the Trustees’ Section of the American Library Association. We librarians
should be very glad to know just what you expect us to accomplish, for
on that depends our manner of setting to work. Do you wish us to aim at
decreasing the percentage of illiteracy in the community? or the arrests
for drunkenness? Are we to strive for an increased circulation? And will
an absolute increase be satisfactory, or must it be an increase
proportionate to population? Is it definitely demanded of us to decrease
our fiction percentage? Shall we, in any given case, devote our
attention chiefly to the home use or the reference use of the library?
Shall we favor the student or the ordinary citizen? These questions, of
course, cannot receive a general answer; they must be decided
differently in different cases, but at least we may agree on the type of
question that it is admissible to answer at all and on the degree of
detail to which it is permissible to go in stating a requirement.
For instance, is it admissible for a board to say to its librarian, “The
results that we require you to show include the following: A
well-ordered collection of books classified according to the Dewey
system, bound in half duck and distributed with the aid of the Browne
charging system?” I think it will be granted that this would be an
attempt to control the details of method in the guise of a statement of
desired results. But where shall we draw the line? How specific may be
the things that a board may properly require of its expert staff? That
is the question whose solution by this Section would be an inestimable
benefit to all libraries and librarians. At present there is wide
difference of opinion and of practice on this point. Many people would
not agree at all with the limitations that have just been laid down;
even those who do agree would differ widely over their interpretation.
There is hardly time to anticipate and meet criticism. I shall be
reminded, I suppose, that the funds for carrying on the library’s work
are in the hands of the trustees, and that one of the main objects of
their existence is to see that the money is honestly spent, not stolen
or wasted. How can they do this without close oversight of methods? To
this I would reply that this important function of the board is
distinctly the requirement of a result, that result being the honest
administration of the library. The method by which it may be
administered most honestly is best left to the expert head. Naturally,
if evidence of peculation or waste comes before the board the librarian
will be held to account as having failed to achieve the required result
of honest administration. In this and in other respects the necessity
that the board should know whether or not the desired results are being
attained means that the work of the executive officer should be followed
with attention. It must be evident, however, that this does not involve
control and dictation of methods.
It must also be remembered that what has been said refers only to the
administrative control of the institution. The duties of trustees as
custodians of an endowment fund, if such there be, or in soliciting and
receiving contributions as well as other financial considerations, are
separate from this and have not been considered.
Again, I shall be told that the head of the executive staff is not only
a subordinate but also an expert adviser of his board. This is true; and
as a consulting expert it is his duty to give advice outside of his own
administrative field if he is asked for it. It may even be his duty to
give it unasked occasionally, but this comes very near to the
interference that I have deprecated. He who would tread this borderland
must tread softly. On the other hand, the expert may and should ask the
advice of members of his board as individuals or of the board as a whole
when he needs it and when he feels that it would give him confidence or
strengthen his hand. In this whole matter there is a clear distinction
between the advisory and executive function on one hand and on the
other.
In short, the view taken in this paper may be briefly summed up as
follows: Lay control in libraries and elsewhere is a logical and proper
development. It would not, on the whole, be well for one who should wish
to endow a library to make an expert librarian sole trustee for life
with power to select his successor. That would be a fine thing for the
librarian, but it would be neither desirable nor proper. It is well that
the trustees should be responsible representatives of the lay public,
for whose benefit the library is to be conducted. But as the public is
interested chiefly in results, the trustees should confine themselves
largely to the indication and requirement of these results, leaving
methods in the hand of their expert staff of subordinates. And it is
eminently desirable that librarians should hear from a representative
body of trustees some expression of opinion regarding the extent of this
limitation.
THE WHOLE DUTY OF A LIBRARY TRUSTEE: FROM A LIBRARIAN’S STANDPOINT[4]
At a former meeting of this section the present writer had the honor of
reading a paper in which he made an attempt to show that the trustee of
the public library is the representative of the public and, as such,
interested especially in results as distinguished from methods, which
are the business of the librarian as an expert administrator. In making
this distinction I urged trustees to give particular attention to the
formulation of such results as they should consider desirable, that
librarians on their part might confine themselves more to the
consideration of appropriate methods for the attainment of these
results. So far as I know, however, this work remains to be
accomplished, and it is because I still think it desirable that I
welcome this opportunity of restating the situation and making some
attempt to illustrate it and to indicate what may and should be done in
the premises. According to this view it is not only the duty of a board
of trustees to consider what should be the results aimed at by its
library, to formulate its conclusions, to communicate them to the
librarian and then to hold him responsible for their attainment, but
everything that the board may properly do may be brought under this
head; and to state it broadly is therefore to set forth comprehensively
the “whole duty of a trustee,” which may serve as the justification of
my somewhat ambitious title.
