The opening address at the Red Wing meeting of the Minnesota
Library Association, Oct. 12, 1905, by Miss Countryman,
librarian of the Minneapolis Public Library. The "public,"
Miss Countryman thinks, "is no indefinite, intangible
somebody; it is just 'we'"--the statement of library
socialization in a nutshell.
Gratia Alta Countryman was born at Hastings, Minn., in
November, 1866, and graduated, with the B.S. degree, at the
University of Minnesota in 1889. In that same year she
entered the service of the Minneapolis Public Library, and
she was assistant librarian at the resignation of Dr. James
K. Hosmer in 1904, succeeding him as librarian.
During these latter days of enormous library activity, we have been
conscientiously examining the functions of a library; we have been
trying all sorts of methods to popularize it, to advertise it. We have
asked for and listened to the criticism of outsiders, and by the light
thrown upon it through this prism have separated our work into its
elemental parts and seen its various hues.
We used to erect a library as an altar to the gods of learning; now, to
use Mr. Dana's words, we erect it as an altar to the "gods of good
fellowship, joy and learning." So you see, our ideals are constantly
rising, our horizons ever broadening, and our work continually
increasing, both in extent and in depth. We might well have considered
our hands fairly full to have dealt alone with this god of learning, but
we find ourselves embracing the opportunity for additional service to
the gods of good fellowship and joy.
It might do us good to consider tonight what we are doing for the cause
of learning, what the library has done to increase serious reading and
study, and how it may further the educational work of the world. This
question is ever present with us, and can stand any amount of
discussion. But it is the gods of good fellowship and joy that we are
discussing tonight, the library not as a center of learning but as a
social center.
We are dealing with a small crowd of people whom we call "our public."
Who are the public? Why, you and I, and my family, and others just like
us. They want just the same things that we do, and to be accommodated in
just the same way that we do. The public is no indefinite, intangible
somebody, it is just "we."
We talk about the people being hungry for books and information. Have
you found it so? Then why do we have free libraries and free schools?
People are willing to sacrifice for something that they are very hungry
for. Do you hunger and thirst to read Homer and Shakespeare, and Emerson
and Arnold, and good histories and literature? Do you, when you are
tired after a day's work, take home a scientific work or a treatise on
civics? No, you are just a little sample of the public, and you think
you need to read a pleasant, entertaining, restful book. You aren't
hungry for information, and, as a matter of fact, the person who
delights in study and has a fine taste for the best in literature has
one of the "gifts extremely rare." Most of us are practical, everyday,
working people, with a very limited time for reading, and this public
whom we serve is just like us. A few of them will love to read the best,
many of them will want information at intervals, a large proportion want
recreative reading, and the vast majority use the library not at all.
Now the former, who want and love the library, you need not be troubled
about. They will naturally come to the library, and you will find
pleasure in serving them. But these latter classes who either come for
pleasure or come not at all must be drawn and held through the social
instincts, and through their desire for pleasure. Every human being must
have social life. We seek company and companionship with whom we can
find mutual pleasure. We may find it in friendly gatherings, social
clubs, or music or conversation or games, but social pleasure of some
sort is sought by all of us, great and small, in town and country alike.
In the city there is usually plenty of opportunity--I might almost say
that there is a surfeit--and one must pick and choose. But in the towns
and villages it is often different; good amusement and profitable
pleasures are not always to be had, and being social beings, the social
craving is satisfied with whatever means may be at hand. Young people
especially can not isolate themselves, or live unto themselves. Just
where is the library going to stand in this matter? Is there anything
which we can do to satisfy these natural desires and to enter more
vitally into the lives of the people? This is the question to take home
and think about.
