PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL
MEETING
OF THE
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
HELD AT
KAATERSKILL, N. Y.
JUNE 23-28, 1913
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
78 E. WASHINGTON STREET
CHICAGO, ILL.
1913
CONTENTS
General sessions:
President's address: The world
of books and the world's work Henry E. Legler 73
"As others see us" 83
Secretary's report George B. Utley 99
Treasurer's report C. B. Roden 103
Reports of boards and committees:
Finance committee C. W. Andrews 104
A. L. A. Publishing Board Henry E. Legler 105
Carnegie and endowment fund W. W. Appleton 111
Bookbinding A. L. Bailey 113
Bookbuying W. L. Brown 114
Co-operation with the N. E. A. M. E. Ahern 125
Federal and state relations B. C. Steiner 126
Library administration A. E. Bostwick 126
Library training A. S. Root 134
Library work with the blind Emma N. Delfino 136
Library work in Great Britain L. S. Jast 139
The immigrant in the library Mary Antin 145
Immigrants as contributors to
library progress Adelaide B. Maltby 150
The man in the yards Charles E. Rush 154
What of the black and yellow
races? W. F. Yust 159
The working library for the
artisan and the craftsman E. F. Stevens 170
The woman on the farm Lutie E. Stearns 173
Book influences for defectives
and dependents Julia A. Robinson 177
Changing conditions of child
life Faith E. Smith 184
How the library is meeting the
changing conditions Gertrude E. Andrus 188
Normal schools and their
relation to librarianship W. H. Kerr 193
The present status of
legislative reference work C. B. Lester 199
State wide influence of the
state library D. C. Brown 202
The law that stands the test M. S. Dudgeon 206
Making a library useful to
business men S. H. Ranck 210
Libraries in business
organizations Louise B. Krause 215
The municipal reference library
as an aid in city
administration George McAneny 219
The friendly book G. M. Walton 224
How to discourage reading E. L. Pearson 230
Report of tellers of election 236
Executive board 237
Council 242
Sections:
Agricultural libraries 258
Catalog 259
Work with children 275
College and reference 300
Professional training 343
Public documents round table 352
Affiliated organizations:
American association of law libraries 362
League of library commissions 364
Special libraries association 382
Post-conference trip 386
Attendance summaries 392
Attendance register 393
Index 409
KAATERSKILL CONFERENCE
JUNE 23-28, 1913
FIRST GENERAL SESSION
(Monday evening, June 23)
The PRESIDENT: The Thirty-fifth Annual Conference of the American
Library Association begins this evening. Custom has decreed that the
presiding officer shall deliver a message, and the present presiding
officer has not sufficient independence of mind to depart from that
long-established custom.
PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS
The World of Print and the World's Work
I
Turning for a text to Victor Hugo's stirring epic of Paris, these words
may be found in the section for May, and in the third chapter thereof:
A Library implies an act of faith
Which generations still in darkness hid
Sign in their night, in witness of the dawn.
When Johann Gutenberg in his secret workshop poured the molten metal
into the rough matrices he had cut for separate types, the instrument
for the spread of Democracy was created. When early Cavaliers and
Puritans planted the crude beginnings of free public schools, the
forces of Democracy were multiplied. When half a century ago the
first meager beginnings of the public library movement were evolved,
Democracy was for all time assured. Thus have three great stages,
separated each by a span of two hundred years from that preceding,
marked that world development whose ultimate meaning is not equality of
station or possession, but equality of opportunity.
Not without stress and strife have these yet fragmentary results
been achieved. Not without travail and difficulties will universal
acceptance be accorded in the days to come. But no one may doubt the
final outcome which shall crown the struggle of the centuries. The
world was old when typography was invented. Less than five centuries
have passed since then, and in this interval--but a brief period in
the long history of human endeavor--there has been more enlargement of
opportunity for the average man and woman than in all the time that
went before. Without the instrumentality of the printed page, without
the reproductive processes that give to all the world in myriad tongues
the thought of all the centuries, slavery, serfdom and feudalism would
still shackle the millions not so fortunate as to be born to purple and
ermine, and fine linen.
II
The evolution of the book is therefore the history of the unfoldment
of human rights. The chained tome in its medieval prison cell has
been supplanted by the handy volume freely sent from the hospitable
public library to the homes of the common people. The humblest citizen,
today, has at his command books in number and in kind which royal
treasuries could not have purchased five hundred years ago. In the
sixteenth century, it took a flock of sheep to furnish the vellum for
one edition of a book, and the product was for the very few; in the
twentieth, a forest is felled to supply the paper for an edition,
and the output goes to many hundred thousand readers. As books have
multiplied, learning has been more widely disseminated. As more people
have become educated, the demand for books has increased enormously.
The multiplication of books has stimulated the writing of them, and the
inevitable result has been a deterioration of quality proportioned to
the increase in quantity. In the English language alone, since 1880,
206,905 titles of books printed in the United States, have been listed,
and 226,365 in Great Britain since 1882. Of these 433,270 titles,
84,722 represent novels--36,607 issued in the United States and 48,115
in Great Britain. Despite the inclusion of the trivial and the unsound
in this vast mass of printed stuff, no one can doubt the magnitude
of the service performed in the advancement of human kind. The
universities have felt the touch of popular demand, and in this country
at least some of them have attempted to respond. Through correspondence
courses, short courses, university week conferences, summer schools,
local forums, traveling instructors, and other media of extension, many
institutions of higher learning have given recognition to the appeal of
the masses. Logically with this enlargement of educational opportunity,
the amplification of library facilities has kept pace. The libraries
have become in a real sense the laboratory of learning. Intended
primarily as great storehouses for the accumulation and preservation
rather than the use of manuscripts and books, their doors have been
opened wide to all farers in search of truth or mental stimulus.
In a report to the English King, Sir William Berkeley wrote as governor
of Virginia in 1642: "I thank God there are no free schools nor
printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for
learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing has
divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from
both."
Governor Berkeley's sentiments, expressed by him in turgid rhetoric,
were held in his day by most men in authority, but that did not prevent
the planting of little schoolhouses here and there, and men of much
vision and little property bequeathed their possessions for maintaining
them. Many a school had its origin in a bequest comprising a few
milch kine, a horse or two, or a crop of tobacco; in some instances,
slaves. From such beginnings, with such endowments, was evolved three
hundred years ago the public system of education which today prodigally
promises, though it but niggardly realizes, sixteen years of schooling
for every boy and girl in the land.
If the span of years needed for the development of the free library
system has been much shorter, the hostile attitude of influential men
and the privations that attended pioneer efforts were no less marked.
As recently as 1889 the writer of an article in the North American
Review labeled his attack: "Are public libraries public blessings?" and
answered his own question in no uncertain negative. "Not only have
the public libraries, as a whole, failed to reach their proper aim of
giving the means of education to the people," he protested, "but they
have gone aside from their true path to furnish amusement and that in
part of a pernicious character, chiefly to the young." And he added: "I
might have mentioned other possible dangers, such as the power of the
directors of any library to make it a propaganda of any delusive ism or
doctrine subversive of morality, society or government; but I prefer to
rest my case here."
And it was somewhat later than this that the pages of the Century gave
space to correspondence in opposition to the establishment of a public
library system for the city of New York.
These were but echoes of earlier antagonisms.
III
For the documentary material dealing with the beginnings of the public
library movement, the searcher must delve within the thousand pages
of a portly folio volume issued by the British government sixty years
ago. If one possesses patience sufficient to read the immense mass of
dry evidence compiled by a parliamentary commission and "presented to
both houses of parliament by command of Her Majesty," some interesting
facts in library history will be found. A young man of twenty-three,
then an underling in the service of the British Museum, afterwards an
eminent librarian, was one of the principal witnesses. Edward Edwards
had the gift of vision. Half a century before public libraries became
the people's universities, as they are today, his prophetic tongue
gave utterance to what has since become the keynote of library aims
and policies. Badgered by hostile inquisitors, ridiculed by press and
politicians, he undeviatingly clung to his views, and he lived to see
his prophecy realized.
Great libraries there had been before his day; remarkable as a
storehouse of knowledge in printed form was, and is in our own day, the
institution with which he was associated. But in these rich reference
collections intended for the student of research, the element of
popular use was lacking. To have suggested the loan of a single book
for use outside the four walls of the library would have startled and
benumbed everyone in authority--and without authority--from the members
of the governing board to librarian, sub-librarians, and messenger
boys. This stripling faced the members of parliament, and without
hesitation proclaimed his thesis.
"It is not merely to open the library to persons who, from the
engrossing nature of their engagements of business, are at present
utterly excluded from it, but it is also that the library may be made a
direct agent in some degree in the work of national education. Let not
anyone be alarmed lest something very theoretical or very revolutionary
should be proposed. I merely suggest that the library should be opened
to a class of men quite shut out from it by its present regulations."
Then he added: "In such a country as this there should be one great
national storehouse. But in addition to this, there should be libraries
in different quarters on a humbler scale, very freely accessible."
One of the ablest members of parliament, William Ewart, of Liverpool,
became intensely interested in the views expressed by young Edwards,
and from that day was counted the consistent champion of library
privileges for the common people. Largely through his instrumentality,
aided by such men as Richard Cobden, John Bright and Joseph Brotherton,
parliament passed an act "for the encouragement of museums." Out of
this measure grew the later public libraries' act. This notable step
was not accomplished without bitter opposition.
"The next thing we will be asked to do," said one indignant member on
the floor of the House, "is to furnish people with quoits and peg-tops
and footballs at the expense of taxpayers. Soon we will be thinking of
introducing the performances of Punch for the amusement of the people."
Events in England influenced similar movements in the United States. In
a letter to Edward Everett, in 1851, Mr. George Ticknor gave the first
impetus to the establishment of a free public library in Boston--the
first in the new world to be maintained permanently by the people for
the people.
"I would establish a library which differs from all free libraries yet
attempted," he wrote. "I mean one in which any popular books, tending
to moral and intellectual improvement, shall be furnished in such
numbers of copies that many persons can be reading the same book at the
same time; in short, that not only the best books of all sorts, but the
pleasant literature of the day, shall be made accessible to the whole
people when they most care for it; that is, when it is new and fresh."
Sixty years after the date of Mr. Ticknor's letter, and chiefly within
the last two decades of the period, the public library movement has
assumed a place in public education, which, relatively, the public
school movement attained only after three hundred years of effort.
When Thomas Bodley died, in 1613, in all Europe there were but three
libraries accessible to the public--the Bodleian, the Angelo Rocca at
Rome and the Ambrosian at Milan. In 1841 the Penny Cyclopedia devoted
about four inches of a narrow column to the subject of libraries,
ancient and modern, and limited its reference to American libraries to
one sentence, obtained at second hand from an older contemporary:
"In the United States of America, according to the Encyclopedia
Americana, the principal libraries are, or were in 1831, that of
Harvard College, containing 36,000 volumes; the Philadelphia Library,
containing 27,000; that of the Boston Athenaeum, containing 26,000;
that of Congress, containing 16,000, and that of Charleston, containing
13,000."
It is only since 1867 that the federal government has deemed it worth
while to compile library statistics, and the first comprehensive
figures were gathered in 1875. It is worth noting that then they
embraced all libraries comprising 300 volumes, and that in 1893 no
mention is made of collections containing less than a thousand
volumes, while the most recent official enumeration makes 5,000 volumes
the unit of consideration. From these official figures may be gleaned
something of the extraordinary growth of libraries, both numerically
and in size. In 1875, including school libraries there were 2,039
containing a thousand volumes, ten years later there were 4,026, ten
years after that 8,000, and at this date there are in this class not
less than 12,000, while the recorded number comprising three hundred
volumes or more reaches the substantial total of 15,634, and 2,298 of
these catalog in excess of 5,000 volumes each.
IV
These figures show phenomenal growth, but even more impressive are
the facts that give their full meaning in detail. From a striking
compilation issued in Germany by Die Brücke a few weeks ago, together
with figures extracted by means of a questionnaire, supplemented
by statistical material gathered by the Bureau of Education, the
facts which follow have been deduced: Counting the great libraries
of the world, the six continents abutting the seven seas possess
324 libraries whose book collections number in excess of 100,000
volumes each, and of these 79--or approximately one-fourth--are
located in the Americas. Of the 79 American libraries 72 are in
the United States, including university, public, governmental and
miscellaneous institutions, with a combined collection of 19,295,000
volumes. If this statistical inquiry is pursued further, a reason
becomes apparent why millions are starved for want of books while
other millions seemingly have a surfeit of them. The rural regions,
save in a handful of commonwealths whose library commissions or state
libraries actively administer traveling libraries, the book supply is
practically negligible. Even the hundreds of itinerating libraries but
meagerly meet the want. All the traveling libraries in all the United
States have a total issue annually less than that of any one of twenty
municipal systems that can be named. The public library facilities in
at least six thousand of the smaller towns are pitifully insufficient
and in hundreds of them wholly absent. The movement to supply books
to the people was first launched in the rural regions seventy years
ago. Indeed the movement for popular education known as the American
Lyceum, which forecast the activities of the modern public library just
as the mechanics' institutes of Great Britain prepared the soil for
them in that country, flourished chiefly in the less thickly settled
centers of population. The early district school libraries melted away
in New York state and Wisconsin and other states, and the devastated
shelves have never been amply renewed. The library commissions are
valiantly and energetically endeavoring to supply the want, but their
efforts are all too feebly supported by their respective states. In
this particular, the policy is that which unfortunately obtains as
to all educational effort. More than 55 per cent of the young people
from 6 to 20 years old--about 17,000,000 of them--live in the country
or in towns of less than two thousand inhabitants. According to an
official report from which this statement is extracted, there are 5,000
country schools still taught in primitive log houses, uncomfortable,
unsuitable, unventilated, unsanitary, illy equipped, poorly lighted,
imperfectly heated--boys and girls in all stages of advancement
receiving instruction from one teacher of very low grade. It is plain
why, in the summing up of this report, "illiteracy in rural territory
is twice as great as in urban territory, notwithstanding that thousands
of illiterate immigrants are crowded in the great manufacturing and
industrial centers. The illiteracy among native-born children of native
parentage is more than three times as great as among native children
of foreign parentage, largely on account of the lack of opportunities
for education in rural America." In Indian legend Nokomis, the earth,
symbolizes the strength of motherhood; it may yet chance that the
classic myth of the hero who gained his strength because he kissed the
earth may be fully understood in America only when the people learn
that they will remain strong, as Mr. Münsterberg has put it, "only by
returning with every generation to the soil."
If the states have proved recreant to duty in this particular, the
municipalities have shown an increasing conception of educational
values. The figures make an imposing statistical array. In the
United States there are 1,222 incorporated places of 5,000 or more
inhabitants, and their libraries house 90,000,000 volumes, with a total
yearly use aggregating 110,000,000 issues. Four million volumes a year
are added to their shelves, and collectively they derive an income of
$20,000,000. Their permanent endowments, which it must be regretfully
said but 600 of them share, now aggregate $40,000,000. Nearly all of
these libraries occupy buildings of their own, Mr. Andrew Carnegie
having supplied approximately $42,226,338 for the purpose in the United
States, and the balance of the $100,000,000 represented in buildings
having been donated by local benefactors or raised by taxation.
The population of these 1,222 places is 38,758,584, considerably less
than half that of the entire United States. Their book possessions,
on the other hand, are nine times as great as those in the rest of
the country; the circulation of the books nearly twelve times in
volume. Closer analysis of these figures enforces still more strongly
the actual concentration of the available book supply. The hundred
largest cities of the United States, varying in size from a minimum of
53,684 to a maximum of 4,766,883, possess in the aggregate more books
than all the rest of the country together, and represent the bulk of
the trained professional service rendered. The great majority of the
3,000 graduates whom the library schools have sent into service since
the first class was organized in 1887, are in these libraries and in
the university libraries. Forty per cent of the books circulated are
issued to the dwellers in these one hundred cities, and in fifteen of
them the stupendous total of 30,000,834 issues for home reading was
recorded last year. Without such analysis as this, the statistical
totals would be misleading. The concentration of resources and of
trained service in large centers of population, comparatively few in
number, makes evident the underlying cause for the modern trend of
library development. A further study of conditions in these human hives
justifies the specialized forms of service which have become a marked
factor in library extension within a decade. With increased resources,
with vastly improved internal machinery, with enlarged conception of
opportunity for useful service, have come greater liberality of rules
and ever widening circles of activity, until today no individual and no
group of individuals, remains outside the radius of library influence.
If this awakened zeal has spurred to efforts that seem outside the
legitimate sphere of library work, no undue concern need be felt.
Neither the genius or enthusiasm of the individual nor the enterprise
of a group of individuals will ever be permitted to go too rapidly or
too far: the world's natural conservatism and inherited unbelief stand
ever ready to retard or prevent.
V
Specialization has been incorporated into library administration
chiefly to give expeditious and thorough aid to seekers of information
touching a wide variety of interests--business men, legislators,
craftsmen, special investigators and students of every sort. This
added duty has not diminished its initial function to make available
the literature of all time, nor to satisfy those who go to books
for the pure joy of reading. The recreative service of the library
is as important as the educative, or the informative. For the great
mass of people, the problem has been the problem of toil long and
uninterrupted. The successful struggle of the unions to restrict the
hours of labor has developed another problem almost as serious--the
problem of leisure. Interwoven with this acute problem is another
which subdivision of labor has introduced into modern industrial
occupations--the terrible fatigue which results from a monotonous
repetition of the same process hour after hour, day after day, week
after week. Such blind concentration in the making of but one piece
of a machine, or a garment, or a watch, or any other article of
merchandise, without knowledge of its relationship to the rest, soon
wears the human worker out. There must be an outlet of play, of fun,
or recreation. The librarian need not feel apologetic to the public
because perchance his circulation statistics show that 70 per cent of
it is classed as fiction. If he wishes to reduce this percentage to 69
or 68 or 61, let him do it not by discouraging the reading of novels,
but by stimulating the use of books in other classes of literature. But
well does he merit his own sense of humiliation and the condemnation of
the critics if he needs must feel ashamed of the kind of novels that
he puts upon his shelves. To quote a fellow librarian who expresses
admirably the value of such literature, "A good story has created many
an oasis in many an otherwise arid life. Many-sidedness of interest
makes for good morals, and millions of our fellows step through the
pages of a story book into a broader world than their nature and their
circumstances ever permit them to visit. If anything is to stay the
narrowing and hardening process which specialization of learning,
specialization of inquiry and of industry and swift accumulation of
wealth are setting up among us, it is a return to romance, poetry,
imagination, fancy, and the general culture we are now taught to
despise. Of all these the novel is a part; rather, in the novel are
all of these. But a race may surely find springing up in itself a fresh
love of romance, in the high sense of that word, which can keep it
active, hopeful, ardent, progressive. Perhaps the novel is to be, in
the next decades, part of the outward manifestation of a new birth of
this love of breadth and happiness."
VI
Many of the factory workers are young men and young women, whose
starved imaginations seek an outlet that will not be denied. In lieu
of wholesome recreation and material, they will find "clues to life's
perplexities" in salacious plays, in cheap vaudeville performances, in
the suggestive pages of railway literature, in other ways that make for
a lowering of moral tone. The reaction that craves amusement of any
sort is manifest in the nightly crowded stalls of the cheap theaters.
Eight million spectators view every moving picture film that is
manufactured. It is estimated that one-sixth of the entire population
of New York City and of Chicago attends the theaters on any Sunday of
the year. One Sunday evening, at the instance of Miss Jane Addams, an
investigation was made of 466 theaters in the latter city, and it was
discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was revenge;
the lover following his rival; the outraged husband seeking his wife's
betrayer; or the wiping out by death of a blot on a hitherto unstained
honor. And of course these influences extend to the children who are
always the most ardent and responsive of audiences. There is grave
danger that the race will develop a ragtime disposition, a moving
picture habit and a comic supplement mind.
VII
It is perhaps too early to point to the specialized attention which
libraries have given to the needs of young people as a distinct
contribution to society. Another generation must come before material
evidence for good or ill becomes apparent. That the work is well worth
the thought bestowed, whether present methods survive or are modified,
may not be gainsaid. The derelicts of humanity are the wrecks who knew
no guiding light. The reformatories and the workhouses, the penal
institutions generally and the charitable ones principally, are not
merely a burden upon society, but a reproach for duty unperformed.
Society is at last beginning to realize that it is better to perfect
machinery of production than to mend the imperfect product; that to
dispense charity may ameliorate individual suffering, but does not
prevent recurrence. And so more attention is being given prevention
than cure.
I gave a beggar from my little store
Of well-earned gold. He spent the shining ore
And came again, and yet again, still cold
And hungry as before.
I gave a thought, and through that thought of mine,
He found himself a man, supreme, divine,
Bold, clothed, and crowned with blessings manifold,
And now he begs no more.
VIII
If numbers and social and industrial importance warrant special library
facilities for children, certainly the same reasons underlie the
special library work with foreigners which has within recent years
been carried on extensively in the larger cities. Last month the
census bureau issued an abstract of startling import to those who view
in the coming of vast numbers from across the waters a menace to the
institutions of this democracy. According to this official enumeration,
in but fourteen of fifty cities having over 100,000 inhabitants in 1910
did native whites of native parentage contribute as much as one-half
the total population. The proportion exceeded three-fifths in only
four cities. On the other hand, in twenty-two cities of this class, of
which fifteen are in New England and the Middle Atlantic divisions,
less than one-third of the population were native whites of native
parentage, over two-thirds in all but one of these cities consisting of
foreign-born whites and their children.
In his Ode delivered at Harvard, Lowell eloquently referred to
"The pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men,
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,
She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,
She of the open soul and open door,
With room about her hearth for all mankind!"
This was written in 1865. Since then the rim of the Mediterranean
has sent its enormous contribution of unskilled and unlettered human
beings to the New World. There have been three great tides of migration
from over-seas. The first came to secure liberty of conscience; the
second sought liberty of political thought and action; the third came
in quest of bread. And of the three, incomparably the greater problem
of assimilation is that presented by the last comers. Inextricably
interwoven are all the complexities which face the great and growing
municipalities, politically and industrially and socially. These are
the awful problems of congestion and festering slums, of corruption in
public life, of the exploitation of womanhood, of terrible struggle
with wretchedness and poverty. Rightly directed, the native qualities
and strength of these peoples will bring a splendid contribution in
the making of a virile citizenship. Wrongly shaped, their course in
the life of the city may readily become of sinister import. Frequently
they are misunderstood, and they easily misunderstand. The problem is
one of education, but it is that most difficult problem, of education
for grown-ups. Here perhaps the library may render the most distinct
service, in that it can bring to them in their own tongues the ideals
and the underlying principles of life and custom in their adopted
country; and through their children, as they swarm into the children's
rooms, is established a point of contact which no other agency could so
effectually provide.
Under the repressive measures of old-world governments, the racial
culture and national spirit of Poles, Lithuanians, Finns, Balkan Slavs,
and Russian Jews have been stunted. Here both are warmed into life and
renewed vigor, and in generous measure are given back to the land of
their adoption. Such racial contribution must prove of enormous value,
whether, as many sociologists believe, this country is to prove a great
melting pot for the fusing of many races, or whether as Dr. Zhitlowsky
contends, there is to be one country, one set of laws, one speech, but
a vast variety of national cultures, contributing each its due share to
the enrichment of the common stock.
IX
Great changes have come about in the methods that obtain for the
exercise of popular government. In a Democracy whose chief strength
is derived from an intelligent public opinion, the sharpening of such
intelligence and enlargement of general knowledge concerning affairs
of common concern are of paramount importance. Statute books are
heavily cumbered with laws that are unenforced because public opinion
goes counter to them. Nonenforcement breeds disrespect for law, and
unscientific making of laws leads to their disregard. So the earliest
attempts to find a remedy contemplated merely the legislator and the
official, bringing together for their use through the combined services
of trained economists and of expert reference librarians the principles
and foundation for contemplated legislation and the data as to similar
attempts elsewhere. Fruitful as this service has proved within the
limitation of state and municipal officialdom, a broadened conception
of possibilities now enlarges the scope of the work to include
citizen organizations interested in the study of public questions,
students of sociology, economics and political science, business men
keenly alive to the intimate association--in a legitimate sense--of
business and politics, and that new and powerful element in public
affairs which has added three million voters to the poll lists in ten
states, and will soon add eleven million voters more in the remaining
thirty-eight. The new library service centering in state and municipal
legislative reference libraries, and in Civics departments of large
public libraries, forecasts the era, now rapidly approaching, when
aldermen and state representatives will still enact laws and state and
city officials will enforce them, but their making will be determined
strictly by public opinion. The local government of the future will
be by quasi-public citizen organizations directing aldermen and state
legislators accurately to register their will. When representative
government becomes misrepresentative, in the words of a modern
humorist, Democracy will ask the Powers that Be whether they are the
Powers that Ought to Be. To intelligently determine the answer, public
opinion must not ignorantly ask.
X
This has been called the age of utilitarianism. Such it unquestionably
is, but its practicality is not disassociated from idealism. The
resources of numberless commercial enterprises are each in this day
reckoned in millions, and their products are figured in terms of many
millions more, as once thousands represented the spread of even the
greatest of industries. But more and more, business men are coming
to realize that business organization as it affects for weal or woe
thousands who contribute to their success, must be conducted as a trust
for the common good, and not merely for selfish exploitation, or for
oppression. As the trade guilds of old wielded their vast power for
common ends, so all the workers gave the best at their command to make
their articles of merchandise the most perfect that human skill and
care could produce. Men of business whose executive skill determines
the destiny of thousands in their employ, are growing more and more
to an appreciation of the trusteeship that is theirs. A humane spirit
is entering the relationship between employer and employed. Great
commercial organizations are conducting elaborate investigations into
conditions of housing, sanitation, prolongation of school life, social
insurance and similar subjects of betterment for the toilers; but a
brief span ago they were concerned chiefly with trade extension and
lowering of wages, all unconcerned about the living conditions of
their dependents. They too are now exemplifying the possession of that
constructive imagination which builds large and beyond the present.
For results that grow out of experience and of experiment they also
are in part dependent upon the sifted facts that are found in print.
The business house library is a recent development, and in ministering
in different ways to both employer and employed, gives promise of
widespread usefulness.
XI
With the tremendous recent growth of industrialism and the rapid
multiplication of invention, the manifest need for making available the
vast sum of gathered knowledge concerning the discoveries of modern
science has evolved the great special libraries devoted to the varied
subdivisions of the subject. Munificently endowed as many of them
are, highly organized for ready access to material, administered to
encourage use and to give expert aid as well, their great importance
cannot be overestimated. What they accomplish is not wholly reducible
to statistics, nor can their influence be readily traced, perhaps, to
the great undertakings of today which overshadow the seven wonders of
antiquity. But there can be no question that without the opportunities
that here lie for study and research, and--no less important--without
the skilled assistance freely rendered by librarian and bibliographer,
special talent would often remain dormant and its possessor
unsatisfied. Greater here would be the loss to society than to the
individual.
XII
Thus the libraries are endeavoring to make themselves useful in
every field of human enterprise or interest; with books of facts
for the information they possess; with books of inspiration for the
stimulus they give and the power they generate. Conjointly these yield
the equipment which develops the constructive imagination, without
which the world would seem but a sorry and a shriveled spot to dwell
upon. The poet and the dreamer conceive the great things which are
wrought; the scientist and the craftsman achieve them; the scholar and
the artist interpret them. Thus associated, they make their finest
contribution to the common life. The builders construct the great
monuments of iron and of concrete which are the expression of this
age, as the great cathedrals and abbeys were of generations that have
passed. Adapted as they are to the needs of this day, our artists and
our writers have shown us the beauty and the art which the modern
handiwork of man possesses. With etcher's tool one man of keen insight
has shown us the art that inheres in the lofty structures which line
the great thoroughfares of our chief cities, the beauty of the skylines
they trace with roof and pediment. With burning words another has given
voice to machinery and to the vehicles of modern industry, and we
thrill to the eloquence and glow of his poetic fervor.
"Great works of art are useful works greatly done," declares Dr. T. J.
Cobden-Sanderson, and rightly viewed the most prosaic achievements of
this age, whether they be great canals or clusters of workmen's homes
worthily built, or maybe more humble projects, have a greatness of
meaning that carries with it the sense of beauty and of art.
In medieval days, the heralds of civilization were the warrior,
the missionary, the explorer and the troubadour; in modern times,
civilization is carried forward by the chemist, the engineer, the
captain of industry, and the interpreter of life--whether the medium
utilized be pen or brush or voice. Without vision, civilization
would wither and perish, and so it may well be that the printed page
shall serve as symbol of its supreme vision. Within the compass
of the book sincerely written, rightly chosen, and well used are
contained the three chief elements which justify the library of the
people--information, education, recreation.
The urge of the world makes these demands; ours is the high privilege
to respond.
* * * * *
The PRESIDENT: We have a very interesting ending to tonight's program
in that we have secured from eminent men and women in the United States
and Great Britain brief expressions touching our own work. A circular
letter was sent to a number of these eminent ladies and gentlemen
represented in professional and business life, to the following effect:
"Librarians realize that they can profit from seeing themselves
'as others see them.' At the coming annual conference of the
American Library Association to be held in Kaaterskill, N. Y.,
it is planned to present to the assembled librarians of the
United States and Canada brief messages from leading thinkers
and recognized authorities in the arts, sciences and letters,
and in public life, commenting upon such library activities as
are related particularly with their own special interests. Each
message may take the form either of criticism or suggestion. We
shall esteem it a privilege if you will consent to contribute
to this symposium. While we shall be glad to hear from you on
any phase of library work which most appeals to you, we venture
to suggest the following topic for your comment: (Here was
inserted a specific topic suggested for individual discussion.)
Sincerely yours,
HENRY E. LEGLER,
President."
Most of these questions will be apparent as the answers are read. We
have distributed these responses among a few of our own members who
will serve as proxies for the most distinguished contributors to a
program which the American Library Association, I believe, has ever had.
Selections from these letters were then read by Dr. Reuben G. Thwaites,
Mr. C. B. Roden, Miss Mary Eileen Ahern and Mr. W. P. Cutter.
(The following is a list of the questions which were asked in these
letters and the replies received follow.)
Are our public libraries succeeding in their effort to bring to men and
women the "life more abundant?"
What can the library do to encourage the study of American history?
Should our public expect the library to supply all the "best sellers"
hot from the press?
Are our public libraries making returns in service adequate to funds
appropriated?
How could our tax supported public libraries be of greater usefulness
to business men?
Is the negro being helped by our public libraries?
Does the public library do as much as it might to encourage the reading
of the classics?
Is the public library helping to improve dramatic taste?
Is co-operation between the public school and the public library
developing in the right direction?
Is the fiction circulated by our public libraries helping to enlighten
the people on social and economic problems?
Is the public library a factor in the recent development of a public
conscience?
Should the public library exercise censorship over the books it
circulates?
What is a dead book?
What rank should the library have in the scale of the community's
social assets?
What is your conception of the ideal librarian?
Is it wicked for our libraries to amuse people?
Are the art departments of our public libraries quickening the love for
the beautiful?
Are our libraries helping to make better citizens of those from
over-seas?
Is the modern city library engaging in activities outside its proper
sphere, e. g., lectures, storytelling, art exhibits, victrola concerts,
loan of pianola rolls, etc.?
Is the library doing as much as it might to be a true university to the
people?
What do you consider the most valuable accomplishment of the public
library movement in the past decade?
Need librarians apologize for circulating a large percentage of
contemporary fiction?
* * * * *
New York, April 7, 1913.
Dear Mr. President:
You ask "what do you consider the most valuable accomplishment of the
public library movement in the past decade?"
* * * * *
Answer--
The spread of the truth that the public library, free to all the
people, gives nothing for nothing; that the reader must himself climb
the ladder and in climbing gain knowledge how to live this life well.
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
* * * * *
My father[1] has asked me to write to you in reply to your letter
concerning the conference of the American Library Association to be
held in Kaaterskill, N. Y. Neither my father nor I have any chance
to see in any detail what our public libraries are doing to make
life more abundant. One little incident, however, has come within my
experience. The New York Public Library sends its discarded books to
various hospitals and camps instead of destroying them. I have been
able to get some of these discarded books for use in a Boys' Club here
in Cornwall. They were well chosen for what I wanted and the boys have
been responsive and interested in taking them out. This is simply one
of the things that the public libraries are doing with the books they
are through with and can use no more.
[1] Lyman Abbott.
Yours very truly,
BEATRICE VAIL ABBOTT.
* * * * *
London, England,
April 15, 1913.
In reply to your letter of April 1st, written on behalf of the American
Library Association, I do consider that to a certain extent the fiction
circulated in the public libraries of the United States does help to
enlighten the people on social and economic problems. But I am bound to
say that I think that we novelists might do a very great deal more in
this direction if we would avoid sentimentalizing the truth in order to
make it seem more palatable, and also if we would adopt the habit of
describing more completely the general social background against which
our leading figures live and move.
Believe me,
Yours faithfully,
ARNOLD BENNETT.
* * * * *
Drama League of America,
Chicago, Ill.
In the last three years the American people as a whole have begun to
awaken to a realization of the vast importance of our amusements in
the nation's life. We are realizing that we are far behind the other
civilized countries in the development of our dramatic taste, and we
are beginning to be uneasy over the danger of being too careless in
regard to our recreation. The people at large are commencing to take
a genuine interest in the problems presented by our theater, and the
character of the plays they give.
We have arrived at a period of prosperity when we have time, at last,
to pay attention to the arts, and especially the last to be developed,
the dramatic art. We are uneasy over the conditions in our theaters
today.
Vaguely the people as a whole are feeling around for one means or
another to correct these conditions, to create a great national art and
to restore drama to her proper place among the arts. One movement after
another has aimed to meet these conditions--new theaters--municipal
theaters, censorship laws,--every sort of reform. It has remained for
the Drama League of America to place its finger upon the really vital
issue. For the actual fault of the present situation lies with the easy
going American public. You cannot create a New Theater without a public
to support it; you cannot force art on an unwilling public no matter
how large an A you use in spelling it. In fact, your reforms must begin
the other side of the footlights; and if we are to have better plays
upon our stage, if we are to do away with the meretricious plays now
too frequently there, we must work with this great pleasure-loving
good-natured public, and cultivate in it a taste for better drama.
We must create a demand for good drama and the supply will follow--the
dramatist, actor and manager are only too willing to fall into line,
if the public can be induced to refuse the worthless play and support
better drama. The really vital and necessary thing is to secure a
public which will enjoy and support good plays. Hence, it has become
an important and basic matter to improve the dramatic tastes of the
country. In fact, in the opinion of many, this is one of the great
problems we have before us as a nation today.
Organized with this very object, the Drama League of America has
worked for three years on the problem. In those three years it has
discovered many things. One of these is, that there is a real and
genuine response to the appeal of the written drama; that the message
of the play need not be restricted to the city with a theater, but
that through the printed play every community may be reached. Another
point worked out by the league is the absolute assurance that the
best and in fact the only way to improve the dramatic taste of the
country is to inculcate a thorough knowledge of good drama--an intimate
acquaintance with the best plays written. As many of these plays are
rarely acted now, or if acted are confined to the big cities, the
third point easily follows, that by means of the printed play we can
gradually so inoculate the entire nation with a knowledge of good drama
and what it really is that it will turn instinctively from the cheap
and worthless play and demand better things. Consequently the first and
most important matter is to make good drama accessible to every one.
By spreading knowledge of the best plays of the past and present, all
over the country, we are improving the dramatic taste of the nation and
paving the way for better conditions in the theaters.
In this effort to increase the reading of plays the Drama League not
unnaturally turned early in its career to the libraries, feeling itself
largely dependent upon them for the full development of its work. The
keenest response has come in return. Over 73 libraries are represented
in our membership and keep on file the league literature. The testimony
from these libraries is most encouraging. On every side we find the
libraries eager to help in this development of public dramatic taste.
Since the only way to improve dramatic taste is by acquiring a thorough
knowledge of plays, it is palpably apparent that the libraries can
be the greatest possible help in this new movement. To illustrate
concretely--The Drama League enters a medium sized town with one public
library, inducing the two or three women's clubs to take up each a
course in modern drama, interesting the teachers in the high school in
the league's high school course, even persuading the grade school to
do drama work with the younger pupils. Usually there are formed also
several little reading circles. Of course, the first demand is for the
published plays. The students flock to the libraries to get the desired
dramas.
In Chicago the testimony has come many times that since the
organization of The Drama League public interest has been so keen that
the demand for dramas has been phenomenal. Is the library content
merely to recognize this condition? By no means. The Drama Department
has had to quadruple its supply, and even then is frequently obliged to
hold the books in for reference only in order to meet the demand. But
see what this has meant to the league to have that quadruple supply of
the dramas demanded by its members. From Washington comes the testimony
that the organization of the league has increased the demand for drama
books; from Los Angeles came a large order for special dramas and
reference books needed by our members. The Massachusetts State Library
has offered to meet any demands made upon it. Librarians in various
communities are officers and directors in this new movement.
May I suggest a few ways in which the libraries can help us? In the
first place, it will be a real benefit to any community if its library
will become a member of The Drama League and keep its literature on
file. In this way the community is kept informed through the Drama
League bulletins of the best current plays by its critical analysis;
it has access also to the study courses and bibliographies on drama
prepared by the league's experts. Secondly, it would be an inestimable
help in this task of improving dramatic taste of the community if the
library would be sure to have on hand all the dramas listed in our
study and reading courses. Thirdly, if the libraries would arrange a
handy shelf of worthy drama where "he who runs may read," where the
passerby would be attracted by a drama and pick it up to read it, it
might induce a taste for better plays, a knowledge of good drama in
a previously heedless theater goer. In Evanston, Illinois, for three
years this shelf has been maintained in the library by the Drama Club.