The layman’s influence, control exercised by and through the viewpoint
of the general public, is a most excellent thing, however much the
expert may chafe under it. This is apparent in every art and craft. The
expert, the man who has made a study of technique, of the way to do it,
comes more and more to think of the method rather than the result--to
elaborate detail and manner and to take keen joy in their recognition
and comparison. So it is with the worker in art or in literature, and
thus we have what are called painter’s pictures and musician’s music and
poet’s poems--works that interest and delight those whose business it is
to produce them, but which leave the general reader or hearer cold. It
is evident that these, no matter how valuable or interesting they may be
from one standpoint, are not the highest examples of their class. Better
are the crude attempts of native genius which kindle enthusiasm and
arouse the best impulses while breaking every canon of art. Best of all,
of course, are the works where the technique and the result are both
admirable and where the technical resources of the workers are brought
to bear consciously, directly and successfully upon the attainment of
the result. And to produce such works two forces must generally
co-operate--the trained skill and enthusiasm of the artist and the
requirement of the general public that his work must appeal to them,
interest them, take them a message. Now this is of interest to us here
and now, because, just as we occasionally have “composer’s music” and
“architect’s buildings,” so, it is “to be feared, we may have
librarian’s libraries--institutions that are carried on with the highest
degree of technical skill and with enthusiasm and interest and yet fail
of adequate achievement because the librarian makes the mistake of
regarding the technique as an end instead of as a means--of thinking
that if his methods be precise, systematic and correct, good results
must needs follow, instead of aiming directly at his results and
adapting his methods to their attainment.
It is here that the trustee, as the official representative of the
general public, may apply a corrective influence. In the case of the
artist or the writer this influence is brought to bear generally in a
financial way--by a wealthy patron who will order a picture or statue
provided it accords with his own ideas--by hostile criticism, public or
private, that drives away purchasers. In a public library, public
opinion rarely makes itself felt in this way; indeed, it could do so
only in cases where disregard of the public amounted to mismanagement
and led to the reduction of appropriations or the discharge of the
librarian. Public criticism, as in the press, might also affect a
librarian’s course; it undoubtedly often does, but it need not; and he
may safely disregard it as a general thing. When, however, his board of
trustees calls him to account, he must listen, and when it tells him
what he is expected to do, it is then his business to devise the best
way to do it.
A rough classification and analysis of the results that a librarian may
be expected to accomplish may not be out of place here. We may treat
them under four heads: financial, educational, recreational and social.
_Financial results._--A library must show a good material return for
money expended. By this is meant that its books and supplies must be
purchased at fair rates, its salaries reasonably proportioned to
quantity and quality of services rendered, its property economically
administered. A board of trustees is derelict in its duty if it does not
require all this, and also hold its librarian rigidly to such
requirement. This means that it must, along the broadest lines, know
the ratio of expenditure to return in these various departments; it does
not mean that the librarian should be hampered by the prescription of
details. It means, for example, that the expert administrator should be
called to account if his bills for lighting and heating are excessive,
and that he should be asked to show cause why they should not be kept
within bounds; it does not mean that he should be required to use lights
of a certain candle-power or turn off the light in a particular room at
a given hour. In most libraries, the making of annual appropriations
under designated heads and the requirement that cause shall be shown for
a transfer from one of these categories to another, are sufficient
measures of financial control.
Among the financial results that have already attracted the attention of
the public and hence engaged the interest of boards of trustees is the
attainment of a proper ratio of expenditure for books to the expense of
administration. This ratio is generally regarded by the lay critic as
abnormally small, but trustees have generally acquiesced in the
librarian’s explanation of the causes that seem to him to make it
necessarily so. It is undoubtedly the trustee’s duty to call his expert
administrator’s attention to this and all other seeming discrepancies in
expenditure, and to make sure that they are not carrying the library too
far toward technical perfection at the expense of practical efficiency.