As individuals, we are coming to have an enormous interest in other
human lives, there is a sense of social obligation upon us; we have come
to know that personal righteousness is not all that is required of us,
but that we must help to realize the social righteousness. The library
has the duty of being all things to all men. It is no longer simply a
repository of books, it is exactly what Mr. Carnegie calls it, the
cradle of democracy, filled with the democratic spirit, and it
endeavors, as far as circumstances permit, to minister to all the needs
of the community in which it dwells. The library stands for progress,
the progress of its town, and this does not mean increasing the material
prosperity of the people, though that may follow, but it chiefly means
the raising of the moral, social and intellectual standards of all its
people, and helping men and women to be more effective in every way. The
library does not exist for one side only of the life of the people, but
for every side, and if it fails to provide for those who seek amusement,
it shirks a duty and renounces a privilege. The sooner we unveil the
"gods of joy and good fellowship" in our library the better; the sooner
we make the library a centre for all the activities among us that make
for social efficiency the better.
Of course there are natural limitations to the kind of work which a
library can do, and in helping to further the spirit of good fellowship
and to furnish pleasure, we must keep within such limits as are
consistent with the spirit of a library. The library can appeal to
people in other ways than by books alone, as we shall consider later,
yet as books are our chief tools, it is natural to think first of giving
pleasure by that method. One of our chiefest ways of late years has been
through the children's room. The children get book instruction and
supplementary reading and enforced book interests, all of which are
needed for their development, in the schoolroom. But in the children's
room at the library furnished especially for them, with low tables,
picture books and low shelves containing fairy stories and all their
favorite authors, they settle down to satisfy their own especial
individual tastes. Then there is the story hour, of which we shall hear
to-morrow. Many of the children have never learned the pleasure of
reading. They do not belong to cultured homes and the presence of books.
Many of them never heard a Mother Goose jingle or a nonsense verse, and
a book is an unlearned delight. But what child, even of this kind, does
not love to hear stories, and listening breathlessly, would not come
again and again. Somehow it seems as if we could not discharge our
social obligation until we had gone into the by-ways and hedges and
gathered in these scraps of society, and taught them the pleasures of a
book. The children, once acquainted with the library, will always count
it among their friends, and it will forever remain a social centre to
them.
We grown ups are not so different from the children; we, too, like a
story, and we, too, want to read the things that cheer and entertain us.
We agreed a moment ago that we, as well as our public, were liable to
leave the serious books for the infrequent study hour and to spend our
leisure evenings with the fascinating novel. Well, I do not know of any
better way to give amusement and pleasure than to furnish the people
with the books they want, in which they can be interested and absorbed.
The "cares that infest the day" will fold their wings better under the
spell of a good story than any other way. I think we need not be
frightened when libraries are accused of being only fiction
distributors, for it is a library's function to amuse as well as to
instruct, and if people will seek amusement through the library, so much
the better for the people. It is natural that the people should feel a
curiosity about the newest book and want to read what other people are
talking about. This adds also to pleasant social intercourse, and gives
people a common subject of conversation. Fiction is bound to be more and
more an interpretation of life by which we see the motives and the
currents in other souls. We need not be afraid to supply good, wholesome
fiction and to use it in establishing social relations with our people,
so that the adults as well as the children shall feel a real pleasure in
coming to the library.
Many of our libraries are now housed in beautiful buildings, in which
case, the building as well as the books becomes a means of social
influence. If there is need of a home for social intercourse and
amusement, the library may legitimately attempt to furnish such a home
within its walls. If there are social or study clubs, organized labor
guilds or missionary societies, or any other organizations, encourage
them to meet at the library, find out what they need, let them find out
that the library is their cooperative partner. And so with the schools
and industries, of which I have not time to speak. The whole building at
all times should be managed in the broadest spirit of hospitality; the
atmosphere should be as gracious, kindly and sympathetic as one's own
home. Then do away with all unnecessary restrictions, take down all the
bars, and try to put face to face our friends the books and our friends
the people. Introduce them cordially, then stand aside and let them make
each other's blessed acquaintance.
Some have tried smoking rooms, had boy's club rooms and games, and many
have tried simply to make the rooms homelike and cheery, and all of
their experience is valuable to us.
It may be that no one of the plans used by other libraries may fit your
case, for it is not necessarily good for you because some one else has
used it successfully. But with any plan do not expect immediate results,
for almost everything that succeeds permanently has a slow, gradual
development; that which flashes up quickly usually dies down suddenly.
Be willing to work out a good plan if you have one, and be willing to
study your people and all of their interests before you shape your
plans.