charitable aid from various sources. Members of the public entitled to
library service, the amount of which has been limited by the rules to
ensure proper distribution and to prevent monopoly, manage to get two or
three times as much as they should get, by applying to different
departments, or to the same department under different names. There has
been much removal of restrictions of late, in libraries, with the intent
to give fuller and freer service to the public. There should be no
restriction that interferes with such service. But many restrictions are
intended merely to check those whose tendency is to hamper service; and
removal of these will evidently injure the public, not benefit it.
Traffic regulations are a great bother, but their removal would not be
in the public interest. Neither would the removal of necessary
regulation of library traffic--the free distribution of books through
the appointed public agencies. I sympathize with our modern desire to
let Mr. A have as many books as he wants and to keep them as long as he
wants; but this sympathy changes to indignation when Mr. A proves to be
a library hog, taking advantage of his privileges simply to keep away
from Mr. B and Miss C the books that they want. Now and again we find a
reader who understands increase of library privileges to mean taking a
book away from someone else and giving it to _him_. There could be no
more flagrant example of the double sin of duplication and
omission--giving A more than he can use and thereby depriving B of what
he needs.
The expenditure of time is a domain in which our two sins become
especially noticeable. If one has plenty of money he may waste a good
deal without serious effects; but waste of time is different. The total
extent of time is doubtless infinite, but not its extent as available to
the individual. He has only his three-score years and ten, and
astronomical happenings have chopped this up for him into years, months,
weeks and days, any one of which is largely a repetition of those that
have gone before. So many of our duties, for instance, are daily that
the average man has only a few hours out of the twenty-four to deal with
emergency work, “hurry calls” and all sorts of exceptional demands on
his time. If he gives ten minutes to something that requires but five,
he must often neglect a duty, and this constitutes duplication and
omission of time, to be remedied by taking the unnecessary five minutes
from one task and bestowing it on another. Here again, however, our
algebraic addition is simple only on paper. We are hindered not only by
our own propensity to waste time but by those whose own is of no value
and who therefore insist on wasting ours for us.
This is a subject on which most executive officers can speak feelingly.
Such officers are troubled with two kinds of lieutenants--those who keep
them in ignorance of what is going on and those who insist on putting
them in continual possession of trivial details--more omission and
duplication, you see. One special kind of time-waster is the assistant
who comes to her chief with a request. Foreseeing refusal she has primed
herself with all sorts of arguments and is ready to smash all opposition
in a logical presentation of the subject calculated to occupy thirty
minutes or so. But the request, as stated, appeals to her chief as
reasonable, and he grants it at once without hearing the argument. Do
you think the petitioner is going to waste all that valuable logic? Not
she! She stands her ground and pours it all out, the whole half hour of
it; and when the victim has granted a second time what he had already
granted without argument, she retires flushed with triumph at her
success. And while this duplicator was duplicating, the other sinner,
the “omittor”, was performing some innocent and valuable administrative
act without her chief’s knowledge, causing him to give wrong information
to a caller and convict himself of ignorance of what is going on in his
own institution.
Time-wasting, of course, is by no means confined to the library staff.
Much of every one’s time, in a library, is consumed in fruitless
conversations with the public--the answering of trivial questions, the
search for data that can do no one any good, efforts to appease the
wrath of someone who ought never to have been angry at all, attempts to
explain things verbally when adequate explanations in print are at hand.
All these things consume valuable time and thereby force the omission of
public services that would otherwise be performed. Some of them are
unavoidable. We must always change up a little time to the account of
courtesy, the avoidance of brusqueness, the maintenance in the community
of that tradition of library helpfulness that is perhaps the library’s
chief asset. This we can not afford to lose. But without sacrificing it,
can we not eliminate some of the bores, cut down our useless services
for the sake of performing a few more useful ones, and increase the
amount of library energy usefully employed without enlarging the total
sum expended? This is one of our most vital problems, did we but realize
it.
We have gone far enough, perhaps, to realize that our two sins are
indeed cardinal and fundamental. The authors of the Prayer Book were
right. We have done those things that we ought not to have done and we
have left undone those things that we ought to have done; and we are all
miserable sinners.
If I had nerve enough to add a new society to the thousand and one that
carry on their multifarious activities about us, I should found a League
to Suppress Duplications and Supply Omissions.
