^^^^^^^^^^ffi>' ^miil^^HH^Hi ii^ifssi !■ ]ii ]]]]\\ J \ - -^r^ X Vt>..i. ^iiAHY aCHOOfr LIBRARIES LIBRARIES ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS BY JOHN COTTON DANA THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY WHITE PLAINS. N. Y., AND NEW YORK CITY 1916 LiBUARj ^dmoi PREFACE The first of the addresses here printed was de- livered in 1896, the hist in 1915, and they thus cover twenty years of my experience as librarian in three cities. They are reprinted, at my own suggestion, in the hope that they contain somewliat of interest and value, especially to the younger members of our calling, and that they will attract a few general readers. For twenty-five years I have devoted myself quite persistently to promoting the habits of read- ing, of using libraries and of book buying. This work has been very fascinating. One of its most attractive features has been its constant change in method, in scope and in material. I have seen that fundamental thing in library management, the rela- tion of the tax-payer to his public library, change from the method of rigid supervision in 1891, in which year only four of a national gathering of about 125 librarians voted for the open shelf, to that of to-day, when almost every library of note eagerly invites its visitors to handle its books. In these same twenty-five years librarians have given up the age-limit method which kept children out of libraries, for the attraction method which lures them in. In 1890 libraries quite definitely pursued re- pose; to-day they seek results. In 1890 a citizen who wished to take home a library book was in- spected for maturity, integrity and sweet reason- ableness, and was guaranteed to possess these attri- butes by a fellow citizen of good repute for the same, before his wish was granted. To-day an entry in a city directory is ample evidence that one pos- JW663940 PREFACE sesses proper book-borrowing qualities ; and a library's eagerness to serve often supplies a directory's defi- ciencies. Under the influence of ^Ir. Carnegie's gifts, whose wealtli is probably as great a surprise to him as his generosity is to tlie world, expensive library buildings have multiplied rapidly since 1890. Many of these seem to have been ingeniously planned to furnish a mininmm of inconvenient space at a max- imum of cost; still, they have increased enormously popular interest in libraries and in appropriations of public funds therefor. Library workers have also increased greatly in number, as is indicated by the national association's membership, which was 200 in 1890 and is over 3,000 to-day. The first school of library science was opened in 1887 by ^Ir. Dewey, against the protests of many worthy librarians who felt that the art of library management did not lie within the field of educa- tion. To-day 10 library schools of good standing have a total of 300 pupils, and minor schools and training classes have many more. In my quarter century of work I have seen li- braries of 5,000 volumes and over increase from about 1,200 to about 3,000, and the total volumes in all our libraries increase from 26,000,000 to 75,000,000. The census tells us that in the same twenty-five years the money invested in printing and publish- ing plants of all kinds has grown from |195,387,000 to over |(;00,000,000, with a corresi)ondiiig increase in output. This increase in the output of the print- ing press is the thing which, perhaps above all other factors, is bringing about a radical revolution in liltrary method. What I have already said may seem to indicate that the changes in the art of library nian- vi PREFACE agemeiit of the past twentjfive rears have been sufficiently radical; and that the modern practice of that art conforms to all the demands born of clianges in material and clientele. Bnt I believe I have shown in this book that in the art of librarian- ship, — the art of promoting the nse of print to civil ends, — the rising flood of print and tliat increase of its nse which is at once the immediate cause of the flood and a result thereof, will soon compel changes in practice more fundamental than any that have gone before. Not many men of books, as one may call librarians, have gone out into the world; but their books have, and the}' must follow them. For every craft, for every art, for every trade, for every kind of business, for every profession, for every social question, there now comes forth daily a veritable army of f>rinted things, greater than any statistics save that of the capital invested in print- ing can do more than vaguely suggest. And it is well to call tliis vast output of print an army and not a flood, for it is irrepressibly militant. It com- pels attention ; and it finds waiting a vast multitude of readers, daily added to by our schools, which surrenders gladly to its assaults. Certain qualities of this innumerable host of printed pages, and an inevitable increase in the use of printed pages by all manner of men, demand, as I have said, changes in tlie librarian's method, so radical as to compel in him who would wisely adopt them a quite definite change in his conception of his calling. In this volume I have not attempted to say def- initely how the librarian of the future will adapt his practice to the new conditions. I have tried only to make it quite clear that the wise librarian will keep his mental manners plastic and his pro- fessional methods flexible. And perhaps here lies vii PKEFACE my chiefest reason for thinkiug that it may prove worth while to reprint these papers — that they quite urgently insist that, after an enthusiasm born of love of the calling, the one most essential attri- bute of the librarian, if he would be forever helpful and never an obstacle, is a profound belief that the end is not yet, that new conditions arise daily and that they can be wisely met only after a confession of ijruorance, a surrender of all doctrine and careful and unprejudiced observations. John Cotton Dana Newark, N. J., June 1, 1916 Vlll CONTENTS Hear the Other Side 3 President's Address to the American Library Association, Cleveland Conference, September, 1896. The Public and its Public Library 15 Popular Science Monthly, Jnne, 1897. The Failure of Book Reviewing 33 Springfield, Mass., Republican, May 23, 1900 A Librarian's Enthusiasm 39 Bulletin of the New Hampshire Library Com- mission, March, 1901 What We Read 43 Printed, in part, in World's Work, March, 1902 Library Problems 51 Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1902 The Place of the Public Library in a City's Life 69 Address at the Dedication of the Trenton, N. J,, Public Library, June 9, 1902 The Increase of Things to Read 75 Address delivered before the Pennsylvania Library Association, November 19, 1902 Mere Words 87 Address delivered before the New Jersey State Teachers' Association, Trenton, December 29, 1902 Fiction-Readers and Libraries 97 Outlook, June 27, 1903 What the People Read 107 Outlook, December 5, 1903 ix CONTENTS Making a Lihuauy Known 115 Address delivered before tlie Long Island Library Chib, 1905 What State and Local Library Associations Can Uo for Library Interests - - . . 123 Address delivered before the American Library Association Conference, Portland, 1905 Many-sided Interest; How the Library Pro- -Motes It 135 School -loiinial, December 22, 1906 Anticipations, or What We May Expect in Libraries 147 Public Libraries, December, 1907 Story-Telling in Libraries 153 Pnblic Libraries, November, 1908 What the Modern Library is Doing- - - - 157 Independent, January 26, 1911 The Country Church and the Library - - - 167 Outlook, May 6, 1911 Women in Library Work 171 Independent, August 3, 1911 Branch Libraries in School Houses- - - - 181 Address delivered before the American Library Institute, September, 1911 Relations of a Library to its City 187 Address delivered before the League of Ameri- can Municipalities, Buffalo, September 18, 1912 The Public Library and Publicity in Municipal Affairs 203 Paper read before the New York Library Club, March 13, 1913 X CONTENTS Making the Library a Business Aid 211 Town Development, March, 1913 LiBRARIOLOGY 221 The Newarker, April, 1913 The Evolution of the Speciai, Library - - - 213 The Newarker, Jannary, 1911 The Legitimate Field of the Municipal Public Library 261 Prepared for the International Meeting of Librarians at Oxford, England, August 31 to September 5, 1911 What Next? 281 Delivered before the New York Library Asso- ciation, October 1, 1915 XI LIBRA^RIES HEAR THE OTHER SIDE President's Address to the Atiierican Lihrary Asso- ehitiou, Vlerehind Couferenee, September, 1S96 "Failures confessed are guide-posts to success; weaknesses discovered are no longer weaknesses." I sometimes fear my entlinsiasm for the free pub- lic librarj^ is born more of contagion than of con- viction. Consider the thing in some of its more evident asjiects. Here is a bnilding, perliaps erected to perpetnate a good man's memory, a monument and of nse only as a monument; or constrneted in accordance Avith the views of an architect whose ideas of beauty are crude and whose thought of utility is naught; ill- adapted to the purpose for wliich it is intended; poorly lighted, badly ventilated. In it are stored a few thousand volumes, including, of course, tlie best books of all times — which no one reads — and a gener- ous percentage of fiction of tlie clieaper sort. To this place come in good proportion tlie idle and the lazy; also the people w]io cannot endure the burden of a thought, and wlio fancy they are improving their minds, while in fact they are simply letting cool waters from fountains of knowledge trickle through the sieves of an idle curiosity. The more persistent visitors are often men who either liave failed in a career, or never had a career, or do not wish a ca- reer. Libraries all have their indolents, idlers and "boarders." There is little that is inspiring, per se, in the sight of the men who gather in the newspaper read- ing room of any free public library. There is not much that is encouraging in a careful look at manv LIBRARIES of those wlio are the more constant visitors to the shelves of the reference department. Who wear out our dictionaries, the students of language or the com- petitors in a word building contest? Of those who come to the delivery desk CO to 80 per cent rarely concern themselves, as far as the library knows them, with anything but fiction, and in that field concern themselves generally only with the latest novel, which they wish because it is the latest. And of this 60 to 80 per cent, a large proportion — probably at least half — prefer to get, and generally do get, a novel of the poorer kind. I am stating the case plainly. I share the librari- an's enthusiasm; but that enthusiasm is sometimes to me, and I believe to many others, a cause for sur- prise. Has it not often come sharply home to every librarian — the hopelessness of the task we assume to set ourselves? The triviality of the great mass of the free public library's educational work? The dis- couraging nature of the field? The pettiness, the awful pettiness, of results? Nor is this all. That we strive for great things and accomplish so little; that our output seems not commensurate with the size of the plant and the cost of its maintenance, this is by no means the only fact which may rightly sober our enthusiasms. Fathers and mothers love their children and look after their happiness. The more they do this, the more they concern themselves that the human beings they have brought into the world be self-reliant, self- supporting i^eople, knowing how to live in harmony with their fellows, and wishing so to live, the more civilized are they. Parental responsibility is some- thing the sense of whicli has never been too acute. That I may rightly scorn and despise my neighbor if HEAR THE OTHER SIDE his cliildreu be not decent, attractive, civilized; that my neighbor may rightly consider himself disgraced if his offspring grow not up in the fear and admo- nition of the good citizen; these things are not yet commonly received. The native manners and the education of the American child are looked upon, not so much as the result of parentage and home train- ing, as the good gift of God and the public school. A strong sense of parental responsibility, this is a prime essential to the growth of knowledge, and to the increase of social efficiency. And this feeling of obligation to train properly the souls of one's own creation; this sense that the parent can win public approval as a parent only when the result is an addi- tional factor in the public's happiness and comfort; this rule of living would surely result, if rightly applied, in careful consideration of the child's educa- tion. But what have we done? We have turned the w^hole subject of education over to the community. We have made it depend very largely on the result of an annual election. We have let it slip gradually into the hands of those veritable and inevitable chil- dren of government — the politicians. The American parent is indifferent to the character of the education of his children. The interposition of the community in what should be his affairs has not only made him indifferent to those affairs, it has made others indif- ferent that he is so. He pays his taxes. If the schools are poor the fault is at the school-board's door, not his. The free public library not only relieves the idle and incompetent and indifferent from the necessity — would he have books — of going to work to earn them; it not only checks the growth of the tendency of the private individual to collect a library of his LIBRARIES own, adapted to liis own needs, and suiting his own tastes and those of his childen; it also tends to lead parents to become inditterent to the general reading of their children, just as the free public school may lead them to be indifferent to their formal education. Certainly, fathers and mothers whose children use public libraries seem to care very little what and how much their children read. They conceal their solici- tude from librarian and assistants, if it exists. Yet, if a collection of books in a community is a good thing for the community — and we seem to think it is ; and if it is a good thing particularly for the children of the comninnity — and we seem to think it is, then it is a good thing, not in itself simply, not as an object of worship, not as an adequate excuse for the erection of a pleasing mortuary monument on the public street, but for its effect on young folks' man- ners and on young folks' brains. But to produce a maximum effect herein, to produce even a modest effect, the right books must be put into the right hand at the right time. Can public servants do this rightly unless the parents cooperate Avith them? But the public library is not an institution which the mother helps to support because she has come to believe in it; because it is her pleasure; because she can and does keep a watchful eye on its growth and its meth- ods. It is part of the machinery of the state. She confides her children to its tender nu^rcies in the same spirit Avith Avliich her forbears confided in their king! Furtherniori', the essence of government is force. This essence remains whether the visible form be king or majority. It is open to question — I put it mildly — wlu'tlier it is expedient to touch Avith the strong hand the im})ulse of a ])eople to train Avith earnest 6 HEAR THE OTHER BIDE tlioiiglit their young', or the impulse of a people to give light to their fellows. People wish, in the main, that their children be well taught. Without this wish a school system, public or private, would be impos- sible. This wish is the fundamental fact; that the system is public and tax-supported is the secondary fact; the result, not the cause. People wish also, in the main, to give their fellows and themselves the opportunity for self improvement. This wish is the fundamental fact at the bottom of the free, compul- sorily supported public library. It is on these funda- mental facts we should keep our eyes and our thoughts, not on the feature of compulsion. We should work, then, such'is my conclusion, for the extension of the public library from the starting point of human sympathy ; from the universal desire for an increase of human happiness by an increase of knowledge of the conditions of human happiness; not from the starting-point of hiAV, of compulsion, of enforcing on others our views of their duty. I have said enough in this line. To the observant eye our libraries are not altogether halls of learning; they are also the haunts of the lazy. They do not always interest parents in their children; perhaps they lead parents to be indifferent to their children. But really, librarians will say, all this is not our concern. We find ourselves here, they say, loving the companionship of books; desirous of extending the joys they can give to our felloAvs; embarked in public service, and active — none are more so ; zealous none are more so; honest — none are more so, in our work of making good use of books. Your modern librarian in his daily life is no disputatious ecouomist, idly Avavering, like the fabled donkey, between the loose hay of a crass individualism and the chopped LIBRARIES feed of a perfectionist socialism. He is a worker. If tliere are things to be said wliich may add to the efiftciency of liis attempts to lielp his fellows to grow happier and wiser, let us hear them; and for this we have come together. I have said these things, not with the wish to lessen the zeal of one of us in our chosen work. A moment's look at the case against us cannot anger us — that were childish; cannot discourage us — that were cowardly. It may lead us to look to the joints in our armor; it should lead us to renew our efforts. If the free public library movement be not abso- lutely and altogether a good thing, and he is a bold economist who vows that it is, how urgent is the call to us to make each our own library the corrective, as far as may be, of the possible harm of its existence. A collection of books gathered at public expense does not justify itself by the simple fact that it is. If a library be not a live educational institution it were better never established. It is ours to justify to the world the literary warehouse. A library is good only as the librarian makes it so. Can we do more than we have done to justify our calling? Can we make ourselves of more importance in the world, of more positive value to the world? Our calling is dignified in our own e3'es, it is true; but we are not greatly dignified in the eyes of our fellows. The public does not ask our opinions. We are, like the teachers, students; and we strive, like them, to keep abreast of the times, and to have opin- ions on vital topics formed after much reading and some thought. But save on more trivial questions, on questions touching usually only the recreative side of life, like those of literature commonly so called, 8 HEAR THE OTHER SIDE our opinions are not asked for. We are, to put it bluntly, of very little weight in the community. We are teachers; and who cares much for what the teacher says? I am not pausing now to note exceptions. We all know our masters and our exemplars ; and I shall not pause to praise the men and women who have brought us where we are ; Avho have lifted librarianship, in the estimation of the Avise and good, to a profession, and have made it comparatively an easy thing for you and me to develop our libraries, if we can and will, into all that they should be, and to become ourselves, as librarians, men and women of weight and value in the community. I have said that your library is perhaps inji.'ring your community ; that you are not of any importance among your own people. And these, you tell me are hard sayings. In truth they are. I am not here to pass you any compliments. If for five minutes we can divest ourselves of every last shred of our trap pings of self-satisfaction, and arouse in ourselves for A moment a keen sense of our sins of omission, of things left undone or not well done, I shall be content, and shall consider that we have wisely opened these Cleveland sessions. I Avould wish to leave you, here at the very beginning of our discussions, not, indeed in the Slough of Despond, but climbing sturdily, and well aware that you are climbing, the Hill Difficulty. Others, I can assure you, will, long before our con- ference ends, lead us again, and that joyfully, to our Delectable Mountains. Pardon me, then, while I say over again a few of the things that cannot be too often said. Look first to your own personal growth. Get into LIBRARIES touch with the workl. Let no one point to yon as an instance of the nariowinj;' effects of too mncli of books. lie social. Impress yonrself on Aonr community; in a small way if not in a large. Be not superior and reserved. Remember that he who to the popular eye wears mucli the air of wisdom 4s never wise. Speak out freely on matters of library manage- ment; and especially, in these days, on matters of library construction. In recent years millions of dol- lars have been spent on library buildings in this country, and we have not yet a half dozen in the land that do not disgrace us. If we have stood idly by and not made our opinions, our knowledge, our ex- perience, felt by trustees and architects, then is ours the blame, and we are chief among the sufferers. Persuade architects and their associations, local and national, who ignore us because in our inconsequence they know they can, that they maj wisely and without loss of dignity consult the professional librarian jibout the building he is to occupy. I say persuade them ; I might better say compel them. To compel them Avill be easy when you have become of impor- tance in tlie world. Even now it is not too soon to attem|)t to confer with them. You can at once make the beginning of friendly and helpful relations with the American Institute of Achitects. But you must ask, not demand. Advertise the A. L. A. and what it stands for. Help to broaden its field. Support heartily measures which look to a greater degree of publicity for it. Interest your trustees in it. Interest your friends, and your patrons and constituents in it. Be ready and willing to do your share of the work, and there is no end of Avork that each year must be done to 10 HEAE THE OTHER SIDE keep it properh' alive and Avell in the pnblic eye. Call the attention of 3;onr trnstees to the difference between the efficient library, such as the A. L. A. advocates, and the dead-and-alive collection of books, still altogether too common. Consider the contrast between the possible pnblic library and the pnblic library that is. If the canses for that contrast lie at yonr door, face them frankly and bravely and strive to remove them. Do not forget the Library Department of the Na- tional Edncational Association, recently established. It gives yon excnse, and it gives yon canse to take an interest, more active even than heretofore, in the introduction of books and library methods into school work, and to concern yonrselves more than ever before with the general reading of teachers and their pnpils. Impress npon teachers the valne to them of yonr library. Persnade them, if yon can, that to do their best work they mnst know well and nse freely the good books. See that yonr local book and news men are heart- ily witli yon in the work of spreading knowledge of the right nse of books and in enconraging ownership of books in yonr commnnity. If yon come in contact with the bookseller and the pnblisher of the great cities, do what yon can to persnade them that to join in the work of this association of librarians is not only to benefit the commnnity at large, bnt to help their own particnlar bnsiness as well. Be not slow in giving hearty recognition to those who have, in the beginnings of library science, taken the first place and borne the bnrdens and made an easy way for ns who follow. If, perhaps against some odds, a lil>rarian, man or woman, is making an eminent snccess of some great city library, may yo\i 11 LIBRARIES not properly send him, once and again, a word which shall signify that you, at least, are alive to the fact of his good work and are yourself encouraged and inspired thereby? Like words of approval you may well extend to the good men, outside the profession proper, who have given their time and energy, a labor of love, to improve certain features of library work. Interest in your work in your own community 3^our local book-lovers and book-collectors and book- worms and private students and plodders and burn- ers of the midnight oil. Get in touch with the teach- ers of literature in the colleges and schools of your neighborhood. Expound to such, and to the general reader as well, Avhenever jo\i properly can, the diffi- culties and the possibilities of your calling, your con- quests in classification and cataloging, and your advances in bibliographj^ and indexing, and the pro- gress in recent years of general library economy. Remember that all these things can be even better done in a small community, in the village library of a few hundred volumes, than in the large librarj^ of the great city. Note the women's clubs, art associations, his- torical societies, scientific societies. Do not forget the private schools. In the small town you can gain without difficulty the good-will of the local news- paper. You can often assist the editor in his work, and lead him to help you in return. 'The clergymen in your town certainly care somewhat for the reading of their young people, and will cooperate with you in any intelligent effort to increase it and improve it. The Sunday-school libraries of your neighborhood are open to your suggestions, if you approach them prop- erly. And the Y. M. C. and the Y. W. C. associations will gladly take from you advice and assistance in 12 HEAR THE OTHER SIDE the mauagement of their reading-rooms aud their libraries. None are so poor that they cannot give to others ; and few libraries are so small that they cannot spare books and magazines enough to make a little library which may be sent out into a still smaller community and there do good service. Do the business men and the business women, the active people, those who feed us and clothe us and transport us, those who have brought about in the last few decades the great increase in creature comforts for every one, do these business people take an active interest in your library? Do they care for you or for your opinion? If not, is it their fault? Is it that they are gross and dull and material and worldly; or is it that you, the wise librarian, know not yet how to bring your educational forces to bear on the life that now is? Our work is but begun so long as we are not in close touch with the man of affairs. Remember that as you in your town, or in your city, widen the sphere of your influence, grow to be a person of worth and dignity in the community, you thereby add so much to the dignity and to the effec- tiveness of the whole profession. If in a city or town near you there is a library which, in its general ar- rangement is not what it should be, which is but a dusty pile of printed pages or but a roosting-place for a flock of cheap novels, yours is in part the fault, and you are largely the loser. When a dweller in that town, one unacquainted with library affairs — and most are such — hears you alluded to as a "li- brarian," he thinks of you as a person akin to the bibliothecal pagan who fails to manage the library of his own town, the only library he knows by which he can measure your work. He is a "librarian"; 13 LIBRARIES you are a "librarian."' We wear the livery of our co-Avorkers as well as our own. Keep these thoughts in mind and you will see how essential it is, would our profession reach the standing- we Avish it to reach, Avould we make it every- where an honor to wear our name, that every smallest library be an effective educational machine, and that every humblest librarian be an active, enthusiastic, intelligent worker. See that your library is interesting to the people of the community, the people who own it, the people who maintain it. Deny your people Jiothing which the book-shop grants them. :Make your library at least as attractive as the most attractive retail store in the community. Open your eyes to the cheapness of books at the present day, and to the unimportance, even to the small library, of the loss of an occasional volume; and open them also to the necessity of getting your constituency in actual contact Avith the books themselves. Remember always that taxation is compulsion, that taxation is government; that government, among present-day human creatures, is politics; that the end of an institution may not justify its means; that a free public library may be other than a helpful thing. See to it, therefore, the more carefully that your own public library at least is rationally administered, and promotes public helpfulness. 14 THE PUBLIC AND ITS PUBLIC LIBRARY Popular Science Monthly, June, 1S07 The opponents of the system of free, tax-supported public schools never have been answered. That they are wrong- in their position is not proved, as so many seem to think, by a simple reference to the great growth and seeming success of the free public-school system and* its attendant free public library system in this country. An institution may thrive, may ap- parently fulfill the purpose for which it was designed, and may at the same time be working great harm to the people who have adopted it and maintain it and trust in it — a harm which nmy become apparent only after a long series of years, and apparent at first, even then, only to the most careful observer. It is a familiar fact that a great change in governmental policy may not produce its full effect for many decades. We are still in the dark as to what will be the final outcome, and especially the final effect on character, of the free public educational system. The individualist opponent of that system says that the individual is the important thing. He con- tends that the individual is happiest when he has the maximum of freedom ; that he best develops when he most fully reaps the rewards of his own exertions and his own self-denials, and most fully receives the punishment of his own indolence and his own prodi- gality — of his own failure to adjust himself to men and things about him. The mass, he says, may restrain the individual wlio would make an attack on others; it may refuse to affiliate with tlie individual who does not do those things which it thinks he should do. For the mass to do more than this, he 15 LIBRARIES says, is so to restrict individual activity and to pre- vent the play of natural forces as to make impossible the development of the only kind of individuals that can form the ideal society. This is stating it crudely. It at least suggests, however, that the advocate of liberty has on his side some of the arguments gained from the study of biology and of history. The former seems to tell us that the fittest have survived in open fight— that only by this open fight do those more fit appeal- ; the latter seems to tell us that the better government governs the least; that the only wise thing the ruler, whether king or majority, can do for the social organism is to let it alone. If it is of doubtful expediency, then, for the sov- ereign majority to take from the individual by force the means wherewith to maintain a library for the pleasure and edification of all, it is the part of wis- dom to see that that library is made, as far as may be, the sure antidote to the possible bane of its origin. It must teach freedom, by its contents and by its administration. It must cultivate the individual. It must add to the joy of life. Always it must truly educate. It is in the light of the preceding, perhaps rather doctrinaire, remarks that the following notes have been written and should be read. The public owns its public library. Tliis fact sheds much light on the question of public library management. It means that the public library must be fitted to public needs. It must suit its com- munity. It must do the maximum of work at the minimum of expense. It must be an economical edu- cational machine. It must give pleasure, for only where pleasure is is any profit taken. It must change 16 THE rUBLlC AND ITS LlIiRARY ill its manner of administration with tlie new time, with the new relations of books to men and of men to books. It need not altogether forget the book- worm or the belated liistorian, and it can take note here and there of the lover of the dodos and the freaks among printed things. Bnt its prime purpose is to place the rigiit books in the proper hands, to get more joyful and wise thoughts into the minds of its owners. The means of its sn])port are taken b}- force from the pockets of the competent and provident; this fact should never be lost sight of. It lives in a measure by the sword. It can justify itself in this manner of securing its support only by putting into practice the familiar theory that the state, would it insure its own continuance, must see that all its citizens have access to the stores, in books, of knowledge and wisdom. It must be open to its public ; it must invite its public ; it must attract its public ; it must please its public — all to the end that it may educate its public. The old-time library was simply a storehouse of treasures. There were few to read books ; there were few books to be read, and those few were procured at great cost of lalior and time. They could be replaced when lost or stolen only with great diffi- culty, if at all, and they were guarded with exceeding care. With the cheajiening of book-producing pro- cesses the reasons for this extreme safe-guarding of books disappeared. Its spirit, hoAvever, is still active. Several causes have combined to keep it alive. Even to this day there are a few books, relatively very few, which are of great value and can be replaced only with extreme difficulty or at great expense. There are also books — first editions, fine bindings, last surviving copies, and early specimens of printing — which are rightly much prized by the artist, the 17 LIBRARIES antiquarian, the curio hunter, or the historian of handicraft. These are all most properly- regarded as treasures, and are kept under lock and key. But the fact that there are a few books which should be care- fully preserved from loss or injury is not sufficient cause for keeping uf> in these days a barrier between the public and its library. Set aside these greatly valued books and the few Avorks highl}^ prized for cer- tain special reasons which the average library con- tains, and there is left the great body of modern books, not expensive, easilj' replaced, and of far more importance to ninety-nine in a hundred of any public library's constituents than all the book curios the world contains. In sii\j save the very richest and largest libraries in this country the books which can- not be duplicated at a reasonable cost have no proper place. It is with the modern, inexpensive works that the public library chiefly coaicerns itself. Its art publications and its rarities of every kind can easily be disposed of in safety vaults or private rooms. Its more valuable works of reference can be guarded from any probable mutilation by a little special service. Its main collection, 60 to 80 per cent of the average library, is what the public wishes to use. These form any librar^^'s real tools in its avowed purpose of aiding in the education of the community in which it is placed. The readers of books, moreover, are no longer few but many, and have greatly changed their manner of looking at books and the guardianship of them in the past hundred years. The tax-paying citizen to-day has his own daily or weekly paper, if nothing more, and knows well that a printed page is no longer a sacred or an expensive thing. He walks up to the shelves of the bookstore or to the counter of the news- 18 THE PUBLIC AND ITS LIBRARY stand and selects his own reading, under his own rules, in accordance with his own opinion of his needs, and after an actual inspection of what the shelves can afford him. He has learned, or is fast learning, that public library treasures are in the main treas- ures no longer; that the only rational selection of reading is one made after the examination of many books ; and he is beginning to demand that he be per- mitted to come in immediate contact with the volumes he is invited to read. The public library, whether it be a library which the people are taxed to maintain or a library which belongs to them by gift, must, so the demand goes, be managed with as much consid- eration for its patrons and with as much appearance of faith in their honesty as the ready-made-clothing house or the bookstore. This demand is seconded by the new view^ of the functions of a public library; it is, in fact, a i^art of this new view. The library is no longer looked upon as a storehouse of learning, to be used by the few already learned; it is thought of as a factor in the growth of the community in wisdom, in social ef&ciency, and a factor therein second only to the public schools, if second even to them. It is accordingly widening its business of book distrib- uting by the addition of the powers possible to it as a laboratory of general learning. Of books it is as true as of the materials of chemistry, botany, or biology — and even the non-literary, wayfaring man begins to see this — that only by working among them and with them can one get out of them their real worth. The public to-day, in a word, sees the impor- tance, the absolute necessity, in fact, of the laboratory method in that study of books which underlies, or at least accompanies, the study of all other things. In its attractiveness to the "would-be student, not 19 LIBRARIES to mention the desultory reader, the library whose resources are open for examination and selection is far superior to the one which keeps its patrons on the outside of the delivery desk. The book buyer finds delight in a personal inspection of the volumes he would select from. It is by the unrestrained broAVsing through a score of inviting volumes that the student, whether beginner or expert, finds at last the one which meets his case. To all who are drawn, whether in ignorant questioning or in enlightened zeal, to visit a collection of books, the touch of the books themselves, the joy of their immediate presence, is an inspiring thing. Those who have had experi- ence of both methods testify that the oj)en library gives more pleasure, encourages reading of a higher grade, and attracts more readers than the library which is closed to the public. The cheapness of books; the growth of the public's feeling of ownership in its library, and of the pro- priety of laying hands on its own; a recognition of the great educational value of the laboratory method in library administration; and the widening of its field of work which a library gains by the added attraction of free access to its shelves — these con- siderations, save in certain peculiar cases, seem to decide the question of the proper policy of the public library toward its public. That more communities do not now demand the adoption of the system of open shelves in their public libraries is due largely to the conservatism of library boards, and to an unrea- soning submission to authority on the part of the reading i)ublic. Even the enlightened are slow to ask for a right before they have exercised it and experienced its advantages. These statements of i)roper library methods will 20 THE PUBLIC AND ITS LIBRARY seem to the reader who is uot familiar with public library methods as the}^ are, simple, commonplace, and self-evident. He may well wonder why one takes the trouble to repeat them in print. By way of justi- fication it should be said that the manner of conduct- ing a public library now in .iilmost universal use in this country is this: Between the books and the would-be users of them is placed an insurmountable physical barrier. At this barrier stand librarian and attendants. The reader or student floundeirs about in a list of the library's books until he arrives at a guess — it is often not more than a guess — at the titles of the books he wishes. A list of these books he hands over the barrier to the attendant, and of them the attendants brings him the first one that happens to be in. Perhaps he wishes to make a study of some subject. Generally, in such a case, he must make out a list from a brief catalogue of the books which he thinks may help him, and of the titles of articles which he surmises Avill be useful in files of periodicals or proceedings. This list, handed to the attendant, brings him some of the things called for. Half of them are probably not what he expected, and he must try again. Always between him and the sources of information the personality of librarian or attendant obtrudes itself. His wants must trickle over a library counter, and then must filter through the mind of a custodian who is perhaps not very in- telligent and is probably not very sympatlietic, before they can be satisfied by contact with the books them- selves. In a good many libraries a few reference books are placed where any one can reacli them. But this is in most cases the limit of the concession made to the demand for immediate contact with the li- brary's resources. The new library in Boston has 21 LIBRARIES stored the most of its popular books, tlie books which the majority of its patrons most call for, in a dark warehouse, lighted only by artiticial light, and reached, as far as the borrower is concerned, only by mechanical contrivances which compel a wait of sev- eral minutes for every book called for. The borrower cannot see the books; he cannot even see the person who does see them. He must depend on lists, tele- phones, pneumatic tubes, and traveling baskets — and this in the most expensive and most extensive and most famous library in the United States to-day. What, now, the open-shelf method of administra- tion being decided upon, should be the character of the building in which the public library is housed? The storehouse idea must be discarded at once. What is wanted is a workshop, a place for readers and students, not a safety-deposit building. The men and women who visit the library and use it — their con- venience and comfort must be first consulted ; how the books are to be stored is another and a secondary question. Nor can the monumental idea be for a moment maintained. The library, if it is to be a mod- ern, effective, working institution, cannot forego the demands of its daily tenants for light, room, and air, and submit to the limitations set by calls for archi- tectural effects, for imposing halls, charming vistas, and opportunities for decoration. The workshop, the factory, the office building, the modern business struc- ture of almost any kind, these, rather than the palace, the temple, the cathedral, the memorial hall, or the mortuary pile, however grand, supply the examples in general accordance with which the modern book laboratory should be constructed. It is a place, is this book laboratory, in which each day hundreds and thousands of visitors must, for ten minutes or as 22 THE PUBLIC AND ITS LIBRARY many hours, use their eyes in reading type of all degrees of excellence and badness. First, then, every sacrifice must be made to secure all possible daylight in every corner. It is a place, again, in which many of the daily visitors will wish to go, at the same time, to the same shelves, the same cases, the same alcoves, to the same rooms, and the same desks and tables. Space — well-lighted, well-ventilated floor space — then, should be given to the public with the utmost prodi- gality. There is no room left, unless economy in con- struction and administration be entirely disregarded, for architectural display, except as it is the natural outcome of plans based primarily on utility. The power of a library lies first in its books. Up to a certain variable limit, varying with their char- acter and with the time and the place, quantity of books is of first importance. As the library sup- ported by compulsory taxation is justified only as it serves to make the ignorant citizen wise and the wise citizen wiser still, its first care should be for its sup- ply of tools — its implements for cultivating wisdom — its books. The library building, as of the second and not of the first importance, should therefore be eco- nomical in its construction. It need not be, it should not be, penurious in its appearance. To a limited extent it may speak to the passer-by of the generosity of the community, of the respect in which its builders hold the business of education. But if solid and plain and manifestly adapted to the purpose for which it is designed, it cannot well escape the attributes of dignity, and, to the reasoning observer, of beauty. The magnificent pile, to which architect and trustee can point the casual passer-by with pride, which may aAve the taxpayer into forgetfulness of the contrac- tor's bills, this has no excuse. It comes, and it prom- 23 LIBRARIES ises to come often ; but it is permitted by the populace in momentary forget fulness of the public library's excuse and function, not in reasoned belief in the utility of bibliothecal palaces. The free public library building, large or small — and of the college, university, or reference library the same may be said — so constructed as to serve thor- oughly well the purposes for which it is intended, exists in theory only. It may be possible to find in this country a few small libraries in which an honest attempt has been made, with moderate success, to grapple witli the library building problem. In the vast majority of cases such light as experience in library administration is able to throw on the ques- tion of the proper internal arrangement of a library building — the proper distribution of expenditure in securing room, light, ventilation, and workableness — has been sini])ly ignored. Arguments drawn from utility, from comfort of readers and borrowers, and from economy of administration, have been set aside. Full rein often, the loose rein always, has been given to trustees* and architects' desires for architectural effect. This is the more strange because certain prin- ciples of library construction are well understood and are no longer matters for debate. Convenient, economical, effective administration of a library calls for greater ease of access and facil- ity of communication in tlie building used than does any other ffu-ni of l)usiness, be it industrial, commer- cial, official, administrative, or religious. And this need for ease and speed in intercommunication in- creases ratlier tlian diminislies witli the increase in tlie size of tlie library, and in the number of its ]>atr<»ns. lllnslrntions of liow tbis general i)rincii)le of library constrnction bas b(M^n ignored may be easily 24 THE PUBLIC AND ITS LIBRARY found. To note the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Boston Public Library is here sufficient. Compare tlie accommodation possible for the busy and impatient patron — and the busy and impatient patron is one of the patrons the modern library should especially strive to serve — in these ill-adapted structures with that possible, with a few quite minor changes, in the modern tall office building, and the point is made clear at once. The whole monumental style of library architecture