where are we now? I have said that I know; probably you think that you
do; but as a matter of fact our knowledge is neither comprehensive nor
accurate. We need a general library survey. We have, as a sort of
statistical framework, the figures now printed annually in tabular form
in the A.L.A. Proceedings, but probably no one would maintain that these
do, or possibly could, give an adequate idea of the character or extent
of the work that our libraries are doing. Those of us who think we know
something of it have gained our knowledge by experience and observation
and neither is extensive enough in most cases to take the place of a
well-considered and properly-managed survey of existing conditions and
methods.
In default of a survey, we must, as I have said, fall back upon
observation and experience. I can certainly claim no monopoly of these,
and what I say in this regard is, of course, largely personal. But it
seems to me that the distinguishing marks of library work, as at present
conducted, include the following. As you will see, they are all
connected and overlap more or less. They are all growth-products. They
are:
1 Size and expense.
2 Socialization.
3 Professionalization.
4 Popularization.
5 Nationalization.
First, library work in our country to-day is large and costly.
Extensively it covers a great territory and reaches a huge population.
Intensively it embraces a large variety of activities--many that one
would hesitate, on general principles, to class as “library work.”
Secondly, a large amount of this increase of activity has been of a kind
that we are now apt to call “social.” It deals with bodies or classes of
people, and it tends to treat these people as the direct objects of the
library’s attention, instead of dealing primarily with books, as
formerly, and only indirectly with their readers. In fact, the persons
with whom the library now deals may not be readers at all, except
potentially, as when they are users of club or assembly rooms.
Thirdly, librarians are beginning to think of themselves as members of a
profession. At first sight this may seem to be a fact of interest only
to library workers, and not at all to the public. Its significance may
appear if we compare it to the emergence of the modern surgeon with his
professional skill, traditions and pride, from the medieval barber who
simply followed blood-letting as an avocation. Professionalism is a
symptom of a great many things--of achievement and of consciousness of
it and pride in it; of a desire to do teamwork and to maintain
standards; to make sure that one’s work is to be carried on and advanced
by worthy successors.
Fourthly, libraries are now conducted for the many; not for the few. It
is our aim to provide something for every one who can read, no matter of
what age, sex, or condition. We do not even limit ourselves to readers,
for we provide picture books for those who are too young to read. We are
transferring the emphasis of our work from books to people. This
characteristic is closely connected with what I have called
“socialization,” but it is not the same thing. An institution may deal
with all the people without dealing with them socially or in groups; and
it may deal entirely with groups without dealing with everybody. The
library now does both.
Fifthly, the library is now a national institution, at least in the same
sense as is the public school. It is national in extent, national in
consciousness, if not national in administration. Our own association
has played its part in this development; the present war has given it a
great stimulus. Those who see no nationalism without complete
centralization and who say that we are not yet a nation because all our
governmental powers are not centered at Washington, will doubtless deny
the nationalization of the library. They take too narrow a view.
We may now combine two or more lines of inquiry. In what direction is
the library moving in each of these respects? Is it speeding or slowing
up? Is there any reason to look for speeding or slowing up in the
future?
As regards size and cost, our development has been swift. We cannot, it
seems to me, keep up the rate. Twenty years ago the institutions now
constituting the New York Public Library circulated a million books.
They now circulate ten million. Does anyone believe that twenty years
hence they will circulate one hundred million? There must be further
increase, because we are not now reaching every person and every class
in the community, but it will not and cannot be a mere increase of
quantity. We must do our work better and make every item and element in
it tell. We must substitute one book well read for ten books skimmed. In
place of ten worthless books we must put one that as worth while. There
are already signs of this substitution of quality for quantity in our
ideals.
Extension, as opposed to intension, has appealed to many enthusiastic
librarians as “missionary work.” Perhaps the term is well chosen. Some
of it is akin to the missionary fervor that sends funds to convert the
distant heathen when nominal Christians around the corner are vainly
demanding succor, material, mental and spiritual. We have too much of
this in the library; attempts to form boys’ clubs with artificial aims
and qualifications when clubs already formed to promote objects that are
very real in the members’ minds are ignored or neglected; the provision
of boresome talks on “Rubber-culture in Peru” and on “How I climbed
Long’s Peak,” when members of the community would be genuinely
interested in hearing an expert explain the income tax; the purchase of
new books that nobody wants when an insistent demand for old standards
of sterling worth has never been adequately met; all sorts of forcing
from the outside instead of developing from the inside. This kind of
thing, like charity, begins properly at home, and the real missionary
takes care to set his own house in order before he goes far afield--to
fill the nearby demand, when it is good, before attempting to force
something on those who do not want it.