Every few weeks a new selection of dramas is placed on this little book
rack which stands near the main call desk. It is much used and very
popular.
The library could also helpfully publish a separate list of its books
on drama and dramas, or better yet arrange them in a separate section.
Such a list is published yearly by the Evanston Library and several
other libraries have recently adopted this plan--notably the Newberry
Library, Chicago, and the Kansas City Library.
Another way in which the libraries can co-operate in raising dramatic
taste, is by making it easy for the playgoer to read the dramas
which have been published and are to be presented in his city. By
co-operation with the Drama League the library might receive word in
advance when a published worthy play is to be given in town. It could
then see to it either that its copy of that play is withdrawn from
circulation and held for reference only, or it could secure extra
copies of the play to meet the extra demand. If it could be thoroughly
understood that the library was doing this, interest in reading the
play could be stimulated. For instance, the library could post a notice
stating the coming of the play to town, side by side with the league
bulletin or criticism of the play, and the announcement that it could
be secured at the book shelf. With this active help of the libraries
we might go far toward securing a trained dramatic taste on the part
of our theater goers. There are several magazines of special value to
the student of drama. It would be a very great help if the libraries
made a special point of including these among their subscriptions
and of listing them under the Drama Department--as for instance, the
Drama Quarterly, and Poet Lore print in each issue a play which has
never been printed in translation before, and which cannot be secured
elsewhere. These are extremely valuable to the drama student. The
Drama Quarterly, moreover, is especially adapted to the needs of the
student of drama, and should be accessible to him. It aims to criticise
the various books on drama and dramas of special excellence, also
publishing notices of the most recent drama movements in this country
and abroad. It is not used for league propaganda, but was taken over by
The Drama League merely because it was in danger of being abandoned.
Moreover, in Current Opinion and Hearst's Magazine are frequently
printed very valuable portions of unpublished new plays. With every
issue of L'Illustration is published a new French drama in French. It
would be an excellent thing if the larger or better equipped libraries
could excerpt the plays from these magazines and have them sewed up
simply, each complete by itself, and kept with the other dramas. In
this way the library could make an excellent modern drama department
readily accessible to the league members, obtainable in no other way,
and at very slight cost to the library.
A very important way in which the Library Association might help is
one which may not be practical, but which your convention might be
able to work out for us. It is in the nature of loan libraries. As we
introduce our study courses into the small towns we frequently find
no library facilities along our lines. One of our workers made an
investigation of the Drama Department in libraries in small towns of
five to ten thousand inhabitants in the Middle West, and found that
without exception all of those she visited, had only Shakespeare and
Faust, with occasionally a volume of L'Aiglon. It is easy to see how
difficult it will be for clubs and individuals to take up a study of
drama under such conditions. Is there any way in which the large state
libraries can prepare a loan library at very slight cost, made up of
books desired for this special work, which could be borrowed by the
local library for the use of its clubs? Of course, in some states, as
in Wisconsin and New York, and probably many others, this is covered
by the traveling libraries; but there are very many where this is not
so. Cannot the libraries go even farther in their effort to improve
dramatic taste and meet the demand for dramas and books on dramas, a
demand which the Drama League is attempting to create?
Several libraries in various cities, as notably Chicago and Washington,
have opened their rooms for Drama League meetings. Cannot this be done
in other cities? Surely any way in which you, as public institutions,
can increase the interest in good drama, is a part of your proper
function. The league work must go hand in hand with the libraries.
Without you and your resources, your wisdom and your co-operation, we
would be much crippled and sadly curtailed in our possibilities of
achievements. On the other hand, now that the development of a national
taste for better drama is becoming recognized as a necessity in order
to effect any improvement in the conditions of our stage today, now
that we fully recognize that the best way to create a better dramatic
taste is by familiarity with the best in drama, now that we are
working to make the reading of plays popular and wide spread, does it
not become a very important branch of the library's activity to take
every step possible to increase the reading of plays and the thorough
knowledge of dramatic literature on the part of young and old?
The real opportunity is with the children. Here we can create a fine
dramatic taste for the future, and here, too, the library can help.
In your junior corner, can you not have the plays recommended on our
junior list, as suitable for children in order that they may have
them for their play acting? Can you not start a Junior League Drama
Circle to read and act little children's plays, just as you have
your story hour? In this way the library is helping us prepare the
audiences of the future which shall not only support better drama, but
being thoroughly inoculated with an instinctive dramatic taste, will
positively demand worthy drama. So will the libraries and The Drama
League, representing the universities, schools, clubs and individuals
in general have aroused the public conscience to a realization of its
responsibilities for the amusements of the people.
MARJORIE A. BEST (MRS. A. STARR BEST)
President, Drama League of America.
* * * * *
The Macmillan Company, New York, N. Y.,
May 5, 1913.
In reply to your esteemed letter of May 2nd I may say that the matter
which seems to me to be of the greatest interest to publishers, and
possibly also to librarians, at the present time is the dissemination
among the public at large of that correct information in regard to the
ever increasing tide of new books which will enable the public to learn
of really meritorious works which are published, and avoid the trash
which is now being so freely distributed.
Almost the only way at the present time of reaching large numbers of
book readers is through the libraries, and this seems sufficient excuse
for bringing this, which seems to me to be the most important matter,
to your notice and of begging that it may be given publicity among
your fellow librarians in order that we may have suggestions for the
solution of the difficulty.
Yours very truly,
GEORGE P. BRETT,
President.
* * * * *
Brown University, Providence, R. I.,
April 29, 1913.
In reply to your letter of April 21 I can only say that I am not
familiar enough with the conduct of American libraries to make any new
suggestions on the question you propose. I think the plan followed by
the Providence Public Library is the best one to encourage the reading
of the standard works of literature. It has, as you of course know,
a pleasant room, easily accessible, in which attractive editions of
the best authors can be read. Would it be feasible to supplement this
plan by publishing, from time to time, interesting, short descriptions
of standard books, giving prospective readers some notion of the
subject and peculiar attraction of each--somewhat after the manner of
publishers' alluring (or would-be alluring) notices of new books?
Yours sincerely,
W. C. BRONSON.
Northampton, Mass.,
May 16, 1913.
Your letter of the fourteenth, inviting me to contribute to a symposium
of thought concerning library work in America and suggesting the
topic, "What is your conception of the ideal librarian," does me great
honor. But it brings to my mind very clearly my inability to offer
a definition which I could possibly hope would be enlightening or
stimulating to a convention of librarians.
The library work of our present day has expanded into such liberal
bounds and taken on such a missionary, and at the same time scientific,
spirit that one who is merely its beneficiary cannot give himself the
hardihood to offer words of criticism or of counsel. I know no work
which shows such splendid contrasts to what it was when I began life
as does the profession of the public librarian and the professional
conception of the library's mission to the world.
It has been my great joy and honor to bring up a large family whose
members are now separated and busy in the world's work and it gives me
great pleasure to say of them, as of myself, that the modern management
of public libraries has made life worth incalculably more than it could
have been under the limitations of forty years ago.
With every good wish I beg to remain ever
Yours truly,
GEORGE W. CABLE.
* * * * *
Santa Barbara, Cal.,
May 5, 1913.
It gives me great pleasure to attempt a brief answer to the question
you suggest--"Is the fiction circulated by our public libraries helping
to enlighten the people on social and economic problems?" I should
be inclined to answer the question decidedly in the affirmative. In
addition to the letters I receive from persons whose only access to
modern fiction is through the public library, concerning my own work,
I have, in the course of political campaigns, and in places in various
parts of the country where I have made another sort of address, held
many conversations with men and women in the audiences. These have
interested me greatly. My own experience corroborates a fact to which I
have heard several librarians attest (and it is to me the most hopeful
phenomenon in our American life), that the American public--mainly
through the libraries--is reading more widely and more intelligently
than those who do not come into direct contact with a large portion
of it guess. Four or five months ago I received a letter from a poor
woman who lives on a farm near one of the larger towns of Massachusetts
giving me a list of the books she had got from the library during
the past year. She had read them all; and they included, in addition
to two good biographies and Royce's "Loyalty," several of the best
recent novels, both English and American, dealing seriously with the
problems of modern life. And finally, the other day when I was in San
Francisco, I had a long conversation with an ex-burglar who had served
a term in the penitentiary, and who has reformed and has been for the
last eight years making an honest living, on the subject of such novels
as you mention. His comments on them were not only interesting but
often valuable. His source was, of course, the public library. Hence,
I am glad of this opportunity to pay my tribute to the librarian, and
to express, as an American citizen, my appreciation of the work he is
doing.
Sincerely yours,
WINSTON CHURCHILL.
* * * * *
Bureau of Education,
Washington, D. C.
April 29, 1913.
The public libraries have no better opportunity for effective service
than that offered through generous and intelligent co-operation with
the public schools and especially with the high schools and the highest
grades of the grammar schools. Ideas and ideals gained through reading
in childhood and youth effect the character more fundamentally and more
permanently, and determine moral conduct for a longer time than ideas
and ideals gained later. It should also be remembered that children
have more time to read than men and women immersed in the strong
current of adult life.
The public library in every city and town should be open on the freest
terms to all school children and they should feel that they have the
heartiest welcome to it. Not only should the teacher encourage children
to use the library; librarians should invite them to do so and make all
possible preparations to serve them. There should be in the libraries a
sufficient number of reading rooms to accommodate children of different
grades. In these should be assistant librarians who know the very best
in literature for children and youth and who know also how to deal with
children and how to make the rooms attractive. It is all important
that the reading rooms and those in charge be attractive, respected,
liked, and loved. It is especially important that children be led to
read those things that have permanent and eternal value. No one should
be permitted to direct the reading of children who thinks it necessary
to have books written down to them or who does not know that the
greatest books are the simplest and the most wholesome. The children's
librarians should also be whole minded and whole hearted people with a
broad and interesting knowledge of the world and life. It will be fatal
if they are narrow, prejudiced, sectarian, or over-provincial.
The public library should have the services of one or more good story
tellers who know the best stories of the world and can tell them in
an interesting way. As often as once a week at least there should be
a separate hour for all the children. The children should, of course,
come in sections--primary, grammar grades, and high school.
In addition to the services rendered as here suggested at the library,
all the children in school or out should have library cards and for
the convenience of the children every school building should be made a
branch library for the use of children at least. I see no reason why
it should not also serve as a branch library for the older people. It
would not cost much to have some one or more teachers at each school
serve as librarians under the direction of the librarian of the central
library. Through the branch library at the school many parents and
other older members of the family could be reached who never can be
reached through the ordinary central and branch library buildings.
Attractive statements about books, especially new books should be sent
to the parents by the children and books might be ordered and returned
through the children. It would not be difficult to induce pupils and
teachers to arrange reading circles and clubs among the adult members
of families living near the school, the books used by the reading
circles to be ordered from and returned to the school branch library.
Teachers and principals would also be willing to arrange for weekly
meetings for the members of these reading circles and clubs, the
meetings to be held at the school. Certificates and diplomas might be
given for the reading of certain groups of books.
The library should own in sets books helpful to teachers and children
in their studies and should, at the request of superintendents and
principals, place sets of these in the several schools for use in
school, but not to be taken out except over night or over Saturdays and
Sundays and holidays.
Libraries should also own large collections of illustrative pictures
and lantern slides. These should be cataloged as books are and lists
of them should be in the hands of school superintendents, supervisors,
principals, and teachers. The pictures and slides should be loaned the
schools freely upon their request. School officers and teachers should
be asked to assist in selecting these and all other collections for the
use of children.
The library should serve in this way not only the schools of the city,
but also the country and village schools in the counties in which they
are located. Through the country schools more good can be accomplished,
frequently, than through the city schools. Country boys and girls
are more eager to read than city boys and girls. They have more time
for it and will read better books. The library should have a direct
relation with every school and every teacher in the county. Of course,
the county should pay for this service, but it should have it whether
it pays for it or not. The city cannot afford to withhold it. The city
depends on the country for its prosperity and life. The children now
in the country will make up a large part of the population of the city
twenty or twenty-five years from now.
In many places the public libraries are doing all these things to some
extent; in no place to as great an extent as is possible. By using to
the best advantage the opportunities here suggested, public libraries
may double their usefulness.
Yours sincerely,
P. P. CLAXTON,
Commissioner.
* * * * *
New York City,
April 4, 1913.
The Negro American is being helped greatly by public libraries wherever
he is given reasonable encouragement to enter them. Often in the North,
he is not made to feel welcome in these libraries and in most of the
public and private libraries of the South, he is rigorously excluded.
It would seem that a statement from the American Library Association to
the effect that the color line in literature is silly, is much needed
at present.
Very sincerely yours,
W. E. B. DU BOIS.
* * * * *
Mayor's Office,
Boston, Mass.
Of course, the financial return for money expended to maintain a public
library cannot be definitely stated, as may be done in connection with
municipal activities which deal solely with material things.
It is impossible to trace along commercial lines the influence upon
the community of an institution whose prime purpose is not profit, is
not even a product that can be expressed in terms of dollars, but is
the enlargement of the individual life, and the promotion of higher
standards of citizenship.
On the lowest and most sordid plane however, an institution like the
Boston public library is worth many times its cost to the city merely
on account of the number of persons from abroad who are attracted to
the building as an example of monumental architecture, or because it
contains exceptional works of art in its mural decorations, or who
visit it as a museum of rare and interesting books. These visitors
number thousands yearly; many of them stay in the city for several
days, and their entertainment and their expenditure of money while they
remain, add to the commercial prosperity of the city.
In somewhat the same way, but on a much higher plane, directly within
the scope of the library function, numbers of students are yearly drawn
to the city by the advantages the library offers for intellectual
research. And the library enhances the importance and value of the
various schools and colleges within our borders, by enlarging their
intellectual resources.
In other directions the value of the library to the community is
evident. The fact that it is here adds something to the value of every
estate in the city. Persons seeking a desirable place of residence
prefer a city or town which has good schools and a well-equipped and
adequately supported library to a place without these institutions,
even if no direct use is made by such persons of either. The influence
of a good library on the general conditions in a community is therefore
a profitable asset.
In assimilating the different elements of a mixed and rapidly growing
population, the work of the library is obvious, and its results far
outweigh their cost. And the increased efficiency of individuals,
which the library promotes, has its effect in inestimable public
benefits. For example, to take a single possible case out of many,
here is a young man without money or influence but who has talent
which, if properly fostered may become the source of power. Through
the opportunities for study given by the public library he perfects
an invention, or writes a poem, or enters a useful profession by means
of which he ministers to the comfort and enjoyment of his fellow-men
and confers honor upon this city. How can one over-estimate the social
value of such lives, or the part which the library has played in their
development? Such instances are by no means few, and unquestionably
they supply an affirmative answer to the question as to whether or not
the library is making an adequate return for its cost.
JOHN F. FITZGERALD.
* * * * *
Chicago, Illinois,
May 10, 1913.
Your question, "Is the fiction circulated by our public library helping
to enlighten people on social and economic problems?" is one which I
can answer promptly and affirmatively. Looking at fiction in the mass,
it is without doubt an enormous educational influence. Leaving out of
view for the moment the historical novel, or the sociologic novel, and
taking merely the local novel, the novel which vividly portrays the
life of a special village, or country, or nation, we find it of the
greatest service in teaching the people of one country, or class, how
the people of other countries and other classes live. Such books bring
the ends of the earth together. They unite the north and the south,
the east and the west, in common sympathy and understanding. They
contribute very largely to the higher patriotism, as well as to the
profounder social brotherhood.
It would be easy to criticise fiction for other and less valuable
content, but speaking generally, I believe it to be second only to the
stage in its power to affect the young student of life and manners.
Very sincerely yours,
HAMLIN GARLAND.
* * * * *
Ithaca, N. Y.,
May 16, 1913.
You ask for comment--as "related particularly with their own special
=interests=" and at the risk of being charged with "talking shop,"
I have been brutally frank. Yet I hope it will cheer these splendid
workers for civilization.
The library is =not= "doing as much as it might to be a true University
to the People." Books alone will not attract the insensitive or
indifferent, nor will handsome buildings. Equal to other necessity
of the library to be "a true university to the people," =is that of
arousing interest, awakening curiosity and alluring into path ways
that lead to books and reading=. I know of nothing better than to have
cheap, popular, illustrated lecture courses that constantly refer to
books and the special theme.
Does the local librarian or do active directors, attempt seriously
to tap the knowledge of the local specialist, professional man, or
public spirited speaker? Do the library people emphasize the necessity
of close, personal contact, as far as possible, with the individuals
and with the people? Libraries must be more human. No machinery, or
salaried personnel, however costly or efficient, within chosen lines
of activity, can do without that same human sympathy, which in other
professions, is known to outweigh in value, all edifices, or the paid
professional corps; yes, even in religion or philanthropy. Not all,
but most libraries--and I have looked in, and at, and around many--are
too self-centered.
Yet with this criticism, honestly called for and as honestly given,
none can appreciate the librarian more than I. To guide youthful
reading, warning as well as advising and alluring them to high flights,
is to make the librarian's calling =second to none= in our complex
civilization.
With all good wishes to the librarians of the United States and Canada.
Sincerely yours,
WILLIAM ELIOT GRIFFIS.
P. S. Every library should have a lecture hall and not be afraid even
of the "fit audience though few."
* * * * *
Clark University,
Worcester, Mass.,
May 17, 1913.
My experience is a long one with university libraries, but I have had
far less to do with public libraries.
The greatest need of the specialist and expert is help in finding all,
and especially the latest, often very scattered, literature on the
special point on which he is conducting his research, and I believe
that in the future every academic library will have a few specialists
with a good knowledge of languages, of Ph. D. rank, who can do just
this. We have one such here, to whom my work owes more than to anybody
else. If I ask her to find me, e. g., all the recent references on a
topic, be it ever so special, including perhaps a score of archives
and special journals, back for three or five years as I may specify,
up to the latest arrival, I get this list, which always includes many
things our library does not have, then take it to the librarian, who
can generally get about everything by borrowing far and near. These,
together with the resources here, are placed upon a table in an alcove
where I can work or take the books home. This makes a perfectly ideal
condition, and it is at the same time indispensable for advanced
special work, and everything in a university library should be plastic
to this end.
A public librarian, it seems to me, should study all the changing
interests in a community or in special parts of it, and be able to
print in the daily press whenever any topic is prominent a little
article telling in a few lines the point of a few books or articles;
e. g. a manual training high school is opened. The daily paper should
state that the library has a good collection of literature up to date
on that subject (if it has), and give a few points from a few of the
best books, naming them. A few titles are not enough.
Another point that interests me greatly is the library story telling.
I think more should be done, not less, in this line for children, and
that books illustrating topics in geography, history, etc., should be
not only laid before teachers but that the classes should meet there
and have the things shown to them. Why does not the public library
go into some of the wonderful illustrative material in the above and
other topics, which is so characteristic of German schools, and of
which American schools know almost nothing? Our educational Museum
here has lately spent thousands of dollars and collected thousands of
these illustrations all the way from wall pictures to bound pictures,
illustrating material from primary grades up into college, which we
loan as we do books to teachers, parents and others. There is a very
great new departure possible here. Why does not your Association look
into this? It has been a great find for us. And about everything in
our large collection and its use, to my mind, might be done by public
libraries although none of them that I know of has done much of
anything along that line. I am
Very truly yours,
G. STANLEY HALL.
* * * * *
The University of Chicago,
Chicago, May 16, 1913.
While I am not at all a specialist in library science and art, I am
daily a debtor to your profession. In answer to the question--"What
rank should the library have in the scale of the community's social
assets?"--I should indicate the following hints of an argument: The
income of every family is increased by the possession and use of a
public library. This item is never found set down in the accounts of a
family as a part of their income, and the students of budgets are too
apt to overlook it; but all communal property, as lake fronts, parks,
playgrounds, public schools, public free libraries and reading rooms,
are so much addition to the enjoyments of all who have the taste and
inclination to use them. As the library contains the very best thoughts
of the greatest men and women of all time, I should say that the public
free library is among the very highest possessions of the people.
When we consider the dangers of idleness or of a depraved use of
leisure, and when we consider the splendid opportunity of spiritual
growth which comes from intelligent and systematic daily use of the
library, we must place this institution among the highest agencies
of social amelioration and progress. Every year sees improvement
in the administration of this noble trust by the professional
custodians and administrators. There is manifest everywhere a spirit
of courtesy, patience and enterprise, which does honor to this branch
of the profession of educators. The librarian and his assistants are
colleagues of instructors in all institutions of every grade, and those
of us who are teaching feel ourselves to be under profound obligations
to our companions in service.
Sincerely yours,
CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON.
* * * * *
Chicago, April 7, 1913.
I have your letter of April 2nd in which you are good enough to ask me
to write a few lines on the topic: "Should the public library exercise
censorship over the books it circulates?"
I suppose there is no question that the good public library should
=have= somewhere in its shelves all books of serious intent, and should
circulate in a restricted and properly guarded way =any= book no matter
what its subject matter. So the question comes down to the propriety
of circulating generally without restriction all sorts of books.
I should hesitate to say that a public library should exercise no
supervision over its circulation, although I myself have suffered from
what I consider unjust and unmerited notoriety--due to the prescient
sensibilities of certain librarians, as you know. But when you will
admit the principle of censorship, the matter is a delicate one, of
course. It would seem to me, for example, unwise to circulate freely
books of medicine. As to fiction--or what publishers call "the general
list" of books, I think an intelligent librarian should hesitate
a long time before putting on his or her =index expurgatorius any
publications= vouched for by the imprint of a =reputable= publishing
firm. For such books have actually passed a severe censorship before
being put out. I realize it is all a personal matter, for what to me
is good red meat may be poison to my brother. I think, for instance,
that such a novel as The Rosary is infinitely more pernicious than
the Kreutzer Sonata, La Terre, or Germinal, but the average librarian
wouldn't. So I am afraid the matter will have to stand just where it
is today--a book will be censored as unfit or unclean according to the
whim of the individual librarian. Presumably the public librarian is
at least abreast of, if not superior in culture and idealism to his
community, and as our communities improve our librarians will become
persons of wider intelligence and culture than they are now in some
cases and exercise their censorial powers with more real discrimination.
Apropos of this matter you may be interested to know that a few months
ago the New York Post in an editorial protest against certain young
American realists and their treatment of sex--instanced Mr. Howells and
myself as examples of "clean American reticent realism!" This, after
all the roar over "Together" is an amusing illustration of growth in
critical opinion. Mr. Howells sent me the editorial but I haven't it
with me.
Truthfully,
ROBERT HERRICK.
P. S. My own views on the proper treatment of sex in fiction will be
briefly touched upon in an article on American fiction to be printed in
the Yale Review before long.
* * * * *
Chicago, May 17, 1913.
You ask me "is the fiction circulated by our public libraries helping
to enlighten the people on social and economic problems?" That is
a question which a librarian can answer better than any author. In
general, it seems to me, magazine fiction is doing more in that line
than book fiction. Some of the greatest circulations ever attained by
periodicals have been built upon a shrewd knowledge of the American
materialism. One editor voices it:--"Americans are interested about
two-thirds in business, and one-third in love." That editorial policy
has won in this country.
As to social and economic problems, more properly considered, I
don't think fiction is doing much for the people. This really is the
fault of the people, or of human nature, or rather of American human
nature. I think we are one of the most neurotic and hysterical people
in the world, which means that presently we shall be one of the most
swiftly decadent people in the world. For this reason, we have sudden
fashions in fiction. Just now we like to read about "action" of heroic
sort--precisely as we pay to see baseball games instead of playing
baseball ourselves. Also, we are for the time given over to a wave of
erotic fiction, just this side of indecent. At one time we were crazy
over historical fiction, before that, over dialect fiction, before that
over analytical fiction. Therefore, I should say that our book fiction
does not and cannot do much in the way of handling social and economic
problems at the present day. Once in a while, we have a political
novel, machine-made, and like all other political novels. Sometimes, we
get a business novel, in turn like all other business novels. We don't
have really very many thoughtful novels good enough to be called big.
I fancy it would not pay authors to write them, or public libraries to
buy them. We are having a period of business and political sack cloth
and ashes, but, drunk or sober, broke or prosperous, the American
character seems to me annually to grow more hectic and hysterical, and
less inclined to care for big things and good stuff. Part of this is
the fault of our newspapers, but most of it is our own fault. We care
for making money and for little else, and we spend money whether we
have it or not. The public libraries would be the natural agency for
correcting some of these things, but frankly I don't know how they
could do it.
Yours very truly,
EMERSON HOUGH.
* * * * *
New York City.
Why should not the libraries amplify the work they are already doing by
the promotion of the public schools as well as libraries as social and
civic centers? Schoolhouses should be constructed with all equipments
for branch libraries, just as they are now equipped with gymnasiums and
baths. The library should not be an accident in the public school; it
should be an integral part of it. The schoolhouse is the natural place
for the library. To it the children come daily--little messengers who
would secure books from printed slips for their parents, too tired or
too distant from the library to serve themselves. The library should
be the school rest and reading room. It would relieve the tedium of
regular school work. It would lend variety to education; it would
enrich it and beautify it.
In addition, great economy would be effected by converting the
school into a library; there would be a saving in construction,
in maintenance, in operation. The fine social sense of the modern
librarian would have a reaction on education and would lead to other
activities being introduced into the schools.
The American library is the model of the world in many ways. It has led
the movement for the widening of public services to old and young. It
is one of the most inspirational achievements of the American city,
and it could do a substantial service by promoting the social center
idea, which is so actively engaging the minds of people all over the
country.
(Signed) FREDERIC C. HOWE.
New York, N. Y.
April 30, 1913.
In response to your kind invitation to send a brief message on the
subject--"Can public libraries legitimately attempt amusement as well
as instruction of the people?" I would reply to the affirmative.
If literature is an art, and if libraries are to be as they should
be--reservoirs of literature--they surely cannot be complete without
giving an important place to arts' most human appeal, amusement.
The novel, invented to amuse, stands today as the vital force in
literature. Of course, by "amusement" I do not mean a vaudeville.
Shakespeare wrote to amuse; and if he does not offer a popular line
today it is because modern writers are better chosen to amuse our
century. Indeed, if you remove the fiction department--the amusement
section--from your library you reduce it to the plans of a machine--an
admirable machine, perhaps--but without a human soul to drive it.
Sincerely yours,
WALLACE IRWIN.
* * * * *
Carnegie Institution of Washington,
Washington, D. C.,
June 5, 1913.
The specific question which you propound, "What can the library do to
encourage the study of American history?" is one which I suppose must
have very different answers for different sorts of libraries. In the
case of libraries of moderate size in small cities, it has sometimes
appeared to me that the money used in the purchase of books on American
history was too exclusively used in buying the less expensive sort of
books, those in one or two or three volumes, of which it is perfectly
easy to get a considerable number out of each year's appropriations;
while on the other hand, the purchase of certain books of value in
expensive sets was never made, because it could not easily be made in
any one given year. If the purchasing policy were given a somewhat
longer range, extending over several years, one might plan to redress
this inequality. To avoid speaking as if I were recommending any one
long set of Americana for purchase, let me adduce as an instance a
library of forty or fifty thousand volumes with which I am familiar
which has in the past twenty years bought a great many books of
English history, without ever yet having afforded the purchase of the
=Dictionary of National Biography=, obviously because it was too large
a morsel for any one year's budget.
If I were to proceed to make any suggestion for the larger libraries, I
might select for comment the relative lack of co-operation among such
libraries in respect to the pursuit of the more expensive specialties.
It is plain that the interest of students are, in respect to restricted
specialties of this class better served on the whole by their being
able to find relatively complete collections in one place, rather
than scattered fragments of such collections in various places. The
ambition of libraries for possession might well be tempered by some
closer approach to systematic organization of these things, whereby
certain ones should be recognized as belonging plainly in the field of
a certain library without competition on the part of the others. I am
speaking, of course, of things which only a few students are seeking,
and which they must expect to seek by travel, and not of those things
for which there is a separate effective demand in every large city.
May I also suggest the question whether it is not a legitimate use of
the funds of a public library to pay recognized experts, resident in
its city or summoned from elsewhere, to go over the shelves relating
to a particular subject and carefully signalize those gaps which are
almost certain to occur; to name, in other words, any important books
which have been omitted but which are necessary to make the collection
a well-rounded one for the needs of the particular locality as the
librarian sees them. I think also that university and college libraries
are particularly in need of such periodical redress, because professors
are so prone to request books needed for the immediate purposes of
their classes, and to exhaust their appropriations by such requests,
forgetting the need of building up rounded collections for general
purposes; and the librarian, on his part, feels a certain delicacy
about suggesting books for which the professor has evinced no desire,
though often he will agree they were desirable, if their absence were
called to his attention. Believe me
Very truly yours,
J. F. JAMESON.
Hadley, Mass.,
May 20, 1913.
I have your recent letter asking for some brief comment on such phase
of library work as most appeals to me.
At present, in accord with the trend of current thought in other
matters, I am inclined to lay stress on efficiency; and under that head
I would urge that librarians, especially in the smaller places, do much
strenuous and persistent weeding among the books that find their way to
the shelves. Feed the furnace with the books that are no longer useful
in your particular library, or in some other way absolutely dispose of
them.
Much of the fiction, both for grown-ups and young people, should go,
after the first interest in it has waned. Many also of the information
books decline in value with the passing years and should not remain
a permanent incubus. Very few of the government publications are of
practical use in the average library.
We have altogether too much veneration for printed matter. Library
housecleanings to discard the literary rubbish and misfits are a real
need. Quality is decidedly more important than quantity, if you would
have charm and the widest usefulness.
Yours very truly,
CLIFTON JOHNSON.
April 11, 1913.
In response to your kind letter of April 5th, and after refreshing my
mind by consultation with librarian friends, with your kind permission
I may say a word on the theme, "That librarians should sometimes take
account of stock," that they should consider the reasons for their
existence and find out how nearly their present day activities coincide
with the purposes for which they are established.
With one or two notable exceptions public libraries in the United
States are a development of the last quarter of the 19th Century.
Until about 1895, or possibly 1900 the efforts of librarians were
directed toward perfecting methods of administration, cataloging, etc.
Then having arrived at mutual agreement as to forms of procedure they
devoted themselves more and more to library extension. They realized
that only fractions of their respective communities were in touch with
the libraries. In a city of 400,000 inhabitants perhaps 40,000 or 10
per cent would make use of library privileges, and the circulation
of a million volumes per year meant the use of only 2-1/2 books per
year for each inhabitant. Then commenced the era of branch libraries,
deposit stations, libraries in schools, libraries in factories, in
fire-houses; a resort to every possible means to extend usefulness of
the library throughout the whole community. Not satisfied with these
expedients other forms of extension are being adopted. I am told that
"one library publishes a weekly paper heralding the advantages of its
city. It has established a business man's information branch, compiled
an index to the products manufactured within the city, and holds itself
ready to give information as to where the best tennis balls, suit cases
and everything else can be purchased." Undoubtedly this is a public
convenience, but it seems to be getting a little away from original
library purposes. There is a tendency for libraries to so scatter their
energies that they lose sight of the main objects of their being.
They exhibit the same tendency which can be seen in the curricula of
many colleges which offer courses upon every conceivable subject,
the lasting value of which to those who pursue them is certainly
questionable.
Libraries are not exempt from the prevalent tendency of municipal,
state and federal agencies to extend their activities and increase
the burden of taxes. It is safe to say that in many public libraries
the budgets have been more than doubled in the last 15 years. It is
a question whether the real service to the community has gained in
proportion. It is not necessary to make hourly deliveries to downtown
delivery stations of the latest thing in fiction, but it is essential
that the libraries should do their utmost to maintain ideals. The
library which has set apart in a separate room a collection of standard
literature has performed a notable service for its community and
furnished an example worthy of imitation. It is a part of the best work
of the library to assist in perpetuating only that which is worthy of
survival.
Very truly yours,
DAVID STARR JORDAN.
* * * * *
The French Embassy,
Washington, D. C.,
May 8, 1913.
On the question you put me: "Are our libraries helping to make better
citizens of those from over-seas?" I must decline to give an answer. It
would be somewhat bold on the part of one who is not himself a citizen
of this country and whose opportunities have been scant, for studying
such a problem, to express an opinion.
Concerning librarians, as such, I may say that my experience with them,
under many climes and skies, has ever been of the pleasantest. Their
keeping company with the thinkers and writers of all times, spending
their days in those temples where the wisdom, the folly, the dreams,
the beauty of ages is stored for the contemplation or warning of
succeeding generations, gives them, of whatever nationality they be, a
philosophical turn of mind, a benevolent desire to help, a friendliness
to the untutored who want to know more. For me they are the typical men
of good will for whom there will be peace.
Believe me,
Very truly yours,
JUSSERAND.
* * * * *
Chicago, May 5.
"Can public libraries legitimately attempt amusement as well as
instruction of the people?" Since you ask me the question, I feel
obliged to answer it in all seriousness. In my opinion the public
library ought not to be turned into a place of amusement. Let us have
this one institution left as a refuge from amusement. The general
desire of the public to be amused has caused it to become almost
impossible for one to go anywhere or see anything without becoming
conscious of the fact that the first and generally the sole purpose
of everything is to amuse. The preachers make their sermons amusing,
the poets make their poems amusing, the artists make their pictures
amusing, the merchants make their shops amusing; one cannot eat in a
public place without being amused. Steamships and railway trains are
operated for the amusement of passengers; every vacant storeroom will
by tomorrow have become a place of amusement and plans are already
being made to convert funerals into amusing affairs. Spare to us the
one place in which we may hope to escape from amusement. Let the public
library remain grand, gloomy and peculiar.
Sincerely yours,
S. E. KISER.
Chicago, April 9, 1913.
In reply to your letter of April 5, 1913, would say--The modern city
library is covering a most desirable field in meeting the needs of a
large element of the public, which looks to it almost exclusively for
information along library and allied lines. A popular library should
be able to supply information on all subjects of a general character
and should not proceed along lines of reference facilities except in a
general way. This ground is covered by private gifts and educational
institutions. The city library should, it seems to me, be constituted
along liberal lines, adapted to entertain as well as instruct. Any
means adapted to stimulate the public desire for the use of its
privileges properly guarded, cannot fail to be of general benefit. Thus
lectures, story telling, art exhibits, and even victrola concerts, loan
of pianola rolls, etc., may serve to induct the mind into the wealth
of knowledge embraced within its wonderful collection of books. The
portals of the city library should be made insidiously alluring, with
the expectation that once within them, the reader will go farther.
Very truly yours,
C. C. KOHLSAAT.
Northampton, Mass.,
June 12, 1913.
To My Fellow Workers in Libraries,
Greetings:
I always feel a little bashful when I go into a strange library as I
sometimes do and happen on a librarian who confronts me with things I
say about librarians in the "Lost Art of Reading." Usually I speak up
quite quickly and say to a librarian, "Oh, but you know I do not mean
YOU!"
But in speaking as I am now to all the librarians there are in the
United States and Canada this seems to be inconvenient.
I am afraid that if there were any nice thoughtful benignant way of
taking each librarian in this great mass meeting, of all the librarians
there are, one side and whispering to him quietly, "Oh, but you know I
do not mean YOU," I would probably do it!
But being driven to it and being faced out this way as I am today, two
or three thousand to one, there seems to be nothing for it but to face
the music and to look you in the eye a minute and say once for all, "I
DO mean you, I mean each of you and all of you," and I accuse you of
not taking immediate, powerful and conclusive steps to convince donors
of libraries and the public of the rights of librarians, of your right
to perform your duties under decent, spiritual conditions as members of
a high and spirited calling, as professional men and women, as artists
and as fellow human beings and not as overworked, under-assisted, weary
servants of books.
The charges against the library donors and managers that I brought
out in my new book "Crowds," more particularly the chapters, "Mr.
Carnegie speaks up," and "Mr. Carnegie tries to make people read," are
charges that are going to be answered most successfully by people who
admit that they are largely true and who will then proceed tomorrow,
before everybody, to turn them into lies. The sooner the librarians
and trustees and public men of this country proceed to make what I
am saying today about public libraries hopelessly ridiculous and
out-of-date, the sooner I will be happy.
If I were to move into a strange community and wanted to be a valuable
citizen in it, the first thing I would do would be to go to the public
library and ask the librarians and their assistants this question, "Who
are the interesting boys in this town?"
If the librarians could tell me I would linger around, and in one way
or another, get acquainted with those boys, follow them up and see what
I could do to connect them with the men with the books, and ideas and
ambitions and opportunities that belong to them.
If the librarians could not give me a list of such boys I would ask
them why.
If they told me that they had not time to attend to such things I would
ask the trustees why.
If the trustees had not selected librarians naturally interested
in boys and books and had not provided such librarians with the
necessary assistants so they would have time and spirit to do such
things I would turn to the people and I would challenge the people to
elect trustees for their library who knew what a library was for.
I sometimes think of the librarian in a town as the Mayor Of What
People Think, and if he does not have time to read books and to love
ideas and inventions in himself and in other people and does not take
time to like boys and get the ideas and boys together, he cannot be in
a town where he lives, a good Mayor Of What People Think.
We shall never have great libraries in the United States until the
typical librarian exalts his calling and takes his place in our modern
life seriously--as the ruler of our civilization, the creator of the
environment of a nation and as the dictator of the motives and ideals
of cities, the discoverer of great men and the champion of the souls of
the people.