is almost of necessity the greatest of handicaps to library administration. It may be said, of course, that it is sometimes advisable to erect first a noble monument, then to make out of it as good a library as its monumental cliaracter permits. Granted. But it should be thoroughly un- derstood, when such a buirding is up for considera- tion, that it is a monument, not a library. When our architects have fully seized the modern situation in its demands and its materials; when the spirit which put up the lying exteriors of the Chicago World's Fair buildings, and thereby delayed our architectural emancipation by many a long day, has begun to die out, it may be possible to erect a tlioroughly useful and entirely workable building wliicli shall be in every part a library and also an artistic monument. The point in the free public library to which the public comes in the largest numbers is the delivery desk. The public side of tliis desk should be a room easy of access from the street, with cloak and toilet rooms near its entrance; well lighted, that catalogues and lists may be easily consulted, and that the work of the assistants may be done in the main without artificial light; large enough to accommodate com- fortably the greatest crowd the library expects ever to attract; and so closed in that the talk and move- 25 LIBRARIES ment wliicli necessarily accompauy intercourse be- tween visitors and the library staff will not disturb workers or readers in other parts of the library. A corner of this room, easy of access from the desk, should be devoted to the information desk, at which the stranger or the student Avill get prompt and cour- teous and full replies to all questions in regard to the library's methods and resources, and suggestions in regard to books or departments to be consulted on an}' specific topic. Near this information desk should be the desk at which borrowers' or members' cards, permits, etc., are issued. In the delivery room, or in a room opening from it, should be the catalogue resources of the library. The desk should be so con- structed as to serve as an aid in the transaction of business — as a means of communication, not as a barrier — betAveen the assistants and the public. Near to it and easy of access should be the books of the lending department; nearest to it, those most used. If for good reason it is found necessary to forbid the public access to any part of the lending department, it may prove advisable to place such part at some distance from the delivery counter, and to move the books to and fro by means of lifts, belts, or like devices. But any plan by Avhich the attendant, to whom a request for certain books is made, is pre- vented from easy access to them, stands in the way of the library's educational Avork, especially AA'here the would-be borrower is himself denied the oppor- tunity to see for himself, in any department, the books he would select from. If a book asked for is not in, another of equal or greater A'alue on the same subject may be in. The borrower, denied access to the shelves, should at least have, if he Avishes it, the benefit of the attendant's knoAvledge of this fact. A ' 2G THE PUBLIC AND ITS LIBRARY delivery service made up largely of mechanical con- trivances may easily put into the hands of the public several thousand books in a day. It may serve a good purpose in so doing. It may find its proper field in performing part of the book-lending work in any large library. But it certainly cannot compete, from an educational point of view, with a service in which the attendant puts himself for the moment in the inquirer's place, and himself goes to the shelves with an intelligent interest in the inquirer's wants. Near the desk should be the catalogue room; and the private official catalogue of the library should be open to the public, if possible. Such an arrangement saves much costly duplication. It is also desirable to have the information about the library's books which is stored up in the catalogue room made available for the public at short notice. Near the deliver3^ room and not far from the main book room should be a special room for children, in which may be kept all juvenile literature, so arranged tliat the children may make their own choice from the shelves. This will prove a strong attraction to the young people, will increase their use of books of the better class, will free other parts of the library from the disturbance children necessarily entail, and will save time and labor at the delivery counter. The room for reference w^ork, if the whole library is not thrown open for this purpose, must be not far from the main book room, must be near the catalogue, and should be near the delivery counter. It should be so planned that those who come to the library simply for a book, or to ask a question, or on sight- seeing, will not be compelled to pass through it. The retiring rooms and lunch rooms for assistants, the conversation or class rooms for special work, the 27 LIBRARIES rooms for roni^li work — as meuding or binding and the manual part of tlie preparation of books for the shelf — the periodical room, and the newspaper room can all be placed at a distance from the library's real center, the delivery counter ; though the last two must be near enough to the reference room to make it easy for readers in the hitter to consult the current numbers of magazines and journals. The office of the librarian in charge should be near to the delivery room, and preferably not far from either catalogue or reference room. The books in the pul)lic library sliould be selected with reference to tlie people who will use them. The people who make use of the free public library are, 60 per cent or more of them, readers of little but the newspapers, the popular nmgazine, and novels. The reading room should supply, and generously, the newspaper and the periodical. The circulating de- partment should put much thought and much energy into fiction. The fiction shelves, perhaps above all others, should be open to the public. If they are tlms open, the question of how low in the scale of literature the library must descend in its selection of novels to attract as many readers as its income will permit it to supply will almost solve itself. Liberty to go to a collection of novels, embracing the best works of the best writers of all countries and all ages, will be attraction enough. It will not be necessary to put on the shelves books of the Bouthworth, the Roe, and the Mary J. Holmes school to draw to the library the ignorant and inexperienced. Such readers are wedded to their literary idols, not because they find them best, but because they know no others. They will not often take the evidence of expert or of catalogue 2S THE PUBLIC AND ITS LIBRAEY that there are other j^ood novels than those of which they have heard from fellow-readers. But the book itself of the unknown writer, placed in easy reach, with attractive title, cover, and illustrations, will prove irresistible. Liberty to see, touch, peep into, and taste the new and heretofore untried will set the known and the unknown on the same plane in the mind of the inexperienced; and the unknown, if the better book and if selected Avith an eye to the library's constituency, will gain the day. The hori- zon of the inexperienced reader will, in such a library, soon widen. The devotee of mush and slush will, under her own guidance, following her own sweet will, almost unconsciously rise to a higher plane. She will be proud to think that she has found possi- bilities of pleasure in good authors whom she herself has had the wit to discover. The fiction list then will not be long and will be select. Two thousand titles, many times duplicated, will cover the field. With the shelves open, witli full liberty of choice given, the obliging attendant will be all the more appreciated. He will obtrude no opinions and no advice, but will be ready and able to give both, if asked, or if opportunity offers. He will be supple- mented with catalogues. And just as the library will make its fiction department — the department in which it will first reach, by which perhaps it can alone reach, from 60 to 80 per cent of its visitors— the most attractive and most carefully administered of all, so will it for this department best equip itself with aids and guides. It will have here catalogues of the most varied kinds — special lists, descriptive lists, like those of Griswold ; historical lists, like that of the Boston Public Library; annotated lists, like 29 LIBRARIES that of the San Francisco Public Library; critical journals; and books and essays on the novel, its de- velopment and uses. In addition to all these things, it will tell the inquirer in which novels he can find set forth great historical characters and the promi- nent personages of fiction; in which he will find descriptions of notable scenes and historical events; in which are found rare psychological analyses, strik- ing descriptions that have become part of the every- day life of the cultivated; and discussions of social, political, and religious questions; and which novels will best tell him of life in this city, in that country, on the sea. In a word, the public's free public library will recognize at last the public's demand for the novel; will not attempt to excuse it, to hide it, to make light of it, or to counteract it; but will make use of it as an educational force in itself, and as a point of departure to more serious things. The novel reader is not a hopeless case. If he be a con- firmed novel reader and nothing more, he has at least the reading habit, and in his youth can in most eases be led from that habit to question and to think. The reference room of the free public library is in some sort already here. Not a few libraries recog- nize the reasonableness of a demand on the public's part for access to dictionaries, encyclopedias, at- lases, gazetteers, and the like. Under the modern view the whole library becomes, of course, a great reference room. Rut the reference department proper, even in the modern public library, should contain ample accommodations in the way of desks, tables, writing materials, etc., for the casual inquirer or the student. In other departments the wants of the reader, the 30 THE PUBLIC AND ITS LIBRARY beginner in learning, should be first supplied, books for the specialist being added as rapidly and to as great an extent as actual demand makes advisable and funds in hand make possible. No money should be expended on mere literary curios or on historical knickknacks. The historical society and the anti- quary can look after these things, and should not have the public purse for their competitor. In accordance with the generar spirit of the open- shelf method of administration, great liberality should be shown in the issuing of library cards. To the library itself for purposes of reference every one who applies will, of course, be admitted, so he be clean and reputable in appearance. To become an accredited borrower of books from the library one should be asked to do no more than sign some simple form of agreement. This, in addition to the infor- mation which can be obtained from a few questions put by librarian or assistants, with perhaps a refer- ence to the city directory, has proved to be enough in actual practice to x>revent the issuing of cards to people who wish them simply to make way with the library's books. In spite of this fact, the custom still holds in most libraries of demanding not only the signature of the person who wishes to become a borrower to an elaborate contract — this signature to be written at the library itself — but also the signa- ture of some accredited citizen who agrees to become responsible for the borrower himself. This is en- tirely unnecessary. The additional clerical work involved in the keeping of the two sets of names of borrowers and guarantors of borrowers, together with the labor necessitated by looking them up in directories and elsewhere, will cost more, save in 31 LIBRARIES very exceptional cases, than will the books whicli may be lost through the adoption of extreme liberal- ity in the issuing of borrowers' cards. The people's money in this part of its library's administration, as in every other, should be spent rather in extending and making more easily accessible to the average citizen the library's resources than in setting barriers of red tape between the books and the people who own them and wish to use them. 32 THE FAILUKE OF BOOK REVIEWING Springfield, Mass., Rcpuhlicun, May 23, WOO It is part of a librariau's business to know some- thing about new books, to know enough about them to enable him to decide wisely which of them to buy for a public library. Of course, in very many cases some one whose judgment he can rely on, better posted in a special line than any librarian can pos- sibly be in all lines, decides for him. This is espe- cially true of technical works. J^ut there are still left many books on which he must form an oi)inion from reviews in the literary journals., 'And so the librarian reads a good many reviews. Most librarians probably do not get much beyond the reviews, with perhaps a look at the title pages of the books in question, if he sees them at all, and sometimes with a luxurious dip into the table of contents. In reading reviews — I am speaking now of reviews of "literary" books, not of scientific or technical works — many librarians are impressed, I am sure, with the small amount of really helpful knowledge to be got from most of them. Bj helpful knowledge I mean here such information about a book as the librarian needs to make a wise decision on the question of its pur- chase. From the formal entry in the trade journal he can learn, of course, of the title, the author, the publisher, the price, the size in inches, the number of pages, if bound or not, and perhaps the number of maps and illustrations. But this is only the skele- ton. Rather it is simply the skin of the book, which the publisher offers duly stretched into the semblance of a thing of value. It may be stuffed with straw, or padded out with sawdust, or possibly it covers the 33 3 LIBRARIES living bone, sinew and muscle of u book that is a book. To find out what may be within the fair exteriors of the latest thing out — this is where the difficulty lies. And here is where the literary jour- nals affect to serve us — and commonly do not. They do not even set forth all the facts as to the l)ook's physique, its bodily condition. They uniformly withhold information as to the paper on which it is printed, whether it is cheap wood pulp which will not stand three weeks' honest wear, or heavilj' coated with clay, and therefore helpless against even the quiet turning of its leaves, or made on lionor and planned for a decent lifetime of usefulness. They do not tell us if it is bound in a thorough, workman- like way, or is thrown together with just enough of muslin and glue to keep it in shape until it is sold. The type, the ink, the index, the margins, the page illustrations — generally ready to fall out before the book has been once read — these things they say noth- ing about. And to the library they are very impor- tant, and especially so to the expense side of its accounts in new copies, repairs and binding. All these matters, to be sure, the librarian can judge of himself, with some slight degree of accuracy, if he can handle the book before lie buys it, which often he cannot. I>ut to be able to learn them from the reviews, where common sense would say they should be set fortli, would be a very helpful thing. The book's ])liysique, however, is, after all, not as important as its character. And in telling us of this the literary journals fail to live u]) to that which they profess. Every lu/w book they mention is excel- lent. If one reads with credulous mind the things said by most reviewers about most books one would feel that an Augustan age of letters comes round again with every rising sun. To test this statement 34 FAILURE OF BOOK REVIEWING a little I have goue over all tlie longer notices of books in fonr literary journals for tAVo months. The journals examined were the Bookbuyer, the Book- man, the Critic and the Nation. The first two are publishers' organs, and i^erhaps it would be asking too much that they should do anything but praise their own books and for the sake of peace refrain from condemnation of those of rival publishers. But if this is their policy they should not cultivate quite so sedulously the air of fairness and breadth. And of the purely literary journals like the Critic, which must support itself largely by the advertising in one column of the books it professes to criticise with unbiased mind in the next, it is perhaps seeking grapes of thorns to expect unterritied censure. But the three are in large measure typical, in this country at least, of the journals to which the book-buyer must turn for information on the latest books. The Na- tion, as the returns of my brief examination indi- cate, is almost in another class, and helps to relieve American book reviewing of the full measure of condemnation. In the four journals considered there were, in the two months' issues which were examined, 243 reviews. In the Critic 75, with about 470 words in each ; in the Bookman 54, with 570 words in each ; in the Bookbuyer 60, with 500 words in each ; and in the Nation 54, with 1,020 words in each. These 54 reviews in the Nation do not include a large num- ber of shorter notes, such as would be ranked as reviews proper in the other three journals, each con- taining 100 to 300 words. The greater length of the Nation's reviews is not due to simple prolixity. They are in general stronger as well as longer than the others. Of these reviews those dealing with fiction were in the Critic 28 per cent, in the Bookman 35 LIBKARIES 50 per cent, in the Bookbuyer 37 per cent, and in tlie ^S'ation none. Had my examination happened to cover one of the months in which the Nation's novel reader does up with a vigorous hand a batch of recent fiction, these fioures would have been different. But it would still have been true that in that journal an unusually small amount of space is given to novels. Dividing these 243 criticisms of recent books into four classes, those which very warmly praise; those which moder- ately praise, but very lightly, if at all, condemn; those which take the aggravating middle ground, blowing neither hot nor cold, simply prattling; and those which frankly condemn, we get these results : Total High Journal reviews praise Critic 75 40 Bookbuyer 60 31 Bookman 54 39 Nation 54 31 All, it will be seen, with the exception of the Nation, lack the courage of condemnation. And of the 189 works examined by the three first named, 154 are found excellent and only nine are actually disap- proved of. This table tells the story of American literary criticism. It is a chorus of praise. Of course it may be said that literary journals do not deign to notice books that they feel they cannot rightly praise. But they review the popular literature of the day, the books that are talked about, offered for sale every- where and read by intelligent people; and to suppose that all these are worthy of a tithe of the praise they get from professional reviewers is simply absurd. 36 Some praise 15 Saying nothing 17 Con- demn 3 20 4 o 9 5 1 8 1 14 FAILURE OF BOOK EEVIEWING Book reviews are writteu to please authors — and publishers. It is a pity, but it's true. Occasionally a journal fails to catch the drift of things and con- demns the wrong book. The Bookman's one con- demnation in its ocean of praise was directed against "David Harum," Later the editor wrote a very flat- tering estimate of the book in another journal, when the tide had turned strongly in its favor. A good book review — I am not speaking here of "criticism"' in the broader sense of the word — should tell the busy book buyer and the busy reader who wants to know about the books he cannot read or even see, these things : What the book is about; with what authority the author speaks; what part of his field he covers; with what degree of definiteness he covers it; the relation his work bears to others in the same or cognate fields ; if it is well arranged; if it is a book for the student and specialist or for the general reader. By a man who knows his subject, these things can be told in a few words. They are told in the columns of the Nation and a few other journals not infrequently.. Generally the reviewers do not set them forth, and sad experience leads the reader to feel that the study of book revicAvs simply leads him astray. They generally darken counsel. An illustration of how books ought to be reviewed — ought to be, that is, if the reviews are to be help- ful guides in book-buying — is found in the admir- able "List of books for girls and women and their clubs," compiled by George lies. The work was largely done by experts. They felt they were un- trammeled by an advertising agent, and they spoke their minds. It is a pity there is not more such work available. 37 A LIBKARIAN'S ENTHUSIASM Bulletin of the Neic Hampshire Library Commission, March, 1901 I have known many librarians and library assist- ants, old and yonng, and every one of them has testified, directly or indirectly, to keen delight in his work. Few leave the profession and they always with regrets. The work is not easy and the pay is not large. Our calling would seem to have strong attractions for people of a certain type — and so it has. Of the many which may be mentioned I wish to speak here of two only : the opportunities it offers for the promo- tion of happiness, and its wide variety of interests. Attractive careers in the field of altruism are not open to every one. The world's work must be done. That it may be done well, those most competent must do it. That the most competent may do it, they must compete with the less competent, and must win the day. Here, then, are war, victory, defeat, and the spoils of conquest. Nature, red in tooth and claw, comes perforce into every factory and every market, and comes to stay. Sympathy softens the aspect of this strife and tempers the sufferings of the defeated. But the strife goes on ; and neither legislative enact- ment nor public opinion, even though born of gener- ous sentiments, can stop it; and if they are carried beyond a certain point, they but forbid the supremacy of the most competent and work us harm. Business must be done; most must engage in business; there- fore, most must do battle day by day. But, if libraries are good things, and it is impos- sible now to question this; and if free, tax-supported 39 LIBRARIES libraries are good tilings, and to-day it is not easy to question this ; then we have in the librarian's calling a lield in which competition is simply a joyful one over efficiency in good works. It is not — and this cannot be said too often — a question of making others good. They who are much given to improving the low morals of others are already Pharisees. The whole question of librarianship is one of joy, of pleas- ure, of fullness of life, of happiness. If the librarian of the country village, for example, can see that her little collection of books, under her clever rule, subtly fitted to its owners, wisely meeting the needs its own active presence arouses, makes this one and that one, old and young, here and there, see more things, know of more things, care for more things, take the broader view, loose the bond of bigotry, open the eyes of charity, teach "of course" to wait upon "perhaps," change self-satisfaction to ambition, and add sparkle to the daily grind — then, is she not a friend of society and of some good in the world? This mere mention of the character of the librarian's career, shows it at once to be helpfully unselfish in its essence, as few careers in the world's field of work can be. It calls attention, also, to the second of the two attractive features in the librarian's calling which I wish here to emphasize : the variety of its interests. All knowledge is the librarian's prov- ince. None can explore this domain thoroughly, but any one can realize, if only vaguely, its immensity, can look upon it reverently and can venture, with timorous delight, into a corner here and there. Some one should write us an essay, or perhaps a poem, on "Our Pleasure in the Books We Cannot Read!" What joy there is, as we walk among the shelves, in the contemplation of the knowledge and wisdom that 40 A LIBRARIAN'S ENTHUSIASM we know lie liere, aud there! Some day we shall have the "Ballad of Him who Joyed to Know that Others Knew." And the work to be done! First, in the library itself; no matter how small it may be, the librarian gets pleasnre in applying to its management every latest method of arrangement, classification, cata- loguing, shelving, delivery, access, that she finds by careful study applies to her peculiar case. It soon takes on for her the air of a home. She says of it : That which my jjeople enjoy when they visit my home fireside, that they shall find and enjoy here. Light, fresh air, adornment, neatness, refinement, hospital- ity, cheer — in all these things my library shall rival the most attractive home in the town which owns it. This is not an office, or a store, or a factory; it is the chosen home of the good and wise men who wrote these books; it is constituted and maintained to help my fellow villagers to find life easier and brighter and more worth the living; it shall speak at once to every comer of all these things. This is home-making and library management — two of the best and most delightful of occupations, both in one. Looking abroad, she sees the editor, the preacher, the teacher, and the scholar, and says at once : These are all on my side and must work with me. Their work is not mine, but mine is surely a part of theirs. She finds they meet her halfway, and more. Her books have allies in their work. They become mobile and move through the community on the wings of a few words spoken shrewdly here and there by these their friends. The pulpit speaks and the press and the teacher, and clubs and Sunday schools and sociables; and every chance gathering of friends takes up the words, 41 LIBRARIES and the treasures on her shelves come forth and move about among the people, and their mission is accomplished, and the library has wellwishers, and advocates and promoters and benefactors. And the children come, to the very youngest; for no one has discovered that good books hurt children, and children who hurt books are few and easily cured. Thus, with all knowledge for her province, with old and young of every kind and of every trade and calling in her community for her field of work, and the promotion of human happiness for her aim, the librarian takes up her daily task each morning with enthusiasm and lays it down each night with regret. 42 WHAT WE READ Printed, in Part, in World's M'orl^, March, 1902 What is it that the people read? First, of course, the newspapers. There are published in a twelve- month in this country about 4,500 different books. The total number of volumes issued in a year is perhaps 10,0(10,000. Add to these the several million volumes, the output of previous years, found in libraries, and we have a brave show of possibility of book reading. But it is very largely a possibility. A few hundred thousand people read novels, a less number read other books. A fe^\ use books in their profession, more simply think they are going to read books and rarely do. Books in these days are for pleasure, for profit and for pride of possession. But newspapers are read. Newspapers have readers — or die. They often create a demand, but unless the readers continue the demand the supply must cease. No newspaper is read from end to end by any one of its readers. But all of every issue of every news- paper, take them by and large, is read by many people. Again demand and supply give us our proof. The paper prints two kinds of things, two kinds from its own point of view — the news and views the people wish to read, and the announcements which advertisers wish to have printed. The first kind of print is read, or it would not appear; the second kind is read or the advertiser would find his money wasted and would advertise no more. All of all newspapers, this is the people's reading. And in considering the gross amount of reading of news- papers going on among us to-day it is not enough to count simply the nmnber of copies of all papers pub- 43 LIBRARIES lislied; the number of persons who read each copy must be taken into consideration. Nothing bnt a guess is possible. Mine is one and a half readers for every copy. This seems modest. It would be difficult to prove that it is an overestimate. From the total population deduct children under fourteen, illiterates and a few other small non- reading classes, and there remain about 40,000,000 adults who could read periodicals if they would. About four billion separate copies of periodicals of all kinds are printed in this country every year, one hundred to each possible reader. But many, prob- ably a large majority of the people who work in mills, mines, factories and on farms read very little, thougli a goodly proportion read something. On the other hand, the professional and managing classes read many more than a hundred a year. Any reader of this who runs over a brief list of his more intimate friends, will find each reads, if only hastily, between three hundred and a thousand. Instead, then, of having forty million people reading one hundred peri- odicals in a year, we have probably not more than half that number reading on an average twice as many. From the directories of newspapers and other periodicals of the United States, I have compiled the statistics given in the following tables that show how many dailies, weeklies and monthlies are pub- lished in this country today. They show also how many copies are issued in a year of the periodicals in each of these classes. From among the many newspapers in the coun- try, I selected a few as fairly typical, and took one copy of each of these few, published on days when no unusual space was given to any especially promi- 44 WHAT WE READ nent topic. Tlie eouteiits of these typical news- papers I aualyzecl, and having made allowance for room taken by illnstrations, by display advertise- ments, and by display headings on news articles, tabnlated their contents in accordance with the sched- nle given below. The analysis is only tentative of course. An analysis of another group of papers published on different dates would show results dif- ferent from these. But the difference in results would come rather in minor details than in the gen- eral outline. We may quite safely assume that four billion and a half copies of daily and weekly papers published within twelve months in this country are devoted to the topics listed in the table on page 46, somewhat in the proportion indicated. Reducing the contents of these newspapers, or the words in them, to volumes of the size of "David Harum," we have in another column a statement of the number of volumes of "David Harum" size that appear in newspaper form each year in this country, on the several subjects indicated in the table. The number of daily, weekly and monthly copies of periodicals published in the United States every year is : dailies, 2,865,466,000 ; weeklies, 1,208,190,000; monthlies, 263,452,000 ; total, 4,337,108,000 copies. My figures are taken from a reliable newspaper directory. Other estimates, based on returns direct from the publishers themselves, are nearly twice as large as mine. In another table I have restated the situation, grouping some of the thirty-two topics of the first table, reducing thereby the number of classes to five. Again putting the contents of the newspapers of a year into volumes of "David Harum" size we have 45 LIBRARIES SPACE DEVOTED TO VARIOUS SUBJECTS Per Cent of Space (Approx.) 1. Commercial and financial: including market and nianufactui-ing- reports, real estate, etc. 11 2. Health and pleasure resorts; general gossip; trivial town news 8 3. Advertisements: dry goods, clothing, depart- ment stores, etc 8 4. Political: domestic, army and navy. Con- gress, Philippine War, etc 8 5. Sports: athletics, etc 7 6. Legal: trials, colonial questions, notices, etc. 6 7. Criminal 4 8. Personal : not trivial 3 ^A 9. Advertisements: personal, marriages, deaths, employment wanted 3*4 10. Advertisements: medical 3 11. Advertisements: railroads, shipping, tele- phone, telegraph, hotels, etc 3 12. Advertisements : wants 3 13. Advertisements: real estate, lodgings, resorts 3 14. Literature: essays, stories, poetry, book re- views, drawing, music and art 2i,^ 15. Social science: strikes, unions, reform work, etc 21^ 16. Advertisements: financial, stocks, etc 2i/^ 17. Religion: churches and church work 2% 18. Political: foreign, including wars 2^^ 19. Railroads; shipping news; trolley lines, etc. 2*4 20. Disasters 2 21. "Society" 2 22. Science 2 23. Political: international, Chinese crisis, Nica- ragua Canal, etc li/^ 24. Advertisements: theatre, opera and other entertainments 1 25. Educational: schools, colleges 1 26. Advertisements: food and mineral waters... % 27. Theatrical: actual stage news % 28. Musical i^ 29. Advertisements: books Va 30. Advertisements: fine arts, schools, etc \i 31. Historical Vs 32. Advertisements: liquors Va Note — Twenty-eight per cent or 566,000,000 volumes is adv Space in Terms of a Book the Size of "David Harum" Copies 270,600,000 160,200,000 159,200,000 156,600,000 132,000,000 119,000,000 86,200.000 71,400,000 69,600,000 61,200,000 60,000,000 58,000,000 56,400,000 51,000,000 49,400,000 49,400.000 47,600,000 46,400,000 45,000,000 41,000,000 41,000,000 40,000,000 30,200,000 21,200,000 18,800,000 15,000.000 13,400,000 12,600,000 9,000,000 3,900,000 3,600,000 3,200,000 ertising. 46 WHAT AVE READ another estimate of the number of volumes of each of these broader classes that are read by the people of the United States every twelve months. SUMMARY OF OUTPUT OF PERIODICALS Copies of "David Harum" 1. Political and governmental matters 352,200,000 2. Criminal, sensational and trivial.... 287,400,000 3. Intellectual, scientific and religious 248,200,000 4. Personal and social 572,800,000 5. Business ■ 539,400,000 Total 2,000,000,000 The weekly papers I have not included in this general analysis. They produce in a 3' ear 1,208,190,000 copies, a little more than one-third of the output of the dailies, and probably somewhat smaller in size on the average. An analysis of them would be still more difficult than has been the analysis of the dailies, for the reason that among the weeklies are to be found a large number of periodicals which are not newspapers proper, ranging in quality from jour- nals like the Police Gazette, the Nickel libraries and cheap story papers to the Youth's Companion, the Outlook, and countless trade and technical journals. The quality of the literature published in the weeklies is probably on the whole not much if at all superior to that found in the dailies. Weekly publications of what we commonly call the better class, would bring up the average, while sporting journals and cheap stor^' papers and things of that kind would tend to bring it down again to the level of the field covered by daily publications. Monthlies number a total output in a year of 285,000,000, only 6 per cent of the grand total. Some of them are very widely read. The number of readers of each monthly is probably greater than the number 47 LIBRARIES of readers of the weeklies and dailies, but in spite of this fact, when one considers the things read by the people of this country, monthly and quarterly journals may be almost left out of account. The scope of the influence of various kinds of periodical publications is shown in the following table, which shows the extent to which the various kinds of journals are read. The papers are classified accordins; to circulation : Daily Circulation Dailies Weeklies Monthlies Over 75,000 1,635,425,000 85.800,000 172,800,000 Over 40,000 350,560,000 70.720,000 22,080,000 Over 20,000 350,560,000 111,280,000 22,080,000 Over 17,500 109,550,000 38,220,000 8,220,000 Over 12,500 156,400,000 53,300,000 10,500,000 Over 7,500 14,085,000 68,250,000 12,150,000 Over 4,000 179,036,000 76,900,000 10,800,000 Over 2,000 40,690,000 312,600,000 4,800,000 All under 2,000 rated at 600 29,160,000 391,120,000 22,000 2,865,466,000 1,208,190,000 263,452,000 From these figures it is difficult to make generali- zations or draw conclusions. This is the newspaper age. The mere physical and psychical effects of reading, increased as it has been so tremendously in the last quarter of a century, is probably materially affecting us. Just how, nobody seems to know. This is something for the physiologists and psycholo- gists to tell us about. The effect on the minds of the people of this country and Europe of assimilating this enormous amount of reading matter each year must certainly be great. A hundred years from now the historian may be able to point to the last quarter of the nineteenth century as the ])eriod during Avhieli were brought forth, through the medium of the daily papers, the causes which profoundly affected the history of the twentieth century. 48 WHAT WE EEAD Is it possible to learn bj experience and observa- tion bow to overcome the monster of print? Some learn this. Those who survive in the struggle to-day must learn how iiot to be dominated by printed things. Perhaps only by experience in life can it be learned at all, but education, which claims to be a preparation for life itself, could devote itself in large measure to fitting those who receive it to struggle successfully with the monster of the printing press. To put it more exactly, the cliildren in the schools — could they not have simple, practical illustrations, largely of course experiential, in the use of the news- paper and other periodicals? They are taught to read, and tliey are taught much beyond tliis. In the best schools they are taught a good deal beyond this. They are given instruction about authors and books of past times, authors and books of whom the major- ity will never hear again. Should they not be given a few hints at least as to the way in which they can best make use of the printed things they will actually come in contact with, first the daily paper', next a weekly with cheap pictures, next a serial publication devoted to silly stories? If education is preparation for life would it not be advisable to give to young people a little specific preparation for the large por- tion of their lives which will be spent in contact with tlie daily printed page? 49 LIBRARY PROBLEMS Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1902 Gabriel Naude had charge of the library of Car- dinal Mazarin and of the libraries of other notable people in the seventeenth century. When he was about twenty-five years of age, in 1627, he published a little volume which he called "Advice on the man- agement of a library.'' This was at the beginning of his career as a book lover and librarian. Yet even at that age and before he had yet enjoyed the experi- ence of gathering and arranging some of the most notable libraries in the Europe of that day, he approached his subject with a fullness of mind and breadth of view which are not often found among librarians. In the closing chapter of his little book he speaks of the proper purpose of a library. ' The acquisition, classification and general care of it he has duly described in previous chapters. "All these matters," he says, "having been settled, there remains to the completion of this discussion only a statement of what should be the library's chief end and aim. To suppose that after all the care and expense I have heretofore suggested have been given to the accumu- lation of many books and their proper installation, we may, as it were, hide all their lights beneath a bushel, may condemn all the brave spirits they embody to eternal silence and solitude — this is to fail utterly to understand the purpose of a library. Of a library we may say, as Seneca says of Nature, that she 'desires not merely to be looked at, but also to be admired; that she would lose all the fruits of her labor, were she to exhibit her handiwork, so vast, so noble, so subtly complex, so bright, and so beautiful 51 LIBRAEIES ill \vaYs so iiuuiifokl, to solitude alone.' In vain would one foUoAV the instructions I have set forth and incur the large expense I have recommended in the purchase of books and their proper establishing, if he have not in mind their consecration to public use; if it is in his heart ever to refuse access to them to the humblest who may have need of them." These sentiments were uttered 275 years ago. They have not obtained very wide acceptance yet; because the preservative function of a library, for several hundred years so justly prominent, has per- sisted like an old, fixed habit, and made difficult the development of other functions which changed conditions demand. All people are becoming readers. The newspaper, in the past three decades, has raised the number of those in this country who make use of print for recreation and information, from two or three million to perhaps ten million. There are among us at least thirty million more persons preparing to come into the ranks of readers. And every day the newspaper gathers more and prints more of all that touches life, and sells that more for less and less, and encroaches on the domain which the book and the weekly, monthly, and quarterly magazine once held for their own. Books cost less and less each year to make; writers increase in number both relatively and abso- lutely; and books of all kinds, from simple restate- ments of trivial facts to careful announcements of the results of prolonged research, from silly verse to mas- terpieces of imaginative writing, rush through the press in an endless and swelling flood. Formerly, save for oral tradition, only in rare and costly books were to be found the means of culture, and the secrets of tlie arts, trades and professions. Now the classics 52 LIBRARY PROBLEMS and the literature of information are to be had almost for the asking. Libraries designed to serve the needs of many decades to come prove too small before they are fairly occupied. Books overflow the shelves; readers crowd the floors. In the great city, as well as in the small towns, donors, trustees, librarians and architects seem not to face these facts of modern life in the field of paper, print and readers. They build after old precedents. They accumulate books as did our fathers when the material, the paper, print and binding, of the book itself was rare and costly. They provide for the few who read forty years ago instead of for the multitudes who read today, and they administer as if library science were an art preservative instead of an art descriptive, selective, directive and distributive. Much has been done, to be sure, to meet the new demands this increase of books and papers make upon us. Library methods have changed. We need go back only twenty-five years to find the original, nat- ural and in its early days entirely just view of a library's proper character and method in general acceptance. The librarian's art was then an art preservative. Books were to be kept, kept jealously, and used carefully, and only by a selected few. Li- brary buildings were storehouses. The space in them for books was relatively generous, that for readers or users of books relatively small. Lofty rooms with encircling galleries satisfied the demand for show. The questions of heating, lighting, ventilation and shelving were secondary and unconsidered, or not well considered. The coming tide of books and the coming hordes of readers were unforeseen, and all buildings were designed to invite and encourage a growth they could not satisfy. Many a city, town 53 LIBRARIES and college in those days built for a decade or two only, when they believed they were building for generations. Tilings are better today. But few yet realize the full extent of the changes time has wrouglit in the world of books, and very few library buildings have been erected in full realization of what the changed conditions demand. It is impossible to draw up general rules as to the details of library construction. The factors of funds, location, adjoining buildings and special needs, all must be given weight in each individual case. A few general principles are, however, of almost universal application. Libraries always grow faster than their communi- ties suppose the}' will. Probably nine out of ten of all the library buildings put up in this country have already proved to be too small. Books will increase in number more rapidly each succeeding year. Popu- lar education and cheap newspapers are rapidly in- creasing the number of readers and of library users in every community. The first general rule, then is, make the building as large as the funds permit. Defer decoration if need be; but get abundant floor space by all moans, and provide for extensions if possible. The public buildings in this country over twenty- five years old which are still fit — in location, style, construction and arrangement — for the purposes for which they were intended are very few. Do not, then, look forward to great ])ermanence for your library Iniilding, and do not think it necessary to make it absolutely fire-proof at the cost of size and conveni- ence. Books can be reasonably Avell insured. Save in a few large collections a total loss is not a vital thing. Build substantially; but do not imagine your 54 LIBEAEY PKOBLEMS structure is for all time, or even for a hundred years, when twenty-five will probably find it out of date, out of place, and a burden. A library is a place in which many people are to read every day. Give them all the light 3'ou can. Library methods have entirel}' changed in the past ten years. We may be sure they will further change in the next twenty-five. What the changes will be, no one knows. The buildings adapted to the methods of ten years ago are to-day out of date. They are hindrances to development and to good work. We may be sure that buildings especially adapted to the methods of to-day will prove to be poorh' adapted to the methods of 1925, and the closer we fit them to present needs by permanent construction the more out of date they will prove to be as new needs arise. Therefore, make your building adaptable to new con- ditions. Provide all the well-lighted floor space you can, and let it alone. Avoid permanent partitions. Do not be deluded into surrounding each spot on which a certain kind of work or reading is to be car- ried on, with a wall of brick or stone. Why should one who reads the Nineteenth Century be separated by a huge light and air excluding, distance-increasing partition from one who consults an encyclopedia, or examines a catalogue, or studies engravings? The need of partitions to keep out noise from other parts of the library is much less than most suppose. Time will try all division walls inside your library, and prove most of them Avrong. Leave them out, and get better air and light; greater ease of administra- tion at less cost; greater comfort for the public; more available floor space — two rooms each twenty feet square are not nearly as large in actual utility as is one room 20x40 feet — and an elasticity, a. 55 LIBRARIES responsiveness to futnre needs, which the next generation