on both sides of the Atlantic, and appears to cause no friction but a
spirit of good feeling and mutual help. It is carried on, for instance,
in Canada, and it is one of the functions of the State library
commissions in the United States. The libraries accept it in the spirit
which Edwards saw would animate the efficient library authority, and,
further, welcome it as a potent means for extending their benefits
into regions hitherto unreached. In Ontario the Minister of Education
is responsible for the administration of the Public Libraries Act,
and assigns this part of his duties to the Public Libraries Branch,
of which the Inspector of Public Libraries is superintendent. But in
Ontario the local authorities are so whole-hearted in their zeal
that the energies of the Branch are mainly confined to general work
in the interest of libraries, to routine inspections, the collection
of statistics, and the payment of grants. Yet, it is admitted, the
majority of librarians and library trustees would welcome a demand for
a minimum standard of efficiency.
The American State commissions usually include the State librarian,
other professional librarians, prominent educators, literary men,
library trustees, and business men interested in the work. “Instead
of regarding with jealousy the assumption by the State of powers like
these, librarians generally welcome the increase of systematic work
fostered by State aid and control. They are active everywhere in
efforts to establish State commissions, where such do not exist, and
the opponents of their efforts are usually persons unfamiliar with
the modern library movement, or politicians who see in such action no
benefit to themselves. In some cases, where legislatures have refused
to enact a proper State library law, State library associations,
voluntary bodies of librarians, have agreed to initiate and carry on,
at their own expense, some of the activities usually supervised and
financed by the State.”[35]
“A former agent of the Massachusetts Free Library Commission won for
himself the title of ‘the travelling bishop,’ descriptive both of the
estimation and affection with which he was regarded.” “State library
commissions exist at present in thirty-seven states. In a few states
such as in California, New York, and Utah, the State library or the
State board of education, in lieu of a library commission, exerts the
functions that such a commission would have.”[36]
The question of State grants to local authorities is perhaps important,
but certainly not so important as some critics would make out.
Equalization of burdens would of course have to be arranged. Yet, on
the other hand, there should be nothing to prevent a very enterprising
authority from spending a great deal more if it chose on further
developments of its library service. Progress would ultimately come to
a standstill if there were not this liberty; uniformity, at any level,
is ultimately stagnation. The Adult Education Committee speak of State
grants to local exchequers; but, apparently, these were to have been
calculated on the measure of a local authority’s zeal in co-operating
with educational work in the narrow sense, and not made a handle for
beneficent central control. It might or it might not be advisable to
assist local effort or reward enterprise by a policy of grants in aid.
Anyhow, it should be borne in mind that the material benefits of
such a scheme of centralization as has been roughly outlined would be
tantamount to a large financial contribution by the State, though it
should cost the State nothing. Apart from equalization of burdens[37]
and, perhaps, rewards for noteworthy efficiency--or the converse, fines
or refusal of grants for failures in efficiency--there seems to be
little use in discussing what proportion of the cost of our systems
of libraries should be defrayed by local rates and contributions
from local authorities and what by the State. Both rates and taxes
come ultimately from the same source, and, so far as that source, the
rated and taxed individual, is concerned, he might as well spend his
time debating which pocket he should keep his purse in. Inspections
and grants from the local exchequer would, obviously, go hand in hand;
but the allotment of grants would certainly not be the sole or the
principal end of the system of inspection.
If all the libraries in the kingdom were linked together in a national
system, the division into urban libraries and rural systems would to
a large extent disappear. A large number of the urban libraries would
be absorbed into groups of town and country libraries, analogous to
the American county groups; and large rural areas, with small village
libraries and a service of boxes, would have their focus in new central
institutes easily accessible to readers in the vicinity and available
for occasional visits by students at a greater distance. Many populous
areas would remain much as they are at present, with some increase of
facilities. But, instead of one Central Library for Students, there
would have to be, sooner or later, several large supplemental libraries
in convenient spots, forming magazines supplying, not individual
readers, but the scattered libraries; and, probably the British Isles
would have to be divided for library purposes into several provinces,
each centering in one of these. Supervision of library activities in
such provinces would devolve upon regional committees, elected by the
county and borough authorities in each province, the central board
exercising co-ordinating functions and carrying out such work as is for
the general welfare.
