to sympathize with 
 him. 
 
 But although we hesitate, perhaps, to tear to 
 pieces good books, even for such a good purpose as 
 this, there is much material that can be so treated 
 with a clear conscience. Many duplicates of art 
 works can be thus used, and there is hardly an illus- 
 trated book which when the librarian is ready to 
 throw it away does not contain plates or maps which 
 can be saved and used. In St. Louis when we con- 
 demn books they are never destroyed and consigned 
 to the old-paper dealer before passing through the 
 hands and before the eyes of all those who might use 
 still usable fragments of this kind. Taking the item of 
 maps alone, some of the best special maps are at- 
 tached to volumes of travel or history, as folders or 
 in pockets. So long as the book is usable, the map, of 
 course, must go with it, but if the map has been re- 
 inforced with linen when the book is purchased, as 
 it ought to be, it will probably be in usable condition 
 when the book is worn out, and may at once be trans- 
 ferred to the map collection. The same is true of 
 other plates than pictures — fac-similes of handwrit- 
 ing, for instance. A very fair autograph collection 
 may be made of such detached plates — not originals 
 of course, but originals are valuable merely as cur- 
 iosities, in the way that we have already noted. Fac- 
 similes are as good for any other purpose. 
 
 Of course all such torn up or detached material 
 is very convenient also for reference use — easily 
 filed and quickly consulted. It may be kept in verti- 
 cal file cases, in loose-leaf binders or in ordinary 
 portfolios. One of the interesting things about it is 
 the facility of assembling it in different ways. In
 
 LIBRARY AS A MUSEUM 
 
 our own library we sometimes tear apart the I • 
 of an art book simply to group the plates in ai 
 der that will make them more valuable for reference 
 
 purposes. This leads us to another aearly related, 
 though 1 should call it a still further, step towar< 
 museum region, which is taken when we deliberately 
 create specimens by clipping and mounting 
 libraries are now doing this freely, both for reference 
 work and for circulation. In many cases there are 
 no separate labels here except a brief descriptive 
 title, the material being classified according to its 
 subjeet or its intended use. The similarity to tie- 
 school museum or circulating museum — a 
 cent development, of museum work— is striking. In 
 this field the library has been ahead of the regular 
 museums. The material clipped and mounted is us- 
 ually book material— largely plates from books, n 
 azines or papers. There is much other material that 
 can be so mounted and used— the kind of thing ; 
 is familiar in memorabilia scrapbooks — theatre and 
 concert programs, announcements, invitations, tick- 
 ets of admission, badges, menus, photographs, ad- 
 vertising material, etc. It is usually a mistake 
 make permanent scrap-books of such material 
 When they need to be assembled in book form the 
 separate mounts can be brought together in a lo 
 leaf binder. A permanent scrap-book ties the mate- 
 rial together in a way that may prove embarassing 
 Suppose, for instance, that you are keeping printed 
 material from three clubs in your town, as you 01 
 Clubs seldom do this for themselvi a S >vei 
 Louis women's clubs have told us that they visit 
 library when they want to indulge in research 
 their own past doings, h might be aatural I 
 a scrap-book for each club and insert the material 
 as it comes. Hut suppose you desire to display ;ill 
 your material on war activities and that some ■
 
 400 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 material in these scrap-books falls under this head. 
 You will have to leave it out or tear out your scrap- 
 book leaves. 
 
 Mounting takes time, and it is not necessary to 
 mount everything. Material used only occasionally 
 may be left unmounted. For instance, much news- 
 paper-clipped material may be kept loosely in heavy 
 manila envelopes. Again, some material may be 
 made more accessible if not mounted, especially if in 
 card form and in standard sizes. Such is the postal 
 card. The amount of valuable material obtainable 
 in postal-card form will astonish those who have not 
 looked into the matter. Besides the usual views of 
 localities, embracing buildings, monuments and 
 scenery, good collections of sculpture, architecture, 
 portraits and many other things may be made in pos- 
 tal-card form. Postal cards are all of the same size 
 and very compact, so that they may be filed in trays 
 and treated very much like catalogue cards, guides 
 being used with them as in an ordinary catalogue. 
 The amount of usable material that can be stored to 
 the square foot in this form is probably greater than 
 any other. 
 
 In all material of this sort, the similarity of col- 
 lection, treatment and use may be so close that the 
 passage from the picture to the object seems almost 
 negligible; yet many persons apparently consider • 
 that here we must draw the definite boundary line 
 between the collections of the library and those of the 
 museum. They would say for instance that it is per- 
 fectly legitimate for a library to acquire, preserve 
 and use a plate bearing a printed fac-simile in nat- 
 ural colors, of a piece of textile goods, but not a card 
 mount bearing an actual piece of the same goods, 
 although the two were so similar in appearance that 
 at a little distance it would be impossible to tell the 
 colored print from the actual piece of textile. Li-
 
 LIBRARY AS A MUSEUM 40 L 
 
 brarians will nut be apt to attach much import. 
 to this distinction, and those whose collections in- 
 clude treatises od textiles with colored plates will 
 not hesitate to supplement them with mounte . - 
 mens of the actual textile with typewritten dee 
 tions. 
 
 Generally manufacturers are only too happy to 
 furnish samples of their current output, and older 
 
 specimens, sometimes of historical interest, can be 
 bought from dealers. 
 
 There are precedents for the treatment of this 
 sort of thin- as library material. Probably Hough's 
 well-known work on American Woods will occur to 
 everyone. No library, so tar as I know, has ever 
 thought of barring this from its shelves because it 
 contains actual thin sections of the various woods 
 instead of pictures thereof. 
 
 The peculiar adaptability of this kind of mate- 
 rial to library use is a physical one, and is shared by 
 every Mat specimen that may be mounted on she tg 
 Instances will occur to every one. An actual flower 
 or leaf, for example, is generally cheaper than ;i col 
 or reproduction of it. and takes up little more room 
 when mounted. A good descriptive botany with in- 
 adequate pictures may well be supplemented by a 
 herbarium of this kind. Historical material is quite 
 generally Hat— often written or printed on card or 
 paper— old pro-rams, menus, railroad tickets, dance 
 cards, timetables, cards of admission, souvenirs of 
 all kinds. One of the most interesting exhibitions 
 I ever saw was of foreign railway material tim 
 tables, tickets, dining-car menus, etc. Many ciii' 
 and Japanese specimens were included, a treatise 
 on forms of railway tickets, with fac-simile ilhigj 
 tions, would be eagerly sought by libraries; « 
 should not the objects themsrhes he equally valu- 
 able? Librarians were -lad to have Miss Kate 8
 
 402 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 bora's book on old wall papers, with its realistic re- 
 productions, but how many of them thought of the 
 possibility of making their own books of specimens, 
 using the papers themselves, instead of photographic 
 facsimiles thereof? 
 
 This point of view may be commended to the 
 makers of decorated bulletins in libraries. Much 
 laborious hand-work is often done in the preparation 
 of these, and the results are seldom worth the 
 trouble. Even when a work of art has been produced 
 it may be questioned whether the time withdrawn 
 from other library work has been employed to the 
 best purpose. By the use of what has been called 
 above "museum material" time may be saved and bet- 
 ter results reached. For instance, I once saw, in an 
 exhibition of picture bulletins one bearing a list of 
 books and articles on lace. It was made in white ink 
 on black cardboard, and bore a most realistic repre- 
 sentation of lace, done with the pen, probably at a 
 vast expenditure of time. The most that could be 
 said for this really clever bit of work was that it 
 looked enough like a real piece of lace, mounted on 
 the cardboard, to deceive the elect at a short distance. 
 Why then did not the maker mount a real bit of in- 
 expensive lace on the board, at an expenditure of a 
 few minutes' time? It should not require much 
 thought to see that bulletins prepared in this way are 
 usually better and more effective than elaborate dec- 
 oration with pencil and brush. 
 