will thank you for. With this no-partition rule goes the rule against fixtures. Complete your interior. Then add the fittings and eases as they are needed and move them, when occasion arises, as time goes on. Fixed desks, fixed rails, fixed bookcases, save perhaps in a stack, are obstacles to comfortal)le administration. No de- livery desk was ever built right the first time. Tliere- fore, build it so it can easily be changed. The books outside the stack will increase in number; so will your readers. This increase will compel the shifting of cases for the former and of tables for the hitter. Make all furniture in small pieces and all moval)le. Put as much as possible of the floor space on one level. Stairs are bad in any library. The snmller the library the worse they are. They mean addi- tional attendants; they add to the daily labor; they are not grateful to the public. The essential things, then, in library construction are maximum of space, on the fewest possible floors, good light, a minimum of partitions, and no fixtures. Many libraries have been built in recent years; prob- al)ly not a dozen among them conform to these con- ditions. This is, in part, the fault of librarians, who have not realized the future of their own calling; in part, of trustees, who have valued things they thought magnificent, -'tasty," ''elegant,'' and imposing before the needs of their constituency; in part, of architects wlio let convention and precedent rule in interior arrangement as well as in exterior design. The sins of the father are visited on the children in such buildings as those of the Boston public and the Co- lumbia college libraries, wliicli by their very cost and prominence strengthen the evil determinations of many an architect and l)oard. 56 LIBEARY PROBLEMS The old librarian \Yas often master of his books. He knew them, every one. Each stood for years in its accustomed place and was in the librarian's mind like an ancient landmark. But the incoming tide increased : the old librarian passed and his knowledge went with him. Careful lists were needed. As lists grew they became complex. Rules of cataloguing arose and flourished. The need for grouping on the shelves books of like nature Avas soon apparent. Classification became a necessity. Its complexity increased. And the classing of books and the listing of books, and the listing of parts of books and the printing of these lists, which were in fact indexes to whole libraries of books — seemed imperative, and libraries exhausted their resources in printing cata- logues which were out of date before their proofs were read, and projected card catalogues which time may prove to be bibliothecal Frankensteins. Yet the development of this inventory-and-index idea in library management was natural and proper. It has been of great assistance in bringing libraries under control. We look forward, however, and see that we are not yet at the end of the matter. New difficulties born of the very profusion of books, prom- ise to arise. Its many books and its expanding cata- logues threaten to obscure our vision of the library itself. In twenty years, libraries of one or two million volumes will be considered as only in their infancy. AVithin the lifetime of some of the younger members of the profession, libraries of a few hundred thousand volumes will be as common as were those of a few tens of thousands a quarter of a century ago. The library of a million volumes will need for its indexing, under present methods, five million cards. Without going into details, we can see how cum- 57 LIBKARIES brons will be a catalogue of this size, no matter how carefully it is arranged. Its form is abhorrent to man}' practical men who make use of books. The ignorant cannot use it, the learned do not need it. It is a tedious and irritating task to finger cards. In a large catalogue the entry of the latest book, and the vast majority of those Avho use books want first of all the last book issued on their subject, is lost in a vast desert of useless references. Men of moderate intelligence, occasional visitors to the library, are helpless in the presence of the catalogue and turn in despair to the attendant, who often depends himself more on lists and special bibliographies than on the catalogue. The student, versed in books, hunts out his own authorities and asks of the catalogue little more than the information that the library has or has not certain volumes. He perhaps can go to it for a few of the first steps of the investigation he is about to set out upon; but having taken those first few steps, he wishes to go direct to the books them- selves. In fact, few men who wish to consult books on a certain topic care for more than guidance to the books. No card catalogue can give them the information they need. They wish the books them- selves; the footnotes and indexes in the books them- selves. They go from point to point in their own way, each consulting his own particular needs. The catalogue for them is hardly more than a starting point. It is not much more than a means of laying hands on a certain book when once they have learned that that certain book is the one they wish to see. The specialist finds more helpful than the catalogue a few minutes conversation with some one connected with the library and posted on the literature of the subject he is about to investigate. Such a person 58 LIBRARY PROBLEMS ill a general way outlines the range of the library's resources, and puts him in touch with the subject if he is not so already, and indicates the location of the books he may wish to consult. Each year, as the output of books grows larger and as they become cheaper, the number each library can and must buy will increase and the annual additions to the cards in the catalogue will become greater in number. This will add to the expense. If the Library of Congress succeeds in its admirable plan of printing correct cards, purchasable at a small price by all libraries, this will reduce the original cost of the catalogue; but it will induce many libraries to add rapidly to their number of cards and so will add to the cost of their storage and arrangement. The labor of sorting a thousand new cards into their proper places among a million others is immense. This labor increases for every library each year and will become for many small libraries a burden larger than they now anticipate. Nor is this all. Not only is the catalogue becom- ing an alarmingly expensive creation; not only is it growing more cumbersome to the user ; not only does it contain each year a greater and greater amount of chaff — its cards referring to the dead books — rela- tively to the few grains of wheat— its cards referring to the live books ; but also it becomes as it grows an institution more and more difficult to revise. In most cases it must in time be revised. Librarians in hundreds of towns and smaller cities — and I believe in most large cities also — will soon find their shelf-space full. They will keep on buying books, more in number each year. They must make room for them. Tliey will pronounce judgment on many of the older volumes and say that for their library 59 LIBRARIES those books are dead. They will give them away, sell them or burn them. But the dead books are entered ill the catalogue, on the shelf-list and in the accession books. And the labor of removing from the cata- logue and its allied lists all traces of the books pro- nounced dead and sent away is prodigious. Yet it must be carried through. I am not attempting to solve tlie problem I am presenting. I venture only to sound a warning. President Eliot, of Harvard, says it is time for libraries to begin to discriminate between the living and the dead among books. He asks for new methods of treatment. It is well that one who speaks with authority says what many have been saying for several years. It is not too soon to attack this problem. Add to President Eliot's appeal for a change from the hoarding process to the method of elimination the bold statement by President Harper of Chicago University as to the place the library is to occupy in the educational institutions of the future — and his prophecies apply with equal force to the public library and its special community — and you have ample justification for the distinction already made in this paper between the former function of libraries — the preservation of books — and its latter day functions, of evaluation, selection, direction and distribution. President Harper says: "The library and the lal)oratory have already practically revolutionized the methods of higher education. In the really uuni- ern institution, the chief building is the library. . . . The librarian is one of the most learned miMnbers of the faculty; in many instances, certainly the most influentiak . . . The library, fifty years ago almost GO LIBRARY TROBLEMS unknown, today already the center of the institution's intellectual activity, half a century hence ^Yith its sister, the laboratory, almost equally unknown fifty years ago, will have absorbed all else, and will have become the institution itself." Public as well as university libraries, as they develop into the influential institutions which Presi- dent Harper says they are to become, will change much from what they now are. Just what are the changes they will undergo, it is impossible to proph- esy. They have been indicated, we may reasonably suppose, by the changes they have undergone in the past few years. Their buildings, as already suggested, will become simpler, better adapted to economical administration, more easily modified to suit new needs, and more readily enlarged for increasing use. Cataloguing methods will be simplified and cheap- ened. Some way must be discovered of making at least an author index which can be more easily kept up to date, more easily and more quickly used, and more readily changed by the dropping of entries of books past their usefulness. It is probable that we shall be able to return to printed broadsides for this special purpose, though the card catalogue in its present form may not go out of use for the index of authors, titles and subjects. Smaller libraries will confine themselves to keep- ing up small working collections, chiefly of the more recent books, constantly relieved of the burden of dead books, and carefully indexed. Historical ma- terial will be confined in them to the best books on the subject at large and to a very small portion of the local field. The omninm gatherum historical method now advocated for the libraries of small com- munities and practiced by many of them, will have 61 LIBRARIES to be abaudoned. Material will, by this method, soon accumulate beyoud all possible control, and, being uncontrolled, will be of no use. Historical libraries will have to struggle with this problem of over-much material. Somehow the selective process even here must be put in operation. The libraries of a few great cities can, and probably will, go on accumulat- ing at large for some years to come. It is well that they should. A wise winnowing process can here be discovered only by much practice on large masses of material. But before long they too will find that a book is not a book if there is nothing useful in it; and that it is better to have the best well in hand, than a mixed mass of live and dead, unorganized, material. As President Eliot has said, the problem of hous- ing and indexing is already a serious one at Harvard. It is not less serious in other large libraries, although the fact is not often admitted. The plan suggested at Cambridge and Boston is one of the possible solutions of this problem of stor- age. This is, to erect in some place outside the city, where land is not valuable, an enormous warehouse, fireproof, simple, inexpensive, capable of indefinite extension ; and to consign to it the dead volumes from all the great libraries of the region. A difficulty here arises which has already been mentioned, that of so treating the catalogues of each library contributing to this warehouse that they will sliow that the books removed are no longer in the library proper, but in the warehouse. This difficulty is one which, under present methods, will grow greater with each succeed- ing year, as the catalogues of each library increase in size and complexity. Another problem is, how to arrange the books in the warehouse so that any given 02 LIBRARY PROBLEMS volume can be found after it lias been learned from the catalogues in any of the contributing libraries, that it is actually "in storage.'' If the coming flood is as great as it promises to be, and if ways of making, handling, storing, revising and consulting card or other catalogues, much less expensive of time, space and material than those now in use are not found, it will perhaps be necessary to cast aside all records of the books which have been pronounced dead and relegated to the storage warehouse, and treat those thus stored in the simplest possible manner — which is, to arrange them in one alphabetical series by authors. This method would discover duplicates; could be carried out by inexpensive labor; and yet would leave the books accessible to the occasional inquirer with little loss of time. The libraries proper, the efficient institutions of President Eliot's desire and President Harper's pro^jhecy, would find them- selves relieved of a tremendous burden by adopting this selective process. They could soon become far more helpful to the ordinary student than they can hope to become as long as they are struggling under the weight of books rarely used and of unwieldy catalogues. The method of administration of the active, up to date, clean-cut working library of the future is still somewhat in question. This working library of the future, so far as we can foretell its character, is in a building which is well-lighted and can be easily readjusted, rearranged and extended to meet new conditions. Space for readers as well as books is ample. Its stack or store- room is planned to hold the least used books. It keeps its main working collection together, not scat- tering it in branches in public libraries, or in depart- 63 LIBRARIES meiit biiikliiiiis in niiiversitv libraries. Branch or departmental libraries will duplicate or supplement the main library, not divide it. It is a workinsr library, not a museum of anticpiities, curios or art, and it does not invite the sight-seer. It is kept up to date, as well by weeding out of volumes past their usefulness as by the purchase of the latest publica- tions. The most used books are most easily acces- sible and most fully catalogued. The latest reference lists and bibliographies on all subjects which the collection covers, are j^rovided. Titles for purchase are selected with great care; utility, and immediate utility, being considered first, rarity, beauty and pros- pective value last. Rules and regulations are few and flexible. That the books be used is considered of the first importance. Museum pieces of whatever kind are not admitted to the library proper, have no place in it, and hence give no occasion for close guardianship of the shelves. Card indexes to the proceedings of societies, to scientific journals and other publications are now being made and published. One which covers the field of zoology, published in Zurich, Switzerland, already contains over 00,000 cards. These indexes are exx)ensive. To their first cost has to be added the cost of keeping and of the addition of new titles as they are received. In the future few libraries will find it possible to buy and keep up more than a care- ful selection of such lists, only those adapted to their own peculiar needs. Tlie burden they will become in a few years will be clearly recognized. Also, the ease with whicli the knowledge they can impart can be transmitted from (tne library to another will be more fully appreciated. In this matter, as in book-buying 64 LIBRARY PROBLEMS and book-weeding, cooperation between libraries by inter-library loans will make it easier for each com- mnnity to see the advantages of specialization, and of small collections kept well in hand. The free public library of to-day does not occupy the field of book-lending as completely as it supposed it did, even a few months ago. The Book-lovers' Library has demonstrated that many people in every community will borrow books of certain classes, even at some personal expense, if the opportunity is favor- able. The free public library evidently has not been offering the favorable opportunity. It is very doubt- ful if it ever can, or should. It will, in the future, concern itself less than ever with the circulation of light fiction. It will find it can use all the funds it can obtain in the promotion of reading of a more serious character, and in other work proper to it. It Avill reach out for the mechanic and the artisan — it has never yet had a hold on them — and will occupy itself more and more with the work of helping parents and teachers to train the young into the habit of reading good books, and into a working knowledge of books and journals of the informing kind. By cooperative effort, among libraries, as illus- trated b3^ the work Mr. George lies is doing and has done, most books as soon as published, will be evalu- ated at the hands of experts. The critical and exposi- tory notes thus obtained will be made generally avail- able. Less weight will be given to the completeness of bibliographies and more to their annotations, and the skill they show in selection. Save for the maker of bibliographies, who has completeness for his only aim, a complete unannotated bibliography is of very little use. 65 LIBRARIES 111 book selectiiiji', in narroAviiiii lii« library's field, ill the casting ont of dead stock, all with the help of expert advice, the librarian must be arbitrary. But in the use of the books by the public in a i^ublic library, by the students in a college library — here he will remove all barriers. The simplest and most flexible rules, based on the facts that the public owns its own institutions, and that most men are honest and considerate of one another, will enable him to see that all claims are treated alike. Suggestions, criti- cisms, advice, demands, will be invited from all. Public oflicers are public servants, and public insti- tutions are supported to satisfy the public's needs — these good old maxims will be kept always in mind. Librarians have passed through the repository stage, when they did little more than collect and save ; the identification stage, when they devoted them- selves greatly to classifying, ticketing and catalog- ing their books; the memorial stage— Avhich we are unhappily still blundering through — when they sur- rendered themselves to the task of erecting Greek temples, Italian palaces and composite tombs; the distribution stage, wherein they find themselves out- stripped by commercial ventures which saw that the novel had become as much desired as the daily paper ; and they are just entering upon the critical, evaluat- ing and educating stage. They are just beginning to find themselves, as President Harper's words testify. In this present stage the}- discover that they are, or may become, the center of many of the forces in their respective communities which make for social effi- ciency and civic improvement. The modern puldic library is the helpful friend of scientific, art, and historical societies; of the educational labor organi- 66 LIBRARY PROBLEMS zatioiis; of city improvement organizations; of teach- ers' clnbs and parents' societies and women's clnbs. At the library shonld be the books and jonrnals to which all these institutions mnst come for their guid- ance or material. Here shonld be rooms snitable for their gatherings. Here shonld be a spirit hospitable to them all; knowing what is in books, bnt keenly alive also to all that is best, all that is striving for helpfnl expression, in the people who own those books and hope ninch from them. THE PLACE OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN A CITY'S LIFE Address at the Dedication of the Trenton, N. J., Puhlic Library, June 9, 1902 Cities and towns are now for the first time, and chiefly in this country, erecting altars to the gods of good fellowship, joy, and learning. These altars are our public libraries. We had, long ago, our buildings of city and state, our halls of legislation, our courts of justice. But these all speak more or less of wrong-doing, of justice and injustice, of repression. Most of them touch closely on partisan- ship and bitterness of feeling. We have had, since many centuries, in all our cities, the many meeting places of religious sects— our chapels, churches and cathedrals. They stand for much that is good. But they have not brought together the communities in Avhich they are placed. A church is not always the center of the best life of all who live within the shadow of its spire. For several generations we have been building temples to the gods of learning and good citizenship — our schools. And they have come nearer to bring- ing together for the highest purpose the best impulses of all of us than have any other institutions. But they are not yet, as we hope some day they will be, for both old and young. Moreover, they speak of dis- cipline, of master and pupil, instead only of pure and simple fellowship in studies. And so we are, for the first time in all history, building, in our public libraries, temples of happi- ness and wisdom common to all. No other institu- tion which society has brought forth is so wide in 69 LIBRARIES its scope ; so universal in its appeal ; so near to every one of us; so inviting to both young and old; so tit to teach, without arrogance, the ignorant and, without faltering, the wisest. A public library can be the center of the activities in a city that make for social etficiency. It can do more to bind the people of a city into one civic whole, and to develop among them the feeling that they are citizens of no mean city, than any other institu- tion yet established or than we as yet conceive. It lends many novels. Novels are destined to play a large part in our life in the next few decades. A few hundred thousand read them now; in a few years millions will read them. As a nation, we are expressing ourselves through them; in them we are putting our history, our hopes, our ideals. Many people, confined by nature and circumstances to nar- row and laborious lives, will get from their novels, here distributed, refreshment, inspiration, wider vieAVS, an admirable discontent. But they should be chosen with care. There are enough of the best to fill all needs. The clergy will find in the library the best books in theology, l)iblical criticism, and religion, and these books Aviil help them to keep from their thouglits all narrowness and hardness of doctrine. Professional men, and men of affairs, will not incline to use their libi-ary. But it can be made so inviting that not a few will find it impossible to resist the temptation to ste]) aside frcun the beaten track of the day's routine and the morning paper into some by-path of literature, science, or art. Public libraries have not been very successful in their attempts to i)ersuade workingmen, mechanics, artisans, to give over the sinful habit of not using 70 PLACE OF THE PURTJC LIBRARY their books. Perhaps it is impossible to establish the reading habit in those adnlts who get physically wear}^ every day. l»erliaps here Ave mnst wait for the new generation to come on with the habit ready formed, and formed largely throngh the inllnence of the library. IJnt the library will give the oppor- tunity. We boast of onr organizing skill. We owe much, very much, of our success in manufacture and trade to our skill in uniting man to man, and men to men, in great organizations working to one com- mon end. Much of this skill is due to a constant practice which goes with our social life. We are daily taught to cooperate. It would be difficult to lind the citizen, no matter how humble his station, who does not belong to several organized bodies, who does not get from those bodies practice in working in harmony with others to effect some wished-for end. Churches, church societies, fraternal orders, social clubs, labor organizations — their name is legion. They are one of our best schools for citizenship. They help us to pick out our leaders; they teach those leaders the art of management; they teach the rank and file the profits of cooperation. And especially strong is this form of social life among the skilled craftsmen. And so a library, having the books to which it wishes to attract these men, and having rooms well fitted for their meetings, will encourage them to gather in these rooms for all the purposes that one can plainly say are non-political, are not anti-social, are educational. There is always a little barrier between the brain-worker and the hand- worker. It should be slight. It should not lead to misunderstandings. If the hand-workers discover that the library is their building and that in it they have a meeting ground common with them to all their 71 LIBRARIES fellow-citizens, this will do much to promote good understanding- and mutual good will. Of course with this use of a library go such lectures and exhibitions under the library's management as experience shows will produce good results. I was for many years in that land where women's clubs and women voters first greatly flourished — Colorado. I learned there what woman can do by organized effort for the broadening of her own life, for the betterment of her own city. Many public libraries owe their existence to women's efforts. They are every library's good friends. Its books and rooms should, then, be made helpful in every possible way to the women and their enterprises. Charitable and reform and educational associ- ations of all kinds flourish amazingly in all our cities. They are of value to those who take part in them; they grow not infrequently into institutions of great influence. They should find in the library a hearty welcome, and should help to spread and strengthen the influence of its books. With the growth of local pride among us, organi- zations for the improvement of cities will increase in number and grow in strength. These a library will especially try to foster. The library may well be the focal point of all those movements which make for a cleaner, a more beautiful, a more attractive city, a city in which it is better worth one's Avhile to pass one's days. With books and photographs and lec- tures and other tools, much can be done to foster such a habit of self-glorification as leads to clearer vision of the improvements a city needs and a stronger determination to secure them. To bring thorough work into better esteem; to make a little more dignified the plain, honest work 72 PLACE OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY of our hands; to increase the interest in his day's labor taken by the artisan; to spread a knowledge and appreciation of good design; these, as I like to understand them, are the objects of the arts-and- crafts movement, now so widespread. To a manu- facturing community this movement will be of espe- cial value. It will lead to more and better trade and technical schools, to more practical and more effective work in drawing and art study in the public schools. It is part of that wonderful renaissance of art now taking place in this country which is so interesting and so encouraging. Of such a movement the library will be one of the natural centers. In its beginnings, especially, its resources will be of the greatest help. Out of the union of those interested in this field — architects, artists, artist-artisans, patrons of art — will grow in time the museum of art and handicraft which every manufacturing city greatly needs. Science and history will come in for attention. Societies already in existence will find in the library help in books and other material, rooms for tlieir gatherings, quarters for storing their collections, until that happy time when each city has, as it should, a museum of science and a home for local historical material, both carefully adapted to work with young people in cooperation with the schools. Have I gone too far afield? I am sure not. All these things which we look forward to as part of the work which a library with a beautiful home can do, have already been done, or are in the process of doing somewhere in this country today. I am not offering you an impossible ideal. I am simply outlining what experience has already proved to be the modern American free public library's proper function. 73 LIBKAKIES I have purposel}' left to the last the pleasantest, most helping thing, work with the children. Here as elsewhere in this new and wonderfnl field we have much to learn of detail; but here more than in any other direction we are sure of our results. We think we are a nation of readers. We have just begun to read. 1 believe I could prove that the practice of using the printed page, even of the dail}^ papers, as a means of refreshment, information or training has only just begun to take root among us. Our schools and our cheap and soon to be still cheaper journals will hasten the spread of this practice. In the adult we cannot guide it. In the youth we can, and here is where the library will show its power. xVs an ally of the teachers in the public schools — the most useful of all the friends a library can acquire — the right books can be put into the hands of the children at the right time. The ability to read can be broadened into the habit of reading; the habit of reading can be guided into the hal)it of reading the tilings that make for wisdom and happiness. The library should buy for this purpose many books, many times more books than it thinks it will need. This will breed here a demand for good books — which it will try the library's resources and the generosity of its friends to satisfy. And through the books, again with the teachers' aid, can be reached many thousands of parents, to whom by any other method appeal would l)e made in vain. And through books and teachers the library will helj) to implant in the minds of thou- sands of cliildren that ju-ide of place, that love of neatness, that delight in a beautiful city, wliicli will come back in an(>ther generation in an irresistible demand for the nobler and more delectable city which all hope to see. 74 THE INCREASE OF THINGS TO READ Address DcJivcrcd before the FennsijJvau'ui Lihrdrij Association, Xocemhcr W, 1902 Institutions are results before tliey are causes; they come because they are wanted, not because they want to come; tlie^' are formed to fill certain needs, and the needs are felt before the institutions are formed. Libraries help to civilize, we hope and be- lieve; but people have a certain degree of civilization before they bring forth libraries. Let central Africa tomorrow acquire traveling libraries thick as a plague of flies, and let Carnegie library buildings crown every hill in eastern Asia, and central Africans and eastern Asians will still be as now, aliens to our thoughts and not friends of our firesides. First come l^eace and civil cooperation; tlien the institutions which cooperation begets. This idea of universal education, from which libraries come, is quite modern. It has developed as have all movements which tend to break down caste distinctions. A few of the stronger and privileged class conceived of popular education as a good thing at just about the time that the populace itself awoke to find it wanted education and was strong enough to demand it, and to get it. So education grew from a privilege to a right, and from a right to a duty. Meanwhile, we passed from books in chains to free jKiblic libraries. Now, these free public libraries, the natural pro- ducts of the idea of universal education as a duty, have like tlie schools and like other institutions, their own ])eculiar inheritance. The marks of the days wlien books were few and costly, when scholars only used LIBRARIES tliem and scholars only kept them, and when scholars were all men of mediaeval learning, these marks are still plain on all our libraries. It would be inter- esting to trace some of our peculiarities of admini- stration, peculiarities which mark our methods off, too much perhaps, from the ways of doing things in other fields, back to the ecclesiastical, monkish, university, learned, scholastic, exclusive, privileged days of the modern library's history. I wish now to speak of only one factor in the library's development, a factor which much influenced library methods in early library days— the supply of things to read. The supply of things to read has increased very remarkably in the last twenty years. Statistics on the subject are of little value back of ISSO. In the census for that year and in those for 1890 and 1900 we get the bases, not for exact comparisons, but for comparisons sulflciently accurate for our illumina- tion. These figures, after allowing for all possible errors, certainly stir the imagination and encourage prophecy. Those I shall give you relate only to this country !^ I am indebted for them to a bulletin of the twelfth census, by William S. Rossiter, on Printing and Publishing. I commend this bulletin to your consideration. And let me commend to you also, to be read in connection with it, a recent address of Prof. Henry E. Armstrong before the educational science section of the British Association for the Ad- vancement of Science. It is an appeal to the educa- tional world to face more frankly the actual facts of life, and to endeavor to use those facts more freely in the exercise of the scientific imagination. Before quoting the figures of the increase in recent years, in the last two decades, of the supply of things 76 INCREASE OF THINGS TO READ to read, I wish to call your atteutiou to a few of the changes and discoveries and inventions w^hich have helped to make this increase so great. In 1870 a poor quality of printing paper cost IG cents a pound. Paper of better quality is sold to-day for 2 cents a pound. A curious fact illustrative of modern newspaper methods is here worth noting. Some newspapers find that when their circulation passes a certain point the quantity of paper used each day is so great that it is difficult to supply all the copies the market demands, and at the same time keep the charges for advertising down to a rate their customers are willing or able to pay. A certain New York paper is said to have found that the cost per line of advertising in one day's issue, simply for the paper on which that line alone is printed, is 21 cents. Under present conditions a paper may almost have a circulation too large to be profitable. Up to 1880 type was made and set very much as it had been from its first invention several hundred years before. Now^ the punches, one of the most ex- pensive of the things required in type-making, are cut almost automatically from one model for type of any size of a given style. The Wicks type-casting ma- chine is reported as about to reduce the cost of type one-half. Using this machine the London Times is set in new type every day. Certain typesetting ma- chines do the work of several men. The Lanston monotype casts and sets and justifies lines — does all that a hand compositor can do — automatically and with astonishing rapidity, under the guidance of a strip of paper properly perforated by a machine almost as easy to operate as a typewriter. The Lino- type machine casts solid bars of type with almost any desired changes of face. 77 LIBRARIES All large papers and most books are stereotyped before printing. A niaeliine no^v makes the stereo- type plates in a fraction of a minute from a matrix formed in a few seconds. Twenty years ago the making of these plates was a slow and laborious pro- cess. The cylinder perfecting press dates back fifty years. Rut improvements in presses have been very marked in the past twenty. Presses are now obtain- able which will deliver in one hour 10(1,000 news- papers complete and folded and printed in twelve colors. I don't need to speak of recent progress in the art of newsgathering. Your daily paper tells you of it. And the syndicating method of these days whereby a score of papers have, each for a small sum, the work of the best experts in literature, science, art and other fields— this is a marvel of yesterday, yet is familiar to us all. Books are set and stereotyped and printed as are the daily papers, and many of them almost as rapidly and cheaply. Machines fold them, gather them and sew them ; machines make their covers ; machines put cover and book together. A neat and attractive Itook bound in cloth and nicely lettered can be bought today, at retail, for 5 cents. The advertising habit has grown. The income of newspapers in this country from advertising alone is estimated at |10(),(H)(),000 per year. This is more than double the income from the same source in ISSO. The income from advertising is what makes the great newspaper possible. While these things have been thus developing, making things to read much easier to produce and therefore much cheaper, the market for them has steadily grown. The horizon of every man is wider 78 INCREASE OF TIlINCiS TO READ than it was t^voiity years ago ; lie Avaiits to know more about tilings; the schools turn out more readers than ever before; every street car invites to practice in reading; every vacant lot bears on its awful front a child's first reader, and on every wayside fence from here to the Pacific is a better reading lesson than our great grandsires found in the horn-books they treasured with such care. And what has resulted from these changes in the methods of producing things to read? In this coun- try libraries of 1,000 volumes and over have increased in number from about 2,500 to about 5,000 in the past twenty years. The number of volumes in these libraries increased in the same period from about 12,000,000 to about 41,000,000. The new books pro- duced each year number about 6,000. Of the copies of old books the number is outside the realm of sur- mise. Since 1880 the department store has come into the field. It sells books by the cord, not by the volume. Book production to-day in this country is certainly many times Avliat it was twenty years ago. Librari- ans lend a good many books in a year ; for a modest guess let us say 100,000,000. But that forms only a drop in the total of the reading done in this country of the total even of the reading of books. Of the production and reading of periodicals we must speak also chiefly in general terms, though we have a few figures which, as I have suggested, illumi- nate our generalities. In this country there is printed a daily newspaper every day for every five persons, about 20,000,000 copies per day. Since 1890 the capital invested in the printing and publishing business has more than doubled. In ten years the number of copies of papers and journals produced 79 LIBRARIES iu a year has doubled. In ten years the number of copies of papers and journals jjroduced in a year has doubled from 4,000,000,000 to 8,000,000,000. In fifty years the same product has increased twenty fold. Mr. Rossiter tells me he got these figures from returns sent into the census office direct from the publishers. I worked out the same statistics two years ago from a newspaper directory. My totals were about half as large as those of the twelfth census. The truth prob- abl}' lies somewhere between the two. Of this total issue the daily papers form about two-thirds. Other kinds of publications have increased much more slowly than the newspapers. The latter are gradu- ally taking up the whole field. They will increase in number. They have not yet secured as readers, so I believe, more than one-fourth of the total of possible readers in this country, which I put at about 40,000,000. These 30,000,000 non-consumers of to-day will come into the reading class with tremendous rapidit3\ Progress in such matters, as George lies so aptly says, is by leai)s and bounds. The newspaper reader is a possible book reader. In many cases he becomes both a book reader and a book buyer. The book market will increase in the next twenty years as it never has before — even in the astonishing last two decades of the nineteenth century. With a greater market there will come a relative decrease in the price per volume. The prizes of authorship will increase, more will write, and if our entire civiliza- tion is not moving on the wrong road, books will be better as well as cheaper and greater in number. In a country which is rushing headlong into the printing, publishing and reading habits; with the production of things to read, from the most trivial journal to the most ponderous volume of science or history, all on a purely commercial basis, what is the 80 INCREASE OF THINGS TO READ work we are to do? We were once keepers of the books; now we are keepers of a few of the many millions of books. Books were once the greater part of all that there was to read; now books are but a trifling portion of the things that are daily read. AVe mnst learn to handle books with less labor and expense. Onr incomes cannot, in their growth, keep pace with the growth in the nnndjer of the books we must take care of. The new book in very many cases deprives the older book of its usefulness. AA'e mnst tind some way of dropping from shelves and onr lists the older books which age makes useless. A distinction is made between books of power and books of knowledge. The conclusions drawn from tliis classification do not hold, save in small degree. The distinction is even very misleading in some of the aspects under which it has been presented. There are great old books, which are broad, universal, endur- ing, because they give us the penetrating view of life of the man of genius, of the seer, the poet, the native- born psychologist. There are others which have gathered greatness with the lapse of time because a fashion of scholarship, the dictates of a religion, the literary customs of a people have led to their reten- tion, and have woven them by quotation, paraphrase and allusion into the fabric of present literature. But these books are not many. A great part of those which are often counted as among them simply shine by a little borrowed light. And the best of the books of power — the worship wliich comes to them is often born of a fashion, of a pseudo culture which apes the real thing. And as the newspaper comes still closer to life, takes all knowledge for its province still more fully, brings us in closer touch each day with other peoples and their civilizations, we must — at least the coming generation must — loosen a little our hold on 81 LIBRARIES the historic, mvthologic, religious and literary back- ground of our own people that we may have time and strength and brain to spare for the task of broaden- ing into a sympathetic understanding of those other peoples. What Darwin lays down as the foundation of social order, sympathy, has, for indispensable ele- ments, community of interest and likeness in knowl- edge. We hope for the federation of the world. In preparation for it each race must regard less exclu- sively its own past and acquaint itself more freely and more willingly with the religious and social legacies of other races. So the great books will lose their uniqueness, because other great books of other great peoples will stand beside them as their equals. Moreover, it is not from books, even from the great books, that the man of action chiefly gets his insight into human nature, into the societ}' in which he lives. Life is before him. He sees it, lives it, and interprets it for himself. The thing he needs, that he may first exercise his imagination on the work that lies before him, and then carry out that which he has imagined, is the latest record of man's control over nature. His psychology comes from birth and daily exercise. His facts, these must be handed to him hj his fellows. It is science that he must have. The books of chemistry, of engineering, of maclunery — these are for him the books of power. The great books of the humanities, these we must have; but with these, almost before these, we must liave tlie books of knowledge. And they come, and go, so swiftly; they replace one another like shadows on the wall. Those which time has made useless gather on our shelves; old age and desuetude creep on them almost in a day. We must drop the old ones; secure the new ones; make them quickly accessible ; invite all to their use ; gather 82 INCREASE OF THINGS TO READ young workingmen about them; make ourselves in this field of action — this field which covers so great a part of the whole area of modern life— quite indis- pensable. To come to simple and practicable suggestions: we librarians should collect and publish in various forms annotated lists of the latest books as they appear on scientific and industrial subjects. We are several thousand strong. We can cooperate if we will. We should not wait for men outside our ranks again to set us the example. Open shelves are here to stay. The public knows when it comes into its own, even if it does not always know its own before it inherits it. A business insti- tution can place its books on open cases in a thousand drug stores and count its losses as a small fraction of what it gains thereby. Why cannot the public library bring its books in somewhat similar fashion into the heart of a city, and count the gain to 999 citizens as more than compensating for their loss from the meanness of the thousandth. I wonder if publicity of scandals promotes wick- edness? Vice stalks at large through a thousand thousand pages of the public press each day. I won- der if thereby vice groAVS in favor? Probably more crimes are read of every day in America by more peo- ple than in any other country in the world. I wonder if we are more vicious than others? I doubt it. At any rate it waits to be proved. Of the viceful novel the same things are true. We read them; and our social fabric still hangs together. My conclusion is this, that, as to fiction in our libraries it is simple- mindedness in us that leads us to haggle and quibble over the question of admitting a certain novel to our shelves when the papers every day give everybody their full of stories more immoral than the novel and when 83 LIBRARIES the very novel in question has, while we weigh and consider, already been read by more thousands than will ever find it on our shelves. I am aware that as a public institution we must lend an ear to Mrs. Grundy — I would it were a deaf one ! But with fiction, the question is not so much, does it square with our notions of purity, as has it strength? Is it alive? Is it true? Does it say something? Is it from the brain of a prophet, a poet, a diviner of things? The canting twaddler, his are the books we can dispense with. I would like to speak of the opportunities libraries have, from the changed conditions of printing and of picture reproduction, to promote the best kind of art education — the art education which means increased art appreciation, increased aesthetic sensitiveness. But that is too long a story. I must, however, call your attention, though very brielly, to the work that lies before us in cooperation Avith publishers and book sellers. Our present controversy with them is de- plorable. It is born of ignorance of the mutual aid we might give one another, the possibility of which seems never to have been realized. To mention only one point: above all other