It is in this direction that our promise of continued progress lies when
we cannot see grounds for expecting great future increase of income.
This leads us naturally to discuss what I have called our socialization,
which is just beginning. It is running strong, but there is room for a
long course, and that course, I believe, it will take. In the first
place, we are functioning more and more as community centers, but there
is enormous room for advance. We are straggling all along the line,
which is one sign of an early stage. Some of us have not yet awakened to
the fact that we are destined to play a great part in community
development and community education. Others are reluctantly yielding to
pressure. Others have gone so fast that they are in advance of their
communities. Take, if you please, the one item of the provision of space
for community meetings, regarded by some as the be-all and the end-all
of the community center idea. It is really but one element, but it may
serve as a straw to show which way the wind blows. Some libraries are
giving no space for this purpose; some give it grudgingly, with all
sorts of limitations; others give quite freely. None of us give with
perfect freedom. I suppose we in St. Louis are as free as any. In 15
assembly and clubrooms we house 4,000 meetings yearly. Our only
limitations are order and the absence of an admission fee. I incline to
think that the maintenance of order should be the only condition. If an
admission fee is charged, part of it should go to the library, to be
devoted to caring for the assembly and clubrooms and improving them.
There are many community gatherings that can be best administered on the
plan of a paid admission. These ought not to be excluded. Most of our
restrictions are simply exhibits of our reluctance to place ourselves at
the complete social disposal of the community. A community is not a
community unless it has political and religious interests. If we are
going to become socialized at all, why balk at these any more than we
should exclude from our shelves books on politics and religion? I look
to see socialization, in this and other directions, proceed to such
lengths that the older library ideals may have to go entirely by the
board. Some of them are tottering now. I have said that I consider this
matter of the use of assembly rooms only one item in what I have called
socialization. It may all be summed up by saying that we are coming to
consider the library somewhat in the light of a community club, of which
all well-behaved citizens are members. Our buildings are clubhouses,
with books and magazines, meeting rooms, toilet facilities,
kitchens--almost everything, in fact, that a good, small club would
contain. If you say “then they have ceased to be libraries and are
something else,” that does not affect me any more than when you show
that we are no longer speaking Chaucer’s language or wearing the clothes
of Alfred the Great.
When we were trying to explain to the architects of the New York branch
buildings exactly what we wanted in those structures and met with the
usual misconception based on medieval ideas of a library, one of the
most eminent architects in the United States suddenly sat up and took
notice. “Why, these buildings are not to be _libraries_ at all,” he
said, “they are to be reading clubs.” He had learned in a few minutes
what many of us still see through a glass darkly.
An even more important manifestation of what I have called socialization
is the extension of occupation groups to which the library is giving
special attention and special service. The library has always had in
mind one or more of these groups. Once it catered almost entirely to a
group of scholars, at first belonging predominantly to the clergy. In
later years it added the teachers in schools and their pupils, also the
children of the community. These are definite groups, and their
recognition in the rendition of service is a social act. Other groups
are now being added with rapidity, and we are recognizing in our service
industrial workers, business men, artists of various kinds, musicians
and so on. The recognition of new groups and the extension of definite
library service to them is progress in socialization, and it is going on
steadily at the present time.
Just now the most conspicuous group that we are taking in is that of
business men. In adjusting our resources and methods to the needs of
this group we are changing our whole conception of the scope of a
library’s collection. As Mr. Dana has pointed out, we now collect,
preserve and distribute not books alone, but printed matter of all
kinds, and in addition records of other types, such as manuscripts,
pictures, slides, films, phonograph discs and piano rolls. Some of these
of course are needed to adapt our collection to others than the business
group--to educators, artists or musicians. We shall doubtless continue
to discover new groups and undergo change in the course of adaptation to
their needs.
The recognition of special groups and the effort to do them service has
proceeded to a certain extent outside the pubic library, owing to the
slowness of its reaction to this particular need. The result has been
the special library. I am one of those who are sorry that the neglect of
its opportunity by the public library has brought this about, and I hope
for a reduction in the number of independent special libraries by a
process of gradual absorption and consolidation. The recent acquisition
of some formerly independent municipal reference libraries by the local
libraries is a case in point. There must always be special libraries.