 Another point of resemblance between this kind 
 of library material and that utilized by museums is 
 the fact that its value is so often a group- value — 
 possessed by the combination of objects of a certain 
 kind, rather than by any one in itself. For instance, 
 a common earthenware jar designed by John Jones 
 in the Trenton potteries may have little value, but 
 if you add to it a thousand other earthenware jars,
 
 LIBRARY AS A Ml - M 
 
 or a thousand pieces of any kind designed by John 
 Jones, or a thousand other specimens made in Tren- 
 ton, the collection acquires ;i value which far exceeds 
 the average value of its elements multiplied by thou- 
 sands. The former may !»<• five rents the latter five 
 thousand dollars. In the same way an illustration 
 Mary Smith, clipped from a trash; story in a ten- 
 cent magazine, has little value- aero value perhi 
 But a thousand such illustrations stowing the pub- 
 lished work of Mary Smith from the time she began 
 until she acquired standing as an illustrator, is 
 worth while. 
 
 It should not be necessary to tell librarians thai 
 the best way to make such a collection as this is not 
 to search for each element by itself hut to gather 
 miscellaneous related material in quantity and then 
 ort it. If you have a pile of slips to alphabetize. 
 you do not go through the whole mass to pick out 
 the As. and then again for the B's, and so on. Von 
 sort the whole mass at once, so that while you are 
 segregating the A's you are at the same time collect- 
 ing the B's and all the rest of the alphabet Like 
 wise, if you want the illustration work of .Jessie Wil- 
 cox Smith, for instance, you need not hunt separately 
 for hits from her pen; you need only clip all the il 
 lustrations from magazines and papers that would 
 be otherwise discarded. Then you sort these by the 
 names of the illustrators, and you have at once col- 
 lections not only <>f Miss Smith's current work but 
 of that of dozens of other illustrators. This is ap- 
 plicable in a hundred other fields. 
 
 It should be noted that this group valm- is poten- 
 tially present in many large collections of material, 
 whether classified or not into the particular groups 
 in question. For instance, we have a large collec- 
 tion of locality post-cards, filed by cities and t. 
 Here are groups ready far use if anyone wants
 
 404 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 views of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Stockton, Cal., to 
 show to a class, or for use with a reflectograph, or to 
 copy for newspaper work, they are already assem- 
 bled. But also if someone is going to lecture on 
 court houses, it is the work of only a few moments 
 to assemble from the file a temporary collection of 
 fifty or sixty examples. The same is true of build- 
 ings of any other type, say college dormitories, rail- 
 way stations, libraries or warehouses, of parks, 
 mountain scenery and industrial processes and of a 
 hundred other things. The value here is a true group 
 value ; it is created by assemblage and becomes dor- 
 mant again when the items are distributed to their 
 proper places in the file. 
 
 The same is true of lantern-slides to an even 
 greater degree, for slides are practically never used 
 except in groups. As a collection of slides may be 
 grouped in scores of ways, it is better to file them 
 in some order that will admit of quick selection, 
 than to form groups arbitrarily at the outset and 
 keep these together. A slide in such a group is prac- 
 tically withdrawn from the possibility of assemblage 
 in some other group. For instance, a view of Michael 
 Angelo's "Moses" might find a place in a group to 
 illustrate a talk on Michael Angelo, or Renaissance 
 Sculpture, or The Art Treasures of Rome, or Old 
 Testament Worthies, or any one of a dozen others. 
 If we place it arbitrarily in any one of these and keep 
 the group together, we shall of course spare our- 
 selves a little trouble if anyone wants that particu- 
 lar assemblage of slides, but we shall not only make 
 it more difficult to assemble the other groups, but 
 practically put them out of the running. Several 
 years ago we had a valuable gift of a collection of 
 slides illustrating phases of city-planning, given by 
 the Civic League of our city. They included many 
 foreign views now difficult or impossible to obtain.
 
 LIBRARY AS A MUSEUM 
 
 The donors bad assembled them in groups to go with 
 lectures prepared in advance and we maintained 
 this arrangement for a time, although it was not in 
 accord with our general plan. Bui we soon found 
 that persons who asked tor slides mi London or 
 Munich or Milan were missing some ol our best mate- 
 rial, simply because we could aol always remember 
 to look through the city-planning groups for some- 
 thing that might In- there. Consequently we broke 
 
 Up these groups and distributed their slides to the 
 
 proper places in our file, which, is in trays arranged 
 
 precisely ;is if the slides were catalogue cards, with 
 proper guides and cross-references on cardboard 
 slips. W'e have memoranda of the slides that belong 
 in each lecture group and these can he quickly as- 
 sembled if wanted. Of course we allow the public 
 to go directly to the trays if they desire and assemble 
 for themselves any group that they choose. 
 
 This is all borderland material between library 
 and museum. There is much of it analogous t«> the 
 lantern slide that libraries have not taken up yet. 
 but that they might handle to good advantage. I 
 do not see why we should not, for instance, circulate 
 microscope slides or photographic oegatives. Stereo- 
 scopic pictures are now commonly handled by libra* 
 pies owing to skilful and perfectly legitimate exploi- 
 tation. 
 
 There is perhaps some doubt whether we should 
 include in this sort of material musical records, 
 either for the nierhanical organ and piano or for the 
 phonograph. These should possibly be considered 
 as books containing music written in a kind of nota 
 tion that admits of sound-reproduction. The fact 
 that there is this doubt should perhaps suffice to 
 throw these records into the borderland of which we 
 
 are speaking. They are to some extent capable of 
 the group arrangement spoken of above, as 1 where a
 
 106 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 library patron asks to take out half a dozen records 
 from one opera or eight old French dances. They 
 are also capable of a kind of correlation with other 
 library material that is quite unique. Thus a read- 
 er may take out at the same time Chopin's military 
 polonaise in ordinary notation and in music-roll 
 form. The pianola reproduction serves as a guide 
 to his own reading of the piece, or he may simply 
 follow the musical notation as he operates the me- 
 chanical player. Similarly, he may take out the 
 miniature orchestral score of a selection and the pho- 
 nograph record of the same as played by an actual 
 orchestra. Here he can not play the piece himself 
 but he can follow the reproduction with score in 
 hand, much to his own musical pleasure and profit. 
 
 An exactly similar correspondence exists between 
 an ordinary book and a phonograph record of it read 
 aloud. Smli records are not often available, but I 
 see no reason why they should not become so, at any 
 i-ate in the case of poetical and oratorical selections. 
 Our means of popular instruction in spoken lan- 
 guage are deficient and these might prove useful. 
 At present we teach children in the schools to read 
 and write, but not to speak. If they do not learn 
 good colloquial spoken English at home, they are apt 
 to remain uneducated in this respect. This plan has 
 worked well in the teaching of foreign languages and 
 it is now possible to buy small phonographs with 
 cylinder records in French, German or Italian cor- 
 responding to printed passages in the accompanying 
 manuals. I certainly think it legitimate of libra- 
 ries to purchase these, and they would be "border- 
 land'' material, I suppose, in the same sense as the 
 musical records. 
 
