of rural systems might learn a good deal from the district organizers
employed by the Village Clubs Association. This organization was
founded during the war, with Government assistance, to stimulate social
life in the country, and counteract the tendency of the villagers to
migrate into towns. It works principally by encouraging the formation
of village clubs and institutes, and assisting these with advice and
practical help, especially by getting them to co-operate in schemes
for lectures, classes, entertainments, sports, competitions, and the
like. Several hundred thriving clubs are affiliated to the Association,
and the staff of officials--men chosen for their experience of rural
conditions and insight into rustic mentality--are in touch with
everything that goes on throughout a radius extending over two or three
counties. Many clubs have through local benefactions acquired large and
beautiful village halls, which are obviously the destined home of the
village library--in point of fact, they are not yet the actual home
even where the village has a library centre, bureaucratic authority
much preferring the school, official routine and discipline to mere
human nature.
The Village Clubs Association takes an active interest in the
intellectual side of rural life; it promotes the formation of village
libraries, very sensibly urging every club to make itself the owner
of a small reference collection, to buy some books for lending, and
borrow from the Central Library to satisfy demands beyond the average.
The Association, further, busies itself in promoting study circles,
lectures, and evening classes, official or otherwise. It has its
own library and education committee, whose activities coincide in
large measure with the work that the county education committees and
directors of education are doing, or ought to be doing, in carrying
out the rural library scheme. Yet the Village Clubs Association and
the educational authorities, even in counties where rural libraries
exist and both are ostensibly engaged in furthering the same purposes,
have done nothing yet in concert, have not availed themselves of each
others’ services, and so far as a person who is not a Government
official can make out, do not know of each others’ existence. In
short, this is another notable instance of our national gift for doing
things twice over and at the same time leaving them undone, of paying
twice for the same job and declining to do it properly because of
the expense. This too, in days of anti-waste campaigns and niggardly
economy. The education committee and the director of education in each
county work under the Board of Education; the Village Clubs Association
is foster-mothered by the Board of Agriculture. It is, apparently, not
official etiquette that the Association should recommend the village
clubs to seek the benefits of the education authority’s library
scheme--their pamphlets of information and advice do not mention the
new possibilities opened out by the Act of 1919--or, on the other hand,
for the education authority to utilize the organizing experience and
fit its own schemes into the framework which the Association could put
at its disposal.
If the education authorities ignore official or semi-official work
such as this, it is to be feared that they will be slow to recognize
and co-ordinate the thousand and one activities, the libraries and
institutes founded by private effort, and the numberless bodies
that are trying hard to infuse a new spirit into rural life. Will
they take over or work in any kind of partnership with the library
schemes of the Y.M.C.A., the village library association working
in Worcestershire, or that centred in Barnett House, Oxford? Will
they make the various field clubs and other local societies their
coadjutors? Unless they do, all the elements of a real social and
intellectual resurrection in the villages will be left just outside
their radius. It was a good thing to begin with the schools, but
the work must get beyond the school at the first opportunity. The
village school is only a makeshift base for the great intellectual and
civilizing crusade in which all available forces must be concentrated.
It is very difficult indeed to evoke in a schoolroom the congenial
atmosphere of the library, the reading circle, and the village
institute. The very word education, with its narrow associations, is
unpopular and repressive. Adult education will have to get rid of the
second term before it can become an inspiration. The sooner, therefore,
the rural library can leave the school and schooling behind the better.
To do so everywhere, in most places perhaps, is not yet possible; but
where it is possible, directors of education must not be allowed to
frown upon the suggestion. Freedom and initiative, spontaneous personal
development, are the chief things to aim at, and they will be attained
most easily in regions outside the range of our present educational
machinery.
Salvation will probably come to the rural library movement from such
counties as are enlightened enough to form leagues between villages,
with real not perfunctory libraries in convenient centres, or
combinations of borough or urban district libraries with neighbouring
villages. Only when a growing proportion of the rural public has the
opportunity of direct contact with libraries, and not merely with small
batches of books sent them at stated intervals, will they realize what
a true library service can do. Only then will there be much hope of
co-ordinating all the miscellaneous local efforts into active schemes
of library extension. Incidentally, unless events have meanwhile
hurried on the process of linking up all our public libraries into a
national system, such combinations may furnish a suggestive example to
the towns. But to achieve all this, it is doubtful if we should make
heavy demands upon the county education committees, unless they depute
this side of their work to a strong sub-committee, reinforced with
co-opted members from outside. Representation of other interests than
those of schools and education, representation of the many voluntary
bodies who are striving to reanimate the countryside, representation,
above all, of the people who read or whom we want to read the books,
is a radical necessity. To this point there will be a return in the
next chapter, where the general question of who shall manage our
reconstituted libraries will arise.
