The influence of books on the community has been used in
this address by Dean (now President) Birge as a basis for
discussing their reaction on special groups, especially
those differentiated by age and sex, and how far the library
should be guided by it and take advantage of it. It is
perhaps the best general treatment of the group features of
socialized library work by a speaker of authority, not a
professional librarian.
Edward Asahel Birge was born at Troy, N.Y., Sept. 7, 1851,
graduated at Williams in 1873 and since 1875 has been a
member of the University of Wisconsin faculty, serving
successively as instructor in natural history, professor of
zoology, dean of the college of arts and sciences, acting
president, and finally in 1919, president of the University.
He has also served as a director of the Free Library at
Madison, and in 1906 was president of the Wisconsin Library
Association, before whom this address was delivered.
The aspect of the subject to which I would call your attention is the
often observed fact of the extent to which modern life in all of its
phases, is becoming based upon books. I say in all of its phases, for we
are concerned with the present extent of this relation between books and
life with its rapid increase, rather than with its existence. Ever since
the beginning of human society men have based their actions on the
teachings of experience. Part of these teachings each individual has
directly derived from his environment, and he has supplemented and
enlarged them by means of those coming from the remembered experience of
others, often belonging to an older generation. Later in history there
were added those teachings derived from books--from the recorded
experience of others. With that enlargement of the basis of human action
which comes from the remembered experience of others we, as librarians,
have nothing to do, and, indeed, there is little to say about it now
which could not have been said with equal propriety, one, two, or twenty
centuries ago. With books the case is different. The last century, the
last generation, the last decade--each has seen the transfer of the
basis of action from the oral to the printed word, which could be
paralleled by no other period of equal length in the history of
civilization. The story of this transfer from talk to print, from rule
of thumb to textbook, from tradition to school, from practise to
science, is long and intensely interesting. I can touch only a few
phases of it.
First consider the lengthening of the school period for children. I do
not think it is possible accurately to compare the present length of
this period with that which existed a century or a half ago; nor would
such a comparison interest us. It is enough for our purpose to know that
years have been added to the school life of many thousands of the youth
of all classes. As a single illustration, consider the effect of the
high school, whose development into a large and popular institution, an
institution affecting great masses of the people, belongs almost wholly
to the period within the life of the generation now on the stage. A half
century ago the public high school was almost unknown and the private
academy reached very few persons. Only a generation ago the number of
students in secondary schools was hardly one-tenth of the present
number. The attendance on institutions of secondary grade has thus
increased five times as rapidly as the population. Within the past
fifteen years the attendance in the high schools of Milwaukee has more
than trebled, while only a little more than fifty per cent. has been
added to the population of the city. In Racine almost exactly the same
ratio holds, and so for many other cities of the United States, the
increase being least marked in New England cities, and greatest in the
cities of the West.
The formative influence of the high school youth are far more
extensively and exclusively books than were those of his father or
grandfather, who probably began to learn his trade, or his business, at
about the age when his boy enters the high school, and who therefore,
during the period of adolescence, received his training from action
rather than from study, from oral rather than from printed experience.
One may find to-day in the writings of many teachers jeremiads over the
shortness of the average school life of children. I would not contradict
their statistics and would join in their regrets, but the fact remains
that the most striking phenomenon in the life of the children of the
past thirty years is the extent to which their training has been
committed to the use of books and the rapid growth of the use of books
as the period has advanced. Few as the school years of the children now
are, those of any older generation have been fewer. This aspect of the
matter is the one that is of interest to us, and the school life of the
present, instead of arousing our regrets by its brevity, may well call
out our astonishment by its length, and demand the use of our best wits
to see the changes which have been caused in the life of the present and
to forecast those which in the future will flow from this fundamental
change in education.
One of these correlated changes is already apparent--the extension of
the period of book learning for many thousands of persons into the
college and university course.
In 1850 the total attendance on colleges in the United States was about
ten thousand. Half a century later, when the population of the country
had increased about three and one-third times, the college students had
increased in a tenfold ratio, or more than three times as rapidly as the
population. Even more significant is the growth of the number of college
students in more recent years. Since 1889 the number has more than
doubled, thus continuing in the latest years a ratio of growth with
reference to population quite as great as in earlier years.