 I may say before closing, in regard to this sort 
 of museum material, that the largest circulation of 
 music rolls that I know of is that of the Cincinnati
 
 LIBBABY AS A MUSE1 M 
 
 Public Library, which distributes them at the rate 
 ul «M>00 per year. We have 3681 rolls and circu- 
 lated 16,S14 iii the vr.ir L917. Neither the Cincin- 
 nati library nor our own pays out money for this 
 material It is all donated. 
 
 The status of phonograph records of all kind 
 
 museum material is hardly as high in this country 
 
 ■ is abroad. In the Sorbonne, in Paris, records of 
 French dialect speech have long been acquired and 
 stored. Records of this kind and moving-picture 
 films, mad.' of permanenl materia] and carefully 
 prepared to show existing conditions would have 
 very high future value, i do nol know of anj 
 tematic effort to collect them in the United - 
 Possibly it might he difficult to find permanent 
 films. A moving picture man told me that only per- 
 ishable ones were being made, as it was not for the 
 interests of the trade that they should Last long. 
 There is too much of this spirit in modern industry 
 and r, ' ;l(l, '< and it is responsible for poor materials 
 of ;l11 sorte paint, textiles, dyes and furniture 
 Permanent carbon photo-prints on paper can be made 
 and doubtless the process can be applied to trans- 
 parent films if desired. 
 
 This is really museum material, but if no museum 
 tak.s it ,,|», I should like to see f he Public Library 
 the work. We already have the films of our 
 great St. Louis Pageant of 1915, which may servi 
 a beginning. 
 
 ft has been said above that museum material 
 
 adaptable to library us,- is bo for physical reasons 
 We may go further and say that the whole difference 
 between a library and a museum [ s : , physical din 
 ence rather than one of either object or method 
 The difference is one ,.f material and «.f the manner 
 of iis display, and these an- conditioned by physical 
 facta Th«- difference between an object and
 
 408 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ture of it is physical. It should not astonish us, then, 
 that when this physical difference is abolished, as 
 it is when the object itself is a picture, or is mini- 
 mized, as when the object is flat like the picture and 
 resembles it closely, like a textile specimen, the 
 boundary between the museum and the library prac- 
 tically disappears.
 
 THE LIBRARY AND THE LOCALITY 
 
 Then' is nothing more important than standard' 
 Lzation, unless it is a knowledge of its proper limits 
 Probably no more important step has ever been 
 taken than the introduction of standardization into 
 the industries; the making of nails, screws, nuts and 
 bolts of standard sizes, the manufacture of watches, 
 firearms and machines of all sorts, with standard in- 
 terchangeable parts. If yon take apart a thousand 
 Ford automobiles and mix up the parts a thousand 
 automobiles may be at once assembled from those 
 parts, without any effort at selecting the particular 
 ones associated with each other at lirst. You know 
 that this principle is now being applied to what are 
 known as ''fabricated'* ships when' certain types <>f 
 freight-carriers are made standard and then twenty 
 or thirty of a kind are built at once in the same yard, 
 being assembled from steel parts cut <»nt and 
 punched in what are called "fabricating ships". 
 
 Now- 1 need not waste time in arguing here that 
 this process can not be made to apply universally or 
 be used indefinitely. To standardize a work of art 
 would be to kill it. Standardization is valuable 
 where interchangeability is necessary rather than 
 adaptation to local conditions. Portable houses, for 
 instance, with interchangeable parts, have been stand 
 ardized to a certain extent, but onh within the 
 bounds of uniform climatic conditions. The stand 
 ard houses for Michigan and Alabama would have to 
 be different. It is important, therefore, us I have 
 said, to know, when standardization is being Carried 
 out, the limits of its advisability and the conditions
 
 410 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 under which it becomes useless or injurious. This 
 is of interest to us librarians because our methods 
 and processes, our buildings, our book collections 
 and the use of both have long been undergoing this 
 very process. And it is surely desirable that almost 
 all the routine processes of library work, and the 
 others to some extent, should be standardized. 
 
 This standardization has been going on ever since 
 librarians began to meet together and began to is- 
 sue their own professional literature ; in other words, 
 ever since the formation of the A. L. A. in 1876 and 
 the establishment of The Library Journal about the 
 same time. The subsequent formation of State Li- 
 brary Associations and local library clubs, as well as 
 the establishment of other library periodicals, has- 
 greatly multiplied the opportunities for librarians 
 to talk over their work with each other, to learn of 
 other and better ways of doing things, to compare 
 existing methods and to determine, if possible, which 
 of them best serves the purpose for which it was de- 
 vised. These things having in some measure been 
 decided, they were then crystallized and fixed by the 
 rise and success of Library Schools, summer-schools 
 and training classes, which selected the methods that 
 had stood the test of time and had emerged from 
 the crucible of discussion and formulated them into 
 standards which were thenceforth taught to their 
 students. This, I think, is a fair statement of the 
 way in which our present library standards came to 
 be standards. 
 
 It is a good way to select the best and to ensure 
 that the best shall not be departed from. If the best 
 always remained best, we should have no quarrel with 
 it. Unfortunately there is flux and change all about 
 us. A method is best when it best corresponds to 
 the conditions. We can ensure that the method shall 
 not be changed, but we have no control over a large
 
 LIBEABY AND THE LOCALITY 411 
 
 proportion of the conditions. They change, in spite 
 
 of ns; and then the methods ought to change with 
 then». In some instances we have erred, possibly, 
 
 by making- it a little hard to change them. We are 
 now ready to consider some of the cases where stand- 
 ards ought not to obtain— where one library ought 
 to fry to he different from another histoid of exactly 
 like it. 
 
 It is evident from what was said above about 
 portable houses, that difference of locality is apt to 
 introduce important exceptions into any rule of this 
 kind; and it is on these exceptions that we an 
 dwell particularly to-day. There are thousands of 
 particulars in which it. is desirable that a library in 
 one town should he conducted exactly like one in an- 
 other town. What are the particulars in which the 
 library must or should he different? 
 
 First, let us consider the stock of hooks. If these 
 have been selected properly, differences between the 
 two towns will perhaps he tirst reflected in these, for 
 a library's ability to serve its community depends 
 primarily on certain correspondences between the 
 hooks and the readers. These correspondences may 
 
 be summarized by saying that the I ks in a library 
 
 must represent a combination of the readers 1 wants 
 
 and their needs. These might always coincide in an 
 ideal community, but in practice no librarian thinks 
 
 of paying attention to the one to tl ^elusion of the 
 
 other. At the same time the demands of the readers 
 
 should always he known ami always considered even 
 if they want what is unnecessary; and we must like- 
 wise try to ascertain what they need, even if they 
 have no desire for it. The extremes in a community 
 
 without library taste would he a library of trashy 
 
 fiction and one of serious standard works at which 
 no one ever looked. A hook-selector who U86S _:<).>'i 
 
 judgment will of course steer between this Scylla
 
 412 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 and this Charybdis, and the result will be a collec- 
 tion that the community can use with both pleasure 
 and profit. Moreover, as time goes on, the readers' 
 taste and the quality of their library will both slow- 
 ly but surely rise. No two towns are alike. Where 
 the books have been thus selected, the collections will 
 reflect the character of the communities, not only in 
 literary taste but in many other things. The indus- 
 tries of the towns are likely to differ. In one, per- 
 haps, there are potteries ; in the other, shoe factories. 
 The workers in the industries and even outsiders in- 
 terested in them for local reasons, should have an op- 
 portunity to consult their literature. The natural 
 resources of the regions doubtless differ — their 
 crops, their mineral output, their attractiveness to 
 the summer tourist, Transportation facilities vary. 
 All these things have their reflection in books and 
 the differences of the towns have their correspond- 
 ing reflections in their libraries. 
 