These central supplemental libraries would be built up largely by
a careful redistribution of existing resources. There is hardly a
library of any size that does not contain many books which are very
seldom used, books, however, which no librarian would dare to jettison,
because he knows that some fine day a reader is sure to come along
to whom one volume or another will be of priceless importance. There
are many other books so infrequently called for that it would be an
immense convenience to store them elsewhere, and utilize the valuable
shelf-space for books in continual request. Books of this sort should
be kept at the supplemental library, duly catalogued, and ready to be
sent to any library throughout the area served, when readers require
them. The supplemental libraries would, of course, be always buying
more books; they would have to keep abreast of the latest advances in
all subjects; but the works just described would form an important
part of their original contents, and would be transferred to them free
of cost. Local libraries are constantly put to the expense of buying
books for one or two users; such users are, no doubt, among the most
deserving of all their clients, and it is but just that their urgent
wants should be satisfied. But it is a tax upon the capacities of small
libraries that should be met somehow else; they would be spared it
by the new system, and the cost of the supplemental library would be
saved over and over again, the local library then having more funds to
maintain the stock of books in regular demand.
The present Central Library for Students is a step in the right
direction, but it is only a step; the work will have to be done on
a very large scale. This library was an outgrowth of the efforts to
supply students attending university tutorial and W.E.A. classes
with books to carry on systematic reading. At the end of 1915, the
Carnegie United Kingdom Trust undertook to provide £600 to assist in
the establishment of the library, £2,000 for additions to the stock,
and £400 yearly for five years, if £320 were raised by subscription.
The subvention was afterwards raised to £1,000 a year, and in 1920 the
issues of books numbered 15,500. The Adult Education Committee were
deeply impressed by the exceptional value of the work performed by this
library, and proposed that it should be made the nucleus of a central
circulating library to supplement the local library service all over
the country. With an assured income of £2,000 a year for ten years,
they calculated that an annual circulation of at least 40,000 volumes
would be attained; their estimate being based on an estimated cost
of 1s. per volume issued. The actual cost of each issue, under our
present benevolent postal regime, is considerably more. The figure is
now probably not less than 1s. 6d. Add return postage to this, and you
will see that, after borrowing a book two or three times, you might as
well have bought it outright. The method of sending out books singly is
too expensive. And a circulation of 40,000 a year would be a mere drop
in the ocean; any small provincial library has an annual circulation
of at least 40,000; a large borough library system in London expects
an annual circulation of about a million. The thing must be done on a
vast scale to be worth doing at all, and then it can be done cheaply,
even if, as might reasonably be expected, the Post Office declines
to grant a large rebate on the transmission of books issued from the
national libraries. The proper method is to make our central library or
libraries an integral part of the whole machine, supplying to all other
libraries all, or nearly all, of the books that are not imperatively
necessary on the spot for everyday purposes. Then the issues from the
central library will not be in twos and threes, but in large batches,
and the average cost will be reduced to an economic amount.
Mr. John McKillop produced a workmanlike scheme in 1907 for such a
supplemental library in London as would have provided all the students
and other hard working readers throughout the twenty-eight municipal
boroughs with all the books required in the most exacting course of
study. He proposed that it should be established by the Education
Committee of the London County Council, since its greatest immediate
effect would be to supply students with expensive works not now within
their reach.
“With eighty-five municipal libraries already established in London, it
would be useless duplication for the Education Committee to undertake
all the work of registering borrowers and issuing volumes to them
and safeguarding their return. It is suggested that the contents of
the Council’s collection should be lent on application to the public
libraries and the libraries of educational institutions which could
then lend them to their clients. This method would avoid the necessity
for a very large staff. The central collection would have as borrowers
merely the eighty-five libraries and branches already established,
and those which may be added from time to time by the boroughs in the
future, together with the fifty or so polytechnics, and such other of
the institutions for higher education as may care to avail themselves
of the facilities offered. In any case its borrowers could not exceed a
couple of hundred, and though each of these might daily draw and return
large numbers of books, the clerical labour required would be but a
fraction of that necessary in a smaller library, where a large number
of borrowers withdraw and return one or at most two volumes each.”[38]
Mr. McKillop based his estimate of cost on the number of volumes
contained in the Patent Office Library, viz., 105,000 volumes, which
comprehend a very large proportion of modern scientific works. “If we
take 35,000 as the number of volumes required for a modern working
science library of reference (_i.e._, excluding the smaller text-books
and class-books), and if we allow four times this number for the needs
of departments other than science, we get a total of 165,000 volumes as
the size of the collection. As a basis to calculate the capital cost of
the collection probably 5s. is too little and 10s. too much per volume.