An equally significant, and quite as conspicuous change, is seen in the
growth of technical education. Thirty years ago, when I came to
Wisconsin, the university was graduating from two or three and a half
dozen engineers yearly, and these could not all find occupation in this
commonwealth, with a population then of more than a million people. Now
a hundred graduates go out at Commencement, while the population of the
state has little more than doubled, and while other engineering schools
of high rank have multiplied all around it.
Nowadays the man of books, rather than the man of tradition is directing
the work of the world. In the copper mines of the north the
old-fashioned mine captain, who received his profession and his
traditions from his father, is disappearing and has almost vanished. His
place is taken by the graduate of a mining school, who interprets what
he sees, not by the light of the experience of his elders, communicated
to him orally, but by the far clearer light of the collective experience
of men embodied in books.
When the capitalist now desires to explore for new iron mines he employs
not the old-fashioned prospector, but puts into the field a party of
young men often fresh from the geological laboratory. Thus science,
organized knowledge, book learning, is driving out with increasing
rapidity the picturesque figures of past times--times wholly past,
though only just behind us in years. That "bookish theoric," so detested
by Iago, is apparently firmly in control of affairs and has displaced
its predecessors and rivals.
In countless other ways the same fact is shown. Half a century ago a
youth who desired to become a lawyer or a doctor entered the office of a
practitioner and learned his profession by practise and experience. Now
he goes to the school of law or medicine and gains his entrance to his
chosen calling by the way of books and laboratories. Even commerce and
trade, in which the rules of practical experience seem most firmly
entrenched, are shifting their basis to books, and schools of commerce
and trade schools are springing up on every hand to give youth a broader
foundation of knowledge than can be gained from practise. Still more
significant are the facts shown by the enormous development of
agricultural experiment stations, farmers' bulletins and farmers'
institutes. Agriculture, that calling which of all others is most
ancient and most conservative, is rapidly changing its basis from
tradition to books. Perhaps I ought not to say "most conservative," for
there is one calling which may better deserve the title--that of the
domestic industries practised by women. Yet even here a beginning of the
transfer, although a small one, has been made by schools of domestic
science.
While this beginning is but small, and while the traditional professions
of women have not yet been greatly modified by books, the life of no
class of the community has been more profoundly affected by this general
change than has that of women. With the passing away of home industries
and with the great increase of wealth which the past century, or half
century, has seen, have come vastly increased opportunities to women for
leisure, for release from domestic duties, and for the prolongation of
school life. The statistics of high schools and colleges sufficiently
show the use which they are making of this leisure. Other facts are
equally obvious and significant as showing the transfer of the basis of
woman's life from domestic experience to books. The woman's club, I
suppose, may be said fairly to take the place of the sewing circle of
our mothers and grandmothers. The contrast even in the name is
significant, as marking the transfer of interest from the circle of
domestic experience to the wider domain of the recorded life of the
world, to the realm of books.
Thus at whatever point we examine the life of the present, we find it
basing itself on books, both for action and enjoyment, and that in an
ever-increasing degree. This truth is peculiarly evident to you as
librarians, since the facts of your own profession and the rapid growth
of libraries and library work afford one of the latest phases of this
general movement.
From 1875 to 1896 the number of libraries in the United States just
about doubled, increasing steadily, and adding, during this period,
about 2,000 libraries, or a little less than 100 per year. From 1896 to
1900, 1,350 libraries were added, or about 450 per year. From 1900 to
1903, 1,500 libraries were founded, or 500 per year. In the past ten
years the number of libraries must have doubled; a ratio growth at least
four times that of the population....
It is plain that the adjustment of the library to this movement of
men's minds towards books is the most important practical question for
all of us. Questions of management, of administration, of methods are
all of secondary importance beside this one--if, indeed they may be
called even secondary. For this change of base is a revolutionary
affair, not a mere matter of readjustment of detail, and it is no easy
task for the library to find itself in such a movement. Libraries are so
small a part of the national intellectual life, so small, in the mass,
for example, in comparison to the great universities, that their proper
influence and work are easily overlooked. There is sometimes danger that
they may be swept into currents guided by other forces rather than find
opportunity freely to contribute their own share to the movement.
Let us turn then to the more practical side of the question, and ask how
the library is adjusting itself, in this changed relation of men, where
it has best succeeded, and where it still has most to do. Let us ask
where experience seems to promise successful solution of problems, and
where the problems are in that stage in which only doubtful success can
be expected from experiments, and final solution still lies far before
us.