I candidly ask you all: What is there that can be done in America in
the way of letting librarians keep on being folks?
One almost wishes that all the members of the library association of
America would write to Andrew Carnegie, snow him under with letters
from the nation, asking him to try the experiment of having at least
one of his libraries in the United States fitted up as elaborately
and as elegantly with librarians as it is with dumb waiters, marble
pillars, book racks and umbrella stands.
When we go into a library--some of us--we want to feel our minds being
gently exposed to cross-fertilization. We may not want librarians to
throw themselves at us--come down plump into our minds the minute we
enter whether or no, but we do want when we come into a library to be
able to find (if we steal around a little), eager, contagious, alluring
librarians who can make people read books and from whom people cannot
get away without reading books. Every library ought to be supplied
with at least one librarian in each department, stuck all over with
books, like burrs, so that nobody can touch him or be near him without
carrying away a book on him that he's got to read and that he will long
to read and will read until somebody drives him to bed!
Faithfully yours,
GERALD STANLEY LEE.
* * * * *
Northampton, Mass.
Greetings and good wishes to the men and women who hold the keys:
I saw in England, last year, a very old library where the books are
chained to the shelves. They have always been chained there; at first
because they were valuable and human nature was weak, and now to
preserve the tradition. But in general, either because the value of
books is less or because human nature is less weak, we trust our public
with its books unchained. The shelves of most libraries, I understand,
are open freely and the loss of books is small--small enough to be
disregarded, you tell me, in relation to the general good.
And not only is the public freely admitted. In Northampton I have seen,
many times, the books put on wheels and traveling out to the public;
they are in a kind of clothes-basket set on a truck with tiny wheels;
and the janitor trundles the truck to the trolley, and the trolley
carries the books to Leeds or Florence or Williamsburg, it may be--I do
not know their destination. I only see them traveling away on wheels.
This is only A-B-C to all of you. Most of you could tell me much more
interesting things that libraries are doing. Some of you have already
seen that it is not enough to put the books on wheels and trundle them
out to the public, but that the public itself must be followed and
captured. You tell me that in the future the library that would be
really up-to-date must catch its readers where it can and chain books
to them.
Presently we shall need wings to follow life and bring it back to
its books. For life moves swiftly; and you who hold the keys and who
are putting books on wheels and sending them out will not stop till
the life in books and the life of the world are come together again.
Presently we shall all work for this. You have freed the books, you
have sent them out, you have reached out to give them to us freely.
Presently you will unlock the books themselves and open the pages;
and the time when a child studied only a few books will belong to the
past; the living use of books will be a part of the life of every child
that is born into the world. Presently we shall all work together for
this--with you who hold the keys.
JENNETTE LEE.
* * * * *
New York, N. Y.,
April 3rd, 1913.
I'd like to do as you request--but I have no facts to contribute. I
feel sure that the public library is doing much to improve dramatic
taste--but I can't adduce any evidence.
Yours truly,
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
* * * * *
Philadelphia, Pa.
The librarian's constant difficulty is now, what shall a library try to
collect, what shall it keep? This has become a grave question. Being
myself book greedy, a gourmand of print, I am a poor judge of what to
reject.
Soon or late the average man, who is presumed to represent common
sense, will ask, "What is the use of these accumulations of books?"
This average man can never consider a library with comment of
imagination. A book is for him a book, whereas for you or me a book is
a saint, a hero, a martyr, a fool, a seraph of light bearing science.
Let us drop him with a word of scorn. We shall not ever understand one
another. Nor would he have the faith in books of that Samonicus who,
for the cure of a tertian fever in the Emperor Gordian, ordered the
fourth book of the Iliad to be applied to the head of the patient.
That has long puzzled me--why the fourth? But Mr. Average awaits a
quotation. A voice out of the splendid day of Elizabeth shall say it:
"Sir, he hath not fed of the dainties that are bred of a book; he hath
not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink."
S. WEIR MITCHELL.
The Nation,
New York City,
May 5th, 1913.
I fear you must be charging me with discourtesy for delaying so long my
reply to your letter of April 19th. I have in fact had the intention
of writing to you rather fully on the subject of public libraries and
best sellers, for use in your conference in Kaaterskill. One obligation
after another, however, has kept me from doing this and now I can only
express to you briefly my conviction that the public library ought by
no means to undertake "to supply all the best sellers hot from the
press." It has always seemed to me that the office of any institution
such as the library is as much to direct and restrain public taste as
it is to supply what is demanded.
With regret that I cannot reply at greater length to your flattering
request for my opinion, I am
Very truly yours,
PAUL E. MORE, Editor.
* * * * *
Washington, D. C.,
May 17, 1913.
When your letter came I was, I believe, away from home. At least I
never had an opportunity to answer it until just now, having been
absent a good deal since its date. Although you do not set the time
of the coming conference, I assume that it is not too late to answer
your question and I am writing now simply to acknowledge receipt of
your letter. I will, however, say that I believe that the circulation
of fiction by our public libraries does help to enlighten the people on
all problems whatsoever, for, in the first place, fiction contains many
of the standard novels which certainly have a tendency for good; and
secondly, however trashy novels are, in the main they have an educating
effect.
Yours very truly,
THOMAS NELSON PAGE.
* * * * *
4 Newbury Street, Boston, Mass.,
April 29, 1913.
I cannot better comply with your request (made on behalf of the
American Library Association) than by giving you a leaf from my own
experience of twenty-five years, as President or managing director
of a rural library, which serves the public in a mountain town where
I chiefly reside, and yet is a private institution, receiving no aid
whatever from town or state. And my message is to libraries of small
means and resources, so situated that trained librarians or assistants
are not to be had.
We have by this time about 5,000 volumes, all obtained through gift or
purchase, of which less than half are works of fiction; and the list,
on the whole, includes most standard works. From one benefactor we have
a good stone building, erected last year upon a lot of our own; and by
the time the testamentary provision of another benefactor takes effect
hereafter we shall have an endowment fund ample enough to place our
institution upon a permanent footing of liberal expenditure. Hitherto
our annual income has been small and met by life memberships, special
entertainments and personal gifts, in which summer visitors and the
townspeople combine.
In order that our books should be classified but without too much
effort I introduced, some years ago, the following scheme: A, denotes
works of fiction; B, biography, history, travels, etc.; C, poetry,
essays and miscellaneous; P, periodicals and pamphlets (by bound
volumes or in cases); R, books of reference. Juvenile books under these
respective heads are marked by an added J.
We have no card catalog and find our patrons served more to their
liking, and perhaps more economically, by issuing printed lists,
frequently, which give the author and the title simply; the number,
and letter, as printed, indicating the subject. About 1905 a pamphlet
catalog was brought out which gave our list complete to that date.
Since that time, supplement lists have been printed at convenience;
while the latest books are always posted in the library on written
sheets. When the supplements become sufficiently numerous we expect
to issue a second full pamphlet catalog; and so on. We cannot pay for
expert assistance to keep up a card catalog properly, with our present
means; and what our patrons most want is to have individual printed
lists that they can readily consult.
About 90 per cent of our circulation consists of A or AJ books, but we
try to increase the demand for the B and C books. So, too, the books
most eagerly sought are those last added, but we encourage the reading
of standard authors wherever we may.
Yours very truly,
JAMES SCHOULER.
* * * * *
Indianapolis, Ind.,
April 24, 1913.
"Is the fiction circulated by our public libraries helping to enlighten
the people on social and economic problems?"
George Meredith, in a letter written in 1884, said:
"I think that all right use of life, and the one secret of life, is
to pave ways for the firmer footing of those who succeed us.... Close
knowledge of our fellows, discernment of the laws of existence, these
lead to great civilization. I have supposed that the novel, exposing
and illustrating the natural history of man, may help us to such
sustaining roadside gifts."
Merely "entertaining" fiction is comparable to vaudeville or to
tight-rope walking; its use may be to amuse the tired laborer
of all sorts; its overuse, however, tends to become a habit and
produce flaccid minds. Save for this, all fiction which depends on
"plot"--always a hash of used meats--or on farcical or melodramatic
"situation," is almost negligible. But on the whole, and because of
this flaccidity, I believe, it would be a good thing if all merely
"entertaining" fiction could be destroyed.
A very small portion of that fiction which is produced by artists
seeking to know and reveal life, deals with economic problems. Except
for the work of a few writers (Mr. H. G. Wells, for instance,--he
includes economic discussions) it concerns itself with social relations
and "the natural history of man." Its circulation must certainly help
to enlighten people upon social problems. Here I must fail you, for
I do not know what type of fiction has the circulation you mean; the
most general circulation, I take it. A novel is helpful as it is a
revelation of truth; it is always harmful when it is written from a
false or assumed point-of-view; it is very likely to be harmful when
it is founded upon shallow observation or a cocksure philosophy. Most
of the fiction produced in our country today is founded upon nothing
except the desire to circulate; therefore it shouldn't!
Very sincerely yours,
BOOTH TARKINGTON.
* * * * *
Elizabeth, N. J.,
May 16, 1913.
The question you ask is not debatable. The public library is among
the foremost aids the American boy has today. As great a help as the
library is the librarian. Much depends upon his personal interest,
enthusiasm, judgment, appreciation of the book and the boy. "The man
behind the book," provides the power.
Librarians undoubtedly are a help not only to the boy, but to the
writer of boy's books. But like all other classes there are librarians
and librarians. Some are efficient, some too theoretical, some
visionary, some without the capacity to understand the normal boy,
and a few are deficient. As far as I have observed, the limitations
of the librarians are not so much in their knowledge of books as in
their understanding of boys. Every profession has its special peril.
The minister may become dogmatic, the judge autocratic. The peril of
the purely bookish man is that of becoming a prig. The pre-conceived
opinion of what a boy ought to be sometimes prevents the discovery
of what he really is. Among some there is a tendency to magnify
the unusual boy at the expense of the normal boy. Such librarians
would confer a benefit if they would discover what has become of the
prodigies of our boyhood.
It is sometimes forgotten that boys must be led into better reading,
not forcibly transplanted. There are steps and stages in this journey
as in every other. A taste for good reading is something to be
cultivated, not forced. A healthy boy has about the same appetite
for observing the ready-made opinions of his superiors that he has
for donning the made-over garments of his ancestors. Many librarians
understand the boy as well as the book. The combination is fruitful,
and divorce here has its own penalty as well as elsewhere. If the
American boy (as in many places he is) can be made to feel that the
librarian as well as the library are for his benefit, a double good
will result.
Cordially,
EVERETT T. TOMLINSON.
* * * * *
Arlington, Mass.,
May 29, 1913.
In reply to the question proposed to me by your Association, "Is the
public library helping the boy to become a useful man?" I reply
emphatically in the affirmative. Of course, the degree of helpfulness
must depend largely upon the library, and still more upon the character
of the boy. To one of low tastes, with no ambition beyond the hour's
indulgence, the finest library will have little meaning; but to one
having a thirst for knowledge, and aspirations for self-improvement,
access to any fairly well chosen collection of books cannot but prove
of inestimable service in stimulating and developing his nobler
qualities. My own early experience convinces me of this. In my
recollections of a backwoods boyhood ("My Own Story," pages 44-46) I
have told something of my indebtedness of a small subscription library,
in which were found the works of a few great writers, among those
Byron, Shakespeare, Plutarch, Cooper, and Scott, and a History of
England, which was the first book I turned to after reading "Ivanhoe."
The world was transformed for me by the poets and romancers that smiled
on me from those obscure shelves. I repeat here what I once wrote of
that golden opportunity of my boyhood. The town has a vastly more
attractive and comprehensive library today; but the value of such an
institution depends, after all, upon what we ourselves bring to it.
The few books that nourish vitally the eager mind are better than
richly furnished alcoves amid which we browse languidly and loiter with
indifference. This is true alike of the boy and the man.
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.
* * * * *
Toledo, Ohio,
May 14, 1913.
You ask, "Is the public library a factor in the recent development of a
public conscience?"
I suppose that by the term public conscience you mean that undoubted
quickening of the public sense, shall we say public decency?--which
America has felt in the last ten years, though as yet it has undertaken
no fundamental reforms, and is too apt to degenerate into a mere hue
and cry after some individual whom it would make a scape-goat for the
sins of the people.
Now, in the development of this feeling, or of this public conscience,
it is doubtful whether the public library has been much of a factor.
It depends altogether upon the librarian. There are a few instances,
no doubt, in which the public library has had this effect, and there
are many librarians in the country who, as wise and intelligent men
like yourself, are interested in vital subjects, and therefore able
to interest others in them. By a judicious exposure of books these
subjects are made so inviting and so attractive that the patrons of
the library are led on and on in an ever widening exploration of the
subject. The library does offer to any one who wishes to make inquiry
the opportunity of gratifying his desires, and in this way it no doubt
exercises a considerable influence. There is a profound and tremendous
influence, silent and indirect, from its mere existence, its mere
presence, which must do good in a city, just as in a home in which
there are many books, even though they were never read, there is the
atmosphere of culture. The librarian, however, should be a sort of
teacher, helping the public mind, assisting in the development of the
public conscience, for I fear that the public, if left to themselves,
would rather read the six best sellers, and in the realm of general
ideas engage, to recall a phrase of Henry James "in the exercise of
skipping."
Yours sincerely,
BRAND WHITLOCK.
SECOND GENERAL SESSION
(Tuesday morning, June 24, 1913)
The PRESIDENT: We are to start this morning with the committee reports.
Unless, however, undue objections are made we shall read these by title
and, like the members of Congress, ask leave to print. A number of
them indeed are in printed form and have been distributed and you have
doubtless found them on the chairs as you entered the hall. I may say
that some of these reports are unusually strong in that they represent
the work of a year of very careful thought and investigation by their
members. If you will take the time, either at this conference or after
you get home, to read these reports, you will greatly profit from the
labors of these respective committees. The printed reports comprise
those of the secretary, the treasurer, the trustees of the endowment
fund, the publishing board, the committee on bookbinding, the committee
on bookbuying, the committee on federal and state relations; and
reports have also been received in manuscript, by the secretary, from
the committees on co-operation with the National Education Association,
library administration, library training and work with the blind.
Unless it is requested that any particular one of these reports be read
at this time we shall pass them over and commit them to the secretary
for inclusion in the printed conference proceedings.
The above mentioned reports are here printed in full.
SECRETARY'S REPORT
The third report of the present secretary and the fourth since the
establishment of a headquarters office is here submitted to the
association. The material conditions of headquarters are practically
identical with those reported a year ago; we are still the recipients
of the generosity of the board of directors of the Chicago public
library, the large room furnished free by them being more and more
appreciated as we compare our commodious quarters with those greatly
inferior where a rent is charged which would be prohibitive to the
funds of the A. L. A. For the continued courtesy and unfailing kindness
of the librarian of the Chicago public library and his able staff I
cannot find adequate words. It is unquestionably a decided advantage
for the executive office of the A. L. A. to be in close proximity to a
large reference collection and to a competent corps of library experts.
In these respects we are fortunate not only in the Chicago public
library, but also in the John Crerar and Newberry libraries which so
admirably supplement each other in forming reference facilities of a
high order.
The routine work of the year has much of it so closely resembled in
kind that of last year that the secretary feels it unnecessary to
rehearse it again in detail, but respectfully refers inquiry on this
point to his report at the Ottawa conference. In quantity it is
rapidly increasing; there are more letters to write; there is more
proof to read; more personal calls from librarians and others as the
establishment of the office becomes known; there are more arrangements
to be made for the many-sided interests of the Association. The
Publishing Board's work is likewise increasing, and with the removal of
the Booklist office from Madison to Chicago headquarters, which will be
made in the near future, additional duties will devolve on the general
office, even though that periodical has its own special staff. These
things, however, are as we desire they should be and we are pleased to
see indications that the funds of the Association are going to permit
the enlargement of the work as this is found advisable.
=The Office as an Information Bureau=--In no way is this growth quite
so noticeable as in the increased correspondence through which the
executive office is used as an information bureau on library economy.
For a time after the establishment of the office this correspondence
was naturally almost entirely with librarians. The letters of the
past year, however, have shown that our existence is becoming known
to others. We are being told the problems of the library committees
of women's clubs; of manufacturers who wish to get their workmen
interested in a business library; of business men who are thinking of
establishing such a library; of young men and women who are considering
librarianship as a vocation and do not know the proper steps to take
to get the necessary training and experience; and of publishers and
of booksellers who are referring various matters to our office. These
things in addition to the steady daily stream of correspondence with
librarians in every state of the union. Last year we recorded that our
actual correspondence averaged 67 letters a day for a period covering
several months. It has been considerably greater the past year. This
includes, of course, all correspondence relative to publications,
membership matters, and business routine. Several months ago the
secretary printed 10,000 little leaflets mentioning some of the ways
in which the A. L. A. can assist in library informational lines. About
half of these have been distributed, mainly in channels outside of
regular library work and among those who perhaps had not previously
learned of headquarters and of our publications.
=Membership=--Last year it was the privilege of the secretary to
report that the membership was larger than ever before in the history
of the Association. We are now glad to be able to say that there is
a substantial increase in membership over last year. In January, the
secretary mailed with the annual membership bills an appeal to members
to help again this year as they did last in securing new members.
This appeal has been very effectual; many have been instrumental in
securing one or more new members and the secretary desires here to
thank all those who have so kindly assisted in this campaign. During
the late winter and early spring many personal letters were written
to librarians and library boards asking them to have their libraries
become institutional members of the A. L. A., and many have responded
favorably. Several hundred personal letters were also addressed to
those who had recently, according to the news columns in the library
periodicals, changed their positions, presumably for the better
financially.
When the last handbook was printed, in October, 1912, there were
2,365 members of the A. L. A. Since then to June 1st, 1913, 192 new
individual members and 40 new institutional members have joined, a
total of 232. On the other hand, the association has lost 11 members
by death, 35 have resigned, and judging by the experience of previous
years about 160 members will probably fail this year to renew their
membership and will consequently be dropped from the rolls. It is
likely that enough new members will join at the Kaaterskill Conference
to offset in numbers those whose membership lapses and that the net
membership in the 1913 handbook will probably be about 2,550 or a gain
of about 185 over 1912.
The income from membership dues is in consequence steadily increasing.
For the calendar year 1911 the total amount from this source was
$5,325.46 (including exchange on checks); in 1912, $6,236.18; and for
1913 we hope the total amount will not be far short of $7,000.
=Publicity=--The usual methods to secure as much publicity as possible
have been followed. The library periodicals have, of course, been
kept informed of what the office was doing that would interest the
library public. We have sent news notes from time to time to the Dial,
Nation, New York Times Review of Books, Bookman, Education Review,
American City, and other magazines, and to about 180 of the prominent
newspapers of the country. Several articles regarding the conference
were given to the Associated Press, and to news syndicates. Before the
Ottawa Conference, the Associated Press sent to all their subscribers
a multi-graphed portion of the president's address. The Association
needs more money for this publicity work and more time should be spent
on it than the secretary has been able to spend. Its results at present
are far from satisfactory and we hope that with growth of income a
more systematic publicity department can be organized, perhaps modelled
somewhat after the excellent methods employed by Prof. J. W. Searson,
who conducts the publicity work of the National Education Association.
=Registration for library position=--The executive office has from its
inception been something of a free employment bureau for librarians
and library assistants, who for proper and sufficient reasons desire
to change their positions. This year the work has been somewhat more
systematized by the use of a printed registration blank, which is sent
on request to any member of the association. The questions asked on
this blank are as follows:
Date of this registration.
Name in full.
Address (permanent).
Address (temporary, or until ...).
State fully all schools (above grammar grade) and colleges or
universities you have attended, with period of attendance at
each.
Degrees, when and where obtained.
Have you traveled abroad? When? Where? How long?
Languages you read easily.
Languages you read with assistance of a dictionary.
Library training and experience.
Positions held, with approximate dates; and salary received.
Nature of appointment desired.
Salary expected.
Part of country preferred.
Physical condition.
References.
Forty-two librarians have thus far registered on these blanks and five
or six of these have been helped to new positions. The secretary has
helped in the filling of some fifteen library positions aside from
those using the registration blank.
If, however, the service to those seeking positions, and to those
seeking capable librarians and assistants is to be as important and
far-reaching as we wish to make it, the office must have knowledge of
vacancies as well as of persons wanting positions. Library boards and
librarians are cordially invited to correspond with the secretary when
in need of library workers.
=Library Plans=--During the year a number of valuable additions have
been made to our collection of architects' plans of library buildings.
We want more, particularly good plans of buildings costing from $25,000
to $75,000, as these are most in demand. Will librarians and boards
who have recently acquired new buildings bear our needs in mind? These
plans have from the beginning proved useful, and if a fair number
of the latest type of plans could be added the collection would be
increasingly useful and used.
=Library Pension Systems=--During the year the secretary has been
making efforts to collect information about pension systems in
operation in libraries or plans being made for pensions. No great
progress has been made, due perhaps to the fact that not many libraries
are as yet contemplating a pension system. The secretary will be glad
to receive information from any librarian or board who has not yet
written him on this subject.
=A. L. A. Representatives at State Meetings=--President Legler was the
official representative at the Ohio meeting, Newark, October 21-24;
at the Illinois-Missouri joint meeting, St. Louis, October 24-26; and
South Dakota conference, Mitchell, November 25-27. He also addressed
the Long Island Library Club on the work of the A. L. A. on October
17th.
Mr. T. W. Koch, member of the Executive Board, was the official
representative to the Indiana state meeting, Terre Haute, October 17-19.
Dr. Arthur E. Bostwick, ex-president of the A. L. A., represented the
Association at the North Dakota conference, Mayville, October 1-2;
Minnesota meeting, Faribault, October 2-4; and Iowa meeting at Nevada,
October 8-10.
Secretary Utley represented the A. L. A. at the Illinois-Missouri
meeting, St. Louis, October 24-26; Oklahoma meeting, Muskogee, May
14-15; and was present unofficially at Niagara Falls, "New York library
week," September 23-28. The secretary has also lectured before the
New York state library school, the Training school for children's
librarians of the Pittsburgh Carnegie library, and the University of
Illinois library school.
=Necrology.= The Association has lost by death eleven members since
the conference of a year ago. The list includes an ex-president of the
A. L. A., and one of the most prominent librarians of the country;
a business man who had for years taken a deep interest in library
progress; an eminent churchman who has for many years maintained his
connection with the national association; the librarian of a large
university; the librarian of a well known public library; and several
others who at their several posts have faithfully performed their
duties and rendered their contributions to the work in which they were
engaged.
The list follows:
Clarence W. Ayer, librarian of the Cambridge (Mass.) public library,
died April 12, 1913. He was previously connected with Western Reserve
University, but had been engaged in library work in Massachusetts for a
number of years. He had been a member of the A. L. A. since 1900 (No.
1984) and had attended four conferences.
Dr. John Shaw Billings, director of the New York public library, died
March 11, 1913. Successful as an army surgeon during the war between
the states, he later assumed charge of the Surgeon-General's library
and brought it to recognition as one of the most celebrated medical
libraries in the world, and compiled an index catalog that has taken a
place among the permanent monuments of bibliography. Coming to New York
in 1895, he began the stupendous work of bringing the various libraries
of that city under one great system, releasing funds tied by legal
complications, and superintending the erection of a central building
costing nearly ten millions of dollars. These tasks he lived to
accomplish and they remain as his lasting monument. He was president
of the A. L. A. for the year 1901-02, and presided at its Magnolia
conference. He joined the association in 1881 (No. 404) and attended
six of its conferences. See Public Libraries, 18: 148-9; Library
Journal, 38, 212-14.
Bertha Coit, assistant in the New York public library, died July 22,
1912. She joined the Association in 1904 (No. 3167), and attended the
conferences of 1904 and 1907.
Right Rev. William Croswell Doane, Bishop of Albany, and for many years
vice-chancellor of the University of the State of New York, died May
16, 1913. He joined the A. L. A. in 1893 (No. 1125) and although he
attended none of the conferences had steadily maintained his interest
in library work and retained his membership in the Association.
Jennie S. Irwin, first assistant in the Mt. Vernon (N. Y.) public
library, died Nov. 8, 1912. She joined the Association in 1902 (No.
2437) and attended the conferences of 1906 and 1908.
Walter Kendall Jewett, librarian of the University of Nebraska, since
1906, died March 3, 1913. He was previously librarian of the medical
department of the John Crerar library, and had been notably successful
in his library work. He joined the Association in 1904 (No. 3109) and
attended four conferences.
Charles A. Larson, editor of publications of the Chicago public
library, died August 19, 1912. He had been connected with the Chicago
library for many years and was highly valued. His able work in the
reference department will be long remembered. He joined the Association
in 1901 (No. 2373) and after lapsing membership rejoined in 1910. He
attended the Mackinac conference.
Rev. William Ladd Ropes, librarian-emeritus of the Andover Theological
Seminary, at Andover, Massachusetts, died December 24, 1912. He was
well known to the librarians of an earlier generation. He joined the A.
L. A. in 1877 (No. 106) and attended three A. L. A. conferences, and
the London international conference of 1877.
Charles Carroll Soule, of Boston, long identified with the book
publishing business and interested in library work, died Jan. 7,
1913. He was trustee of the Brookline (Mass.) public library from
1889-1899, member of the A. L. A. Publishing Board from 1890-1908,
second vice-president of the A. L. A. in 1890; and a member of the
Council 1893-96 and 1900-05. Mr. Soule was an expert on library
planning, having written a book, and numerous articles on this subject.
A pamphlet on "Library rooms and buildings" was issued by the A. L. A.
Publishing Board as one of its tracts. He joined the A. L. A. in 1879
(No. 216) and had attended 18 conferences. No librarian was better
known to librarians than this interested layman. See Library Journal,
38:89; Public Libraries, 18:57.
Nelson Taylor, bookseller of New York, of the firm of Baker & Taylor,
died June 26, 1912. He had been a member of the A. L. A. since 1906
(No. 3531).
Bertha S. Wildman, secretary to the librarian of the Carnegie library
of Pittsburgh and a member of the faculty of the Training school for
children's librarians, died February 19, 1913. She was a graduate of
Pratt Institute library school and previous to her connection with the
Pittsburgh library had been the organizer and first librarian of the
Madison (N. J.) public library. She joined the A. L. A. in 1900 (No.
1945) and attended four conferences.
GEORGE B. UTLEY,
Secretary.
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
REPORT OF THE TREASURER, January 1--May 31, 1913
=Receipts=
Balance, Union Trust Company, Chicago, Jan. 1, 1913 $3,395.29
G. B. Utley, Secretary, Headquarters collections 4,555.41
Trustees Endowment Fund, interest 350.00
Trustees Carnegie Fund, interest 2,509.90
A. L. A. Publishing Board, Installment on Hdqrs. expense 1,000.00
Estate of J. L. Whitney 104.34
Interest, January--May, 1913 28.92 $11,943.86
-------- ----------
=Expenditures=
Checks No. 40-44 (Vouchers No. 615-690 incl.) $3,379.74
Distributed as follows:
Bulletin $ 246.06
Conference 20.70
Committees 23.50
Headquarters:
Salaries 2,125.00
Additional services 213.30
Supplies 177.91
Miscellaneous 155.45
Postage 78.48
Travel 85.00
Trustees Endowment Fund (Life Mem.) 150.00
C. B. Roden, Treas. (J. L. Whitney Fund) 104.34
A. L. A. Publishing Board, Carnegie Fund interest 2,509.90 5,889.64
-------- --------
Balance Union Trust Co $6,054.22
G. B. Utley, Balance, National Bank of Republic 250.00
---------
$6,304.22
James L. Whitney Fund
Feb. 4, 1913, Principal (Union Trust Co. of Chicago, savings acct.) $104.34
Respectfully submitted,
C. B. RODEN, Treasurer.
Chicago, June 1, 1913.
REPORT OF THE FINANCE COMMITTEE
To the American Library Association: Ladies and Gentlemen:--
In accordance with the provisions of the constitution, the Finance
Committee submit the following report:--
They have duly considered the probable income of the Association for
the current year and have estimated it at $21,915.00, and have approved
appropriations made by the Executive Board to that amount. The details
of the estimated income and of the appropriations are given in the
January number of the Bulletin. The committee have also approved the
appropriation to the use of the Publishing Board of any excess of sales
over the amount estimated.
On behalf of the committee, the chairman has audited the accounts of
the treasurer and of the secretary as assistant treasurer. He has found
that the receipts as stated by the treasurer agree with the transfer
checks from the assistant treasurer, and with the cash accounts of
the latter. The expenditures as stated are accounted for by properly
approved vouchers. The bank balance and petty cash, as stated, agree
with the bank books and petty cash balances. The accounts of the
assistant treasurer have been found correct as cash accounts.
On behalf of the committee, Mr. E. H. Anderson has checked the
securities now in the custody of the trustees, and certifies that their
figures in regard to the securities on hand are correct. He finds that
at par value the bonds and other securities amount to $102,500.00
for the Carnegie fund, and $7,000.00 for the principal account. He
certifies that to the best of his knowledge and belief the accounts
submitted are correct.
All of which is respectively submitted for the committee.
CLEMENT W. ANDREWS,
Chairman.
With the completion of the ninth volume of the A. L. A. Booklist Miss
Elva L. Bascom severs her connection as editor and as head of the
editorial department of the Publishing Board. For five years Miss
Bascom has carried on this work with signal ability and with devoted
industry, and it is with sincere regret that the members of the Board
have accepted her resignation. During this period of editorial activity
Miss Bascom has maintained the excellent standards established by
her predecessors, Miss Caroline Garland and Mrs. Katharine MacDonald
Jones, and has given to the publication a standard of judgment in
selection and critical appreciation that has made the A. L. A. Booklist
invaluable to thousands of librarians and as many library trustees in
the selection of current books for their respective institutions. The
A. L. A. Booklist is everywhere recognized as a publication wholly
untrammeled by commercial consideration in the listing of books and the
recommendation which these are given.
Miss May Massee has been elected as Miss Bascom's successor and will
enter upon the work early in August. Her experience as a member of the
staff of the Buffalo public library and her training prior thereto
commends her for the position.
Concerning the A. L. A. Booklist there are no new facts to report,
comments noted in previous reports being applicable as well at this
time. While renewed representations have come to the members of the
Board, suggesting a change of size, form, and character, and the
arguments in behalf thereof have been given due weight, it has not
seemed wise to alter the policy which has been continued for a period
of nine years.
With the beginning of the new volume the place of publication and
therewith the editorial headquarters will be transferred from Madison,
Wis., to Chicago. By consolidating the editorial headquarters of
the Publishing Board with the headquarters of the American Library
Association both will be materially strengthened and some financial
economies can be affected.
=Periodical Cards=--The Board received word last fall from the Library
Bureau that they would have to advance prices for the printing of the
analytical periodical cards. The matter was placed in the hands of a
committee, and after some negotiation, unexpectedly prolonged by the
illness of the representative of the Library Bureau, a rearrangement
of the work was made which will enable the Board to continue the
service to the present subscribers without change in prices. This has
been accomplished by giving an order for sixty-five copies of all
titles and thirty-five additional titles of the periodicals most in
demand. Hereafter, subscriptions must be made either to the full set of
approximately 2500 titles, or to the limited set of 200. A revision of
the list is now in progress.
Concerning the periodicals issued during the past year Mr. William
Stetson Merrill has submitted the following report as editor:
The sixteen shipments of A. L. A. periodical cards prepared and sent
out during the year ending May 31, 1913 have comprised those numbered
284 to 299, which were received by subscribers June 18, 1912 to May 14,
1913. These shipments have included 3459 new titles and 136 reprints,
making a total of 3595 titles. The time of preparation has been reduced
from thirteen to ten and a half weeks.[2]
[2] By "time of preparation" is here meant the interval between the
receipt of copy, and receipt of cards by the subscribers.
In February of the present year the editor took occasion to check up
the work currently done, with the titles of periodicals given in the
printed list as indexed by the Publishing Board. It was then discovered
that in the case of thirty-five periodicals no titles had been
indexed during intervals ranging from two to five years to date. These
facts were brought to the attention of the collaborating libraries,
which later reported upon these arrears as follows: Periodicals for
which no issues later than those indexed had been received by the
library, 12; discontinued, 3; now indexed by the Library of Congress,
2; overlooked or indexing postponed by the library, 10; dropped, 2;
record card wrong, 1; no indexer, 5. The collaborating libraries at
once took up the work of bringing their indexing up to date and at the
time of writing only three current periodicals are not indexed to date,
with the exception of those for which there is at present no indexer.
The preparation of the distribution and charges sheets has been in the
hands of Mrs. S. L. Hitz and Miss Jane Burt under the supervision of
the editor, who has also attended to all the correspondence connected
with the card work.
=New Publications=--New publications since the last report was
submitted include the following:
Aids in library work with foreigners, compiled by Marguerite
Reid and John G. Moulton. (2000 copies).
How to choose editions, by William E. Foster. (Handbook 8)
(2500 copies).
Buying list of books for small libraries, compiled by Zaidee
Brown,--new edition revised by Caroline Webster. (1000 copies).
List of economical editions, by Le Roy Jeffers. (2nd edition).
Revised. (1000 copies).
Periodicals for the small library, by Frank K. Walter. (3000
copies).
A. L. A. Manual of library economy, 5 new chapters.
Chap. V. Proprietary and subscription libraries, by Charles
Knowles Bolton. (1000 copies).
Chap. X. The library building, by W. R. Eastman. (2000
copies).
Chap. XIII. Training for librarianship, by Mary W. Plummer.
(2000 copies).
Chap. XXVII. Commissions, state aid and state agencies, by
Asa Wynkoop. (In press).
Chap. XXXII. Library printing, by Frank K. Walter. (1500
copies).
A normal library budget and its items of expense, by O. R.
Howard Thomson. (Handbook 8.) (1500 copies).
Index to library reports, by Katharine T. Moody. (1000 copies).
List of Polish books, compiled by Mrs. Jozefa Kudlicka.
(Foreign Booklist 6). (1000 copies).
=Forthcoming Publications=--How to start a public library, by G. E.
Wire, M. D. Second and revised edition. (Tract 2).
Graded list of stories for reading aloud, by Harriot E. Hassler;
revised by Carrie E. Scott.
=Reprints=--During the past year the following publications have been
reprinted:
Guide to reference books, by Alice B. Kroeger. (1000 copies).
Cutter's Notes from the art section of a library. (Tract 5).
(1000 copies).
Catalog rules, compiled by committees of the American Library
Association and the Library Association (of the United
Kingdom). 1908 edition (1000 copies).
Essentials in library administration, compiled by Miss L. E.
Stearns. (2nd edition). (Handbook 1). (2000 copies). Revised.
Mending and repair of books, by Margaret W. Brown. (Handbook
6). (1000 copies).
U. S. Government documents in small libraries, by J. I. Wyer,
Jr. (3rd edition). (Handbook 7). (1000 copies).
=A. L. A. Catalog=--The success of the A. L. A. Catalog, 1904-11,
has been greater in point of sales than the most sanguine of us had
expected, 3471 copies having been sold since its publication a year
ago. There is still a reasonably steady demand, 321 copies having
been sold during the first five months of 1913. The book has been
more extensively advertised than any of the Board's other recent
publications, special efforts having been made to make it known to
high schools, college professors and book lovers generally, but the
sales have, nevertheless, been largely confined to libraries, library
commissions and library schools.
=Manual of Library Economy=--Fourteen chapters of the Manual have thus
far been printed, each as a separate pamphlet, and one is now in press.
The list is as follows:
1. American library history, by C. K. Bolton.
2. The Library of Congress, by W. W. Bishop.
4. The college and university library, by J. I. Wyer, Jr.
5. Proprietary and subscription libraries, by C. K. Bolton.
9. Library legislation, by W. F. Yust.
10. The library building, by W. R. Eastman.
12. Administration of a public library, by A. E. Bostwick.
13. Training for librarianship, by Mary W. Plummer.
15. Branch libraries and other distributing agencies, by Linda A.
Eastman.
17. Order and accession department, by F. F. Hopper.
20. Shelf department, by Josephine A. Rathbone.
22. Reference department, by E. C. Richardson.
26. Bookbinding, by A. L. Bailey.
27. Commissions, state aid and state agencies, by Asa Wynkoop. In press.
32. Library printing, by F. K. Walter.
The chairman of the Committee the manual, J. I. Wyer, Jr., reports that
seven other chapters are known to be in an advanced state and may be
expected soon.
=Advertising=--The Board's publications have as usual been advertised
in Library Journal and Public Libraries and in one or two special
numbers of the Dial. Review copies of publications are sent to library
periodicals and a number of other papers and magazines, such as the
Bookman, American City, Nation, Dial, New York Times Review, Chicago
Post (Friday review), Springfield Republican, Boston Transcript, etc.
Our best returns, however, continue to come from direct circularization
of libraries, library commissions and library schools, about 11,000
pieces of mail advertising our publications having been sent out since
the last conference.
No new large publication has appeared since the A. L. A. Catalog,
1904-11, was published a year ago. Although thirteen new publications
have been printed and two more are forthcoming they are all, with one
exception, small in size and with price ranging from ten to twenty-five
cents a copy. Consequently the amounts from sales are but small in the
aggregate. Would it not be well for the Board to endeavor to put forth
at least one publication each year which shall be of sufficient size,
usefulness and importance to make it rank as the "opus major" of the
year? There are surely subjects enough within our scope that can be
handled to the advantage of the libraries and the profit of the Board.
