use of the library as a great engine of popular education, using the
noun in its broadest sense and emphasizing the adjective. The library is
more and more a great humanizing influence; if this is so, nothing human
must be alien to it. And much that is human and humanizing is
nevertheless ephemeral. With some the implications of this word are
wholly contemptuous. Of a day! Does nothing valuable pass quickly away,
having done its little work? The day itself is a day only and vanishes
with the evening and the morning; yet it has its part in the record of
the years. So with “ephemeral” literature. As we have seen, a great deal
of what we are wont to consider as standard and permanent will
ultimately perish. Yet be its life that of a year or a century, a book
may play its little part in the mental development of those who read it.
Just at present the favorite vehicle of literary expression is fiction.
People put into stories what they have to say of history, sociology and
ethics; they embody in romance their theories of aesthetics, economics
and politics. There is good doctrine with a poor literary setting and
there are paste jewels in pure gold. But taking it by and large the
much decried deluge of modern fiction has undoubtedly been educative in
its tendency. This is why I cannot yield to logic and predict the
gradual disappearance of all but a small residuum of fiction from the
public library. There is a tendency in that direction but there are some
signs of a reaction. The seer may hope, even if he dare not predict,
that the great public library that can afford to do so will continue to
purchase such fiction as will interest or entertain the average person
of education, even if it is to stay on the shelves but a few months.
What will be the future distribution of libraries in this country? At
present their numbers are large in the northern states and comparatively
small in the southern. Growth has been unexampled in its rapidity and
has been stimulated by large benefactions. So far as this growth may be
looked upon as the direct result of Mr. Carnegie’s gifts it may
doubtless be regarded as abnormal, although it should be noted that
every Carnegie building means a present and future outlay on the part of
the community in which it stands, of many times the amount given by the
donor. Primarily, library expansion is the result of a popular
conviction that the public library is a public necessity. Expansion has
proceeded in proportion to the spread of that conviction and along the
lines of its progress. If there are fewer public libraries in the South
than in the North it is because the need for them is not felt there,
even if it exists. Doubtless the race problem is a powerful inhibitory
influence. Two things are certain; that library expansion is to go on
for some time, and that a time will come when it must stop. When that
time arrives, the library will have attained its majority and we shall
have an opportunity to address ourselves to problems that can not be
attended to during our period of growth.
Who will use our great library of the future? Who uses the library of
to-day? I have been asked that question by reporters and have been
puzzled to answer it. For whose use is the public library intended? It
will be logical to answer “the Public, of course,” but there are a great
many people who will give this answer with mental reservations. With
them “the Public” means some particular part of the public. Some think
that the libraries are for the poor, or at any rate for those who cannot
afford to buy books for themselves. This is a survival of the origin of
some of our circulating libraries, which were originally charities. But
a public foundation and a charitable foundation are two different
things. Our parks are free, yet we do not object to their free use by
the wealthy, nor do the wealthy classes themselves seem to shrink from
it. Some again would limit the use of a library to students, or at all
events to those who do not care to withdraw books for home use. These
are people who do not believe in the circulating library--and there are
still such. Others again would have the public library cater only to
those of educated literary taste. For these reasons and for others it is
a fact that our public libraries, even those with the largest
circulations, are not used by the entire public. Probably, however, they
are being used more and more freely. In a library that uses the two-book
system it is impossible to tell exactly from statistics, how many
persons are drawing from the library at one time. Assuming, however,
that the number is proportional to the number of books outstanding, we
find in the New York Public Library that it has been increasing a little
faster of late years than the circulation. In other words, individual
reading has not increased, and the great recent increase of circulation
in our library and presumably in others also, is due to an increase of
readers. The size of the library’s public is therefore increasing and
there is no reason to suppose that it will not continue to do so. Of
course there must be a limit. For instance, certain sections of the
public will not use a library--as they will not use a school--in
conjunction with other sections. This may be because of social or racial
feeling, or personal uncleanliness or offensiveness, even when the
latter is not carried to the point where the librarian can properly
object to it. In such cases the lower element will drive out the higher.