In the United States, where the obstacles to a rural library service
are still more formidable, the town population being only 45 per cent.
of the whole, various plans have been tried, and a different method
than that recently adopted in this country has met with most success,
the method of expansion outwards from a library at the centre, freely
open to the public. The State library commissions do not flatter
themselves that they have completely solved the problem, for only 794
of the 2964 counties in the United States have as yet one or more
libraries of not less than 5,000 volumes; but they are apparently on
the highroad to success. At all events, they are fully aware of the
extent and value of their opportunities. All the states in the union
have State libraries, and most have library commissions, which operate
in different ways, some with exemplary thoroughness, and some, it
must be confessed, rather perfunctorily. Many states have systems of
travelling libraries, that in New York being the most extensive and
flourishing. Yet comparing this with the rival county system now to
be described, a well-informed critic says, “The few people reached
compared with the great rural population of the state of New York,
wherein the travelling library under the direction of the State
Library Commission seems to be more widely used than in any other
state of the Union, indicates the futility of trying, by means of a
travelling library system operated from the capital of the state, to
supply farm homes with library privileges.”[22] Municipal libraries
have reached their highest development in Massachusetts, which has on
its public shelves more than six million volumes, about two to each
inhabitant; but in the absence of a county system the rural population
is neglected. Indiana also has an admirable township law, empowering
townships to combine and work in concert; yet only one rural inhabitant
in each eleven enjoys library privileges. A very different tale is told
in those states where the system of the central county library has been
set up, though the system is even now but in its infancy.
The pioneer county library was established in 1901 in Van Wert, Ohio,
in a state where the library movement had hitherto made but indifferent
progress. Funds for a building had been left to the county town by
a self-made banker, J. S. Brumback, and his heirs decided that it
should be a library for the whole county, whereby 30,000 people would
enjoy benefits that would otherwise have been restricted to 8,000.
The county is small and compact, measuring 405 square miles, and is
predominantly a rural area, 16,300 persons at that time living on farms
or in out-of-the-way spots, and the inhabitants of the towns depending
largely for business on the rural population. The county spirit is
strong. There are county parks, a county fair, a county hospital, a
county Chautauqua, agricultural shows, sports, singing contests, and
other county affairs. Hence the tree was planted in the right soil, and
took hold at once. A county tax was sanctioned, a large initial stock
of books was acquired, and has been continually augmented; and when
the stock had increased to 25,000 the whole library service, which is
threefold, dealing with the town of Van Wert, with fifteen branches,
and with the schools in town and country, was run at an aggregate
cost of $7,000 per annum. The staff is divided into three departments
corresponding to the three divisions of the service, besides the
custodians at the branches, who receive an honorarium for their
attendance at certain hours. An equal if not a greater circulation of
books is attained through the schools than even through the branch
stations. Sunday schools are pressed into the work, and the extension
activities are multifarious. Collections of 125 books are sent to each
branch every three months; in addition, supply boxes of a hundred
books go regularly to some branches, and when required to others.
Every inhabitant of the county it must be understood, is entitled to
borrow direct from the central library. This is an important point,
and, observes the librarian, it would be still more important if the
central library were worked on the open access system. In 1920, the
total number of agencies in operation was 142, comprehending, besides
the central library, five city stations, six city schools, fifteen
branches, and 115 school collections. The registered borrowers comprise
nearly sixty per cent. of the whole population, three-quarters of them
using the central library, whether they live in the town or in the
villages. Though weeding-out is a regular practice, obsolete books
being ruthlessly discarded and the library supplied with the latest
books so as to be a real workshop, the total stock is now 30,597,[23]
which is rather more than one volume per head of the population.
Van Wert is a small county, and the compactness of the area served
gives it an immense advantage over areas of the size of most English
counties, which would have to be divided into library districts to be
put on the same footing. But the superiority of the county system, with
its facilities for direct access as well as its service through the
branch stations and the schools, over the mere travelling library, was
so manifest that the system rapidly spread. Among the states that have
adopted county library laws, following Ohio’s example, are Wyoming,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, California, Maryland, Washington,
Nebraska, Oregon, Iowa. Canada, also, has welcomed the system.
California has the largest number of county libraries, and is not far
from covering the whole area of the state with a library service. It
has a state board of examiners in librarianship, and only certificated
persons are eligible to county library posts. One laudable social
object is clearly realized as a motive behind rural library policy in
the United States, to encourage the people to live as far as they can
from the heart of the cities, in spots where they can own a little
ground for cultivation, and enjoy pure air and a wholesome environment.