 Many years ago, your lecturer called the atten- 
 tion of librarians to the fact that they have in their 
 own statistical tables a means of ascertaining 
 whether they are keeping up with the reading-ten- 
 dencies of their communities in book-purchase. 
 Nearly every library classifies both its stock and its 
 circulation, and tabulates both for the year, giving 
 also the percentage of each class to the whole. Now 
 suppose, for instance, that his tables show nine per 
 cent, of history on the shelves, we will say, whereas 
 the circulation of the same class is eleven per cent. 
 Evidently his readers are fonder of history than he 
 is. They read it in greater degree than he buys it. 
 Moral; buy more history. Of course this would be 
 the moral only where the tendency shown was to be 
 encouraged. For instance the average percentage of 
 fiction on the shelves in a public library is probably 
 about thirty, whereas its circulation runs from sixty
 
 LIBRARY AND THE LOCALITY 
 
 to sixty-five. We do not say here "Buy more fiction", 
 because fiction reading needs no encouragement, but 
 rather judicious restraint, although I certainly am 
 
 not one of those who condemn it. I wish, however, 
 that we could divide our novels into three claa 
 good, indifferent and had, and then tesl the public 
 demand by the method outlined above. I am con- 
 vinced that sonic surprises might be in store for us 
 Among the subjects that differ totally in two Lo- 
 calities, local history and biography are conspicuous 
 Doth citizens and visitors are often interested in 
 them. There are features of each that are of more 
 than local interest, but the purely local side must 
 generally he taken care of by the library or nol at 
 all. Sometimes there is a local historical society 
 whose work, of course, the library will not try to du- 
 plicate; but there is always room for co-operation, 
 stimulation and aid. A moribund historical body 
 may often be galvanized into life by an interested 
 librarian. The library may offer such a body the 
 hospitality of its building and shelf-r n for its col- 
 lections with mutual benefit Bu1 in scores of towns 
 there is only languid interest in local history or lo- 
 cal worthies, and the library itself niiisi do all that 
 is done. Material hearing on these local matters 
 rarely consists of hooks. It will include local news 
 papers, (dippings, -a pamphlet or two, menus, leaf- 
 lets, programs — all sorts of printed things issued by 
 churches, schools, clubs and societies, and lost 
 soon as issued unless caught at once and preserved 
 Here is the library's chance to possess a collection 
 that is the only one of its kind in the world; for OUl 
 side th«' home town no one would think of getting ir 
 together. Supplementing these printed records may 
 he all sorts of manuscript material letters, diaries, 
 reminiscences or narrative- written or dictated 
 pecially for the library by persons who have booh*-
 
 414 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 thing' locally interesting to tell. If there are maps 
 showing the growth of the town or anything else of 
 interest about it, the library is the place for it. The 
 collection and arrangement need take none of the 
 busy librarian's time, for there is always someone in 
 the town whose interest and labor can be enlisted. 
 If nothing else can be done, at least a file of the local 
 newspaper can be kept and indexed on cards, es- 
 pecially for names of localities and persons. Work 
 of this kind done currently and not allowed to ac- 
 cumulate, does not take much time. 
 
 In these days of universal snapshots, local photo- 
 graphs are easy to get. The librarian may take a 
 few herself and the library may well defray the ex- 
 pense. A hundred years from now, twenty views of 
 your main street, taken at five-year intervals from 
 the same point and showing the progressive changes, 
 would be worth their weight in gold. Groups taken 
 "just for fun" or for family reasons, are often worth 
 keeping because they show the fashions of the day. 
 These are of no particular interest to us now, but any 
 of us would be glad to have in our libraries a collec- 
 tion of groups showing prevalent modes of dress in 
 our towns during each year in the last century. Old 
 buildings are often torn down to make room for new. 
 These should be photographed before they go. 
 
 All material of this kind is peculiar to the libra- 
 ry where it is preserved and helps to make that li- 
 brary's collections a departure from standardization 
 otiose importance we need, perhaps, insist on no fur- 
 ther. 
 
 It may not be possible to collect in the library 
 all of the interesting local material in the town. 
 Much of it may be in the hands of private owners 
 who will not part with it, Some of it may be owned 
 by clubs, churches or public bodies. In this case 
 there should be an index somewhere to indicate
 
 LIBRARY AND THE LOCALITY 415 
 
 where it is, and there is no more appropriate place 
 for this index than the library. I have elsewhere 
 suggested thai where this privately-owned material 
 consists of books, cards for them may be inserted 
 also in the library's public catalogue. But, in addi- 
 tion, there i^ DO limit to the extent to which tin- li- 
 brary may go in indexing material, and this work 
 may well enlist the interest and efforts of volunteers. 
 There may be an index to old furniture, one of colo- 
 nial houses, possibly illustrated and annotated like 
 the tine one prepared by Mr. Grodard tor the 
 Connecticut State Library, one of soldiers sent by 
 the town to various wars, one <,t' noteworthy storms 
 or of very high or low temperatures, one t * » local or- 
 ganizations, past and present. The special intei 
 of the community will guide these efforts, and here 
 too the library of one town will differ materially 
 from that of another. 
 
 Possibly library standardization has affected 
 buildings more than anything else about a library. 
 There was a time where its absence was doing a great 
 deal of harm, especially in the case of small or med- 
 ium-sized libraries put up under the Carnegie gift 
 Every hoard and every local architect had a differ- 
 ent idea, but all seemed to agree that the building, 
 no matter how small, was to he a monument, with a 
 rotunda and a dome; and a good deal ol waste re- 
 sulted. There w.is a loud call for some kind of a 
 standard plan, and small library buildings, whether 
 for branches or independent Libraries, are novi ;i good 
 deal alike, so much so that we can often pick out a 
 library building by its outward guise, and that we 
 will sometimes say of a post-office or an art gallery, 
 "That looks exactly like a library". This ease of 
 identification is of course good as far as it l:<"-^: but 
 it should not interfere with a certain degree of adap- 
 tation to local conditions. This is obvious in the
 
 41G LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 rase of sites offering local peculiarities. For in- 
 stance, the High Bridge Branch of the New York 
 Public Library is built on a steep hillside. The ar- 
 chitect has taken advantage of this fact to arrange 
 an entrance on the ground level on each of the three 
 floors. The lowest is a service entrance, the next 
 above leads to the children's room and the upper- 
 most to the adult department. Each door opens on 
 a different street and the three facades are respec- 
 tively three, two and one story high. Evidently no 
 standard plan would have been of use here. The 
 building, inside and out, had to be planned for this 
 site and this alone. And although not many sites 
 require such special treatment as this there are 
 many that do not lend themselves to the erection of 
 a rigid standard building. In Detroit the Carnegie 
 Committee, I am told, were inclined to insist on a 
 basement assembly room in branches to be built on 
 ground where any basement at all would involve 
 wasteful expense of construction. The proposed con- 
 tents of a building should often affect its plan. Some 
 architects have not yet learned the difference between 
 an independent library and a branch of the same 
 size and probable circulation. An independent li- 
 brary may have to house treasures, and should be of 
 fire-proof construction. A branch rarely houses 
 anything that can not easily be replaced and it may 
 be waste of money to make it fire-proof. 
 