=Foreign lists=--The Board has not felt greatly encouraged to undertake
the publication of lists of foreign books because of the unfortunate
financial experience with those already issued, only one of the five
having paid for itself. This spring, however, when the manuscript of
the long-expected Polish list was received a new policy was adopted.
The secretary circularized those libraries whom he thought would be
interested in this list, stating that the publication of the list
depended upon the receipt of a sufficient number of subscriptions,
requesting those libraries who were able and disposed to do so, to
subscribe for at least four copies at 25 cents each. By this means
enough subscriptions were readily secured and the Polish list has been
printed. If libraries are willing to subsidize the publication of these
lists, or putting it another way, to pay for several copies more
than they perhaps need, other lists can be undertaken, and the Board
will welcome suggestions as to what languages should be taken up. It
has been suggested that a Yiddish list would be useful, also Italian,
Lithuanian, Finnish and Spanish lists.
HENRY E. LEGLER, Chairman.
FINANCIAL REPORT
=Cash Receipts June 1, 1912, to May 31, 1913.=
Balance, June 1, 1912 $ 1,168.46
Interest on Carnegie Fund 6,084.90
Receipts from publications:
Cash sales $3,354.68
Payments on account 9,936.85 13,291.53
Interest on bank deposits 17.36
Sundries 1.56 $20,563.81
--------- ----------
=Payments, June 1, 1912, to May 31, 1913.=
Cost of publications:
A. L. A. Booklist $1,671.40
A. L. A. Bulletin reprints 52.57
A. L. A. Catalog, 1904-11 3,613.43
Aids in library work with foreigners 38.50
Buying list of books for a small library 40.00
Catalog rules 193.19
Essentials in library administration 242.99
Government documents in small libraries 25.50
How to choose editions .... 70.00
List of economical editions 111.80
Manual of library economy, Chaps. 5, 10, 13 148.60
Mending and repair of books 22.50
N. E. A. Reprint (Bostwick's article) 14.50
Periodicals for the small library 93.80
Periodical cards 2,038.44 $8,377.22
Addressograph supplies 21.47
Typewriter 37.50
Advertising 177.40
Postage and express 1,089.01
Rent, Madison office 300.00
Travel 189.72
Salaries 2,658.77
Elva L. Bascom, editing A. L. A. Catalog, 1904-11 300.00
Katharine T. Moody, editing Index to Library reports 300.00
Expense, headquarters (1912--$2,000; 1913--a/c $1,000) 3,000.00
Supplies and incidentals 1,009.61
Printing 15.25
Royalty on Guide to reference books 279.78
Contingencies 40.81
Balance on hand, May 31, 1913 2,767.27 $20,563.81
SALES OF A. L. A. PUBLISHING BOARD PUBLICATIONS.
April 1, 1912, to March 31, 1913.
A. L. A. Booklist, regular subscriptions 1385 $1,385.00
Additional subs. at reduced rate of 50c 187 93.50
Bulk subscriptions 853.20
Extra copies 1110 159.10 $2,490.80
Handbook 1, Essentials in library administration 617 124.47
Handbook 2, Cataloging for small libraries 602 105.04
Handbook 3, Management of traveling libraries 42 6.13
Handbook 4, Aids in book selection (out of print)
Handbook 5, Binding for small libraries 279 39.40
Handbook 6, Mending and repair of books 395 61.02
Handbook 7, Government documents in small libraries 528 72.35
Handbook 8, How to choose editions 1561 97.39 505.80
Tract 2, How to start a library 38 1.90
Tract 3, Traveling libraries (out of print)
Tract 5, Notes from the art section of a library 359 17.93
Tract 8, A village library 89 4.42
Tract 9, Library school training 87 4.32
Tract 10, Why do we need a public library 245 10.71 39.28
Foreign Lists, French 54 13.32
Foreign Lists, French fiction 38 1.90
Foreign Lists, German 45 22.00
Foreign Lists, Hungarian 17 2.48
Foreign Lists, Norwegian and Danish 29 7.11
Foreign Lists, Swedish 35 8.61 55.42
Reprints, Arbor day list 24 1.20
Reprints, Bird books 10 .99
Reprints, Bostwick, Public library and public school 20 1.00
Reprints, Cataloging in legislative reference work 54 2.89
Reprints, Christmas Bulletin 14 .70
Reprints, Efficiency of L. Staff and scientific
management 127 1.80
Reprints, National library problem of today 13 .65
Reprints, Rational library work with children 73 3.60
Reprints, Relation of P. L. to municipality 1183 25.90
Reprints, Traveling libraries as a first step 26 1.30 40.03
Periodical cards, Subscriptions 1,868.63
Periodical cards, Old South Leaflets v. 14 6.30
Periodical cards, Reed's Modern Eloquence sets 5 12.50 1,887.43
League Publications:
Aids in library work with foreigners 630 44.73
Directions for librarian of a small library 712 22.05
Graded list of stories for reading aloud 87 8.42
Library and social movement 172 6.59
Buying list of books for small library 385 28.47 110.26
A. L. A. Manual of library economy:
Chap. I. American library history 228 16.16
Chap. II. Library of Congress 162 12.59
Chap. IV. College and university library 178 14.19
Chap. V. Proprietary and subscription
libraries 264 23.62
Chap. IX. Library legislation 198 15.86
Chap. X. The library building 381 31.02
Chap. XII. Administration of a public library 202 16.34
Chap. XIII. Training for librarianship 246 23.85
Chap. XV. Branch libraries 225 15.82
Chap. XVII. Order and accession department 346 27.84
Chap. XX. Shelf department 285 21.70
Chap. XXII. Reference department 229 19.23
Chap. XXVI. Bookbinding 342 27.36 $265.58
A. L. A. Catalog, 1904-11 3471 4,107.25
A. L. A. Index to general literature 25 143.40
Catalog rules 547 298.32
Girls and women and their clubs 34 2.65
Guide to reference books 565 774.83
Guide to reference books, Supplement 528 124.63
Hints to small libraries 130 84.95
Index to library reports (advance orders) 41 38.70
Library buildings 172 16.57
List of editions selected for economy in bookbuying 94 22.43
List of economical editions, (2nd edition) 164 38.41
List of music and books about music 50 12.24
List of subject headings, (3rd edition) 819 1,902.55
List of 550 children's books 199 29.44
Literature of American history 25 135.00
Literature of American history, Supplements 71 9.69
Periodicals for the small library 98 9.40
Plans for small library buildings 97 116.72
Reading for the young 11 8.11
Reading for the young, Supplement 15 3.71
Subject Index to A. L. A. Booklist 162 23.01
Subject Index to A. L. A. Booklist, Supplement 224 12.40
A. L. A. Bulletin 271 84.00
Library statistics--Bulletin reprint 25 1.18 8,029.59
---- --------- ---------
Total sale of publications $13,424.19
REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE CARNEGIE AND ENDOWMENT FUNDS
To the President and Members of the American Library Association:
The Trustees of the Endowment Fund of the American Library Association
beg leave to submit the following statement of the accounts of their
trust--the Carnegie and General Funds--for the fiscal year ending
January 15, 1913.
There has been no change in the investments, and all interest has been
promptly paid. The Trustees are pleased to call attention to the credit
to the General Endowment Fund of nine life memberships, and would
recommend that more of such memberships be taken as they are about the
only source of addition to that Fund.
On January 31, 1913, the usual audit of the investments and accounts
of the trust was made by Mr. E. H. Anderson, of the New York public
library at the request of the chairman of the Finance committee of
the Association. As evidence of the audit, Mr. Anderson furnished the
Trustees with the following copy of his report made to the Finance
committee:
Feb. 1, 1913.
My dear Mr. Andrews:
Yesterday, January 31st, I went to the vaults of the Union Trust
Company at Fifth avenue and Thirty-eighth street, this city, and
with Mr. Appleton and Mr. Kimball, trustees of the endowment fund of
the American Library Association, checked up the bonds now in their
custody. I enclose herewith their typewritten statement concerning the
funds in their hands, and I certify to the correctness of the figures
as to the bonds on hand. These I have checked in black ink after a
personal count of them at the vaults aforesaid. At their par value they
amount to $102,500 for the Carnegie Fund, and $7,000 for the general
endowment fund.
I have not examined the bank book of the trustees nor the vouchers
for the amounts transmitted to Mr. Roden, the treasurer. Mr. Roden's
records should verify the amounts transmitted to the treasurer. If you
think it worth while I can examine the bank book of the trustees, but
personally I do not think it necessary. If you feel that it should be
done, however, return the enclosed typewritten statement for comparison
with the bank book. Mr. Roden will also be able to check the receipts
for life members. I think Mr. Appleton said that two more had been
received since January 15th.
I hereby certify that to the best of my knowledge and belief all of the
accounts on the typewritten sheets enclosed herewith are correct.
Very sincerely yours,
(Signed) E. H. ANDERSON.
Respectfully submitted,
W. W. APPLETON,
W. C. KIMBALL,
W. T. PORTER,
Trustees Endowment Fund A. L. A.
May 1, 1913.
CARNEGIE FUND, PRINCIPAL ACCOUNT
Cash donated by Mr. Andrew Carnegie $100,000.00
=Invested as follows:=
June 1, 1908 5,000 4% Amer. Tel. & Tel. 96-1/2 $ 4,825.00
Bonds
June 1, 1908 10,000 4% Amer. Tel. & Tel. 94-3/8 9,437.50
Bonds
June 1, 1908 15,000 4% Cleveland Terminal 100 15,000.00
June 1, 1908 10,000 4% Seaboard Air Line 95-1/2 9,550.00
June 1, 1908 15,000 5% Western Un. Tel. 108-1/2 15,000.00
June 1, 1908 15,000 3-1/2% N. Y. Cen.
(Lake Shore Col.) 90 13,500.00
June 1, 1908 15,000 5% Mo. Pacific 104-7/8 15,000.00
May 3, 1909 15,000 5% U. S. Steel 104 15,000.00
Aug. 6, 1909 1,500 U. S. Steel 106-7/8 1,500.00
July 27, 1910 1,000 U. S. Steel 102-1/2 1,000.00
------- --------
102,500 99,812.50
Jan. 15, 1913 Union Trust Co. on deposit 187.50
-----------
$100,000.00
In addition to the above we have on hand at the Union Trust Company
$150 profit on the sale of the Missouri Pacific Bonds, which we have
carried to a special surplus account.
CARNEGIE FUND, INCOME ACCOUNT
=1912=
January 15, Balance $1,524.33
February 6, Int. N. Y. Central 262.50
May 1, Int. U. S. Steel 437.50
May 10, Int. Cleveland Terminal 300.00
May 31, Int. Mo. Pacific 375.00
May 31, Int. Seaboard Air Line 200.00
July 2, Int. Amer. Tel. & Tel. 300.00
July 2, Int. Western Un. Tel. 375.00
August 8, Int. N. Y. Central 262.50
September 3, Int. Seaboard Air Line 200.00
September 3, Int. Mo. Pacific 375.00
November 1, Int. U. S. Steel 437.50
November 1, Int. Cleveland Terminal 300.00
December 31, Int. Union Trust 39.90
=1913=
January 2, Int. Western Un. Tel. 375.00
January 15, 1913 Cash on hand 934.90 $6,064.23
------- ---------
=Disbursements:=
=1912=
January 24, Carl B. Roden, Treas. $1,524.33
June 4, Carl B. Roden, Treas. 1,575.00
September 18, Carl B. Roden, Treas. 500.00
October 28, Rent Safe Deposit Co. 30.00
November 18, Carl B. Roden, Treas. 1,500.00
January 15, 1913, Cash on hand 934.90 $6,064.23
--------- ---------
ENDOWMENT FUND, PRINCIPAL ACCOUNT
=1912=
January 15, On hand, Bonds and Cash $7,286.84
February 28, Life membership, C. N. Baxter 25.00
March 28, Life membership, L. A. McNeil 25.00
March 28, Life membership, A. B. Smith 25.00
May 4, Life membership, H. L. Leupp 25.00
May 28, Life membership, W. M. Smith 25.00
May 28, Life membership, L. E. Taylor 25.00
July 2, Life membership, E. P. Sohier 25.00
September 18, Life membership, M. R. Cochran 25.00
November 1, Life membership, S. C. Fairchild 25.00
$7,511.84
------ ---------
=Invested as follows:=
=1908=
June 1, 2 U. S. Steel Bonds 98-1/2 $1,970.00
October 19, 2 U. S. Steel Bonds 102-5/8 2,000.00
November 5, 1-1/2 U. S. Steel Bonds 101 1,500.00
=1910=
July 27, 1-1/2 U. S. Steel Bonds 102-1/2 1,500.00
January 15, 1913 Cash on hand, 541.84 $7,511.84
Union Trust Co. --------- ---------
ENDOWMENT FUND, INCOME ACCOUNT
=1912=
January 15, Cash on hand $175.00
May 1, Int. U. S. Steel 175.00
November 1, Int. U. S. Steel 175.00 $525.00
------- -------
=Disbursements:=
=1912=
January 24, Carl B. Roden, Treas. $175.00
June 4, Carl B. Roden, Treas. 175.00
January 15, 1913 Cash on hand 175.00 $525.00
------- --------
BOOKBINDING COMMITTEE
In last year's report it was stated that a special collection, showing
the kind of work done by library binders, had been started by this
committee. During the past year this collection has been materially
increased by samples submitted by different binders; it now includes
work from 34 binders covering the entire country from the Atlantic
ocean to the Pacific. The collection was formed so that when librarians
write to ask about the work of specific binders, the work itself can be
examined and intelligent answers given.
Notices of the collection were printed in the various library
periodicals and a certain numbers of requests for information have been
received; a smaller number than the committee hoped for, but sufficient
to warrant keeping the collection up-to-date.
In view of certain criticisms of this collection, it may be well to
state that it is not the purpose to print criticisms of the work
of different binders, or to grade them in any way. When asked for
information the committee will not compare the work of one binder with
another, neither will librarians be advised to desert one binder and
employ another. All that will be done will be to send suggestions as
to ways in which the work of the binder in question can be improved.
In order to do this the work of the binder must be available for
examination. The committee fails to see how any binder can take offense
at this method, or claim that other binders are being officially
recognized by the A. L. A.
The announcement of the publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
that they were about to issue a Yearbook which would be printed only
on India paper called forth a protest from this committee against
the use of thin paper--a protest which had no effect whatever until
letters protesting against its use had been sent to the publishers by
50 librarians of the larger libraries. Even then the sole concession
that the publishers made was to agree to bind 750 copies on ordinary
paper, provided that we could guarantee a sale of that number. For
this reason the committee asks that those who wish to purchase a thick
paper edition of the Yearbook register their orders with the committee.
If the total number by July 1st amounts to 750 copies, the publishers
will be notified to that effect. Many librarians have refused to buy
the India paper edition, and it is evident that if all librarians would
refuse to get it, the publishers would realize that the demands of
librarians in this respect should be heeded.
There have been comparatively few reference books published or
announced during the year which the committee felt would need to be
bound especially for library use. It was thought advisable, however,
to submit our specifications for binding the new editions of the
Standard Dictionary and Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography.
The publishers of the Standard Dictionary adopted practically all of
the specifications and the publishers of the Cyclopaedia of American
Biography now have them under consideration.
In this connection it is worthy of notice that the publishers of
reference books are not only giving studied attention to binding
processes, but they also realize more fully than they did a few
years ago the necessity of using leather which is free-from-acid.
Until within the last two or three years it has been difficult to
get leathers tanned according to the specifications of the Society
of Arts. Recently, however, several firms in this country have begun
to specialize in leathers free-from-acid; and in addition to this,
the Government Printing Office insists on having a certain amount of
such leather and calls for it in its proposals for bids. These are
encouraging signs that in the future we may hope to get leather which
will not disintegrate so rapidly as that which we have been obliged to
use for many years past.
With assured standards of book cloths and leathers, which
manufacturers, publishers, binders and librarians each year are
recognizing more and more as vital to the proper construction
of a serviceable book, there remains only paper to be carefully
standardized. Some efforts are being made by private companies and by
the government to discover which papers are best for certain uses, but
at present the librarian at least knows little of the subject and is
practically at the mercy of the publisher.
ARTHUR L. BAILEY,
ROSE G. MURRAY,
J. RITCHIE PATTERSON.
COMMITTEE ON BOOKBUYING
At the Ottawa meeting of the American Library Association this
committee reported simply progress, without giving details of its work
during the past year, but it had submitted the following report to the
Executive Board, which we now submit to the Association at large, and
follow it up with a further report of the action of your committee
during the past year.
To the Executive Board of the American Library Association.
The A. L. A. Committee on bookbuying met with a committee from the
American Booksellers' Association in Cleveland on May 13, 1912 for
the purpose of discussing book prices and discounts to libraries. As
it was found impossible to come to any satisfactory understanding
before the annual meeting of the associations, it was decided to make
only a report of progress. It was, however, further agreed that a
more detailed report should be made to the Executive Boards of the
associations to ascertain if the Executive Boards deemed it wise that
the discussion should be continued.
The Booksellers' Association at its annual convention held in New York
in May has accepted the report of progress, and has reappointed its
committee.
During the year 1910-11 your committee had much correspondence with the
officers of the American Booksellers' Association, with the librarians
and with the booksellers throughout the country on questions of the
upward tendency of book prices and the efforts which were being made to
decrease the discounts to libraries.
At a meeting of the American Booksellers' Association held in May,
1911, a committee on "Relations with libraries" was appointed to
take up the matter with the committee of the A. L. A. Shortly after
this committee was appointed, your committee asked that a time be
set for a meeting. As the chairman of the Booksellers' committee was
abroad, the matter was postponed until September. In September the
A. L. A. committee was asked to prepare a statement and submit it
to the committee of the American Booksellers' Association, to which
they agreed to make a reply, the two papers to form the basis for a
discussion at a meeting to be held as soon as the Booksellers' reply
had been prepared. We submitted the statement requested in October,
1911. Although repeated requests for a reply were made, we did not
succeed in getting a copy until March, 1912, and notwithstanding
repeated requests for a meeting to discuss the matter, none was held
until May 13, 1912, on the eve of the annual conference of the American
Booksellers' Association.
We attach a copy of the statement made by your committee and the reply
by the committee of the American Booksellers' Association. The attitude
of the members of the committee of the Booksellers' Association at
the meeting referred to did not differ from that taken in the reply
excepting that they were willing to modify the expressions in the
reply to a considerable degree. It urged that special attention should
be given to the tables of business loss and profit, which had been
prepared in the book store of Brentano's. In connection with these
figures the net books should be most considered so far as the new books
are concerned. At the present rate of increase of books so issued it
will be but a short time before all books are so published.
Your committee was asked to admit that it was morally wrong to demand
that the booksellers should do business at any such profits, or loss,
shown by these figures. Your committee did not feel that it was
justified in taking that position, nor would it be even if it were more
certain of the accuracy and fairness of the figures.
Without doubt there is much that is wrongfully asked or required of the
booksellers by some of the library people, which must of necessity add
materially to the cost of doing business, but this, we believe, should
be paid for by those asking the special favors, and should not be
covered by a regular charge upon all library business. There was much
to be said in favor of the booksellers' increase of prices if it needs
to cover such expenses.
On the other hand, it is thought that the bookseller is not justified
in all of the increases which have been made in the prices of books to
libraries; as, for example, the discounts now allowed to libraries from
prices of the net fiction and net juveniles.
It is believed that, with the right spirit of coöperation, there are
certain changes that might be made which would help the bookseller, as
well as the librarian. If what we understand to be the present attitude
of the booksellers remains unchanged, if they are unable to give as
well as to take, your committee feels as though the discussion might
as well come to an end. We believe that there exists considerable
difference of opinion among booksellers as to the justice of the terms
now being offered to libraries as large buyers of books.
It will be a matter of great regret if there cannot be established
most cordial relations between the libraries and the Booksellers'
Association. At the same time, we do not think that the A. L. A. should
establish such relations upon terms made wholly for the benefit of the
booksellers.
We think that the Executive Board should know the present condition of
the negotiations, so that it might, if it sees fit, instruct its future
committee.
(Signed)
WALTER L. BROWN,
CARL B. RODEN,
CHARLES H. BROWN.
Committee on Bookbuying.
Statement Made by the Committee on Bookbuying of the American Library
Association to the Committee on Relations with Libraries of the
American Booksellers' Association.
October, 1911.
To the Committee on Relations with Libraries, American Booksellers'
Association.
Gentlemen:
We send you herewith a brief statement of the position of the Book
Buying Committee of the American Library Association in relation to the
subject which we hope to discuss with you.
The relations between libraries and the book trade should be placed
upon a business basis, and the discussion of them upon any other ground
is not asked for by the libraries.
There is no question as to the desirability and the necessity of
improving the conditions of the book trade, and we are in sympathy with
the apparently successful efforts now being made toward that end.
The libraries ask that at this time of reorganization and radical
changes a careful and just consideration should be given to their
claims as large buyers of a special character. This has always been
recognized in the past, and is the reason for the special discounts
allowed them by the booksellers.
The library trade as a factor in the book business is of increasing
importance. While it may not be considered as "Wholesale business"
if, as it is claimed, that term implies the purchase in quantities of
single titles and involves a business risk in such purchases, yet it
differs so much more from the character of the retail trade that in the
new adjustment of discounts there would seem to be little justice in
charging against it the expenses of retail trade.
We believe that the amount of library trade, and its peculiar character
warrant your association in having appointed a committee to consider
its claims.
In dealing with libraries many of the largest items of the expense
involved in the conduct of the retail business are wholly unnecessary.
It can be conducted as well by dealers on back streets or in lofts as
it can be by those who have the most luxurious and expensive stores to
attract the retail trade, it does not call for the advertising of their
wares by the dealers; all skill of salesmanship is eliminated, and no
accounts have to be charged off because of failure.
It is claimed that there are other expenses as great, perhaps, as those
mentioned, which are peculiar to the library trade, but in reality are
not called for in the business of many libraries, and while, perhaps,
they are customary, they are really necessary in but few cases, if
any. These expenses would seem to be rather the result of bookselling
methods than because of any peculiar demands of the business. These
"bad features," as they were called in your recent convention, were
pointed out as being
(a) Very slow pay,
(b) Its approval feature,
(c) The practice of asking for competitive bids with the lack
of ability to judge squarely of such bids.
We cannot see that any of these features are of vital importance to the
library. To many libraries, as we have said, they do not apply at all,
and probably others would be better off if they were not allowed by the
trade.
The "approval feature" which was made much of by one of your officers,
is, we believe, quite as much the fault of the dealers who wish to
urge the sale of their stock as it is the fault of libraries who wish
to examine the books before purchasing. Many books are sent out to
libraries on approval which have already been passed upon, or are
entirely outside the range of their purchase, and involve an expense of
time to the library, which is forced upon it by the bookseller.
We agree that no library should ask for competitive bids on itemized
lists, for the gain to the libraries who do this is much smaller than
the expense involved. It is probable that such lists would show a lack
of bibliographical detail and would require much time in wasted effort
on the part of the bookseller. Library authorities purchasing books
in this manner might, perhaps, be expected to show a "lack of ability
to judge squarely of such bids." We believe that the bibliographical
work of the bookseller in searching for the best (or more often the
cheapest) edition to quote on such a list is the most expensive
work the bookseller would have in this trade. Such work is wholly
unnecessary, as the selected lists of recommended books published by
the American Library Association, as well as those published by the
state and local associations and the large libraries, are in the habit
of stating the edition, the publisher's name and the price. It is safe
to say that all libraries are supplied with such bibliographical aid to
the extent of their needs and purchases.
This question, however, has little to do with the trade of the
libraries conducted according to modern methods. The best libraries do
not send out for competitive bids on itemized orders, and they do place
the necessary bibliographical detail on their orders, and we might add
that their officers are fully capable of judging squarely the editions
supplied and the price quoted.
We should like to see the book trade classify the library business as
peculiar to itself. Taking the best library trade as a standard, it
might suggest some requirements which should be asked for in return
for obtaining the library discount. If the business is free from these
faults with which it is more or less justly charged, it should be
profitable to the bookseller.
We believe that libraries have a right to protest against the
increasing charges made to them for the passing of the books of
the publishers through the hands of the booksellers, and that some
concessions should be made in the discounts now granted. We believe
that there is ample room for increasing the booksellers' profits by
the reformation of its methods, or perhaps we should say the library
methods, which are now accepted by them. The general increase and the
tendency toward further increases in the charges for the handling of
books for libraries by the rules of your association we believe to
be unjust, and that we are fully justified in asking that a careful
consideration be given to this question with a view toward making more
liberal discounts to this trade.
We do not believe that the last move of your association in making
the same discount on net fiction as upon other net books is warranted,
for we think it would be only fair to grant the libraries a proportion
of the larger profit which the bookseller receives by reason of the
extra discount allowed by the publishers on net fiction. If no other
concession is made, we believe that a better price should be offered to
libraries on their purchases of net fiction.
We should regret to have the booksellers take action which would give
the libraries the impression that their trade was a burden to the
booksellers; that the members of your association required a larger
profit from them than what is amply satisfactory to the jobbing trade
and many dealers.
It is to the interests of the library to foster friendly relations
with the local booksellers. We believe that together they can be of
more service than when working against each other; it is good for
the community; we believe that it is also to the interests of the
booksellers to keep the library trade, not only because of sentimental
reasons, but because it pays. Not only are the library accounts
practically guaranteed and the requirements of display, advertising
and salesmanship minimized, as we have already stated, but the
library is often the only buyer of many books which are received by
the booksellers. No other one customer keeps the stock moving to such
an extent as the library. None other wears out books and calls for so
many duplications after the period of popular demand, taking from the
bookseller's shelves books which he need not re-stock. Much of this
kind of trade prevents actual loss which the bookseller would have
without the library customer.
We are not at all convinced that the booksellers are losers in the
library trade, nor do we wish to be placed in the position of receiving
special favors. The libraries like to feel that the booksellers are
giving them fair prices so they will not be constantly shown by
out-of-town dealers how much cheaper they might have bought their new
books by waiting a brief time after publication.
Wide margins of profit always lead to the cutting of prices unless the
trade is absolutely controlled, which is not the condition in the book
trade at this time.
We wish to be in a position to urge all libraries to buy of the regular
dealers in their localities, and trust that your committee may be able
to see some way of recommending further concessions to the library
trade.
Answer to the Foregoing Statement
Answer to the library Committee on Relation with Booksellers, as
proposed by Charles E. Butler, Brentano's, New York.
1. We agree that the relations between librarians and booksellers
should be on a business basis, and that there is no question as to the
desirability of improving the condition of the book trade.
2. We are in hearty sympathy with the desire of the libraries, that
a careful and just consideration should be given to their claims for
better discount as large buyers collectively of a special character.
3. It is the most earnest desire of the book trade to be absolutely
fair and just toward the libraries. We fully and most sincerely believe
that the libraries would not for a moment desire or expect that their
purchases should be made at the sacrifice of a trade, whose very
existence depends on what reasonable profit can be made by them in
their business transactions.
4. The libraries believe that the booksellers can make better discounts
than they do now, if they carry on their business along the lines
indicated by them, while the booksellers claim that the present
condition of buying and selling prohibits them from making a profit,
but is actually productive of loss, and that the method proposed by the
libraries is not possible.
5. The booksellers are of necessity the agent of the publisher. If
his business is not self-sustaining, he must fail. The reduction of
real booksellers, by a most liberal construction of what constitutes
a bookseller, from about 3,000 when our population was 40 millions
to about 2,000 with our population at 90 millions, is evidence of
the truth of this assertion. The booksellers are entitled to sell to
everyone who buys books, libraries or others.
6. The libraries are not booksellers, therefore they are not entitled
to booksellers' discounts, which they are now getting from certain
sources. Thus, booksellers are deprived of the library business.
7. The bookseller is an important factor in any community in which he
is placed. He is taxed by city and state. His educational influence
cannot be estimated. His capital, his brains and physical effort are
all invested in making his business a success. To do so, he needs
reasonable profits, and it is business folly to do any part of his
business that results in a loss.
8. A great majority of the libraries are created and supported by
direct taxation, by charitable contribution, endowment, legacies and
the like. It is true, the libraries have to be conducted in a careful,
businesslike way simply keeping within their means. Doing this, they
are free from the booksellers' anxieties and difficulties as a merchant.
9. The unique position enjoyed by libraries in the community as to
their capital and freedom from commercial risk, and exemption from
taxation and rent, has raised the question: "Why should they receive
discounts on books?" Do they, as libraries, get special discounts on
their building, their shelving, light, heat, electricity and supplies,
etc., etc.?
10. The libraries state that in booksellers dealing with libraries many
of the largest items of the expense involved in the conduct of the
retail business are wholly unnecessary.
"It can be conducted as well by dealers on =back streets or in lofts=
as it can be done by those who have the most luxurious stores to
attract the retail trade; it does not call for the advertising of their
wares by the dealer; all skill of salesmanship is eliminated and no
accounts have to be charged off because of failure."
11. The bookseller establishes himself in every community, in such
locations as will attract trade--generally the best--limited only by
his capacity to pay rent and expenses. This is vital to his success.
A bookseller locating himself on a =back street= for the purpose of
doing business to enable him to give the library a large portion of
his small earnings would speedily end his career. He could not get
enough library business to exist on and his chances of doing a general
retail business, on a back street, would be very small indeed. He would
become solely a 25 per cent or 30 per cent buyer, 10 per cent which he
gives to the libraries, with a possible 28, 25 or 20 per cent expense
account. We do not believe that the libraries would knowingly ask
anyone to do business under such circumstances for their benefit. Will
the libraries figure this out?
12. Presuming, for the sake of argument, a bookseller does locate
himself on a back street for the purpose of doing library business:
He =must= be a bookseller to get a =wholesale rate=. A mere agent not
carrying stock, but simply buying on orders, would not be supported or
supplied by the publishers, as he does not carry stock or assume the
risk of the business.
13. He would therefore have to carry a reasonable amount of stock to be
considered a bookseller. The libraries may not know that the discount
given the bookseller is qualified by the quantity purchased of each
item. Thus, the average trade discount now prevailing on net books and
net fiction is 30 per cent in small quantities. If he purchases 10 to
25 copies of a title, he gets an extra 5 per cent. If he purchases 50
to 250 of a title (according to the publisher and the book offered) he
gets an extra 10 per cent. The libraries familiar with this discount,
and being misguided as to the results, argue that a better discount
than they now get should be given them by the bookseller. We have not
included here the great number of books published at such discounts as
25 per cent, 20 per cent, 15 per cent, and even 10 per cent, to which
must be added transportation and other charges. More of such books
are bought by libraries than by the retail buyer, such as educational
books, scientific books, medical books, law books, subscription books,
etc.
14. Now this is what really happens to the man on the =back street=, as
well as to =the bookseller= on the principal thoroughfare. It is safe
to say that out of the purchase of 100 new books of any one house, say
for a period of a year, about 90 per cent would have to be bought in
small quantities at a discount of 30 per cent, about 5 per cent at the
extra 5 per cent discounts, and 5 per cent at the extra 10 per cent
discounts. Thus, buying 90 per cent of his stock at 30 per cent and
selling to libraries at a discount of 10 per cent leaves 20 per cent
to do business, with an average expense cost to the bookseller of 28
per cent on every dollar of sale. =The 10 per cent at better rate would
improve matters very little=, as can readily be seen. It does not seem
as if the bookseller could make better discount than he does to the
libraries and it really is a question whether he is justified in giving
as much as he does now, if able to give any at all, except at a loss to
him.
15. The theory has been advanced by the libraries that all their
business should be considered by booksellers as an =independent
element= in the business and not chargeable with the 28 per cent cost
per dollar of sale, but that the library business should be charged
with a much less ratio of expense, thus enabling the bookseller to
gratify the desire of the libraries for a further discount. They base
this proposition on the following claims:
1. It does not call for the advertising of their wares by the dealer.
2. All skill of salesmanship is eliminated.
3. No accounts have to be charged off because of failure.
The facts are that the smaller libraries, and to some extent the larger
libraries, are constantly supplied by publisher and bookseller with
circular matter regarding new and forthcoming publications, letters
and personal visits as to special publications, as well as sending the
new books, as issued, on approval, at considerable cost and trouble,
and some loss of sale, because books are not available for display to
possible buyers who visit the dealer's place of business. The proper
handling of library orders to any reasonable extent requires skilled
clerks with good knowledge of books, the use of catalogs and the
ability to work out titles correctly that are incorrectly given, and
which is so often done. It is true that no accounts have to be charged
off, but library accounts require much care and trouble in making
duplicate and triplicate vouchers, many have to be sworn to before
notaries, in some cases depositing money as security that goods will
be supplied at prices quoted, and generally a long wait before the
bills are paid, and many minor troubles annoying to both libraries and
dealers.
16. As a business proposition, the making of a library department a
separate one from the business, and determining its exact cost of
maintenance, and basing the library discount thereon is not feasible,
for the reason that the bulk of its operations are so interwoven with
the business, requiring the assistance of the entire force at many
stages that it would be impossible to pick out and determine what each
operation costs. Again, the profits and loss of a business can only
be finally determined at the end of the fiscal year, when the stock
is taken, and the books closed--a very anxious moment indeed for the
bookseller. He then knows, to his joy or sorrow, how much it has cost
him to make one dollar of sale, and what profit or loss he has made on
each dollar of sale, on every class of merchandise he has sold, the
library trade included. This percentage of sale is his guide for the
following year, and as a good business man, he must eliminate every
class of merchandise he sells that does not produce some profit. No
business can work successfully otherwise.
17. The following table will show the various ramifications of a
special library department in the business, if carried out as proposed.
What suggestions would the libraries make in a case like this?
Work of the library clerk.
Clerks.
Writing to libraries
for trade.
Sending circulars
and book information
to libraries.
Certain reference
catalogs.
Receiving order for
estimate and
price.
Looking up same
and selecting editions
and pricing.
Writing to publishers
about special
books to be
priced.
Correcting librarian's
errors.
Store Assistance.
Correspondence in
general.
Typewriters, machine,
paper, etc.
Advertising for out-of-print
books and
general advertising.
Assistance of other
clerks.
Order department
and laying out order
and getting
shorts.
Receiving department.
Bookkeeping department.
Packing and shipping
department.
Catalog--reference.
Freight and express
on goods bought.
Returns and credits.
Postage.
Loss on bad accounts.
Theft.
Depreciation
of stock.
Rent.
Heat.
Light.
Care and keep of
store.
Salaries and wages.
Interest.
Store supplies.
Insurance and taxes.
Auditing.
Cost of books on approval--going
and
coming.
Good will and reputation.
18. The libraries state that
They have a right to protest against the increasing charges
made to them for passing of the books of the publishers through
the hands of the booksellers, and that some concession should
be made in the discounts now granted.
19. In this, the libraries should consider they are not a trade
organization, who, like the booksellers, depend on their trade for a
living. Publisher and bookseller are one in interest--producer and
distributor, and it is economically proper that the publisher's product
should pass through the hands of the bookseller, and to whom?--to
their clientele, the public. What relation does the library have to
the bookseller, other than as a buyer, the same as the rest of the
community? It is claimed that libraries are large buyers collectively,
but the general public are larger buyers collectively, by many millions
of dollars. If the library theory holds good, would not the same theory
hold good if the citizens of each community were to combine in their
purchasing and demand discounts accordingly? Would this not result in
the booksellers' sudden and complete annihilation, instead of a gradual
one, as it has been?
20. As to the "increasing charges," there is no more increase to
the libraries than to the general public. What brought about these
"increasing charges?" The necessity of self-preservation of both
publisher and bookseller. Till the beginning of the net system and for
some years thereafter books were published at the traditional prices of
more than fifty years ago (and later a period of ruinous competition to
the bookseller) the discounts to the trade remaining about the same,
and this in spite of the fact that the cost of everything pertaining to
book-making and its selling had greatly increased, and had not advanced
in price, while almost every other article of merchandise, labor,
material and the necessities of life, has greatly increased in cost,
and increased in selling price.
21. The libraries state:
We should regret to have the booksellers take action which
would give the libraries the impression that their trade was a
burden to the bookseller, that your members required a larger
profit from them than what is amply satisfactory to the jobbing
trade and many dealers.
22. The booksellers do not feel that the libraries are a burden to
them. They are anxious to have trading relations with them, but on a
mutually satisfactory basis. The library does not need profit for its
existence, supported as it is, but the bookseller needs it for his very
existence. Were the libraries aware of the actual facts of the case,
they would undoubtedly learn to their surprise that the trade done by
"the jobbing trade and many dealers" was anything but satisfactory,
and were their dealings with the libraries closely analyzed they would
find they had made small profit, if not loss, on the total of the books
sold to them. The dealers have only shown existing conditions, and have
asked for relief.
23. The libraries are not sole buyers of net books. A very large
proportion of their purchases are of non-net books, which are sold to
them at little or no margin of profit, and at the same discount as the
booksellers get. This is ruinous competition.
24. Why then do the trade desire library business under existing
conditions? They do not seek this business for its profit-making
on general publications, regular and net, for that is almost nil,
but for such stock as can be bought at much better discount than the
regular trade rates, such as jobs and the like, that they can sell
the libraries, and also for the real value of the libraries to the
bookseller that their orders often enable him to dispose of certain
stock--even at cost--which might take a long time to dispose of.
Finally, there is a certain amount of pride--surprising as it may
seem--that the bookseller has. He wants to sell the library in his own
community, he wants to do all the business of his community, and he
feels it keenly that his library is the only one with whom he cannot do
business, except at a very small profit or loss; and which trade goes
to some other town or state.