If the practical American looks at it in this way, we may be sure that
there is much force in the contention that a first-rate library service
in the country would be a real attraction and help materially in the
movement back to the land.
Here it is worth while mentioning a different class of library that is
multiplying fast in the United States, greatly to the furtherance of
the same movement--agricultural libraries. There are three varieties of
these, the library of the agricultural college, that attached to the
experimental station, and the agricultural library formed by a private
individual or a farming corporation. Their are sixty-five agricultural
colleges in the States, maintained by state or federal funds.
Primarily, such libraries serve the college students; but the colleges
have adopted a strenuous extension policy, running short winter courses
for farmers, organizing agricultural clubs, sending out instructive
groups of exhibits, batches of books, reading lists and reading
matter, in the form of pamphlets, cuttings, and answers to inquiries.
The University of Wisconsin distributes books by parcel post and issues
bibliographical bulletins; the Massachusetts Agricultural College has
a system of travelling libraries; Purdue University prepares select
libraries of agricultural literature and takes steps to sell these to
farmers. “Through the farmers’ papers, on the special trains, at fairs
and at institutes, the work was carried on.”[24] Agricultural libraries
are an essential auxiliary to the experimental station, where the work
is forwarded materially by the services of an expert librarian skilled
in searching out information. The experimental station and its library
play a part in answering queries from working agriculturalists, similar
to that played by our commercial and technical libraries for the
benefit of manufacturers and men of business.
The advantages of basing a rural library service on a central library
to which the readers can resort if they desire are manifold. Foremost
is the supremely important point that the users can come if and when
they will to see and handle the books and make themselves familiar
with the library’s contents. Open access in town libraries has been,
not merely an educational factor, but an inspiration. The box of books
doled out from a repository that the reader has never seen, and to
which he would not be admitted if he applied, is better than nothing,
but it is a library service only to those who have hitherto had
nothing. A town takes a pride in its library; the villager would have
the same personal interest in the collection of books housed in the
village hall. An inaccessible repository is not likely to excite the
feelings of county patriotism which have been a valuable element in the
success of the Brumback Library, Ohio. Such patriotism is needed, if
the unanimous social effort required of this new experiment, much more
than it was required in the towns, is to become a reality.
The ideal plan would be to divide the large counties into sections,
each centering in a town or regional library. The town libraries
exist, and if proper financial conditions were arranged the towns
would probably not be averse from coming into a well-planned scheme.
They would gain, not lose, by the change, since the available stock
of books would be enlarged indefinitely and there would be a wider
apportionment of overhead charges. At present, Somerset is worked from
the little watering-place of Burnham, which has no library service
for itself, and books are actually sent across the width of the shire
into the suburbs of Bath, a town rejoicing in a large collection of
lending-library books used mainly for desultory reference purposes. How
much better were Somerset mapped out into districts served from the
existing public libraries at Radstock, Weston-super-Mare, Taunton,
and Bridgewater, with new ones established at Glastonbury, Wells, or
other places, unable singly to afford a library. Why should not Sussex
be supplied from the chain of admirable libraries in her south coast
towns, with a new one in the hinterland at Horsham? Kent has public
libraries at Maidstone, Gravesend, Chatham, Bromley, Canterbury, and
Folkestone; Maidstone, with its Bentlif Institute comprising library,
museum, and art gallery, would form a central magazine hardly to
be surpassed, and with subordinate centres at the other places it
would be easy to cater for the whole county. Wiltshire is served
from Trowbridge, where the bookless inhabitants have to be sternly
repulsed from the sacred repository, whilst Calne and Salisbury have
libraries of their own that might co-operate in supplying this large
agricultural area. Similarly, the Gloucestershire repository is in the
county town, and has no dealings with the Gloucester Public Library.
Examples might be multiplied; but the reader need only open the map of
the United Kingdom to see how easy and natural a thing it would be to
adopt the American county library system and centre our rural service
in an accessible library building, with its reference collection, its
reading rooms, and above all, its lending book-shelves thrown open
to all comers. The Librarian of the National Liberal Club, Mr. C. R.
Sanderson, prepared a scheme for Middlesex, one of the latest counties
to accept the Carnegie grant, for organizing a regional service
worked from a central library established within the joint boundary
of Southgate and Friern Barnet, which have between them a population
approaching 60,000. The alternative to this proposal is the usual
travelling library system, and it remains to be seen which will be
ultimately adopted. Middlesex, most of which is mere suburb of London,
is in circumstances very different from those of the average county.
It already has a score of public libraries in its towns and urban
districts, many of which would be anything but worse off if they were
linked into a county scheme. Failing that consummation, towards which,
however, it may be hoped that future events will lead, there seems no
reason but timidity and short-sighted frugality to hesitate in choosing
the American pattern.