The library began as a place to keep books, permitting their use by the
public, but often under such restrictions as seem to indicate that this
service was granted "grudgingly and of necessity." Books and the high
life were in some obscure way correlated in the mind of the librarian,
and he too often seemed to feel that these were treasures not to be
shared by the many. The first change which came, therefore, as the
library was swept into the general intellectual current of time, was the
removal of restrictions on the use of books and their replacement by
devices intended to encourage and extend that use. A second step, and a
much more revolutionary one, has been to teach the community directly
the uses of books, and thus not merely to afford easy conditions for the
use of books on the part of those who want them, but to add a positive
force which will compel the books to go out in the community, there to
perform their present service and to create a demand for an increased
service in the future.
This change marks a fundamental departure of the library from its old
basis, and one which will affect it greatly, for good and perhaps for
ill. The movement toward freedom of administration was really concerned
with small matters, and left unaltered the central plan and purpose of
the library. But with the assumption of direct educational work for
children, for women, for men, the library has entered upon a new epoch
in its evolution. It has taken up duties whose performance will demand
greatly enlarged resources--of space and of money, of books and of
working staff. And what is of even greater importance, the purpose, the
point of view, of those who control the library, and the temper of the
administration, will change, and ought to change, under the pressure of
these new duties.
This positive and educational library work falls into two main
types--that for children, and that for adults--both men and women. It is
still in a tentative condition, in a formative and experimental period.
The results are still so few and recent that they do not admit any exact
formulation. They permit only general and suggestive statement.
Work for children is, in some ways, the easiest educational attempt of
the library, since it runs parallel to the work of the schools, and
those for whom the work is done are easily reached and easily guided.
Its function is, of course, in part to supplement the school. It would
be, however, a great misfortune if it were looked upon merely as a
supplement to the school, as a means of providing reading which the
school ought to buy, but cannot afford. Its purpose is rather to begin
in childhood, both for pleasure and for profit, a voluntary association
with books which lie wholly outside of the school program. It aims to
begin the early formation of the habit of reading as distinguished from
study--a habit which will be permanent, instead of ending with the
period of formal instruction. It recognizes the fact that school life
must soon end, and that when the end comes, the important feature of the
child's intellectual condition is not so much the amount he has learned
as the temper and habit of his mind toward books. Has he merely learned
certain truths from books or are books open to him? It is of fundamental
importance to the community that the second alternative be secured. The
school libraries and children's librarians are, therefore, not to feel
that their duty is to supplement the school. That duty lies on a
different, and, in a way, a higher plane, in a more spiritual region. It
is their part to make the child a citizen of the world of books, and to
naturalize him so thoroughly that he will always remain a citizen. Thus
only can he share fully, not only in the high and permanent pleasures
that books afford, but also in that great movement of life toward books
which marks our time.
From remarks which I have heard on various occasions, I believe this
extension of library service and library duties to youth has often been
misunderstood. Work with school children, whether done by the library
force as part of their duties, or by assistants especially engaged, has
seemed to many to be a somewhat unnecessary extension of the
library--something of a luxury. These added duties have often been
assumed by the libraries under special pleas, and for reasons temporary
in character. But in that wider view which I am trying to present, the
truth is recognized that the library is a permanent storehouse of books
for the community, to which the citizen of every class and age must
repair for knowledge not only interesting and useful but necessary to
the conduct of life. We recognize also that while the training of the
schools soon ceases for every individual, the service of the library
extends throughout life. We assert also that the possibilities of this
service must be taught to the members of the community from childhood,
and that the efficiency of the books will largely depend on the
efficiency with which this teaching is done.
Especial care must be taken with children and youth toward the end of
the ordinary school periods--in the upper grades and in the high school.
Here it is that the transition to independent reading must come. The
children's room must not be merely an appendage to the kindergarten and
primary school, but the library must supply to youth of all ages not
only books, but inspiration in reading. The questions which arise in
work for children are many and often perplexing, but if these general
principles are accepted, they are, after all, questions of detail rather
than of principle.