A MESSAGE TO BEGINNERS
History may be described as an account of the conflict between the
tendency of things to move and efforts to fasten them down so that they
will keep still. Where they have been moving in the wrong direction
these efforts have been praiseworthy; but in too many instances motion
has been resisted simply because it _is_ motion, quiescence being looked
upon as the supreme good. In his interesting “History of Fiji”, Dr.
Alfred Goldsborough Mayer notes that the difference between the savage
and the civilized man is not one of content of knowledge, for the savage
often knows far more than we do, but is due to the fact that the savage
is bound hand and foot by tradition--he is a slave to his imagination,
and to that of his forefathers. The conflict in his case has ended
definitely with the triumph of the fastening down process. There is no
more motion. He can not fall back, but neither can he move forward. He
is locked in one position--that of the particular generation, five,
fifty or five hundred years ago, when his fight for progress was lost.
With the civilized man the fight still goes on. It is not yet won nor
lost and the story of it, as I have said, is history. Read it in this
light and it will assume for you new significance. Wars, revolutions,
changes of dynasty, racial migrations, linguistic changes, the
achievements of art, the triumphs of science, the evolution of social
systems, the development of justice, the rise of literature and the
drama--everything that marks the story of what has been going on in the
world--is but a phase of this age-long struggle between forces and
obstacles of whose origins, at bottom, we know little. So far as the
obstacles have won, there are still savage elements lurking in us; so
far as we have thrust them aside, we are advancing further toward
civilization. The one title that we have to call ourselves civilized is
the fact that no set of traditions or customs--no institution--has yet
become crystallized into the fixity that obtains with the savage
races;--not the Church, not government, not science, nor art nor
literature. All these are changing, despite efforts to pin them down.
Our language, our social customs are altering; our fashions of dress
change from year to year. Our old people, for a man often reverts to
savagery in his old age, pass away with words of regret on their lips
for the good old days of their youth, when things were different. A
savage has never to do this, for the days of his youth and his age are
precisely the same--custom, speech, habit, observance, tradition, all
are locked up into fixity.
The education of the savage is directed toward perpetuating this fixity;
that of the civilized man should be a force in the opposite direction.
Recognizing that change is the life-blood of civilization, it should be
devoted to controlling and directing that change, leading the mind of
the pupil to anticipating and welcoming it and bracing that mind against
all feeling of shock due to the mere starting of the machinery of
progress. I say this is what education should be. I believe that it is
tending in this way. But a large part of it is still savage--an effort
to keep our customs, thoughts and actions to standards set up by our
ancestors.
The Public Library, we are fond of saying, is an educational
institution; which kind of education shall it dispense? Shall it be a
motor or a brake? Shall it look back into the past or forward into the
future?
To many persons, the idea of a forward-looking library seems absurd. It
is essentially a repository of records, and records are of the past. You
will find somewhere, unless oblivion has overtaken it, an address by
your lecturer on “The Public Library as a Conservative Force”. Such it
doubtless is and such it should be--but its conservatism is that of
control, not of stagnation. It is the skilled driver who keeps the car
in the road--not the ignoramus who stalls it in the ditch. Records are
assuredly of the past; but the past and its records may be looked upon
in either of two ways--as standards for all time, or as foundations on
which to build for the future. The civilized man rejoices in
foundations--he builds them deep and strong, and erects upon them some
noble superstructure. The savage puts up his great stone circle, mighty
and wonderful perhaps, but complete in itself and of no manner of use.
So I ask you, what is our collection of records to be--a stone circle or
a foundation?
Now the records themselves--the books--can never determine this any more
than the great monolith can determine whether it is going into a
Stonehenge or into the foundation of a Parthenon. It is what we do to
the books--to and with them--that matters.
The world would never move on without records of the progress that had
already been made. Just as surely, it would never move on by reliance on
those records alone. What we have accomplished brings us merely to a
mile stone in the path of progress. To reach a given point, one must
pass the mile stones on the way; but they must be passed and left
behind. We shall never get anywhere merely by sitting down upon any of
them. To make a personal application to yourselves, you will never make
good librarians unless you master what good librarians before you have
learned and taught. But just as certainly, you will never be good
librarians if you regard this as a definite stopping point. The trouble
with most of our education is that it is static and not dynamic; it
looks backward, not forward; it teaches what has already been
accomplished and fails to equip the student for devising and
accomplishing something further, on his own account.
