This statement of first principles was made by Melvil Dewey
at the Second International Library Conference, held in
London, July 13-16, 1897, and is reprinted from the
Transactions and Proceedings of the Conference (London,
1898). In reading this address, it must be kept in mind that
it was made to Englishmen, whose conception of the functions
of a public library were then, as now, much more
conservative than ours. A sketch of Dr. Dewey will be found
in Vol. I. of this series.
We have been listening to an admirable account of the development of the
library movement from earliest times to the present day, and I venture
to believe that when the history of the age in which we live is written,
and is looked back upon by those who shall come after, it will be known
distinctively as the "Library Age."
Libraries of one sort or another have existed from the beginning of
human history, and we are now well into the fifth century since the
invention of printing; so that it would seem as if there had been
abundant time for library development. But so great an institution as
the modern library is of slow growth. It has taken a thousand years to
develop our school system from university down to kindergarten. The
public library is much more rapidly going through corresponding stages
in order to come to its own. The original library was a reservoir,
getting in and keeping safely, a storehouse for posterity. That was and
is a great function, for which I have profound respect. Then, after many
centuries, came another library epoch, for which we all feel still
greater respect. The cistern was made a fountain; giving out was seen to
be more important than getting in. The library is no longer merely a
passive receptacle, but becomes an aggressive educational force in every
community. The reservoir will not become a stagnant pool, for, in its
branches and deliveries, the public library has mains and pipes laid
through every street, and reaching almost to the door of every
householder. And we live now not in the age of the reservoir, but in the
age of the fountain. In our zeal and admiration, however, we are apt to
forget that there is yet another and even more important stage to reach.
In my own city, some time ago, we spent half a million dollars in
providing an ample supply of water. But we found that we had really
opened convenient communication with the cemetery by water, for the
quality of the new and abundant beverage was such that our death-rate
steadily rose. The burning question became qualitative, not
quantitative, and we are now spending our money on efficient filtration.
Of course no library intends to circulate injurious books, but equally
no town intends to distribute harmful water. We are concerned more with
the results than with the intention. The mortality tables make plain the
physical defect, but alas! science has as yet devised no instruments
delicate enough to record the greater danger to the individual and the
State from poison in the great current, which has come to be a mighty
flood, of modern reading matter. The most hopeful, and perhaps the only
practicable, method of guarding against this serious danger is through
the public library, which must now in the last days of this eventful
century recognise the gravity of the new responsibility which it cannot
shirk. Before another audience I might dwell at length on what this
problem of selection means, but the representative librarians of the
world will understand my claim that, wonderful as was the development
from the cistern to the fountain, its importance is overshadowed by this
great question of excluding the pernicious, which I sum up in the word
filtration. This is the great problem of the modern library, and its
solution must depend largely on the State.
It is often said that the modern periodicals and newspapers are our
greatest danger; but this, of course, is true only of the sensational
and other objectionable types. I yield to none in my high appreciation
of what the best kind of newspaper may do in its capacity as the
strongest ally of the public library and of the public school. I am
confident that early in the next century such journals will be
recognised as a distinct part of our educational machinery, but I am
equally clear that the worst journals, conducted merely as money-making
enterprises, and catering to the worst instead of to the best elements
of both society and individuals, are the most potent factors for evil,
and the greatest enemy which the ideal librarian has to combat in
carrying forward his best work. They leave their habitual readers with
neither time nor taste for anything above their own low plane. The mind
will inevitably rise or fall to the level of its habitual reading, and
we apostles and missionaries of the book have no more disheartening
outlook than on the readers whose literary atmosphere is limited to the
modern sensational newspapers. But the apologists for such reading say
that the history of their own times is of more importance to them than
any other history; should they not, therefore, become as familiar as
possible with it? But when a man, on account of "pressure of business,"
never looks inside any good book, yet has time to read everything in the
newspapers, he is--well, specialising too much in "history." How many
men and women there are, who, from year's end to year's end, read
nothing but the so-called history of their own times, and who can tell
you nothing better than which dog won the last fight! It is a good thing
to know the history of our own times; so is a pinch of salt a good thing
on one's breakfast potato, but it is not necessary to drink a barrel of
sea water each morning in order to get it.
It is highly desirable that I should know the geology and topography of
my own State, but I can learn all that is worth knowing without creeping
on hands and knees with nose close to the ground over the barnyards and
dump heaps of our commonwealth, under the vain delusion that I am
exhaustively studying its geology. We must join this battle squarely.
