The public library for the public
The librarian of former times was almost invariably a bookworm, and
was often a student properly so called. The older librarians of the
present day, and the librarians of the great libraries of our cities,
are also very commonly men of letters, men of learning, men who admire
the student spirit and know how to appreciate it. The librarian of
former days actually felt that the books of which he had charge were
to be used, if they were used at all, chiefly, if not only, by persons
who wished to make some careful and painstaking research; and the
older librarians, and the librarians of the greater libraries of
today, are also inclined to think that their libraries are best used,
or at least are used as fully as they need be, when they are visited
by those who are engaged in original investigation or serious study of
some sort. As a fellow librarian once wrote me, for example, of one of
his colleagues, "His whole trend is scholarly rather than popular; he
appreciates genuine contributions to art, science, and industry, but
has little taste for the great class of books that the main body of
readers care for." This view of literature, libraries, and the use
of books, and this special fondness for what may be called genuine
contributions to art, science, and industry, are proper enough in
their time and place; but it cannot be too often impressed upon
the library world, and upon those who contribute to the support of
libraries, and upon trustees and directors generally, that the thing
that is of great consequence in the work of the free public library is
not its product in the shape of books which are the results of careful
research, or of books which are contributions to science, art, and
industry; it is the work that the library does from day to day in
stimulating the inquiring spirit, in adding to the interest in things,
and in broadening the minds of the common people who form 90 per cent
at least of the public library patrons. That is to say, the public
library is chiefly concerned not in the products of education, as
shown in the finished book, but in the process of education as shown
in the developing and training of the library users, of the general
public.
It is from this common-folks-education point of view that the
advocate of the open-shelf system looks upon the question of library
administration. A free public library is not a people's post-graduate
school, it is the people's common school.
The more I see and learn of free public libraries the more I am
convinced that a public library can reach a high degree of efficiency
in its work only when its books are accessible to all its patrons. The
free public library should not be managed for the use of the special
student, save in special cases, any more than is the free public
school. That it should be solely or chiefly or primarily the student's
library, in any proper sense of the word, is as contrary to the spirit
of the whole free public library movement as would be the making
of the public schools an institution for the creation of Greek
philologians. Everyone engaged in educational work, and especially
those thus engaged who are most thoroughly equipped for the work in
a literary way, and are most in touch with the literary and scholarly
spirit, should have his attention called again and again to the needs
of the crowd, the mass, the common people, the general run, the 90
per cent who either have never been within a schoolroom, or left it
forever by the time they were thirteen years of age. And his attention
should be again and again called to the fact that of the millions of
children who are getting an education in this country today, not over
5 or 6 per cent at the outside, and perhaps even less than that, ever
get as far, even, as the high-schools. The few, of course, rule
and must keep the lamp burning, but the many must have sufficient
education to know how to walk by it if democracy is to endure. And the
school for the many is, and is to be, if the opinions of librarians
are correct, the free public library; but it cannot be a school for
the many unless the many walk into it, and go among its books, handle
them, and so doing come to know them and to love them and to use them,
and to get wisdom from them.