25. We trust we have made clear to the libraries the exact business
situation as it relates to the bookseller, jobber, and the like.
To some extent, what is stated here is no new story. The general
assertion has been made by the bookseller that the library business is
unprofitable, while the libraries state they believe otherwise is or
should be the case, and suggest their ideas as to a remedy.
26. It can be proved, we think, to the entire satisfaction of
the libraries, that in spite of the net system and corresponding
maintenance of price, the bookseller, jobber and the like, will be
happy indeed if he can show the smallest margin of net profit as
a result of a year's work in selling regular and net books to the
libraries and the public as well.
27. The booksellers, jobbers and the like desire the library business.
They believe that it rightly belongs to them in their own locality, and
to no one else, be they large or small.
28. They believe the discount given to libraries by booksellers,
jobbers and the like, should be uniform the country over, and leave a
small margin of profit to the seller.
29. They believe that competitive bidding by the libraries has been
detrimental to booksellers, jobbers and the like, as well as to the
libraries in many ways, direct and indirect.
30. They believe that the libraries desire to be fair in this matter
and not ask for unreasonable terms, and that a knowledge of the real
facts of the case of the condition of the booksellers, jobbers and
the like, will convince them that the booksellers, jobbers and others
are doing all, if not more than they can, in giving the libraries a
discount of 33 1-3 per cent on regular books, and 10 per cent on net
books, as at present.
31. Booksellers, jobbers and the like fully believe that they can be
of great assistance to the libraries and the libraries to them, and
it is their earnest hope that close and harmonious relations may be
brought about, and that they will do all in their power towards it.
The booksellers most heartily endorse the great and good work the
libraries perform to the community, and from a selfish point of view,
the bookseller freely admits the great assistance derived by them from
the influence of the libraries in creating a desire for reading and
the possession of books, and the general educating and elevating of
the community, and the bookseller also feels that his presence in any
community is likewise educating and elevating and that his interests
should be reasonably conserved.
32. The booksellers complain that when libraries become publishers, as
many of them do, they make their prices net but give the trade little
or no discount therefrom. Such books sold by the bookseller, cost him
considerable in addition to the published price.
33. They cordially invite the librarians to go into any facts and
figures they may desire to be informed about, as to the cost of
booksellers doing business and as to the conditions affecting the
relationship of both, with a view that all difficulties may be removed,
to our mutual satisfaction.
34. We are pleased to learn that the libraries believe---
1. The approval feature can be dropped.
2. That no library should ask for competitive bids on itemized lists.
3. The bibliographical work is entirely unnecessary by the bookseller
and can be dispensed with.
4. That the relations between libraries and the book trade should be
placed upon a business basis.
5. That there is no question as to the desirability and the necessity
of improving the condition of the book trade, and that they are in
sympathy with the apparently successful efforts now being made toward
that end.
BOOKSELLERS SELLING TO LIBRARIES AND THE RESULT, IN PROFIT AND LOSS TO
THE BOOKSELLER.
The following tabulation is compiled, from actual purchases made from
four prominent publishers, by a large bookseller, during a period of
one year. These purchases included books in all classes of literature,
fiction, biography, science, travel, etc., etc., which would fairly
represent the book purchases of a number of libraries for the period
of one year. These books were bought at varying discounts, viz.:--2/5,
2/5-5, 2/5-10, 1/4, 1/4-5, 1/4-10, 3/10, 3/10-5, 3/10-10, 1/3, 1/3-5,
1/3-10. Every advantage was taken where possible, to obtain by quantity
buying, the extra 5 and 10 per cent, given by the publishers. The
amount bought of these four publishers at published price was about
$37,035.87, which cost the bookseller about $24,000.00, and included
both regular, net and special books.
Let us assume that this bookseller sold these books from his stock to
the libraries, at a discount from the published prices, on regular
books, of 1/3 and a discount of 10% from the published prices of net
books.
It is here shown, what the result of the operation would be to the
bookseller, as to profit or loss. The cost point of doing business by
booksellers the country over, has been fairly well determined to be on
the same average, 28% per dollar of sale. This may fluctuate according
to circumstances and location, between 30% and 25%. In order, however,
to clearly and fully cover all possibilities in the matter, the expense
per dollar of sale has been calculated at 28%, 20%, 15%, 10% and 5% per
dollar of sale.
In all these calculations per dollar of sale, no allowance is made for
depreciation of stock, fixtures, bad accounts, etc., etc.
It is hoped that a careful analysis of this table will help solve the
library problem.
TABLE NO. 1.
Published Discount Sold to Cost to Cost per
Price to Libraries Booksellers Dollar
Libraries at of Sale
Cost per Dollar of Sale 28%.
Non Net 15,935.85 1/3 10,623.93 9,145.56 2,974.70
Net 21,099.98 1/10 18,989.99 14,854.44 5,317.19
Cost per Dollar of Sale 20%.
Non Net 15,935.85 1/3 10,623.93 9,145.56 2,124.78
Net 21,099.98 1/10 18,989.99 14,854.44 3,797.99
Cost per Dollar of Sale 15%.
Non Net 15,935.85 1/3 10,623.93 9,145.56 1,593.59
Net 21,099.98 1/10 18,989.99 14,854.44 2,848.49
Cost per Dollar of Sale 10%.
Non Net 15,935.85 1/3 10,623.93 9,145.56 1,062.39
Net 21,099.98 1/10 18,989.99 14,854.44 1,898.99
Cost per Dollar of Sale 5%.
Non Net 15,935.85 1/3 10,623.93 9,145.56 531.19
Net 21,099.98 1/10 18,989.99 14,854.44 949.49
Total Cost Loss Gain Total Loss Total Gain
Cost per Dollar of Sale 28%.
Non Net 12,120.26 1,496.33 -- -- --
Net 20,171.63 1,181.64 -- 2,677.97 --
Cost per Dollar of Sale 20%.
Non Net 11,270.04 646.11 -- 308.55 --
Net 18,652.43 -- 337.56 -- --
Cost per Dollar of Sale 15%.
Non Net 10,739.15 115.22 -- -- --
Net 17,702.93 -- 1,287.06 -- 1,171.84
Cost per Dollar of Sale 10%.
Non Net 10,207.95 -- 415.98 -- --
Net 16,753.43 -- 2,236.56 -- 2,652.54
Cost per Dollar of Sale 5%.
Non Net 9,676.75 -- 947.18 --
Net 15,803.93 -- 3,186.06 -- 4,133.24
TABLE NO. 2.
The following tabulation is compiled on the same basis as Table No. 1,
but showing the result to the bookseller, as to profit and loss, if the
bookseller increased the discount to the libraries, on regular books,
from 1/3 to 2/5, and on net books from 1/10 to 1/5.
Published Discount to Sold to Cost to Cost per
Price Libraries Libraries at Booksellers Dollar of
Sale
Cost per Dollar of Sale 28%.
Non Net 15,935.85 2/5 9,561.53 9,145.56 2,677.22
Net 21,099.98 1/5 16,879.99 14,854.44 4,726.39
Cost per Dollar of Sale 15%.
Non Net 15,935.85 2/5 9,561.53 9,145.66 1,434.22
Net 21,099.98 1/5 16,879.99 14,854.44 2,531.99
Cost per Dollar of Sale 10%.
Non Net 15,935.85 2/5 9,561.53 9,145.56 956.15
Net 21,099.98 1/5 16,879.99 14,854.44 1,687.99
Cost per Dollar of Sale 5%.
Non Net 15,935.85 2/5 9,561.53 9,145.56 478.07
Net 21,099.98 1/5 16,879.99 14,854.44 843.99
Total Cost Loss Gain Total Loss Total Gain
Cost per Dollar of Sale 28%.
Non Net 11,822.78 2,261.25
Net 19,580.53 2,700.54 4,961.79
Cost per Dollar of Sale 15%.
Non Net 10,579.78 1,018.25
Net 17,386.13 506.14 1,524.39
Cost per Dollar of Sale 10%.
Non Net 10,101.71 540.18
Net 16,542.43 337.56 202.62
Cost per Dollar of Sale 5%.
Non Net 9,623.62 62.10
Net 15,698.43 1,181.56
June, 1913
Report of the Bookbuying Committee of the American Library Association,
1912-13
In November, 1912, your committee was notified by the secretary that
the executive board asked it to continue its negotiations with the
committee on libraries of the American Booksellers' Convention.
A meeting with the latter committee was immediately arranged for,
and such meeting was held in New York City on November 25th, which
was attended by two representatives of the Booksellers' Association
and by two members of the committee on Book Buying of the A. L. A.
A discussion lasting over three hours, when all the details and
conditions were gone over, resulted in a definite agreement, the
ratification of which the committee of the American Booksellers'
Association promised to recommend to that Association.
This agreement was in the nature of a small concession on the part
of the Booksellers' Committee. While the concession was small, it
was accepted as at least showing a disposition on the part of the
Booksellers to co-operate with the libraries in the promotion of a
better feeling between them. The Booksellers' Committee agreed to allow
the libraries a discount of 15% from the net price on new fiction,
instead of 10%, which is now allowed. The 15% discount was to be given
during the calendar year in which the novel was published, as given on
the title page.
A few days after this agreement was made, the acting chairman of the
American Booksellers' Association committee announced that he could
not carry it out, because of his finding that the booksellers could
not afford to do what he had promised to recommend, and at that time
submitted figures which he thought proved his contention. These figures
differed in no particular from those which were formerly submitted,
and which are a part of this report, and which, we believe are on a
false basis of an exaggerated cost of doing library business, and of
misleading statements as to discounts allowed by the publishers to
booksellers on new fiction.
At the annual meeting of the American Booksellers' Association, which
was held in May of this year, a statement was made by its committee on
Relations with libraries, but this statement does not form a part of
the published report of the proceedings of the convention, and your
committee has not been able to obtain a copy of the stenographer's
notes. The acting chairman of the Booksellers' Committee informs us
that he made no report, but that he submitted and supplemented the
foregoing statements of the committees, with quotations from the
correspondence of the two committees. It, therefore, probably differed
but little from the original statements made by the two committees.
We would, therefore, call your attention to the reasons given in the
Booksellers' "Statement" for holding the uniform higher prices which
the libraries are paying for books because of the short discounts
allowed by the Booksellers' Association. As the position taken by the
Booksellers' Association is not agreed to by all of the individual
booksellers, such action may or may not be looked upon as a "restraint
of trade."
The estimate of the cost of doing business by retail booksellers is
28%, and the contention is that no profit is made from any item which
does not net them a sum greater than 28% above cost. This would mean
that they wish to force the libraries into becoming retail customers
because library business as a wholesale trade is regarded by the retail
booksellers as too costly, and the Booksellers' Committee believes
that it should not be welcomed by them. All booksellers do not take
this view any more than they would wish to endorse that expressed in
paragraph 8 of the "answer" of their committee, which reads as follows:
"A great majority of the libraries are created and supported by direct
taxation, by charitable contributions, endowments, legacies and the
like. It is true that libraries have to be conducted in a careful,
businesslike way, simply keeping within their means. Doing this,
they are free from the booksellers' anxieties and difficulties as a
merchant."
Your committee believes that there is no question as to the desire of
all libraries to encourage good feeling between the booksellers and
themselves, nor is there any question as to the desirability of having
a bookstore in every community.
We believe that the local booksellers should be encouraged, but not at
the expense of the taxpayers through the library.
The libraries, as wholesale buyers, should, we believe, be allowed
greater discounts on the net books. As the retail booksellers seem
not included to make any compromise, we believe that your committee
on Book Buying might, in the immediate future, be of service to the
libraries by calling their attention to the advantages of buying many
replace books from booksellers who are desirous of obtaining and
keeping the library business and to those who deal in remainders and
second-hand books, both here and abroad.
Inasmuch as the Booksellers' Committee on Relations with libraries did
not keep its verbal promise, and has reassumed its former position
which allows no concession whatsoever, although asking and expecting
co-operation from the libraries, we believe that there is nothing to
be gained by further negotiations with the Booksellers' Association
Committee on Relations with Libraries as it is now constituted.
Respectfully submitted,
WALTER L. BROWN,
CARL B. RODEN,
CHARLES H. BROWN,
Committee on Bookbuying.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON CO-OPERATION WITH THE NATIONAL EDUCATION
ASSOCIATION
The committee of the American Library Association on co-operation
with the National Education Association, while having no special
accomplishment to present, still seems justified in reporting the year
as being one decidedly of progress. Never before in the experience of
the committee has there been a more friendly expression of a desire to
co-operate on the part of the N. E. A. than has been the case this year.
President Fairchild sent an invitation unsolicited for a representative
of the American Library Association to take a place on the general
program of the meetings of the National Education Association in
Salt Lake City. The committee has not been able to find a proper
representative to accept the invitation, owing to the great distance
from library centers of the place of meeting.
There has been an increased amount of discussion by correspondence of
the members of the committee as to the work that could be done more
thoroughly to create a sympathetic attitude toward the work of the
public library as an integral part of public education.
An increasing number of schools are turning to the libraries for help,
and one association of college librarians has strongly emphasized the
need of instruction in library methods for the students of high schools.
The committee has been active in its efforts to co-operate with
the library department of the N. E. A., and has received a written
expression of thanks for its work this year from the officers of the
department.
M. E. AHERN,
Chairman.
COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL AND STATE RELATIONS
The committee reports that its chief activity throughout the year,
has been the endeavor to secure a cheaper postal rate upon books, in
which effort it has been unsuccessful. Attempts were made to have
books included in the parcel post bill of 1912, and also to have the
rate on books made the same as the second class rate on magazines when
sent by individuals. At the regular and extra sessions of Congress,
the Chairman of the Committees of Congress on Post Offices and Post
Roads, were interviewed, and the Postmaster-General was urged to give
the favorable influence of his department toward the end desired. There
seems to be no probability of an immediate alteration in the rate upon
books, unless a complete revision of the parcel post section of the
postal laws be made, and there is some question as to whether it is
desirable for books to be included in the parcel post, with the present
zone system, inasmuch as under it, the postage upon books within
certain zones would be actually greater than under the existing law.
The activity of those desiring a one cent postage upon letters, also
causes members of Congress to hesitate in making any reduction such as
we desire.
When the new tariff bill was introduced in the House of
Representatives, the Committee addressed a communication to the
Committee on Ways and Means, so as to secure the retention of the
privilege of free entry for books imported by public libraries. The
Treasury Department on April 19 decided "that small importations
through the mails for colleges or other institutions entitled to
import books free of duty under Par. 519 of the Tariff Act will be
passed without requiring an affidavit in each instance, provided such
institutions will file with the Collector of Customs a copy of its
charter or article of association showing it to be entitled to pass
such importations free of duty." Libraries desiring to avail themselves
of this privilege should forward this information promptly to the
Collector of Customs at the port where they receive books.
BERNARD C. STEINER, Chairman.
COMMITTEE ON LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION
Part of your Committee's report is simply supplementary to that of
last year, constituting with it a survey of methods used in certain
libraries in carrying out two common operations--accessioning and the
charging of issue. Last year the selected libraries were asked simply
to describe these operations closely, being urged to leave out no
detail, no matter how trivial and unimportant. It was thought that no
set of questions, however minute, would provide for all such details,
and that a questionnaire might result in many omissions and make the
operations, as performed by the contributing libraries, appear to be
more uniform than is really the case. The event proved, however, the
necessity of some sort of a questionnaire, and after a study of last
year's results the following was prepared by Mr. George F. Bowerman,
of this committee, and sent out by the chairman both to the libraries
named in the last report and to certain others. Data have been received
from the following institutions:
Public or Circulating Libraries
Butte, Montana
Atlanta
Pittsburgh
East Orange
Forbes Library
Jacksonville, Florida
Lincoln Library, Springfield
Los Angeles
New York
Pratt Institute
St. Louis
Salt Lake City
Seattle
Washington
College or University
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.
Westminster College, Fulton, Mo.
Harvard
Kansas
Syracuse
Tulane
State Libraries
Indiana
Iowa
New York
Virginia
Special Library
John Crerar, Chicago
Society Libraries
Medical Society of the County of Kings
New York Society
New York Bar Association (accession only)
We give below the questions sent out with a summary of the various
answers by numbers. The original blanks are on file at A. L. A.
headquarters, showing answers in greater detail, together with the
names of the answering libraries.
Summary of Reports on Accession Routine
[Harvard University library did not answer each question in detail,
as it keeps no accession record in the usual sense. A record is kept
each day of the number of volumes and pamphlets received by gift and
by purchase, from which statistics are made up at the end of the
year. A file of continuation cards for annual reports and similar
continued publications and a record of gifts from individuals are
useful supplements to the daily record. Bills for books are filed
alphabetically under dealer's name each year, and order slips, giving
agent, date of order and date of receipt, are preserved.]
(1) When do you accession, before or after cataloging?
Before cataloging--14.
(2) Are all books that are cataloged accessioned? Affirmative,
24 (exception, 11).
(3) What method of keeping your accession record do you use?
All use accession book except Los Angeles and Forbes
Library, which use bill method, and Washington, D. C.,
which uses order cards as accession record.
East Orange does not believe accession =book= essential.
Pittsburgh, which accessions only adult books, is inclined
to believe book unnecessary. Their method of treating
juveniles is especially interesting.
Seattle notes that their book has fewer items than the A.
L. A., and says the use of order cards as accession
record is an excellent method.
(4) Which of the following items do you enter in your
accession record?
The number following the item indicates the number of
libraries reporting its use:--Author, 19; title, 18;
publisher, 17; place of publication, 13; date of
publication, 18; size, 10; edition, 13; number of
volumes, 23; binding, 11; publisher's price, 8; cost,
18; source, 20; date of bill, 10; date of entry, 14.
(5) Do you enter facts about re-binding in the accession record?
Affirmative, 3; negative, 20.
(6) a. Do you use your accession record to obtain statistics of
additions?
Affirmative, 19; negative, 5.
b. What items do you include?
Some of these questions were not answered, so it is
inferred that the statistics obtained are for total
additions only. Following items were reported
on:--Class, 7; source, 8; branch, 2; language, 2;
circulating or reference, 2; adult and juvenile, 2.
(7) Do you maintain a numerical record of accessions according
to classification? Department or branches? Does it cover
expenditures for each main class? Department or branches?
Negative, 14; record according to classification, 6; branch
or department, 3; separate record of expenditures, 4.
(8) Where do you place accession number?
Page after title page, 6; title page, 3; title page and
first page, 1; title page and page 101, 1; book plate
and page after title page, 1.
(9) Do you write price and date of bill as well as accession
number in the book. Do you write cost of a set in the first
volume?
Affirmative, 6; negative, 13 (both questions); cost, 1;
date, affirmative, 3; negative, 1; cost in volume 1 of
set, 6.
(10) How do you indicate the branch or department to which a
book is assigned?
Not indicated, or there is no branch, 14; stamped or indicated
in accession book, 5; books stamped or marked, 5; separate
accession book for each branch, 3; order card and book
stamped, 2.
(11) In case of replacements do you keep a record of the
accession number which has been replaced or do you regard
replacement as if it were an added entry or duplicate,
disregarding old number entirely?
Replacement is regarded as an added entry or duplicate, and
no record kept of the old number, 16; New number given
to replacement but make note of the number replaced, 6;
Old number used, 3.
Butte, Mont., reports:
"We enter each new copy in the shelf list as copy 2-3,
etc., keeping a record of each book."
New York City Bar Association reports:
"Do not use numbers, but dates. A book added to replace
is not counted for the annual statistics."
(12) Do you note in the accession record when a book is
withdrawn, or do you keep a withdrawal book?
Note in accession record, 9; note on shelf list, 4; note
in accession book and keep withdrawal book, 3; have
withdrawal book, 2; have no withdrawals, 2; files
book cards, 1; keeps record on cards, 1; keeps cards
withdrawn from public catalog, 1; not noted at all, 2.
New York City Bar Association reports:
"We keep all books except in very rare cases. The only
notes made are in catalogs and in statistical record."
Summary of Reports on Charging Systems
1. What charging system do you use?
Newark system, 12; Brown system, 2; Borrower's record, 2;
Single file--Book file under date or class, 4; Double
file--Borrower's file and book file, 6.
2. The process of charging.
a.1. Do you issue books on borrowers' cards? 18.
a.2. Do you charge by means of call slips? 4.
a.3. Permanent or temporary book cards? 5.
b. How many cards are issued to one borrower?
One card, 10; two cards, 4; three cards, 1;
temporary borrower's cards, 2; temporary book cards
and no borrower's cards, 9; borrower's pocket
instead of borrower's card, 1.
c. If a borrower presents his own cards and those of
others also, do you issue books on all cards presented?
Affirmative, 13; negative, 1 (cards, slips or pocket
held at the library, 12).
d. Do you issue privilege or teachers' cards?
Affirmative, 9; negative, 7.
e. How many 2-week books of fiction are charged on one
card?
e.1. One book of fiction on a card for 2 weeks--10.
Two books of fiction on a card for 2 weeks--2.
Three books of fiction on a card for 2 weeks--1.
Tulane University--Faculty can withdraw any number
at one time; students, only 3.
No discrimination between fiction and
non-fiction--3.
No limit--Virginia State.
No exact time limit--2.
e.2. One 7-day book on one card, 11; three 7-day books
on one card, 2; unlimited (East Orange), 1; no
7-day books, 2.
e.3. One 4-week book of fiction on one card, 5; two
4-week books of fiction on one card, 2; three
4-week books of fiction on one card, 2; unlimited
(East Orange), 1; none issued for 4 weeks, 6.
f. How many pay duplicate books may one borrower draw at a
time?
Number unlimited, 8; three at one time, 1; five at
one time, 1; as many as cards presented, 1.
(Libraries having no pay collection, 16.)
g. Do you issue books and magazines on the same card?
Affirmative, 14; negative, 4; no circulation of
magazines, 4.
h. How many books are issued on privilege or teachers'
cards?
Unlimited, except for fiction, 5; 12 books, 1; 10
books, 2; 5 books, 3; no special cards issued, 16.
i. Are books stamped on the date of issue--8.
Are books stamped on the date of return--10.
j. Do you use different colored pads for charging and
discharging?
Affirmative, 5; negative, 18.
k. Do you use different colored pencils for different
dates?
Affirmative, 5; negative, 19.
l. Do you use different sized type for different dates?
Affirmative, 1; negative, 24.
m. Is the assistant at the charging desk required to use a
mark or initial of identification on the book card?
Affirmative, 11; negative, 15.
n. n.1. Do you stamp fiction and non-fiction on
the same card?
Affirmative, 12; negative, 5; no distinction
made, 1.
n.2. Do you stamp fiction and non-fiction on
different parts of the same card?
Affirmative, 5.
n.3. In combination? 3.
n.4. Do you use the same colored ink for fiction
and non-fiction?
Affirmative, 9; negative, 2.
o. Are the class numbers of non-fiction written on a
teacher's or privilege card?
Affirmative, 5; negative, 4.
p. How many places do you stamp--Book card? Borrower's
card? Date flap? Book entry? Call slip?
3 stampings, book card, borrower's card, date
flap--12.
2 stampings, book card, borrower's card--2.
2 stampings, book card, date flap--3.
2 stampings, call slip, date flap--3.
1 stamping, call slip--4.
1 stamping, temporary book card--1.
1 stamping, borrower's pocket--1.
q. Do you renew books more than once?
Affirmative, 11; negative, 14.
r. Do you renew books issued for 7 days?
Affirmative, 3; negative, 15.
s. Do you renew books issued for two weeks?
Affirmative, 19; negative, 2.
t. Do you renew books issued for four weeks?
Affirmative, 12; negative, 3.
u. Is the process of renewal like original charge?
Affirmative, 19; negative, 2.
3. Counting of Circulation.
a. Do you verify your count by having it checked by a
second person?
Affirmative, 3; negative, 21; no count kept, 2.
b. Do you verify your filing in the same way?
Affirmative, 4; negative, 20.
c. Are records kept in different departments combined
daily in a single statistics record?
Affirmative, 10; negative, 7; daily and monthly, 4;
yearly count, 1.
d. Do you send collections of books for home circulation
to places outside the library?
Affirmative, 16; negative, 11.
e.1. Do the custodians of these places furnish circulation
figures?
Affirmative, 14; negative, 3.
e.2. How often? Monthly, 6; bi-monthly, 1; yearly, 3;
weekly, 1.
f. Is any record kept of the reading (not home
circulation) of these collections?
Affirmative, 2; negative, 14.
g. If no circulation figures are obtainable, do you count
the original collections sent as books issued?
Affirmative, 13; negative, 4.
h. is omitted.
i. For what periods are such collections sent on deposit?
Varied, 16; two months, 2; two weeks, 1.
4. Filing of cards.
a.1. Are fiction and non-fiction cards separated under the
day's issue?
Affirmative, 12.
a.2. Or are all cards filed in alphabetical order according
to author or otherwise.
Accession number, 1; author, 2; author and accession
number, 1; borrower's name, 2; call number on
slips, 2; class number, 6; title, 1.
b. Do you use different colored book cards?
Affirmative, 13; negative, 14.
c. Do you have separate files for 7-day cards, or do you
file them daily with 2-week books issued one week
previously--also 4-week books issued 3 weeks previously?
Separate files, 4; no separate files, 5; filed daily
with 2-week books issued one week previously, 8.
d. Do you have separate files for cards issued to
teachers? For renewed books? Foreign books?
Teachers--Affirmative, 6; negative, 17; renewed
books--Affirmative, 1; negative, 22; foreign
books--None.
e. Do you use guide cards to separate the classes of
non-fiction or do different classes have different book
cards?
Guide cards, 2; guide cards and colored book-cards, 1;
colored book cards, 4; neither, 15.
f. Have you separate files for books loaned to staff
members, trustees, etc.?
Affirmative, 8; negative, 19.
g. Are special records kept of books in quarantined houses?
Affirmative, 14; negative, 12.
h. Do you keep your file of collections loaned as deposits
separate from ordinary circulation?
Affirmative, 18; negative, 4.
5. Discharging of books.
a. Do you stamp on borrower's card or slip the date book
is returned?
Affirmative, 15; negative, 2.
b. Do you keep on file at the library all cards of
borrowers when in use?
Affirmative, 14; negative, 13.
When not in use?
Affirmative, 16; negative, 5.
c. Do you retain at the library a borrower's card on which
there is a fine?
Affirmative, 16; negative, 1.
d. Do you issue receipts for books without cards?
Affirmative, 5; negative, 17.
e. Do you give the receipt to the borrower to be returned
with card for cancellation of date or do you keep file
of such receipts at the library?
Receipt file kept at library, 4.
f. Do you discharge books before stamping off borrowers'
cards?
Affirmative, 5; negative, 10. Discharging and stamping
off done at the same time, 9.
g. If not do you look up book cards overdue before you
stamp off borrower's card?
Affirmative, 8; negative, 3.
h. Do you inspect book while borrower waits? Affirmative,
15; negative, 11.
i. Are books discharged near your return desk or away from
it?
Near or at desk, 28.
j. Do you inspect carefully all books returned?
Affirmative, 18; negative, 8.
k. Is this inspection made when books are discharged or
when shelved?
When discharged, 8; before shelved, 8; at both times, 3.
The most interesting thing brought out by this investigation is the
fact that it has taken your committee two years to ascertain and
tabulate the simple facts regarding methods of procedure, in a very
limited number of institutions, in the performance of only two of the
many operations that go to make up their current work. From this it
may be imagined how long and difficult a task it would be to carry
out a really comprehensive survey of all the work of all kinds of
libraries as currently performed. And yet such a survey would appear
to be a necessary preliminary to a study of the subject whose aims
should be definite suggestions toward the improvement of this work in
the direction of greater efficiency. It would seem, at present, a task
beyond this committee's powers, although we may be prepared to take
general advisory charge of such a work if others can be induced to
undertake the details. Possibly some of the library schools may regard
this as profitable employment for their students.
In the next place we are struck with the complete negative that our
results place upon the general impression that the various details
of modern library work are becoming--possibly even have already
become--thoroughly standardized. No one thinks, of course, that
everyone does everything alike; but we are apt to believe that
there are now a few generally approved ways of doing each thing,
and that each library selects from these the one that suits its own
conditions and limitations. On the contrary, we seem to be in an
era of free experiment. Nothing in the two sets of operations that
we have studied--not even the existence and value of the operations
themselves--would appear to be regarded as sacred. Everyone has his own
methods and is apparently satisfied, either with them, or with his own
ways of departing from them and groping after something better.
We cannot regard this as altogether desirable. Doubtless no one most
efficient way of doing any of these things can be settled upon, so
long as conditions differ, but we cannot believe that differences so
fundamental and complexities so varied as those revealed in this report
are due merely to differing conditions, and that each is the best in
the place where it is practised. We must conclude, therefore, that many
of our libraries are doing these particular things, and by inference
others also, in wasteful, inefficient ways.
Having made a survey of the facts, the next step would be to inquire
concerning all variations from a method selected as the simplest in
each case--possibly accessioning as practised at Pratt Institute
Free Library or the Public Library of the District of Columbia and
the charging system at Pittsburgh or at East Orange, New Jersey. The
cost of these variations in time and money and the skill necessary
in carrying them out, should be ascertained and the practical value
of each, if it has any, should be found. It may then be possible to
select, for a library of a given type, a standard method of procedure,
which will be, all things considered, the most efficient for it.
In regard to cost, the report of the sectional committee on the cost of
cataloging, to be made at this conference, will doubtless throw some
interesting light on the problem.
Questionnaires
The use of the questionnaire by this committee may require some
justification in the light of the growing feeling among librarians
that the multiplicity of such demands upon their time is becoming a
nuisance; and possibly some general recommendations on the use of
library questionnaires may be in order.
We feel that the value of the questionnaire, and the way in which it
should be received, regarded and disposed of, depend primarily on the
purpose for which it is intended and also largely on the skill and
tact of the questioner. We distinguish three main classes of library
questionnaires: (1) Those intended to gather data for the information
of librarians in general; (2) those intended for the use of single
libraries; (3) those intended for the information of individuals. Those
of the first class, it seems to us, it is the duty of all librarians to
answer, as far as possible. They include questions sent out by A. L. A.
or state association committees and those put by individual libraries
or librarians with a promise to publish the results or to put them into
shape that will make them available to the public, provided, of course,
the information sought appears likely to be of value when tabulated.
Questionnaires of the second class will generally be answered, not so
much as a matter of public duty as of personal courtesy. They include
requests from one librarian to another about details of administration
for guidance in making improvements or alterations in method. A
librarian feels usually that it is good policy, if nothing more, to
comply with such requests so far as his rules permit, for he may at any
time desire to make a similar request on his own part. It is suggested,
however, that whenever possible such data as these should be asked in a
way, and from a sufficient number of libraries, to warrant throwing the
results into a form that will make them generally available.
The third category includes most of the questionnaires that excite the
ire of librarians and cause a feeling that questions of all kinds are
nuisances demanding abatement. They come from students writing theses,
from assistants preparing papers for local clubs, from individuals
obsessed with curiosity, from reporters, from persons of various
degrees of irresponsibility. There is no reason why any attention at
all should be paid to these and we recommend librarians to return to
them merely a stereotyped form of polite acknowledgement and refusal.
It is hoped that the Headquarters of the Association may become more
and more the clearing house for systematized information of this kind,
saving thereby much wasteful duplication of material and effort. We
recommend that the originators of legitimate questionnaires send to
Headquarters before making up their list of questions, to see how many
can be answered in this way.
Much of the feeling against questionnaires is due to lack of good
judgment on the part of the framers. It is obviously unfair to ask
another librarian to answer questions that could be answered from
the resources of the questioning library, even if the latter would
require a little more time and trouble. A large proportion of the items
in questionnaires of all three grades specified above are of this
character. If it is desired that all the answers shall appear in the
same form on one sheet, answers obtainable in the questioning library
may be written in before sending out the list, and the attention of
the correspondent may be called to this fact. In any case a statement
should accompany the questionnaire that the information asked cannot be
obtained by any other means at the asker's disposal.
In some cases questions are asked that require the collection of
unusual data regarding the current work of the library. The answers
to such questions can evidently not be given, even if the library
is willing and anxious to undertake at once the additional work of
collection, until the expiration of the period for which the figures
are asked--generally one year. The usual method seems to be to send out
such questions to a large number of libraries in the hope that a few
will be able to answer them at once. A better way would be to send out
to a large number of libraries a statement of the desired data, asking
those willing to undertake their collection to notify the asker. At
the expiration of the period of collection the sender of the questions
would then have accurate data and he would not expect them before the
end of this period--whether one year or less.
It would seem to be unnecessary to remind those who receive and answer
questionnaires that returned blanks should bear the name of the library
to which they refer, were it not for the fact that this is so often
omitted. In one recent case the name was given simply as "Carnegie
library," with no address.
Briefly set forth, the recommendations of this committee, regarding the
use of library questionnaires, are, then, as follows:
(1) That questionnaires should always be for the information of
librarians in general, or for improving the service of one library in
particular, preferably the former.
(2) That no questions should be included that can be answered in the
questioning library or at A. L. A. Headquarters.
(3) That questions requiring the collection of current data over a
specified period of time be asked proportionately in advance of the
report desired, in cases where the data are not such as are usually
recorded.
(4) That those who answer questionnaires be careful to include the name
and address of their library.
Labor Saving Devices
It is a commonplace of library history that librarianship has
contributed the card catalog idea to commercial life. The library in
turn is indebted to commercial life for many labor-saving devices.
Very likely a few of the largest libraries utilize all available
labor-saving devices to the utmost. Your committee is, however, of
the opinion that the medium size and smaller libraries might reduce
the cost of administration through the more general use of mechanical
appliances. We recommend that at a coming meeting of the Association
there be held an exhibition of all available competing labor-saving
devices adapted to library use. The assembled demonstration of such
devices should prove most instructive to the members of the association
and would itself be a time-saving device. Such an exhibition could
probably not be advantageously assembled except in a large city. Your
committee therefore recommends that either it or a special committee be
authorized to arrange for such an exhibition and demonstration.
All of which is respectfully submitted.
Committee on Administration.
COMMITTEE ON LIBRARY TRAINING
At the beginning of the year the committee began the consideration of
an outline, prepared by the chairman, of possible points considered in
the proposed examination of library schools. This outline was submitted
to the members of the committee individually and valuable suggestions
obtained and was afterwards discussed by such members of the committee
as were present at the January meetings in Chicago.
This outline which is appended to the present report is not to be
considered as necessarily final, for the committee invites criticisms
and suggestions from other members of the profession. What the
committee desires if library schools are to be examined, is that the
schools should be examined from the point of view of the needs of the
profession, not simply from the point of view of the interests of the
library schools. The real vital questions lying at the foundation of
the examination of library schools are these: Does this method of
obtaining recruits for the profession give the best results which can
be secured by such a method? Do the library school trained workers
prove in actual experience that their training has been of the right
sort? These questions cannot be answered from an examination of the
records of any one or even any half dozen library school graduates, but
only from the examination of many such records.
As was before said, criticisms on the outline are invited from members
of the profession and from any of the library schools, as the desire of
the committee is to make an absolutely thorough, and impartial study of
the whole library school problem.
At the January meeting in Chicago the members of the committee were
rejoiced to learn that the executive board had re-appropriated the
appropriation for 1912 with a like amount for the work of 1913.
With these financial limitations in mind the committee considered the
question of an examiner, and one having been agreed upon, made the
proposition with great confidence, only after considerable delay to
have it declined. Further search through the field discovered another
person who seemed equally suitable and she was approached only to
decline.
The real difficulty evidently lies in the fact that we are asking
the examiner to undertake a large piece of professional work and
practically offering only expenses and the cost of a substitute for
the regular work during such times as it is necessary to leave it.
Naturally enough, it is not easy to find anyone willing to take this
additional burden.
The committee now have in consideration other names and hope, if
reappointed, to be able to announce an examiner before the beginning
of the next library school year to such schools as indicate their
readiness to receive an examination.
For the Committee.
AZARIAH S. ROOT, Chairman.
Appendix
Scheme of Efficiency Tests for a Library School
(Note.--In its general outline this scheme is indebted to the admirable
Test of College Efficiency prepared by Dean Charles N. Cole of Oberlin
College.)
I. THE PROCESS OF EDUCATION
A. Government and control of the school:
1. Trustees:
(a) How chosen. Fitness to direct library training;
(b) Tenure of office;
(c) Meetings, how often;
(d) Ad interim power vested where;
(e) Determination of policy: does it lie with trustees,
president, director or faculty.
B. Equipment of the school:
1. Connection with other educational work:
(a) With college or university;
(b) With other institutions;
2. Connection with a library:
(a) Of what type;
(b) What constituency and to what extent used;
(c) How far equipped with modern library methods;
(d) Actual practice work in library by students;
3. Bibliographical apparatus:
(a) General reference books;
(b) Trade Bibliographies;
(c) Special Bibliographies;
(d) Library economy;
(e) Samples of library blanks and supplies;
4. Housing:
(a) Recitation rooms;
(b) Study or work rooms;
(c) Rest and social rooms;
(d) Library facilities.
C. Administration of the school:
1. Officers:
(a) How many;
(b) How obtained;
(c) Qualifications;
(d) Tenure of office;
(e) Estimate of work;
(f) Compensation;
(g) Vacation;
2. Faculty:
(a) Do new teachers have a voice in determination of
educational questions;
(b) Faculty meetings, how often;
(c) Committees, how many; what duties.
