multiplication of technical and other special libraries call for
new types of librarian. The administrator of a large urban or rural
system must be a highly educated and many-sided person. Knowledge
of the relative values of books on an immense range of subjects is
hardly more necessary than ability to help other persons, not only to
select the right kind of books, but also to read, not at a venture,
but methodically. The able librarian must have a wide comparative
acquaintance with the contents and the technique of many libraries. He,
or perhaps she--for women are at least as well-fitted as men for almost
any kind of library work--must be a competent organizer, a good judge
and controller of others, and one who can infuse keenness and interest.
It is a tradition that he should be a master of the superficial, a
compendium of second-hand learning, knowing something about everything;
but that it would detract from his qualifications as a kind of walking
index to universal knowledge, if he knew too much about anything in
particular. This is an inhuman and impossible ideal. The oft-quoted
dictum of Mark Pattison that the librarian who reads is lost, unless
it be wantonly interpreted that we have lost the well-read librarian,
is a mistaken warning. One must have a hobby for mere vitality’s sake;
and, unless we specialize in something, we shall not even know what
knowledge is about anything.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Langley & Sons_
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, GENERAL LIBRARY.]
The corner-stone of the edifice is the science and art of book
selection. The librarian must be a first-class judge of books, and
of books for definite use. He is to be the guide and counsellor
of innumerable readers; the inspirer of untold thousands more. He
should be ready at a moment’s notice to deliver a lecture on the
art of reading, and, with reasonable time for preparing his notes,
to conduct a tutorial class or at any rate lead a reading circle.
Some specialization will give him a good start on either run. A mere
smattering is not of much use in this branch of library extension work.
Thus the desideratum is an appropriate blend of general and special
accomplishments, and there is no question as to which should be
acquired first. Entrants to the School of Librarianship are expected
to have matriculated beforehand: if they aim at academic honours,
they should take their degree before they specialize in professional
subjects. Many of the present students are pursuing librarianship as a
postgraduate course: this may become a general rule as the programme
of studies is enlarged. The University has recently allowed the course
to be taken as the final stage in a degree course, under certain
regulations. Some American library schools have highly specialized
curricula; the Carnegie Library School of Pittsburg, for instance, has
courses in Library Work with Children and School Library Work; and
at Washington, in association with the School for Secretaries, there
is a Training School for Business Librarians. High school or college
graduation is usually required for admission, and in the library
schools at Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin there
are courses leading to a degree. Too much specialization in the library
school itself is not desirable. The best librarian for a technical,
scientific, historical, or other special library is one who has taken
the B.Sc., B.Eng., or honours Schools, and then followed a course in
Librarianship. Librarianship is not a science, notwithstanding the fact
that a number of the American library schools call themselves schools
of library science, and that a baccalaureate is granted in this, but
an art. It is the application of knowledge, knowledge which must
be attained first; education must have preceded training. That is a
rough-and-ready way of putting it; but such is the main principle that
should guide us in drawing up a course in librarianship.
Both in England and in America, two orders of librarians and library
assistants are tending to become clearly differentiated, on the
analogy of the two orders in the Civil Service. On the one hand are
those who enjoyed a liberal education and have supplemented this with
a first-class technical training; on the other, those who had a poor
start educationally. The latter may by intelligence and perseverance
catch the former up; there will be no watertight partitions between
the classes. But the difference between them will become more and
more accentuated as library activities become more complex and more
specialized. In one way, a school of librarianship forms a medium
between the two grades; it may enable an energetic man or woman to
overcome the disadvantages of a poor start in life; in another way,
it helps to differentiate the classes, those persons who proceed
successfully through the courses and win diplomas going automatically
into the higher class, and those who fail to attain more than a few
odd certificates, into the lower grade. The main determining factor
is to have enjoyed or to have missed a good preliminary education,
comprising a knowledge of languages and fair general culture.
The present curriculum of the School of Librarianship is as follows:--
(i.) English Composition.
(ii.) *Latin _or_ Greek _or_ Sanskrit _or_ Classical Arabic.
(iii.) *A Modern Language other than English.
(iv.) Bibliography.
(v.) Library Organization (including Public Library Law).
(vi.) Library Routine.
(vii.) Cataloguing and Indexing.
(viii.) Literary History and Book Selection.
(ix.) Classification.
(x.) Palæography and Archives.