The library's influence over women has been the greatest in extent and
productive of the largest results; so much so that, in the opinion of
many critics of the public library, that institution is in danger of
becoming "feminized." I shall not attempt to discuss so large a subject
as that indicated by this fearful word, but it may not be unprofitable
to touch upon the causes which have given the work of the library for
women at once so great an extension and so great a success, as well as
some obvious limitations. I should place first among the causes, both
for the success and the limitation of this influence, the recent
acquisition by women of large opportunities for the intellectual life,
their natural conservatism, and their greatly increased leisure as
compared with men. That women read books, and read them in enormous
numbers, is granted, indeed asserted. That they read seriously I have
heard questioned and have always wondered at the doubt. It seems to me
rather that they never read in any way except seriously. How many
women--reading women, I mean--can put away an unfinished book without a
sense of guilt? How many can "browse about" in a library and enjoy doing
so? How many really like to read a dictionary or encyclopaedia without
ulterior designs upon an article for the women's club, or, at least,
without wanting to know something? These are all tests--unconscious, but
none the less excellent--of the real readers, of those to whom books are
alive and intimate friends. While I have no statistics at hand, I fear
that many women most devoted to libraries would fail to reach this
standard. The field of the intellectual life has been widely opened to
women so recently that they still feel a certain sense of duty along
with the privilege which is granted them in entering it, rather than a
complete sense of being at home there. The conservatism of women helps
this tendency to read seriously and for general purposes. The
traditional use of books as a means of culture appeals to their more
conservative mind as it does not to men. They are more easily induced to
read for reading's sake--they are willing to read the books one ought to
read. They are moved by considerations of mental improvement independent
of any result beyond the improvement itself. The library as a library
attracts them. Then, too, the amount of their reading and its character
is modified by the fact that women are so much more limited than men in
means to pass their leisure. Jerome K. Jerome (if correctly reported by
newspapers) recently pointed out that much so-called reading is no more
an intellectual process than is smoking a cigar, and that often we go to
books just as to the cigar, to pass the time and to prevent the
intrusion of disagreeable thoughts. Of course this is, and ought to be,
wholly true, and since with us the cigar is a masculine privilege, the
woman must take to books as the man takes to smoking, and even to
drinking. Speaking seriously, the library is to many women a relief from
care--the only distraction from the monotony of routine. It is a cheap
and easy thing to sneer at this use of books, but we who believe in the
friendship of books know that here lies one of the greatest blessings
they can give, as it is one of the greatest blessings of true
friendship. Nor do we wonder that the uncultivated, or the
half-cultivated, often choose their book friends from a class not
greatly above their own.
On the other hand, women have hardly begun to use books on lines along
which we are seeking to get men to read--in directions connected with
their trade or profession. Domestic industries, so far as they are in
the hands of women, are still most wholly dependent upon tradition. They
are not exposed to competition. Failure or inefficiency does not put the
proprietor out of business. Their results are not measured in dollars
and cents. In a word, the whole line of motives which is forcing
masculine industries over to the basis of books is lacking in the chief
feminine occupations. We are now seeing only the feeble beginnings of
the attempt thus to transfer them from tradition to science. A long time
must pass, and social conditions greatly change, before the transfer is
made. Thus women are not forced from general to special lines of
reading, while they have greater motive for general reading than have
men.
As a result, women are becoming, to a degree without example in the
past, the possessors and transmitters of the life of culture. I do not
believe that fewer men read good literature than formerly, but the
increase in masculine readers of this type has been so much less than
the increase in women readers that in comparison the number of men seems
to have shrunken greatly. Of course much of this reading by women for
culture is desultory and aimless, much is misdirected. But after all
deductions are made, it remains true that the knowledge of books seems
to be tending to become the possession of women rather than of men. It
has always belonged to a certain class of men--not a very large part of
the community--and it is still theirs; but its extension to other
classes has been along female lines rather than male, and its
transmission to the next generation seems only too likely to depend in a
large measure upon the female line. College statistics at present show
the same facts. Language, literature, and art are the chosen studies of
women. Men turn rather to science, economics, or politics--subjects
which, they suppose, bear directly on future plans for life. These great
subjects whose main purpose in education is the uplifting of the mind,
the widening of the mental horizon without direct reference to any
specific line of life--these appeal far more strongly to women than to
men, and their influence, in a rapidly increasing degree, will reach the
next generation through the mother rather than through the father. It
would be a pessimistic view which would say that modern society is
coming to depend on the mothers for the accumulation and transmission of
culture, while retaining in the male line the function of accumulating
and transmitting wealth, though much could be said for the thesis and a
very plausible argument could be constructed for it.