The library business of independent industrial and commercial
institutions is best cared for in this way. But every group that is
merely a section of the general public, set apart from the rest by
special needs and tastes, may be cared for most economically by the
public library. If its service is not adapted to give such care, rapid
and efficient adjustment is called for.
In a library forecast made several years ago, Mr. John C. Dana stated
his opinion that the library, as it is, “an unimportant by-product,” is
to be of importance in the future, but will then have departed from the
“present prevailing type.” Without necessarily agreeing to our present
insignificance, we may well accept, I think, this forecast of future
growth and change.
Professionalization, too, has by no means reached its limit. As has been
pointed out, it is a symptom, rather than the thing itself. It is like a
man’s clothes, by which you can often trace the growth or decay of his
self-respect. Pride in one’s work and a tendency to exalt it is a
healthy sign, provided there is something back of it. The formation of
staff associations like that recently organized in New York is a good
sign, so is the multiplication of professional bodies. The establishment
of the A.L.A. in 1876 was the beginning of the whole library advance in
this country. It was only a symptom, of course, but with the healthy
growth of libraries I look for more signs of our pride in what we are
doing, of our unwillingness to lower it or to alter its ideals.
The familiar question, “Is librarianship a profession?” reduces to a
matter of definition. We are being professionalized for the purposes of
this discussion if we are growing sufficiently in group consciousness to
let it react favorably on our work.
One of the earliest developments of a feeling of professional pride in
one’s work is an insistence on the adequate training of the workers and
on the establishment of standards of efficiency both for workers and
work. Here belongs a forecast not only of library school training, but
of official inspection and certification, of systems of service, etc.
Standardization of this kind is on the increase and is bound to be
enforced with greater strictness in the future. In our professional
training as in other professions the tendency is toward specialization.
With us, this specialization will doubtless proceed on the lines of
facilities for practice. An engineering school cannot turn out
electrical engineers if the only laboratories that it has are devoted to
civil and mechanical engineering. A specialist in abdominal surgery is
not produced by experience in a contagious disease ward. Similarly we
ought not to expect a school remote from public library facilities to
specialize in public library work, or a school in close connection with
a public library to produce assistants for the work of a university
library. Increasing professional spirit among us will demand
specialization according to equipment.
Popularization, some may think, has already gone to the limit. How can
we be more of the people than we are to-day? Are we not, in sooth, a
little too democratic, perhaps? Personally I feel that a good deal of
the library’s social democracy is on the surface. Any member of a
privileged class will assure you that his own class constitutes “the
people” and that the rest do not matter. The Athenians honestly thought
that their country was a democracy, when it was really an oligarchy of
the most limited kind. England honestly thought she had “popular”
government when those entitled to vote were a very small part of the
population. A library in a city of half a million inhabitants honestly
thinks that a record of 100,000 cardholders entitles it to boast that
its use extends to the whole population. We cannot say that we reach the
whole number of citizens until we really do reach them. The school
authorities can go out to the highways and hedges and compel them to
come in; we cannot. Herein doubtless lies one of our advantages. Our
buildings are filled with willing users. It is our business to
universalize the desire to read as the schools are universalizing the
ability. But we have not yet done so, and popularization proceeds
slowly. I cannot say that I see many indications of speeding up in the
rate, although our increase in the recognition of groups, noted above,
may have an influence here in future. As groups develop among that part
of the population that uses the library least, our opportunity to extend
our influence over that part will present itself. One such group is
ready for us but we have never reached it--that of union labor. The
recognition of the unions by the library and of the library by the
unions has been unaccountably delayed, despite sporadic, well-meant, but
ineffective efforts on both sides. No more important step for the
intellectual future of the community can be taken than this extension of
service.