persons we hold the key to the tastes and interests, as to the books for young people in this country — the coming readers and buy- ers of books. This through our intimate and friendly relations with schools and teachers. In one way and another I have from time to time in the past ten years tried to tell publishers that libraries can help them, and would like to do so, and I have tried to tell librarians that they can help the publishers, and that they should. The ])ublishers have stood by the conservatism of the dollars in sight; we have stood on a stiijud dignity, and we are apparently farther apart than ever. I 1»elieve tliat the full and free discussion 84 INCREASE OF THINGS TO READ of our relations, which is coming, will result in oar arriving at an understanding of one another and at a generous and helpful cooperation. Another point in our management of libraries illuminated by a plain presentation of the facts of modern print-production is our relations to the daily press. The press must and does give us the "news." Within this little Avord are now embraced all aspects of human activity. Our function it will be to help the people who establish us to select from all printed presentments of the life of today those best adapted to their needs. From the papers we can rightly ask, and, save for slips now and then, due to human frail- ties, to weak points unavoidable in a machine so great and complex as a modern newspaper offtce, we need never ask in vain for sympathetic aid. We have never asked enough. A body of workers as large as ours, one not lacking in persons of sense and discern- ment, engaged heart and soul in a good and helpful public service, a body like this owes it to the work it is trying to do to put that work early, late and often before the public. I have long advocated a committee of the American Library Association on publicity. It should have taken up the work ten years ago. It is not too soon to begin. Our forerun- ners were students, consumers of the midnight oil. They held themselves apart. They modestly offered to the world, now and again, the results of their labors. Our work is different; Ave make libraries useful to the scholars, but also we try to make them active agencies in popular education. For this latter work especially we need daily the publicity, the kindly criticism and the encouragement which the newspapers have always shoAvn themselves ready to give. 85 MERE WORDS Address Delivered before the New Jersey State Teachers' Association, Trenton, December 29, 1902 We sometimes speak scornfully of "mere words." That is because it is easier to make sounds tlian it is to talk sense. Orators tend to run to sound. A pinch of plain reason makes a multitude of fine words seem like substantial mental food. The younger we are the more ready we are to take the crackling of a few thorns for a good hot fire. Where deception is easy deceivers multiply. So good teachers are always on the watch against the word habit. And they wisely speak in scorn, sometimes, of "mere words." But now and then the word's side of the case may properly be presented. Words mark us off from other animals. When we had invented language we had climbed on to the high table-land of humanity. We are the only rea- sonable race. If other creatures are rational, their reasoning is hardly of our kind. We think almost solely in words ; and can we think of a thought which —not using words— is not the kind of thought we use when we think? The question is a pleasant puzzle. At least it serves my turn, for I am trying to bring up vividly the idea that words underlie our whole life ; are the signs of our nobility and a cause thereof ; are bonds of society, the records of our pro- gress and the steps on which we rise. And they are, some of them, as full of emotion as others are of meaning. Association, constant use, experience, story, fable, history, all have made them able to arouse in us sentiments grave and gay, feelings of 87 LIBRARIES o-rief, pity, joy, reverence, emotion, wonder. It is a curious and astounding thing this power to touch all the stops in the complex organ of our emotions which a "mere word" enjoys. ^Vere a violinist to play to you here and now a bar or two from "Yankee Doodle" or "America" or "Home, Sweet Home" or "Dixie," you would be moved, each and every one of you; vaguely perhaps, perhaps very definitely, but some- how the mere vibration of the strings of the violin would thrill through every one of us. Tliis is won- derful when soberly thought of. Still more wonder- ful it is that the vibrations I may set in motion from my throat, fashioned at my Avill to make a certain familiar word, can likewise move you, and still more definitely, deeply, and permanently than the far more cunningly-fashioned notes of the violin. I will try it. Be as coldly observant and critical as you please — while I simply name to you a few names — it will only make my little experiment the more interesting: "Aladdin, J>abylon, the Pyramids, Homer, Ulys- ses, the rarthenon, the Tiber, Julius Caesar, the Goths, Charlemagne, King Alfred, Richard of the Lion Heart, the Crusades, Napoleon, A>':iterl(K>, Lex- ington, Washington, the Nile, Pharaoh, ^Nloses, Pales- tine, Herod, the sea of Galilee, Nazareth, the Garden of Gethsemane, Calvary." As I rei)eated those words you got from them a feeling of sympathy, of awe, of vast distance, of long lapse of years, of exultation, of reverence, of tender- ness, and with these feelings, not at once perhaps as strong and clear as "Dixie" could arouse, but deeper, came a tumult of thoughts of every form and nature. In, or with, or by those few simple sounds you trav- eled, from the Egyi)t of three thousand years ago down tiirough Greece and Rome, and the Miiblle Ages, 88 MERE WORDS and modern times to our Revolution, and then went back for a moment to the great figure of all history and to the religion in which yon live. Just a handfnl of words. Consider their power. "Mere words !" This is not all of my argument. This sensitive- ness to words does not come by nature. One may be born to be musical. One is not born to a knowl- edge of Julius Caesar. We speak of such things as my little list of words recalls as part of the inheri- tance of the race. They are not so save in a re- stricted sense. We do not inherit them. We learn them. Many times as the story of Aladdin has l)een told, it must be told again for each and every child, as new generations come on the stage. Consider tlie observation, reading, and study that each of you engaged in before your brains were so attuned that those simple sounds I made aroused in them sym- pathetic vibrations of thought and feeling. Was it worth your while? Do 3^ou feel that, being thus attuned, you have a better claim to rank as women of intelligence? We all seek pleasure. To make to-morrow not less full of joy than to-day, and to keep from it some of to-day's pains and sorrows; this sums up our aims. I am not forgetting that oue of to-morrow's anticipated pleasures may be the making others a little happier than we did to-day. I am not now going into the field of ethics. I am trying to bring out in a little different light the old picture of the delights of a many-sided interest. The oyster may find content in mud and high water, the cow in her cud and the shade of a tree. We of the great race of human-kind have long thought it better worth our while to count time by interests, images, thoughts, emotions, than by vaca- tions and holidays. We like to live. We think living 89 LIBRAKIES is worth while. And Ave put all we can into the field of our own intellect and emotions, that life may thereby be long, however short and few its days. Going on with the argument for a moment: far more effective in playing on our emotions and broad- ening our horizon than single words, are words in combination. Here the skill of the artist comes in, and here, too, we get in greater strength the elements of memory, habit, association, and suggestion. This is a commonplace, the power of language; our de- pendence on it; the strong and many-stranded and multi-colored warp it makes for the wonderful tapes- try of the life of man, of which our daily conduct is the woof. It is a commonplace, but one that we find more marvelous, more admirable, fresher in its newness with each day's progress in our lifelong education. Let me point my moral witli a few simple phrases which your own manner of up-bringing have made fit to move you : ''In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the' deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the waters. And God said. Let there be light : and there was light. "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words, witliout knowledge? "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee and answer thou me. "Where Avast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. 90 MERE WORDS "Who liatli laid tlie measures thereof, if thou knowest: or who hath stretched the line upon it? "Whereupon are the foundations thereof fast- ened? or who laid the corner thereof; "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy' r9 "Canst thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season ; or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? ******* "The Lord is my Shepherd ; I shall not want. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters. "He restoreth my soul : he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.'' ******* Of the power of these phrases to move us I need not speak. We read them, we hear them— and they conquer us. We have come now to reading, and I am nearer the point I wish to impress upon you. I have re- minded you that you live in words; that through them your life is compact of meaning and full of delights. I have needed but to hint that only by long study, by constant practice in them, by varied experience with thousands of them in many thou- sands of relations, have words come to bring to you a full burden of suggestion, a good measure of joy. 91 LIBRARIES The coiichisiou is plain. To live ii full life we must will a full appreciation of all that words convey, we must understand their simplest message; also, we must feel their deeper significance, as when a master hand plays upon them and presents to us — as does Emerson, for example, in his "Concord Bridge" — a world of human nature and human life in a few short lines. This is no question of A, B, C. This knowledge of words does not come at the end of the Fourth Reader. This is a matter of many men of talents as set forth in their books. To know life, to feel life, to know our fellows, to live, in a deep sense of that word, we must have met the kings among men in the words in which they have set themselves before us. The old things that belong to our race, the gods, the heroes, the scenes, the deeds, the fancies of our fathers' fathers, all these we must have taken up into ourselves before life can have for us that fullness we desire. In a word, we must read. We have come now to the relations of libraries and schools. The libraries are established that they may gather together the best of the fruits of the tree -of human speech, spread them before men in all liberality and invite all to enjoy them. The schools are in part established that they may tell the young how to enjoy this feast. They do this. How much more they do for civility, honesty, and other simple and fundamental virtues in those first six years of school I am not here to tell you. They teach the young to read. They put them in touch with words and phrases; they point out to them the delectable mountains of human thought and action as set forth in "mere words," and then they let them go. It is to be lamented that they go so soon. At twelve, at thirteen, at fourteen at the most these young men 92 MERE WORDS and women in your care, whose lives could be so broadened, sweetened, mellowed, Immanized by a few years' daily contact with the wisest, noblest, 'wittiest of our kind as their own words portray them — at this early age, when reading has hardly begun, they leave you, and they leave almost all of the best reading at the same time. If, now— and I told you my point is an old, familiar one, of which, none the less, I hope you will never tire— if now, you can bring these young citizens of yours into sympathy with the books the libraries would persuade tliem to read; if you make ''mere Avords" inviting to them; if you c-an impress upon them the reading habit; then the libraries can supplement your good work ; will rejoice in empty shelves ; Avill feel that they are not in vain ; and the coming generations will delight, one and all, in that which good books can give; will speak more plainly; will think more clearly; will be less often led astray by the "mere words" of false prophets of every kind; will see that all men are of the one country of humanity ; and will, to sum it all, be better citizens of a good state. To get children into the reading habit you need right at your elbow some of the good l)ooks tlie libraries contain. You need this one to help you in your work; that one to broaden, for the pupils, the text book's limited view; another to tell them more of the great man or the notable event at which the lesson only hints. You need them to help you to find the one field of knowledge in which that boy, a seem- ing monument of indifference — and you all have such in your classes — may find an interest; and always you need them of many kinds to promote practice in reading, to encourage the reading habit, to send home with the pupils to their firesides. Tlie day will come when every schoolroom in the 93 LIBRARIES land will be a branch of its nearest library. All pres- ent tendencies in library work point that way. That is the relation of library and school I have worked towards for a good many years. Children mnst learn to read. They mnst learn to read readily, and to read understandingly. For this they need practice. They mnst form the habit of reading; and the habit of reading good things. And all this they must do before they leave your care at thirteen or fourteen years of age. The supplementary reader has done much in this direction. How much only the older among you can realize. The libraries, with a branch in every schoolroom, will do more. What can yon do to help them? First, if you have a iniblic library in your town make yourself familiar with it. Learn how to use it; how to get books from it; learn to use its books of reference, what its resources are in the lines you are teaching, and discover all the things it is willing and able to do for you in the way of books. Will jt lend you an armful? Will it buy the books you ask for, if not already on its shelves? Will it welcome your pupils and lend them books? Will it receive courteously a roomful of them if they come for some reasonable purpose? Learn those things. You will find the learning a pleasure. Next, test your own knowledge of the best books for the young. If you have not read them already, if evil fortune denied to your childhood the fearsome delight of discovering, with Crusoe, a strange foot- print on the sandy shore; if you never saw Giant Despair overthrown, or the Sleeping Beauty wake, or the portcullis graze Marmion's plume, it is still not too late. You sinned, or were sinned against, or both. But the gateway to the realm of childhood's 94 MERE WORDS fancies is never closed. Get Scudder's "Children's Book" and read it through. Read also the good books about children by grown up people for grown up people. Try Barrie's "Little White Bird," and see if birth and education have made you fit to enjoy a master of Englisli, a man of tenderest sympathies, a prophet of the land of children. All this, you may tell me you have done. This seems to you an old story. Your supplementary readers have brought you and your pupils into close touch with these things. Let us hope this is so. But I believe you will find there is something yet to do in reading in which the library can be of help. Reading comes by practice. The practice which a pupil gets during school hours does not make him a quick and skillful reader. There is not enough of it. If you encourage the reading habit and lead that habit, as you easily can, along good lines, your pupils will gain much, simply in knowledge of words, in ability to get the meaning out of print, even though w'e say nothing of the help their reading will give them in other ways. I have lectured you enough. I am afraid I may alarm you by my preaching ; may make books seem a burden and public libraries things to be avoided. That would be a grievous mistake. Libraries are pleasant places. Their shelves do not groan with the wisdom that is on them. They delight in their burdens. Their books are like your own companions, grave or gay, as nature made them. And one may believe that the great men, our fellows, who made the best of them, rejoice mightily when any words of theirs add to the happiness of any one of us. Libraries are founded to add to the joy of your lives and to lighten your daily work. 95 FICTION-KEADEES AND LIBRARIES Outlook, June 27, 1003 Some observers of the book market believe the day of the booming of the novel is nearly over. They think that the time when a new story can be puffed and advertised into tremendous popularity is past. This opinion has little basis in fact. Novels have been increasingly with us for a round hundred years. For several thousand years men have taken pleasure in prose fiction. Like the ruler, the priest, the trader, and the artist, the story-teller has been with us from camp-fires to cities and from huts to i^alaces. We cannot shake him off, and would not if we could. He has made us known to ourselves. At his best he has interpreted life for us, broadened us and mellowed us; at his poorest he has diverted us and made us forget the pettiness of our work and spirit. When his tales found the opportunity of print, and mul- tiplied themselves a thousand times in an hour, his fascination did not increase, but his circle of listeners widened. It is widening still. Consider the present situation and its signs of the future. There are to-day in this country probably twice as many readers of newspapers as there were ten years ago. Many of those who read before now read more. But those who read ten years ago could not, if they read all day and all night, consume the thousands of millions of papers and journals our presses now give us each year. The ranks of the readers get new recruits every day. A few come up into the reading class through high schools and col- leges ; but only the smallest fraction through the lat- ter, and only a pitifully small percentage through the 97 7 LlIiKAKIES former. The most tome up through A, 1>, ab, street signs, posters, nickel stories, and the daily paper itself. Not all of us are readers yet. There is much popular error on this subject. Few adults in America are illiterates; but not all who know how to read take advantage of their knowledge. The majority of all the possible readers in this countrj' do not, ])r()])- erly speaking, read at all. I mean this literally. I do not mean that they do not clearly understand what they read, but that they do not use print, save very rarely, for any purpose whatsoever. But out of this majority there are passing every year thousands and tens of thousands into the reading class. That this change has been taking place rapidly in the past ten years the growth of newspaper production and of an accompanying newspaper consumption in that jx^riod is abundant evidence. That the transformation is not complete, that many millions of literates have yet to graduate into the class of actual readers, could be shown by statistics of present newspaper consump- tion and of the possible readers in the country, set forth in connection with a study of the areas in which the present output of reading is consumed. Every month and every year a new army of users of ]>rint marches into the field out of the country of the non- reading. This army is recruited partly from the additions to our population, but chiefly, as I have said, from tliose who could read before and did not. These incoming hordes of devourers of books are nearly all of the class that gets its fundamentals only from the public schools, its practice from wayside fences and daily papers. They want the facts of life. They get them, disjointed and disconnected, from the newspapers. They want also the story ; the romnnce ; 98 FICTION-READERS AND LIBRARIES tlie coiitiimoiis, c-oiiiiected narrative, reflecting tlieir own life, bnt toiiclied witli more emotion than they are (jnite conscions of, and painting their ideals in bright, unmistakable colors with broad, strong con- trasts. In a word, they w^ant stories. At first they read chiefly authors whose names never appear in our literary journals. They read them more than any save careful observers ever realize. Gradually, out of the nmny millions, a few millions come into the field which we complacently s])eak of as "current literature." And these few millions are they who make it sure that novels, as they appear in this field of current literature, will continue to sell in huge editions, and will continue to be as readily subject to booms by skillful advertising as the latest soap or the newest health food. The sum of it all is, the people, as always, want stories. And"^ stories are probably good for them. The novel today seems to express the present man more fully than any other form of literature. It is tlie most common form of art. It can touch all subjects, express all feelings, teach all doctrines. Unless all signs fail, it is sure to widen its field still further, to become still more widely read, to teach us more readily, to set fortli our character, history, and aims more comprehensively still. As a librarian the subject of novels interests me keenly. The librarian is a public servant, appointed primarily not as a censor but as a distributer of books. He is employed to supply, but within certain limits, the books the people ask for. What are the limits? The people wish novels ; novels are probably helpful to them— which novels shall he give them? Financial considerations compel a selection. No library can buy all. Help in finding an approximate 99 LIBRAEIES aiiSAver to this important (iiiestioii can be got by learn- ing which authors, by the libraries' own showing, are chiefly in demand to-day. From thirty-fonr typical libraries in this country — libraries ranging in size from those of New Eng- land country towns to those of cities like St. Louis and Cleveland — I obtained lists of the names of all the authors of fiction for adults represented by the novels lent on three separate days ; also figures show- ing the total number of books of each author lent on" the three days. These names and figures I have tabulated, and I give some of the more important results below. In reading the names and figures several things should be taken note of, if we would avoid an entire misunderstanding of them. In the first place, this list shows the preference, not of book-buyers, but of free public library users. Of course borrowers at public libraries are also buyers of books, but this list represents their preferences as borrowers. General observation permits us to conclude that it represents fairly well also the preferences of the borrowers, and others, as book-buyers. The "best-selling" novels of a civen week are usuallv the most often-asked-for novels at the public libraries. This list, however, fails to follow the best-selling list more closely than it does because not all libraries buy all the best-selling novels, and because the borrower at the library usually takes some novel, even if lie cannot get the novel of his choice; and because this list, being a list of authors, not of books, is affected greatly by the fact that some of the authors in it are represented in most libraries by many different titles. Crawford, for example, stands first, partly by reason of the fact that he is almost always on the shelves. He is taken many 100 FICTION-READERS AND LIBRARIES times as a last resort. He is fairly popular ; and then there are so many of him ! Then we should remember that this list repre- sents in a measure the preference for books of a certain general class, rather than a preference for specific authors. Mary Johnston and Winston Churchill, for example, stand near the head ; but they are there because their books are of the type now popular — historic, dramatic, simple, and superficial, rather than deep and elemental. Were they to pub- lish no more books, their names would drop out of sight on another list of this kind made up a year from now ; while" Dumas and Dickens, men of more individuality, appealing to more permanent tastes, would occupy about the same positions they do here. Again, this is a list of writers, not of books. Were it a list of books, we may be sure the names would be very differently arranged. Mr. Cru'nden, of the St. Louis Library, has shown, by careful study of the issue of the more popular of the novels on his shelves, that "Les Miserables," "Vanity Fair," "The Three Guardsmen,'' and other books, put by common consent among the great books of the world, are those most often read by library borrowers ; that they main- tain their places in the front rank, in spite of the seemingly greater popularity of the novels of the hour. I have alluded to the fact that Crawford and other authors of like fecundity, as King and Roe, owe their prominence in part to the fact that they have written so many books. They are assisted in gaining their eminence — I am not now attempting to say whether that eminence reflects credit on the work the public libraries are doing or not — by the practice which is common in libraries of buying all the works 101 LIBRARIES of an author as tliev appear once he has gained the public's ear. It is quite customary, for example, having met the public demand with a dozen copies of the first success of Jenkins, to buy a dozen of Jenk- ins's later efforts as they appear, regardless of the question of their merit. And while they are doing this, librarians neglect, as inquiries I have made have shown, to supply the constant demand for the older novels on whicli time has set the seal of approval. Of a list of one hundred of the best novels, compiled by any competent judge, most librarians would find on their shelves in the busy season hardly more than half, in good presentable condition. This manner of novel-buying of course works to the disadvantage of the standards, and helps to bring into greater use the authors we find first on my list. But here another fact should be borne in mind — that, of popular novels of the hour no library buys enough copies to supply the demand. As it is the actual demand we are try- ing to measure, our figures fail us in that they show the demand as modified by an insufdcient supply. If all the libraries contributing to this report were to purchase the latest popular novel up to the limit of the inquiries made for it, a list like this would change as to the authors which stand near its head almost from day to day. Pro1)ably this ever-])resent limit of supply gives us in these returns a better index to the character of the average reading called for than would like returns from libraries wliidi supplied all calls for the latest craze in fiction. To make the significance of this list and its ac- companying figures ])('rfectly plain, I should say again that in thirty-four reiM'esentative libraries in this country there were lent on three days in tlie cur- rent year a total of 19,144 novels. These novels were 102 FICTION-READERS AND LIBRARIES by about 1,200 authors. Of the total number of novels — in round numbers, 20,000 — 078 were by F. Marion Crawford, 535 by Rosa N. Carey, 486 by Alexandre Dumas. Only those authors, seventy- seven in all, are here given whose books were lent to the number of more than seventy. Novelists pleasing to the ladies are in the lead. Carey, Douglas, Amelia Barr, and Burnham are uni- versal favorites with the women whose literary life is not unduly strenuous, who like a story of true love dealing Avith a manner of life not conspicuously dif- fering from their own. These leaders in popularity, like almost all on the list, are proper, conventional, and clean, and if the common opinion about novels and novel-reading is correct, they maj^ be said to be, with few exceptions, wholesome. The writers of fiction whom time has tried and experience has approved of are not near the front. Of Dickens, Scott, George Eliot, Thackeray, and Hawthorne, 772 novels were read out of the total of 20,000, or less than 4 per cent. ; while Carey, Douglas, Barr, Burnham, and Captain King found favor in the eyes of 2,087 borrowers, or nearlv 11 per cent of all. These figures probably represent fairly well the popular taste; that is, they represent the taste of that small portion of the community wliich keeps in a literary way up to the level, in general journalism, of the Ladies' Home Journal, and in current litera- ture of The Bookman. These readers include most of the readers of such books as come rightly or by a kind courtesy into the field of "literature." Of all the readers in tlie country they form, as I intimated earlier in this paper, oidy a small part. But they include most of the managers and directors of affairs. 103 LIBRARIES They are the substantial, socially efficient people on whom we rely. And this table here is a bit of evi- dence as to the wholesonieness of their tastes. Of course, if libraries were not all censors of read- ing in good degree, if they did not choose to keep the most frothy and the undeniably filthy from their shelves, this would be a different showing. But with shelves thus unguarded there would come to them much more freely other elements of the community, and our list would no longer be so closely indicative of the tastes of our friends and neighbors. It would speak of tastes Avhich we know exist, but find it pos- sible to ignore. List of the names of authors of fiction for adults more than seventy of ivhose works were borrowed in three days at thirty-four representative free pub- lic libraries in the country, tcith the number of copies borroKcd in each case : Rank. Author Vols. Rank. Author Vols. 1 Crawford 678 17 Crockett 256 2 Carey 535 18 Hector (Mrs. Alex- 3 Dumas 486 ander) 253 4 Douglas 396 19 Ford 235 5 Barr, Amelia 301 20 Caine 226 Burn ham 390 21 Dickens 221 7 Doyle 389 22 Wilkins 219 8 King 375 23 Mitchell 212 Hope 336 24 Howells 194 10 Barker 329 2.-> Corel li 184 11 Stockton 328 26 I>ulwer 180 12 Roe 323 27 Kipling 179 13 Johnston 303 28 Davis, R. H. 173 14 Churchill 302 29 Besant 172 15 Holmes, M. J. 299 30 Green, A. K. 169 IG Burnett 261 31 Merriman 165 104 FICTION-READERS AND LIBRARIES Rank. Author Vols. 32 Pool 165 33 Black 164 34 Scott 162 35 Baclieller 162 36 Duchess, The 159 37 Collins 158 38 Eliot 118 39 Cooper 116 40 Lyall, Edna 144 41 Harte 140 42 Marlitt 138 43 Allen, J. L. 136 44 Thackeray 136 45 Wilson, A. E. 135 46 Barrie 134 47 Harlancl 132 48 Thompson 131 49 Ward, Mrs. 127 50 Cable 124 51 Stevenson 122 52 Reade 118 53 Haogard 118 54 Weyman 118 Rank. Author Vols. 55 Chambers 115 56 Page 113 57 Catherwood 113 58 Craik 112 59 Hawthorne 105 00 Wood, Mrs. 104 01 Pemberton 103 02 Yonge 101 63 Rnssell 100 64 Balzac 97 65 Braddon 95 66 Harrison, Mrs. 95 67 Castle 93 68 Winter, J. S. 93 69 Tarkington 92 70 Hardy 88 71 Brady 87 72 Blackmore 85 73 Major 84 74 Zangwill 80 75 Kirk 79 76 Mark Twain 77 77 Rnnkle 71 105 WHAT THE PEOPLE READ Outlook, December J, 1903 Things to read and readers to enjoy tliem increase in ways we scarcely note, and wdth results none can estimate. If man is better for knowing more, then no generation has matched onr own in excellence. To be informed is not the same as to be wise; but cer- tainly it is a step away from ignorance. Ever^^ roadside fence is now a primer for the passer-by, every trolley-car a first reader to the traveler, and every hoarding a treatise on zoology, manufactures, and social problems. To-day, most read a little, if onW the signs and posters; some read newspapers — probably ten to twenty millions of the forty millions who could read them if they would. A few read novels; if the nu)st popular novel finds only a million l)uyers in a country where forty millions could read it if they would, who can say that novel- readers are more than a few? A very few, possibW two or three millions, read standard literature and serious contributions to thought and knowledge. Surely, the procession of readers grows larger every year, relatively as well as absolutely. The change in the character of what it reads, of this much can be said, little can be proved. The penny-dreadful and the Beadle of delightful memory led the way to the nickel lilu'ary and the copious chronicles of the little things of home. Alouzo and Melissa have their suc- cessors on every news-stand, and "Scottish Chiefs'' still give us blissful thrills, with no change of scene or costume and with slight deference to the latest fashion in dialogue. The best poetry seems to follow old models, and, as ever, there is little of the best, 107 LIBRARIES and that little, little read. Gibbon wrote good history long ago; Darwin i>ut forth tlie great book of science before most of us were born; and we get good his- tories and good science still. But now, as then, their readers are few. In the last ten years young people have come to form a large proportion of library borrowers, taking now nearly a third of all books lent. Like their elders, the children are fond of story-books, and select them seventy-four times out of a hundred. Adults read seventy novels to thirty other books, showing an apparent increase in the popularity of the "other books'' of about 40 per cent in ten years. Some complain that our natural history runs now to sentiment, and that the sentiment is only a little less false than the natural history. Glory be to the sentimentalist none the less. The librarian now enjoys with the teacher the sight of countless thou- sands of children eager to learn of the joys and trials of those other children of the wild. Thus sympathy comes and interest with it, and the habits of kind- ness and gentleness follow after. Every public library in the land is to-day a whole Kindness-to-Animals Society in itself, through the books of nature stories on its shelves. The geography of the schools is a far broader subject than it formerly was. The teacher now sup- plements the text book in a hundred ways. She calls on her public library for all that can throw light on the country under review, and travels written to attract the young are her especial delight. Yet our figures show no increase in travel reading. This awaits explanation. Where borrowers took one hundred books on social science ten years ago tlu^v now take one hundred and 108 WHAT THE TEOPLE EEAD ninety. This is not due to a greater interest in parti- san politics, which in libraries goes chiefly Avith history and biography. The newspaper's seem to give the people a surfeit of party platforms, issues, and candidatorial platitudes. Of history and biography the use among adults seems not to increase ; but children call for them, and have raised the total lendings in ten years by 70 and 24 per cent respectively. This is encouraging to the librarian, even though he knows he must chiefly thank his helpmeet the teacher for the change. From the historical story which the writer of boys' books weaves about Ticonderoga and Ethan Allen, to a biography of Allen and a history of the Kevolution, is an easy step, under a teacher's guidance. More- over, the child of foreign parents, still speaking his mother tongue at home, is eager to know of his new country, and calls for books of history and biography — real, true things he wants — where the American boy more often asks for stories. This phenomenon is not yet fully explained. It is observed in all libraries near centers of foreign population. It is one aspect of that astonishing assimilative power which our country possesses, and uses, almost unconsciously, to mold to its own ways all who come within its influence. But, after all, the change in reading for the better, as library statistics demonstrate it, is rather slight. The figures seem to indicate a drift from overmuch of literature of feeling — the novel — to literature of thinking; from emotion to judgment. They suggest it only; they do not demonstrate it. Such a change cannot be expected. None the less, we may find much cause for congratulation in the present situation. I have made a diagram illustrating the print-using 109 LIBRARIES habit ill the life of our people. If read from left to right, the ^vhole area represents the whole population of the United States. Its height represents, at the extreme left, all persons living who are under one year of age, and then, passing to the right, all those of each successive age, up to seventy, as indicated by the numbers at the bottom. The heavy curved line is the line of school attendance. School begins to gather in the children Avlien they are four; at seven it holds, for a time each year, 70 per cent of all of that age. Nearly all who enter remain until they are from ten to twelve. Then they begin to leave in large numbers, and hardly more than 30 per cent enter the high school at fourteen or fifteen, and the merest fraction enter college at nineteen or twenty. This tells the story. We scarcely do more tliaii teach our children to read. Between those who read much and those who read none there is of course no such hard and fast line as I have suggested. There are but fcAV who do not read at least the signs on the street-cars or the posters by the country road. P>ut reading, even in a very broad sense of the word, has not yet become a universal habit. Those Avho teach, those who read many things themselves, those who write books or contribute to newspapers, all associate chiefly with reading ])eople. They see countless opportunities for reading thrust under the eyes of every one. They con- sider the newspapers, the schools, tlie libraries, their own children, their own associates, and they conclude that every one reads. Then they tiike note of the character of the print Avhich confronts all eyes, the yelloAV journal, the trifling novel, the flimsy magazine, the nickel story papers, the torrent of that literature which they scorn, which rarely gets even the compli- 110 WHAT THE TEOPLE READ meiit of coiiclemnatioii from even the most trivial of literary journals, the literature of the submerged 90 per cent; and, viewing all these things, they conclude that not only does every one read, but that most read wretched stuff, and that the reading public's taste steadily deteriorates. Whereas the situation in fact is this • School attendance grows steadily larger every year, relatively as Avell as absolutely. It includes more of the children of five and six. It gathers more of the four and five-year-olds. And especially does it hold in school more children as they come to the working ages of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. This means that every year the million who leave school have had a longer training in print-using. At the same time, through school libraries and public libraries, and a wiser use of good literature for reading lessons, these million have each year more of the reading habit and a better taste. Most of them have, how- ever, not passed the sixth grade. Most of them come from homes where no reading is done. Most of them go at once into fields of work Avhere reading. is not a habit and ''literature'' is an unknown word. And to these we must add the many thousands who do not pass through the school area at all, not even for a few short years. We have, then, coming to-day into this vast kingdom of print— so appallingly vast, so de- pressingiy commonplace — a procession with the same general characteristics it has long had : a handful of college graduates, a larger group of high school grad- uates — combined, not 10 per cent of the whole — and a rank and file which reads very little, and that with difficulty. The procession, I say, has the same char- acteristics it has had for several generations past ; but it is larger, vastly larger, and grows larger every year. The demand for something to read comes now 111 LIBRARIES from millions, formerly from a few tlioiisand. They demand reading suited to their capacities and tastes, and the supply comes forth. The bill-board, the penny pai)er, and the 5-cent dreadful, these are their third and fourth readers, their literary primers, their introductions to better things. In reading them they are teaching themselves and improving themselves, and in almost the best possible way. They get what thej' wish, they read with interest and pleasure, they ges 1 40 50 READERS AND NON-READERS take profit therefrom. ^Moreover — and this is the other Aveighty fact in the case — they steadily improve in their choice. The chronicle of the growth of clean and wholesome journals, daily, weekly, and monthly, in the past two decades is just as wonderful in its way as that of the growth of those yellow papers which make us cringe. Cheap and loud newspapers will go on increasing in numbei*. The better i)apers will do the same. The day of the newspajier is yet to come. In twenty years we, as a people, will consume many times the daily 112 WHAT THE PEOPLE READ print per capita we now take in. Books also will mnlti])lT. ]N'(»yel-rea(ling- is in its very infancy. And so of other fields. ^Meanwhile the library, on the one side, joins forces with those who work in the field of school attendance, and helps to give the yonngest prodnct of the schools at least a glimpse of the pleas- ures and profits of good l)ooks. On the other side, it tries to make itself, as it were, tlie universal journal, the newspaper of all time, the handy book of reference for the worker and the laboratory of the scholar. 