Taking 7s. 6d. as a working figure the total cost would be about
£62,000 (one penny rate in London produces £171,000). But it would be
impossible to spend for this purpose wisely and economically such a
sum as £62,000 within less than ten years, and the collection could be
got together with reasonable rapidity by the expenditure of not more
than £10,000 in any one year. The average expenditure would probably be
nearer £5,000. In regard to administration the cost would be probably
easily covered by £5,000 a year when in full working order, but would
be four or five years in getting up to that figure.”[39]
If the cost of Mr. McKillop’s scheme was to be £5,000 a year in pre-war
money, we can hardly expect much from £2,000 a year now, especially
when the whole of the United Kingdom, and not London alone, is to be
supplied. Further, it is hardly too optimistic to conjecture that the
number of students and other serious readers in the population is a
great deal higher now than it was in 1907, and, accordingly, that the
demands upon our supplemental libraries would be proportionately more
exacting. No, the Adult Education Committee have not looked far enough:
a much bigger scheme is required, and the expenditure of much larger
sums than they contemplate. But there is no need to be frightened by
the cost; one may safely affirm that the general economic saving will
be in direct proportion to the outlay on the establishment and upkeep
of the experimental libraries. Whatever is spent at the centre, will be
far more than made up by savings at the circumference.
Mr. McKillop put the case of the student of science and technology, for
whose difficulties he felt most concern, although there are numerous
others whose state of destitution is no less pitiful, with a cogency
that cannot be bettered.
“These students may be either those whose means enable them to pursue
courses of study in the splendid laboratories of University College,
the Royal College of Science, the City and Guilds Institution, and
other schools of equal rank, or they may be young men and women whose
circumstances compel them to earn their living by daily work, and have
only access to the culture and improvement offered by evening study.
While the former presumably have access to the best literature of their
subject in the libraries of the institutions in which they work, the
latter, although, it is suggested, showing probably greater devotion
and sacrifice in the pursuit of knowledge, are debarred by the hours of
opening and closing from the use of the magnificent collections in the
British Museum, Patent Office, and other public libraries of reference.
The polytechnics, it is admitted, do make great efforts to supply the
books required by their students; but it cannot be contended that at
present they can compete in this respect with the other institutions
named, which provide for the student who has all his day for study.
It is precisely for this latter class that the public rate-supported
libraries of London ought to provide, and it is a well-established
fact to those who know something of the inner working of the public
libraries in London, that it is one of the great sources of discontent
among London’s public librarians that insufficient funds, and sometimes
also unsympathetic borough council committees, prevent their doing
more than is done for this class. But there are inherent difficulties
which have to be taken into consideration. London is not a unit; it is
twenty-eight independent units without even a semblance of federation,
and it would impose an insupportable financial burden on the ratepayers
if every one of the twenty-eight boroughs were to attempt to supply,
through the public libraries, the books required by advanced students
in science, technology, history, literature, art, and other domains of
study which can be pursued in London.”
... But why should London provide twenty-eight sets of all these works?
There is no probability that one student in, say, Bermondsey, and one
in, say, Finsbury, will require the same volume of the Philosophical
Transactions at the same time, and, therefore, it is not necessary
that both Bermondsey and Finsbury, and every other library in London,
should possess a set. But there is a probability that more than one
student in the same borough might require the same volume at the same
time; for instance, a teacher at the Battersea Polytechnic might
recommend the half-dozen or so students in his advanced class in
chemistry to read some classical memoir; and Battersea Public Library,
to meet this demand efficiently, would require two or three sets of
the Philosophical Transactions, which would be an obviously absurd
arrangement. The absence of any system of co-operation between the
metropolitan libraries renders it impossible for them at present to
co-operate in any way in meeting this difficulty.[40] Mr. McKillop
went on to show that it might be possible for the local libraries,
trusting to the central collection for an adequate supply of what may
be called students’ works, relatively seldom used, to work with a
standard collection of popular works which would be the same in all
boroughs. “When this point is reached, it might be possible to have a
common catalogue for all the libraries.... The way is, in consequence,
easy for a local authority which decides to establish a collection. It
can procure for a very small sum the catalogue of all its collection
ready made on the best lines, and all it has to do is to purchase the
books, etc.”[41] Without endorsing this idea of stereotyped libraries,
an idea which is obviously contrary to the vital principle that a local
library, if it is truly alive, will by the predominant character of its
contents show itself to be the expression of local individuality, we
must admit that it opens up suggestive possibilities.