Nationalization has just begun. It is speeding up and will go far, I am
sure, in the next twenty years. Our libraries are getting used to acting
as a unit. We should not like administrative nationalization and I see
no signs of it; but nationalization in the sense of improved
opportunities for team work and greater willingness to avail ourselves
of them we shall get in increasing measure. For instance, one of our
greatest opportunities lies before us in the inter-library loan. It
knocks at our door, but we do not heed it because in this respect we
have not begun yet to think nationally. But having begun national
service in the various activities brought to the front by the war, we
shall not, I am sure, lag behind much longer. The national organization
of the A.L.A. has long provided us with a framework on which to build
our national thoughts and our national deeds, but hitherto it has
remained a mere scaffolding, conspicuous through the absence of any
corresponding structure. The war is teaching us both to think and to act
nationally, and after it is over I shall be astonished if we are longer
content to do each his own work. Our work is nationwide, in peace as in
war and our tardy realization of this fact may be one of the
satisfactory by-products of this world conflict.
Now it is not beyond the possibilities that the library movement, headed
right and running free, may still fall because it meets some obstacle
and goes to pieces. Are there any such in sight? I seem to see several,
but I believe that we can steer clear. If we split on anything it will
be on an unseen rock, and of such, of course, we can say nothing.
One rock is political interference. The library has had trouble with it
of old and some of us are still struggling with it. It is assumed by
those who put their trust in paper civil service that it has now been
minimized. This overlooks the undoubted fact that in a great number of
cases the civil service machinery has been captured by politicians, and
now works to aid them, not to control them. The greatest danger of
political interference in public libraries, now lies in well-meant
efforts to turn them over to some local commission established to
further the merit system, but actually working in harmony with a
political machine.
Another rock on which we may possibly split is that of formalism.
Machinery must be continually scrapped and replaced if progress is to be
made. It will not grow and change like an organism. The library itself
is subject to organic growth and change, but its machinery will not
change automatically with it. If we foster in any way an idea that our
machinery is sacred, that it is of permanent value and that conditions
should conform to it instead of its conforming to them, our whole
progress may come to an end. I have called this a rock, but it is rather
a sort of Sargasso Sea where the library may whirl about in an eternity
of seaweed.
Another obstacle, somewhat allied to this of formalism, is the “big
head”--none the less dangerous because it is common and as detrimental
to an institution as it is to an individual. Just as soon as a person,
or an institution, sits down and begins to appreciate himself or itself,
to take stock of the services he or it is rendering the community, to
wonder at their extent and value, those services are in a fair way to
become valueless. The proper attitude is rather that of investigation to
discover further possible kinds of service, with the exercise of
ingenuity in devising ways to render them effectively.
We have occasionally been accused of taking the attitude of
self-laudation, but I really do not think there is great danger of an
epidemic of this malady. We do not receive enough encouragement. Once in
a while, to be sure, someone tells us, or tells the public, what a great
and valuable institution the public library is but the treatment that we
receive is generally mildly humorous when it is not characterized by
downright indifference and neglect. Whenever a book comes into my hands
telling of some movement in which I know that the library has borne an
honorable part I always turn first to the index and search for
recognition under the letter L. Generally it is not there; when it is,
it is almost always inadequate. If we are attacked by the “big head,” it
will have to be a case of auto-intoxication.
Exploitation is another possible rock. I have already alluded to the
danger of capture by a political machine, but there are other interests
more subtle and quite as dangerous. Many a useful institution, intended
to be nonpartisan, has been captured and used by some interest or other
while remaining non-partisan on the surface. Our safety, so far, has
resided in the inability of most interests to see that we are worth
capture. When the drive comes, as I believe it will, our continued
safety will lie, not in resistance, but in an equal yielding to all--a
willingness to act as the agent for all isms, religious, economic,
political and industrial without exalting one above another or
emphasizing one at another’s expense. Something of this we are already
doing, and in so far as we succeed in it we are placing ourselves in a
position of vantage from which it will be very difficult to dislodge us.
Assuming the truth of all this--and it is something of an assumption, I
grant you--what then, is our library of 1950 to be? An institution not
very much larger or more expensively operated than our present maximum,
although with a higher minimum, carried on with a more careful eye to
economy and watching more jealously the quality of its output. It will
have two units of service, as at present, the book and the citizen, but
it will tend to regard the latter as primary, rather than the former and
will shrink from no form of service that it can render him. The higher
quality of its work will be reflected in the greater pride of the
worker--in a spirit of professionalism that will insist on adequate
training and proper compensation and possibly will use organization to
enforce these ideals. It will reach out somewhat further among the
people than it does now, although not so much that the difference will
be notable. Finally the teamwork between different libraries will be
more frequent and effective, assistants will be exchanged freely,
readers’ cards used interchangeably and inter-library loans will take
place easily and often.