 The architectural style of a library building is 
 often properly made to conform with some style 
 peculiar to the locality or regarded as suitable for it 
 The Riverside Public Library in California is proper- 
 ly in the Spanish colonial or Mission style; that of 
 New Haven, Conn., is a modified New England Colo- 
 nial, the Jackson Square Branch in New York is 
 Dutch, the Chestnut Hill Branch in Philadelphia 
 and the Public Library in Harrisburg are of the ir-
 
 LIBRARY AND THE LOCALITY 417 
 
 regular sto] e masonry bo familiar in many parte <»f 
 Pennsylvania. Some of the branches in Portland, 
 Ore., used to be and perhaps siiii are of wood, built 
 <if the Douglas fir of the surrounding region. 
 
 The power of the purse is an important thing in 
 libraries as elsewhere, and possibly we should have 
 taken up earlier the variations of library income with 
 locality. Not only are some communities better able 
 to support a library than others, but of two with 
 equal ability one will excel in interest and willing- 
 ness to give, An attempt to regulate income by 
 rule is the requirement of the Carnegie Committee 
 that a municipality shall appropriate for the sup- 
 port of a library in a Carnegie Building, not 
 than ten per cent, of its cost I know that the condi- 
 tion is primarily stated the other way around. The 
 town is supposed to decide what it can give to sup- 
 port a library and then the Carnegie Committee i^ 
 willing to capitalize this at ten per cent. But the 
 library once built, its cost becomes the fixed item 
 and the appropriation the variable one. and in many 
 eases it has varied so far downward as to constitute 
 a violation of the town's library contract, or late 
 the Committee is making an effort t<» detect and 
 tabulate these violations and t<> use them ;is a i 
 
 for witholding donations in neighbor! Is where 
 
 they have been frequent. A man is known by the 
 company he keeps, and it may lie just to regard with 
 some suspicion one who lives in a neighborhood 
 where dishonest persons congregate. Si ill. towns 
 are unlike men. since their locations are fairly per- 
 manent, and it seaiveh seems right to turn down 
 Jonesville's request for a Carnegie library because 
 Smithtown, •">."> miles away, ha- been unable to appro 
 priate the ten per cent that it promised. Th,' Com- 
 mittee has also made what I regard ;i- the mistake of 
 
 finding fault with the library that suiter- from an
 
 418 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 unduly reduced appropriation, instead of with the 
 city or town government that is responsible for the 
 reduction. To throw blame on the head of an insti- 
 tution that has just been robbed of its birthright 
 would seem to be adding insult to injury. But de- 
 spite the failure of this particular effort at standard- 
 ization, there seems to be a feeling that library in- 
 comes should be so far standardized as to be calcul- 
 able from the particular set of circumstances under 
 which the library is working. The State of New 
 York once attempted to regulate its library appro- 
 priation by home-use alone — so many cents per vol- 
 ume circulated. This was a very crude attempt, but 
 possibly we ought to be able to say just how many 
 dollars ought to support a library in a building of 
 specified size with so many books, and a circulation 
 of so many per year. This matter was the subject of 
 earnest discussion for a year or more in the Amer- 
 ican Library Institute, but no definite conclusion was 
 reached. It has always been my belief that some 
 sort of formula could be deduced by mathematical 
 methods from a large number of observed data, that 
 is, the statistics of a series of normally-conducted li- 
 braries. Observe that this is not so much standard- 
 ization as an attempt to systematize the recognition 
 of differences. 
 
 With the average librarian the practical ques- 
 tion is not so much what sum he ought to have 
 to run his library, as how he can and shall run it 
 with what he has. Limitation of income invariably 
 limits service, and unfortunately the kind of service 
 on which it bears most sharply is that which is the li- 
 brary's specialty — namely the provision of books. 
 The purchase of books should be the last thing in 
 which the library ought to economize but in practice 
 it is generally the first. The building must be cared 
 for — lighted and heated; the public must be served.
 
 LIBRARY AND THE LOCALITY 
 
 Bui it is easg to stop buying books, and it is in book- 
 purchase that the library with small income differ* 
 from its neighbor with plenty ol money. There are 
 some curious exceptions where the library ean doI 
 wholly control the expenditure of its money, which 
 is regulated by the dead hand of a testator. Thus 
 the Forbes Library of Northampton, .Mass., now sen- 
 sibly consolidated with the Public Library of that 
 city, was obliged for years to expend most of its in- 
 come for the purchase of books, leaving practically 
 nothing for keeping up its building or paying its 
 staff. It was thus rich where a library is usually 
 poor and vice rrr.su. 
 
 The earliest efforts at standardization among li- 
 brarians were directed toward cataloguing; and 
 probably cataloguers arc our greatest sticklers for 
 a rigid adherence to pules. Those who read Mr. E. 
 L. Pearson's column in The Boston Transcript real- 
 ize that there are some librarians who consider this 
 facta legitimate target for ridicule. And it is clear, 
 I think, that both the methods and results of cat- 
 aloguing ought not to be immune from modification 
 to adopt thrnn to local peculiarities. Some public li- 
 braries are used so much for scholarly or antiquar- 
 ian research that their catalogues need to approxi- 
 mate that of a university library : others are of 
 popular a nature that they hardly need a catalogue 
 -it all. The needs of a certain community may re 
 quire the ?ery lull analysis of certain I ks, when 
 
 elsewhere these could do very Well with less anah 
 
 or possibly none at all. The selection <>f subject 
 headings may have to be made with due regard 
 the use that a catalogue is likely to receive r.o-.ks 
 
 on open shelves do not need precisely the sa kind 
 
 of cataloguing as those i<> which aeeess is not 
 lowed. A library's public, ;<><>. sometimes gets Into 
 habits, and if these are unobjectionable, it may be
 
 420 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 better to humor them than to try to change them. 
 Some bodies of readers like as many printed lists as 
 possible; others rarely use them. In some places 
 there is great demand for a monthly bulletin; else- 
 where it is little used. Any librarian who does not 
 stand ready to adapt his catalogue in some respects 
 to the character and needs of his readers runs the 
 risk of limiting his field of service. 
 
 Methods of distribution may require selection or 
 modification to suit local peculiarities. Take, for in- 
 stance, the choice of a charging system. "Which is 
 the best charging system?" is a question frequently 
 asked of experienced librarians' or library school in- 
 structors. This query is on a par with "What is the 
 best material for clothes?", or "Is paregoric or ipecac 
 the best medicine?" A librarian who finds in her 
 new job a charging-system that she dislikes, which 
 has been used without complaint for years, should 
 investigate before changing. Acceptance of the sys- 
 tem may be simply due to habit. Even then, as we 
 have seen, there may be reason for retaining it. And 
 there is a fair chance that it may have held its 
 ground because it is in some way better adapted to 
 the community. Of course the adaptation may be to 
 something else — size, for example. A rapid rise in 
 the circulation may take a library out of the small- 
 library class and necessitate changes not only in 
 charging system but in many other things. 
 