The eternal conflict of good and the best with bad and the worst is on.
The librarian must be the librarian militant before he can be the
librarian triumphant. At the end of another century, when a conference
like this is held, our descendants will look back with wonder to find
that we have so long been satisfied to leave the control of the
all-pervading, all-influencing newspaper in the hands of people who have
behind them no motive better than the "almighty dollar." The solution of
our difficulties lies in recognition by the State that public libraries
are not only good things, but that they are an absolutely necessary part
of our educational system. We started with the university, but found
that we had to put under it the college. Then we went a step further,
and had the academy and high school to prepare for the college; the
primary and grammar schools to prepare for the high school; and now we
have the kindergarten under the primary school. I am not giving a
chronology, but simply pointing out that during these centuries
educators have constantly been facing the question of adequate provision
for meeting completely the public wants. We have at last reached step by
step from the university to the nursery, and have provided a series of
schools covering the entire field. Yet, with all this, we have not
attained the full system of education that we ought to attain, and every
thoughtful person is now asking, "What next?"
Huxley has well said that a system of education which in the early years
trains boys and girls to read and then makes no provision for what they
shall read during all the rest of their lives, would be as senseless as
to teach our children the expert use of the knife, fork, and spoon, and
then make no provision for their daily food. The whole history of
education has been a series of broadening conceptions. I can recall no
case in which the ideal has narrowed, but step by step we have come to a
general recognition that education is for poor as well as rich, for
plebeian as well as prince, for black and white, for native and
foreigner, for brilliant or backward, for women as well as men, for
deaf, dumb, and blind, and all defectives and delinquents, who in the
old conception were left without the pale. It is almost within our
memory that we have come to substantial agreement that the State owes an
elementary education to every boy and girl born within its limits, not
alone as a right to the child, but as a matter of safety and practical
wisdom on the part of the State; and this broader conception is followed
closely by a second and still broader one, that every boy and girl is
entitled not only to an elementary, but to something also of higher
education. I have met no competent student of this subject who dares
deny that hereafter the State must recognize that education is not alone
for the young, for limited courses, in schools which take all the time
of their pupils, but that it must regard adults as well; and not alone
for short courses, but all through life--not in our recognised teaching
institutions alone, but in that study outside of office or working hours
that may be carried on at home. I may sum it up in the one sentence,
"Higher education, for adults, at home, through life."
In this home education, which must hereafter be recognised side by side
with school education, the library is the great central agent round
which study clubs, reading circles, extension teaching, museums, and the
other allied agencies must cluster. A statesman solicitous for the
future welfare of his country will find his most fruitful field in
protecting and guiding the reading of the people. It is what a man reads
that shapes his future, which depends, not at once upon the rostrum and
the pulpit, but on the book and the newspaper. In education we recognise
that the supreme end is the building of character, but many of us have
never thought clearly how directly this character-building rests upon
the public library. It is reading that begets reflection, reflection
begets motive, motive begets action, and action begets habit, and habit
begets character; and who here dares question this, that it is not the
air nor the water, nor yet the "roast beef of Old England," not its
history nor traditions nor laws nor geographic location, but
_character_, that has made the Anglo-Saxons, England and her daughters
across the seas, the most wonderful people of the earth. It is not
brawn, but brain. The dogs and horses might have the physical qualities,
but it is the mind and soul, and those elements of true greatness which
can best be instilled into a people through the reading of good and
great books, that have made a race of which we are justly all so proud.
One of the wisest of Frenchmen said of the Franco-Prussian War, when the
needle-gun was suggested as the explanation of German victory, "No; it
was not the needle-gun, nor the German soldier who held it, nor yet the
German schoolmaster who trained the soldier, but it was the German
university that made the schoolmaster."
"Knowledge is power," and it is knowledge that has made England and
America great. Think of the men who read the poorest newspapers, but
know nothing of our best books. Can the State afford to make other
things free, and not make free true and useful knowledge as preserved in
books? Can the State recognize the necessity for free schools, and fail
to provide free access to the best reading in all realms of knowledge?