I am warning you in the midst of a course intended to fit you for
librarianship that the course alone will not so fit you. But it will
start you--and a start in the right direction is of great value--nay, it
is indispensable. When the fielder throws the ball directly into the
baseman’s hands there is a preliminary motion of his arm. At the end of
that motion the ball begins its flight; its start has enabled it to go
straight. Your library course will be the throw that enables you to go
straight to the mark, but you must not forget that the whole flight
remains to be made. My metaphor is a bad one. The ball has no power to
adjust or alter its course. You have that power; you can better a good
start, or you can nullify it. You may even hit the mark after you have
been started in the wrong direction; but to say this is by no means to
recommend a wrong start.
All this is a series of platitudes; but to insist on the obvious is
often useful. There are so many obvious things that we are apt to
neglect some of the most necessary, just as we may fail to see a sign on
a building because it is all plastered with signs. Nothing is more
common than to assume that a period of formal education, general or
special, makes its subject “fit”, either for life or for a vocation.
Some never get over this idea and fail in consequence; some discover
their mistake and blame their training because it does not do what it
can not do and was not intended to do. Formal training trains one to
start; it makes one fit to run the race. The race is not won when the
training has ended; it has not even begun. The man with a B.A. degree is
not ready to tackle the problems of life and vanquish them. The graduate
in law or medicine is not a trained lawyer or physician, and when you
have completed your library course you will not be trained librarians.
You will have been started right, the rest of your training will depend
on your reaction to the forces, the stimuli, that surround you on all
sides.
What the executive officer is looking for all over the world is
initiative, guided by common sense; but it is rare. Possibly our
education fails to develop it; possibly no system of education could
develop it. But it exists; and we are all happy when we find it.
Throwing out of consideration the really lazy, ignorant or incompetent
assistant, competent subordinates may be of three kinds--first, he who
has been trained to do certain things in certain ways and continues to
do only those things in only those ways, not realizing the possibility
of change or improvement; secondly, he who does realize this possibility
but has been taught, or at any rate believes, that it is not his place,
but only his superior’s, to take active steps toward something more or
better; and thirdly he who both realizes and acts, who does what he can
to see that such steps as he can properly take to improve matters are
taken and that such as he can not take of his own accord are suggested,
in a proper manner, to his superior. If I were asked to sum up, in a
few words, the things that differentiate a well run from a poorly run
institution I should say, first, the existence of a staff composed of
persons of this third variety, and secondly a chief executive who
appreciates and uses them. A progressive executive with a staff of
assistants who faithfully obey orders and do nothing more will not go
far. His institution may make no mistakes; it may run like a machine,
but it will have the faults of a machine--its product will be machine
made. With a live staff and a poor executive there will be a maximum of
mistakes, absurd and ill-judged plans--a failure to co-ordinate effort
in different lines. With plenty of initiative in the staff, and with an
executive to select, restrain, encourage and control, we have an
approach to the work of a single living organism, the most perfect tool
of evolution.
While this means the encouragement of suggestion it also means rejection
and selection. It means that while the staff will have to bear
disappointment with good nature and without diminution of initiative,
the executive, on his part, must realize that a hundred impractical
suggestions do not disprove the possibility, or even the probability,
that the assistant who makes them may ultimately offer some plan,
method, or device of great value. Some of the greatest improvements in
library service are due to persons with an imagination and an initiative
especially prone to run wild in impractical suggestions.
I realize that I may be regarded as tossing a firebrand among you when I
tell you to develop your initiative. An unwise or uncontrolled
initiative may do harm, but I fervently believe that greater harm is
done every day by the lack of all initiative. Better than any stagnant
pool is a running stream, though it break bounds and waste itself in
foam and spray. There may be those who will say: Let the student first
learn to obey without question; when he has done this it will be time to
talk to him about initiative. Alas! that will also be the time when he
has lost the chance to develop it intelligently. No, the accepted
standards and the ways of progress must be assimilated at one time.
Rather than unquestioning obedience to an order, a rule or a formula,
let us have appreciation of the reason for it and disobedience whenever
a breaking of the letter may keep us more closely to the spirit.