In the purely technical subjects, the instruction is partly theoretic
and partly practical. The students are set to work, under expert
supervision, cataloguing sections of a library; they classify masses
of books, and perform upon them various routine processes; they are
given mediæval English, Latin, and Norman-French documents to decipher
and translate, mediæval manuscripts to catalogue and calendar. They
watch bookbinding demonstrations, and are shown, not only how a book is
bound well, but also how the job is done in a shoddy way by dishonest
binders. Skins of the finest quality and other bookbinding materials
are hanging up in the school, and all sorts of library apparatus and
equipment are on exhibition. During the long vacation the students
are expected to work as voluntary assistants in libraries of the most
modern type, and no opportunity for practical experience or for seeing
things actually being done is neglected. Lectures on such phases of the
prescribed subjects as library architecture, rural library systems,
library work with children, technical and commercial libraries, and
library extension, are continually being given by special authorities
not on the regular staff. The student who is not a graduate must
pass examinations in all the ten subjects set out above, before he
can receive the diploma; the graduate may be exempted from the first
three. Those candidates who have not held salaried offices in approved
libraries do not receive the Diploma until they have done at least one
year’s work in such capacity. It is apparent, then, that the course
is partly general and partly technical; and, whether the entrant is a
graduate or not, there is no escaping the basic requirement, a good
general education, or the other essential, practical experience.
America had library schools thirty years before Great Britain; there
are now eighteen library schools in the United States, several
requiring a college degree before admission, some qualifying their
alumni for a degree in library science. Other agencies for training
librarians are apprentice classes and summer schools; and the training
these last provide is more continuous and thorough than is afforded
by the same kind of institution in this country. Certain general
colleges, also, hold courses in bibliography, palæography, and kindred
subjects, useful not only to the librarian but also to the research
student. Germany, Italy, and Sweden preceded us in the establishment
of library schools, the first-named in 1861. France exacted
technical qualifications from candidates for university libraries
in 1879. Holland has a library school, and 1920 saw one started in
Czechoslovakia. All these are Government or university foundations. If
our libraries become a national concern, training in librarianship will
necessarily be an affair for the community to regulate and finance.
Old-fashioned library committees and librarians still exist who
are well content with the library assistant that, as they put it,
“has gone through the mill,” in other words, a person without any
education worth mentioning and without training in any real sense,
who has learned his work by having had to do it and never studied the
why or the wherefore of library practice. There are still librarians
who regard librarianship as simply a job like any other job, which
has got to be carried on and incidentally find some one a berth; and
who feel aggrieved if called upon to furnish anything beyond the
most rudimentary service--lending and reference library and reading
room--and regard any sort of library extension as incipient bolshevism.
Committees and librarians of this stamp actually prefer the uneducated
junior, the youth, that is, who has enjoyed nothing more liberal than
primary schooling; whereas the intelligent and progressive committee or
librarian would rather appoint, even to a senior post, a well-educated
person who has to learn his duties, than one poorly educated yet having
had a great deal of practical experience. The former would have to
spend some time in picking up the ways of a new post, but, given equal
abilities, he would show himself the better man in a brief space of
time.
Perhaps a more insidious danger than this survival of the obsolete
is the view, to which all administrators of systems are apt to fall
a prey, that high mechanical efficiency is the be-all and end-all of
library economy. Perfect and smooth-running machinery is an admirable
thing; it will certainly be one of the characteristics of every
library system that achieves complete success. But there are elements
still more essential, which cannot be secured by the pursuit of mere
mechanical perfection. To put mechanism and mechanical organization
first, knowledge and ideas second, is as bad a mistake as crass content
with the old, inadequate service. The danger of being dominated by
mechanism is, in truth, as real a danger in the world of libraries
as ever it was in Erewhon. “True, from a low materialistic point
of view, it would seem that those thrive best who use machinery
wherever its use is possible with profit; but this is the art of the
machines--they serve that they may rule.”[47] This very danger is
already apparent, it has been noted, in some of the rural systems
superintended by bureaucratic directors of education. Their criterion
of efficiency is uniformity, in method and results. But uniformity is
of no value except as a mark of excellence or fitness. When uniformity
is sought for its own sake, it is bound to stultify aspiration and
suppress spontaneity. In the earlier days of the public library,
there were librarians who thought that they had achieved immortal
fame by inventing that surprising piece of mechanism, the indicator.
Library progress for decades was checked by the indicator and the
repressive form of organization of which it was the symbol, the closed
library. To infuse a new spirit into the reading and the non-reading
public will do infinitely more for the future of libraries than any
amount of mechanical efficiency. That is the reason why the School of
Librarianship has erected its course of professional training on the
broad base of a liberal education. This is no slight to the technique
of librarianship; but means that technique must be the servant, not the
master, and that machinery will be used best if those who control it
have intelligence and vision.