The remedy seems to be sought in segregation. This may be either open
and acknowledged as in those southern cities where the library has a
separate department for colored people, or it may be virtual, as where a
convenient lounging room with newspapers is provided for the tramp
element, sometimes with the privilege of smoking. In large cities the
branch library system acts in the same way. The character of the
card-holders is determined by that of the surrounding district and we
thus get practically separate libraries for separate sections of the
community. I look to see this separation proceed to a somewhat greater
degree, not perhaps systematically but automatically and almost
involuntarily. In spite of the apparent concession to class feeling, it
will certainly increase the aggregate use of the library and thus make
it more truly a public institution. So far as the branch system is
concerned, of course, this is only one of the ways in which it increases
the size of the library’s public. Even in a section where the population
is perfectly homogeneous, more people will always be served by two
libraries than by one. The number of branch library systems is rapidly
increasing and the prospects are that the greatest possible use is to
be made of them in the future. And they will be made up of true
branches. Delivery stations have their uses, but they can never take the
place of buildings with permanent stocks of books and all the
conveniences of a separate library. Where a branch building is also a
delivery station, as it always should be, that is, where the users of a
branch are allowed to draw on the stock of the Central Library or of the
other branches, it is found that the branch use vastly exceeds the
station use. In our own library a branch that circulates 500 to 1000 of
its own books daily will give out only two or three from other branches.
This is sufficiently indicative of the preferences of the public, and in
a matter of this kind public preference will ultimately govern. These
branch libraries will have limited stocks of books, mostly, though not
entirely, on open shelves, and will include small reference collections
which will be more important as the branch is farther removed from the
central library. These predictions, it seems to me, are all warranted by
present tendencies.
How will the future library be governed and administered? The governing
body at present is almost universally a board of trustees who are men of
standing and responsibility but usually without expert knowledge. These
are sometimes semi-independent and sometimes under the direct control of
their municipal government. The present tendency seems to be to minimize
municipal control but to increase the number of governing bodies subject
to it. In other words private libraries are doing more public work than
formerly under contract with municipalities, becoming thereby subject to
the control of the city or town but not so closely as to bring politics
into the management. This state of things is so desirable that we may
expect it to be multiplied in the future. As regards the lay or inexpert
character of the governing board, though it is looked upon by some as
objectionable, it is shared by the library with great numbers of other
public and semi-public institutions. Such a board may be regarded as
representative of the great lay public, on whose behalf the institution
must be operated, and whose members are interested in results rather
than in the special methods by which these results may be obtained. That
the members of such a board should be mere figure-heads is certainly not
to be desired; that they should, either as individuals or collectively,
take part in the details of administration is equally undesirable. There
are boards that are doing the one or the other of these things, but the
tendency is to lean neither in the direction of laxity nor of undue
interference--to require definite results and to hold the librarian
strictly responsible for the attainment of those results, leaving him to
employ his own methods.
And the librarian of the future; who and what will he be? The difference
between the modern librarian and him of the old school has often been
the subject of comment. The librarian nowadays is less the scholar and
more the man of affairs. Is change to go on in this direction? There are
rather, it seems to me, signs of a reaction. Perhaps reaction is hardly
the word. The librarian, while keeping in touch with the times, is
reaching back for a little of the spirit of the old-time custodian and
incorporating it with his own. Is it too much to hope that the heads of
our future libraries, will keep in the forefront of library progress,
alert to appreciate the popular need and to respond to it, may yet have
something of the sweet and gentle spirit of the old scholars who used to
preside over our storehouses of books?
Who are to be the assistants in our library of the future? At present
our staffs are recruited from the following sources:
(1) The library schools. The best of these have supplied chiefly the
heads of the smaller libraries, and heads of departments or assistants
of the higher grades in the larger libraries. Few heads of the large
libraries are school-graduates and few lower-grade assistants. There
are, however, schools of the second class whose graduates have gone into
the lower grades both in small and large institutions.
(2) Apprentice classes, generally formed to instruct untrained persons
in the work of a particular library, so that those who enter its lower
grades may be at least partially fitted for their work. The best of
these rise by promotion to the upper grades.
(3) Appointment of totally untrained persons. If such persons are
thoroughly well educated they may enter the work in the higher grades or
even as the heads of libraries. B If not they generally enter at the
bottom, although of course some obtain higher positions through
political or local influence.
This, I believe, states the situation fairly. What are the tendencies?
There can be no doubt that the library school is growing in favor. The
increasing numbers of those who apply for school courses, the raising of
requirements, both for entrance and for graduation, the second class
schools that have sprung up in limitation of those of higher grade,
making necessary the appointment of committees by various library bodies
to examine and report on them--all point in this direction. At the same
time we have had numerous instances, of late, of the selection of
non-graduates to fill high library positions and at least one instance
of frank statement on the part of a librarian of acknowledged eminence,
in favor of taking college men of ability into the library immediately
on graduation, instead of putting them through a library school. The
library schools aim, and very properly so, at occupying the same
position toward the library profession that the medical and law schools
do toward the medical and legal professions. Statistics show that they
have not yet reached that position. Still, it is probable that they will
continue to approximate to it as a limit. In the future, more and more
of the higher library positions will doubtless be filled by
library-school graduates--and so also will more of the lower positions.