113 MAKING A LIBRARY KNOWN Address Delivered before the Long Island Library Club, 1905 In makiug a library known the first and best of all its own agencies is, of course, the delivery desk. At this place more people learn what the library is, how it conducts itself, what it wishes to do and what it is doing in the community, than anywhere else. At this place, also, visitors to the library get their impression of the administration of the institution. Here they learn to like or dislike it, to approve or disapprove of it, to wish it well or to criticize it, to give it sympathy and aid, or neglect and discouragement. It is a commonplace that the mos^t efficient peoj^le in a library, those best able both to attract and to help others, should be detailed to meet the public at the delivery desk. Unfortunately, owing to the way in which libraries are now organized, it is difficult to place many of the best of the staff at this point. I grow each year stronger in the opinion that the pur- chase, reception, indexing and general preparation for the shelves of books have withdrawn from the work of getting in touch with the public too much of the library's originality and skill. The catalogue has become, in a measure, to libraries an old man of the sea. Let us treat our books more simply, and our readers more skilfully. After all, an index is but a tool. It is the newspapers, of course, which of all out- side agencies chiefly help to make the library known. I do not need to enlarge on their almost universal sympathy with the work of the library, their unfail- ing courtesy toward it, their readiness to print material in regard to it, even although it must often 115 LIBRARIES seem to the editors not to liave a very strong newsy tiavor. A librarian ninst, of course, bring the ma- terial he wishes printed to the attention of the news- papers in the right way. His library mnst in the first place have that attitude toward the public which the newspaper may readily expect the public to approve of. He makes it manifest, if he can, that he wishes to have the library's door sill worn down as fast as possible by the coming and going of the feet of those who built and maintain it. Having made it plain that this is the general atti- tude of the library, he then presents t-he specific ma- terial he wishes to have printed in as attractive form as possible. The notes he sends, usually typeAvritten, are items of news, brief and plain, rather than demands or complaints. Most particularly he tries to keep the newspapers in touch with all changes and modifications of system. Nothing is better for a pultlic institution than publicity. The people who pay for its support are entitled to know — it is a part of their education to know— all its ins and outs, its receipts, its expenditures, its methods, its plans and ambitions. Newspapers are almost invariably willing to insert these brief notes. They feel that about the manage- ment of a public library there should not be, toward the public, the slightest intimation of a desire for secrecy. I learned this lesson well from that best of American newspapers, the Springfield Republican. Of course there are matters of petty and personal detail and subjects under consideration to publish wliich would show i)oor judgment or poor taste. The newspapers understand this. To illustrate what I have been saying about the courtesy of tlie newspaixMs toward libraries and their evident belief that libraries are engaged in educa- tional work, and i)roi)er to be noted frequently in IIG MAKING A LIBRARY KNOWN their columns, I have caused to be clipped from the newspapers in Newark all the things that have ap- peared about the library during thirty days. These items I have mounted on cardboard with notes to show when and Avhere they appeared. They were published in three newspapers of Newark, two daily and one Sunday paper. They are thirty-one in number. The longer articles, as you will see, are reports of, or papers read at, the meeting of the New Jersey Library Association at Asbury Park on October 18. I include them with the others because they went to the i)apers from the Newark Library, and were pre- I)ared at that library for the press. And further- more, the Newark librarian was the president of the association at that meeting and thought it his duty to secure as far as possible the publication of its proceedings. This showing of what the newspapers of a town have done for their public library in thirty days is more significant of the journals' good will toward the library than anything I can sa}'. The next in order is perhaps the catalogue, mean- ing by this printed book lists and bulletins, or what- ever form it may take. The question of the advisa- bility of having a complete catalogue of a library in one volume I cannot now go into. In a large town, where many cannot go to the library, a brief author list of all of the most important books in it seems to be quite an essential thing, though few libraries can now afford it. As to bulletins and lists in general, I am sure they should usually be made many, small and simple, instead of few, large and all-inclusive. The eight-page bulletin, for example, containing a list of all the books added to the library in a month, is almost as expensive as the same list printed on eight 117 LIBRAEIES separate sheets. In the latter form it can be given entire to any borrower who wishes the whole list. One of the sheets meets the wishes of nearly all the persons Avho care to take a list away. Lists thus published give eight times as many lists for the same money. These lists sliould be simple in tlieir entries, witli- out change in style and size of type, and without undue prominence given to the numbers. The more like ordinary reading matter the entry for the book is made, the more likely the ordinary reader is to understand it. These lists, especially if brief and devoted to some one topic, can be to good advantage mailed to persons in the toAvn who are known to be interested in special subjects. Work done for and through the schools comes next in order. Every teacher is a possible promoter of the library's work. She can win to it every year, if she will, forty or fifty friends in her pupils, and through them can win to its advocacy, and in a meas- ure to its use, almost as many families. Small wonder that we ask the schools to help us! It is the library's place to be of use to them; it is the library's good fortune if it have the skill to win their good will and active aid. If the library has a room in which meetings — edu- cational, charitable and civic — can be held, these meetings may almost be placed next in order among the library's agencies for making itself known. Most libraries are far too conservative in this matter. Few will remain so long. The schools are beginning to show us the way. We are to have Sunday lectures in the Newark Library, the school authorities having led the way by granting for that purpose buildings which a short time ago were thought sacred to the children's weekday work. lis MAKING A LIBRARY KNOWN The work which the library does for and with the study clubs and volunteer organizations of all kinds in its town is, of course, one of the good ways of making itself known, felt and appreciated. If the clubs meet in the library building the work for them is by so much the easier and more effective as a means of publicity. Many organizations have re- ceived much assistance from libraries in the way of suggestions, books and pictures. I believe the time is coming when they will go a step further and ask the libraries to provide them with courses of study. This is more likely to happen if libraries can secure the cooperation of experts in colleges and other places in the compilation of such courses. Circulars of all kinds and personal notes are helpful in bringing the library to the attention of individuals. Sometimes a weekly or monthly bulletin is sent to a group of people like the teachers or the members of some organization. It is desirable to bring the library to the attention of busy professional men and students, even those who have collections of their own and rarely use the library. These can sometimes be reached by sending to them a few times in each winter a postal card telling them that a certain book has just been received at the library, and will be held for a time, in case they care to see it. Posters and bulletins hung in conspicuous places throughout the city are useful methods of gaining the attention of many. Posters, like book lists and circulars, should be as brief as posssible. They should be well printed, and in case they are hung in hotel corridors, barber shops and other public places, they should be neatly and simply framed. Exhibitions in the library, either of material belonging to the library itself or of paintings or other 119 LIBRARIES things lent for tlie purpose, in many cases draw many to the institution. These exhibitions, like some of the other things I have mentioned, are oftentimes more helpful in making the library known through the opportunity they give for ncAVspaper note and comment, than through the actual visits paid to them by people interested. Whether or no much time should be spent in making a display or exhibition would seem to depend entirely on local conditions — the character of the library and of its community. The exact benefits that may be derived from this as from most other forms of advertising, it is impossible to estimate. Delivery and deposit stations bring the library to the very doors of many people in the city who never can visit the main building itself. Delivery stations seem a particularly unsympathetic way of getting books into people's hands. The arm's length method of selecting through a catalogue, the many disappointments because of the constant demand for the new books, of which the supply is always inade- quate, these alone discourage many from the con- tinued use of the delivery station. The deposit sta- tion, a small collection of 1>ooks placed in a store on open shelves and cared for by the storekeeper — this seems more successful. It is a representative of the library itself instead of the mere shadow thereof in the way of a book list. Home libraries have been very useful where care- fully and skilfully administered and have resulted in putting the library on a good footing with some of the people most difficult to reach. An objection to them is that if they are to be successful they must be carried on by skilled workers, workers who have been trained in the l)est methods of what is called 120 MAKING A LIBRARY KNOWN settlement work, and such people are not often found on the staff of a public library. Into the librarian's own personal work in a com- munity it is, of course, impossible to go in detail. He or she belongs to certain clubs and organizations. He, perhaps, makes many helpful acquaintances through a church, perhaps, through organizations like social clubs, perhaps, through business associ- ations like a board of trade. All of these forms of personal Avork will be found to draw attention in the right way to the library itself. The librarian must be well known if his library is, for he cannot, being a public servant, divorce himself in the public mind from the institution he adndnisters. Professional organizations like the national and state and local library associations give the librarian an opportunity — as you give me to-day — to present the work of his library to his constituents in a way which attracts their attention and informs them. Few citizens are slow to see that it is to their advan- tage to have their public servant, the librarian, inter- est himself in library meetings, make himself known as one proud of their library, interested in tlieir industries and progress, glad of an opportunity to represent their city and wishing always to learn of liis colleagues their latest and best ideas for adoption in his own community. I think it quite proper tliat I take advantage of the invitation you have kindly given me to speak to you to show you by indirection how proud Newark is of her beautiful library luiild- ing and how generous she is in her wish tlmt the institution which lives in it be active, helpful, and well advertised. 121 WHAT STATE AND LOCAL LIBKAKY ASSOCI- ATIONS CAN DO FOE LIBEARY INTERESTS Address Delivered before the American Library Association Conference, Portland, 1905 In one of the great books of the world, written about fifty years ago, the author has a chapter or two on man's mental and moral faculties. In them he tells how, as he modestly ventures to imagine it, men learned to be moral, to have a feeling for con- duct, to think of other men as possessed of rights, to be at peace with others, to understand others, to get help from others, to work with others for a com- mon end, to cooperate, to organize. This process, all compact with thought and feeling, this growth of the animal into man, has been long continued; it still goes on; it m-dj never end. Now, it is far in thought from the snarling of the white and yellow dogs of war in eastern Asia to our gathering of peaceful bookmen for mutual aid and consolation. Yet the two events illustrate at once the conditions from which we have come and the progress we have made. It pays, we now say, for some to work together; and it pays, we still say, for some to fight one another. That is our conclusion; thus far, and thus far only, the race has gone in that slow march toward humanity which Darwin so simply outlined fifty years ago. This is a large text for a humble theme. But why not begin with the obvious? If ever they seem of doubtful value — these organizers of ours — let us remind ourselves that by such in good part has man learned to be his neighbor's neighbor and that neigh- bor's fellow-citizen. To work with your fellows to a 123 LIBRARIES common end — this is to be civilized, to be moral, to be elKieient. This makes nations possible and promises the parliament of the Avorld. And so, in speaking of associations of librarians the first thing to be said is, that they effect so much b}' the mere fact tli;it tliey are. They do so mncli of which Ave are but vaguely conscious, they so often give to so many without outward sign tliat subtle feeling of comradeship wliich becomes before one knoAVS it a stimulus to further eff'ort and a guide to thiit effort's profitable expense. One may Avell say, then, that the best Avork of an association is the association itself. To put it more definitely, and to point to some of the secondary gains, we can say that to organize an association, no matter hoAV poorly attended its meet- ings may be, teaches much to those who organize it, if to no others. You need not fear over-organization. Take your lesson from modern industrialism. Be sure that tlie l;nvs of nature hold liere as elscAvhere and that tlie useless (lis;ii)i»ears. Seize the opportun- ity to get lessons in management and the art of Avorking togetlu'r. ^Moreover, tlu' meeting Avhich you carefully plan, provide si)eakers for, advertise among your colleagues, aimounce in the papers and perate? and that skill will follow? and that he who has power and will to cooperate has acquired a social education? The good book is alive. A gathering of good books is an organization of the wise. Any library may stand idle, but every library has infinite capacity for good work. The library can hold its books to the simple task of giving strength, incentive, and guid- ance to the few who spontaneously seek them; just as the school can wait upon the call of the student who comes and asks its aid. But the library may also awaken interest and stimulate inquiry; just as the school summons the indifferent to its tasks by making plain the pleasures and profits of the knowl- edge it can give. But the school can also command attendance and compel study; while the library can invite and attract, but no more. It is in the wide range of its ])owers, the variety of its profferings, and the number of its constituents that the library finds its advantages over school and college; and these same advantages assure the success of its efforts to add to the interest of life. P>ut first it must make known its powers. It is under the burden of misapprehension. Books were formerly for the bookish only. The bookish formed a class apart. They were literary in the old sense of the word. From those days comes the feeling that a public collection of books is a collection of literary books useful chiefly to the professed student of books and to the reader of hrlJcfi-lrffrr.'^. In my town a 138 HOW LIBRARIES PROMOTE INTEREST library can openly follow its mission for seventeen full years, and an active man of affairs in the town can still express surprise when he learns that his library will i^ladly answer his inquiries, to the full of its abilities, about the price of books, the choice of books, or the tests of wood-block paving. The in- stance is typical. The fact is told a thousand times yet it is still known to but few, that while the library is for students and readers it is not for them only, but is also for the daily use of every citizen. Just what this will mean in the life of our towns and cities, Avhen all are awake to its possibilities, it is impossible to say. I am sure the librarian will then look on its figures of books lent as even less important than he considers them today. First, then, I repeat, the library must make itself known, and it must make itself known, not so much as a library in the conventional sense of the word, as an index, easy to reach and easy to use, of all the facts of life, all the best theories of life, and all the skilfully woven fancies of life. The newspapers, many of them at least, under- stand the library better than the librarian. They note that to its shelves come reports of all that the world is doing, saying, and dreaming, and they may well Avonder that so little comes from them. The news is a little belated for morning scareheads, it is true; but in fullness, accuracy, and depth it excels. The librarian cannot retail this world-news through the daily press; but he can bring it nearer to his people than do a few figures of circulation and a bibliography of earthworms. Tlie daily record of the library's additions to the possibilities of profit, pleasure, and wisdom on its shelves should fill a corner of the paper and be found of interest by 139 LIBRARIES manj-. Librarians will know that I am not speaking from experience. Rather, I am prophesying. The library should be a commonplace to every one. To use it should be as natural when one needs news or knowledge, iiction or fact, as it is to use the trolley when one needs transportation. The telephone is the mutual friend of all. It is a great leveler, and it adds a million strong-threads to that great social fabric which we are all trying to weave. It brings the library, in a sense, to every fireside. That its use between the people and their books has been so little is another indication of the academic remoteness of the library. Having found by telephone that the book, pamphlet, journal, cata- log, quotation or what not is in the library, the inquirer should be able to have it quickly brought to him. Private enterprise delivers its goods; a public institution can well imitate this example as far as means permit. The newspaper and the telephone bring the library into the everj-day world. The newspaper — I am repeating my prophecy— shows from day to day how the library gathers the best that is done and thought and said in the world in every field. The morning paper says that Peary failed; the library soon will have in its books the story of the successes of his failure. Santos-Dumont flies; Herculaneum is to be excavated; the English soap trust dissolves; Japan floats a ship of war; — these are the morning's notes. Later the library offers the same, in book or journal, carefully considered and set in proper relations. Of each of these and ten thousand other things a few wish to know the full truth. So far as the lil)rary gets full and careful chronicles it should let their coming be known. To do this requires scholarship, 140 HOW LIBRARIES PROMOTE INTEREST of which our libraries have not enough. But paren- thetically let me say that they never did have enough. Many of the old librarians were readers, few of them were students. They cultivated the muses; but the muses did not respond. Their admirers mistook a cheerful literary geniality for high converse and apt reference to the learned for learning itself. Often it is possible for the library, by note, or postal, or brief list, to send to the one or the few in its city that word about book or journal which is just what he needs. In time the organized special information work of a public library will be very great. Many will ask for what they need when they need it. Many will ask, also, to be told when that which they need comes to the library shelf. Private enterprises can clip you the notes you wish from a thousand journals as they appear. Surely a public institution, for a moderate fee, if need be, can furnish notes of books and articles on special subjects. If you say all this is informing the library's con- stituents and not interesting them, then I have not made my chief point plain. The library contains in- formation, more or less full and recent according to its resources, on every subject that every person in its city finds it interesting and profitable to know about. And if there is any subject which would interest any of its people did they chance to hear of it — about that subject also the library has informa- tion. Now, given a storehouse like this, if it make itself widely known for what it is, present interests will be fed, new interests will be aroused. I am aware that these remarks smell more of commerce than of the lamp. The old-fashioned stu- dent, if he heard them, might well ask where he can find, under the conditions I suggest, that old-fash- 141 LIBRARIES ioiied library with its penetralia perfuuied with emanations from ancient volnmes in which the old- fashioned librarian pores over books that are books and joins with in(iuiriii<>- spirits in peaceful dialog. Let me say to this that 1 began with the axiom that libraries are for scholars. Then let me add that every library, even though the rumor get abroad that the active motion within it has penetrated the places some would wish reserved for the spirits of the dead and the meditations of quietists — every library, I say, no matter how grievously awake and sinfully modern it may be, can furnish a quiet corner for rumination. Every librarian delights in its readers. If to any the old books and a place apart are of the essence of library enjoyment, these the librarian can provide and will with pleasure. Then let me add that the disturbance of that fine quietude which old folios, disintegrating leathers, ancient dust, and venerable readers typify, by change, newness and restless use, is not a new thing. Had Caesar perfected for Rome the great public library he planned it would not have been an abode simply for the ancient browsers of the day — unless we are quite mistaken in our Caesar. When all the libraries of Rome rejected Ovid's books as not lit for their readers, the wits surely had their joke about silly and presumptions censors of morals and the passing of the good old times when libraries let the wise choose their own reading. The latter-day librarian, one says, is too commercial and talks too much of methods of persuasion and conducts his place as if readers were not born, but made by advertising. Well, the Ptolemies ransacked the world for books and then that these might not uselessly lie idle provided food and lodgings for the readers they invited I To this, 142 HOW LIBRARIES PROMOTE INTEREST with all its inoderiiitj, the American free public li- brai7 has not vet come. Lipsius asked, three cen- turies ago, why gather books if they are not to be freely used? Mazarin, fifty years later, was proud to open his library to all the world without excepting a living soul. These, mind you, are ancient ideas, not new ones. And it is cheering to feel that the librarian of to-day is awakening at last to their full import. The library, then, should be accumulative of books ; hospitai)le to students ; a sedative for quietists, and provocative of interests — and the last is not least. To be stimulating it must be known, easily reached, and by post and telephone easily bespoken. The rest of my argument is not so easily set down. I wish to touch in a few words on some of the activi- ties which, in harmony with the thought that a people's books should broaden and multiply that peo- ple's interest,* emanate from or find their first move- ments within our modern libraries. Again I do not speak from experience or from the history of any one library. I say simply that things like these are done in this, that, and the other village, town, or city; not all in any one. A lecturer of note is coming; a famous opera is revived; the art of printing is discussed; the river front is to be redeemed ; the smoke nuisance is to be abated ; the library sets forth in newspaper or special list the best and latest writings on each and every one of these topics. The town needs a museum of art, of science, of local history; the library is among the first to note the fact; by letters, lectures, and references to appro- priate books and pamphlets it brings the need home to the few best fitted to consider their advantages and 143 LIBRARIES opens a corner in the library- to the humble beginnings of one or all of them. Foreigners, knowing no English, flock to the fac- tories. The library calls in the children, and gives them the English books thej ask for ; through them it attracts the parents; learns that the latter wish to read of their new country in their own tongue; finds that there are no books in foreign languages Avhich simply and briefly describe us and our ways, and sets; to Avork to have them written. Posters about the library go up in railway' sta- tions, trolley cars, and other public places. Lecture courses are given in library halls and at them the library's appropriate books and lists thereof are shown and distributed. Children whose homes are without books, ideas, or reading habits are taught the pleasures of literature by wise story-tellers and skilful readers. Branches are set up here and there in cities ; books are sent by the basketful from the village library to country cross roads; open cases full of books are put in stores; tin}' libraries are sent to homes in remote corners of the city and to lone farmhouses among the hills ; a library agent tours a state, enlight- ens, interests, instructs, and exhorts by turns in every village and town — all to the end that more may find pleasure and profit from books and through them multiply their interests, moderate their prejudices, and broaden their sympathies. In due course every school-room becomes a library, every teacher a librarian, and every pupil is encour- aged to form the habit of reading good things and collecting ideas. The library displays collections of beautiful 144 HOW LIBKARIES PKOMOTE INTEREST things. The sciences and the trades also are shown, and the library becomes now a miniature museum of some industry, now of some art. The story could go on through many other details; and you may think it strange that one ventures to say it is not enough. In answer let me say that, for all our eighty million, we publish few of the best books, we do not maintain properly a single weekly or monthly journal of high scholarship, we are self- centered, unduly prejudiced in our judgments, and are thoughtless and clamant hero-worshippers. Our published utterances are what Ave should expect. Out of the conflict between them come many sparks of wit, but these rarely flame up into the clear light of sound learning. We need to feel that others also think, and think with care and with background of more learning than is given to many of our people to acquire. In the libraries are the books of the wise; the very souls of the wise. AYe are all learning to read ; perhaps the library will in time learn how to induce more to read the best. If many read the best, interests will multiply and deepen and, if Herbart Avas not mistaken, broader A'iews will be taken and wiser councils will more often prevail. Our Lindsay Swift laments the day "when the cry went forth that the librarian must be a business man and not a scholar." The edge of his kindly wit is turned a bit when we recall that he is himself in the library business; and we feel that so long as libraries find his like useful, scholarship is not forbidden among us ! iVlso we may take his humor Avitli better grace, if we remember that while many may refine subtly on the violin, flute, and other tender instru- ments, for a complete orchestra one at least must 145 10 LIBRARIES beat the drum. And, once more, it had been a sad day indeed if the cry had gone forth "that the librarian must be a scholar and not a business man." Thronhborhood. On the special arrangement and equipment of this room I need not here enlarge. The trend of educational development is toward this wider and fuller use of public buildings and to- ward this closer cooperation between the directors of formal education and the keepers of the people's books. The arrangement just described will probably not lead to the disappearance of the branch library as an offshoot of a main central independent institution, even if the branch be in a school house. The advan- tages which accrue to the community from the pos- session of a library with its own management and its own individuality seem to be too great to be given up for the sake of a possible reduction of expense. Branch libraries in the schools will probably continue to be parts of an independent library system. But toward such a cooperation and combination of the library and the public school as I have briefly outlined it would seem that we are steadily moving. The use of public school buildings for many pur- poses for Avhich, up to a very recent date, they were assumed not to be adapted, is but one special aspect of the recent rapid growth of municipal efficiency. Our cities have, as might be expected in a new coun- try, failed to govern themselves well. This failure has shown itself in many ways, and particularly in the lack of cooperation between departments. This lack has led to much duplication of labor, doul)ling of expense and neglect of important work that gained nobody's attention because it seemed everybody's busi- ness. Some cities, for example, have had three sets 184 BRANCH LIBRAIUES IN SCHOOLS of snmmer plaYi^rouiuls provided respectively by a board of education, a park and shade tree commission and a special commission on playgrounds. The educational work of a community includes day schools, evening schools, trade and vocational schools, playgrounds, summer schools, libraries, mu- seums of art, science and technology, and many other things. The well-governed city of the future may find it wise to group all these educational movements un- der one management. Whether that will be the best possible plan, no one as yet can tell. It is quite plain, however, that much closer cooperation will be insisted on than has heretofore been practiced between the bodies which manage a city's efforts to teach and train its youth. It is toward this helpful cooperation that school and library move when they unite in placing in each school building an ample and well- managed collection of the world's best books. l.sr) RELATIONS OF A LIBRARY TO ITS CITY Address Delivered before the League of American Municipalities, Buffalo, September IS, 1912 I seem to find myself coustitutionally opposed to the office-holder. We all have our sinful thoughts and perhaps this is mine ! Through one of life's little jokes I am an office-holder myself, partly, one might suppose, in punishment for my sinfulness of thought. Through another of life's little jokes the punishment does not fit the criminal, since I thoroughly enjoy my office-holding! For over twenty years I have found that I leave my library with regret, however long the day has been, and return to it always with delight. This anti-office-holding theory is simple and axi- omatic. A man conducting his own business wins money, fame and honor by attention, toil, integrity and brains; and loses money, fame and honor through negligence, sloth, double-dealing and stupid- ity. A man conducting a public business finds that excellence of work maj sometimes accompany him direct to the pillory of condemnation by his master the voter, and that work evilly done may sometimes go with high public favor. The man who runs a busi- ness finds that success Avaits chiefly on his own efforts ; the man in the public office finds that success waits on voters' whims. The man in business culti- vates his business ; the man in office must cultivate his constituents. The business man is driven to effi- ciency, the office-holder is driven to dally with the voter ! There you have in brief the theory under which we find that a democracy of offices and elections is condemned to submit to inefficient holders of office. 187 LIBRARIES And yet, here we are, and doing not so ill as the theory says we must. Perhaps the theory grants not enough to the factor of poor human nature. Perhaps human nature compels some of us to enjo}' our tasks and to do our best in them, regardless of tumult and shouting at the primaries aud astouudiug conclusious at the ballot-box. A friend in Newark who is but a close second and almost a first witli me in enthusiasm for democratic ideals, is fond of saying tliat after all public business is more lionestly managed than a great i)rivate Imsi- ness; perhaps not as effectively managed, — an over- plus of rotation in office is alone sufficient to prevent that, — but more decently and with less financial waste. I find it hard to believe him. Governmental sins are so obtrusive, are so hilariously dangled before us by an unterrified public press. But, in these later years I begin to see facts tliat weigh heavily on his side. Here is one. A great rail- road spent a few millions in improving its line. Un- der certain huge embankments it built arches for the passage of highways. Against due warnings, intent more on immediate economies than on community welfare or tlie voice of foretliought, it built these arches narrower than tlie state hiw commanded. Now it must spend about half a million doHars in rebuild- ing and widening tliese same arclies! Somewliere in that railroad's maiuigement is a spirit which is at times self-centered and pig-headed and here, for one of its demonstrations, the stockholders must meekly pay a sum large enough to arouse a noble tumult among the voters — were their city fathers to nuike a like error — of the largest munici])ality. And so, at sight of an example here ami there of excellence in office, easily found if you look, and of 188 RELATIONS OF A LTIiRARY TO ITS CITY stupidity and sin in plain and pure business, I become reconciled to my position as a delighted, somewhat laborious and I hope moderately successful office holder. As such it is a pleasure to meet with my fellows who are seeking to learn from one another so much of the fine and difficult art of city management as each may have discovered. If we must be municipal of- ficials, let us do our best to learn the art and craft of public business. Other trades, arts and sciences less difficult than city management have their clubs, leagues and associ- ations and pass the hat for contributions of ideas for the common purse of information. Then let man- agers of cities also join hands. In this business there is much to learn and nothing to conceal. There are no trade secrets in civics. The jealousies of size and beauty are for promoters and real estate speculators and are always squelched at last by health reports and census figures. In city government you can es- tablish no monopoly of excellence. You may use a patent pavement if you are in the patent pavement stage of development ; but the art of cheaply keeping it clean is not open to patent or copyright. The fact is that the world knows how to run a city in the best possible way. The world knows it, but no one man knows it and no one city knows it. I mean that somewhere in this or other lands, some mayor, fire or police commissioner, health officer, school supervisor or what not is running his particu- lar department better than it was ever run before, more easily, more cheaply, more agreeably to the public. It is our business to find him, get from him his method, always given for the asking, and apply it. 189 LIBRARIES The best in everj'^ line, that is what this league is seeking for and wishing to apply. The city that finds and applies these best ideas is the city that is best governed. A league devoted to the search for the world's best municipal ideas is a league to encourage. Here is where the library comes in. In books, journals and reports, that is, in print, are to be found all of these best ideas, and if you wish to find them, to print you must go. Now, it is a library's busi- ness to take care of all that's in print, to store it and index it and so fix it that it will yield up to the inquirer all that it contains. In print somewhere are nearly all the secrets of good city management. Your first library should be your own. You have already accepted the idea of a central bureau of mu- nicipal knowledge; you could do no better thing than to carry out the idea in all its fullness. Every city needs the expert, not now and then but at every turn. The expert is simply one wlio has cast an unpreju- diced eye on many actual experiments and drawn the obvious conclusion therefrom. A library of muni- cipal reports is a collection of municipal experiences. Gather these reports and put by them men able to draw from them the facts and to set the facts in good order, and expertness comes forth. In Newark we ignorantly quarrel over the paving of our Broad street. Your league library should send us, for a reasonable fee, the results of tlie latest experiments in paving of every kind under conditions like our own, and our quarrel would be at once relieved of igno- rance and reduced to dollars and cents. Every librarian in the country, every city govern- ment, every expert and every contractor for city work would welcome a great library founded by a h^igne of cities, Wlmtever it might cost it would earn that 190 KELATIONS OF A LIBRARY TO ITS CITY cost a huudred times over every year. Consider the countless letters and circulars every intelligent city department is every year paying for to get informa- tion from other cities, information which is always fragmentary and usually misleading. A league library would tell the whole story and tell it straight to a hundred cities at once at little more than the present cost of incomplete information to one. Consider also the endless errors of judgment into which cities fall through lack of the latest informa- tion on sewage, fire prevention, construction, admini- stration and a hundred other things, all costing money, often very much money, and nearly all avoid- able with the aid of a great central bureau of muni- cipal knoATledge and municipal experiences. But you are familiar with all this, and have begun the work indicated. I speak of it because as a librarian I realize how valuable a really great bureau would be and how gladly it would be welcomed and eagerly cooperated with by all the progressive public libraries in the country. Of this league library the municipal library of every city would be a branch. Much of the work municipal libraries now vainly attempt to do would be better done by that of the league. But each city would still have its own problems, peculiar to itself, in the solution. of which its own library would be most helpful. Moreover, every city must keep its own records with increasing care and must, if it is to legislate wisely, change its ordinances and draft new ones in the light of information which a municipal library, complete, well indexed and controlled by a master of books and print can alone furnish. The institution I have charge of is a free public library. It was established in 1889. Its building 191 LIBRARIES \va.s erected on vote of the citizens and at their own exi)ense in 1900, at a cost of -1325,000 and among all in the country which are at all like it in size or cost is easily the best. 1 was not in Newark when it was built so I speak without prejudice; I have worked in it for eleven ^ears and have seen manj' other libraries, so I speak with knowledge ; I am rather proud of good things in my adopted city, so I speak with pleasure; and as I now have the floor, I can speak without fear of immediate contradiction. The building being of the best, the institution it houses should enjoy a like degree of excellence. Here I am more modest in mj expression and will confine myself to saying that Newark seems to like it. An ounce of experience is Avorth a pound ftf theory, so instead of trying to describe to you the place an ideal library occupies in the life of an ideal city I am going to tell you very briefly what the Newark library has been and done in its city in the years I have known its work, since January, 1901. AVere there more time I would depart from my story now and then to tell of certain good things other libraries have done which we have not, for there are other libraries; and you will pretend to be reasonably sur- prised, I hope, when I say that some have done things we have not, or have done better what we have also done. But first let me give you an axiom or two. Public institutions should enjoy the approval, the respect and, I dare to use the word, the affection of their public. Do you inquire about the place of any city department in the life of its city? Go find if the public like it and are proud of it, and your question is answered. It is an axiom, is it not? And it ap- plies, does it not, as well to the private enterprise 192 RELATIONS OF A LIIiKAKY TO ITS CITY working within a city as surely and entirely as it does to any city department? How much more com- fortable, efficient and prosperous many a public utility business Avould have been in the past decade had they pasted that axiom in their hats, and then lived up to it! Now, I think Newark likes its public library and have faith she is proud of it. Tavo things lead me to these conclusions and lend me the conceit to say them: First, the generous hospitality with which I have been treated in all my eleven years of residence. I think they were proud of their library when I came, and they had reason to be if only because they built it and paid for it themselves, and quite naturally they expected it to continue to be worthy and enjoyable and to have at its head one whom they could pleas- antly endure. At any rate, there the good will was, and I defy any man of feeling to go to a new city and be received with good will and good wishes and hearty support, as I was, and not put forth his best in the effort to make his work a success. I hope these remarks are not too personal ! Another reason for thinking Newarkers like their library is that they support it. Our annual income has grown in eleven years from |^4,000 to $120,000, nearly threefold and it is difficult to find those who have begrudged the money. Following the axiom I gave you, is another, that if you like a thing you are willing to pay what it costs. Our library was established in 1889. For twelve years it was well but very modestly housed in an old remodeled theatre. It got its second wind, and almost a new birth when it moved into its building twelve years ago. It is the story of its eleven latest 193 13 LIBKAKIES years, diiriiij4' which I have known it intimately, that I shall tell you. In lUOl we had 79,(100 books and Newark people took home to read 315,000 a year; we now have 1*00,000 and this year we lend over a million. Now, those are the basic lignres of most estimates of libraries. And it is true that the good library grows in books and is more used by its patrons every year. But conditions so vary in different cities that these figures never tell the whole story. Newark is not a reading city. It is industrial, it is a snburl), and thousands of its adults speak English onh' a little and read it not at all. To promote the library's use we had to advertise it, and in advertising we spent much energy, time and money. The trustees said, in effect, "Our city has put into this plant, including land, building, equipment and books, about three- quarters of a million dollars. If this plant is idle that money is locked up and doesn't even draw inter- est. The people of our town don't know wliat a good thing their public library is, and it is our duty to show them and get them to use it." And they did', and the story of how they did is the story of the library's work over and above tlie buying, indexing and lending of books. One of the mysteries of modern library manage- ment is the pay roll. To explain that mystery is not my business today. I will only say that our pay roll takes about 53 per cent of our income, and that is the average in all the larger libraries of the country right now. This means that our library has been able to take a place in the city's life, besides buying and lending books, without spending more on salaries than do libraries which are not so municipally active. Our building is so large that we still have seven 194 RELATIONS OF A LIP.RARY TO ITS CITY rooms, having a total of more than 10,000 square feet, which the book part of onr work doesn't need. AVe have had some or all of the building open for public nse every day in eleven years save about twenty-five; a total of 50 per cent more hours than any other public building in the city, and more than three times as many hours as the school houses. I maintain that this is as it should be. A public building should be used. While the building was thus open the people of the city held in the spare rooms mentioned, in eleven years, about 6,000 meet- ings, by and for nearly 700 different organizations, with a total attendance of about 180,000. These meetings ranged from boys' debating clubs to the Board of Trade, and covered such subjects as city planning, charity, hospitals, pedagogy, tuberculosis, philosophy', languages, and the world's peace. As long as there was a room unused an^' public welfare educational movement, not looking for money profits to any individual, could find free of charge for its orderly meetings a warm, well-lighted and properly janitored room in the library building. On many days ten such meetings have been held. In this movement for getting the maximum of use out of a city's public educational buildings I wish to make here a claim for Newark as pioneer in liberality and extent. Of dis- turbance, bad feeling, trouble, because the A's could have a room for their meetings and the B's could not — of this kind of thing there was in the eleven years not an item worthy of mention. We call this daily use of the library plant very good advertising. While it has been going on the annual use of the library's books increased about 300 per cent while the population increased about 10 per cent. 195 LIBEARIES I said Newark is not a reading town. It seemed the library's business to try to make it one. Grown- ups can't be tangiit to use books. Children can; so we put a good deal of time, thought and money into plans for introducing school children to good books. In eleven years teachers have taken into their school rooms more than 5,000 little libraries of about fifty books each, kept them for a term and used them to encourage and guide the reading of their pupils. We have children's books in most of our branches, and we have a room for children in the library build- ing, and about a fourth of the million books we lend each 3'ear are borrowed by young people. We wanted to help interest the children in their city, so we began about ten years ago to gather inter- esting books, articles, clippings and pictures on Kewark. Then we induced a newspaper man who knew his own city to write a history of Newark for young people, and we published it. Then New- ark study began to creep into the public school course, and we continued to hunt up and reprint and lend short accounts of Newark institutions of all kinds, city departments, public buildings, parks, streets, trolleys, trees, water, sewage, hospitals, and scores of other things. Then the schools supplied themselves with better maps of the city, about ten feet square, than any city school had ever had before ; then the Board of Education asked an assistant superin- tendent to write a course of study on Newark for all the grades — and he did, and so we have the first carefully worked out and by far the most complete plan for teaching the children of a city to know their own city that the world has yet seen. Please put down this my second claim for Newark, that she is the pioneer in teaching children city patri- 196 EELATIONS OF A LIBRARY TO ITS CITY otism in the only rational way, by giving them, first, a knowledge of their city and so an intelligent interest in their city and, thereby, sympathy with their city, and, therefore, a wish to help their city to become more prosperous, better governed, clean, more beau- tiful and a more attractive place to live in. The library's share of all this work was also adver- tising, at least we called it so, and it paid. You know Newark has begun all-year schools in two of its biggest buildings; this being one of the first and the most successful trials of the plan. I was in one of the classrooms in August and found the children reciting a lesson on the story of our water supply from sheets of information the library had furnished. By and by we must spend a few millions more on our water plant. Those children will surely take an intelligent interest in the question. Some one asked if any of the class used library books. Nearly every hand went up. This was in the Italian quarter. Teachers are not yet well trained in the high and normal schools and colleges, which they attend while getting their equipment as pedagogues, to know chil- dren's books or to use a library. So we wrote text- books on these two subjects and have been giving our normal school students a short course on the latter, this year to 120 students, and are just about to give a course to the older students on the former. Some day all normal schools will themselves do these things; few do it yet. We do it because we think it good advertising, in the long run. The students go into the schools as teachers and in turn teach the children to use good books — the library's books and all others — and to use them to their profit. All our work with young people is managed from 197 LIBEARIES a special department which has a room and a sort of a bnrean of information for teachers in the main library building. Teachers need pictures in this pictorial age, and Ave have nearly 5(I0,0()() in the library, arranged like a huge pictorial dictionary under subjects, with 40,000 of them conveniently mounted and displayed, besides 800 big colored pictures, large enough to be seen across a school room, to decorate the walls and to illustrate subjects of study. Teachers borrow the smaller ones by tens of thousands and the larger by scores. In one of our high schools we have a library and a skilled librarian. It is one of the best institutions of its kind in the country. We expect to have similar libraries in our two new high scliools and in our normal school's new building. Also we expect to liave libraries for community use in many of our school buildings just as soon, and that will be very soon, as the world accepts to the full tlie axiom that a public building shoubl be always in use. For the high scliools we print pamplilet lists of gooeneral one, to Avhich I assume all librarians give assent : ''The librarian of a p\iblic library is that servant of the coniniunity who has in charge sources of infor- niation — books and journals of utility — as well as works of art in the form of books of literature. These sources of infornmtion should be such as fur- nish facts about the town or city which supports the library; not its history only, by any means, but present-day facts on subjects like character of popu- lation, industries, educational facilities, water supply and sanitary conditions. The books and journals of facts should include also statements from experts on problems of town development, like those of pav- ing, street layout, policing, fire protection, improve- ment of water supply and extension of educational facilities." If the theory thus briefly stated is sound, then every public library sliould have been a bureau of municipal information and municipal research and a general storeliouse of civic knowledge long before the so-called municipal library was ever mentioned. So much for wliat librarians should have done and did not do. Perhaps one of the most difficult problems Amer- icans are facing to-day is that of how to manage