And why should training in librarianship be confined entirely to
librarians? It has often been urged that bibliography should be taught
in schools. Book selection, indexing, classification, in short, most
of the professional subjects, are elements of a general training in
organization and in methods of study and research. When there comes
about a thorough correlation between libraries and schools, young
people will, as a matter of course, acquire the rudiments of the
library arts. Since the child, as soon as he leaves school, will have
to pursue his intellectual activities chiefly through the medium of
books, he should be taught something about bibliography, at any rate
the maxims and methods of book selection. Self-education to-day is
rendered more difficult and uncertain by the very multiplicity of
books that solicit attention. Even advanced university students are
surprisingly ignorant of the means for ascertaining the nature and
relative value of the literature of the subjects they are working
on. A thorough grounding in book-selection and certain other of the
library arts might work a reformation in the newspaper world: it
is a point for the attention of schools of journalism. Imagine the
results if there were a reference library of high quality in every
office and every reporter and sub-editor had been trained in using it
accurately. No one is competent to be a guide in intellectual matters
or a dispenser of knowledge who is not engaged in a continual process
of self-education. The value of a knowledge of librarianship to the
layman is recognized in the United States: in 1914 ninety-one American
colleges gave courses in what is there called library science.[48]
One result of the library extension work described in an earlier
chapter is a wider diffusion of the library arts. When the Education
Act of 1918 comes into force throughout the land, and the school-child
becomes a “young person”; when intellectual training is carried on
right through the plastic period of mental development, the opportunity
for cultivating the library arts will be laden with profound
consequences. If elementary schools and continuation schools then work
in due co-ordination with libraries, the new curricula will in large
measure comprehend what we desire: instruction in the art of reading
and the enjoyment of literature, guidance in the use of scientific and
technical books and in the methods of research. Every young person
should be shown how to make himself master of the multifarious contents
of a library, to acquaint himself with other library resources that are
within reach, to become his own bibliographer, map out his reading to
the best advantage, and be able to choose books wisely, whether he is
buying for his own shelves or making use of the public library.
The vital importance of the library arts to the researcher and to
all whose work is among books, pamphlets, or records, needs no
expatiation. Mr. Sidney Webb, in lecturing to young librarians some
years ago, depicted the infinite pains with which he constructed his
own bibliographies of social science. He had to acquire the library
arts in the hard school of experience, when manuals of bibliography and
guide-books to books were fewer than they are now; and, no doubt, the
fine library at the London School of Economics may be regarded as in no
small part the result. Modern specialization has extended the field of
knowledge so enormously that the finest education is, in a large sense,
only elementary--only a preparation of the individual to use human
knowledge and exert himself in extending it.
Exact classification is making its way in all directions. The art of
classification is not only an invaluable mental discipline, it may
be applied with advantage in every province of work and business.
It stands for order and method in all sorts of affairs. Though a
classification of books is not the same thing as a classification of
things, and may depart in many respects from the exactness of logical
theory, there is no better way of inculcating the usefulness of system
than by illustrating it in a well-classified library, where the
reader can find his way from shelf to shelf, and follow the tracks
pointed out for him to other book-cases the contents of which are more
distantly connected with his subject. Commercial firms have learned the
value of systematic filing. Representatives of business corporations
and parties of students from schools and colleges visit the Commercial
Library at Manchester in order to examine the vertical file and have
its principles explained. It is in the research departments of the
technical firms that classification, filing, and indexing are pursued
to their furthest reaches. It is to be wished that the librarian’s
near relations, the publisher and the bookseller, would make more use
of system. When the bookshops are arranged on an intelligible plan,
there may be less romance in the Charing Cross Road, but it will be
better for business. And, though some might think there was more
lost than gained in the second-hand shop if “Americana” were shelved
according to Dewey and “Book Rarities” placed in their proper decimal
order, there is at any rate no sentimental objection to the scientific
arrangement of new books. But, with the notable exceptions of two or
three large firms of publishers and the university presses, no one
seems to think it worth while to issue classified catalogues of new
publications. Booksellers and publishers prefer to arrange their wares
and compile their catalogues by the sizes of books, by binding, or
by prices--by anything except the subject. Both are sadly in need
of a course in librarianship. Publishers have declined to take the
expert advice of the Library Association, or to learn anything on
the materials, printing, format, or even the kinds of books that are
wanted. The fact is, their books, their catalogues, and their methods
of marketing are adapted to the momentary satisfaction of a public
having no acquaintance with the library arts. When we are each our own
bibliographer, these perfunctory ways will have to be dropped, or the
reader and book-buyer will want to know why.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Langley & Sons_
READING ROOM OF THE GOLDSMITH’S LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.]
Classification is the natural basis of indexing, or rather classifying
and indexing are complementary to each other, the object being to
have everything in its place and to show how it can be found. Every
author, every one who uses or dispenses information, every one who
keeps so much as a commonplace book, ought to be an efficient indexer;
yet ignorance of what constitutes a good index is almost universal.