I can assure you that you will make better assistants if this is your
temperament, that librarians are looking earnestly for more of this
kind, rejoicing when they see the spark of life among the dead wheels
and cogs of the library machinery, determined to give any one who shows
it an opportunity to show more of it, by promoting him to a place of
greater effort and of higher responsibility and service. When such a
promotion comes, perhaps over the heads of others with better training
and longer experience, there is often wonder and a disposition to
explain it all by “favoritism”. And viewed from the proper angle, this
is correct; every chief librarian has his favorites; they are those on
whom he has learned that he can depend, not only for solid and accurate
knowledge of facts and methods but also for quick and ready response to
the slightest change of conditions--for appreciation of what is needed
in a given set of unusual circumstances and resourcefulness in devising
new methods or modifying old ones to meet the emergency--what I have
already summed up in the one word initiative.
Every teacher, and every student knows that a good arithmetician may
fail utterly when he comes to state and solve problems in algebra. His
success has been due to the memorizing of rules and their application.
When he is confronted with the necessity of putting into mathematical
symbols the fact that A, B and C can do a piece of work in 3, 4 and 5
days, respectively, he is stumped because an entirely different sort of
demand is made on his intelligence. And when his teacher explains how
the statement may be made, although he has learned how to state that
particular class of problems, he is just as much at sea when he is
confronted with the question of how soon after 12 o’clock the hands of a
watch will again be together on the dial.
In other words, he has left the land of rules and entered the region of
common sense. If he is bright, he very soon realizes that all
mathematics is common sense; that rules are very useful indeed, but only
as short cuts to mechanical processes.
So, at least so I trust, all the methods and tools of library work are
based on common sense--catalogues and charging systems and
classifications are very useful indeed, but only as short cuts to
certain results that would otherwise not be achieved or would be arrived
at too late or too confusedly. We must learn all about these, but the
time will come when we shall leave the library school and enter the
library. Here no sort of rule, formula, method or process will suffice
for us, essential though they all are; if we are to make good we must
add common sense, adaptability, resourcefulness, initiative.
Possibly you think that I have been applying the principle of conflict
between progression and stagnation somewhat carelessly--now to your own
training as librarians and again to the service rendered by the library
itself. In truth these are intimately connected. Progressive assistants
make a progressive library. A staff that does its work mechanically
will operate a library without initiative. If your habit of mind has
grown to be a habit of regarding all the technical detail of library
work as part of nature’s law, you will be shocked at a suggestion that
the library of which you are a part should undertake some public service
that a library never undertook before.
You may know already--you certainly will know soon--that this question
of the extension or limitation of library service is still a burning one
in many minds. Libraries to-day are doing a thousand things that no one
of them would have thought of doing fifty years ago. That some of these
things are foolish or ill advised I have no doubt. We now occasionally
hear it said that there should be some authoritative statement or
agreement on what public libraries, at any rate, ought to do and what
they ought not to do. But we Americans do not take kindly to limitations
of this sort, although they are familiar in countries where service of
all kinds is more standardized. We read in a recent magazine article of
the trials of Mrs. James Russell Lowell with English servants, when her
husband was American minister in London. Wishing to have a loose corner
of carpet nailed down, she called on one after another of her domestic
staff, only to be told that the clearly-defined duties of each did not
admit of that particular item of service. She finally lined them up on
one side of the room, tacked down the carpet herself and then discharged
every one of them. This sort of thing does not seem to Americans like
efficiency. If some needed bit of service in an American town remains
undone, and church and school and library all look the other way because
it does not fall within a carefully-limited sphere of duty which each
has assigned to itself, we shall count them all blameworthy, especially
if it shall appear that one of them is equipped to perform that
particular service easily, cheaply and well. The church and the school
have both taken this view, and the modern extension of the library’s
functions shows that it has been doing likewise. It has gone further
than either of the others, probably, because it finds itself in many
ways better equipped for the doing of civic odd jobs. It is related of a
railway manager that an employee whose work was over once asked him for
a free ticket home. The manager refused, saying: “If you had been
working for a farmer you would hardly expect him to hitch up and drive
you home, would you?” “No”, said the man, “but if he had a rig already
hitched up and ready to start, and he was going my way, I should call
him darned mean if he didn’t take me along.”
In many cases the library has been hitched up and standing at the door
when the necessity has arisen, and it has been “going the same way”--in
other words, the need of the community is nearly related to the work
that the community’s support has already enabled it to do. Under these
circumstances it is in the position of Coleridge’s Wedding Guest--it
“can not chuse but hear”.