towns and cities. There is no short-cut to the solu- tion of this problem. New methods of election, new 203 LIBRARIES forms of ballot, new kinds of primaries, commission government — these alleged remedies are not remedies at all. The only sure cure for social inefficiency is increase of intelligence and good will. A city's public library tries to help this much- needed growth of intelligence and good will. Libra- rians have usually taken on faitli the doctrine that to read the world's great books is to grow in grace and social excellence, and have been satisfied if, through their activities, they increased in their re- spective communities the amount of use made of good literature. Special emphasis has been placed by them on the salutary effect on the American peo- ple of acquaintance with the world's classics. Now, I am skeptical of the value of acquaintance with the classics as an education in good citizenship or as an incentive thereto. I believe there is more inspira- tion to civic decency for a cliild in the story of how his community gets a sui)ply of pure water than there is in the best fairy tale ever devised or tlie noblest Teutonic myth ever born. A child can be taught to worship, in a measure, the heroes of another country and another time; but that worsliip will not lead him to refrain from sweeping the dirt from the sidewalk in front of his tenement into the street gutter. After imitation and habit — and he finds in most American cities few to imitate and still fewer to help him to good habits in civic cleanliness — the strongest impulse to consider his city's good looks and general well-being is knowl- edge of the why and wherefore of affairs, like side- walks, streets, gutters and the cost of street cleaning. Good will toward the community and the wish to serve it are born of acquaintance with it, just as 204 THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND PUBLICITY affection for one's friends and a desire to help them are born of close intimacy. Basing our work on this theory, we have in Newark been able, largely through the influence of the public library, to put to the front a very elab- orately' conceived and elaborately equipped enter- prise for publicity in municipal affairs. The method was as follows : Beginning ten years ago, the library accumulated municipal information. This information, if not already in suitable form for young people's use, it digested and arranged and simplified and issued on sheets for general use, and especially for the use of children. With the help of teachers, an interest in this information was aroused among many of the school pupils. Munici- pal affairs were used as topics for study, essay and discussion. This work went on for several years, increasing slowly in extent all the time. Finally it took definite shape at the hands of the educational authorities. There was then jiublished, in 1912, a "Course of study on the city of Newark," for use in all the schools of the citj^, from the first to the eighth grade, written by Mr. J. Wilmer Kennedy, assistant super- intendent of public schools. This was the first com- plete thing of its kind, so far as my knowledge goes, in the history of public education. Accompanying the "Course" itself, were many supplementary leaf- lets and appropriate maps. We look upon this as the most valuable contri- bution to publicity in municipal affairs that the Newark Library has had anything to do with. Only time will tell whether, being pushed in the schools, it will produce the effect hoped for. 205 LIBRARIES If it is successful, all future generatious of New- arkers will, in their xevj cliildliood, begin to learn their city; will know how it has grown, why it has grown as it has, what it has accomplished, in what it has failed, what it needs, and how the things it needs can best be obtained. lieing thus informed, they will not onh' vote intelligently once a year, but will also act intelligenth', and with some affection for the city, on every one of the 364 days between elections. The titles of the topics in this course of study and of the accompanying leaflets will help one to understand its scope and character. A few of them are: Literary landmarks of Newark, Men and women of Newark, Juvenile courts. Shade trees and parks, Noise in cities, Transportation, ^lilk supply. Playgrounds. A somewhat different form of publicity in public and quasi-public affairs has been carried on for sev- eral years in our main library, but more especially in what we call our Business Branch. At this branch we not only keef> on hand the kinds of information and the kinds of literature that we are using in our campaign for the promotion of city interest among young jDeople; we have also collected there a large mass of nmterial having to do with what may be called the private interests of Newark citizens, their business affairs. On the municipal, or governmental side, we in- clude the publications of the city of Newark, the county of Essex and the state of New Jersey, the publications of a good many otlier cities on those subjects in wliich Newark is just now particularly interested, and many publications of state and na- tional governments, ^laps of all kinds supplement this material, especially maps of Newark and Essex 206 THE PUBLIC LIUUARY AND PUBLICITY county, showing highways, trolley lines, water sup- ph', sewage equipment, fire stations, police stations, schools, voting districts and scores of other things. A vertical file contains newspaper clippings, pamphlets, programs, reports from special depart- ments and societies, on hundreds of civic, social and school subjects. This material furnishes definite information about ordinances, departmental organ- ization and general city conditions. All statements are accompanied with references to sources. Our periodical files give us advertisements of public contracts, county court caleiidar, building permits, new incorporations, conventions to be lield in Newark, quotations of local securities, bankrupt- cies, sheriff's sales, real estate transfers and mort- gages, excise licenses, automobile licenses and bank statements. We have ten real estate atlases cover- ing Newark, New York and vicinity. With this material we have gathered, as I have said, things of interest to men who are engaged in business of every kind. We collect business litera- ture, finding its field, I am sorry to say, almost unex- plored by any library agencies whatever. We made quite a careful study of industrial Newark. We sent circular letters on the follow-up system to about 2,000 of the city's manufacturers. We were able, from tliese replies, to make quite a complete index to Newark's industries. On the work of discovering and purchasing and arranging for use this municipal and general city improvement literature and tliis business material, the library spent a very considerable sum. The use made of it has amply justified the expenditure. From the point of view of what one may call literary efficiency, it can be said that this kind of 207 LIBRARIES literature is uiiicli more effective thau is tlie "liter- ature of the studeut,'' so-called. I mean material on the outer margin of the field of belles-lettres, like volumes of comments on Dante or Shakespeare. To explain further : If one speaks of "resources for students" in American libraries, you think at once of history, literature, philology, philosophy, art, archaeology, science and applied arts, and the men- tal picture is of long sets of proceedings of societies and of rare and ancient volumes. Slowly, with some reluctance, and only after vigorous suggestion, does one think of a "student" as one who is busied with yesterday's books and this morning's journals and the advance sheets of pamphlets not jat issued. As all admit that libraries should be helpful to students, and as students are not easily conceived of in terms of newspaper clippings and yesterday's journals and this morning's pamphlets and of directories of com- merce and the trades, it is not strange that librarians have been slow in spending monej' and labor on these things. Our civic and business material has been fairlj^ well used. We feel sure it would be used more if it were more widely known. The trustees finally de- cided, at my suggestion, to try to promote knowledge of the things the library possesses which are espe- cially useful to our citizens by the p\d)lication of a journal. As this journal was to appear in an indus- trial city, and as it Avas to exploit civic and indus- trial sources of information, it was decided to make it the opposite of academic — to devote its pages largely to civic and industrial news and the discus- sion of city problems. It was hoped that in this waj' it wonbl win gradually a fairly wide range of 208 THE PUBLIC LllUiAKY AND PUBLICITY readers, and those readers iK)tiii<;' that their public library publishes a journal full of municipal and busi- ness news, would come to realize that the library possesses this kind of news — and then would be induced to use it. It was not supposed that our journal, now fifteen months old, would make any notable contributions to the literature either of business or of city govern- ment. It continues, on the one hand, the kind of work already spoken of which led to the establish- ment of the course of study on Newark in the schools, and on the other hand, the kind of work that led to the acc\imulation of our large mass of Newark busi- ness information. Its basic puri)ose is ahvays to advertise the library to the citizens. It is a new thing, quite new. The question of what information it shall give and what subjects it shall discuss is a difficult one, to be met afresh every month. It has been, on the side of subscriptions, moder- ately successful only. The number of copies usually printed is 1,500. It has distributed 2,000, 3,000 and 6,500 on specific occasions. One cannot say positively that it is doing the work that it was hoped it might do; but we believe that it is. I notice a decidedly 'literary" tendency among librarians, and a very natural tendency it is. When reference is made, in conversation or in public meet- ings, to the business side of life and the library's relation to it, some eager friend of culture usually goes through the appropriate incantations, calls up the ghosts of the classics, and, in their name, exhorts his fellows not to forget that, after all, the world is made good by doing good, and that the soul is more 209 14 LIBRARIES than broad and butter, and tlie "the light that never was on sea or land'' is more important than a good supply, at a fair price, of electric current. 1 have no particular objections to this method of justifying one's conservation, of making still more comfortable one's comfortable adjustment to things as t\\ej are. I will say, however, that I would be very sorry if I missed, in a discussion of this or of any similar presentation of the utilitarian work which awaits all librarians in public libraries, allu- sions to spirituality, vitality, culture, breadth, liter- ature of power, and other things familiar to those who deal in flai^-doodle. 210 MAKING THE LIBRARY A BUSINESS AID Town Development, March, 1913 Do you know your own public library? If you do not, you should, and for this reason: You are interested in the development of your own city, else you would not be reading a magazine called Town Development. Therefore you frequently want to get information about your city. You want to know, for example, why the streets are not kept cleaner. To help you to answer this ques- tion you want to know how much your city spends per year in cleaning its streets. You want to know how much this amounts to per square yard. You want to know whether the price per square yard your city pays each year for cleaning its streets is as much as, or more than or less than other cities pay whose streets are kept much cleaner than the streets of your city. Again, you want to know why the paving of your main business thoroughfares is always in such poor condition; and so you want to know how the money spent in paving and repairs for streets in your city compares with the money spent on similar work in other cities. You want to know why some of your school houses are built close to trolley lines, so that teachers and pupils lose about a fifth of all their school hours because they cannot hear one another talk. And you wonder if other cities do the same foolish and expen- sive thing. You want to know also about freight rates, rates of fire insurance, the number and cost per year of saloon licenses, and the city's sanitary con- dition, the prospects for improved sewage disposal, 211 LIBRAKIES the character of your moving picture shows, and a score of other things, some of them connected with the welfare of jour home and family', some having to do with the development of your business, and some being simj^h' questions of general town improve- ment in which as a well-bred citizen you are deeply interested. Now, you should know your own public library because it will supply you with answers to questions like those just suggested. Almost every public library in the country is eager to be of use in a practical, everyday way to the citizens of its com- munity. If it has not the kind of information you are after, it would like to get it. In most cases it would have gotten that kind of information long ago, if it had been asked to do so. It is difficult for a library to decide to spend time and money in getting information that would be useful to the business men of its community, to its active town-development citizens, unless it is quite sure that the time and money thus spent will not be wasted for lack of use. You may say that your library should first get the information its citizens need for the better building of their private business and for the better understanding of public affairs, and then — should advertise widely Avliat it has. AYell, that is what the Public Library of Newark has tried to do. It has perhaps gone farther than almost any other library in this work of gathering sources of civic and commercial information and putting tliat information where the city's active, com- mercial citizens can get it and advertising the fact that the informatiou is in a convenient jdace and can be had for the asking. It probably has not done 212 THE LIBRARY A BUSINESS AID more in this line than most libraries would be quite willing to do, if they were asked. You should know your own library and ask it to help you and your fellow citizens in promoting your business and devel- oping your city. The main building of the Newark library is three- quarters of a mile from the city's center. The New- ark business man does not need to go to the main building to get his information. He steps just around the corner from the city's traffic, commercial and office center to a branch called a business branch. This branch is much more like a store than a library. It is on the sidewalk level, and has a big show window where books, maps, charts, globes, signs aTid pictures, often changed, make as interesting a display as does any show window in the street. In- side is one large room, with more floor space than many large towns have got in the Carnegie-built marble palaces which they stooped to ask for — 3,100 square feet. The room is high, well lighted, quiet and inviting. It is open every week-day from 9 a.m. to 1) p.m. Its resources include 13,000 books, maps of more than 1,000 cities, towns, states and countries of all parts of the world, 700 directories, which cover many thousand different towns and countries and scores of occupations; the latest publications of cities, coun- ties and states on subjects of interest to Newark ; and especially, of course, the official publications of New- ark and New Jersey, ninety house organs, sixty trade union papers, ninety business periodicals, sixty mu- nicipal and local development journals; many volumes of statistics ; a collection of the catalogues of 3,000 Newark manufacturers, very fully indexed; a good collection of modern fiction and of general 213 LIBRARIES literature; and a special telephone service which con- nects it in an instant with the lending and reference center of the main library, or with its technical or school or art or tietion or order departments or with the central ottice; and — a messenger service throngh which it can get from the main library's coUectioa of 180,000 volumes, in thirty minutes if need be, any- thing a patron calls for which the branch itself cannot supply. A citizen steps into the business branch and makes it known tliat he wants the latest book on town planning, or shop management, or business organi- zation or motor boats. When found, either here or at the main library, he asks if he can take it home. He is told that he need only sign a little slip of paper to identify him, and he can take home that book and a dozen others, if he wishes, and keep them for a month. Then he says : "I am interested in some timber land in western Oregon; I'm going to send a man out there and want to know how he can reach it, what tlie country looks like and what towns are near by."" The branch librarian offers him a 1913 calendar of Oregon witli a full description of the county in Ore- gon in which his timber is situated. Down from tlie central library soon comes a United States govern- ment map of the region he asks about, showing it in great detail, being one of nearly 3,000 such nmps on file at the library. Then he says tliat he has recently invested in a brewery in soutliern New Jersey, and wants to see all the bills concerning the making and sale of malt liquors which have been introduced in the last few days into the State Legislature. The librarian liands 214 THE LIBRARY A BUSINESS AID him all the bills thus far introduced and seats him at a table to look them over. Then he says that the great trunk sewer, which is to carry off the sewage of a dozen nearb}^ cities, in- cluding Newark, is to go near his factory, so he has been told, and can he see an exact maj) of its route? The librarian hands him the last published report of the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission with the route of the sewer plainly marked. Being pleased with his success thus far and still having wants unsatisfied, he says he wishes a design for an emblem or a decoration of some kind, suitable for a letter head or a catalogue cover, one which shall suggest his business, which is that of making wheels for automobiles. Another 'phoned message to the main library's collection of 350,000 pictures, designs and photographs, brings soon a dozen designs, sOme in black and white and some in colors, in all of which a wheel forms part of the composition. Almost every successful business man has a small collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals in his own office. This he makes use of and usually thinks that he has at hand information enough for all his purposes. He does not realize that he also possesses, in a public institution which he pays money to help maintain, another library, which he can easily use, very much larger and very much fuller in nearly all the kinds of information he needs than he has himself. This other library of his has gathered, or could gather if he asked it to do so, more information than most men of affairs have in their own offices, even on their own lines of business, or at least on certain aspects of it. Why does he not use this other library of his,, as well as his own? 215 LIBRARIES The fact is that few active Americans have ever learned how much lielp may lie for tliem in books ami pamphlets and jonrnals and mai)s and charts and diagrams, in the publications of societies and associ- tions, in the directories of cities and towns, in the cataloiiues of manufacturing establishments. All this kind of material and much else the modern American public library is ready, as I have said, to purchase and classify and index if it but moved to do so by the demands for it. If I may be a little personal for a moment I will explain that this business and civic service idea in public library work first came to me as worth while nearly twenty years ago, when I was managing a public library in Denver, Colorado. I found it not difficult to select and purchase such books and jonr- nals as would please school children, teachers, wom- en's clubs, readers of history, biography, travel and literature and students of society, science and philos- ophy. I found it also not difficult to create such an atmosphere of general good will and public service and freedom of restraint in the library as to make it attractive to the kinds of readers I have mentioned. But then I noted that the vast majority of busi- ness men in the community, men in stores, factories, insurance and real est^ite offices, and the like; own- ers, operators, managers, promoters, public officials, agents, contractors, builders, foremen, bench workers, mechanics, etc. — I noted that most of these men of affairs never used the library or called on it onlv for novels and an occasional book of history, travel and the like. As I looked over the whole field of print, tlie whole output of the printing press, I became more 216 THE LIBRARY A BUSINESS AID and more strongly impressed with the vast extent of the accnrate statistical and expert information, gath- ered at great expense of brains, diligence and money, and set down in print, which touches closely on all those activities which we may loosely designate as "business." I noted, also, that very few even of the successful men of business, had more tlian a very slight knowl- edge of the great extent of this material, and that fewer still made any practical use of more than a minute fraction even of so much of it as directly illuminated their own special businesses. I noted on the one hand, for example, tliat the young carpenter made little use of the educational opportunity that awaited him in books and journals on carpentry, building, architecture and design; on the other hand, that heads and managers in big commercial, manufacturing and financial concerns, cared little for the knowledge and suggestions of experts set forth in books and journals on their several callings. To illustrate my point a little further; great manufacturing enterprises in this country have wasted vast sums in experiments and ventures wlvfch a careful study of the American and foreign litera- ture of their subject would have told them to keep in their pocket books. And again, right now in Newark, we are clipping from the daily United States Consular Reports, which every large producer and sales agent should have laid on his desk every morning, items that relate to Newark products, pasting them on postals and mailing them to local makers of those products, and — are surprising them with the information! 217 LIBKAKIES Truly, while libraries are thinking too little of being useful to business, the man of business is thinking too little of tlie things he can find in print in his library. The result of my Denver cogitations was the decis- ion that wlien the opportunity could be found, or made, I would tr^' to open in a large city a business branch in that city's business center. The opportunity came in Newark. We began in a very small room and did little more than stock it with the usual line of library books. As rapidly as the income of the library permitted we increased the stock of books and moved into larger rooms, until, about three years ago we secured our present x)lace. The "business'' side of our work in the branch we were then able to push more seriously. Our purpose was to gather so much material, of the kind that can be useful to the active citizens of a large manufactur- ing and commercial city, that those citizens would feel almost compelled to use it, would feel that they were not running their institutions wisely if they did not use it. In collecting this material we found great difficul- ties. We knew about what kind of printed material Ave wanted, but we did not know the names of the specific books, and we could not find any one who could tell us. We discovered here, that is, a field of print, the field of business literature, wliicli no one had exjdoited and nia])ped, not even tlie librarians of the country who have done a very great deal in the past forty years to make easy the selection and purchase of books in most departments of knowledge. We Avent on as best Ave could, searching out and buying and indexing, rather groping our way, and collecting gradually a unique and most useful mass of business information. We did not gather, 218 THE LIBRARY A BUSINESS AID and have not yet, more of this kind of information than some of onr largest libraries have; bnt we seem to Iiave been the first to put it together in hand3^ form and set it down, with competent attendants, in the heart of a city's business district. While gathering and arranging these business things we advertised them, widely. The use made of them increased. It has increased until we must either find larger quarters soon, or else devote all tlie space we now have exclusively to the "business'' side of the work of this branch. In trying to promote in the community the use of the communit3''s utilitarian literature in this branch we were more and more impressed Avith the similarity between this kind of promotion or advertising and that of a commercial enterprise. We had noted the "house organs" published by many large firms, and the idea occurred to us that if the Newark library were to publish, in place of the lists of new books with literary' notes and minor items of library news such as make up the bulletins of most libraries, a "house organ," devoted to Newark town improvement and to advertising the library's commercial and civic resources, we might gain the attention of the tax- payers and induce them to take more profits — by daily helpful use — from their free public library. We did not start the Newarker to make money. It is a city's advertisement to itself of its own excel- lencies and opportunities, and especially of its own library's resources. It is growing in favor. If the business branch is as good a thing as we believe it to be, then its child and promoter, the Newarker will prove to be a good — as it is the first — public library house organ. 219 LIBRARIOLOGY The yewarkev, April, 1913 The greater part of this paper has been reprinted by the Syndicate Trading Company of New York for distribution by boolisellers. A daily paper, a nickel weekly and a 10-cent monthlj^ — these make a library. It's a small one, yet it contains more reading than any "average man" in all Europe had in his honse dnring the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era! But that is no reason why the average man of to-daj' should think such a collection is a good enough library for him and his family. In fact he does not. He buys a few books. It would pay him to buy more. Here are notes on how to practice successfully the pleasant art of getting one's own library. 1. Buy Some Books Everyone should buy books. Bj^ that I mean that every person of intelligence, able to read ordinary print with some ease, will find that the habit of own- ing books and having them about him will give him more i^leasure in the long run than any other habit he can form. Onlj" a few buy and read books, to be sure ; but then, only a few get out of life all the pleasure they are capable of getting. So the small number of the bookish does not prove anything except that the wise are always few ! 2. But if I Don't Bead? But you may say you rarely read in books, and so why buy any? Well, to this there are several answers. One is that books make fine furnishings. They do good to the room they stand in. They give your house an air and you are obliged to breathe that air! Then, too, 221 LIBRAKIES they are tempting. Who knows when you will yield to the temptation to enjoy books if they are always at hand? And, again, there are family and friends; perhaps they will bless 3'ou for giving them a chance at pleasures Avhich you miss yourself. And, again, buying books is a joyful task, and you cannot give your mind to it for ever so short a time each week or month, when you select the next volumes for your shelf, Avithout getting a subtle pleasure much beyond that of choosing a new cravat or another picture or a new brand of cigars. And, once more, all book buyers are bookish, even if thej never read in their books a single line. You meet followers of book fads, first editions, American history, sixteenth cen- tury poetry or what not, who will tell you they buy but do not read. Don't believe them. Tliey mnj not read what they collect ; but you may be sure they have their own private bookish tipples, in which they quietlj' indulge and out of wliich the}' get a mild but penetrating literary intoxication. But here are reasons enough. The point is proven. It pays to buy books. 3. What Books Shall I Buy? Buy what you like. It's the same rule, you see, as the Great rule about Reading! Often one knows the kinds of books he likes, when he reads them ; but does not know how to find more of that kind. This trouble it is easy to get 'round by asking tlie public library. There you will say that you like this book and that and the other, and that you want to find more of the same kinds. The library' makes a pretty good guess at what is Avanted, and sets out for you a dozen or a score or a hundred volumes for you to taste and choose from ; or sends them to your home 222 LIBRARIOLOGY for you to look over at your leisure. In this way you buy quite safely, and so do not cumber your shelves with books that are not in your line. Or, you may say you want books of such a kind that, if you read them you will be posted on certain lines you are interested in. Here the library's task is easier. It can give you names, authors, publishers and prices of the best books on the subjects you have in mind, and can tell you quite accurately which are elementary, which are complete, which are accurate but dry, which are general but interesting, and, if the subject is one with two sides to it, which are the best books on each side. Then you buy what you think you need. 4. The Abundance of Good Lists If the library is not handy for a visit, then call it up on the 'phone or wa4te a letter, and ask for lists. The library can show you, or lend to you if you call, or send to you if you write, lists of a hundred kinds. Some mention 50,000 volumes, arranged in groups on every subject under the sun, with notes of description and with prices. Others are shorter, down to a list of the ten latest books on the Panama Canal or on Producer Gas Engines, or the Social Life of the Egyptians 3,000 B.C., or on Paving, or Flying Ma- chines or the Life of Richard Wagner. Some name the best picture books for children who haven't learned to read, or the best books for adventurous bo3^s, or for lively girls or for the Young Man who hasn't Time to go to College, or for the reader of detective stories and of thrilling adventures, or what you will. Name the kind of list you want and the library can produce it — that is what it is for. 223 LIBRARIES 5. Shall I Buy Many Books at Once? Sometimes, yes. Suppose yon have moved into a <;,ood-sized house from tlie cramped (juarters you have always lived iu ; suppose the children are coming to the reading age ; suppose your business is a little less pressing and, in your evenings, you are a little less weary, why, then is the time to buy books b}' the yard. You knoAV what are the subjects you want to read about, and so does your wife. Both of you know the kinds of novels you enjoy. Also you are sure 3'ou want the children to see on the shelves and to handle and look into and get acquainted with the good old books that they later hear intelligent i)eople mention, that they will find mention of in their read- ing, and that they will be meeting in their studies as they go through school and college. In such a case the selection is easy, and to buy a thousand books in the first winter would not be extravagant or foolish. G. Shall I Get a Big Dictionary? When the time comes, yes. But first get books that you or your family or both like to read. If there are children about you will find they use dic- tionaries in school, and you will Avish to keep ahead of them by having a pretty good dictionary at liome. If the family has the habit of talking about words and their exact meaning and how to i)ronounce, get a dictionary, surely ! But you can begin with quite a small one. Some of the small ones are very good and vastly interesting to look into. At the library you can see all the big ones and many of the small ones and can learn about others. BuA' the kind that suits your needs. A big one is 224 LIBKARIOLOGY often just a Imrtleii to a man, in the way, and never used. 7. Shall I Buy an Encyclopeulv? If you are the encyclopedia kind of a man, 3'es. And when the children begin to pass the ten-year mark you should have one for them to pull down and handle as they will. But it is easy to waste good book money on an encyclopedia. There are many kinds, and the best one for you is the one that, among those 3'ou can afford, you Avill use most. Some are for young peoi)le, some are for students, some are for average i)eople with small incomes, some are for the rich. In thousands of homes are thousands of non- fitting encyclopedias taking up good shelf room that entertaining novels might much better occupy. The library not onl^' has good encyclopedias large and small, it also has much information on sizes, kinds, bindings, and cost ; some of it found in carefully Avritten books on the subject. Ask the library's ad- vice before you buy. 8. Shall I Buy "Complete Works''? No. Buy the books you want of any given author, and no more. You need not buy twenty volumes by one writer for the sake of getting the three that are all you care to read. The Complete Works Habit shows its effects on too many homes already. Rows of all that Brown, Jones, Robinson, Smith and other great authors ever Avrote, not omitting Avhat is worth- less and including often his private and useless letters and a life by a commonplace friend — these glare through the glass doors of their cases in thousands of homes, and declare their unused uselessness by their bright and shiny look. In few homes are read the complete works of anybody. 15 LIBRARIES Sometimes the best editions can be bought in sets only; but in most cases you can buy just the books you wish of any -writer in just the style and price that suit your eyesight, taste and pocketbook. y. A\'iiAT Shall I Say to Ijook Agents? A very good rule is to say that you buy all your books at the stores. Another is to say that you don't talk book buying at home. Another, that you never bu3' on tirst look or half looks, and that if he will send to you the complete thing he has to sell and leave it with you for a week, you will give him a written decision. Another is that his book will soon be on sale, and much cheaper, second-hand in the book- stores. This is true of 90 per cent of the book agent's wares. Another is that you buy only after taking advice. Then call up the public library on the 'phone and ask if the books offered are the books you need. Traveling agents have persuaded many to buy books who would never have bought them otherwise, and in this way they have been rather helpful. Rut they almost never have anything that you cannot get cheaper at a store. Most of the things they offer are not what you really care for. Nearly all their "Fine Editions" are poor imitations of tlie real thing. 10. Ah! the Second-hand Rook Store I If you really want to decorate your home witli some "Fine Looks Rooks,'' then go to a good second- hand book seller, like our own Charles Dressel, ami there you will Hud scores of grandly beautiful "sets" which the "man who wants a glass case full of fine books in his parlor" bought tlirough a ])ersuasive traveling agent, and then in due course sold to our friend for a song as useless lumber. 226 LIBKARIOLOGY At this same shop are also to be found good editions, sane, sensible, book-looking books in sets, of those anthors whose complete works you feel you need. The department stores have in recent years taken over the traveling agent's wares, especially since the recent disclosures as to the real value of some of the so-called de luxe books ; and there you can find sets of every degree of excellence and at fair prices — often, indeed, at prices ridiculously low. Treat the book agent kindly; wish him well in what is usually a perfectly proper business ; but tell him you now buy your books at stores. 11. Which are the Books for Me? You speak of choosing your friends. You mean that as you meet new people and come to know them you naturally pick out those who appeal to you, who don't bore you, who help you to pass a pleasant even- ing now and then, who have something new to say, who help you to see things differently and make life more entertaining. Y'ou don't pick these friends on sight, and you don't select them on somebody's recom- mendation. You get to know them first, and then hold to them if you like them. Find your own books in the same way. The pro- cess is easier with books than it is with men and women. Of books you can get quite careful descrip- tions, from which you can often tell which of them you will like. Then it is much easier to examine a book than it is a possible new friend. The book is all there, in sight. The new and promising acquaint- ance may tomorrow show you a side of his nature that will make you wish never to see him again. From the public library you can get a package of books sent to your home, books that you and the 227 LIBRARIES library have aj^ieed may suit you. These you can look over at your leisure. If any prove to be of your kind, well and good. If not, you can try another lot. You pick your friends out of those who live and work much as you do. You will find the books you want to read in much the same wa}'. Of course, novels take care of themselves. Poetry 3'ou want or j^ou don't want, and for the present that ends it. Of essays you get enough in your daily paper's editorials. But if now you have not the book buying habit at all and think you ma^^ like to work into it on some special lines, where begin? 12. You Work at Something? Buy Books on THAT Something Start in on your own business. Whatever it is it has an interesting history; there is romance con- nected with it somewhere, surely, and probably also art, and ver^' likely politics and war and strange adventures. For example, shoes. There are museums of shoes. There are liistories of shoes and books about slioes and famous and learned cobblers and shoe-makers. All the long storj of the invention and development of protection for the feet is full of curious, entertain- ing and amazing items. And the literature to-day of leather and of all the other materials that go into shoes and of the machines that make them and of their distribution through the trade — of all this the literature includes liundreds of books of every conceivable kind, sci- entific, technical, commercial, biographical, historical. If you are in shoes, try a few of these books. Tlie same facts and the same suggestions apply to every calling. 228 LIBRARIOLOGY 13. From Daily Papers to House Books You must read the daily papers; then you need to read a few magazines of the popular kind to get short stories of modern life and to keep up on inven- tions, discoveries and what not; then you must look over your own trade papers, one or two or even more —and there is still time left for buying and reading a few good books on your own calling. Next, perhaps first, get some books useful in the house. Books on cooking, furniture, decoration, music, dress, entertainments, games, hygiene, and, if tliere are children, on their health and training, on their sports and pastimes — on all these and a score of other like subjects there are encyclopaedias large and small, handbooks, manuals, guides, compendiums, treatises and histories. Of these household books, many of them most entertaining and most of them helpful, how few are found in homes ! Even of cook books the supply is usually limited! If in doubt, then, about how to fill your new book shelves begin with your own calling and go on to the every day demands of the house. 14. Branch Out and Take in the Two Americas As for books on life and the world in general here are two good ways to begin : First, sit down with this list and consider whether books on any of these subjects would interest you : NeAvark history. New Jersey history. New Jersey politics. New Jersey industries. New Jersey birds, insects, trees, shrubs, flow- ers, animals. 229 LIIIRARIES New Jersey rocks, soils, minerals, mines. New Jersey farms and farming. New Jersey railroads, canals, water com- merce. New Jersey roads. New Jersey maps. Ill all of these and on the same snbjects concerning the United States, yon can find at the library books, docnments, pamphlets and pictnres, many of them pnblished by the state or by the federal government and free for the asking. Then look over this list: Onr foreign trade. The Panama Canal. Mexico, Central America, Pern, Brazil; and the development and trade relations witli onr conntrj' of these and other Sonth American countries. Canada, its growth and onr trade with it. The far northwest and the wonderfnl devel- opment of Oregon and Washington. The Hndson, the Ohio, the ^lississipyn, the Colnmbia, the Great Lakes, the romance of their discovery and the wonders of their commerce. The story of wheat, of corn, of cotton and the rivalries of the world's great grain ])rodncing conntries. The tariff. Onr navy, onr army. On a thousand things like these, abont whicli yon find brief notes in the papers every day, the lil)rary has many books, some short, some long, some statis- tical, some narrative and fascinating. On any of 230 LIBRARIOLOGY these subjects, all of Avbicli come quite close to every man who works for what he gets, the library has books ill abundance, and the best of them — or all of them — it will bring out for you to see; or it will take you to the shelves where they stand, or will send a dozen to your home for you to look over at your ease. Some of them you will surely wish to own. 15. Then Take in the World Go a little further with the list, if nothing so far named has seemed to appeal to you. Perhaps you say that your newspapers and magazines give you all you care to know on subjects like these. That may be true. But a trial of a book b}^ a man who knows what he Avrites about, will convince you that after all most journals only touch the outside of things. They cannot pretend to do more. Their editors give you a little of many things and not much of any one, except local news. Flying machines, dirigible balloons, and sub- marines. Great fortunes, trusts and labor unions. Socialism, communism, anarchism. Painting, cubists, futurists, sculpture, art museums, architecture. The history of the alphabet, of writing, of printing. Printing today, its marvelous machines and how their product grows. How we think. The mind and the body. Materialism, pantheism, monotheism, prag- matism. Bergsonism, spiritism, monism, positivism. 231 LIBRARIES Education in Egypt, Greece, Rome, China. Public schools in America, England, Ger- many, France. The origin of language. What we mean by science. Astrology, necromancy, alchemy, chemistry. Myths, legends, fairy tales, superstitions. Fire, electricity, light, heat, power. And these items are only the merest suggestion of the thousands of toi)ics on which your library can furnish you many books and tell you of many others. Take Egypt for example; you know something of its history, of the Nile and its dams, of the Pyramids, of its temples, tombs and sphinxes; of its English government and its recent growth. Leaving all these one side, here is a little book on what Egypt did for civilization, brief, fascinating, astonishing and reli- able. They were doing great things in Egypt 6,000 years ago ! You can, under this first method of finding a starting point for book buying, either go over lists like those given above, or you can go over in your mind the topics you find in your daily and Sunday papers and jot down a few on which you think you may like to see a few of the best and latest books. Send this list to the library and later call and see what tlie people there can show you. IG. Another Way of Finding Youk Books Another way of finding your best book buying sub- jects : Get lists of some of the series of small books on all kinds of subjects that are now being published in England and America. Single volumes cost, bound, only 25 to 50 cents. The several series include books on hundreds of topics. There are "literary'- 232 LIBRARIOLOGY books in plenty— novels, stories, poetry, plays, essays, letters, hnmorj!— as well as brief histories, biographies and travels and good short books on science, religion, art, philosophy and society. Others are on snbjects like these, each written by a man who knows: A World Atlas (20 cents). Evolntion Heredity. Science of the Stars. Hypnotism. Bergson. Synonyms. Wellington and Waterloo. The Natnre of Mathematics. Theosophy. Syndicalism. Cooperation. Woman's Snffrage. Principles of Electricity. Look at these lists yonrself, and pass them abont in the home. Some in the family are jnst now keen on boats, toy flying machines, tennis, football, wireless teleg- raphy, school hygiene, housing, photography, the stage, motor cars, gas engines, moving pictures, dress, rugs, laces. Won't they ask you to consider buying a book or two on their pet subjects? 17. The Fundamental Fa:mily Library Now you have a library. It is yours and your family's, and it tits you all like an old glove, because you have put into it what you wanted, and not what somebody said you ought to want. You have bought 233 LIBRARIES according to your own and your family's taste, edu- cation, calling and amusements. Your library con- tains the worlds best books — for you ; at least it does so as far as you have gone. Onlj' prigs and pretend- ers will find fault with it, even if it has not one of the Old ^Masters you were tortured with in school days and have joyfully avoided ever since. 18. A Possible Family Library But perhaps you don't wish to plunge into book buying on your own ignorance and dissipate the igno- rance by a touch of experience. Then all you need to do is to take the collection we call ''First Aid to a Reading Family," which is all carefully described on another page, and proceed to buy it. As the descrip- tive note at the top of that list says, this is a very good lot of books. If you cannot or will not make your own selection, then this is what you need. It is not only made up of good books itself, it suggests other good books. It was planned to promote book owning as well as book reading. You and your faniil3' will use it, and, using it, will soon find it too small. It is not a complete library; complete libraries are most depressing. It was particularly ]»lanned to disclose its incompleteness. The books in it will demand more books at your hands. 