When the demand for assistants in the higher grades begins to slacken,
proportionately to the supply, as it is sure to do some day, the library
school graduates will be willing to enter the library force in the lower
grade, and will thus crowd out the untrained or partially trained
applicants to some extent. They may even make the apprentice class a
superfluity, in which case I am sure librarians will abandon it without
a sigh.
In these somewhat desultory forecasts the object of the prophet has been
not so much to impress upon others his own beliefs as to stimulate a
taste for prophecy--a desire to glance over the rail and see which way
the current is setting. Without being fatalists, we may hold that there
are certain great tendencies in human affairs, vast social currents,
against which it is well-nigh hopeless to struggle. Those who desire to
accomplish results must work with these currents, not against them.
Success has almost always been won in this way. Even when a few bold
spirits have seemed to stem and turn back the whole tide, it will
generally be found that an unseen undercurrent was in their favor. Learn
therefore to judge of the currents; so shall we avoid the rocks and
shoals and bring our craft safely to port.
THE LOVE OF BOOKS AS A BASIS FOR LIBRARIANSHIP[7]
Is the love of books a proper or necessary qualification for one who is
to care for books and to see that they do the work for which they were
made? First, let us ask a question or two. What is the love of books;
and what is there in books that one may love? The same question might be
asked and answered of the love of human beings; for between it and the
love of books there are curious analogies. Of what, then, do man and
book severally consist as objects of interest and affection?
First of all there is the man himself, the ego, the soul--which cannot
indeed exist on this earth without its material embodiment, but which
most of us realize is in some way distinct from that embodiment. So the
book has its soul. The ideas or facts that it sets forth, though
dependent for their influence on the printed page, exist independently
of that page and make the book what it is. Next we have the material
embodiment; that without which the man or the book could not exist for
us; which is a necessary part of him or it, but necessary only because
it is the vehicle through which man or book may be known by the senses.
The body of the book is thus so much, and only so much, of its material
part, its paper and its ink, as is necessary to present the contents
properly to the eye. Lastly, we have the clothing of man and of book,
having the function of protection or of decoration, or both; in the case
of the book the protective cover, often highly decorated, and so much
of interior elaboration as cannot be said to be strictly necessary to
the presentation of the idea. The “body” and the clothing of the book,
let it be noted, are not strictly separable as are those of the man. The
line between them may be drawn in different places by different people.
The same illustration, we will say, may be considered by one reader an
absolutely necessary part of the book--an organ of its body--while to
another it is but an ornamental embellishment--a decorative gewgaw. In
spite of this vagueness, however, there is here an undeniable
distinction between those material parts of the book that are necessary
to its existence and those that merely embellish it or protect it.
The book therefore, like the man, is made up of soul, body and clothes.
Which of these is the entity that may be loved? Now there are many kinds
of lovers and many kinds of love. The belle of the ball may be
surrounded with admirers, but if clad in rags and seated in a gutter she
might excite no favorable notice. Still more may a pretty face be loved
when it has no mental or spiritual qualities behind it. Yet these types
of affection are inferior--no one would deny it. In like manner those
who love the book merely for its fine clothes, who rejoice in luxurious
binding and artistic illumination, and even those who dwell chiefly on
its fine paper and careful typography, are but inferior lovers of books.
The one loves his book for its clothes, and the other for its bodily
perfection; neither cares primarily for its contents, its soul.
Now the true lover is he who loves the soul--who sees beyond clothes and
bodily attributes, and cherishes nobility of character, strength of
intellect, loftiness of purpose, sweetness of disposition,
steadfastness of attachment--those thousand qualities that go to make
up personality. All these the book has, like the man or the woman--for
is it not the essence of its writer? Your true book-lover would rather
have a little old dog’s-eared copy of his favorite author, soiled and
torn by use, with binding gone, and printed on bad paper with poorer
type and worse ink, than a mediocre production that is a typographic and
artistic masterpiece.
And yet we call the collector of fine bindings and rare editions a
“book-lover,” to the exclusion of the one who loves truly and devotedly.
The true book-lover wants to get at the soul of his book; the false one
may never see it. He may even refrain from cutting the leaves of the
rare first edition that he has just bought, in doing which he is like
the ignorant mother who sews her child up in his clothes for the
winter--nay, worse; for you cannot sew up the child’s soul.