 Some day an industrious student of library econ- 
 omy will tabulate these things that are independent 
 of local conditions, or so nearly so that it is better 
 to standardize them, and tell how the others should 
 be varied with local topography, climate and popu- 
 lation. There is no time for that in a single lecture; 
 and if I can leave firmly fixed in your minds the 
 idea that some things are better standardized, while 
 others should be functions of variable local condi-
 
 LIBRARY AM> THE LOCALITY 
 
 tions, I Bhall have accomplished all thai I set oul to 
 
 do. 
 
 r have already noted some of the differences be 
 fc ween a branch library and a central library. Pos 
 sibly these deserve further mention as an instance 
 of the adaptation of methods of distribution to lo- 
 cality. I have frequently had occasion to deal with 
 complaints which on investigation proved i<. be due 
 t«> the fact that tin- complaining reader expected to 
 find at a branch library all the facilities of a central 
 library. He had lived near the central library in 
 one city, and had moved to another when- it was 
 more convenient lor him to use a branch. The first 
 thing that strikes him is thai the reference collection 
 is inadequate. He does not realize that the central 
 reference collection can not possibly he duplicated 
 at branch libraries. Such complaints, however, may 
 often give the librarian a hint. He may have 
 equipped all his branches with the same small, good 
 reference collection, forgetting that reference work- 
 varies with locality. Several complaints of this sort 
 from the same branch may indicate the necessity of 
 enlarging the reference collection there or perhaps 
 <»f adopting some such scheme as we are trying in 
 St. Louis of a central reference collection of dupli- 
 cates for supplying temporary branch needs. 
 
 It is not always realized that the character of the 
 hook-collection in a branch library is influenced bi 
 the mere fact that it is a branch, apart from con 
 
 siderations of size, circulation and character- ,,f 
 
 readers There are many standard books, in small 
 
 demand, that no library should be without One 
 
 copy will serve the i ds of the whole t<»wii. if there 
 
 is but one library there the I k must form part of 
 
 that library's collection, whereas if there are a cen 
 tral building and branches, it si Id be i,, the cen 
 
 tral library not in the branches It is for this -
 
 422 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 son that the A. L. A. catalogue should not be used 
 for stocking a branch. I know of cases where num- 
 bers of books lie idle on the shelves of every branch 
 in a city system, because they are not branch books 
 at all. One or two copies at Central would have 
 been sufficient, and to place them in branches has 
 been waste of money. 
 
 When the New York Public Library took in a 
 considerable number of small independent libraries 
 as branches I had the opportunity, a year or so after 
 the event, of ascertaining from the librarians, what 
 difference to them and to their readers the change 
 of status had made. They were unanimous in say- 
 ing that although they, as librarians, felt less in- 
 dependent, the service to readers was vastly im- 
 proved, owing to the fact that the library now 
 formed part of a large system. This is always the 
 result of any kind of union of effort, whether by con- 
 solidation or co-operation. The individual is some- 
 what hampered but the community is benefited. 
 This, of course, is something of a departure from 
 our subject. 
 
 Sometimes the chief difference between two lo- 
 calities is in the character and temper of the read- 
 ers. The whole scheme of relations between library 
 and public needs often to be altered in moving from 
 one place to another. This is perhaps most notice- 
 able in a city where there is a system of branch li- 
 braries. The assistant who has been transferred 
 from a Jewish to a Scandinavian district and then 
 to one occupied by well-to-do Americans will under- 
 stand what I mean without further explanation. 
 
 But this difference in readers is of course much 
 wider than mere racial difference. It may be a dif- 
 ference in social status. We Americans are too apt 
 to pretend that this sort of thing does not affect a 
 public educational institution, but it decidedly does.
 
 LIBRARY AND THE LOCALITY 
 
 Some librarians make the mistake of thinking that 
 these differences are racial also. It is a matter of 
 common knowledge among city librarians that in a 
 "slum" library the problem of discipline is simplicity 
 itself compared with a library where the readers are 
 nearly all well-to-do. This is often asserted to 
 pend merely on the racial difference between the 
 newly arrived immigrant Russian Jew, Italian or 
 Pole — and the native American. Bui we find that 
 when the immigrant has learned the customs of the 
 country and has made enough money to raise him in 
 the social scale and enable him to move from his 
 shim surroundings, he quickly lakes his place with 
 the well-to-do library patrons. Be is more exacting 
 and his children are harder to manage. The differ- 
 ence is really a social one. The immigrant is accus- 
 tomed to being looked down on in his native coun- 
 try, to living on little and having few principles. Be 
 is humble and thankful for small favors. What he 
 gets at the library fills him with amazement and 
 gratitude. Mary Antin lias told as all about it. But 
 the well-to-do citizen, whether by birth or recent ac- 
 quirement, realizes that the library is being sup- 
 ported by his taxes. lie realizes it. in fact, s<> keen- 
 ly, that he gives it somewhat undue prominence in 
 his mind and sometimes shows this in his treatment 
 Of the library stall'. Knowing that the library be- 
 longs in part t«> him. he may often forget that it be- 
 longs in equal degree to others. II. • is Impatient or 
 even resentful Of rides intended to maintain equal- 
 ity of service. His children unconsciously absorb 
 
 this same attitude. They resent control and are 
 hard to keep in order. Much of the librarians' time 
 must he given to smoothing down ruffled featl 
 ami maintaining discipline time which ought to be 
 given to bettering the quality of sen 
 
 Evidently these two kinds of communities must 
 he handled differently. They call for different train-
 
 m LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 ing on the part of the staff — a different stock of books 
 — almost for different buildings. Then there is the 
 indifferent community, which may be anywhere in 
 the social scale and which requires special handling. 
 It is even difficult to tell at times whether or not a 
 community is really indifferent. Their reaction to 
 the library is often a phase of the local feeling that 
 is the subject of this lecture. It is present in some 
 communities and absent in others, but its presence 
 does not always mean real appreciation of library 
 privileges, nor does its absence mean lack of such 
 appreciation. 
 
 Not more than a few months apart, about ten 
 years ago, two branch libraries were opened in New 
 York. One was in Greenwich Village, a district of 
 strong local peculiarities, which I fear it is about to 
 lose because writers have taken to describing them 
 in the magazines. The other was on 96th street, 
 which was a part of New York like any other. The 
 "Village" took the greatest interest in the library 
 from the moment when its site was selected. The 
 building was watched from its foundation up. Bad 
 little boys annoyed the workmen. Local politicians 
 and merchants congratulated the neighborhood and 
 told us how fine they thought it was all going to be. 
 Everybody wanted to take part in the opening exer- 
 cises and nearly everybody did. There were floods 
 of oratory and crowds of visitors. But having ob- 
 tained the library and done what it considered its 
 whole duty in the premises, Greenwich Village, not 
 being a community of readers, proceeded to leave us 
 to our own devices and it was only after months of 
 up-hill work that the Branch succeeded in getting 
 anything like a respectable circulation. 
 