19. How Ar.ouT the Great Classics? Well, what about tliem? Have you read them? Have you read any of them? Did you like them? If you bought a hundred of tliem would you hurry home every night to read them? You must ansAver these (luestions yourself. If you like them, then they are youv books, and you bought them long ago. If you are very, very literary 234 LIBRARIOLOGY you have already read them whether yon liked tliem or not. If you wish to know how some of the great- est of our fellow men looked at life, and hoAV they described what they saw and felt and thought, then you must read some of the World's Greatest. But don't forget that many of your greatest fellow men never wrote at all! They did things, and said nothing for publication. ( It's the same way to-day !) And while it is true, probably, that the writing of great things in a great way is the greatest of all the things men have done, these greatest of all things — the World's Classics — may not enlighten you, may not give you joy, would only bore you — and — there is a very fine and delightful and amazing and absorb- ing lot of life awaiting you quite outside of the covers of the Truly Great. Get your own Fundamental Family Library or our First Aid to a Reading Family and use it and see that what I have said is true. 20. On the Other Hand A short plea, which could be made longer and stronger, for some acquaintance with the Great Old Books is worth adding. A few of the old books were so well written or told of such interesting things or were so closely (.onnected with popular mythologies and religions or with great leaders or reformers, or warriors, or ad- venturers, or with great national events, that they came to be read or talked about by many, and espe- cially by those who wrote. Katurally those who wrote spoke of the beliefs, the superstitions, the events and the persons which are written of in these old books, and naturally also the later writers often quoted the very words themselves of these now familiar books. 235 LIBRARIES They did this partly because they had nothing to say themselves, and could onh' sny again what liad been said better before; i)artly because they hoped that by quoting in this way from earlier books their read- ers would take them to be learned; parth' because they wished by quotations to bolster up their own opinions ; partly because they could make their points clearer by citing what they thought were familiar examples; and partly because they truly found the incidents and the things said in the earlier books to be interesting in themselves, genuinely human and wonderfulh' and universally true to life and very admirably told. Thus it came about that books of all kinds, save perhaps tlie dryest descriptive ones, are constantly referring to things in the Old Classics. Now, if you know enough about the old books to get the meaning of these countless references to them in the new ones, you, of course, understand the new ones better. Then, too, it seems to be true tliat we get very great pleasure from our recognition in reading, just as we do from recognitions of scenery, cities, friends and acquaintances; and if one recognizes and understands the allusions in old books and the quota- tions from them in what he reads, he gets much i)h'as- ure therefrom. As to the direct value to us of what the older writers said, that is another matter. That value is often greatly overestimated, and especially by writers who have no force or originality of tlieir own and give us nothing but a useless dilution of quotation and reference from the writers they Imve absorl)ed, mixed Avith maudlin praise of them and artless prattle of their own. Don't read books about great books. You were told al)out some of them and read some of them in scliool days. If you care for them now, read them, 236 LIBEARIOLOGY by all means. In any event pnt a few of tliem on your shelves for the children to see and read if they will. 21. Beautiful Books Beware of the agent Avith the very fine and very special books. They are usually neither fine nor spe- cial. In thousands of homes, where what is really needed and what was never bought, is the Funda- mental Family Library, or our First Aid Collection, are rows of shiny, showy, begilded, neglected "sets," which cost ten times the money it would take to buy a real, live and daily used and greatly enjoyed and charmingly bethumbed lot of books. A good rule in all book buying is this : if it looks "fine,'" don't buy it. Another, already given, is, if it comes in sets, don't buy it. And if it comes at the hands of an agent and is both fine and in a set, shun it. There are beautiful books. It is not difficult to learn to know tliem when you see them. The library can show you quite a lot of them, and gladly will. If you learn to know them when you see them, then you will take pleasure in them, and when you can do that, it is worth your while to buy one now and then. Eight after printing was invented 465 years ago, a few very beautiful books were printed. This was because the early printers naturally tried to produce with type and a press as beautiful work as centuries of practice had taught the copyists to make with the pen. They could afford to take plenty of time to the work, for if they printed only a few pages in a day, that was far more than the copyists could do. But printing soon became common; then the printers had to compete for speed and quantity just 237 LIBRARIES as they do now. The result was that after about the year 1500 only a few very carefully printed and very skillfully desii»ned books were published until quite recent years. In this country to-day are being printed some of the finest volumes ever seen. It would be worth your while to look at a few of them. If yon find they give you pleasure, yon should buy one or two, or more if your purse permits. They are works of art, just as are good paintings and good sculptures. 22. What Kind of a Bookcase? The best is the plainest, of wood to suit the room, not shiny, and without glass or curtains or filigrees of any kind. Those in the stores are usually cheaper than those made to order. P>ut the store kind is often too fancy. The books should show ; not tlie case. The nearer the case comes to being invisible the better. Very inexpensive cases can be made to order and stained or painted to suit the room. Tlius made they will be not only modest and unobtrusive, not blatant and glaring like most polished-oak-and-glass-door cases, but also will fit the places in the room where you wish them to stand. In your new house, build no cases into the walls. Thus made thej are expensive, are usually not well adapted to their purpose, and you are almost sure to wish to change tliem witliiu a few months and find it impossible to do so without great expense. Get a few books, then get a small case of the size to fit a convenient space to liold tlieni. When you need it, get another case. Low cases all around a room with a t()i> shelf for bric-a-brac are sometimes good. But usually a l)etter plan is to get cases nearly 238 LIBRARIOLOGY seven feet liigli, rather narrow and then pnt them just where they best tit. 23, Shall I Take Any Journals? Yon have answered tlie qnestion yonrself, for yon bny and read from one to half a dozen news- papers every day, and they are in some respects tlie greatest of all jonrnals. Then of conrse yon get one or two of yonr trade jonrnals, yon bny and take home an occasional pop- ular monthly, and at home yon find at least one of the jonrnals for women. But these are not enongh to give yon and the family the pleasure yon are all entitled to get from periodicals. This is the day of periodical publications. They cover every conceiv- able topic, and among them are many in which men and women Avho each know more about at least one subject than any one else, write about that subject. Of this kind of writing there is very little in our newspapers. The newspapers have not yet come to the point where they hire specialists to do their reporting. And specialists do not often write for the popular weeklies and monthlies. Our newspapers get the news; our commercial papers do the same in their field; our technical jonrnals are good; our journals of general knowl- edge of books, art, science, exploration, and general world-life are not what they should be in either number or quality. Therefore, in the list of journals we have added to the "First Aid to the Reading Family" collec- tion you will find several from England and one or two from France and Germany. They are very good. You need them; without them you cannot keep up with the world you live in. 239 LIBRAEIES First Aid to the Eeading Family Tliis is the list of Itooks and magazines spoken of in the preceding text. It is a very good lot of books. Put these books on yonr shelves and let the jonrnals named come in every week or every month and you and your family can't help reading. Tliis is not the set of books you Avould pick out if you went to work to choose and buy for yonrself. But, as the text expressly says, this collection is named for the average intelligent aiul bnsy man who wants to begin on a library of his own, bnt does not wish to take the time to do the picking and choosing himself. Some will say that no one wishes to bny his library ready made; that each man is different from all others, and ought to buy the books that suit him. But while that is precisely what the text says, isn't it true that you buy a ready-made library every day when you buy your daily paper? If it is so important that you pick all your own and your family's reading, why don't you edit a newspaper for use in your own home? Once more, these are good books, and will make a good beginning for the ^Model Incomplete and Al- ways Growing Library you onght to liave started long ago. GENERAL, BOOKS Encvclopaedia of Etiquette. Holt. World Almanac. $.25 $2 Webster'.s home, school and of- Appleton's New Practical Cyclo- fice dictionary. $2.50 pedia. 6v. $18 THE CITY AND THE CITIZENS City Government in the United How the Other Half Lives. Riis. States. Goodnow. $1.25. $1.25 Socialism. Spargo. $1.50 Efficient Democracy. Allen. $1.50 New Worlds for Old. Wells. $1.50 ChansinK America. Ross. $1.20 The Spirit of Social Work. De- The Spirit of Youth and the City vine. $1 Streets. Addams. $1.25 240 LILJKAIUOJ.OGY MAKING AND SAVING MONEY Every-day Business for Women. Pay-day. Henderson. $1.50 Wilbur. $1.25 Pin Money Suggestions. Bab- Money and Banlving. Wliite. coclv. $1 GARDENING AND NATURE Our Native Trees. Keeler. $2 Principles of Vegetable Garden- ing. Bailey. $1.50 Wild Flowers. Parsons. $2 Nature Study and Life. Hodge. $1.50 Outlines of the Earth's History. Shaler. $1.75 GAMES, PASTIMES AND OCCUPATIONS Model Aeroplanes. Collins. $1.20 Electrical Handicraft. St. John. $1 How to Judge of a Picture. Van Dyke. $.60 Wireless Telegraphy. St. John. $1 A B C of Motoring. Krau.sz. $1 Why i\Iv Photographs are Bad. Taylor. $1 Practical Bridge. Elwell. $1.50 Small Boat Sailing. Knight. $1.50 Book of Foot-ball. Camp. $2 The Wilderness Hunter. Roose- velt. $2.50 The Party Book. Fales. $2 Conjuring. Kunard. $2 The Book of Camping and Wood- craft. Kephart. $1.50 Boston Cooking School Cook Book. Farmer. $2 Boy Scouts of America. Thomp- son. $.50 The American Boy's Handy Book. Beard. $2 HISTORY AND TRAVEL General History. Myers. Short Historv of the People. Green. $1.20 Historv of the United Channing. $1.40 "Boots and Saddles." $1.50 The Oregon Trail. Parkman. $1.50 The Balkan War. Gibbs. $1.20 Handbook of Alaska. Greely. $2 $1.50 English States. Custer. Russia in Europe Asia. Goodrich. $1.50 The Story of the Panama Canal. Cause. $1.50 A Tenderfoot with Peary. Borup. $2.10 Turkish Life in Town and Coun- try. Garnett. $1.20 The Last of the Plainsmen. Grey. $1.50 STORIES FOR OLDER PEOPLE The Street Called Straight. King. $1.35 The Red Button, Irwin. $1.30 The Magic Skin. Balzac. $.35 Buried Alive. Bennett. $1 The Rosarv. Barclav. $1.35 The Mill on the Floss. Cross. $.35 Vanity Fair. Thackeray. $.35 The Talisman. Scott. $.35 Jane Eyre. Nicholls. $.35 Ben-Hur. Wallace. $1.50 The Virginian. Wister. $.75 Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne. $.35 The Three Musketeers. Dumas. $.35 David Copperfield. Dickens. $.35 STORIES FOR YOUNGER PEOPLE Two Years before the Mast. Dana. $.75 Robinson Crusoe. Defoe. $.75 Treasure Island. Stevenson. $.75 Tom Brown's School Days. Hughes. $.75 Last of the Mohicans. Cooper. $.60 Canoemates. Munroe. $1.25 The Lakerim Athletic Club. Hughes. $1.50 Swiss Family Robinson. Wyss. $.75 Fables. Aesop. $.88 Homeric Stories. Iliad and Od- yssey. $1.25 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Clemens. $1.75 Ivanhoe. Scott. $.40 Hans Brinker; or. The Silver Skates. Dodge. $.75 Little Women. Alcott. $1.50 Arabian Nights. $.35 Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Andersen. $.35 Wonder Book: Tanglewood Tales. Hawthorne. $.35 The Age of Fable. Bulfinch. $.60 241 16 LIBRARIES FOR THE PARENTS AND THE CHILDREN The Care of the Body. Wood- worth. $1.50 TelHng Bible Stories. Houghton. $1.25 Talks on Teaching. Parker. $1 Education by Plays and Games. Johnson. $1.10 Red Letter Poems. $.50 Poetical Works. Whittier. $.50 Poetical "Works. I>ongfellow. $.50 Pageant of English Poetry. Ed. Leonard. $.50 Poems of Tennyson. $.50 Tempest. Shakespeare. $.56 Macbeth. Shakespeare. $.56 of the Future. Baskets. Wliite. The Children Smith. $1 How to Make $1 Children's Gardens. Miller. $1.20 How to Study. McMurry. $1.25 Merchant of Venice. Shake- speare. $.56 American Literature. Richard- son. $.35 English Literature. Brooke. $.35 Sketch Book. Irving. $.75 Essays. Emerson. $1 Gentle Reader. Crothers. $1.25 MAGAZINES AND PAPERS Life. New York, N. Y. $5 Collier's. New York, N. Y. $2.75 Saturday Evening Post. Phila- delphia, Pa. $1.50 Ladies' Home Journal. Philadel- phia, Pa. $1.50 The Sphere. London, England. $9 L'lllustration. Paris, France. $10 The National Geographic Maga- zine. Washington, D. C. $2.50 Popular Mechanics. Chicago, 111. $1.50 Illustrirte Zeitung. Leipzig, Ger- many. $8 Die Kunst. Munich, Germany. $6 242 THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPECIAL LIBRARY The Neivarker^ January, 1914 The character of libraries, their scope and the methods of managing them depend ultimately on the character and quantity of things intended to be read. When things to be read were written upon stone, whether in hieroglyphics or in sculptures or in orna- ments of buildings, libraries were unknown. When things to be read were impressed upon bits of clay which were dried or baked, and preserved as records, collections of those records were made and kept, and libraries began. When things to be read were writ- ten upon paper or any of the many kinds of material which were used before paper was invented, it was clearly wise to collect them, store them safely and arrange them conveniently for use. Things to be read thus gathered and housed formed the first libraries properly so called. After the invention of printing, things intended to be read became more common ; but, as they were still quite rare and expensive, the old methods of collect- ing and preserving them were kept up and the habit of giving them a certain reverence was continued. The reverence was due in part to the fact that few could either write or read, in part to the rarity of books, in part to the mystery attached by the igno- rant to the art of reading ; but chiefly to the fact that writing and reading and the practice of preserving books were largely confined to exponents of accepted religious cults. As time went on and books increased in number and reading became more common, this reverence for the book decreased, but it decreased very slowly. 243 LIBRARIES Books were for the promotion of culture. Culture was something which the upper classes only had a right to get. Science was pursued by few, and those few were scarcely' admitted to the aristocracy of book- users. It is only within very recent years that in England, for example, the study of medicine and its allied subjects, even if carried on to most helpful results, gave him who followed it a good position in the social hierarchy. The real books in the opinion of the educated among the upper classes, and, indeed, among all of the members of the upper classes who were competent to form opinions, were held to be, first, the literary masterpieces, the books which time had spared be- cause they were thought to tell things so skilfully as to make them of interest and value to all men for all time. Among these were included all the older Oreek and Latin writings, which were looked upon with a certain awe, largely because they were in Greek and Latin. Second, books on these classic books, yf^M]• expositions, criticisms. Third, books on religious subjects and especially on theology in all its ])hases and including philosopli3\ These books continued to form the greater part of libraries until within a few jears. When the public library movement took form and celerity in our country, about forty years ago, the accepted field of library book collection had widened to cover all kinds of writings. Novels were still looked on with a little disfavor, unless they were by writers time had tried and the ministry approved; science was closely looked at to see that it did not incline to infidelity ; and discussions of sex and society and government were feared as tending to promote immorality and insurrection. On the whole, how- 2U THE SPECIAL LIBRARY ever, almost auytliiug that had the form of a book could find a place in the public library of forty years ago, even though it might not be thought proper to admit it to the presence of a mere reader. As a collection of all printed books the library had arrived; as a something established to gather all knowledge and all thought that the same might be freely used by all classes of the community, it had not. The failure of the public library of forty years ago to address itself to all the community without distinction of wealth, social standing or education, and its failure, so far as it did so address itself, to find its advances welcomed and its advantages mad- use of, were due to two factors chiefly : the tendency of the librarian to think of his collections as rather for the learned than for the learner, and the tendency of the community at large to think of a collection of books as rather exclusively designed for those who had been reared to use them. This long-continued, self-imposed opinion as to the proper limi^itions of the library-using group was broadened in due course for several reasons. The output of print increased with great rapidity ; and the newspapers, to speak of one form only of printed things caused a rapid growth in the reading habit and led millions to gain a superficial knowledge of many aspects of life and thought. Public and private schools and colleges taught more subjects and taught them better, until finally the sciences were, a few years ago, ndmitted as proper fields of knowledge and tools of discipline even to the most conservative of English universities. From acquaintance with a wide range of required school reading it was but a step to the demand that a still wider range be furnished by the public library. 245 LIBKAKIES The liiibit of reading increased very rapidly anions; women. More of them became teachers, more of them entered industrial life, more of them joined study clubs, and these changes in their forms of activity all led to an increase of reading, to a wider range of reading and to a notable and insistent demand upon libraries that they furnish the books and journals on whatsoever subjects woman's broad- ening interests included. Indeed, a certain almost apostolic devotion to the reading done by children and an enthusiastic welcom- ing of women as readers and students have been two of the most marked features in the development of the library work in the last twenty years. Another change in library activities is now taking place, and is being mainly brought about by the increase in things printed, already alluded to. And here it may be well to refer to the opening statement, that the character of library management is depend- ent on the character and quantity of things to be read ; and to call attention to the fact that the imme- diate causes of changes in the contents and adminis- tration of libraries — newspapers, children's wider reading, women's greater interest in world-knowledge — are themselves largely the results of the growth of print and the resulting increase in things to be read. Modern invention, making printing much cheaper than formerly, has led inevitably to a tremendous growth in output. And by way of explanation of, though not as an excuse for, the failure of librarians as a class to realize the great changes in scope and method of librarj- management, Avhich the growth of printing and of the use of things printed will soon bring, it may be said that printing and print-using gained their present astounding rate of increase only 246 THE SPECIAL LIBEARY within the past ten or fifteen years. Few yet realize that printing is only now, after 450 years of practice of the art, at the very earliest stages of its develop- ment and is bnt beginning to work on mankind its tremendons and incalcnlable effects. The increase of print is marked in new book pro- duction ; is far more marked in periodical literature ; perhaps still more in the publications of public insti- tutions and private associations; still more again in the field of advertising by poster, circular, picture and pamphlet; and perhaps most of all in the mere commercial wrapper. Every added piece of print helps to add new or more facile and more eager readers to the grand total of print consumers. As commerce and industry have grown, print has increased also, and naturally and inevitably more rapidly than either. Considered merely as an industry and measured by money invested and value of output, print seems to be growing now faster than any other of the great industries, among which it is one of the first ; and in view of the fact that a like expenditure each year pro- duces, thanks to invention and discovery, a greater output of things to be read, it must be admitted that in its products, properly measured, print to-day stands in the front rank of all our manufactures. As modern production, commerce, transportation and finance have grown and become more compli- cated, they have found in print a tool which can be well used in the effort to master the mass of facts which daily threatens to overwhelm even the most skillful in their efforts at safe and profitable indus- trial management. In spite of all that is reported in print of things done, projects planned, tests made, results reached, in the ten thousand wide-ranging 247 LIBRARIES lilies of the world's work — from a new i^old reef of iiiiexaiiipled richness in the fastnesses of New Uni- nea's mountains, to the new use of a by-prodnct of a city's !j;arl»aiie, much escapes, or, beinj; printed, is nnknown to him who can use it to his advantage. And so onr worldy information uoes on piliiiii ^ip^ not all of it in ])rint, but so much of it in i)rint as to make that whicli is i)rinted almost impossible of control. The problem of efficient handliiifi,' of worldly infor- mation is diiificnlt enonoh in itself, bnt to this is added what Ave may call in contrast other-worldly informa- tion. Social qnestions which were seemingly ([uite few in nnmber only a generation ago, have ninlti])lied marvelonsly as modern indnstrialism and nniversal edncation have prodnced their inevital)le resnlt of complicating onr social strnctnre. These social qnestions demand solntion ; societies to solve them straightway arise, and proceed to in- quire, to study, to investigate, to experiment, and to publish resnlts. These published resnlts inevitably throw liglit on tlie daily routine of the industrialist, a rontine already complex enough; also, tliey t(Mid to modify public ()]»inioii or even almost to create a new and hitherto unheard of public (tpinion, and this nt^w- born opinion again affects, and often most seriously, the industrialist's routine. ^Meanwhile this new social service spirit tJikes hold npon questions of gov- ernment, complicates them, gives nnexpected answers to tliem, reverses the old ones, and, so doing, affects in a startling way the attenii)ts of the industi-inlist to establish and maintain his nmtine. Of all this social-service and governiueut activity the i)rinte(l output is amazingly mnltitudinons. 248 THE SPECIAL LIHRARY In iiiiY city of moderate size the social service institutions, inclndinj;' departments of the city, county, state and national governnuMit, and the pri- vate and quasi-public organizations wliich are at- tempting to modify opinions, customs, ordinances and laws directly or imlirectly, through stiuly, experi- ment, investigation, exhortation and demand, are so numerous, so active, so persistent and in the main so effective, and publish annually so many thousand pieces of things to be read, as to make it almost impossible for any organization to have in hand full knowledge of them all. Yet upon every enterprise in that city many of these countless institutions have already produced an effect, or will to-morrow, next week or next year. The wise industrialist would take them into account in planning his campaigns, and finds it extremely difficult to do so. Add to this other-worldly literature the tremen- dous stream of worldly literature already alluded to, and include in the latter the vast flood of trade, tech- nical and scientific journals, proceedings of societies and books and brochures from individuals; and then consider the difSculties which confront, on the one hand, the industrialist who would know of the social, economic, industrial, technical and scientific changes, advances and movements which may affect his enter- prise; and confront, on the other hand, the organiza- tion, be it public or private, which is trying to keep him duly informed ! Moreover, beyond all this is the vast field of research within which countless widely scattered workers, who for lack of swift interchange of knowledge of their respective successes and failures are wasting their time on misdirected and needless effort. 249 LIBRAKIES The change which this swift growth of thiiigs- iuteudecl-to-be read is to-day imposing on libraries can now be roughly outlined. They may properly continue to serve the student, in the old sense of that word, the child and the inquir- ing woman ; they must also serve the industrialist, the investigator or scientist and the social worker. It is too soon to say in just what manner this new form of service will be rendered. The difference in the amount of material to be mastered makes a wise method of administration most difficult of discovery; and added to this great difference in amount is a difference in what one may call the proper length of life. The technique of tlie management of printed ma- terial gathered by libraries has, in its development in the past forty years, been devoted almost solely to the accurate description, complete indexing and care- ful preservation of that material. So elaborate was the ritual in this field which was established and quite generally adopted some twenty years ago that to-da}^ it costs a library of moderate size from 20 to 50 cents merely to prepare and put on the shelf each one of its collected items, be the same a pamphlet of four jmges costing nothing or a scientific treatise of a thousand pages costing |10. And tliis takes no account of binding. It would be useless to attem])t here to describe or to enumerate the countless sources from Avhich comes this mass of material which confronts us, and demands of tlie librarian a reasonable control. It comes from governmental bodies, public and quasi- public institutions and businesses; from private bodies, scientific, artistic, philosophic, educational, 250 THE SPECIAL LIBRARY philanthropic, social; and from private individuals. It even inclndes print which is designed to advertise bnt informs as well; and in this line thousands of makers of things are putting out printed notes on optics, chemistry, travel, food, machines, machine products and a thousand other subjects, which often contain later and fuller and more accurate informa- tion than can be gained elsewhere. Nearly all this vast flood of print, to the control of which libraries must now in some degree address themselves, is in pamphlet form, and, what seems to be of the utmost importance in considering the prob- lem of hoAV to handle it, nearly all of it is, as already noted, ephemeral. Herein ; also as already said, is a characteristic which distinguishes it from nearly all the printed material with which librarians have heretofore busied themselves. Everything intended to be read which comes into a library's possession must be preserved — such is the doctrine based on the old feeling of the sanctity of print which once was almost universally accepted. Even to this day those are to be found who urge the library of a small town to gather and preserve all they can lay hands on of all that is printed in or about that town. When President Eliot of Harvard a few years ago, seeing clearly, as can any whose eyes are open to the progress of printing, that print may over- whelm us if we do not master it, urged that great libraries be purged of dead things, the voice of the spirit of print worship of a hundred years ago was heard proclaiming that nothing that is printed, once gathered and indexed, can be spared. Whereas, did any large library attempt to gather, and set in order for use under the technique now followed, as large a 251 LIBRARIES proportion of all tliat is now printed, as it did of what was printed in 1800, it wonld bankrni)t its commnnity. The amazing growth of the printing industry is overturning tlie old standards of value of things printed and the old nietliods of use, has indeed already done it, though few as yet realize that this is so. To establish this fact is one of the primary pur- poses of the whole argument. To emphasize its truth, two more things may be mentioned, the moving pic- ture film and the plionographic record. Historically these are as important as are an}- printed records of our time. Yet what library dare take upon itself the task of gathering and preserving and indexing them? Here we have two kinds of records of contempo- rary life, both closely allied in character to printed things, which the all-inclusive library does not even attempt to gather, list and index. Difficult as it would 1)e for any one library, or even any group of large libraries, to collect and preserve all these records of the liuman voice and of the visible activities of men, still more difficult would it be to gather and save all that is printed today. The proper view of printed things is, that the stream thereof need not be anywhere completely stored behind the dykes and dams formed by the slielves of any library or of any grou}) of libraries ; but tluit from tliat stream as it rushes by expert observers should select what is pertinent eacli to his own con- stituency, to his own organization, to his own com- mnnitj', hold it as long as it continues to have value to those for whom he selects it, make it easily access- ible by some simple process, and then let it go. r>oth tlie expert and the student may rest assured THE SPECIAL LIBRARY that the cheapness of the printing process of onr day and the natural zeal and self-interest of inquirers, students, compilers, indexers and publishers, will see to it that nothing that is of permanent value, once put in print, is ever lost. Not only are there made in these days compilations and abstracts innumerable by private individuals for their own pleasure and profit; but also a very large and rapidly increasing number of societies are devoting large sums of money, high skill and tireless industry to gathering, abstract- ing and indexing records of human thought, research and industry in all their forms. Select the best books, list them elaborately, save them forever — was the sum of the librarians' creed of yesterday. To-morrow it must be, select a few of the best books and keep them, as before, but also, select from the vast flood of print the things your constitu- ency will find helpful, make them available with a minimum of expense, and discard them as soon as their usefulness is past. This latter creed has been as yet adopted by very few practicing librarians. It is gaining followers, however, in the fields of research and industry whose leaders are rapidly and inevitably learning that only by having accessible all the records of experiment, exploration and discovery pertaining to their own enterprise, wherever made, can they hope to avoid mistakes, escape needless expenditures and make profitable advances in au}^ department of science or in any kind of industrial or social work. In recent years has arisen an organization called the Special Libraries Association. It came into being in this way : A few large enterprises, private, public and quasi- public, discovered that it paid to emplo}^ a skilled 253 LIBRARIES person and ask him to devote all liis time to gatherinp; and arranging printed material ont of Avliich be could supply tlie leaders of the enterprise, on demand or at stated intervals, with the latest information on their work. This librarian purchased periodicals, journals, proceedings of societies, leaflets, pamphlets, and books on the special field in which his employers were interested, studied them, indexed them, or tore or clipped from them pertinent material and filed it under projoer headings, and then either held himself in readiness to guide managers, foremen and others direct!}^ to the latest information on any topics they might present, or compiled each week or each month a list of pertinent, classified references to the last words from all parts of the world on the fields covered by his organization's activities, and laid a copy of this list on the desk of every employe who could make good use of it. Roughly described, this is the method of control- ling the special information the world was offering them whicli perhaps not more tlian a score of pro- gressive institutions had found it wise to ado}!t > to five or six years ago. At that time the public library of Newark was developing what it called a library' for men of affairs, a business branch. This was in a rented store close to the business and traiis])ortati()n center of the city. The library's management believed that men and women who were engaged in manufacturing, com- merce, transportation, finance, insurance, and allied activities could profitably make greater use than they had heretofore of information to be found in print. They were sure that this useful industrial informa- tion existed, for they knew that the most ]>rogressive 254 THE SPECIAL LIBRARY among men of affairs in this country, and still more in Germany, found and made good use of it. Indeed they knew that they already had in the main library's collection much material which almost any industrial organization and almost any industrial worker could consult with profit. Such material was already used to a slight extent in the central building; but they believed that if what might be called "the printed material fundamental to a great manufacturing and commercial city" were so placed and so arranged that it could be easily consulted by men of business, tlie habit of using it would spread very rapidly. From the first it was evident that the library was entering a field not jet greatly cultivated. There were no guides to selection of material ; there were no precedents to serve as rules for handling it when found. Professional library literature did not help, because this particular form of library work had never been undertaken. It was not difficult to learn that the old rule, gather everj'thing possible, index and save forever, must here be in the main, discarded, and the new rule, select, examine, use and discard be adopted. But to put the new rule into practice was very difficult. This question naturally rose, are others attempt- ing work at all similar to this of ours? Inquiry soon brought to light a few librarians of private corpora- tions, public service institutions and city and state governments which, as already noted, were also work- ing on the new line. Correspondence and conference followed; an organization for mutual aid promised to be helpful and the Special Libraries Association was formed. Merely as a matter of history, and chiefly because 255 LIBRARIES the active and skillful Avorkers wbo now have the movement in hand, promise to make of this associ- ation an institntion of very great importance, it may be well to state here that the suggestion of an organi- zation of those engaged iu what may be called the sheer utilitarian management of print, was made by the Newark library, and that from that library and from the library of the Merchants' Association of New York, were sent (nit the invitations to a pre- liminary conference at Brettou AVoods, in July, 1909. Representatives of about a dozen special libraries were present, and the librarians of several public and university libraries as well. The name Special Libraries was chosen with some hesitation, and rather in default of a better; l)ut it has seemed to lit the movement admirably. It may be said, of course, that every library is in a measure special, in its own field, and that state libraries, libraries of colleges and universities, of medicine, law, history, art and other subjects may be called special. But a special library, and the special departments of more general libraries — like the business branch in Newark^are the first and as yet almost the only print-administering institutions which professedly recognize the change in library method that the vast and swiftly mounting bulk of i)rint is demanding; realize how ephemeral, and at tlie same time how exceedingly useful for tlie day and liour, is much of the present output of things-intended-to-be-read, and frankly adopt the new library creed as to i)rint man- agement, of careful selection, immediate use and ready rejection when usefulness is past. The story of the growth and work of this associ- ation of special libraries not only demonstrates the truth of the statement that the modern lU'inting press 25G THE SPECIAL LIBRARY is giving' lis a new view of its own importance and helpfulness, it also shows how rapidly the new view is being taken by the world of att'airs; and, further- more, it suggests some of the methods to which adoption of the new library criH'd is giving rise. The association began with about thirty members, of whom more than half represented special libraries that could be properly so-called. In one year the number of special library representatives increased to more than 70, and in the next two years to 125. In January, 1910, the association began the publica- tion of a monthly journal. The distribution of this journal, which has been very wisely and economically edited and published by Mr. John A. Lapp, legislative reference librarian of Indianapolis; the distribution of circular letters, reports and articles in the public press; the meetings of the association itself and of sub-divisions of it and outgrowths from it, all have served as an excellent and effective propaganda of the idea of the systematic use of print in the world of affairs. A list of special libraries in this country, published in Special Libraries for April, 1910, not including libraries of law, medicine, history and theology and including ver^^ few public, scientific and reference libraries, gave 11 es, and has printed scores of helpfnl articles on snch snbjects as "The earning power of special libraries," "The valne of the special library for the bnsiness man, the sales- man or the shop expert," "Indnstrial libraries," "A reference library in a inannfacturing j)lant," and many carefnlly prei)ared lists of books, magazine articles, new legislative enactments and the like, witii titles like the following: Acconnting, ^lotion pictnres. Open sho}), Short ballot. Efficiency, Pnblic ntility rates. This association and this jonrnal are described here tlins fnllj^ because they seem to point so clearly to the coming change in general library method with which this whole artments for the pro])er control of all pertinent ])rinted information, is of itself good evi- dence that the needs these departments sn])ply are needs "\Ahicli pnblic and college libraries of the con- ventional tyi)e are not supplying. Other evidence could be set forth from state libraries, mnni(ii>al libraries and libraries of legislative research. It is not suggested that libraries of the type of ten or even five years ago, public, i)ro])rietary, state, historical, could ever do the work Avhich the enlight- ened industrialist of to-day asks of the special jjrint- 258 THE SPECIAL LTI'.KAKY handling department l»e sets np in and for his own organization. Bnt this seems evident enongh from all that has been said, that the old type of library must modify itself in accordance with the new needs wliich the evolntion of knowledge and the growtli of print have created. Speaking of the free pnblic library only — thongh what is trne of this is trne in a measnre also of the college, nniversity or historical library — it should try to master so mnch of the Hood of print as is of importance to its community as a whole, and to those aspects of industrial life which are common to all men and women of affairs in its community. This paper has failed of its nmin purpose if it has not shown that the public library should ecpiip itself to handle a vast amount of ephemerally useful material, and should, by its methods in this work, suggest to the large business institutions how helpful they would find the adoption of similar work within their respective fields. 259 THE LEGITIMATE FIELD OF THE MUNICIPAL PUBLIC LIBKARY Prepared for the International Meeting of Librarians at Oxford, England, August 31 to Hepteniher 5, 19U The question implied in tlie title set for this paper is this : ''^Vhat is the legitimate field of a free public library established and maintained by a city?" To this question no answer can be given. Social organisms— American and English cities for examples— are always changing in size and char- acter. Their component units change through death, birth and immigration; and the knowledges, faiths, thoughts and habits of each component unit change within that unit's own lifetime. With this change in the organism goes, of course, a change in the institu- tions which the organism may set up, either to satisfy its positive needs, or to fulfill its wish to conform to certain customs found in other kindred organisms, or to favor a habit, like that of universal education, into which it may have fallen. It follows, then, that a free public library estab- lished by a city, no matter how clearly defined may have been its character and the scope of its work in the minds of those who established it, will change that character and that scope as the city organism itself changes through the inevitable modification of its component units. The legitimate field of work of a city's public library is, then, that field which the temper of that city may at any given time permit it, or encourage it, or compel it to"^ occupy. As that temper changes, the 261 LIBRARIES Held will cluuiye accordinglv; narrowing and widen- ing and using broad or intensive cultivation as days pass and knctwledges, thoughts and feelings vary. The field actually occupied by a librai-y on any given day can be roughly described — for that day. The tiehl it will occupy to-morrow, and tlie tield it onght to oecupy to-morrow — this latter being Avhat may be called its legitimate field — neither of these can be delinuted. I have thus tried to show tliat no answer can be given to the question implied in onr title, not for the purpose of suggesting that discussion of the topic is futile, for I do not tliink it is; but to prepare the way for discussion. If we have no rules or principles which enable us to say that any given form of library activity is or is not proper, ov k^gitimate, then we can look upon all forms of tliat activity Avitli ])]iih)- sopliic calm and consider their value from the rational point of view — that of pure expedieney. Of course it is not neeessary to say that there may be found features of library work Avhich courts of law prononiuM? illegal. These our discussion only remotely touches upon. Let us then restate our (luestion thus: "What are some of the more interesting, recent an(i unusual kinds of library Avork, and do they seem expedient?