If all this is true, it is inevitable that women should use libraries
far more than men. It is equally inevitable that in this large use much
should be trivial, much customary, much misdirected and unwise. Nature
has no means of reaching success except by the rule of natural
selection--the old-fashioned plan of "cut-and-try," and this means much
failure along the road of advance. We who see the work of the library
from our daily experience know how much it is contributing of culture,
how much of happiness, to the life of women, and through them to that of
the community.
But men--why do they not use the library, say the critics, and what
shall the library do to increase its use by men? You have all read the
vigorous article that the _Independent_ published on this subject last
summer, which, with much of error, contains a good deal of truth in a
stimulating form. It presents a subject which must have a somewhat
larger treatment.
It ought first to be said that in this and other articles on the topic
the terms _women_ and _men_ are by no means similarly used. The writers
are not concerned about men at large--the husbands and brothers of the
women who are said to visit the library--the women of comparative
leisure, who are seeking information on art, literature, or ancestry,
who are trying to get up a paper for the club, or who visit the library
for recreation. It is the plumber, the machinist, the grocer, whose
absence they deplore, and to whom they think the library ought to give
help. Not only so, but it is the plumber, rather than as a man, whose
presence is desired and who is to be aided. The library, says the
_Independent_ in effect, ought to teach the plumber how to "plumb";
ought to furnish him with information which his boss is unable to give.
But this is a new function for libraries, however useful it may be, and
a function which libraries do not attempt for women. Dressmakers do not
(I speak under correction, but I think I am right) expect to secure at a
library a knowledge of how to fit a difficult customer, any more than do
tailors. Yet this sort of thing, we are told, the library ought to do
for men; and we are told in a tone which implies that here is an obvious
duty which only wilful ignorance can overlook.
It ought rather to be recognized that in undertaking this work the
public library is entering a new and almost unexplored field of effort,
and also that it is trying to extend its influence to classes of the
community which it has not hitherto reached, and along lines of
knowledge which it has never seriously attempted to follow. In such a
work there must be many experiments and many failures, and the positive
results will be small for a long time....
The problem for the library, as regards men, is therefore twofold: 1.
Can men be induced to visit the library for general purposes, to use it
in ways similar to those for which women come to it? 2. How can the
wage-earners and handicraftsmen be induced to visit the library and use
its books for their practical advantage?
Let us first consider the general question: Can we reach the men? The
women come to the libraries, say the critics, in shoals and droves, for
all sorts of intellectual purposes, good and bad. You catch the
children, they say, in school, when they cannot get away, and indeed are
glad of relief from lessons; but the men--can you reach them and affect
their lives? In reply we must say at once and frankly that no such large
volume of success with men is possible as has been the case with women.
The public library came to women at the precise moment when increased
education disposed them to use it, and increased leisure gave them the
opportunity. It fills a space in their lives which would be otherwise
void. But the present time is one of decreased leisure and increased
intensity of work for all classes of men. Perhaps I ought to except from
this statement the wage-earner, who as eight hour laws and customs come
into force will have more time for reading than the man of almost any
other class in the community. This movement toward lessened hours of
labor is more effective where libraries are best organized and therefore
presents an opportunity for the extension of library influence, both
general and special. The opportunity must be improved, yet neither the
wage-earner nor the business man will be easy to reach; neither has been
among the active patrons of the library in the past. Their lives are
already full, both with business and pleasure, and if the library is to
reach them, it must attract them on lines which appeal to them more
strongly than business or present pleasure. It must reach needs which
they know and feel to be real.
I do not believe that men of the present generation will come to
libraries in great numbers for the purposes that attract women. We might
as well admit that they will not substitute the novel for the cigar, the
printed story for the companionship of the club. They will not read good
books because they ought to do so, and the number who will read them
because they like to do so is unfortunately not great. Men have not thus
acted since the world began, and man-like, they will not do so now, even
though such conduct on their part would help our library statistics very
greatly. Nor will any great number of them read in order to enlarge the
basis of life, for, in spite of the greatness of the movement toward
books, it affects at first hand only a few people in the community. The
mass of workmen, now and always, will get their knowledge from tradition
or at second hand. It will be the unusual man who will get his ideas
from books at first hand and thus improve his work and that of his
fellows.
The problem is then to reach these few, and through them the community;
and this brings us to the second phase of the question. I do not find
that the problem has been solved; perhaps it is too recent. But
libraries have been attempting its solution by various methods and with
varying success.