[Illustration: LIBRARY OF THE SOUTH-EASTERN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, WYE.]
The more rapidly the method of the travelling book-box spreads into
counties in which efficient urban libraries are already working, the
sooner will its radical defects appear; common sense and obvious
convenience will presently call for the abolition of such anomalies,
and insist on a proper utilization of existing resources. The earlier
this happens the better, for such utilization will be far more economic
than an ineffective system, however cheaply run. The outcome will
be something much nearer the goal indicated by the Adult Education
Committee in their Final Report.[25]
“The hope lies in the recognition of the county market town as the
natural centre for the surrounding villages and the gradual development
of transport facilities radiating from the market towns.... The
development of transport and the extended use of electric power will
tend to the decentralization of industry and the movement of firms
from the town to the country. It is improbable, however, that town
workers will be prepared, in any large numbers--even when the housing
shortage is remedied--to exchange urban life for life in the country so
long as the latter is without the counterpart of the many and varied
activities to which they have become accustomed in the towns.... The
rural problem, from whatever point of view it is regarded--economic,
social, or political--is essentially a problem of re-creating the rural
community, of developing new social traditions and a new culture.
The great need is for a living nucleus of communal activity in the
village, which will be a centre from which radiate the influence of
different forms of corporate effort, and to which the people are
attracted to find this satisfaction of their social and intellectual
needs. We conceive this nucleus to be a village institute, under
full public control.... The institute should contain a hall large
enough for dances, cinema shows, concerts, plays, public lectures,
and exhibitions. At the institute there should be a public library
and local museum. If arrangements can be made for games and sports,
so much the better. The institute, in a word, should be a centre of
educational, social, and recreational activity.... As the institutes
will be used more and more for public and quasi-public purposes, it
seems to us that they should be established out of public funds. In
the main, the establishment of village institutes should be a national
charge. The complicated social and economic questions which we call
collectively the rural problem are a matter of the greatest national
importance. They do not admit of any simple solution. They need to be
approached by many roads; one of the most important is through direct
encouragement to the establishment of a new communal organization and
to the development of corporate activities and social institutions in
harmony with modern social ideas. The State cannot create a new social
spirit; it can but provide opportunities for its growth and expression.
One of the chief of these opportunities is the village institute,
and we can think of no more profound or far-reaching piece of rural
reconstruction than the provision of buildings expressly designed as
a focus of the social activities of village communities. Whether such
institutes become active centres of social and educational work will
depend largely upon the degree in which voluntary organizations of
various kinds co-operate in utilizing the opportunities which the
institutes present. It is clear that a village institute can never
become the mainspring of organized life in the village unless the
organized activities of the village centre in the institute. The
success of village institutes in the future rests upon an appeal to
groups of people with common interests, rather than to individuals. It
is because they have, in recent years, begun to flourish that we look
forward hopefully to a vigorous life within the village institutes.”
Only let the library hold the central position in these rural
institutes that it held in the Mechanics’ Institutes before the Public
Libraries Acts, and let the numerous libraries--and institutes--be
knitted together in active fraternal union, and the Committee’s dreams
may easily be accomplished.[26]
FOOTNOTES:
[18] The Adult Education Committee may have been justified in laying
the blame for this state of things on “the want of foresight of the
original promoters of the movement, who assumed that the institutions
would appeal only to the artisan classes of the large centres of
population”; but they were hardly right in going on to ascribe it more
particularly to their mistake in allowing the legislature “to restrict
the expenditure of public money to the product of a penny rate.”
[19] _A Report on Library Provision and Policy_, by Professor W. G. S.
Adams (1915), p. 15.
[20] “Prior to 1920, pioneer rural schemes had been financed or
assisted by the Trust in the counties or areas noted in column ‘A’
below; column ‘B’ shows the counties to which grants have been
sanctioned this year; column ‘C’ shows the counties whose Authorities
are in negotiation (preliminary or advanced) with a view to a grant.”
A
Perthshire
Caithness
Montrose District
Nottinghamshire
Staffordshire
Wiltshire
Gloucestershire
Buckinghamshire
Dorsetshire
Somersetshire
Yorkshire Village Library
Cardigan
Carnarvon
Brecon & Radnor
Denbighshire
Montgomeryshire
Grantham District
Westmorland
Warwickshire
B
Sutherland
Clackmannan
Renfrewshire
Forfar & Kincardine
Midlothian
Berwickshire
Peeblesshire
Dumbartonshire
Kent
Pembrokeshire
Glamorganshire
West Sussex
Cheshire
Inverness