"Free as air," was the old-time strongest expression. Then men learned
how absolutely essential to physical well-being was abundance of water,
and our language records in its favourite expression, "free as water,"
the meaning of the untold millions that civilization has spent to supply
all people freely with this essential. We are learning the greater
lesson about the necessity of free knowledge more slowly, because
intellectual and spiritual things are not so readily discerned by our
mortal eyes, and it takes more time to read even those messages that God
has written very large for those who have eyes to see; but the time is
not far distant, mark my words, when our speech will again record the
general acceptance of a great truth in the common phrase, as "free as
knowledge." We should make the public understand the relation of the
school system to the library system; that the library is not merely a
collection of books, or a storehouse, but an aggressive and active
source of education, side by side with the free schools. If the issue
came--but, thank God, it never will--between giving up either the
library or the free school, I am not sure that I would not choose for
the welfare of the country the public library rather than the school.
This may sound strange from one who has given his life to education, but
I believe that even without our schools nearly every boy and girl would
somehow learn to read; and when I soberly consider the influence on
lives and characters and on the State, it seems probable that,
infinitely valuable as is the work of our free schools, it would be
exceeded by what could be done by a system of free public libraries,
reaching every boy and girl and man and woman in the community, and so
administered as to provide each freely from childhood to the grave with
the best reading in every field of interest and activity.
The State, whatever it may or may not do, should recognise the library
as being as essential to public welfare as is the school, and it should
give it as careful protection from dangers without and within as it
gives to institutions like banks and insurance companies. The State
should protect the library against unjust laws, improper interference,
or pernicious influence of any kind from without. It should guard it
also against misconduct, incapacity, or neglect on the part of its
trustees, officers, or employees. Beside the direct appropriations for
its support, it should grant the most liberal powers for holding
property given by individuals for the public benefit, and, above all,
should grant entire exemption from taxation. To tax a free public
library for doing its beneficent work is theorising gone mad. It is as
absurd as for a missionary to refuse admission to his preaching, or for
the manager of a theatre in which a fire has just started to shut out
every fireman till he had presented the conventional coupon for a
reserved seat. The example first set by my own State (New York) in the
statute which I had the honour of drawing ought to be followed
universally. We created a public libraries department, to devote its
entire attention to advancing the best interests of public libraries. It
would take the entire morning to sketch to you the various forms of
beneficent work which we have found practicable. We help to establish
new libraries, reorganise old ones, revise methods, select books, lend
single books or entire libraries, grant books or money up to $200 yearly
to any library raising an equal sum from local sources, and, by means of
correspondence, personal inspection, and steady work in a dozen
directions, help every community to get the greatest practical good from
the labour and money given to its free library. We have now about five
hundred travelling libraries moving about in all parts of the State. The
public library is rapidly becoming universal. For the Government not to
recognise it in its own organisation is as absurd as it would be to have
a standing army and no war department, or schools dotted all about the
state and no department of education. Time forbids more than the mere
naming of what is needed, but the first great step in summing up the
relation of the State to public libraries is the establishment of a
public libraries department, in charge of a strong man who appreciates
the almost limitless opportunities for usefulness which this new field
affords.
Our discussions this morning took such a turn that you could almost
hear behind them, like the recurring motive of one of Wagner's operas,
the question, "Who shall be greatest among librarians?" In our State
Library School I give each year a course of five lectures on the
qualifications of a librarian, and point out under a half-hundred
different heads the things we should demand in an ideal librarian; but
when we have covered the whole field of scholarship and technical
knowledge and training, we must confess that overshadowing all are the
qualities of the man. To my thinking, a great librarian must have a
clear head, a strong hand, and, above all, a great heart. He must have a
head as clear as the master in diplomacy; a hand as strong as he who
quells the raging mob, or leads great armies on to victory; and a heart
as great as he who, to save others, will, if need be, lay down his life.
Such shall be greatest among librarians; and, when I look into the
future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who will achieve
this greatness will be women.
It is well to hold up high ideals, but it would be a sad mistake to
underrate the services of the noble men and women who in some, perhaps
many, respects fall far short of the standards we lay down, and yet who
have done, and are doing well, much of the world's best work. Let us
dwell on what has been well done, not on what has been omitted or on
what might have been done by other men in other circumstances.
I remember, some twenty-five years ago, reading in George Eliot's
_Romola_ these words, which we should remember when thinking of any
great librarian who of necessity fails in some respects to meet all our
ideals: "It was the fashion of old, when an ox was led out for sacrifice
to Jupiter, to chalk the dark spots and give the offering a false show
of unblemished whiteness. Let us fling away the chalk, and boldly say
the victim was spotted; but it was not therefore in vain that his mighty
heart was laid on the altar of men's highest hopes."