_Educational results._--It is only right to require that a library
should be able to show that it is increasing the educational content of
the community, or raising its educational standard, or at least that it
is exerting itself to do so, both directly and by co-operation with
other agencies, especially with the public schools. A board of trustees
is certainly justified in ascertaining by any means in its power whether
this is being done, and if not, in asking an explanation of its
librarian. Does everyone in the community know where the library is? Is
everyone who would be benefited by it making use of it? Is it a help to
the schools, and do the teachers recognize this fact? Does the community
in general regard it as a place where material for the acquisition of
knowledge is stored and discriminatingly given out? These are questions
that can be settled not so much by the examination of statistics as by
ascertaining the general feeling of the community. It is much easier for
a trustee to find this out than it is for a librarian; and trustees,
both individually and as a body, should continually bear in mind the
value to them of information along this line. Librarians are apt to talk
a good deal about the educational function of the library as an adjunct
and supplement to the school. It is to their credit that they have made
it an educational force not under pressure but voluntarily, as a
recognition of the necessities of the situation. But where such
necessities have not yet been recognized or where their full import has
been slow of realization, the educational side of library work remains
undeveloped. Let the board of trustees notify its executive officer that
it expects him to look to this feature of his work as thoroughly as to
the condition of his building or the economical expenditure of his
lighting appropriation, and all such institutions will experience a
change of heart.
_Recreational results._--Nothing is more important to the physical and
moral health of a community, as of an individual, than the quality of
the recreation that it takes. The question of whether recreation is or
is not taken need not be considered. Everyone takes recreation; if
means for the healthy normal variety are not provided, the other kind
will occupy its place. And the healthy normal individual--child or
adult--prefers the first kind if he can get it. With the physical
variety the library has nothing to do; but to purvey proper intellectual
recreation is one of its most important provinces. Is this adequately
done? Is it done at all? Does the librarian exalt other functions of his
great machine and neglect this one? The large amount of fiction
circulated in most public libraries is generally taken as an indication
that the quantity of its recreational content is considerable, whatever
may be said of the quality; but this is a very superficial way of
looking at the matter. There is educational material of the highest
value in fiction and nearly every non-fiction class contains books of
value for recreation. Moreover, what may be recreation to one man may be
the hardest kind of study to another. The enthusiast in higher
mathematics may extract as pure amusement from a book on the theory of
functions as his neighbor would from the works of “John Henry.” In
short, it is very difficult to separate education and recreation. Good
work presupposes good play. It is simply our duty to view the library as
a whole and to decide whether it contains the means of satisfying so
much of the community’s demand for recreation as is wholesome and
proper. Whether it does this may be judged from the freedom with which
the library is used for recreational purposes compared with other
agencies. A proper admixture of physical and intellectual amusement is
required by everybody; is the library doing its share toward the
purveying of the latter form? I do not know any better way of finding
out than for the library trustees to use their eyes and ears, nor any
more effective remedy for inadequate results along this line than the
pressure that they can bring to bear on their librarian.
_Social results._--Under this head we may group a very large number of
results that are apt to be overlooked or taken for granted. They may
perhaps be summarized in the statement that the library should take its
proper place in the institutional life of the community. What this is
will depend largely on the community’s size and its social content. In
many small towns the library naturally assumes great social importance;
in a city it may be relatively of less weight, though perhaps its
influence in the aggregate may be even greater. Whether it is doing this
part of its work properly may probably be best ascertained by comparison
with the work of other institutions that go to build up the social
fabric--the church, the home, the club, the social assembly. Does the
dweller in the community turn as naturally to the library for
intellectual help as he does to the church for religious consolation?
Does he seek intellectual recreation there as he seeks physical
recreation at his athletic club or social entertainment at a dance? And
so seeking, does he find? Does he come to regard the library as his
intellectual home and the librarian and his assistants as friends? What,
on the other hand, is the attitude of the library staff toward the
public? Is it inviting or repellent, friendly or coldly hostile, helpful
or indifferent? Here is a whole body of results that are, in a way, the
most important that a library can produce, and yet it is impossible to
set them down in figures; they can scarcely even be expressed in words.
The social status of a library is like a man’s reputation or his credit;
it is built up by thousands of separate acts and by an attitude
maintained consistently for years; yet a breath may blast it Of this
position a board of trustees should be particularly proud and its
members should do their best to uphold it. If they realize by those many
delicate indications that we all recognize but cannot formulate, that
the library is failing to maintain it, the librarian should hear from
them. They should let him know that something is wrong and that they
expect him to right it. If he does not know how, that is an indication
that his personality and ability are parts of the failure.
This, then from the writer’s standpoint, is the whole duty of a
trustee--or rather of a board of trustees--to see clearly what it wants,
to give the librarian his orders, and to require an accounting.