 On the other hand the establishment, construc- 
 tion and opening of the 96th Street Branch were 
 treated by the surrounding residents with supreme
 
 LIBBABY AND THE LOCALITY 425 
 
 indifference. No one bad asked to have a branch lo- 
 cated ;it tin's point, which had been selected solely 
 for reasons of topography and population. As the 
 building went up, no one asked whether it was a 
 school or a bank. Nobody came to the opening ex- 
 ercises. And yet when the library began to circu- 
 late books the community responded to such an ex- 
 tent thai in a short time the branch was giving them 
 out at the rate of 40,000 a month. Bere the interest 
 and pride of a community in the possession .-if a li- 
 brary building and its disposition to make use of the 
 library are clearly shown to be two different thit 
 In this rase the two communities were parts of the 
 same city, but separate towns often show the same 
 phenomenon. Some of the most indifferent library 
 towns, for instance, are the ones where superhuman 
 efforts were put forth to secure a Carnegie building. 
 A kind of standardization of which we can not 
 have too little is that controlled by the man who 
 takes himself as the standard his own ideas, prej- 
 udices and habits. This kind of standardizer is not 
 always aware of what he is doing. He believes that 
 his methods are the best. They may be best for him 
 and possibly for the particular environment in which 
 he lias been working . I am not sure that some of "in- 
 most cherished library habits did not originate in 
 this way- were not originally simply the personal 
 whims of some aide and forceful library administra- 
 tor \\h«> was in ; i position, in the formative stage <>f 
 library progress, to impress them on tie- fabric of 
 (»nr work. Fortunately for U8, the men of this kin. I. 
 in the early history of the library movement, were 
 not only men of force but generally <»f common- 
 sense as well. Possibly their habits and customs 
 
 were as good as any others that we might have 
 
 adopted. ! am sure that the\ were better than some 
 
 lint individual points <,f view maj in some -..
 
 426 LIBRARY ESSAYS 
 
 prove disastrous. I remember an English novel in 
 which a local librarian personally interested in the 
 history of the French Revolution, uses all the avail- 
 able funds of his institution for years to buy books 
 on the subject, building up a fine collection, but mak- 
 ing his library useless for its ordinary purposes. 
 His successor,' a man with other interests, threw out 
 the whole collection. I have often wondered which 
 of these two librarians one ought to condemn most. 
 Both are examples of the injury that may be done 
 by what we may call auto-standardization. 
 
 I am preparing tins whole lecture with a fear 
 that some one of this kind may think he is adapting 
 his library to his locality when he is only standard- 
 izing it by himself. Self-deception may go far in 
 matters of this kind, and there is something to be 
 said in favor of hard and fast standardization with- 
 out departure of any kind, in that it prevents aber- 
 rations such as I have just hinted at. I trust that 
 no self-standardizer is in my present audience. 
 
 Our conclusion from all this should be, I think, 
 that a library should not only assimilate its methods 
 to those of other libraries — which is standardization, 
 but should react to the needs and conditions of its 
 own surroundings, which is localization. If you 
 would know the extent of this local reaction and the 
 character of its results, ask the members of the li^ 
 brary's community, especially if that community is 
 small. And we must remember that no library com- 
 munity is large, so far as its direct popular use is 
 concerned. Whether it is in a village or a city, 
 whether it is a central library or a branch, it is ef- 
 fective as a community centre only within a small 
 circle, of perhaps half a mile radius. The residents 
 of this circle are in a position to give testimony re- 
 garding the library's local services. If it has suc- 
 ceeded in adapting itself to local needs its reputa-
 
 LIBRARY AND THE LOCALITY 
 
 tioD will be that of a valuable, helpful, well-dispo 
 
 institution; if not, the neighbors will be hostile, or 
 at least indifferent Libraries thai are in constant 
 troultle with their readers the objecl of continual 
 complaint and controversy, generally have the feel- 
 ing that the fault is with the public. Sometimes it 
 is; for a maladjustment is seldom on one Bide alone. 
 But more often it is chiefly due to the fact that the 
 library has overlooked its purely local functions. 
 while possibly at the same time conforming most ad- 
 mirably to what are considered the best library 
 standards. No library can afford to neglect its spe 
 Cial duties to its locality and if these conflict with 
 standardization, it should lie the general standards 
 and not the local adjustments, that should go by the 
 hoard.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Administration, Cost of. 217 
 Advertising, General, 277; in 
 
 library, 35, 172 
 Age limit for children. 210 
 Allen, James Lane, quoted, 
 a. L. A. catalog, 122; Pr< sid< 
 
 address, 121 
 American Library institute, H8 
 American Idea of delegated au- 
 
 thority, .".7: Of propriety, 133 
 Americans as money-lovers, 156 
 Antin. Mary, quoted, 423 
 Appointments. 95 
 Appropriation for books, 24 
 Architecture of libraries, 315 
 Art, Not Intellectual, 331 
 Assassins, Persian sect, 129 
 Autograph collections, 398 
 Auto- standardization, 425 
 
 Badness. Three kinds in books, 
 
 207 
 Beginners, Message to. 357 
 Beresford. J. D., quoted, 372 
 Best books defined. 141 
 BibUa abibUa, .88 
 Bibliographies for book selection, 
 
 19 
 Binding. Choice of, 25 
 Boards of trustees, 39, 49, 93 
 Book committees, 22, 147 
 Book- lovers, 99 
 Booh selection, 17, 125; Raising 
 
 standard of, 141 
 Book -taught BUkins, 
 Books, l (istributlon of, 30; Love 
 of, 97; w ; toflu- 
 
 of locality on stock of, 
 411 
 Booksellers' League I N 1 
 Boston Public Library, 
 Boston Transcript, 419 
 Bowdoin Colleg» 111 
 Branch dep't., Jurisdiction of. 
 
 233 
 Branch libraries 
 of sites, i7> 
 
 Brooklyn Public Library. 
 
 Scli. 
 
 • . William J.. 
 Buildings, Future, ■ 
 
 on of, 115 
 Bulletins, Pictun 
 Busim sg man'.-- libi 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 64 
 Carnegie, Andrew, 
 quoted, 105 
 
 egie ( lommittee, R< qulre- 
 
 mentfi Of, criticized, 417 
 Cash-registers, n 
 Cataloguing. Local modifications 
 
 of, 419 
 Catholics and the library. 300 
 
 oi Librarian as a, 121 
 I -, i,i. r, l ►eflnitlon of, 111; Func- 
 tions of. Hi 
 ('Kane. . Definition of, "74 
 Charging systems, 420 
 Chestnut Mill Branch, Phila., 
 
 416 
 Children, Work with. 86 
 Children's department, Juri 
 
 tion of, 833 
 Christian Scientists and lh< 
 
 brary, 301 
 Church and library 
 Churches, Duplication of. 344 
 Circulation, Statist 
 
 long range, --1 
 
 Ch IC !-• ague. St. Loulf 
 
 Civil Servlci Commission, NY. 
 
 CiVil S. I \ l. . In It!-: 
 
 Cla 
 
 of. 
 ci n , ,.( work, 2:: 
 
 CUpp • 
 ( ;lo* 
 
 • im . rdal system la libi 
 
 ■
 
 430 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Contract system, 94 
 Cost of libraries, 85 
 Cyclopedia, Library as a, 14i> 
 
 Dana. John C, quoted, 261, 317 
 Decameron, criticized, 137 
 Delivery service, Frequent, 228 
 Delivery station work, 221 
 Detroit branches, 416 
 Distributer, Library as a, 29 
 Dont's. for book-selectors, 150 
 Downtown branch, 228 
 Drudgery, 102 
 Duns on postal cards, 13 
 Duplication, Sin of, 341 
 
 •ion. 257: Through libra- 
 ry. 87; University of, 111 
 Educational center, Library as, 
 
 111 
 Educational results, 52 
 Efficiency records, 199; quoted, 
 
 385 
 Eliot, Charles W., quoted, 80 
 Envelopes for filing, 400 
 Ephemeral books, 34, 89, 104 
 Examinations, 186 
 Exclusion of books, Grounds for, 
 
 122; Of readers, 242 
 Exhibits in a library, 397 
 Expenditures, Division of, 418 
 Experiments, 370, 389 
 Expert advisers for book-selec- 
 tion, 125, 145 
 Experts, Control by, 40, 49 
 Exploitation of libraries, 321 
 Extension of library service, 365 
 