Another proposal of the Adult Education Committee lies open to more
severe criticism. This was a project for assisting industries and
technical students and research workers by setting up a great chain
of industrial libraries forming “a technical library system for each
industry,” independently of the municipal library system. Side by
side with the latter, not yet, and perhaps not even then, organized
as a reciprocating system, there would be erected a complex and
highly expensive series of special collections, open, apparently, to
members of the particular industries alone. “In the case of general
libraries the unit of organization and administration is the local
authority, in the case of the technical library system it should be
the industry.”[42] The amount of costly and unnecessary duplication,
both of contents and of machinery, in such a cumbrous scheme dumbfounds
the experienced librarian, especially when he reflects that all the
libraries in the kingdom could be put on a scientific basis, and
all the wants of both the general public and the special industries
amply satisfied, at much less the price. Such a scheme must obviously
have been framed by persons having but a rudimentary idea of the
library arts, or they would have thought out a much more practical
and economical plan. The extravagant cost and the impracticability of
the proposal have been exposed in a special Memorandum by the Library
Association, representing the trained librarians of the country, who,
strange to say, were not consulted before the scheme was evolved. The
gist of their criticism is contained in the following paragraphs:--
“The Library Association is not prepared to admit that this policy is
sound or economical. Clearly, extensive overlapping cannot be avoided,
because a large number of industries require general technical
libraries and not special technical libraries. For example, the motor
industry is special, but a library for that industry must contain
books special to many other industries, on metallurgy, chemistry,
physics, and other subjects. An industrial library should comprise
information, not only on the industry itself, but on subjects and
industries in contact with the industry for which the library is
intended. As a rule the industrial and technical student, unless he
is a beginner, needs information just off the line of his special
work. Hence, libraries formed round an industry will tend to become
general technical libraries. Few industries are confined to one area.
Birmingham is usually regarded as the centre of the hardware trade,
which, however, is spread widely over the country. A technical library
for an industry must have a centre and branches with all the machinery
of inter-communication and exchange. Even so, the books could not be so
readily accessible as by an extension of the present library service,
which has developed naturally in response to the people’s demand for
information. A better plan, therefore, would be the proper organization
of the existing libraries of technical societies, and an extension of
the present service of public libraries, the technical collections of
which (so far as funds have allowed) have been selected to aid the
industries of the locality. The public library service is already
extensive; improvement on it is essential; but to organize another
parallel service would be a regrettable waste of money in view of the
great need at this time of obtaining the best technical library service
at the least cost.
“The Library Association is strongly of opinion that scientific and
technical information should be freely available to people who are
not yet enrolled in or who are outside an industry; otherwise that
industry would tend to be impervious to new ideas, except from within.
They earnestly press for the efficient equipment and expansion of
the existing public technical collections, and for the foundation of
technical libraries, in large provincial cities, on the lines of the
Patent Office Library in London.”
The all-important question remains to be discussed: If a centralizing
authority is required to enable the libraries of this country to take
their proper share in reconstruction and in carrying on civilized life
in an intelligent and orderly way, who is to be this centralizing
authority? What Government department is fit for such a charge? Unless
a new one is to be created, the Board of Education obviously has sole
claim. This was the unhesitating conclusion of the Adult Education
Committee. The Library Association, the membership of which is made
up principally of salaried officers or elected representatives of
the present municipal authorities, took alarm at this proposal, and
especially at the corollary that the library authority should be the
local education committee. The objections are, briefly and summarily,
two: That the interests of the libraries might tend to be subordinated
to those of the schools, and that bureaucratic control would stifle
local interest and local initiative. But, as was urged in the chapter
dealing with the interaction of libraries and schools, if the Board of
Education undertook this wider responsibility, it should, and doubtless
would, become a board of something more than scholastic education.
Libraries must not be allowed to take a second place to the schools,
the work of which at an early period of life they are destined to
transcend. Let the local education committee attend, as now, to the
schools, which will be, and should be, its first consideration. But
let another body, appointed definitely for the purpose, partly no
doubt from the same personnel, but well seasoned with co-opted members
representing the wider intellectual interests of each locality, be
responsible for managing the public library.[43]
[Illustration: THE ORATORY LIBRARY.]