D. Instruction in the school:
1. Faculty:
(a) How obtained;
(b) Qualifications;
(c) Tenure of office;
(d) Estimate and adjustment of work;
(e) Requirements of teachers;
(f) Number of hours of instruction given by each
teacher in a school year;
(g) Compensation;
(h) Vacation;
(i) What supervision of teachers' work;
2. Students:
(a) How admitted, examination, certificates, etc.;
(b) How far does actual practice differ from catalog
statements;
(c) Requirements for admission;
(d) Requirements for admission of students to advanced
standing (in two year courses);
3. Supervision of student work:
(a) Regulation of amount of work;
(b) Guidance in choice of studies;
(c) Requirements for passing grade;
(d) What is done about conditions and failures;
(e) What methods for enforcing the regularity of work;
(f) What provision for the individual help of weak
students;
(g) Graduation;
(h) Records, how kept, etc.;
4. Curriculum:
(a) Arrangement and order of studies;
(b) Length of time devoted to each subject;
(c) System of required studies;
(d) System of electives;
(e) What training for special fields of library work,
e. g., children's librarians, legislative reference
librarians, etc.
5. Class Room Work:
(a) Size of classes;
(b) What part of the course is class room work;
(c) Method of conducting class room work;
6. Practice Work:
(a) What part of course is practice work;
(b) How revised and supervised;
(c) What is the purpose in practice work;
(d) Is this purpose realized;
7. Informal Instruction:
(a) Lectures, etc.;
(b) Opportunities to see work of libraries;
(c) Actual experience in libraries other than that
connected with the school.
E. Student Life and Work:
1. Number of students:
2. Work of students:
(a) What seem to be the scholastic ideals of the
students;
(b) To what extent do the students seem to have
professional enthusiasm;
(c) What studies do they elect when there is an option;
(d) Outside activities of students;
(e) Social life and cultural development of students;
(f) Environment particularly with reference to breadth
of culture;
(g) Room and board; are students housed under sanitary
and elevating conditions;
(h) Health;
(i) Social conditions and standing of students;
(j) Previous educational advantages;
(k) Literary, musical and artistic opportunities during
library school course;
(l) Opportunities to form personal relationships with
members of the faculty.
II. THE TESTING OF SCHOOL WORK IN PRACTICAL ACTIVITY
1. What has been the professional success of the graduates:
(a) To what extent have they taken prominent places in the
library world;
(b) Omitting as far as possible personal qualities, is
there any general characteristic stamping the students
of the school;
(c) Do the interests of the graduates seem to be broadly
professional, or narrowly confined to a particular type
of work which they have entered;
2. What has been the general intellectual standing of the
graduates:
(a) Have they shown themselves equal to cope with their
opportunities;
(b) Have they shown a range of interest which has enabled
them to connect their work with that of philanthropic,
charitable, sociological;
(c) Have they taken influential places in the towns in
which they work.
COMMITTEE ON WORK WITH THE BLIND
The libraries which circulate embossed books have continued their
services throughout the year with ever increasing results, the largest
circulation having been attained by the New York public library, which
circulated 21,938 books and pamphlets. The Free library of Philadelphia
sent out 17,706 volumes; the Carnegie library of Pittsburgh, 3,218; the
Perkins Institution, 6,000; Wilmington, Delaware, 567.
=Library of Congress.= The most important event in the history of the
Reading Room for the Blind during the year was the appointment of Mrs.
Gertrude T. Rider as Assistant in charge.
=Perkins Institution.= The school is now in its new home where the
library is housed in commodious quarters, and is in charge of a trained
librarian from Albany, Miss Laura M. Sawyer, and a trained assistant
from Simmons, Miss Louise P. Hunt, who devote their time to the care of
the valuable special collection in ink print about the blind as well
as to the circulation of embossed books.
=New York State Library.= Eight new titles in New York point were
embossed for the New York state library in 1912 and an additional list
of well chosen titles is now in press for 1913.
=Saginaw, W. S., Michigan.= The Free lending library for the blind has
asked the legislature for $2,000 to replenish the collection with new
books. Of 202 borrowers the librarian reports that 117 persons have
drawn no reading matter during the latter half of the year.
=California State Library.= Mr. Charles S. Greene, of the committee,
sends the following report of the work of the State library and the San
Francisco reading room:
The California state library for the blind wishes to report progress
during the last year. Although we have had very little money to
buy books, accessions have increased from 2,309, April 1, 1912, to
2,659 April 1, 1913, mainly through gifts and the regular receipt
of magazines. Borrowers have increased from 475 to 550. The most
satisfactory advance, however, has been in the increased use the blind
borrowers are making of the library in borrowing all kinds of writing
appliances and games to try before buying and in asking information on
all subjects of interest to them. Such questions as what occupations
are followed by the blind, and where different articles for their use
can be purchased, are constantly being asked. With an increase in the
State library fund, which the present legislature will probably grant,
it is hoped to buy all the new publications as fast as possible, as
well as to complete our collection of appliances for the blind.
The San Francisco reading room and library for the blind has about 400
volumes. It conducts an emporium for the sale of articles made by the
blind and teaches Braille reading and writing, Braille stenography,
weaving, basketry and broom making.
=Pennsylvania.= All borrowers residing in the western part of the state
are now supplied with books from the Carnegie library of Pittsburgh;
those residing in the eastern part of the state have the use of books
deposited with the Free library of Philadelphia by the Pennsylvania
home teaching society.
=Cincinnati, Ohio.= Miss Smith, of the committee, sends the following
report: "There seems to be nothing new here in the library work for the
blind. The Clovernook Home, which is to be opened May 30, has absorbed
the attention largely of Miss Trader and her sister and this spring
the flood interfered somewhat with the meetings at the library."
=Minnesota.= Miss Carey, of the committee, writes as follows of the
work in Minnesota: "As far as I know the entire work of providing books
for the blind in this state is done through the School for the Blind
at Faribault. The library there is in excellent condition, being on a
wholly modern basis as to classification and details of management.
It is open throughout the year and circulates to outside readers on
an average 25 books a month. There are 80 regular readers outside the
institution and about 90 in residence this year. As the school is small
this is a large number. The librarian in charge is one of the teachers
and for years in this school it has been considered something of an
honor to hold this position, although it is by no means a sinecure....
The library work is always stimulated by the annual summer school for
adult blind which brings in new readers each year. At the close of the
session the pupils, many of them, become patrons of the library 'for
good.'"
=New Publications.= Since the first embossed book was issued in
Philadelphia in 1833, the publishing of literature in raised print has
been increased until there are now 16 presses in active use in this
country. The record of new publications for 1912 is as follows:
American Braille, 56 titles in English; 2 titles in German.
New York point, 14 titles, of which 8 were embossed by the New York
state library.
In European Braille new titles have been issued in England and
Scotland; in Moon type 11 titles have been added and 10 other titles
are in press.
=The Catholic Review=, monthly, published by the Xavier free
publication society for the blind, 824 Oakdale Avenue, Chicago, Ill.,
in American Braille.
=The Illuminator=, a quarterly Braille magazine, published by
the Holmes-Schenley literary society of the Western Pennsylvania
Institution for the Blind, Pittsburgh, Pa.
=Society for the Promotion of Church Work Among the Blind.= Volumes
3 and 4 of the music of the Hutchins' Hymnal have been finished and
copies distributed to a number of the leading circulating libraries
where the volumes will be available to those who may not wish to
purchase them.
=Bible Training School=, South Lancaster, Mass. "Some friends of the
blind, in looking over the catalogs of books in different libraries for
the blind, were impressed with the small amount of Christian literature
that had been placed in the embossed type, especially in New York
point and American Braille, so the plan was conceived of creating a
fund and printing one book after another as the funds would accumulate,
placing them in the circulating libraries throughout the United
States." To obtain the volumes in New York point and American Braille,
free of charge, address Mrs. S. N. Haskell, South Lancaster, Mass.
=Gould Free Library for the Blind=, 555 East 6th Street, South Boston,
Mass. "The library is working under the auspices of the International
Bible Students' Association headquarters, Brooklyn, N. Y., which
supplies financial aid in the main, while donations have been accepted
from outsiders. Our books are all Bible studies, very helpful and
appreciated by the blind. We circulated 3,474 books and pamphlets last
year in the three point systems and a few books in Line type and Moon
type."
=Free Theosophical Circulating Library for the Blind=, 32 Waverly
Street, Everett, Mass., has issued three titles in American Braille;
also a monthly paper of 7 or 8 pages.
=New postal law.= Under an act of Congress of August 24, 1912,
"magazines, periodicals and other regularly issued publications in
raised letters for the blind, which contain no advertisements and for
which no subscription fee is charged, shall be transmitted in the U.
S. mails free of postage and under such regulations as the Postmaster
General may prescribe."
=The Twelfth Convention of Workers for the Blind= will be held in
Jacksonville, Illinois, June 24-27, 1913, and among those who will
attend the conference are several representatives from public libraries
interested in the circulation of embossed literature. Miss L. A.
Goldthwaite, of the New York public library, has been asked to conduct
a round table. In the general discussion of the subject of catalogs for
the blind it is hoped to obtain the best opinion of those in attendance
upon the most convenient form for such catalogs or finding lists for
use by those who read by touch. The Library of Congress, the New
York public library, the Brooklyn public library, the New York state
library, the Free library of Philadelphia, as well as institutions
for the blind, will be represented by the assistants in charge of the
circulation of embossed books.
At this conference there will be given the report of the "Uniform Type
Committee" appointed at the Overbrook conference in 1911. The two
agents of that committee, who made an extended tour of this country
from May, 1912, until February, 1913, visited many schools and other
institutions for the blind and tested over 900 readers in one or more
of the three systems--New York point, American Braille and British
Braille. Scientific tests to determine the best size of type, spacing,
etc., have been made to establish a standard or uniform system of
writing and printing. The recommendations of the committee have been
reserved until the meeting of the American Association of Workers for
the Blind at Jacksonville; they are awaited with interest by all.
EMMA R. N. DELFINO,
Chairman.
The PRESIDENT: As you will see from your printed programs we are
privileged this morning to receive an accredited delegate from the
Library Association of the United Kingdom, and it is our especial
pleasure to greet as this accredited delegate an old friend of American
librarians. He was with us at the Conference of 1904, and we have since
that time watched with a great deal of interest the strong, splendid
work which is manifest in the library over which he presides. I have
the honor of introducing to you this morning the Honorary Secretary
of the Library Association of the United Kingdom and the accredited
delegate from that organization, Mr. L. STANLEY JAST, chief librarian
of the Croydon Public Libraries.
Mr. BOWKER: And, Mr. President, I move that we receive our welcome
guest from the L. A. U. K. by a rising vote of welcome.
Mr. Jast spoke as follows:
PRESENT CONDITIONS AND TENDENCIES OF LIBRARY WORK IN GREAT BRITAIN
Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: I should like first of all to
express the peculiar personal pleasure I feel at being privileged
for the second time to attend a conference of the American Library
Association. As you have said, sir, it was my pleasure in 1904 to
attend a meeting of your body, then as now the accredited delegate
of my Association, but that meeting of 1904 was, as you know, an
international meeting, and an international meeting anywhere is apt to
take on general rather than special characteristics, and I have long
wished to be present at an ordinary meeting of the American Library
Association, so that I might see for myself how you conduct your work
and hear you discussing your own problems in your own way. So that I
trust, Mr. President and ladies and gentlemen, that you will kindly
forget that
"A chiel's amang ye takin' notes."
Iam authorized by the Council of the Library Association to extend to
you, sir, and the members present their very heartiest greetings and to
express on their behalf their high appreciation not only of the special
invitation which you sent to them to send a delegate but for the
extremely generous offer of hospitality which was attached thereto. My
Council felt that to such an invitation only one response is possible
and that was to accept.
We were in hope that Mr. Henry R. Tedder, who is the chairman of
the Council of the Library Association and its honorary treasurer
and an ex-president,--and otherwise the secretary of the Athenaeum
Club,--would have come as our delegate, because Mr. Tedder's importance
is intrinsic and not like mine purely adventitious and depending wholly
upon the office which I at the moment have the privilege to hold; but
it was impossible for Mr. Tedder to come on this occasion and, ladies
and gentlemen, I am the best that we can do for you at this time.
But I am happy to say that it is the general feeling of the Council
that in future we should not let many meetings of the A. L. A.--at
all events in the eastern states--go by without sending one or more
members of our Association to be present at them. I do not think that
there is anything from which our Association is likely to get a more
valuable return than by the visits of some of its more prominent
members to America in order that they may see for themselves and not
merely read about what you are doing, and how you are doing it and get
some knowledge of the conditions under which you are working, of your
achievements and of your difficulties, and so bring to library work
in Great Britain that added power which must inevitably come from a
wider knowledge. So that I trust that the imperfections of the present
delegate will be overlooked, in the hope not only of more but of better
to come.
I am also requested by my Council to extend a very hearty invitation
to the members of the American Library Association to attend the
annual meeting of the Library Association to be held in 1914. That
meeting will almost certainly be held at Oxford, by invitation of the
University and of the city. I need not of course point out the extreme
suitability of the city of Oxford for a meeting of librarians, nor
the attractions which Oxford must possess for everyone who likes an
atmosphere of ancient learning and who revels in the architectural
glories of a bygone day. So we hope that as many of you as possible
will come over there for that meeting in order that we may make of it
a sort of Americo-Anglican conference. Observe the order, please, in
which I mention those words. I draw special attention to that because
I believe I have somewhat of a reputation for an absence of tact on
these occasions--at any rate among our own members.
When I informed Mr. Utley that I was coming he was good enough to write
me a letter, which I received just before I sailed, and he asked--not
knowing me very well of course, or he might not have been so liberal
in his invitation--that I should talk to you on any subject I liked.
I thought that it would be best perhaps if I should say something
about the present conditions of library work in Great Britain. Of
course it is impossible, in an address lasting only a few minutes,
to cover anything like the whole field, and if I did attempt it I
should only bore you. But you may be interested in one or two of the
outstanding features of our recent work, because they throw light
upon conditions which are in many respects very different from yours.
First of all, there are two features in what I may perhaps call the
domestic situation, which to us are of considerable significance. The
most important step which the Library Association as an association
has ever taken has been the recent reorganization of its membership
along the lines of the professional qualifications of the members. In
our old grouping we took no account whatever of whether a member of
the Association was a professional librarian or merely a member of
a library committee or just a person interested in library work. The
honorary fellows of the Association and the fellows were any persons,
whether librarians or not, whose names would add dignity and importance
to the Association, or who had distinguished themselves by some special
service rendered to the Association or the movement as a whole. Then
in addition Mr. Tedder himself had a small group of what he called
_very_ honorary fellows who were the honorary fellows who insisted on
paying their annual dues. That was an entirely private group of Mr.
Tedder's. Now we have changed all that. Fellows and members of the
Association are now professional librarians only, and non-professional
librarians are known as associate members. The privileges of membership
including the power to vote and to serve on the Council are shared
equally by all members of the Association. The fellows consist in the
main of librarians only, but there is a small sprinkling of deputy and
sub-librarians. The by-law referring to fellows who do not hold chief
positions states that "they must be librarians of approved status,"
but we interpret that phrase "approved status" in the widest possible
way. The members consist of assistant librarians--all those assistant
librarians who are not in the small group of fellows; they must be
twenty-five years of age and have had six years' experience. That
is so at the moment. But after the 31st day of December, 1914, only
librarians who possess the diploma of the Association will be entitled
to fellowship, and in order to receive the diploma you must have taken
in addition to possessing practical experience in an approved library,
the six examinations held by the Association, have obtained the six
certificates, have gone through if necessary a ~vive voce~ examination
and have submitted a thesis. Then professional librarians who possess
four out of the six certificates will be entitled to membership. A good
deal of criticism has been leveled at the scheme owing to the fact that
the librarian of some pettifogging little library, with perhaps a total
rate income of a couple of hundred a year or even less, because he is a
chief in a small way, is entitled to fellowship, while an assistant in
a big library system, who may have infinitely more responsibility, is
only entitled to membership. But we had to begin somewhere and we had
to draw the line somewhere and we drew the line at the sub-librarian,
because when we got below the sub-librarian we should not know where
on earth we were, because there is no accepted nomenclature of library
positions in our country. I do not know whether there is in yours.
"Sub-librarian" does not always mean the same thing. The term "chief
assistant" is used in a very different way in different libraries.
Moreover, the Privy Council would not have approved these by-laws
unless we had opened the door as widely as possible to the holders of
all existing chief positions.
There is one weak point so far which we have discovered in our scheme.
We have no provision for non-professional members corresponding to
professional fellowship among the professional members, but we have a
new by-law now before the Privy Council creating a group of associate
fellows and the associate fellowship will be conferred upon chairmen of
library committees and upon non-professional members of the Association
who have served the Association in some definite capacity as members of
the Council or in some other way.
That, I think, then is the most important domestic thing that we have
ever done because we have now made the beginnings at all events of a
definite organization of the profession.
The other important thing will not have the same interest for you,
but I mention it because it throws light upon our own conditions. We
have settled, by a new by-law, the relations of branch associations to
the parent body. Until recently we had a by-law which merely provided
that branches in any particular district may be formed but it did
not state what the powers of the branches were, and owing to that
absence of definition we have suffered for a great many years past
from a considerable amount of trouble. One or two of the branches
grew considerably in recent years, in numbers and in importance; and
they began to resent the fact, the inevitable fact of course, that
for the most part the actual work of running the Association fell
upon the members of the Council who were resident in London or near
it. It may seem absurd to you to speak of the distance of London from
the great provincial centers in Great Britain, but it is not absurd,
because every country measures distance on its own scale, and to all
intents and purposes Manchester is just as far from London as Chicago
is from New York--because we =think= it is. As Hamlet says, you will
remember--anticipating Mrs. Eddy by several centuries--
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
And as an illustration of the result of this friction I may mention
that in London, at the library school--which is hardly a library school
because it has not the organization that your schools have, so I ought
not to use that term really, but a department of library lectures
at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which is a
department of the University of London; at these lectures all persons
are admissible whether they are librarians or not, but at similar
lectures in the provinces everybody was excluded who was not already
engaged in library work. So that you had the absurd situation that
while the parent body was running one policy at headquarters you had
branch associations running an entirely different policy in their own
centers. The question of the "open door," as it was termed, was a very
hotly debated one at one time in our Association. Well, the general
effect of the stress between the branches and the Council was of course
bad, each branch being a more or less permanent storm center. While
no absolute harm was done perhaps, and while the fireworks let off
at the annual meetings were of a more or less harmless character, at
the same time we had a general condition of irritation which affected
injuriously the work of the Association as a whole. Now we have done
away with that, very largely at all events, at least, we hope, by a new
by-law, the main points of which are these: First of all, membership of
a branch association includes membership of the parent body; the parent
body receiving the subscription to the branch association returns to
the branch association a rebate of so much a head for the expenses of
the branch and, most important of all, the constitution and by-laws of
a branch must be approved by the headquarters council and must in no
case conflict with the by-laws and constitution of the parent body.
The Council meets monthly, I may say, and one of the quarterly
meetings is held on the occasion of the annual meeting. So that means
that the expenses of the provincial members are paid to three of
the quarterly meetings held during the year; and all the important
business--especially contentious business--is relegated to those
quarterly meetings.
Leaving the domestic question and coming to the library situation
as a whole in Great Britain, I think that the phrase "marking time"
fairly describes it. The public libraries in the United Kingdom have
accomplished, I think, great things with extremely limited means. But
though the first library act was passed in 1850, though the libraries
have since then justified themselves many times over, though the
demands made upon the libraries have gone on increasing time after
time, yet the libraries are still strangled by the statutory limitation
of one-penny-in-the-pound on the tax leviable for library purposes
which was imposed not by the Ewart Act of 1850, which limited the rate
to a halfpenny, but by the amending act of 1855. It is quite true that
about forty of the large towns of the country have promoted special
parliamentary bills giving them power to levy a rate of two-pence or
even more in the pound, but in very few cases is two-pence actually
levied, and of course it is the smaller towns, which can not face the
expense of promoting special legislation, which really need greater
rating powers even more than the larger boroughs.
As the incidence of a library tax in Great Britain is quite different
from yours I may perhaps give you some general idea of what it means
by taking the case of my own town, simply because I happen to remember
the facts more clearly. Croydon is a town in the outer London ring,
with a population of 174,257 people. Its income from the penny rate
is a little over £4,000 sterling. It circulates about 555,000 volumes
per annum and its fiction percentage is about fifty. Whether that is
something to be apologized for or not I am not quite clear, after the
president's address of last evening. Then one has to remember that the
ratable value of a place like Croydon is a good deal higher than the
ratable value of most of the provincial towns. But those figures will
give you a general idea of the yield of the penny-in-the-pound rate.
A rate of that kind results, you will easily see, in the case of the
smaller towns, in a condition of genteel poverty, and in the case of
many small towns of absolute hopeless starvation. And this unfortunate
position has been accentuated by the tremendous growth of branches in
recent years. Of the three b's which constitute a library--building,
brains and books,--the ordinary British rate-payer thinks mainly of
buildings. The building usually does not cost him anything, because he
gets it from Mr. Carnegie, and it is something to look at and something
"we've got for our ward, don't you know," books will drop from the sky,
and "anyhow you don't require brains to hand books over a counter."
Hence, from this you have a town, which will perhaps support, in
passable efficiency, one central building and two branches, endeavoring
to support one central building perhaps and six branches, and so on.
Hence the limited book funds which we have in our libraries and hence
on the whole the poorly remunerated library staffs.
And that brings me to a point which it was suggested to me by one of
your members I should say something about, and that is the position
of women in English public libraries. I am not going to express any
opinion on the subject of women in libraries. After all, as George
Bernard Shaw says somewhere, opinions are really only serious when
you act on them, and my capacity for courage has never been equal to
the task of acting upon many of my opinions. But as things are at
present, a number of libraries employ women assistants. There are
very few places where women are chief librarians; there are a few in
the quite small towns. There are very few libraries which have women
sub-librarians or deputy-librarians. These are almost invariably men.
But the number of women employed in secondary and tertiary positions
in English public libraries is considerable and is very definitely
increasing. And whether that be a good thing or a bad thing, I am quite
clear about this, that it is increasing for the wrong reason. Women
are employed in English public libraries not because they are better,
but because they are cheaper--with the unfortunate result that the
increase of women in the library staffs tends necessarily to lower the
already low average of salaries paid.
The Library Association have long recognized of course that the
root of all our present difficulties lies in the limitation on the
library income, and in order to do away with that they have been
promoting for the last three or four years or more a library bill,
the main clause of which permits a town to levy a rate, not exceeding
two-pence-in-the-pound, that is exactly double the present amount.
When we originally drafted the bill we did away with the limitation
altogether, but we have now put a limitation in order to placate
possible opposition. That bill has been already read once before the
present parliament--but the first reading of course is a purely formal
matter; it is the second reading which is the crucial one; and owing to
the exasperating nature of the orders of the House of Commons any one
member has only to rise in his seat and say, "I object," to a private
member's bill for that bill to be labeled "contentious business" and
for its second reading to be deferred to the Greek kalends, owing of
course to the enormous number of private members' bills and to the
growing inefficiency of the House of Commons as a legislating machine.
It is choked with bills and it can not adequately attend to the
thousand-and-one matters which call for its attention. The best chance
for the bill would be for the government to grant facilities for it.
If they would do that I have not the slightest doubt that the bill
would pass because so far as we can see there is little or no serious
opposition to it; but we can not get it discussed. The unfortunate fact
seems to be that the government will not worry about anything which
does not sway votes. Nobody is going to get excited about a library
bill. If it is true that there is no particular opposition to it, it is
also true that there is no crowd of electors passionately demanding it.
Then we suffer to a considerable extent in Great Britain from the
attitude of the superior people to the public library. In America all
the superior people are sympathetic with the public library--apparently
so anyhow. In England usually they sneer at it. Why, Heaven knows!
Only the other day a cabinet minister who was considered to be a
friend of ours, whose name before he reached cabinet rank was actually
a backer to a bill on similar lines to the present one, in a meeting
which he addressed referred to the country as being "drenched" with
public libraries. I think his point was the far greater importance
of public wash-houses or something of that sort. And, as I say, he
used the extremely unpleasant, and peculiarly unappropriate adjective
"drenched." Now of course no one objects to a cabinet minister talking
nonsense. After all, what else can you talk to a popular audience
in politics but nonsense? But this particular variety is pernicious
nonsense. The press, of course, with their usual avidity for seizing
on anything silly, print that sort of thing ad nauseam and a good deal
of real harm is done and difficulty created. I think the minister in
question has stated somewhere that he owes a great part of his own
education to the public library. Mr. Carnegie has said the same thing.
Behold how differently men requite the benefits they have received!
Well, Mr. President and ladies and gentlemen, I have perhaps given you
the idea that I take a rather pessimistic view of library conditions at
the present moment in Great Britain, but that is not so at all--most
emphatically not so. I am absolutely convinced that the future of the
public library in Great Britain is as certain as it is with you, and
though the next step forward may be delayed, the longer it is delayed
the bigger that step will be when it is taken.
The PRESIDENT: Mr. Honorary Secretary and our Guest: I would that
the gift of speech had been given me that I might adequately express
to you the sense of appreciation that we all feel for your coming,
for your gracious words of greeting in behalf of your Association and
for the view that you have given us of not only the conditions that
obtain in Great Britain but also what the future holds forth for the
libraries of your country. In our American assemblages it is customary,
when some procedure is taken that no one is particularly interested
in, to pass it by; but when something transpires that requires further
and more careful thought it is our parliamentary custom to refer this
to a committee. In this particular case I am sure that I am meeting
the wish of the Association as well as my own personal desire when I
refer your splendid message to a committee of the whole, consisting
of all the librarians present, all the members who have unavoidably
been kept at home and that other, smaller group who come within the
classification of Mr. Dewey's "private collections." What you have said
to us, sir, has emphasized to us particularly that not only is there
in the relationship between your libraries in Great Britain and ours
in this country a kinship of interest, brought about through identical
language, and a kinship of literature, but also there are common aims
and aspirations. Just as the language is subject to local variations,
due to the customs of geographical centers, so there are differences
in method perhaps. But, after all, we are each, in our own way,
attempting to do the same things and to achieve a common purpose. I
trust, sir, that you will convey to your associates in Great Britain
our gratitude for the kindly expressions which you have brought to us
from them, and we venture the hope that we shall be enabled to carry
forward the splendid precedent which has been set in your coming.
As you glance at the names of those who are to participate at this
session, you will note that this is practically New York Day; the one,
sole participant who is credited to another part of the country is
after all perhaps merely loaned to Missouri, because he is a graduate
of the New York library school. I shall ask the First Vice-President,
Mr. Anderson, to preside over the rest of this meeting.
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen, I can take that kind of
punishment with great composure. The subject for the regular program
this morning, as you all know, is work with foreigners and with the
colored races. I have the honor to be a neighbor of the first speaker
and I may say to you confidentially that she has recently moved a mile
or two farther away from me without adequate explanation. The author of
"The Promised Land" needs no introduction to this audience. All of you
have read with enthusiasm and appreciation the chapter of her book in
which she testifies to the value of the service of the Boston public
library to her. It gives me very great pleasure to introduce to you
MARY ANTIN, who will talk to you on
THE IMMIGRANT IN THE LIBRARY
It is very difficult to be interesting or impressive while telling
people things that they already know. I won't try to do that. Any one
of you sitting in this audience could tell me a great deal more about
the immigrant in the library than I can possibly tell you. What I am
going to do is to ask you to have in mind what you know about the
immigrant, to call up the figure of the immigrant in your libraries as
you have seen him daily, and test by your knowledge what I have to say.
You know better than I do in what numbers the immigrants come to your
libraries, how much of their time they spend there, what books they
seek there. What I want to ask you is to share your knowledge of these
things with as many people as possible; tell your neighbors every
time you have a chance what the immigrant does in the library. Every
little while we begin anew the discussion of the immigrant--to let him
in, or not to let him in--and all sorts of arguments are presented on
both sides. Representatives of various organizations--capitalistic,
unionistic or what-not--hurry their advocates to Congress to speak
for or against, on this side and on that side. I want to ask you to
see to it that the knowledge that you have of the immigrant is also
widely spread on such occasions. The caricaturist is always ready with
his pencil to give us pictures of the immigrant in various amusing
poses--more or less true, more or less false; the interesting author
of the comic paragraph is always there; the artist of the vaudeville
stage, and enthusiasts of one sort and another--enemies or friends of
the immigrant--are ready to speak up whenever the question comes up.
~You~ have a fund of knowledge on the subject which is very special,
very different. Bring it out on every occasion! When the gentlemen
in Congress want to pass a law to hold up the immigrant at the gate
because he cannot read fifty lines of our Constitution, say to them,
"Hold! Wait and see what the immigrant's boys and girls will read when
they are let loose in a public library." Remind them that the ability
to read is not in itself a test of intellectuality. You know scores,
hundreds of boys and girls of educated, cultured American families who
do not take such an interest in your libraries as the boys and girls
of these illiterate immigrants. You know what you know. Please tell it
so loudly that every one may hear. Talk about the "five-foot shelf of
classics"! Is it not true that the boys and girls of the immigrants
swallow it whole and make no boast about it? Why, they are saturated
with the classics the minute they get a chance. The mere ability to
read--what does that amount to? You know what book the immigrant calls
for. Every little while I read a short paragraph in the New York papers
telling that the East Side branches of the public library have the
greatest circulation of the classics. I would like to see those little
paragraphs enlarged, printed big and spread where everybody can see
them. We need to know these things.
Please let me speak today as an American, and not as an immigrant. I
wish I could efface from your memory this once the knowledge of my
origin. Don't make allowances for what I say because of what I was. I
am not speaking as an immigrant making an appeal for the immigrants.
I am speaking to you as an American. My credentials are these: I have
been with you nearly twenty years. My father was an Americanized
citizen before I got here and I married a native American. Please
accept me as an American today. Let me speak as one of yourselves.
We are so ready to classify people by externals--by their habits, their
customs, by the way they dress, by their gestures. Why, a better test
of a man than the way in which he makes a living is the way in which
he spends his leisure; and to that you can testify in the case of the
immigrant. To gain our bread and butter we are forced to do this, that,
and the other thing. But nobody drives us into the public library if
the saloon is across the way. Speak up and tell to which door the
immigrant turns in his leisure hours. People of dainty habits are
disgusted with the personal habits of the poor foreigners. They have
noticed a smell of herring and onions in the East Side of New York.
The smell of onions, my friends, can be driven out, but a mean habit
of mind is harder to eradicate. Many gentlemen who feast daintily on
caviar content themselves with the sensational newspaper or the trashy
novel. Are they superior to the hired laborers who feast on boiled
potatoes and herring and onions and have a volume of the classics
propped up before them while they eat? There are people who object to
the uncouth manners of the alien. It would do us good to make a study
of the natural history of the personal habits of the immigrants. There
is a reason for the shrug of the shoulders, for the gestures that are
so easily caricatured. They have a history, way back, that it would do
us good to realize.
You workers in the libraries, you see the immigrant in hundreds, you
see him off guard; for a man in his hours of relaxation is not posing;
you see the alien as he is at least on one side of his nature. Let your
neighbors know what you know about the immigrant. Whenever testimony is
being taken on the subject, let your voice be as loud as any. Almost
every day you will read in your favorite paper letters to the editor,
about "the immigrant peril"; how the foreigners lower our standard of
life, demoralize our habits, spoil the manners of our children in the
public schools. Some of these things are true, to a certain extent. But
you, under whose observation the immigrant comes, and the immigrant's
children, ought to be ready with an explanation of many of these
things, and you ought to be ready to suggest a remedy. You know what
kind of homes these immigrant children come from, and that explains a
great deal. You sit there and agree with me, I can see by your faces.
You nod and you smile and you turn to one another, as much as to say,
"That is so." Don't tell it to me! I know it!! Tell it to those who do
not know it.
A few days ago I received a delegation of boys and girls from the
nearest village high school. They represented the debating clubs
of their school. They were preparing a debate on the subject of
immigration, and who could help them except I? We talked very
earnestly for about an hour at my fireside about this perennial
question, and these young people took me at my word and were very
much in earnest about what I had to say and in the way in which they
received what I had to say. That is all right. As a subject for
discussion in the high schools that question may be made immortal, but
as a subject for national agitation it ought to be laid at rest. Why is
it that certain questions have been settled once and for all and others
are always being reopened? Those questions are settled finally which
are considered in relation to their underlying principles. Let us not
confine ourselves to the superficial aspect of the immigration question.
Every once in a while, when we come to moralize about these
immigrants--there are too many of them, they come from the wrong
quarters of the globe, and what not--let us ask ourselves, Is that the
real thing that concerns us, or is there something at the bottom of
this agitation that ought to receive attention first? Are we really
afraid that the immigrant is going to take the bread from our mouths?
If so, let us stop and think about it. It is the law of nature that
the best man shall come out ahead. Are we going to stop the immigrant
by temporarily locking the door, while we have possession of the key?
It will not be for long. Right to the end it is going to be a struggle
between the better and the worse, and the better will get ahead. We
need not be afraid that the immigrants will take the bread from our
mouths if we see to it that we are equally able or better able than
they to earn our bread. It is said they are taking the earth from under
our feet. Not if we are strong enough to stand and hold our ground. If
they are getting the better of us, it is because they are better than
we, or else, if that is not so, then they can not be getting the better
of us, and we need not be afraid of them.
We will never settle this question until we are willing to consider
it along fundamental lines. Did our forefathers, when they launched
the declaration that all men were created free and equal, refer to
the few hundreds or few thousands of people who were then in this
country? Why, in that case, many of you are here only as guests! Was
there any thought in their minds that of all the people in the world,
those who happened to get in here before they set to work to compose
the Declaration of Independence were the ones who were born free and
equal, and with equal opportunities, and all the rest of mankind with
limitations? You heartily approve the sentiments expressed in our
Constitution and our Declaration of Independence. How then can you
limit the application of their principles? When did the day dawn when
it was time to shut the gate? When did the hour arrive when we could
say that all those of free and equal origin were already here and the
rest could stay outside? I don't know at what moment immigrants begin
to be immigrants and not pilgrims and voyagers for spiritual freedom.
People were surprised at a phrase I used not long ago, and quoted it
right and left, as if I had made a great discovery, when I said that
every ship that brings over the immigrants is another Mayflower. Why, I
can not think of it in any other terms. Ships are now made to run with
steam instead of with sails, and our forefathers did not come in the
steerage because the Mayflower wasn't built that way.
You see I am not sticking to my text--a proof of an inexperienced
speaker. But I am not a speaker. I am a witness on the witness stand. I
have been called from the ranks to testify. Now each of you is in the
same position. It would have been an impertinence on my part to get
up before a body of scholars without a finished address, if I had any
idea that I was going to make an intellectual contribution. I simply
answer to my name as a witness, and each of you can do no less: testify
to what you know. Now remember I am not asking this for the sake of
the immigrant. If this were the proper time and place I would tell you
just how, in what order, my interest in the immigrant on the one hand
and in America on the other developed. With me it was America first,
and it still is so. I was not conscious of the immigrant as a special
class of our citizenship until I became conscious of certain American
problems. It is with me the immigrant for the sake of America, not
America for the sake of the immigrant, and I beg you to believe me. And
why do I insist that all the truth you know about the immigrant shall
be brought out? I am not speaking--I can not repeat it emphatically
enough--because I am an immigrant, not even because I represent that
specially large group of immigrants, the Jews. If America should go
back on its ancient traditions and close its hospitable doors, the
Jews would suffer bitterly. But what is one more disappointment in the
history of the Jews? They have known how to lift up their hearts and
thank God for disappointments before. They would simply adopt another
dream. It is not for them that I speak. Nor is it because I am a great
lover of justice. I want to see that justice is done to the stranger,
to be sure; let us know all sides of the immigrant that no injustice
may be done. But the thing that makes me speak to you more than any
other is my love for America, for the ideals that I was taught to
cherish in the public school. I took everything in my school books
literally; when I read that this is the land of freedom; that the door
is open to all worthy men and women, and that all shall have an equal
opportunity. I want to hold you to that, to a literal interpretation of
those terms.
I went back to Russia two years ago, to Polotzk on the Dvina, the
city in the Pale where I was born, and again I felt as I felt in the
beginning, when I first came here, after seeing how those people over
there regard us. They still take us at our word. When we turn them away
at the gate, for this and that petty excuse at the bottom of which
is some selfish motive that we do not dare to acknowledge, they are
bitterly disappointed. And yet they are not the worst sufferers. It is
we who suffer, we as Americans, for in turning them away we abandon our
ideals, and lose the consciousness that we are still conserving the
ideals of our forefathers. It always seems to me that in our attitude
towards the immigrant, more than in any other branch of our national
policy, we make manifest our true ideals. In our formal dealings with
foreign governments we may make blunders, we may betray weaknesses, but
on the whole these matters remain a secret with the foreign ambassador.
The people at large do not follow very closely these dignified
negotiations about treaties and tariff and what-not; but as we meet
these individual men and women at the gate, here we give ourselves
away. There, at the gate of entrance, we, the people of America, deal
directly with the people of the world. The immigrant with his million
eyes is looking at us, and he will tell whether or not we still believe
in the things for which we honor our forefathers on all our patriotic
anniversaries.
There was a young Jewish girl working in my household as a cook, who
had been through very unhappy experiences in this country, experiences
which, unfortunately, have been multiplied in the lives of many other
girls who come here unprotected. She told me her story once, and I
saw that what hurt her more than her own misfortunes, more than the
agony she had been through, more than the disgrace she had suffered,
was her disappointment in America. She found that in America, in this
instance that she knew of in her own life, a man may do a gross wrong
and there is no way to get hold of him and punish him. She had times of
discouragement when she would talk to me and complain of that thing.