Now let there be no misunderstanding. As the true lover would have his
mistress beautiful--nay, as she _is_ beautiful to his eyes, whatever she
may be to others, and as he would, if he could, clothe her in silks and
adorn her with gems, so the true book-lover need not be and is not
adverse to having his favorite author sumptuously set forth; he would
rather than not see his books properly and strongly printed and bound;
his love for the soul need not interfere with proper regard for the body
and its raiment. And here is where the love of the book has an advantage
over the affection whose object is a person. In spite of the
advertisements of the beauty doctors, a homely face can rarely be made
beautiful; but the book may be embodied and clothed as we will; it is
the same, however printed and bound, to him who loves it for its
contents.
Thus it will be seen that when I speak in general of “a love of books” I
mean not a love of their typography, their illustration, or their
bindings, but of their contents; a love of the universal mind of
humanity as enshrined in print; a love of the method of recording ideas
in written speech, as contrasted with their presentation in the spoken
tongue--a love of ideas and ideals as so recorded. Such a love of books
is pre-eminently a characteristic of civilized man. It is not synonymous
with a love of knowledge--the savage who never saw a book may have that;
it is not even the same as a love of _recorded_ knowledge, for knowledge
may be recorded in other ways--in the brain by oral repetition, in
sculptured memorials, in mere piles of stone. It is a love of the ideas
of men recorded in a particular way, in _the_ particular way that has
commended itself to civilized man as best.
The very existence of a library presupposes such a love of books. No one
who had not an affection for the printed records of his race would care
to possess them, much less to collect and preserve them. It would seem,
then, that a love of books should be not only a qualification but an
absolute prerequisite for entrance upon librarianship. By inquiring how
and why it has come to be regarded as a non-essential or as of secondary
importance, we may perhaps learn something.
A young woman comes to me to ask for library work; and when I demand
sternly, “Have you training or experience?” she timidly answers, “No;
but I’m very fond of books.” I smile; you all smile in like case. Why do
we smile? What business have we to underrate such a fundamental
qualification and exalt above it mere technicalities? The ability to
acquire these technicalities exists in ten persons where the ability to
love books as they should be loved is found in one. If the love so
avowed is real, even if it is only potential, not actual, our feeling in
its presence should be one of reverence, not amusement. It should prove
the candidate fit, perhaps not for immediate appointment, but for
preliminary training with a view to appointment in the future.
If it is real! Candor compels me to confess that, like some other
avowals of love, that of a love for books does not always ring true.
“What have you read?” I once asked one of these self-styled book-lovers.
She fixed me with her eye and after a moment’s impressive pause she
replied “Deep thought!” I mentally marked her as a false lover. Proud
parents relate how their progeny in childhood would rather peruse E. S.
Ellis than play and pore over Alger than eat--this as irrefragable proof
of fitness for a library career. Consideration of cases like these makes
us wonder whether the smile is so much out of the way after all. Does
the true book-lover publicly announce her affection in the hope of gain?
Does she not rather, like Shakespeare’s maid, “never tell her love?” It
is to be feared that some of these people are confusing a love of books
with a love of reading. They are not the same thing. Some persons enjoy
the gentle mental exercise of letting a stream of more or less harmless
ideas flow through their brains--continuously in and continuously out
again--apprehending them one after another in lazy fashion, and then
dismissing them. The result is a degree of mental friction, but no
permanent intellectual acquisition. How much of our own reading is of
this kind I shudder to contemplate. Far be it from me to condemn it; it
has its uses; it is an excellent cure for wakefulness after a busy day;
but it no more indicates or stimulates a love for books than shaking
hands with a thousand callers makes it possible for the Governor or the
President to claim them all as intimate friends.
A real love for books, after all, is betrayed rather than announced; it
shows itself in the chance remark, the careless action, just as another
kind of love may show itself in a glance or a word.
I believe this to be the reason why a love for books is so little
considered among the modern qualifications of librarianship; it appears
in acts, not in words; it cannot be ascertained by asking questions. He
who protests that he has it must needs be an object of suspicion. And
yet I venture to say that if any librarian has made a conspicuous
success of his work, apart from the mere mechanics of it, he has
achieved that success primarily and notably through love of books. This
I assert to be the case down to the assistant of lowest grade.
To be good, work must be ungrudging. And though other things than love
for one’s task may make one willing to do it and able to do it well,
intelligent interest is always a prime factor in securing the best
results.