The first and most successful attempt is that of the large libraries,
like that of Pittsburgh and the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, which
maintain a technical library for the men--a library adequately housed in
its own rooms and administered by a special librarian. These technical
libraries for working men succeed in their aim of reaching many of the
class for which they are established. They offer not merely an
opportunity for reading, but that guidance in the use of books which all
classes of the community need, if they are to use books for a serious
purpose. They show us that success in this line of effort may be reached
if the library has an income sufficient to enable it to undertake the
task on a large scale.
This condition is, however, not that of most of the libraries which are
represented here. Our incomes are none too large for the work which we
must necessarily do for the general public. Such libraries must
ordinarily content themselves with offering to men opportunities for
reading without special guidance in the use of books. This work has been
attempted in a good many of the smaller libraries. They attempt to
provide masculine conditions for reading and reading material which will
appeal to men. The first includes a well-furnished, comfortable room for
men, where a man can come in his working clothes without feeling he is
out of place; smoking may be allowed or not--both plans are tried
without great difference in apparent result. The masculine reading
comprises newspapers and magazines; good books of literature which can
be left in the room (paper bound copies suggested); most important of
all are trade journals; if possible, files of the recent volumes of
these journals, selected according to the industries of each town; and
the most readable and most recent reference books on similar subjects.
In a word, a room is furnished with reading which will appeal to the
classes of men who do not ordinarily use libraries and who are not
greatly interested in literature.
This plan is good one and ought to be tried, but I believe the
conditions are exceptional under which it will reach large numbers of
men. Inertia and habit will keep most of them away from the library.
They will see the daily papers at their wonted places of resort, and the
room, necessarily lacking in much of the freedom of the club, will fail
to attract very many of them. They will not form the habit of visiting
it, even though they might enjoy it if the habit were formed. It must
also be remembered that increasing numbers of the manufacturing concerns
are providing their employees with reading of this kind, and thus
limiting the use of the city library.
In some libraries the attempt to reach men has gone still further and
has led to an inclusion of attractions which are ordinarily regarded as
outside the work of a library. They have attempted to combine to some
degree the privileges of a club with that of the public library. The
Stevens Point Library has a club room, equipped with billiard tables,
cards, etc., as well as with technical journals and similar books. This,
the librarian reports, is very successful in attracting boys, many of
whom learn to use the library. Men, however, do not come in large
numbers, as they do not care to use a place frequented by boys, and in
which smoking is not permitted. At Wausaukee a special room with games
and where lunch is served has been established at the library as a means
of furnishing a sort of club room for lumber men who come to the
village, especially on Sunday, and who have no other place of resort,
except the saloon. How far such methods are advisable as a part of
library work is a question which will often be asked during the coming
years and which only experience can answer. At present such enterprises
have not gone beyond the stage of early experiment.
Summing up the result, I would frankly confess that the reports which I
have received are not numerous enough for a positive judgment, yet it is
my impression that where there is an income large enough to provide a
special librarian and a public large enough to warrant the expense, this
movement for special libraries for men is likely to succeed. It seems
also to be true that where the library provides the men with the
opportunity for reading only, and does not furnish guidance for readers,
no very large use is made of technical books and there is no greatly
increased use of the library in general. How to guide the reading seems,
therefore, to be the central factor in the solution of the problem.
In a small town a special librarian is impossible, for financial
reasons, but there, as well as in large cities, lectures can be given
which deal with practical subjects and the aid to their knowledge which
the library affords. Many cities are giving such courses of lectures,
notably perhaps New York, and with considerable effect on the use of the
public library. I have no statistics regarding such lectures from the
various cities, but undoubtedly this method offers the easiest plan for
extending the use of the library in smaller cities and towns. I say the
_easiest_, and it will not be difficult to secure good lectures on
literature, history, or art, but lectures on the practical subjects are
much more difficult to obtain, since it is hard to secure lecturers who
know more about the trades than do the craftsmen who constitute the
audience.
If these movements are to succeed, they must not be attempted in an
amateurish way. They must be well planned and well executed--planned and
executed with careful reference to the wants of the men of the
community. Above all, they must be persistently carried out with full
vigor year after year, even though results are apparently small. Their
purpose must be steadfastly maintained and the methods of execution
continually readjusted, as success or failure indicates. It is no light
or easy thing to change the habits of half the adult members of the
community--to cultivate the reading habit in those who have reached
maturity without acquiring it--and the work which the library proposes
for itself involves such a task.