I am frequently struck with the attitude of librarians toward their
boards of trustees, not as shown in their public acts, but as revealed
in conversation among themselves. A board is apt to be adjudged good or
bad, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, as it takes a more or less passive
part in the administration of the library. If it acts simply to approve
what the librarian does and to see that he gets the necessary funds, it
is regarded as ideal. All that most librarians seem to want is to be
given plenty of money and then to be let alone. This is a view of the
whole duty of a trustee with which I do not sympathize. On the other
hand, it is not to be denied that boards of trustees have done much to
encourage this attitude because when they are really active in their
interest their activity looks too closely to detail. They are then apt
to interfere in the regulation of methods rather than to require results
and afterward ascertain whether and in what degree these results have
been reached.
A board of trustees is the supreme authority in a library. I would have
this fact realized in its fullest meaning by both trustees and
librarian. And I would have the board exercise its supremity in what
may be called the American manner. The people constitute the supreme
authority both in Great Britain and in the United States. In the former
country, however, this authority is symbolized by the person of a
monarch, who reigns but does not govern; and the minutest details of
administration are attended to by the people in the persons of their
parliamentary representatives and of the cabinet, which is, in effect, a
parliamentary committee. In this country, on the other hand, we entrust
administrative details very largely to our chief magistrate and his
personally appointed advisers. We tell him what to do and leave him to
do it as he thinks best; and though Congress is disposed at times to
interfere in the details of administration, these usually consist more
largely of departmental decisions and rulings than of definite
provisions of a legislative act. The President of the United States is
the people’s general executive officer and administrative expert in
precisely the same sense that the librarian occupies that office in his
own library. Congress and the board of trustees bear similar relations
to these officers. And although this may be carrying the comparison of
small things with great to the point of absurdity, it shows clearly that
the American idea of delegated authority is to make the authority great
and the corresponding responsibility strict. That the best results have
been attained in this country by following out this plan in all fields,
from the highest government positions to the humblest commercial posts,
seems to be undoubted; and I believe that the library has been a
conspicuous example.
Appoint a good man, then, as your administrative expert; give him a free
rein, but not in the sense of following him to dictate the whole policy
of your library. Decide for yourselves the broad lines of that policy,
relying on your own common sense together with his expert advice;
require him to follow out those lines to a successful issue, and hold
him responsible for the outcome. So doing you shall fulfil, so far as
the limited vision of one librarian enables him to see, the whole duty
of a trustee.
THE DAY’S WORK: SOME CONDITIONS AND SOME IDEALS[5]
What is the library for? What are we, who are in charge of it, to do
with it? What point are we striving to reach, and how shall we get
there?
First of all, the library is a collection of books. Books are to be used
by reading them. The whole machinery of the library, its buildings, its
departments, its regulations, its disciplined staff, are to bring
together the reader and the books. Whatever auxiliary work the library
may undertake, this must be its first task.
Now to what end is this done? A book from the material point of view is
so much leather, paper and printer’s ink, but on the intellectual and
spiritual side it is a storage battery of ideas. To put a book into a
reader’s hand is to complete a mysterious circuit between the writer’s
and the reader’s mind. This charging of the mind with ideas is what we
call education. To the physiologist it is a mere modification of brain
structure; to the economist and the historian it spreads further out; it
is a modification of the individual’s action toward the whole world; it
is the alteration of the world’s present status and future history.
Education cannot be accomplished by books alone; it can even be
accomplished wholly without them; but if they are used properly, there
is no one agent that can do more for education than these devices for
the storage and transmission of ideas. That the library is an
educational institution is now generally recognized. It is common to
call it an adjunct to the school, or to speak of it as continuing the
work of the school. That the school and the library should work hand in
hand where it is possible, goes without saying. But I think we may
properly object to any phraseology that implies the subordination of the
library to the school. The library stores books and makes them
available. Part of the school’s work also is to make available the
contents of books. The library may continue the work of the school; but
so in some cases may the school merely complete the work of the library.
Many a student has received his first inspiration and instruction in the
library and has been thereby stimulated to enter a regular course of
study. It is better to let the library stand on its own merits as an
instructional agent. The difference between it and the school,
fundamentally, is that the library’s educational energy is chiefly
potential while that of the school is, or should be, dynamic. Yet though
the library is only a potential force--energy in storage--the library
plus the librarian may and should be dynamic too. We then have in both
school and library the book and the teacher, with the difference that in
the school the book is only the teacher’s tool, while in the library the
librarian exists to care for the book, to place it in his hands who
needs it, and to make it effective.