Oh, it shook me to find that in the mind of this ignorant, illiterate
child of seventeen, we, the American people, had lost something of our
prestige. I talked to her--perhaps the need inspired me--and explained
to her that our laws, like the laws of civilization at large, are not
yet perfect; that law and civilization are things of gradual growth;
and showed her that although we are still to blame for many things that
here exist, we have done far better than other people in some respects.
I made it my business to try to prove to this ignorant Russian girl,
my cook, who waited on me every day, that America was still America,
despite some mistakes and some failings, and that, on the whole, we
have gone further in the quest of justice than other nations. It
mattered to me that this one girl should think we were still Americans,
and surely it matters to you just as much.
Do not let these millions that come to our gates get the wrong
impression of us. Do not let people with selfish interests to serve,
who send representatives to Congress, speak louder than you do when
this question comes to be discussed. Let the truth out every time.
For the sake of our country I am asking it, not for the sake of
the unfortunate foreigners. We owe them something, as a people of
charitable heart, to be sure, but we owe more to ourselves and to our
traditions.
This same girl of whom I speak also afforded an illustration of
some of the nobler traits of many of our immigrants that you are
aware of, and that you ought to testify to. I mean the reverence
for learning that is found among the ignorant, the illiterate, of
many of our immigrants. This girl who could not read or write a word
in any language until she came to me (when gradually, by means of
the cook-book, she made some progress), had a genuine reverence for
learning, which is in itself half of the material for making a scholar.
I kept her pretty busy in my household, as I usually do keep our maids,
and sometimes, when there would be a rush of more work than I could
do, I would put her to extra trouble, to bring my luncheon upstairs,
perhaps, when I could not stop for meals. "Oh, Miss Antin," she used
to say, "it is wonderful that I can wait on somebody who can write
books!" A respect for letters such as this is not one of our prominent
characteristics as Americans. I ought to have the courage of our
foreign visitor, who told the truth about his people. I can do no less.
We can not boast of too much reverence for learning. Is it not a great
asset these foreigners bring with them, this reverence for learning?
The man behind the pushcart can't read fifty lines of the Constitution,
but his heart bows in reverence before the man who can, and that is
worth more than the ability to read the Constitution and forget it.
There are so many ways of classifying the immigrants--as laborers, as
a peril, as a help, according to one's point of view. But I always
think of them as a cloud of witnesses in the tribunal of the nations.
They go back and forth, in person or through letters; their experience
is reported all over the world, and they tell the truth about us. The
immigrant is the only visitor, you know, who comes to stay and finds
us out. The tourists, the critics, the honorable guests of various
honorable institutions, who are taken around in carriages and shown
our best front, what do they know about us? The letters home that go
out from the East Side, shiploads of letters, some of them written at
dictation, sent by persons who cannot write themselves--(I used to
write letters for my cook; I have never forgotten some of them)--those
are the documents that go all over the world. They are forming their
opinion of us in the far corners of the earth. What shall they say of
us?
If you see that justice is done in the case of the immigrant, they will
have no evil to say of us. Our traditions of liberty, of hospitality to
the oppressed, will be realized in the eyes of the world.
Now it does not matter that the immigrants today may not be running
away from religious oppression, or may not be victims of political
martyrdom. Martyrdom of the worst kind is martyrdom of the spirit,
and immigrants who have suffered such martyrdom are still coming to
us by the shipload. It is accurate to say, in a certain way, that
the immigrants in the beginning came in search of liberty, and today
they come in search of bread. That may all be, but with most of our
present-day immigrants, if you give them bread and nothing else, they
are not satisfied. You know it. And I know what the people said in
Polotzk only two years ago. If any of you thought, from reading my
story, that I had put down the reminiscences of my early childhood,
with the haze of the past over all, that I had idealized everything in
my enthusiasm, I can assure you that while my story was in manuscript
I went back to Polotzk, to find out if I had told the truth, and I
found that I had. I found there my old rabbi, my teacher who taught
me my Hebrew letters. I talked with various of the old scholars, who
were very old when I got back after seventeen years' absence--these
old men who spend their time over the Talmud in the corridors of the
synagogues--and I found among them just that attitude toward America
which I remembered to have existed when I came away nearly twenty years
ago. They look on us today as on the upholders of justice and true
liberty. They still believe in us.
Do not let them lose that faith! It is more to us than it is to them
that they shall be satisfied in their high longings. That is all I ask
of you. You know the immigrant as he is in the library; you have a
view of him that most people have not. You send your little paragraphs
to the New York papers. They are not printed big enough. Nobody sees
them. Speak up and tell what you know about the immigrant, that justice
may be done, that we may remain sound-headed and true-hearted in our
national life, true to our traditions; and the immigrant will hear with
a million ears and see with a million eyes and run with a million feet
to the far corners of the earth, to cry that America is still America.
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: I shall ask you to rise as an expression of
thanks and appreciation of Miss Antin's address. (The audience remained
standing for a moment.)
The next speaker will discuss the subject of immigrants as contributors
to library progress. It gives me very great pleasure to introduce to
you Mrs. ADELAIDE B. MALTBY, who is in charge of the Tompkins Square
branch, on the lower East Side, of the New York public library.
IMMIGRANTS AS CONTRIBUTORS TO LIBRARY PROGRESS
I should prefer to let Miss Antin's personality and accomplishments
bear home to you the point I had hoped to make; and silently let
what she has said to us possess our imaginations to the end that our
interest and will-to-do will be vigorously stirred. Fortunately, this
will happen in spite of my words.
A little girl with a fairy book in her hand gleefully remarked: "I can
tell what kind of stories are in the book by the continents." Would
that we could so tell the stories of our peoples! Yet the story of
immigrants in this country is not unlike that of the "Ugly Duckling;"
and Miss Antin is living proof of the swan-like qualities. We, as a
nation, have persisted in hatching the odd egg; have been apparently
proud of the duckling's ability to swim untaught, like other ducks;
and were duly troubled, when because of his unlikeness, he was
not acceptable to closer acquaintance with cock and gander in the
barn-yard. We have witnessed, with but feeble protest, his struggle to
feel at home, his association with wild ducks and all it entailed. It
seems as if the winter of his agony is enduring. He's had a stirring
within as of something better to come! The question is will we make
greater effort to recognize the swan-like qualities and to give freedom
for their development? In this direction lies progress.
As contributors, I shall not single out great personalities from among
our foreigners. They will belong to history. Nor do I mean only the
well educated groups. They are generally accorded recognition. But I do
name the masses who earn just consideration slowly.
First of all, immigrants have kept us alive in every generation. Shall
we say on the "qui vive" in some localities? All agree that living
is no minor art, so to stimulate life is a contribution. Frank Warne
in his book, the "Immigrant Invasion," tells how the distribution of
immigrants previous to our civil war practically determined the outcome
of that struggle, by giving to the North balance of power in Congress
because of larger population, which was made up of able-bodied men who
replaced Federal soldiers and kept shops and farms going to furnish
supplies to the army. It is interesting to note that Mr. Warne ascribes
the trend of immigration to the north and west very largely to what was
read in the old countries about life in different parts of America,
mentioning "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as the one product of literature most
influencing distribution.
Cold statistics tell us that New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Illinois and California have the greatest number of foreign
born. With this as a basic fact we naturally suppose that in these
states, at least, public libraries will be found catering to and
helping to Americanize and to educate these citizens-to-be; because, if
for no other reason, we proudly call ourselves the "university of the
people." If the truth were told through questionnaire, or otherwise,
about twenty-five out of one hundred libraries throughout New York
state are sufficiently alive to the problem to supply books to attract
and interest foreigners. Yet for twenty years, at least, the task of
assimilating the almost overwhelming influx of immigrants has been
acute in the states named and in many localities elsewhere. A gentleman
working for the education of foreigners in American ways has said that
he thought libraries seemed most indifferent to their opportunities.
While another, a foreigner, devoting himself and two fortunes to
bettering conditions for immigrants, thinks that public libraries, when
they do work sympathetically--I mean that in the broadest sense--with
the foreign born are the only organizations which accomplish with real
altruism the implanting of American ideals and the developing of
better citizens. This, he believes, is done when we appreciate and
build on the natural endowment of the individual or race.
Since the national government has been facing this stupendous problem,
commissions and organizations galore, official and philanthropic, have
sprung into existence as aids. So many are there in New York City
alone, a possible list would bewilder one! Yet in how many reports of
such work when educational assets of communities are being cited, is
there mention made of libraries as a force in educating the immigrant?
Through libraries, however, more than through most educational agencies
may self-expression and development of natural gifts be realized by
individuals of all ages and nationalities. Where does the trouble lie?
Have we been open-minded or eager enough to discover the excellent
contributions foreigners bring to the end that we respond to live
issues, thus building progressively?
Old habits can be changed to new compunctions. There is no standardized
method of discovering or of spiritualizing men, of holding intercourse
with aliens or of receiving what they bring; but we can develop
sympathy and understanding, by knowing the people as individuals,
their countries, literatures, languages, arts, great national
characters--in a word, their histories, even to economic conditions.
Thereby do we come to an understanding of reasons for immigration
of the present day and of aspirations for life here. Thus equipped
mentally for further sympathetic appreciation, first hand observation
of conditions will help; or if that is not possible, an imaginative
putting ourselves in the immigrants' places from the time they leave
their old world homes with all their worldly goods in their hands and,
in spite of homesickness and fears, with courage and hope in their
hearts--with them as they exist in their steerage quarters and with
them when they pass through the portals and mazes of Ellis Island, in
the main uncomprehendingly but always trustfully. I can not attempt
here to draw the detailed picture; but if you cannot see it for
yourself, Mr. Edward Steiner gives it graphically and faithfully in
his "On the Trail of the Immigrant." At last, the Federal government
accessions the immigrant. He is passed on, properly numbered, to be
shelf-listed by states, cities and towns, coming finally to libraries
and other institutions to be cataloged. It remains to us then to
decide for our own work whether there shall be one entry under the
word "alien" or whether his various assets shall be made available by
analytical entries.
Somewhat of all this we must know to appreciate what the immigrant
can contribute to life here, and to library progress, if we are wise
enough to call it forth or make opportunity for its expression. It is
vain to hope for the assimilation of the alien as a result of conscious
benevolent effort. We too often forget that each of the hundreds of
thousands is a human being! With a sense of the finest they can bring
with them, we should have an increasing knowledge of how they live
here, what they think and how these elements can be influenced by books
and personal contact. The pressure of a congested neighborhood goads to
thoughtful search for remedies.
No one will go far along these paths without realizing how avid
libraries must be to reap the benefits of such diverse gifts, rather
than to suffer from the dregs. We must correlate books and people as
never before to attain progress.
"If we once admit the human, dynamic character of progress, then it is
easy to understand why the crowded city quarters become focal points of
that progress." As an earnest of what is being done in many libraries
elsewhere, may I tell of our work in New York, of that only because I
know it best. What has been done in one place and more, can be done in
another through interest, desire and adaptation.
The necessity of having the library near the people for whom its
use is intended is, of course, recognized. This is more especially
true when the people are foreigners. The New York public library
has forty-one branches and all that are located in districts where
foreigners live have, beside English books, collections of books in
languages native to the residents. By so doing we believe that we
convince of our friendship those adults who do not and even those who
may never read English. This is a fundamental necessity, opening up
various possibilities for imparting American ideas and ideals. The
less English the grown people read the more they need knowledge of
true American ideas to help keep them in touch with their children,
who rapidly take on ways and manners strange to their parents, many
of whom are uncomprehending, reticent and often sad. We go still
further. We have assistants of the nationalities represented in the
neighborhood, whose special duty it is to make known to their peoples
the library privileges, also to know their people individually as
far as possible and, of course, the books. Right here may I say that
a foreign born assistant imbued with respect for her own countrymen
and with true American ideals can in her enthusiasm do more to make
real citizens than many Americans. This cannot be accomplished if, as
happens with so many young foreigners, their own people as we see them
in this country, are held in contempt. It were pity to scorn the strong
qualities they possess, these "Greenies," as they call themselves.
They live daily too close to the vital facts of existence to develop
self-consciousness or artificialities to any great extent. We talk of
simplicity. They have it. Courage, singleness of purpose, happiness in
modest circumstances and astonishing capacity for work are elements of
everyday life unconsciously developed. Their wealth of imagination,
fostered by their own folk-lore and early traditions, could not be more
wonderfully illustrated than it has been just recently in New York.
The majority of us think of New York and other large cities as vast
factories with the machine-like and vicious qualities of human nature
uppermost, so it is most refreshing to contemplate "Old Home Week in
Greenwich Village" and the "Henry Street Pageant."
"Old Home Week" successfully recalled Greenwich Village history in a
dramatic way to its residents--American, Irish and Italian--and aroused
a new sense of fellowship in sharing the district's activities.
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Henry Street Settlement,
a pictorial representation of the history of the neighborhood
from the days of the Indians to the present time was given by
its residents--men, women and children--before an assemblage of
spectators from all parts of the city and representative of all its
activities--civic and social. The last living picture, or episode,
was of all the nationalities that have lived in the last fifty years
in Henry Street, once the center of Manhattan's fashionable life.
The Irish, the Scotch, the Germans, the Italians and the Russians
appeared. They sang the songs and danced the dances that contribute
so much poetry to the life of the city, while onlookers marveled at
the temperamental qualities which made it possible for foreigners to
reproduce with unconscious realism historical scenes of a city and a
country not their own!
Such neighborhood pageants as this and the celebration in Greenwich
Village, exert a wholesome and a permanent influence in our municipal
life. In both these events the libraries of the neighborhoods took
part. The library aimed to show that folk-songs and folk-dances are
kept alive by folk-stories. The contrast between old New York and
the present time was shown by the use of historical scenes--lantern
slides--and a story; in the one case reminiscent of early Dutch
settlers and in the other a poetic interpreting of the spirit of
service in municipal life. Those planning the pageant felt that this
was a direct help in making atmosphere or in inducing an interpretive
mood in participants. Festival occasions like these bind together by
national ties the people and institutions of a neighborhood and are
rich with possibilities for the library. To a delightful degree they
broaden our understanding of the folk-spirit.
So it seems natural to have stories in the library told by foreigners
in their native tongues. From time to time we have groups of Bohemians,
Germans, Hungarians, Italians listening to old world traditions and
tales. Knowing the original and the translation enhances the value of
the story in English for narrator and listeners. Through these story
hours we are reminding the foreigner of his unique contribution to life
here, and are showing our respect for his best. For a simple example,
our picture books and book illustration in general do not express life
as vividly or realistically as Russian, Bohemian or Swedish artists do.
Having some of these in our juvenile collections has been a distinct
contribution to establishing sympathetic relations with foreigners.
Yes, it is true that the Italian laborer loves Dante and Italian
classics. It is relatively true of other nationalities. If we take
for granted that we should know and libraries should have, French and
German standard writers--and this largely because their literature is
older, more translated or their languages better known--may we not also
take for granted that literary history is still in the making? Should
we not bestir ourselves to know latter-day masterpieces, if such there
be, and the older literature which has helped mould or inspire writers
of them, in Swedish, Finnish, Bohemian, Polish, Hungarian or any other
language spoken by the people surrounding us? Perhaps the need of
realizing what these literary contributions may mean can be emphasized
by the fact that in one week, June 2 to June 9, 1913, thirty thousand
souls, nearly five thousand daily, passed the man at the Eastern
gateway. Eighty per cent or thereabouts are going beyond New York City
these days.
Is the Hungarian's enjoyment of Jokai or their patriot poets for
Hungarians alone? One can better appreciate how to sustain effort and
enthusiasm in a person or a group of this nationality if one knows
that much of their best poetry came almost from the cannon's mouth
on the field of battle; and if one has seen the glistening eyes and
heard the voices of kerchief-capped girls and boys in trousers to shoe
tops as they sang in ringing tones "Esküszünk!" and then heard their
national song in English for the first time. At home they may not
celebrate their Independence Day, March 15; but when they are invited
to, here, in the library, they do it with much genuine feeling and true
sentiment, which I believe leads them to appreciate and adopt as their
own our Independence Day. Through such as they, perhaps, patriotic
sentiment and feeling may once more be evident in our Fourth of July
celebrations.
If we try to think of a library without the contributions of writers of
other nationalities, we must face almost empty shelves in some classes
of knowledge. This makes us realize more clearly that immigrants have
rich possessions by right of inheritance while these are ours only
by adoption. Some of the newcomers to our shores may have lost their
heritage temporarily; but they will warmly cherish as a friend the
library that restores to them this valuable possession and for us that
friendship is preeminently a contribution.
There are other special ways in which the library seems happily
successful in forming such friendships. With adults it comes through
our co-operation with neighborhood associations, or organizations
working for the benefit of foreigners, such as the Y. M. C. A. and Y.
W. C. A. who conduct in our lecture rooms classes to teach English to
foreigners. In these instances it is our pleasure to supplement with
books the copies treated. The book work is, perhaps, most marked in
connection with the English classes where we have opportunity to watch
progress and needs of the individual more carefully from the time
when an eager pupil may ask, as one did, for a book called a "Woman's
Tongue" wanting Arnold's "Mother Tongue" to his reading of Hale's "Man
without a country," perhaps, or Andrews' "The perfect tribute." There
are also many semi-social, semi-educational clubs, or associations,
which hold their meetings in the libraries. The Slavia is a Bohemian
club, which has as its only meeting place the Bohemian department of
one of our branches. Its members have done much to help form a splendid
Bohemian library. Several Hungarian associations work in co-operation
with three branches, where are collections of Hungarian books. A
large Polish society gives its educational lectures twice a month
in one branch and its advice in the selection of books; but perhaps
the "German Association for Culture" best illustrates my point. They
state: "We are working for culture, and we aim to give the Germans in
America and the Americans a better understanding of our contemporary
German literature and art. We are bending our efforts more particularly
for our members who as artists, poets, writers, etc., are producing
valuable works. And we want to help as much as possible those talented
artists, poets, etc., who are not yet known." Their distinction is that
they succeed! Even in the et ceteras!
As concrete instances of other possible contributions by foreigners
to library progress, I want to tell of the discussion of one City
History Club chapter and the action of a settlement organization.
The membership in both is composed of foreign-born young men from
sixteen to twenty years of age, and both groups interest themselves in
present day civic welfare. The Settlement Club wrote to the mayor,
comptroller, library trustees and several daily papers a dignified
plea for increase in library appropriation and in salaries. The year's
closing meeting of a certain City History Club was a discussion of the
city budget, the club members representing New York's mayor, aldermen
and comptroller. The main contention of the majority was that cutting
the appropriation of the public library meant seriously handicapping
one of the city's most efficient servants and they ended with a warm
appreciation of service rendered by library assistants and a vigorous
plea for better salaries. This was later reproduced for an audience of
representative citizens by the City History Club as a token typical
of their work. Both these happenings came as complete surprises to
librarians. It seems as if in their eagerness to "get on" young
foreigners, especially, seek and use every possible public means for
advancement. They soon appreciate what good service means and how to
get it. They make us feel toward what ends they are tending and suggest
definitely our part in the building for civic betterment.
To sum up, immigrants do bring very rich contributions in arts
and literature. They bring many capabilities, that of acquiring
intellectual cultivation being not the least among them. I am not blind
to the seriousness of the problems they create, having worked among
them about ten years; but the conviction strengthens that knowing
and understanding their racial and social inheritance and first hand
contact with groups of individuals stimulate to broader thought and
living. It is not an argument! It is a suggestive statement! Immigrants
can contribute to library progress.
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: We will now have a paper from Mr. CHARLES E.
RUSH, the librarian of the St. Joseph public library, on
THE MAN IN THE YARDS
This great country of ours has become within the last century a huge
"melting pot" for all the nations of the world. Foreign and English
speaking tongues from the four corners of the earth have sought our
shores as a haven of relief and opportunity. No other nation has
experienced a like growth and none other has ever gained the changing
cosmopolitan characteristics which have come to us from such widely
differing component parts. Those of us who call ourselves Americans
owe our life, liberty and happiness to the conditions which brought
about this great growth and upon us devolves the great burden of
relieving many of the unfortunate conditions which naturally result
from the continued and increasing wave of humanity still seeking better
things in our so-called land of freedom and equality.
During the past ninety years nearly thirty millions of people have
entered our immigration gates, adding to our numbers more inhabitants
than the total population of the United States three score years ago,
and almost one-third of our present total figure. At the close of
the year of 1912 the total and combined population of five states of
the Union did not equal the number of immigrants admitted during the
preceding twelve months. Eighty per cent of these thirty millions
arrived during the last fifty years. Eighty-seven per cent of them were
more than fourteen years of age, while only thirteen per cent were
under fourteen. These figures easily demonstrate that the problem is a
growing one and that the large proportion of new arrivals are destined
to become citizens and parents of future citizens in a short time. Our
past policy of devoting our greatest efforts to the thirteen per cent
while largely neglecting the eighty-seven per cent seems very similar
to the losing method of mending a leaking boat by removing the water
with a sponge rather than by repairing the hole.
Economists tell us that the "rise and fall of the immigration waves
are very closely connected with the phenomenon of prosperity in this
country," and that the general causes of westward expansion lie in the
presence of foreign political and religious persecutions, low wages,
bad economic conditions, ease of transportation, inflated rumors of
great opportunities in America, and the appeal of separated friends and
relatives.
The early immigrants, being largely of Teutonic and Keltic origin, were
thrifty and self-reliant by nature and entered our American life as
skilled workmen in agriculture and in the trades. In the last quarter
of a century the source of the tide has changed from the northern to
the southern countries, resulting in a far different type of foreigner
who is generally unskilled, lacking independence and initiative, and
blindly submissive to authority. Many come from nations with a per
cent. of illiteracy rising as high as seventy, and notwithstanding the
fifty per cent decrease in the total percentage of illiteracy in this
country during the past thirty years we must face the fact that some
twenty-eight out of every one hundred of the new arrivals over fourteen
years of age are annually classed as illiterates. In the future we may
expect to receive an increasing flood of immigration from China, Japan
and India, with problems and conditions even more perplexing.
Some say that the incoming foreigner directly affects the entire
laboring class native to America in that he adds materially to the
supply of wage earners, lowers the scale of wages due to lower
standards of living, changes working conditions through the subdivision
of labor, modifies labor organizations, influences local and national
politics and increases social difficulties. It has been said that "low
standards of living on the part of unskilled workers menace the higher
standards of the skilled workers. The man of skill is recognizing this
fact and he is frequently found joining hands with the unskilled to
right the grievances of the latter. In the cotton mills, in the meat
packing industry, in the coal mines, in the clothing industry and
elsewhere, one nationality has been displaced by another satisfied
with a lower standard of living. In turn the second has been displaced
by a third, and so on. Wave after wave of immigrants may be traced in
the history of one of these industries. As rapidly as a race rises in
the scale of living, and through organization begins to demand higher
wages and to resist the pressure of long hours and over-exertion, the
employers substitute another race and the process is repeated. Each
race comes from a country lower in the scale than that of the preceding
until finally the ends of the earth have been ransacked in the search
for low standards of living combined with patient industriousness."
(Carlton).
Our civilization cannot remain unaffected by these changing
characteristics and the threatening, industrial conditions confronting
us. With the army of the unemployed rapidly growing larger and larger,
it behooves the American nation to encourage immediate consideration
of ways and means to prevent unfortunate results in our industrial,
political and social life.
The national government, being concerned chiefly with the admission
or rejection of the immigrant, quickly places him under the care of
state and local governments, who are duty-bound to assume the entire
responsibility of developing him into an efficient worker and a good
citizen. The regulation of private employment agencies, protection
of the foreigner in transit, adoption of standard employment laws,
creation of municipal unemployment commissions, etc., indicate that
state and city governments are beginning to respond to this duty
of offering more sympathetic understanding, more adequate care and
better protection to the newly arrived, confused, unemployed and
homeless immigrant. These governments are slowly realizing that
their obligations have been sorely neglected in the past when
such problems were wholly consigned to the well meaning but quite
inadequate field of private philanthropy. Public libraries, as
departments of city governments, concerned with the dissemination of
knowledge of the masses, must soon realize their large responsibility
in the naturalization, education and socialization of our foreign
born population. It is very gratifying to announce that the state of
Massachusetts has very recently taken the lead in this particular
field of service by the passage of an act authorizing the appointment
by the Board of library commissioners of a field worker to direct the
educational work of libraries among the aliens of the state.
Libraries, like human beings, can reach a high point of efficiency
and service in a particular line only when that line is encouraged
and promoted. The development of libraries favoring certain classes
of citizens has been quite general and extremely successful. Much has
been said but comparatively little has been done for the foreigner
among our laboring men. The "man in the yards," the unskilled foreign
wage-earner, being taxed, while needing more and receiving less from
society than others, "has done much of the rough and hard work of
recent decades. He has built the roadbeds of our railways, mined
our coal and iron, unloaded our vessels, and cleaned our streets.
The recent immigrant has performed the crude manual labor necessary
for the upbuilding of big industrial plants and huge transportation
systems. His services in developing the resources of the nation have
been extremely important. Many industries would be almost depleted
if divested of all wage-earners of foreign birth and those born on
American soil but of foreign born parents. If the foreign born and the
native born of foreign parents were removed from our large cities, the
latter would shrink to approximately one-third of their recent size."
(Carlton.)
This "man in the yards" with whom "intimate contact removes prejudice,
inspires appreciation and kindles self-respect," displays an astounding
amount of seriousness and earnestness in his desire to learn and
to improve himself when once informed of the possibilities in our
libraries. Very often he finds his chief delight in the best of books,
like a child calling for good instead of new books, and many times
he is not as dull and as ignorant as generally supposed, being more
appreciative of better things than our average native laboring man. The
opportunity is a great one to be of practical and inspirational help
to an eager reader seeking to increase his earning power and joy in
life, and to learn of the higher ideals of citizenship and the coming
brotherhood of all.
In order to devise worth-while methods of approaching him and securing
his interest, place yourself in imagination in similar surroundings and
conditions on a foreign shore. Only through direct appeals touching
your personal needs, pleasure and occupation would you be attracted
in like circumstances by strangers. The same is true with our new
Americans.
Foreigners who speak the same language largely settle in the same
locality and move from place to place in groups. A thorough educational
survey of these groups in the community tributary to the library
or branch is of first importance to determine the characteristics,
conditions and needs of each group. Whenever it is possible an
experienced library and social worker should be employed. The advice
and assistance of factory managers, labor leaders and social workers
cannot be valued too highly. Following these steps branch and deposit
stations administered by local assistants may well be located in
favorable shops, yards, factories, settlements, centers, and labor
headquarters, without arousing undue suspicion among the men, even more
extensively than in many of our progressive library systems today.
The formation of the recently named "Creative" or "Extension"
departments and the appointment of one or more trained assistants to
create interest and regularly visit and supervise the library work
in each district, group and institution will soon become a customary
feature in the large cities. I firmly believe that it will not be
many years until our large manufacturing institutions employing much
labor will construct recreational centers in their plants equipped
with social, reading and gymnastic departments sufficient to meet the
needs of their employees. Furthermore, I see little to discourage the
establishment of traveling library collections on wheels, visiting
certain districts on scheduled time, after the manner of the now
famous Maryland wagon and automobile. In libraries near foreign
centers special departments are needed to supply practical and simple
information in different languages on requirements for naturalization,
instruction, employment, investments, American customs, travel and
history, demands of law and order, American money and banks, and
friendly advice on many things of fifty-seven or more varieties.
The development of our present line of tactics, including the
presentation of lectures emphasizing the possibility of increased
wages through practical reading, the formation of classes in the study
of English, the promotion of special foreign entertainment programs
and exhibitions, the extension of the library habit to adults through
publicity directed to their children, the publication of daily news for
workers by means of special library papers and the general press, the
creation of more effectively printed library advertising done in many
languages, the co-operation with individuals and societies promoting
educational, social and recreation centers, etc., will open a new era
in library service for foreign laboring men.
A great number of specialized and technical industrial books may not
often be found necessary in library collections, since the great need
among this class of readers is a large supply of trade journals and
more elementary mechanical books for the unskilled workman, the student
mechanic and the future tradesman.
On the other hand life as well as livelihood must be considered and
met. All men must live while they are earning a living and in these
days they must be trained for vacation as well as vocation. The
tendency today is to place too much emphasis on the daily struggle
for livelihood and to neglect the hours of life during leisure time.
In defense of the "man in the yards" the crying answer returns, "but
what of the man whose soul-deadening toil leaves little or no time for
leisure or whose daily labor kills all mental and physical desire for
leisure, rest and improvement." This cry will return again and again
until all labor shall be so equalized that all men will have more
of what life offers and less of what it demands. Those who work on
specialized labor done under intense strain and through long hours are
destined to become weakened, brutalized and almost incapable of showing
intelligent interest in social-betterment. Even "family life," the
first school of morals, is a closed book against the man who comes home
dead-tired late at night.
Consider some of the perils through which the working boy must pass
from year to year, such as economic waste in un-educational trades,
stinted physical development, early maturity, suppression of the spirit
of boyhood, indifference towards knowledge and efficiency, personal
weakness, and delinquency. The dire results due to these perils are
well illustrated by the following replies made by a number of Chicago
factory children when asked why they quit school:
"Because it's easier to work in a factory than it is to learn at
school."
"You never understand what they tell you in school and you can learn
right off to do things in a factory."
"They don't call you a Dago."
"You can buy shoes for the baby."
"Our boss he never went to school."
"School ain't no good. The Holy Father he can send ye to hell, and the
boss he can take yer job away er raise yer pay. But the teacher, she
can't do nothing."
Is it not true that greed, selfishness, privilege, injustice and
neglect are five of the great sins of civilization? These obstructions
to progress are largely due to ignorance and indifference, two causes
which are in themselves as great evils as their results. In order to
attain the best of social conditions, positive cures must be found for
these devastating evils--cures that will replace greed by liberality,
selfishness by the brotherhood of man, privilege by equality, injustice
by justice and neglect by service--cures that will transform ignorance
and indifference into clear-eyed knowledge and active responsibility.
Laws and revolutions have failed more miserably than we enjoy
admitting and only through the far reaching, beneficent influences of
education and religion may we expect to touch the roots of these great
evils.
Is it possible that many of our public libraries, who reach the
individual and his family long before and for many years following
the efforts of our public schools, can consider themselves excused
from a large part of their responsibility in the educational movements
now striving to improve the physical, mental and moral conditions of
these men who suffer for want of better things? How can it be that
some librarians stand by indifferently and heed not the cry of need
from these weaker members of society, who, with their distinctive and
curable social difficulties, have been left alone to carve their own
destinies, unappreciated and unaided? The time is near at hand when
everyone shall recognize that it is the "common right of all men to
share in the culture, prosperity and progress" of society, and that the
conservation of life by raising it to its highest value is to be the
cry of our new era of heightened individuality.
In his inaugural address President Wilson uttered these accusing heart
searching words: "We have been proud of our industrial achievements,
but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the
human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and
broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women
and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen
without mercy the years through. The groans and agony of it all, the
solemn moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and
factories and out of every home where the struggle has had its intimate
and familiar seat, have not yet reached our ears."
The "vision of the open gates of opportunity for all" must first be
seen by those who lead before they who follow can dream dreams and go
forth to realize them.
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: The next speaker, who is now the librarian of
the Rochester public library, was for many years librarian of one of
the most important libraries south of what Mr. O. Henry was accustomed
to call "Mason & Hamlin's Line." I have the pleasure of introducing Mr.
WILLIAM F. YUST, who will speak to us on
WHAT OF THE BLACK AND YELLOW RACES?
The form in which this subject is expressed is first a question asking
for information which has never before been collected. Possibly there
is in it also a mild challenge to library authorities calling for a
declaration of purpose and policy.
So far there is no indication of a yellow race problem in public
libraries. When foreigners enter a field which is already occupied they
do not produce a real race problem so long as they are so few in number
that they are chiefly objects of curiosity.
It is difficult to understand how the Japanese can be a serious race
problem in California where they constitute only two and one-half per
cent of the population and own and lease only twelve one-hundredths
of one per cent of the land. And yet it sounds as if there is trouble
there. Whatever may be its nature and its causes, the difficulty has
not extended to public libraries. The Chinese on the Pacific coast,
as elsewhere, are seldom seen in a library. They live in their own
quarter and hardly ever penetrate other sections of the city except for
purposes of trade.
The Japanese who frequent the libraries are not numerous. They belong
almost entirely to the student class and the books they take are used
in connection with their school work. In some places they "appear to
be more resourceful, more polite and more intelligent than the average
high school student" with whom the libraries come in contact. As a
class of patrons they are not only inoffensive but desirable.
While the yellow man is clearly not a problem in libraries, it is
equally certain that the black man is a problem. This is especially
true in the South. In northern libraries it is the rule to admit him
without distinction. Throughout the South, with very few exceptions,
the segregation maintained in all social, educational and religious
institutions is enforced in libraries.
This paper will deal primarily with the public library question. But
account should also be taken of the institutional libraries to which
negroes have access.
Institutional Libraries
The report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1910 contains a
list of 189 secondary and higher schools for the colored race in 16
states and the District of Columbia. Of these 160 report libraries
aggregating 368,684 volumes with an estimated value of $295,788.
Following is a summary of the institutions and their libraries arranged
by states. Of these libraries 84 have less than 1,000 volumes;
56 have 1,000 to 5,000 volumes; 11 have between 5,000 and 10,000
volumes; 6 have between 10,000 and 20,000. Two have 26,607 and 27,000
respectively.
Schools Volumes Estimated
Reporting. in Value.
Library.
Alabama 14 49,522 $26,525
Arkansas 6 9,450 5,150
Delaware 2 1,900 800
District of Columbia 2 27,253 43,569
Florida 7 8,267 7,120
Georgia 14 49,025 32,181
Kentucky 6 3,950 2,350
Louisiana 10 14,353 16,051
Maryland 5 7,250 5,735
Mississippi 11 18,432 14,920
Missouri 3 4,950 5,500
New Jersey 1 35 25
North Carolina 20 16,560 13,097
Ohio 1 6,500 2,500
Oklahoma 1 975 1,450
Pennsylvania 2 19,500 20,500
South Carolina 16 27,600 21,000
Tennessee 11 30,025 17,935
Texas 8 13,550 17,830
Virginia 18 52,030 35,950
West Virginia 2 7,557 5,600
--- ------- --------
Total 160 368,684 $295,788
Many of these collections except in the larger institutions, have
been characterized as "so unsuitable as to be almost worthless ...
the discarded refuse of garrets and overcrowded store rooms, which
should have gone to the paper mill, but was sent to these poor children
through mistaken kindness."
These libraries are primarily for the use of the students, but they
are usually open to the townspeople for reading and reference. While
the people thus have access to a collection of books for consultation,
it can not be said that they have the equivalent of a public library,
even where the selection is good. It is a common occurrence, however,
throughout the country for institutional libraries to operate against
the establishment of a public library without acting as a satisfactory
substitute.
General Attitude
The prevailing attitude toward libraries for negroes is one of
indifference among the masses of both races. But the same conditions
existed for many years and still exist in other parts of the country.
The library must follow the school, it can not precede it. When it
is remembered that the educational awakening of the South is of
comparatively recent date and that anything like general education of
the negro is still more recent, the small number of public libraries
for negroes will not appear so strange. In a few places a vigorous
demand has arisen. In a few places the authorities have not only
supplied the demand but have endeavored to stimulate and enlarge it.
It may be said, however, that there are still people who think that
the negro is incapable of education and that it actually unfits him
for usefulness. Uncle Remus has a saying, "When you put a book into
a negro's hand you spoil a good plow hand." This notion still lurks
in the minds of a surprisingly large number of people, who cite the
wretched condition and dense ignorance of millions of negroes after
fifty years of freedom. In 1910 thirty per cent of them were still
illiterate. Libraries can not flourish in illiteracy as trees can not
grow in a desert.
There are, however, oases in the desert, bright and shining examples of
individuals, schools and whole communities, which have demonstrated the
negro's capacity for the highest education and development. There is a
growing disposition to afford him full opportunity for making the most
of himself.
While some librarians are urging action, others shrink from it as from
a disagreeable task. One is endeavoring to look at the subject of a
negro library from the missionary standpoint and is trying to convince
the trustees that such an innovation would be desirable, but finds it
very hard to arouse any interest and enthusiasm. Another proposes to
let the question alone till forced to take action. Another reports that
the city is on the verge of the question. Another is having difficulty
to find a central location for a colored library where white people
do not object. One city with a branch library in a negro high school
considers it an easy way out of a difficult situation. The authorities
realize that the time is coming when these facilities will no longer be
adequate. At present their funds are needed so much in other directions
that they hope to be able to postpone this added expense for some time
to come. One library having a special room for negroes never pushes
this part of its work, but does only what it is compelled to do by city
ordinance. Another where there is no race distinction tells how the
library is overrun at times with negroes and what a drawback this is to
the work.
Some lend books to negroes but do not allow them to sit in the reading
room. This practice is not established by rule and regulation but rests
on the disposition of the librarians to be helpful to all. Public
sentiment will tolerate it in this form while it would rebel at an
attempt to guarantee the same service in formal rules.
Table of Leading Cities
Following is a table of some of the chief southern cities showing their
status with respect to negro libraries. The letter x denotes a negro
educational institution having a library of 1,000 volumes or more.