 Falsity in books, 123 
 
 Feed-wires, Compared with 
 books, 168 
 
 Fiction, Appraisal of, 23; Selec- 
 tion of, 147 
 
 Finance, 51: Statistics of. 73 
 
 Fines, 4 
 
 Forbes Library, 419 
 
 Force, Fields of, 115 
 
 Forecasts, 310 
 
 Foreign books, 133 
 
 Formalism in libraries, 290, 320 
 
 French ideas of propriety, 132 
 
 Genius. Definitions of, ►">! 
 Gerould, Mrs., quoted. 291 
 
 Gifts, Undesirable, 173 
 Gil Bias, criticized, 137 
 Glennon, John J., 274 
 Godard, George, 415 
 Grades in the staff, 186 
 Grant, Ulysses S., Life of, 380 
 Greenwich Village, New York 
 
 City, Library in, 424 
 Group-education, 116 
 Group-psychology, 285 
 Group-value of collections, 402 
 Groups, Recognition of, 315 
 
 Harrisburg Public Library, 416 
 Hicks, Frederick C, quoted, 261, 
 
 264 
 Hierarchy, Control by a, 42 
 High Bridge Branch, New York 
 
 City, 416 
 House-to-house delivery, 871 
 Houses, Index to, 415 
 Hungarian books, 368 
 Hysteresis, 269 
 
 Imponderables, 260 
 
 Income from fines, 7 
 
 Indecency and immorality dis- 
 tinguished, 127 
 
 Indianapolis Public Library, Ad- 
 dress at opening, 283 
 
 Initiative, Need of, 361 
 
 Insurance, A relief of "ill luck," 
 390 
 
 Interest and initiative, 384 
 
 Inventory, 70, 74 
 
 Jackson Square Branch, New 
 
 York City, 416 
 James, William, quoted, 117, 260 
 Japanese, Heritage of, 167 
 
 Kent. William, quoted, 206 
 Kipling, Rudyard, quoted, 168 
 
 Language, Best of, 142 
 
 Lantern-slides, 404 
 
 Lay control in libraries, 39 f 49 
 
 Lecky, W. H. H., 128 
 
 Lectures, Collections taken at, 
 
 175 
 Lenox Library, 393 
 Librarians, Three kinds of, 241 
 Librarians' libraries, 50
 
 [NDEX 
 
 
 Librarj . The small, 29; And the 
 business man. 269; The sub- 
 scription, 293 
 Library schools, 96 
 Library work, Future of, 
 Local history, 113; Material, 117 
 Locality, Library and, 409 
 Luck In the library. 373 
 Lutherans ;m<l the library, 
 
 Machine- work, 
 
 Mai - mi in the libra 
 
 205 
 Mallock. W. H.. quoted, 153 
 Mayer, Dr. Alfred G., quoted, 
 
 357 
 Medical officers, 380 
 Meetings in libraries, :;i 1 
 Militarism. Union against, 271 
 Miller, Elsie, quoted, 224 
 Missionary work of libraries 
 Morgan, J. P., 390. 394 
 Moving i"i i urest 
 Museum. Library as a, 
 Music, Popularization of, 325 
 Mutilation of books, 1 1 
 
 Napoleon, Anecdote of, 37:: 
 
 Nationalization of libraries, 310 
 
 New Haven Public Library, 41K 
 
 New York. Consolidation of li- 
 braries in, 350 
 
 New Yin!-; !'!'.i Circulating Li- 
 brary, Scheme of service, 185 
 
 New York Public Library, 312, 
 1 2 _• ; Science circulation 
 Scheme of service, 192 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, quoted, 66 
 
 Newspaper science, 12 1 
 
 Newspapers. 105 
 
 Ninety-Sixth St. Branch, Nev 
 York City. 425 
 
 Non-partizanship, 180, 270; In 
 book selection, 12G 
 
 Omission. Sin of. Ml 
 i rpen shelf libraries, 82 
 Organization of Idlem 
 Othello • riticized, r:7 
 Overdue bunks, 8 
 
 Pains and penaltle 
 Pay-duplli m, 6 
 
 Peai son, E i. . 119; qu i 
 
 Phonograph re ' 
 Photogr iphs, Loi d, »n 
 Pianola rolls, 
 Plates as mu 
 
 Play defined, 112 
 Poe, Edgar \ 
 
 I'ii. if j i: . ■:■ 
 
 Poets, librarii 
 
 Political Interference with 
 
 braries, 320 
 Popularization of Infoi 
 
 123; Of librai 
 Portland, Ore., branches, 1 1 7 
 Postal-card material 
 Postal-cards. [UegaJ, 13 
 Prairie psychology, 294 
 Private collections Indexed, US 
 
 in novel, 130 
 Professional training, 318 
 Professionallzation of llbi 1 
 
 310 
 Profit in a library, 161 
 Promotions. 186 
 
 Public Control by, 12, 19; w 
 
 IS it? 91 
 Public-opinion, p>>\\ en/ 
 Publicity, 35, 280, 304 
 Publishers' Weekly, 20 
 
 Racial in social b( • 
 Readers. Statistics of, 7 ( ; 
 Reading of music. 
 Realism, I 
 
 Recreation through libi 
 ational results, 
 rence use, Stat 
 ii.it ion, size .1 nd r 
 Reich, EJmll, qi 
 
 ;tion in tletini 
 tion. Imi m 
 
 of. 117 
 Reviews, 21 
 
 Riley, James Whitcomb 
 Riverside Public Llbnu 
 
 416 
 Knl. - 852; Author it 
 
 sr. Louie 
 
 St. LOUlS pi in 
 
 St. Louis Pul
 
 432 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Savage, Characteristics of, 357 
 Scholarship in libraries, 287 
 School and library, 60, 88 
 School, Function of, 113 
 School libraries, 255 
 Scrapbooks, 399 
 Screens for display, 397 
 Service systems, 183 
 Shaw, George Bernard, 127 
 Sight-reading, 333 
 Simplicity, Best of, 142 
 Smith, Munroe, quoted, 259 
 Social results, 55 
 Socialists, Mistake of, 155 
 Socialization of libraries, 310 
 Special libraries, 316 
 Standardization, Limits of, 409 
 Statistics, 69, 161: Use of in 
 
 book-purchase, 412 
 Sumner, "William G., quoted, 133 
 Sunday school libraries, 301 
 Superficiality denned, 135 
 System, Magazine, 280 
 System in the library, 153 
 
 Talk. Unnecessary, 214 
 
 Taste, Cultivation of, 33, 329; 
 Test of 142 
 
 Telephone use, 274 
 
 Text-books, Composite, 264: Un- 
 satisfactory, 124 
 
 Textiles, 400 
 
 Theft of books, 14 
 
 Time, Waste of, 163, 353 
 
 Trade-lists, 19 
 
 Travelling libraries, 86 
 
 Triviality, 135 
 
 Trustees, 39, 49 
 
 Trustees' Section, A. L. A., 44, 
 49 
 
 Truth in advertising, 
 books, 123; As a test, 14 
 
 Turgenief as a realist, 34 
 
 278; 
 
 ? 
 
 Vacations, 212, 215 
 
 "Vincent, George E., quoted, 116 
 
 Volta Review, quoted, 265 
 
 Walmsley, H. R., quoted, 265 
 Wister, Owen, quoted, 132
 
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