There has been a slight improvement of late in the proportion of
books indexed; but the general standard of precision and scientific
arrangement is still very low. Apart from inaccuracy, which is a common
defect, our methods, in regard to thoroughness and ease of reference,
are painfully inferior to American methods; [49]the fact is patent
even in some of our big co-operative treatises, which have no excuse
for their slovenliness on the score of economy. Yet the public seem
to be content. They are used to taking what is offered them, and have
never considered what minimum of efficiency in book-production they are
entitled to expect. A review here and there makes its protest against
a bad or omitted index, or against inadequate or forgotten maps, or
illustrations that do not illustrate, and to this may be attributed the
slight improvement noticed. Yet the importance of indexing, in all the
affairs of life, is so obvious that, apart altogether from its function
in books and libraries, it ought to find a place in any well-planned
scheme of education.
But the most important and fundamental of the library arts is that
of book selection, which is best defined, not as choosing the best
books, but as choosing the right, the appropriate books. The student
of librarianship is taught literary history so that he may be a safe
and discriminating selector of books, and be qualified to see that the
library contains the right sort of material. The object of library
lectures and reading circles is to direct readers to the right books to
read. In her account of a very interesting experiment,[50] Miss Sayle
describes how the Hampshire villagers were allowed the casting vote
on every book purchased by the simple expedient of eliminating those
books that failed to attract readers. The results sound lamentable.
Whole sections went under the hammer. Autobiography, Gardening, Lives,
Travels, Poetry, are one and all reported “Abolished, owing to lack
of readers.” _Waverley_, _Kidnapped_, _Barnaby Rudge_, and Pierre
Loti’s _Iceland Fisherman_, were among the classics discarded in one
year in order to make room for the works of Mrs. Henry Wood, Miss
Worboise, Baroness Orczy, and Gene Stratton Porter. Lamb’s _Tales from
Shakespeare_ seldom left the children’s cupboard. Now Miss Sayle is
undoubtedly right in extolling the principle of giving her village
readers the initiative in the choice of books for their own library,
the library they founded and maintain out of their own pockets. But her
story is not creditable to those who might, had they gone the right way
to work, have guided the tastes of these village readers, so that they
would have chosen and enjoyed the very books that had to be discarded.
One can hardly imagine a reading circle finding much to discuss in
books by the luminaries mentioned as chief favourites; but it is quite
as difficult to imagine that a paper or a reading or an intimate talk
about Stevenson, Scott, Dickens, and a few of the poets, would have
failed in opening many eyes to the charms of the writers abolished.
To prescribe what people shall read is impossible; it is foolish to
present any public, in town or country, with a well-chosen library, and
tell them to take it or leave it. Coercion would be as fruitless as it
is impossible. But to leave the choice to the untrained and unguided
initiative of the villagers, without some attempt at training and
assisting their powers of choice, is hardly less absurd than it would
be to let the children in a school decide what lessons they should be
taught.
This is the real inwardness of the great fiction question, on which so
much wordy argument has been expended. There is no need to deplore the
high percentage of fiction that is read; if this is of any literary
value, the percentage is so much to the good. The innuendo underlying
the Adult Education Committee’s sneer at “unsystematic and recreative
reading” betrays an illiberal conception of the cultural value of
belles-lettres, of which Meredith said:--
“Light literature is the garden and the orchard, the fountain, the
rainbow, the far view; the view within us as well as without. The
Philistine detests it, because he has no view, out or in. The dry
confess they are cut off from the living tree, peeled and sapless, when
they condemn it. The vulgar demand to have their pleasures in their
own likeness--and let them swamp their troughs! They shall not degrade
the name of noble fiction.... Shun those who cry out against fiction,
and have no taste for elegant writing. Not to have a sympathy with the
playful mind is not to have a mind.”
The question is not whether public libraries ought to provide novels,
nor simply whether they should provide only the best novels and reject
the bad. The important problem is, how the general reader is to be
led to choose and enjoy the best. To spend public funds on the public
provision of feeble and enfeebling reading-matter is indefensible.
True, there are librarians who defend it: one head of a large system
has recently pleaded for fiction of the Charles Garvice and Ethel
Dell type, because the charwoman and the overworked housewife find
it restful and soothing, and cannot afford to subscribe for it to
the circulating library. But public libraries are not a sort of poor
relief: their mission is not to provide, even these unhappy folk,
with opportunities for mental dissipation; but, the very reverse, to
introduce them to higher pleasures. Would apologists for bad novels
recommend our public art galleries to adopt similar standards of taste?
Or our museums? No doubt, if we turned them into a kind of Madame
Tussaud’s or sensation-mongering picture-house, these would be much
more popular with a very large and a very important class.