If men are to be reached at all it must be on a business basis, not on
that of occasional effort. Nor must the missionary spirit prevail, for
men, as a rule, do not wish to be reformed or to be helped. They must
find in the library a place which appeals to their sense of comfort and
which gives them things that they want, or, like other sensible people,
they will not use it.
One word in closing this topic, and that in emphasis of what I have
already said. It is easier to keep a boy reading as he grows up than to
catch him again as a man after the library has lost him. Take a lesson
from the church. The boy who graduates from Sunday-school rarely returns
for a post-graduate course. In the wise administration of the work for
children and youth lies the main hope not of reaching, but keeping men
in the library.
But it should be definitely understood that this enlargement of library
work which the times are forcing upon us means increasing expense, more
room, more books--which must be more frequently renewed--and a larger
library staff. It means the attempt to do efficiently several lines of
intellectual work for the public instead of purveying literature for
those who desire it. This new work the library can readily accomplish,
but not with the staff which was sufficient for the old duties. Any
library can provide, for example, the list of desiderata mentioned in
the _Independent's_ article, which could easily be extended. They can
all be furnished by the library as the public wants them and will pay
for them. They cannot be, and ought not to be, supplied by an already
overworked library staff of two or three persons.
The library, therefore, should not enter upon these duties blindly or
ignorantly. It is a great task which is thus undertaken--to educate the
community to use books and to guide it in that use. Although small
beginnings are possible, the work will inevitably grow on our hands just
as that of the schools and colleges has done, and for similar reasons.
But whatever difficulties lie in the way of their performance, it is
plain that the library must assume these new duties. With many
experiments, with many failures, with many partial successes, the
library will extend its teachings, its conscious influences, until they
touch the life of the community at every point.
In this rambling talk I have discussed library work as it looks forward
to new problems, and have devoted only a word, and that perhaps a rather
disparaging one, to the traditional use of the library. I would not
leave the subject in this way. For the traditional use of books remains
and will remain the center of library work and the main source of its
best influences. The problem of the library to-day, looked at from
within and not from without, and in relation to other agencies, is
essentially that which confronts the university. Both institutions once
stood for culture and for culture exclusively. Both are now challenged
by the spirit of the newer time and are called upon to justify
themselves as public utilities. This they must do, and that in full
measure, but there is a real danger that both, in the multiplicity of
the new duties thus forced upon them, may forget the weighty words,
"these ought ye to do and not leave the other undone." For, after all,
the highest public utility which the library offers, or can offer, is
the opportunity to cultivate the friendship of books. This utility is
none the less precious because it is intangible. Indeed, it is the
unique privilege of the library among municipal enterprises that it can
provide a service which aids the higher life of the citizen so directly
and so purely. In the spirituality of this function, the library stands
second only to the highest institutions of pure learning, and to the
church.
No new undertaking, no extension of work, no plea of necessity can
warrant or justify any loss of power on this highest level. The problem
is not to discover how to sacrifice as little as possible of the old
spirit to the new duties, but to learn how through the new duties we may
make more wide-spread and more potent for good that oldest and best
inheritance from the past--the love of books.
"The people's university," the library has been called, but it would be
as great a pity if the librarian so understood this term as to believe
that people came to the library only to learn, as it would be if any
went there who could not learn what they sought. That university which
is a place to study rather than a place to live is missing its best
possibilities, and in a similar way the library ought to be, first and
always, a place to read rather than a place to study. I would not go so
far as to say that I want to find it a place to "loaf," though I might
be provoked into saying so; but certainly it must be a place where I can
"invite my soul"--such a place as the world gives me elsewhere only in
the church or in the silence of nature. Trade journals and technical
works are of great use; books for women's clubs are good things; the
children's room is a necessity; but these of themselves no more make a
library than a kitchen, dining room and bedroom make a home. Out of such
utilities as these you may get a boarding house, but nothing better; the
family makes it a home. Those are wholly wrong who believe that standard
books are so cheap that anyone can buy them, and therefore the library
could conceivably get on without them. Without the best literature you
might get a very useful institution, no doubt, but not a library, for in
a library the great works of the great authors are the soul and theirs
is the spirit which enables the library not merely to contribute to the
advance of the community toward prosperity and intelligence, but also,
in some degree, to touch its higher life to finer issues.