** Discussing this we keep within the range of o])in- ioii, aiul we arrive at tentative conclusions only. Dis- cussion of this kind should be entertaining, at least; and, if touched A\itli knowledge and some ex])erien('e, jind tempered by coolness, may be quite profitable. I have before me as I write the last report of the Cleveland Tublic Library. The Cleveland Library was the (irst one of good size in our country, ami I 262 THE MUNICIPAL PUBLIC LIBRARY guess in the whole world, to practice open access. This was more than twenty-tive years aj^o. iSince then, under the same librarian, it has taken up many new forms of library activity and given them full trial and pronounced them, for its purposes, expedient. It carries on all the conventional activities of a library, such as buying and binding books and jour- nals and lending them, and binding and rebinding books. On these no discussion arises. It has recently added to its stalf a library editor, who edits library publications, annotates books and promotes advertising. It is difficult to question the wisdom of this addition to the staff of a library which expends nearly |400,000 per year, outside of build- ings, owns 300, 000 volumes, has eleven large and fourteen small branches, employs about 400 persons, does much printing and advertising and lends for home use each year 2,700,000 volumes. In the City Hall the library recently opened a branch which it calls a Municipal Reference Library. The name defines its functions, and to define its func- tions is almost a sufficient argument for its expedi- encj. It has not been successful thus far. Few know it exists; few of those who hear it understand what it is for. Is this a good reason for withdrawing from this part of the library field? The librarian thinks not, and I agree with him. ^Nlany good institu- tions have helped to create the need they were est'ib- lished to fill. The librarian knows that most city officials, like nearly all men of affairs, have never learned how valuable a tool they have at hand in the printed page and in the precedents, experiences and statistics in the work of city management which ma:^' be drawn therefrom. He suggests closer cooperntio'i with a City Bureau of Information and Publicity, 263 LIBRARIES already in existence, and more aggressive advertisins; methods. A few cities have nmnicipal libraries, independent of the public library. They are not all successful and some do little more than furnish salaries to in<-oiii- petents. It seems clear that it is unwise for a eity to maintain two independent institutions for carry- ing on the same w^ork — that of gathering print ami extracting from it that material which will licl]) tiit^ city government to do better work. The public library' has the plant and the experts; it can easily add to its municipal literature and engage more experts therein. A niunicii)al branch of a public library seems quite expedient, wherever the need for it appears and the opportunity is given to estal)lish it. The Cleveland librarian speaks of advertising liis municipal branch ; and the question arises, how far may library advertising be wisely carried? In Xewark we have for three years spent about a thousand dollars per year, about eight-tenths of 1 per cent of our total outgo, on the publication of a monthly journal, the expenditure named being over and above the receipts. It carries no advertising. It declares itself as a publication intended "To intio- duce a city to itself and to its Public Library." Tliis is an extreme case of library advertising. Perhaps none is more so. Is it wise? The reasons for thinking that it is cannot be briefly and effectively stated. It takes up some of the cost of publishing catalogs and lists; it promotes the use of our business branch ; each month it reaches and makes friends and patrons of a few men of affairs in a city where trade and manufacture are more definitely all-engaging than they are in most Ann^-i- can cities; it promotes interest in our new museums 2G4 THE MUNICIPAL PUBLIC LIBRARY of science, art and industry, offsprings of the library; it helps arouse interest in the work of the City Plan- ning Commission, of which the librarian is a mem- ber; it gives to the city itself a certain repute both for the forwardness which it has, anro])erly house library branches. If so, costly and elaborate library branch buildings will rarely be ercctcMl. and more efficient institutions than th(\v conld ever honse will find homes within the same walls that hold that very mnch largei' institution for social betterment of which the library is the liand-niaiden — the ])nblic school. The acceptance of gifts coiiii»els a certain com- ])laisance toward the giver and his ways. This is an inevitable movement of the mind, and may easily 270 THE .AirXICIPAL PUBLIC LIP.RARY prove harmful. In the growth of municipal social- ism, as marked hx the rise, among other things, of public sch(>ols and libraries, there lurks an abund- ance of dangers. These are surely accentuated by an acc()mi)anying increase in Avillingness to accept what one has not earned— not from one's fellow tax- payers, but from an unrelated giver whose economic manners, whether good or bad, we slnmld be able to look upon with perfect freedom and without the squint inflicted by acceptance of his largess. Cleveland has a very large collection of clippings, leaflets and pamphlets alphabetized by subjeets and arranged in many thousand large envelopes. In Newark we have a similar group of material, kept in a vertical tile cabinet. Ours is perhaps used more largely than is Cleveland's to relieve us of some of the terrific expense of cataloging. We put into it, at a very small cost, thousands of items which, if treated in the conventional way, would cost from 25 to 60 cents each to retain and index. Both these groups lie outside, in large part, the generally accepted field of library collections, in that they cover the latest information, often quite inaccu- rate, and the latest opinion, often quite crude, on topics of interest chiefly to business men. As labor- saving devices they may be important, and I am quite sure they are; but merely as such they are not in the field of this discussion. As tools for use in cater- ing to the man of affairs, they may be discussed under this query. "Should the pul)lic lil)rary devote more than a very small part of its income to an attempt to supply local business with things in print of value to it?" In Newark we answered the query with a yes several years ago. We are still spending a good deal 271 LIBRARIES of money in bnikling up and administering what we call our business resources. Against tliis, perhaps the strongest argument is, that the traditional pur- pose of a library is to feed and protect the all-too- slender flame of the lamp of learning, to foster those more humane arts which have never too vigorous a growth; that just now all the training of our schools tends to look too directly to mere gainful ends; and that at least one field, that of the guardianship of books, should be tended with an eye single to the promotion of things of the heart and of the mind, and not of the pocket. In answer, more can be said than can be here set down. This at least may be noted, that the products of the press come forth in a mighty and steadily increas- ing stream ; that of these products many are of imme- diate value to those who are at work at the very admirable task of making Avhat man needs and what the present social order leads him, almost compels him, to long for; that it is impossible to divide our modern Amazon of print into that whicli i>lainly makes for culture and that which makes for better production and better distribution of products; that as all print comes to libraries, they must receive tlie mere sordidly helpful as well as the admittedly en- nobling; and that it well becomes a librarian to put to its best use, within reasonable limits of cost, that wliich promises materially to profit his constituents in their daily task. This may also be said, in passing, that to use the printed things of the day, even for the loftiest ends, and certainly for the profit of the man of affairs, the (.Id methods of handling, by slow expensive catalog- ing, must be abandoned. We must arrange, use for a l>72 THE MUXK^IPAL VViMAC JJBRARY time, and then tlirow aside mncb ol" all that vast mass of print which the i)i-ess now otters ns. W'e must no loniier attempt to eatah)<> and store for all time more than a minute fraction of it. Hence that encyclopedia of clii)i)ings in Cleve- land and that elaborate and costly tilinj^- system which we in Newark call the most valnable of all our departments. It may be said that any well-selected city library normally obtains and makes accessible all the print that the men of affairs in that city will care to nse. To which I reph', that we think onr business branch in Newark has demonstrated the contrary. It has been exploited enough elsewhere, and I can here say only that its strictly business features absorb only a small part of our annual outgo; its presence and use introduce the library to a part of the public which in most cities never meet book collections, and that very strong testimony to its usefulness and its rationality appears in the eti'orts made in other cities to establish institutions like it. In most cities libraries use deposit stations, which are small collections of books jdaced on open shelves, usually in drug stores, with a small bonus to the owners of the stores on each book lent. These are moderately successful. But it is somcAvliat doubtful if this unsupervised distribution of books, chiefly recent popular novels, is worth the cost. An extension of this same method leads to the traveling library, so-called, perhaps, because it trav- els from the lilu'ary to its appointed place and back again in one package; whereas the deposit station books stay where put, save as they are changed in part from day to day or week to week, as borroAvers may make requests. 18 LIBRARIES Cleveland uses iiuiiiy traveling libraries; Newark has eleven. New York has carried the idea further than any other city. It sends books to 703 centers other than schools and recreation centers, lending l»y this means over 300,000 volumes per year. Thus it reaches at coniparativeh' small cost people in institutions who would otherwise be without the use of books, being inmates of hospitals or confined in prisons; advertises the lil»rary and the pleasures of books to people not of the reading habit; brings into connection with the library influential persons con- nected with many public institutions and with business enterprises. Conversely, the use of these books has very little supervision by the library, this depending on the workers who assume the responsibility therefor, and ma}' do it well or ill. A library can promote interest in the fine and applied arts in its city. How far should it go in doing this? Most libraries go a very little way. They seem content, as to art, with their material enswathe- ment of brick, stone and mortar, an enswathement usually of doubtful beauty and of manifest unfitness. Some venture on a bust, or a bronze, or a large photo- graph or two of accredited art objects, of a past so remote that in contemplating them criticism is (juite lost in reverence. A good many have photograph col- lections, and here again time has usually made the selection and not the needs of the library's clientele. All libraries collect "art works." The phrase is com- monly used to cover any wry large and expensive volume with pictures in it. A book from the Xnle press would by most be considered as unusual and be reverenced for its price; but would not be con- sidered an "art work." 274 THE MUNICIPAL PUBLIC LIBRARY Four or five libraries have made collections of prints. That more have not done so is of course due to two things : the public does not care for them, and, as our schools and colleges do not mention them in their courses, librarians scarcely recognize them as art. Now, are fine and applied art subjects in wliich libraries should concern themselves, save through the purchase and cataloging of books and journals there- on? No answer is forthcoming. In Newark we have collected, partly by gift but chiefly by purchase, a few paintings, a good many bronzes, a great number of vases, and a group of prints so large that we may almost say that we have a print department. The paintings are not very good, and as in my opinion oil paintings occupy much too large a part of the art field in the minds of most, I am rather glad they are no better. Our bronzes are chiefly inexpensive copies of antique heads. Our vases are neither rare nor costly; but as rarity and cost have nothing to do with art or beauty, we feel at liberty to think them beautiful. Our prints begin with the exquisite auto-litho- graphs of modern German artists — and some of these are on tlie walls of the main building and many of the branches — and go on through the products of all the processes and methods of reproducing pictures, and are accompanied by much material illustrative of the manner of print-production. This collection has cost a good deal of money and a great deal of time and thought. Few admire it or enjoy our other modest art objects. On first view they have not paid, and to procure them, has tlierefore not been expedient. Nevertheless, I believe the attention given to them has lain within our legitimate field, and I am sure 275 LIBRARIES that most libraries slioiikl give more heed to tliese same things. I do not say this because our modest art collections and the art exhibitions we have given ill our lecture rooms have led to the establishment in Newark of museums of tine and applied art; but be- cause it seems obvious that a li1)rary, gathering as it does the record of all the arts, should, in its minor adornments, use some of the very products themselves of some of those arts. Moreover, nohlcssic oblige^ we are granted by our positions a good opportunity to share as well as to tell, to suggest by actual object as well as to preach through the chosen page. Life is far too short, at best; but happily is easily lengthened by multiplying the interests of the day and of the emotions whicli the new interests arouse. Large educational and decorative pictures — chiefly the lithographs issued by German publishers to illustrate history, geography — including ma]ts — geology, botany, zoology, ethnology, anatomy, as])ects of nature, architecture, painting and many other subjects cost from 30 cents to |1.50 each, unmounted. The library of Newark seems to be the only one that has spent time and money on the acquisition and lend- ing of these i)ictures. We have about 1,500, mounted on heavy cardboard, bound in black, fitted with eyelets for hanging, classified and indexed and arranged like cards in a catalog for easy inspection. I send a l)ani]>hlet descriptive ublic-welfare organizations, 278 THE MUNICIPAL TUBLIC LIBRARY non-profit-seeking societies bnt by no means all charit- able, chiefly American. We found this material often furnished our readers with later in formation on many topics than we could gather for them from any otlier sources. It is included in the vertical file group already alluded to. Much of it is received as gifts. but the cost of securing it through correspondence is quite considerable, and to index it and arrange it properly demands a good deal of time of skilled per- sons. We have had no reason to question its value or the propriety of permitting it to absorl) a small per cent of our annual outlay. Much of this material is ephemeral, being extremely useful today and be- coming quite useless lumber in six months or a year. Our vertical file plan provides for a semi-automatic weeding out and casting aside of such of its contents as have passed their usefulness. Mr. John A. Lapp, librarian of the ^tate Library of Indiana, has recently been maintaining a bureau for the collection and distribution of information on public affairs. He covers particularly the field of legislation, state and municipal. A few public and other libraries paid |25.00 per year for the service his bureau rendered, which consisted of a weekly series of typed statements on the more important matters in the field covered. He did not furnish books or pam- phlets, or indexes to either; but chiefly notes guiding US to the printed story of notable happenings iu the very complex and rapidly changing world of state and city management. This service is soon to be enlarged, and will cost four times the present price. To accept it is to co- operate with other libraries in an endeavor to secure, at moderate cost, so much of a vieAv of public affairs in our country as will enable us to select from the 279 LIIJKARIES whole iield so much again, as proDiises to be of value to our own commnnity. We believe, that although this worlv is quite remote from book-buying and book- lending, it is in fact a long step toward that kind of library management whicli new conditions are forcing upon us. All the world's activities are now put down hi print; this gives us more print than we can gather and more tium we could use even if we could gather it. We must now select and, of that which we select we must soon discard as useless the larger part. Co- operation in selection in one important field — this is what Mr. Lapp's work gives us. Were this not in print 1 would not venture to send it, for it is far too long to be read to any audience. I have chosen a few things out of a vast field, hoping some of the things chosen may arouse an interesting discussion. I regret that I was led to speak so fully of our own Newark activities. l>nt, after all, they probably illustrate fairly well what is going on over here, and I can describe tliem more accurately than I can those of other libraries. To refer to Cleveland once more, let me suggest that any who are interested in the wider field of tlu^ municipal library's activities would do well to get the last Cleveland report, and therein read of wliat American librarians consider legitimate activities wiselv conducted. 280 WHAT NEXT? Delivered before tJie Xeir Yorl' Lihniri/ Association, Oetoher /. 1015 I wrote this paper, a short time aj-o, in the ureen hills of Vermont. When I fonnd that 1 had to leave those green hills and spend a day in the woods of New York state, that I might read this paper to TOii, I was somewhat irritated. Perhaps the condi- tions led me to make this paper, not exaetlv irritat- ing itself, and I hope not peevish, but slightly critical ; not critical, however, of New York librarians, critical only of librarians in general. While 1 was not feeling peevish toward New Yorkers when I wrote the paper I must admit that, with a Yermonter, there is always a tendency for irritation to arise when he comes into the presence of a New Yorker. You know the reason why. It is because of the scandalous treatment which the people of New York gave to the people of the (ireen Moun- tains 140 years ago. In those days Gov. Benning Wentworth, holding sway, as he claimed, over lands west of the Connecticut Kiver, granted some of them to true men from Connecticut and ^Massachusetts. These good men came north into the wilderness and took possession of their grants and set themselves to the ardu(ms task of reclaiming and taming them. Thereupon certain New Yorkers of detestable memory also laid claim to these New Hampshire grants and sent certain people across Lake Champlain to take possession thereof. The Vermonters, already on the ground, persuaded of the righteousness of the cause and the justice of their holdings, caught these intruding New Yorkers, tied them to trees, and im- 281 LIBRARIES pressed on their backs the "beech seal/' the instru- ments of application being rods cut from beech trees. So irritated were the New Yorkers by the treatment which thej received at the hands of those best of men, the boys of the Green Mountains, that when Vermont, at the close of the Revolution, a])i)lied for admission to the Union, as the fourteenth state, an opposition was formed at AVashington, largeh' oper- ated by New Yorkers, which resulted in preventing Vermont from becoming one of the United States. The Vermonters, irritated in their turn, declared, by the mouth of Ira Allen, brother of the famous Ethan, that so long as such corruption ruled in the courts of the federation of states they would withdraw into the fastnesses of the mountains and sul)mit them- selves to the beasts of the woods and the justice of Jehovah. And they did so. For thirteen years Ver- mont was an independent republic, owing allegiance to none. Y^ou can understand, now, why Vermonters are sometimes irritated when they stand in the presence of NeAV Y^orkers. As the criticisms in tliis paper may be taken too seriously, let me first read something wliich truly expresses my own view of your excellences. Having heard this you will understand that I am not seri- ously critical of the workings of your association: ''P.oth directly and indii-ectly, it has been and is today a i)ositive benelit to every library and every librarian in the state. From the beginning it has stood strongly for the best library ideas and policies, and has been an eft'ective force in having those ideas em- bodied in the state's laws and practices. It has stood always for the most liberal treatment of libraries by leiiislators and local authorities and its recommenda- 282 WHAT NEXT? tioiis have been influential factors in securing sucli treatment. It lias been zealous in ]>i-<»niotini;- high standards for libran- work. . . . i^ibrary training in normal schools, instruction in the use of books and libraries in public schools — ideas Avhich are now- being accepted in all the more progressive of these institutions, are ideas Avhich had their first formal promulgation and recommendation in this state at a meeting of this association at Twilight Park, just nine years ago." The war has shown us that we are quite uncivil- ized; are still able to act like dogs quarreling over a bone. Even in this countr3- the war spirit is so prevalent as to show that our Avork with the "best books," our children's libraries, our classics, our stories and all our other well-meaning exertions have not abated and prol)ably never will abate man's native ferocity. When Mars is talking books have to sit still. Librarians cannot prevent the breakdown of civilization! What, then, can they do? I find no maxim suited to the occasion, unless it is "Let us be hundde." And in the midst of our humil- ity let us take a lesson from the English and find humor in our own doings and in the antics of our enemies — ignorance and sin. But to invite you to a feast of humble pie is neither to prophesy nor to exhort; and you expect one or both. Do you not? Wliat I seem to need first is a message, and I liad ]io]»ed to find a message suited to the troul)led times. I do not wisli to preach busin(\ss literature or maps or special libraries, though some- thing on each of these may be expected. I wish to disappoint your expectations, of course. In seeking for a bit of advice to give you which should be appropriate to a time of universal war, I 2S3 LIBRARIES said to myself, "Surely the jitney tuitl the tiyiiig ma- chine and the gas engine, their parent; tlie movie, the vietrola, tlie snhmarine, tlie aeroplane, the type-caster, the otlset press, and the war; to say nothing of tele- phone and wireless, have changed the fonndations of human life, and tlie conditions thereof; and snrely from a large view of these changes and of the revehi- tions war has given us, should come a message, a definite program, for at least a part of our activities. But I seem unable to talce the snilhciently large view. Perhaps our work is so trivial tluit no industrial or social changes and no revelations of our moral state which the war tells us is wry low, can attVu-d any reasons for modifyiug it. At present that is my own view. The library, like the school, is merely an unimportant by-i)roduct of Ji certain stage of invention, discovery and social ar- rangement. As a by-product it is amusing, to some degree entertaining and to a very slight degree dis- tinctly useful. Hut it is so much a ])roduct and so small and insignificant a product and to so small a degree a factor that it can find, in the social and economic changes and hideous moral revelations of the time, no new doctrines for its guidance as a practical, efficient factor. If I am not right in this present view then we ought among us all to be able to say something like this: "The movie is doing this and that to change our fellows; the gas engine is bringing the city to the country and ince versa ; the offset press and the type- caster and the nu'chanical etcher ai*e doing this and that; the fiying machine i)romises this, the i)hono- graph and vietrola that, and the war shows that we are as black as we can ])aint ourselves and that solid- arity of men and j)arliaineuts of nations are dreams; 284 WHAT NEXT? therefore, we librarians slionid gird on the whole armor of our excellences and do"" Well, what should we do? Having shown that onr work is so slight and that we are so much more results than we are causes that even world-changes give us no new moral codes and no new moral banners to lift on high, I am driven to repetition, to cast in new forms a few of our old maxims. To say, for example, that who sweeps a room in accordance with common sense makes both room and action line, especially if he sprinkle the room with the fresh water of a kindly humor! Being unimportant let us be so smilingly. Let us exalt our calling for our own stimulation and make it so enter- taining that our absence Avould be missed even though we have no speaking part. I was first asked to speak to you al)out what the library of the future may be as a practical institution. I changed the title to "What next"?'" because, when I came to examine my topic, I found the reluctance with which I accepted your invitation was more than justified by my poverty of ideas. Not an absolute poverty, let me hasten to say, for the creative moments of our friend Bergson, when I feel that I am myself an original first cause, are not more rare than they ever were. My poverty of ideas disclosed itself as quite complete when, as my opening remarks have told you, I asked myself this question : "Our fellow men having proved themselves fundamentally uncivi- lized, in spite of twenty-five or thirty centuries of books, five centuries of printers and forty years of zealous and mission-hearted American librarians, w^hat should the said American librarians do?" Do you say that we should go on putting the right book in the rigiit hands at the right moment? And 285 LIBRARIES will that per!>iuide any not to lij^lit, or to make slicUs, or to sell munitions or — except Mr. Rockefeller — to lend money to those who are fighting? Some have said to me that it were better for mankind if in my own library work I put less emphasis on industry and more on culture and uplift; less on mere books and more on books of power ; less on directories and more on Walter Pater and Henry Van Dyke. And I must reply by saying that the nations that have most freely wallowed for several centuries in "books of power" are the ones which are now wading deepest in one another's blood ! I am perfectly well aware that you do not think I am giving you the practical talk to which you are entitled. But I think I am. The first thing to do when you are going to build is to survey the site. The site for the practical — and the word as it was given to me, of course, meant useful — for the useful library edifice Ave hope to build is right in the center of poor human nature, and tliis center is now a morass of greed, servility, prejudice, national hatred and general beastliness, as Europe demonstrates. Surely it is an entirely practical proceeding first to look frankly at this morass and learn, if we can, if libraries will help a little in its drainage and puri- fication, before we draw our plans and certainly before we venture to gaze with holy joy on the mere mirage of a noble and useful stnu-ture born of the heat of a baseless enthusiasm I Now, if you will grant that the s]>irit which makes wars is so firmly rooted in us l»y the thousands of years of fighting through w]ii( li man came to be what he is that it cannot be eradicated save by centuries of effort; and if you will grant that you cannot properly today treat of the future of the library as a useful 286 WHAT NEXT? thing without tirst of all cxaiuiiiiiig its possible activities in the light of a frightful war; and if you grant that as an institution for ending war it is (|uite negligible, even if it heroicallj- holds to red ink on its catalog cards, and stands solidly for the ribbon arrangement of fiction, and refuses to buy any more of Mr. Ciiand)ers" novels— then I will leave the subject and retnrn to fault-finding, advice and prognosis. Librarians are continually coming together to hear the talk of persons who have never written great books. That is a strange performance for persons whose mission in life it is to induce people to read the best books, is it not? I suppose it is true that those who cannot read must listen, or die in igno- rance. ]>ut librarians can surely gather an ample supply of sweetness and riches from the printed page. Indeed, they are so skilled in this art, and have so great a faith in it, that they preach countless sermons on it. L>ut, if librarians can read to profit, why do they so often meet to listen? They call the young away from the talker on the street, they rush books into a village to divert the participants from their local academy of the country store, they preach read- ing early and late, and write hymns to the printed page, and burn incense before the bound volume; and then they run off to a meeting to hear somebody say a little something that has been better said in print, if it was ever worth saying at all ! Oh! of course, there is the interchange of spirit at the meeting; the magic of together, and the informal discussions where we learn so much, and the inspira- tional atmosphere — of this paper, for example ! But, first, if those are the things for which library meet- ings exist, why not omit the talks? And, second, according to the missionary literature of our sect, 287 ]jr,KAlUES there is iiotliiiii; >>o iipliftiiiji,-, so liiima.iiiziui; and even so informing as books. Keally and trnly, now, can von deny that books are nobler, more masterly, more spiritnal, more inspirational, more vitally social than any talk at any inn even by an intelligent libra- rian and still more intelligent laymen? 1 will now tnrn abont and admit that there are certain good things which can be accomplished only throngh meetings like tliis. IJiit 1 am (piite sure that there are too many of these meetings. And I am sure, also, that yon (mght to bring to your meetings much more of definite, careful work; 1 mean the clearly stated results of hai-d work of the previous year. This work is waiting to be done. Then these results should be i)rinte(l and made available to the library world. Is that what you call a practical suggestion? Do you admit that the library as a practical institution would be much more intiuential if ycm all accepted your own primal and oft repeated doctrine and read and studied each year more of those good books you are pressing upon others; if you then formulated the conclusions of your reading and your study, and compared notes with one another; and if you then, at occasional meetings like this, bi-ought out your con- clusions to be tested; and if, finally, having found that a promising residuum is left, gave it to tlu^ world? I have for long years preached and written on this practical suggestion; but the preaching and the writ- ing have not persuaded you, and, not at all to uiy suri)rise, you ]>ersist in your iutem])erauce in listen- ing. Though avowed ]>rotagonists of the i)ractice of reading, in your hearts yow are worshippers of preachers. You ]»ray for more eye-mindedness in the 288 WHAT NEXT? world; but are yourselves ear-miuded. You are not ashamed to feel that you are exercisiuji' and strenuth- ening your intellects at meetings like this, when you are, in fact, merely gratifying your auditory centers with the cadences of a tinkling voice. Ignorant non- readers, of whom the world is full, must be permitted to listen much. They must even be permitted to think that they have greatly developed their intellects when they have once heard a man of note declaim. But, for us, who are readers and preachers of read- ing, these delights and satisfactions in listening ought to be rare and greatly restrained. It was plain to me that in the title suggested for my talk — "the future of the library as a practical institution" — the word practical meant useful, liread- winning, business-promotiug. I was to speak on the business man and of the sweet influence on him of the last New Zealand year book and of the post route map of Arkansas; and I was to show that tlie library of the future — not forgetting the things of the spirit, oh no, by no means! and not neglecting uplift, and not failing to pass a kind word to inspiration as I went along — I was to show that the library of the future will surely soon take its place as a useful and important factor in the world of affairs. Well, in my opinion, I do not need to prove to you that libraries are going to be far more useful, far more practical, far more closely allied to industrialism than they have ever been. Their advance in this direction is, right now, very rapid, and so open to the observant eye that any librarian who does not see it may be sure that his or her library is not of the kind which most of the libraries in the country soon will be. In time the library is going to be of great impor- tance in the world; but this importance will not be 289 19 IJBRARIES very fiiH^' shared in l)y libraries of the present pre- vailing type. We shall be obliged to change our scope and methods a good deal if we are to become nsefnlly important or importantly nsefnl. You see, what the book does, it does quietly. Even in education the results of its work are not obvious. One boy studies books and his brain develops; but father and old Vox Populi cannot see his brain, and cannot realize that his work on books is producing results. Another boy hammers a piece of perfectly good copper into something as ugly as sin, and this the father and Vox Populi can see at once is a result, a product, and they admire, and wonder, and say, "Behold what practical training can do for a boy!" And thereupon cities and universities proceed to spend millions on equipment for practical training, and a few begrudged hundreds on books with, i)er- haps, for the university, a preposterous monument thrown in to fill the eye and store the few books. The silence of the book and the invisibility of its handiwork, these are two of our great handicaps, not to be overcome either by talking ourselves or by listen- ing to great speakers. In spite of them, however, it is perfectly obvious that the book — and the book in the new library nomenclature means print in any form — will soon be an important factor in every bit of the world's handwork. In time we shall become those veritable print-using animals which we librarians have long praised as the highest of created beings. Here I wish to pause and tell you about three things with which I have come in touch in recent months and which perhaps give point to the facts on which my suggestion is based : to wit, the prodigious change in the print-producing and the print-using 290 WHAT NEXT? habits that has recently come upon us, and the ac- companying changes that should be made in library administration. It has been my pleasure, this summer, to have a hand in the beautitication of, and the work of, the county fair at Woodstock, Vermont. Among the other things which the committee I was connected with carried on, was this : They sent, at my sugges- tion, to about 150 state institutions and social service organizations having to do with any aspect of rural life, a circular letter asking these organizations each to send to the county fair a supply of the pamphlet literature they issue ; there to be distributed. As the result of these letters we had, at the county fair, many copies of each of a thousand different pam- phlets on farm life. They covered farming in general, fertilizing, fence-making, care of stock, rais- ing chickens, hygiene in the home, care of infants and many other topics. It is not too much to say that, if these pamphlets had been printed in a little different form, after the manner of the conventional book, they would have formed a library of a thousand volumes of the best and latest literature on the farm and farm life. These books, or pamphlets, were dis- played on shelves by kinds and distributed to all comers. So much of the literature as was not taken on these two days will be distributed by the local superintendent of schools. This is library work of a new kind. One of the most interesting and intricate of all modern callings is that of the credit man — the man who decides for a business house to whom credit shall be given, and for how much, and under what circum- stances. To do this work wisely he must know his United States well, the character of the population 291 LIBRARIES ill the (liferent centers, aud the character and possi- bilities of the industries here and there. These credit men have learned that the printed pa^e is, ahove all other things, the most valuable tool they can use in acquiring the information they need. The local asso- ciation in Newark has asked us to prepare a list of the best books for the use of credit men, in equipping themselves for work, and have said that they wish this list made as good as possible and that they will pay the cost of publishing the same, regardless of its length. This, again, is, perhaps, library work of a new kind. The Associated Advertising Clubs of tlie World is one of the most powerful organizations of its kind. Among the munj activities of this organization is the establishment of collections of books for the use of advertising men, either independent libraries or de- partments in public libraries. I have the good for- tune to be the chairman of a Committee on Libraries under the direction of the General Committee on Education of this organization and hope to be able, through this position, to be of assistance in promoting the acceptance by public libraries of the doctrine that library management must, in some respects, be notably modified to meet changing conditions in tlie use of print. And here comes my practical suggestion Avliich, as I hope you will see, draws together and makes fairly logical all that I have been saying. The suggestion is based on the fact that by far the greater part of all print today is outside the field of the conventional library; and on the further fact, partly a result of the first, that the library of to-day is not a very important factor in human life. The suggestion is that you appoint a committee or 292 WHAT NEXT? a group of committees to examine into and report upon the use of print to-day and the rehition of the present prevailing type of public library to that use. The printing press is pouring out a mighty stream of print. This stream is helping to turn the wheels of the machine shops of human activity. Con- ventional public libraries seem as tiny skiffs on this stream, and their occupants as almost solely con- cerned with the navigation of their resi)ective skiffs. Or, if you prefer the figure, these libraries are as backwaters and eddies, turning flotsam and jetsam slowly round and round, with bits of treasure trove scattered here and there through the mass. In any event, and regardless of figures good or bad, my advice is that you discover where libraries are to-day, what relation they bear to the world's use of print,^ and then discover, if you can, how that relation can be made one of indispensable utility. 293 INDEX Advertising a library, 85, 115, 127, 139, 143, 158, 194, 200, 206, 219, 264 Advertising, Incomes from news- paper, 78 Aeroplane delivery of books, 149 All-year schools, 181, 197 A. L. A. should advertise, 10, 85, 131 Architecture of the modern li- brary, 24, 54 Art works, collecting, 199, 274 Arts-and-crafts movement, Libra- ry a natural center of, 73 Associated advertising clubs of the world, 292 Associations, Library, state and local, 123 Attractiveness of modern libra- ries, 14, 19 Automatic who, what and why machine, 150 Books, Methods of making, 78 Books, Preparation of, for library, 174 Books, Use of, should be taught in schools, 74. i'3, 165. 269 Books, Why buy? 221 Branch libraries, 161, 269 Brancli libraries in schools, 164, 181 Buildings for modern library, 22, 25, 53, 63 Bulletins should be small, 117 Business branch, Newark, 200, 206, 217, 254 Business branch, Newark, re- sources and use, 213 Business literature, a legitimate part of library coUectioii, 13, 207, 211, 217, 272 Buying books, 33, 65, 221, 222, 226, 240 Bibliographies, Cooperative, 65, 83 Biography, Increase in children's reading of, 109 Book agents. How to treat, 226 Book reviewing, Failure of, 33 Book reviews, statistics, 35 Book reviews; what they should be, 37 Book selection for private library, 227 Book selection. Methods of, 33, 65 Book stores, Second-hand, 226 Bookcases for private library, 238 Book-lending field of public libra- ry, Limits of, 65 Booklists, Special, annotated, etc., 29, 37, 65, 83, 141, 232 Booklists to supplement general catalogue, 57, 117, 223 Booklists, Use of, by library, 57, 117, 198, 223 Books for private library, 227, 240 Books, importance of physical make-up, 34 Books, Increase in, 53, 79, 247 Card catalogue, Problem of, 57 59, 61, 115 Catalogue cards, samples, 172 Catalogue, Future possibilities of the printed, 61, 14S Catalogue room, location, 27 Charging system, future possibili- ties, 149 Children, Books for, 94, 108, 159 Children, How to supply reading for, 160 Children in the public library, Work with, 74, 158, 266 Children, Reading habit in, 49, 74, 93. 108, 111 Children's librarians, 101 Children's room, location, 27 Children's work in Cleveland, 266 Church, The country, and the li- brary, 167 City, Instruction about, in the schools, 196, 205 City management, Ideals in. 189 City's life. Place of the public li- brary in, 12, 41, 69, 187 Class room libraries, 163 295 INDEX Classics, Reading of, 234 Classification of books, 57, 173 Cleveland public library, 262, 265, 271 Closed shelf system, disadvan- tages, 21 Colleges, Failure of, to teach read- ing habit, 165 Complete works, 225 Construction, Economical, a ne- cessity for libraries, 23, 54 Cooperation between libraries, 64, 83 Cooperation between libraries and publishers, 84 Cooperation between libraries and schools, 163 Cooperation between library and church, 167 Cooperation between library and community, 12, 41, 71, 136, 178 Cooperation between library asso- ciations, 123 Cooperative bibliographies, 65 Country church and the library, 167 Course of study on the city of Newark, 205. Current information in the library, 208, 211, 271 Dead books in libraiies a problem, 59, 62 Delivery department, Automatic, 149 Delivery desk, its place in making a library popular, 115 Delivery desk, Location of, 25 Delivery stations. 120 Deposit stations, 120, 273 Dictionar\-, Buying a, 224 Discarding books, 61, 148 Editions, Fine, 237 Education, free public school and free public library system, 5, 15, 75, 181 Education, Libraries as means of, 66 Education of children, 5 Education of children in the use of print, 49, 74, 93, 269 Elimination of dead books, 60 Eliot, Pres., on living' and dead books, 60 Encyclopedia, Buying an, 225 Enthusiasm, A librarian's, 39 Involution of the special library, 243 Exhibitions as a means of making a library known, 119 Exhibitions of art objects, 199 Failure of book reviewing, 33 Family librarj-. Fundamental, 233 Fiction, less will be bought for public libraries, 65 Fiction, Reading of, 28, 70, 97 Fiction reviews not reliable, 36 Fiction, Selection of, for the li- brary, 28, 65, 83, 99 Fiction, statistics, 4, 100, 102 Fiction, Use of, for reference and equipment for this use, 29, 70 Fire-proof buildings, 54 First aid to the reading family, 240 Foreign population and the public library, 266 Foreigners, Books for, 265 Free public educational system, 15, 75, 181 Furniture should be movable not fixed, 56 Future of the library, 148 Geography, Book helps in teach- ing, 108 Gifts to smaller libraries, 13 Harper, Pres., on the library. 60 High school reading list, 198 History, Increase in children's reading of, 109 Home, Books useful for the, 227, 240 Home libraries, 120 House organ for the library, 200, 208, 219, 264 296 INDEX Indexes to society and scientific publications, Burden of, 64 lies, George, 37, 65, SO Information desk, location, 26 Information or vertical file, 207, 271 Kennedy, J. W., Course of study on the city of Newark, 205 Legitimate field of the municipal public library, 261 Lending department, plan and lo- cation, 2ij Librarian, a worker, S Librarian, an office-holder, 187 Librarian's enthusiasm, 39 Librarian's influence, 13, 121 Librarians' meetings, 2S7 Librarianshii), a public business, 189 Librarianship as a profession, 9, 39, 41, 171, 189, 209 Libraries, Increase in number and growth of, 79 Libraries, Origin of, 243 Librariology, 130, 221 Library associations, state and lo- cal, 123 Library construction, some gen- eral principles, 22, 54, 63 Library, Course of instruction in the use of, 197 Library meetings, Faults of, 129 Library methods. Changes in, 53, 55. 63, 65, 148, 206 Library organizations, How to form, 126 Library, relation to the commun- ity, 12, 41, 71, 136, 178 Library, Work of, for countv fair, 291 library's functions, 15, 51, 60, 66, 69, 73, 135, 153, 261 Light rooms in library buildings. Necessity for, 23 Literary criticism not reliable, 36 Literary journals. Book reviews in, 34 Made-in-Newark index 200 Magazines for private library, 242 Management of modern public li- braries, 16, 19 Management problems, 250 Map collection. 206 Meetings in library buildings, 71, 118 Model home library. List of books for, 240 Municipal affairs, publicity and the public library, 203, 212 Municipal improvement organ- izations and the public library, ^Municipal information. Collection of, 205 Municipal league library, 190 Municipal libraries, 191, 264 Municipal public library, its le- . gitimate field, 261 Municipal reference library, Cleve- land, 263 Museums, Need of, 73, 199 National Educational Association, library department, 11 Natural historj' stories for chil- dren. 108 Naude on the management of li- braries, 51 Newark business branch library, 200. 206, 213, 217, 254 Newark, check list of organiza- tions, 132 Newark, course of study, 196, 205 Newark library building. Use of, for meetings 195 Newark library. Notes about, 191, 198 Newark Museum Association or- ganization, 199 Newark newspaper items about li- brary, 117 Newarker, The, 200, 208, 219, 264 Newspapers, Publicity for library through, 85, 115, 139 Newspapers, analysis of contents, 46 Newspapers and periodicals. In- struction in use of, needed, 49 297 INDEX Newspapers, Reading of, 43 Newspapers, statistics, 44, 79 Newspapers will usurp the w-ork of libraries, 147 Normal schools, Library instruc- tion in, 197 Publicity through newspapers, 85, 115, 139 Publishers and libraries, coopera- tion needed, 84 Publishing and printing, statistics, 43, 76, 80 Open shelf system desirable, 17, 83 Organization, Value of, 71, 124, 132, 136 Organizations in Newark, statis- tics, 132 Paper costs, 77 Parents, cooperation needed, 6 Partitions should be avoided in li- brary buildings, 55 Periodical room, 28 Periodicals, estimated annual cir- culation, 48 Periodicals, increase in number, 79 Periodicals, Reading of, 43 Periodicals, Weekly and monthly, character of contents, 47 Periodicals, what to buy for home use, 239 Phonograph, Story-telling by, 151 Picture collections, 198, 215, 275 Popular fiction authors, 104 Poster advertising, 119 Print, Increase of, 52, 75, 79, 245 Print, statistics, 45, 52 Printing and publishing, statistics, 45, 52, 76, 80 Printing presses. Improvements in, 78 Public affairs information bureau, 279 Public, The, and its public library, 15 Public library and publicity in municipal affairs, 203 Public library, How to start a, 126 Public library system compulsory, 7 Public welfare organizations, col- lection of publications, 278 Publicity methods, 115, 127, 141, 143, 158, 194, 200, 206, 219, 264 Readers and non-readers, graphic diagram, 112 Readers' cards. How to dispense with, 149 Readers' cards. Liberality in issu- ing, 31 Readers, Increase in number of, 52, 98, 108 Reading habit, children should ac- quire, in school, 49, 74, 93, 269 Reading habit. Increase in, 52, 98, 108, 110, 246 Reading habit, not taught in col- leges, 165 Reading, Librarian's, what it should consist of, 179 Reading matter. Increase of, 52, 75, 246 Reading matter, Kinds of, 43, 98, IDS Reading, statistics, 4, 44, 52, 100, 108, 111 Reading, Teaching of, 74, 94, 159, 269 Reference room,. Location of, 27 Reference work should not be limited to one department, 30 Registration of borrowers, meth- ods, 31, 149 Relation of library to city, 12, 41, 69, 178, 187 Repair department, qualifications necessary, 175 Reviews, Book; what they should be, 37 School buildings. Branch libraries in, 94, 163, 181 School buildings, continuous use, . 270 School buildings. Ideal, of the fu- ture, 183 298 INDEX Schools and libraries, Relations between, 92, 94, 118, 163 Schools, Wider use of, ISl, 270 Scientific organizations and the public library, 73 Second-hand book stores, 226 Social activity, The library a center of, 70 Social organizations and the public library, 12, 72 Special Libraries Association, Origin of, 253, 256 Special Libraries, journal, 25S Special library. Evolution of the, 243 Storehouse plan for dead books, 62 Story-telling in libraries, 151, 153, 162 Students' use of card catalogue, 58 Study clubs, Work with, a means of publicity, 72, 119 Supplementary school readers, 159 Telephone, Questions answered by, 140 Traveling libraries, 120, 273 Typesetting and casting ma- chines, Use of, 77 Vertical file collection, 207, 271 Wider use of the school plant, 181, 270 Women in library work, 171 Women's clubs and the library, 72 T\'ords, Mere, 67 Woodstock, Vt., County fair 291 Workingmen, Use of library build- ing by, 70 299 RETURN LIBRARY SCHOOL LIBRARY TO*^ 2 South Hall 642-2253 LOAN PERIOD 1 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS DUE AS STAMPED BELOW DEC 19 1992 FORM NO. DD 18, 45m, ^,j^ UNIVERSITY OF BERKE CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY LEY, CA 94720