Negro
Population 1910 Public Remarks
City Total Negro Lib.
=Alabama=
Birmingham 132,685 52,305 No
Mobile 51,521 22,763 No
Montgomery 38,136 19,322 No
=Delaware=
Wilmington 87,411 9,081 Yes Admitted to Wilmington
Lib. without distinction.
=District of Columbia=
Washington 331,069 94,446 Yes Admitted to Pub. Lib.
without distinction. 2 x.
=Florida=
Jacksonville 81,640 40,020 Yes Sep. room & sep. books
in Carnegie lib.
=Georgia=
Atlanta 154,839 51,902 No 4 x.
Macon 40,665 18,150 No
Savannah 65,064 33,246 Yes Small sep. lib. of
little consequence.
=Kentucky=
Covington 53,270 2,899 No
Lexington 35,099 11,011 Yes Draw bks. at same desk with whites;
sep reading room; little used.
Louisville 223,928 40,522 Yes $30,000 Carnegie branch of pub. lib.;
2nd branch $22,500 being built.
=Louisiana=
New Orleans 339,075 89,262 No $25,000 Carnegie branch
to be built. 4 x.
=Maryland=
Baltimore 558,485 84,749 Yes Pratt free lib. admits without
distinction. 2 x.
=Missouri=
Kansas City 248,381 23,566 Yes Pub. lib. admits without distinction.
St. Louis 687,029 43,960 Yes Pub. lib. admits without distinction.
St. Joseph 77,403 4,249 Yes Pub. lib. admits without distinction.
=North Carolina=
Raleigh 19,218 Yes Sep. bldg. erected by city.
Poorly supported.
=Oklahoma=
Oklahoma City 64,205 6,546 Yes Pub. lib. admits without distinction.
=Tennessee=
Chattanooga 44,604 17,942 314 vols. placed in col. high
schools as a beginning.
Memphis 131,105 52,431 Yes Cossitt Lib. supplies books
thru LeMoyne Inst. 1 x.
Nashville 110,364 36,523 No $25,000 Carnegie Branch
to be built. 2 x.
=Texas=
Dallas 92,104 18,024 No
Galveston 36,981 8,036 Yes Branch of Rosenberg lib.
in col. high sch'l.
Houston 78,800 23,924 Yes $15,000 Carnegie bldg.
under negro board.
San Antonio 96,614 10,716 ?
=Virginia=
Norfolk 67,452 25,039 No
Richmond 127,618 46,733 No This city has no
pub. library.
Cities Having Colored Libraries
Charlotte, N. C., is the first and only city to build a library for
negroes with its own funds. After erecting a $25,000 Carnegie building
it spent $5,000 on a site and a separate building for negroes which was
opened in 1906. But its only income for maintenance is $400 a year from
the city. Most of the books have been donated. In 1911 the librarian
of the white library enlisted the interest of a Pittsburgh woman who
collected about 600 volumes for it in the North. The librarian at
Wilkes-Barré, Pa., sends it the best of her discarded books. From these
facts one may infer what kind of standard is maintained.
The white library was incorporated by the legislature in a special
act, which at the same time created a separate negro board. Several
ineffectual efforts have been made to have the act changed to place the
colored library under control of the white board and the supervision
of the white librarian. This would undoubtedly result in greater
efficiency, as now everybody including the colored board seems to be
inactive and indifferent toward it. Its failure however can hardly be
ascribed to the negro board alone because it is manifestly impossible
with such resources under such conditions to conduct a library which
would command the respect and the interest of either race.
Savannah, Ga., also has a small library for negroes. It was organized
in 1907 and is housed in rented quarters, but very few persons seem to
know of its existence. The city appropriates $360 a year for it. In
1911 it had 2,611 volumes and 1,244 were drawn for home use. Its total
receipts were $375.77. At the end of the year $35 was due the librarian
for salary and there was a deficit of $33.93. In 1910 Mr. Carnegie
offered $12,000 for a colored branch building and the city has promised
an increased appropriation on the completion of the building. For a
time the negroes tried to raise the money for a site by subscription,
but so far they have not succeeded.
Jacksonville, Fla., has in its Carnegie building a separate room and
books in charge of a colored attendant. Of its 81,000 population half
are colored, but the negro registration is only five per cent and
the circulation six per cent of the whole. No effort is being made
to extend it. The opinion prevails that the arrangement is a mistake
and that a branch library in the negro quarter would bring out a much
larger use.
Galveston, Texas, has had a branch of the Rosenberg library in the
colored high school since 1904. It contains 2,745 volumes. With a
colored population less than one-fifth as large as Jacksonville it has
twice as many borrowers but circulates only one-fourth as many books,
2,433 last year. This seems a very small number and does not bear out
the theory that a separate branch enlarges its use.
In Memphis, Tenn., the Cossitt library in 1903 entered into an
agreement with the LeMoyne Institute, a colored normal school, which
furnishes the room, and the Cossitt library furnishes the librarian
and the books, which number about four thousand added to a like number
belonging to the school. While these are used mainly by pupils and
teachers of the school, it serves as the book supply for all interested
negroes in the city and surrounding district.
The facilities thus furnished seem to meet the present demands pretty
fully. Much depends on the librarian's attitude, which is helpful and
encouraging. The circulation last year was 13,947 vols. The institute
is erecting a new school building, which will provide better library
accommodations.
Louisville, Ky., was the first to establish a full-fledged branch on
a broad basis and to erect a separate branch library building for
negroes. The original plan for ten Carnegie branch libraries, of which
seven have been built, included two for negroes. The first of these was
opened in rented quarters the same year as the main library in 1905.
Three years later it was moved into the new $30,000 building.
In its administration the colored branch is a part of the general
library system and is under the supervision of the main library. The
branch librarian, who is a graduate of Hampton Institute, and the two
assistants are colored.
The branch serves as the reference library for the colored high schools
and other educational institutions. It is in close co-operation with
the grade schools through the collections of books which it sends to
the classrooms to be drawn by the pupils for home use.
It has an assembly room which is used for lectures, entertainments
and numerous other public meetings, and two classrooms for smaller
gatherings. There is a story hour for children and several reading
and debating clubs for boys and girls and adults. Through its various
activities the library not only circulates books and furnishes facts
but it is an educational and social center from which radiate many
influences for general betterment.
Fine work is being done with children, who draw 68 per cent of the
books circulated. An interesting account of it is given in the Library
Journal for April, 1910, 25:160-61, by Mrs. Rachel D. Harris, a former
teacher in the colored schools, who is in charge of this department.
When the branch was started eight years ago it was somewhat of an
experiment and there was doubt and apprehensiveness all around with
regard to the outcome of the undertaking. But it has been a pronounced
success from the beginning. It has grown steadily until last year
73,462 vols. were drawn from it for home use. It has become so popular
that the second branch is now under construction in the eastern colored
section of the city.
The colored people are proud of this library and its achievements. Its
opening marked an epoch in the development of the race which is second
in importance only to the opening of the first colored free schools
there in 1870.
Houston, Texas, also has a separate branch building opened last
April. For the past four years it was maintained in a small way in the
colored high school. The new building is distinctively a product of
negro enterprise. Booker T. Washington's secretary called on Andrew
Carnegie personally and secured the promise of $15,000 on condition
that the city of Houston would agree to provide not less than $1,500
annually for its maintenance. The $1,500 for the site was raised by
colored citizens entirely among their own people. The plans for the
building were drawn by a colored architect and its erection supervised
by a committee of a separate board of trustees, which consisted of nine
colored men. The librarian is a colored girl who is responsible only to
the colored trustees. Although she and the trustees consult freely with
the librarian and trustees of the public library, the latter act only
in an advisory capacity to them. They are therefore justly proud of the
library as their own achievement. It contains 5,000 volumes. From a
colored population of 30,000 the registered borrowers were only 1,261
last year and the books drawn 5,117. These numbers seem very small, but
no doubt there will be a large increase in the new building.
While the Houston method of management may contribute to the negro's
self-respect and minister somewhat to the pride and independence of a
few of their number, the wisdom of the plan may well be questioned. The
results are bound to be inferior unless experience counts for nothing.
It is unfortunate that so many cities in their first venture proceed
with such disregard of the experience of other places. But the limit
is reached when the same city repeats the process with a second board
after one board has learned its lesson. This applies not only to the
details of planning, erecting and furnishing a building but equally if
not more to its operation, the selection, purchase and cataloging of
books, the appointment of assistants and the transacting of its daily
business.
The white public library boards of Nashville and New Orleans both have
plans under way for the erection of Carnegie colored branch buildings,
each to cost $25,000. In Nashville the negroes are raising $1,000 and
the city is paying $5,000 toward the site. In New Orleans the city
will purchase the site. In neither of these places is there any public
provision at present for supplying books to negroes.
In Atlanta, Ga., the leading educational center of the South for
negroes, they are still without public library facilities, although
agitation on the subject began over ten years ago. On the day of
the opening of the beautiful $125,000 Carnegie building a committee
of colored men called on the library board. Prof. W. E. B. DuBois of
Atlanta University acting as spokesman said:
"Gentlemen, we are a committee come to ask you to do justice to the
black people of Atlanta by giving them the same free library privileges
that you propose giving to whites. Every argument which can be adduced
to show the need of libraries for whites applies with redoubled force
to the negroes. More than any other part of our population they need
instruction, inspiration and proper diversion; they need to be lured
from temptation of the streets and saved from evil influences, and
they need a growing acquaintance with what the best of the world's
souls have thought and done and said. It seems hardly necessary in
the twentieth century to argue before men like you the necessity and
propriety of placing the best means of human uplifting into the hands
of the poorest and lowest and blackest.
"The spirit of this great gift to the city has not the spirit of
caste or exclusion but rather the catholic spirit which recognizes no
artificial differences of rank or birth or race, but seeks to give all
men equal opportunity to make the most of themselves. It is our sincere
hope that this city will prove itself broad enough and just enough to
administer this trust in the true spirit in which it was given."
The chairman asked, "Do you not think that allowing whites and negroes
to use this library would be fatal to its usefulness?" Another member
of the committee replied that they did not ask to use this library nor
even ask equal privileges but only some privileges somewhere.
The chairman then made these points clear: (1) That negroes would not
be permitted to use the Carnegie Library in Atlanta; (2) That some
library facilities would be provided for them in the future; (3) That
the city council would be asked to appropriate a sum proportionate to
the amount of taxes paid by negroes of the city; (4) That efforts would
be made to induce northern philanthropists to aid such a library.
Later Mr. Carnegie offered to give the money necessary for the erection
of a branch library for negroes. When the details of its administration
came up for consideration the negroes demanded representation on the
library board. This was positively refused and the proceedings were so
completely blocked that the negroes of Atlanta are still without any
public library advantages.
Methods of Management
From the cases cited it appears that there are four distinct methods
of dealing with this question in the South: (1) To admit the negro to
the same building on equal terms with others as is done in Baltimore,
Wilmington, Washington and some of the Missouri libraries. This method
is not satisfactory to the whites. As one report says, "There are white
people who are deterred from using the library because in so doing they
must touch elbows with colored folks.... We could do better service to
both races if there could be a separation, for we must take the people
with their prejudices, especially in the use of the library, which is
a purely voluntary matter." (2) To admit him to the same building but
to a separate room, which is not satisfactory to the negro. One library
which has this plan reports, "Many of the educated and cultured negroes
(for there are some even in the South) will not come unless they can
do so on the same social equality and use the same apartments as the
white patrons." (3) To have a separate library under control of members
of their own race. This is almost certain to produce inferior results
on account of their inexperience and lack of knowledge regarding every
phase of the work. (4) To have a separate branch in charge of colored
assistants who are under the direction and supervision of one board
and one librarian, who have control over the entire library including
all branches and other agencies. This plan assures the greatest economy
and efficiency and will probably be adopted by all the libraries whose
funds will permit it. A separate colored board is as unnecessary and
unbusinesslike as would be a separate board for each white branch.
On the advantages of a separate branch library one colored man writes:
"In the South the separation is not only necessary for the peace and
cordial relations desirable to be maintained but the colored branches
are desirable because the colored people would use them so a hundred
times more than they would otherwise. The feeling of perfect welcome,
ownership and unqualified privilege are all necessary to patrons who
are to get the best possible from libraries among them. These things
in the South can only be had in separate branches as much as it is
regrettable that there should be a mind and spirit demanding separate
libraries."
Traveling Libraries
Delaware and Kentucky are the only state library commissions reporting
special traveling libraries for negroes. Last year "seven traveling
libraries of 30 to 50 volumes each were arranged for the use of the
colored schools in Delaware, and the entire charge and care of these
libraries was given over to the State College for Colored Students near
Dover." The Kentucky commission has two libraries of 50 volumes each in
circulation and is planning to send more. Hampton Institute also sends
out traveling collections of books.
Another system of traveling libraries is that established in 1910 by
James H. Gregory of Marblehead, Mass., for distribution through Atlanta
University among the negroes of the South. There are about 60 libraries
of 48 volumes each. They are sent to any community, school, church or
other organization for one year and then exchanged for a different
set. Two interesting articles on these libraries and their founder
were published by G. S. Dickerman in the Southern Workman, August and
September, 1910.
What the Negro Reads
What the negro reads is in itself a large and interesting subject. A
brief article on it dealing equally with what the negro does not read,
appeared in the Critic, July 1906, from Mr. George B. Utley, then
librarian of the Jacksonville public library. The first book drawn from
the Louisville library was Washington's "Up from slavery." The most
striking feature of the circulation in general is the comparatively
small percentage of fiction read. Of the 258,438 volumes drawn from
the Louisville library during its first six years only 46 per cent was
fiction.
This may be due to the fact that the so-called leisure class, who are
supposed to read most of the fiction, is smaller among the colored
people; or that the novel does not appeal so strongly to the negro
mind; or that the library is used more largely by pupils, teachers,
ministers and other professional people, who come to it for more
serious purposes.
A book entitled "Tuskegee and its people," edited by Booker T.
Washington, contains biographical sketches of many negroes who have
gone out from that school to work for the elevation of their race.
These sketches give a remarkable picture of the "conditions that
environ the masses of the negro people," as well as their struggles for
improvement.
One of them describing the country school which he attended writes,
"When I reached the point where the teacher ordered me to get a
United States history, the book store did not have one, but sold me
a biography of Martin Luther instead, which I studied for some time
thinking that I was learning something about the U. S."
Years later "I betook me to the woods, where I read everything I
could get. It was during this time that accidentally, I may say
providentially, I got hold of a book containing the life of Ignacius
Sancho; and I have never read anything that has given me more
inspiration. I wish every negro boy in the land might read it."
Another Tuskegee graduate, a woman whose mother as a slave had been
taught to read by her master's daughter, writes: "Sundays, with my
sisters gathered about her knees, we would sit for hours listening as
mother would read church hymns for us."
The articles by Mr. Dickerman above referred to give the results of
some investigations on their choice of books. He received answers from
35 leading negro schools in response to a request for a list of such
"books as had been found in the experience of their schools to be the
most popular and the best and which they would recommend." The "Life of
Lincoln" appeared on 15 of these lists; "Little women" 15; "Robinson
Crusoe" 14; "Paul Dunbar" 11; "Uncle Tom's cabin" 10; "Ivanhoe" 9;
"Souls of black folk" 9; "Ramona" 8; "Life of Douglass" 8; "Uncle
Remus" 7. Six lists included "Alice in wonderland," Grimm's "Fairy
tales," "John Halifax," "Last days of Pompeii," and "Swiss family
Robinson."
These lists all came from schools and therefore bear the earmarks of
the schoolmaster. But the largest part of the reading by negroes is
done by the pupils and teachers in connection with their school work.
This would account for the preponderance of the literature and history
classes. Miss Sarah B. Askew observes that among the general readers
in a public library "the colored people's tastes are for quick action,
strong emotion, vivid coloring, and simplicity of narration." Books
by and about their own people are in constant demand. The colored
magazines, those devoted especially to their interests and those
published by colored men are always popular.
There is also a growing demand for books useful to the mechanic in
his daily work. Chauffeurs "avail themselves of technical books on
automobiles." An early experience in the Louisville library was with
a woman who made a business of raising chickens. She called at the
library for medical help because many of them were dying. Strangely
enough this subject had been overlooked in selecting the books and the
librarian was unable to prescribe for sick chickens. But a book on
poultry was ordered for her immediately.
Conclusions
Following are some conclusions regarding libraries for negroes:
(1) That books and reading are of the utmost value in the education,
development and progress of the race.
(2) That in northern public libraries they are admitted to all
privileges without distinction.
(3) That in southern libraries the segregation of the races
prevails, as it does, in all educational, religious and other social
institutions.
(4) That in many places institutional libraries are supplying the book
wants of the few negroes who really have need of libraries.
(5) That among the masses of the colored race there is as yet very
little demand for libraries.
(6) That where a genuine demand has manifested itself and up-to-date
facilities have been provided negroes have been quick to use them and
have made commendable progress.
(7) That in some of the large cities containing a great many negroes
who are intelligent and who pay taxes the provision made for them is
sadly inadequate or is entirely lacking.
(8) That southern librarians generally are kindly and helpfully
disposed toward them and that the majority of the white people favor
a fair deal for them, including the best training and the fullest
enlightenment.
(9) That in the South any arrangement which aims to serve the two races
in the same room or in the same building is detrimental to the greatest
good of both. Complete segregation is essential to the best work for
all.
(10) That many libraries are not financially able to conduct separate
departments and so the negro loses out.
(11) That a few cities have splendid facilities for them, a few others
are now establishing branches, a considerable number are discussing the
question seriously and another considerable number which should be at
work are doing nothing.
(12) That the best solution of the problem is the separate branch in
charge of colored assistants under the supervision and control of the
white authorities.
(13) That even in northern cities which have large segregated colored
districts such separate branches would result in reaching a larger
number of negroes and doing better work for both races.
(14) That the South is entitled to the sympathy and help of the North
on this question, which is only a part of the larger question of negro
education. That sympathy will come with fuller information and will
increase as the size and seriousness of the problem is more fully
understood.
Adjourned.
THIRD GENERAL SESSION
(Wednesday morning, June 25, 1913)
The PRESIDENT: There is a matter of business to come up this morning.
At the last conference the Association adopted an amendment to the
Constitution which, to become effective, must be ratified at this
meeting. It may be added that the requisite notice required by the
Constitution, of thirty days, has been given by the Secretary, through
publication in the Bulletin, where you have doubtless seen the proposed
amendment together with the by-law which is dependent, of course, upon
the adoption of the amendment itself. The Secretary will please read
the proposed amendment as adopted at the Ottawa conference.
The SECRETARY: I will also read that portion of Section 14 of the
Constitution to which the amendment would apply:
"=Council.= Membership. The Council shall consist of the
executive board, all ex-presidents of the Association who
continue as members thereof, all presidents of affiliated
societies who are members of the Association, twenty-five
members elected by the Association at large, and twenty-five
elected by the Council itself,"--
And the proposed amendment consists of the following words to be
inserted at that place:
--"and one member from each state, provincial and territorial
library association or any association covering two or more
such geographical divisions which complies with the conditions
for such representation set forth in the by-laws."
The PRESIDENT: The amendment is before you for consideration. What is
your pleasure? Are you ready for the question?
(The question being called for and put, the amendment was adopted.)
The PRESIDENT: Dependent upon the adoption of the amendment to the
Constitution there is now before you for consideration a proposed
amendment to the by-laws. The Secretary will please read the suggested
amendment which carries into effect now the Constitutional amendment
which you have just adopted and which becomes effective, in that it has
now been adopted by two successive conferences.
The Secretary then read the proposed amendment Section 3a, which is as
follows:
"Sec. 3a. Each state, territorial and provincial library
association (or any association covering two or more such
geographical divisions) having a membership of not less than
fifteen members, may be represented in the Council by the
president of such association, or by an alternate elected at
the annual meeting of the association. The annual dues shall
be $5.00 for each association having a membership of fifty or
less, and ten cents per additional capita where membership is
above that number. The privileges and advantages of the A.
L. A. conferences shall be available only to those holding
personal membership or representing institutional membership in
the Association."
The President then put the question and the above amendment to the
by-laws was duly adopted.
Dr. ANDREWS: I move the addition of the words "or to members of
other affiliated societies," in order not to bar these members from
attendance at our meetings.
The PRESIDENT: Dr. Andrews' amendment is to include the words "or to
members of other affiliated societies."
Mr. RANCK: I think, as a member of the Committee that had something to
do with the drafting of the proposed by-law, that I can say that the
purpose of that provision was that there should be some advantage to
persons holding membership in these organizations, to get the railroad
rates, hotel rates, etc.; in other words, to have some pecuniary
advantage in their becoming members and not to be able to come and get
those advantages without holding any kind of a membership.
If I may be permitted, Mr. President, I should like to give a few
figures with reference to the distribution of the members of the
Council as it now exists, as given in the last handbook. There were
72 members of the Council, counting the one or two who have died,
representing 48 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. However,
in the Council only 20 States in the Union have representation.
In other words, there are 28 states in the Union that are not
represented in the Council. The population of these 28 states is nearly
thirty-three millions and their area is nearly two million square
miles, whereas the area of the states that are represented is a little
over a million square miles. The point is, Mr. President, the purpose
of the amendment to the Constitution and these amendments is to give a
wider geographical distribution of representation in the Council; in
other words, that more than half of the area of the United States may
be brought in, on account of this geographical representation, and that
the thirty-three millions of people who live in those states may be
able to get a representation which it seems at the present time they do
not have.
The PRESIDENT: The question before the conference is on the proposed
amendment of the by-law as offered by Dr. Andrews.
(The President put the question and the amendment was duly adopted.)
The PRESIDENT: The question now is upon the amendment to the by-laws as
amended.
(The President put the question and the amendment to the by-laws was
duly adopted.)
The PRESIDENT: The Association during the past year suffered grievous
loss in the passing of two of its notable members, members who had
long been identified with the Association and its work, and I may
add the loss of a friend of librarians everywhere, that splendid
gentleman, Mr. Francis Fisher Browne, of The Dial,--a man gentle of
soul, keen of intellect and fine of fiber. While perhaps we are not
called upon to take official notice of his passing it seems to me very
well that we should group him with those whose loss we mourn at this
time. By request of the Executive Board and of the Council a committee
consisting of Dr. Putnam, Mr. Bowker and Mr. Wellman have been asked to
draft memorial resolutions on the passing of Dr. Billings and Mr. Soule
and I would ask Dr. Putnam to report at this time.
Dr. PUTNAM: With your permission I will ask Mr. Wellman to read the
suggested minute with reference to Mr. Soule. And the Committee would
suggest that if the expression in these minutes appears to you just,
that they be adopted by a rising vote.
Mr. Wellman then read the following resolution which was unanimously
adopted by a rising vote.
CHARLES CARROLL SOULE
With profound sorrow, we record the death of Charles C. Soule, whose
services and relation to the American Library Association were in many
ways unique. Though himself not a librarian, yet in the early days of
the public library he was one of those who foresaw the great force
which it might be made to exert in our democratic civilization; and to
promote the wise realization of this vision, he labored unceasingly
as a member of this Association for more than thirty years and was a
constant attendant at the meetings. He served as vice-president in
1890, as member of the Institute for six years, as member of the
Council for eight years, as trustee of the endowment fund for twelve
years, and as a member of the Publishing Board for eighteen years. But
his distinctive contribution was in efforts towards the improvement of
library architecture; and here by his study and writings, as well as by
creating the office of advisory expert in building, he did more than
any other man to further the planning of library buildings for library
work.
In reciting the tale of his accomplishment, it is impossible to
forget the man. Unselfish and high-minded, a good counsellor and a
consistent friend, he ever showed eager and affectionate interest in
the work of his fellow members, and especially in the success of those
beginning their careers. Above all, he possessed a generous faith in
his associates and an unfailing good will. These were but a few of the
qualities which enabled him to achieve so much for the public library,
and which endeared him to hosts of librarians throughout the land.
Dr. PUTNAM: Mr. President, this is proposed as a minute for the records
of the Association. It is therefore headed "John Shaw Billings."
The resolution was unanimously adopted by a rising vote.
JOHN SHAW BILLINGS
April 12, 1838--March 18, 1913
A member of the American Library Association
1881-1913--Its President, 1901-02
It is seldom that the death of an individual removes from two
professions a unit of singular power in each. But such was the loss in
the recent death of John Shaw Billings; a scientist in a department of
science intensive and exacting, a librarian rigorously scientific in a
profession broadly humane. To the former he made original contributions
which constituted him an authority within special fields; but also
in his great Index-Catalog of Medical Literature, one which assured
certainty and promoted advance in every field--and left the entire
medical profession his debtor. As a librarian, having first brought
to preeminence the professional library entrusted to him, he was
called to the organization into a single system of isolated funds
and institutions, achieved that organization, and lived to see it,
under his charge develop into the largest general library system in
the world, with a possible influence upon our greatest metropolis of
incalculable importance to it, and through it, to the welfare of our
entire country.
The qualities which enabled him to accomplish all this included
not merely certain native abilities--among them, penetration,
concentration, vigor, tenacity of purpose and directness of method,
but others developed by self-denial, self-discipline, and a complete
dedication to the work in hand. It was through these that he earned his
education and his scientific training; and they hardened into habits
which attended him to the end of his days, when he concluded in toil
that shirked no detail a life begun in toil and devoted to detail.
Such habits, a keen faculty of analysis, and a scientific training
kept him aloof alike from hasty generalizations and from the impulses
of mere emotion; while his military training induced in him three
characteristics which marked alike his treatment of measures and his
dealings with men; incisiveness, a distaste for the superfluous and the
redundant, and an insistence upon the suitable subordination of the
part to the whole. In this combination, and in the knowledge of, and
power over, men which accompanied it, he was unique among librarians;
in his complete lack of ostentation he was unusual among men. His
mind was ever on the substance, indifferent to the form. A =power= in
two professions, to have termed him the "ornament" of either would
have affronted him; for he was consistently impatient of the merely
ornamental. Any =personal= ostentation was actually repugnant to him;
and he avoided it as completely in what he suffered as in what he
achieved; bearing, with a reticence that asked no allowances, physical
anguish in which most men would have found ample excuse from every care.
If such a combination of traits assured his remarkable efficiency,
it might not have seemed calculated to promote warm personal or
social attachments. Yet there was in him also a singular capacity for
friendship; not indeed for impulsive and indiscriminate intimacies, but
for those selective, deep, steady and lasting friendships which are
proof of the fundamental natures of men. And however terse, austere,
and even abrupt, his manner in casual relations, where a really human
interest was at stake he might be relied upon for sympathies both warm
and considerate, and the more effective because consistently just and
inevitably sincere.
The testimonies to these qualities in his character, to these powers,
and to his varied achievements, have already been many and impressive.
The American Library Association wishes to add its own, with a special
recognition not merely of the value to the community of the things
which he accomplished, but of the value to individuals in the example
of a character and abilities so resolutely developed and so resolutely
applied to the service of science and the service of men.
The PRESIDENT: To offer a telegram as a substitute for a long and
pleasurably anticipated paper is cause for regret, but such must be the
case this morning as Miss Arnold finds it impossible to be with us.
The telegram reads as follows:
"Emergency meeting of Simmons College Corporation has been
appointed for Wednesday and prevents me from attending library
meeting. Extreme regrets.
SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD."
The general theme of this morning's session is "Library influence
in the home, in the shop, on the farm, and among defectives and
dependents." We shall begin the morning's program with a paper on
"The working library for the artisan and the craftsman," by EDWARD F.
STEVENS, librarian Pratt Institute free library, and director of the
school of library science, Brooklyn.
THE WORKING LIBRARY FOR THE ARTISAN AND THE CRAFTSMAN
It is not my privilege to speak to you at this time of the
professional, technical, or practical aspects of that recent phase of
library work wherein is attempted the reconciliation of shopmen with
bookmen. In the very few moments placed at my disposal I may mention
only that human relationship which enters so largely into a librarian's
dealings with men who are concerned with and about their work.
The straightforward, sympathetic intercourse of man with man may adorn
to the point of making almost beautiful a department of librarianship
which is extremely matter-of-fact in its essential character and
might easily become commonplace in its practicality. The business of
a technology department in a public library may best be expressed in
terms of the statement of the policy of the Franklin Union established
in recent years in Philadelphia--"the further education of men already
employed." Such a working library is strictly a library of work. It is
almost oppressively utilitarian. Yet to a librarian who has had the
privilege of making books known to artisans and craftsmen, and who is
now denied that privilege, the sense of the loss of the fellowships,
not to say friendships, that formerly were a part of his daily
occupation proves that the sympathetic was after all the potential
element in his experience.
I may say with Lowell, "I like folks who like an honest piece of
steel.... There is always more than the average human nature in a man
who has a hearty sympathy with iron."
Theodore Roosevelt has given us a maxim that deserves to be written as
a rule of life--"That which one does which all can do but won't do is
the greatest of greatness."
Therein is the greatness of work with practical men--the discernment
of the simplest facts of life, the performance of the simplest acts of
life in working out the complex things of life, recognizing, to begin
with, that a man's difficulty is at once less a difficulty when it
becomes the friendly concern of a fellow-man. My own first experience
as a seeker after help in a public library in matters technical that
were then of great importance to me, met the rebuff and disappointment
that have given me a point of view which amounts to a conviction.
In the present day, the library assumes considerable confidence in
inviting the workingman into its constituency, and the workingman
must come to it with no less confidence if the library expects its
justification. The mechanic, as formerly the scholar, must approach the
library with a calculated expectation. The librarian must understand
him, believe in him, and in turn make himself understood by him.
In a recent issue of the =American Machinist=, a writer deplores
the general lack of sympathy and interest in the affairs of the
"unheralded mechanic." That the life he lives has no place in men's
thoughts nor in literature. This is the closing statement: "As it is,
if left to themselves, mechanics will by their silence continue to
let those outside the shop think of them as nothing but men tied to a
whistle."
Leigh Hunt (himself very much an outsider) in a familiar essay makes
this friendly observation: "A business of screws and iron wheels is, or
appears to be, a very commonplace matter; but not so the will of the
hand that sets them in motion; not so the operations of the mind that
directs them what to utter."
But this mechanic that now nears the public library is coming neither
as a pathetic figure in distress, nor as a mysterious or heroic figure
beyond our comprehension. He comes as an unpretending man dignified by
earnestness of purpose not to discredit an honorable vocation.
The best of mutual understanding and feeling, however, will not secure
the chief ends of librarianship except so far as they splendidly
prepare the way. The recognition of books as tools comes only as the
books stand the same practical test that the workman applies to his
instruments.
The librarian must furnish books shaped to the man's hand, books that
he can use to perform work, that he can depend upon as true, accurate,
precise, simple, efficient, economical, reliable in the same sense
that his tools must be all these. And so, the selection of books for
a working library of technology becomes not unlike the testing of
instruments of precision. Care in selection is of supreme importance in
fitting up a tool-shop of books.
Wisdom in application is scarcely second to intelligence in choice.
A practical man does not often come to a library for this or that
particular book, for the work of a specified author, or for a title
that he has in mind. If he does, he cannot always be depended upon to
know his own wishes in the matter. What this man wants is information
about a topic that concerns him. He leaves it to the library to tell
him in what printed form that information can be had--and it's risky,
for the library, to trifle with him or to play him false. Hesitation,
indecision, irresolution are fatal. If the library exhibits lack of
faith in itself, who, indeed, shall have faith in it? The workingman
will be sure to entertain the same contempt for the librarian's
doubtful application of even the best books as he himself would of the
misuse of good tools in his own trade.
This necessity for books that will answer to needs is the incentive in
the erection of a working library to which men may resort.
At home we have a permanent and constantly revised selection of the
most useful technical books registered on cards of varying colors
showing the differing characteristics of the books included. This
is our Works Library. And within it, on blue cards, are listed the
simplest and most direct texts for the man with the least preparation
for books. This is our Dinner-Pail Library. And starting with these, we
may go on with a degree of confidence in teaching men the use of tools
the handling of which we ourselves understand.
Preparedness in attitude, preparedness in equipment, await the arrival
of the man the most skeptical of the library's guests. Does he come
and go away again confirmed in his skepticism? If he does, it's the
library's fault, not his. Does he come, and remain, to come again?
Then he is ready to pay the tribute of his allegiance that becomes the
librarian's great reward.
We have heard the =American Machinist= complain that the mechanic
found no voice to sing his praises. Not less is the genus librarian
unwept, unhonored, and unsung. He expects praise as little as he
desires it, and, perhaps, I may say, deserves it. But the ready word
of appreciation, the acknowledgment of the library's help in overcoming
difficulties that drove a man there as a last resort, the confession
of awakening to the new knowledge of the library's wider purpose and
power, is expressed often with a frankness and fervor that surprise and
gratify the fortunate librarian who has been instrumental in bringing
things to pass.
I recall how men of few words and little sentiment have spontaneously
related to me their experiences of misfortune, perplexity,
disappointment, or other embarrassment that caused them to turn to the
public library for a possible helping hand, and then, how the library
did not fail them in their extremity. At such times, I knew that the
free library was doing what it undertook to do.
Of this sort are the few, the impressive instances that illustrate how,
on occasions, a working library can meet very exceptional requirements.
There are also the very many--the students, apprentices, shopmen,
machinists, inventors, chemists, engineers, manufacturers--all artisans
and craftsmen in their various ways, who are coming to learn that in
their usual daily processes they may expect from the public library the
ordinary, indispensable service that the library has always performed
for those who know the value of books.
It is this complete idea of a library that still fails of development
in the minds of these men, an idea that the library is a live thing,
a public utility of which they will naturally and inevitably avail
themselves as they do of the street-cars to take them both to and away
from their work. Nothing is needed to convince men that a utility =is=
a utility save the satisfying use of it. When they have found that the
library speeds them on in the direction of the day's occupation, then
it becomes easy enough for them to learn that the library can also get
them far removed from it. And when the workingman fully comprehends the
=working= library, and by means of it is introduced to the =diverting=
library, he becomes a man with the greatest capacity for usefulness,
and the library's conquest of the community is finished and triumphant.
The PRESIDENT: Mr. Stevens has very forcefully brought out the factor
that a book may be in bringing into life dormant faculties that might
otherwise go to waste and recalls to us the remark of Prof. Dewey, that
the loss of the unearned increment is as nothing compared with the loss
of the undiscovered resource.
Of course you know as well as the members of the program committee
that they had nothing to do with the selection of the next speaker;
the topic chose her. How could anyone else be asked to present the
subject of "The woman on the farm," than Miss LUTIE E. STEARNS, of the
Wisconsin free library commission?
THE WOMAN ON THE FARM
Modern programs of library extension through public libraries as
distinguished from traveling library systems are practically confined
to an arbitrary line drawn tightly around the city's limits. Charters,
laws, or ordinances under which many libraries operate are usually
interpreted to restrict the use of such institutions to a narrow
area and no great attempt has been made through legislation, save in
California and a few isolated examples elsewhere, to extend library
privileges to adjacent communities. It is a happy omen for the future
that the president of the American Library Association, the custodian
of a library catering to two-million city dwellers with a circulation
second in rank to Greater New York, should have seen fit on his own
initiative to place among the topics of this meeting the needs of the
woman on the farm, the real founder of the city's citizenship.
"Who's the greatest woman in history?" was the query debated by Kansas
school teachers recently. They considered Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth,
Semiramis, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Catherine of Russia, Maria Theresa,
Grace Darling, Florence Nightingale, Susan B. Anthony, and half a
hundred others. When they came to deciding, all the names known to
fame were ruled out. And to whom do you suppose the judges awarded the
palm? Here is the answer: "The wife of the farmer of moderate means who
does her own cooking, washing, ironing and sewing, brings up a family
of boys and girls to be useful members of society and finds time for
intellectual improvement."
These teachers knew that woman, they knew the drudgery she faced at
four or five o'clock every morning the year 'round. There are twenty
millions of her in this country of ours, she makes up nearly one-fourth
of the population of the country, and while we are dealing with these
most "vital statistics," we may include the tragic fact that sixty-six
per cent of those committed to insane hospitals are from rural
districts, the farm women constituting the great majority thereof.
And yet the needs of this great, deserving class of "humans" with minds
and hearts even more receptive to ideas than are city women--the needs
of such as these are as yet almost wholly unrealized by librarians
aside from Commission workers. No committee of the American Library
Association has ever had the joy of working out a program of library
extension from the great city systems to rural readers. The question
put by the then President Roosevelt to his Country Life Commission,
"How can the life of the farm family be made less solitary, fuller of
opportunity, freer from drudgery, more comfortable, happier, and more
attractive?" still awaits solution from the library standpoint.
Though agriculture is our oldest and by far our largest and most
important industry, it has only recently occurred to us in the United
States that we had a rural problem. It is only within the last decade
or so that we have awakened to the fact that there is a rural as well
as an urban problem, and the library world is too prone to keep from
recognizing it. We are not concerned in this connection with the
problem of the retired farmer who moves into a town to spend his last
days which are, seemingly, all he is willing to spend; nor shall we
discuss those restless flat dwellers in our cities who, tempted by
such alluring and wholly immoral titles as "The Fat of the Land," "The
Earth Bountiful," "A Self-Supporting Home," "Three Acres and a Cow," or
"Three Acres and Liberty"--"for those to whom the idea of liberty is
more inspiring than that of the cow"--attempt to start ginseng, guinea
pig, pheasant, and peacock farms, and who return to the city as shorn
of guineas as the pigs they leave behind them.
In the serious solution of this problem, we may, in truth, differ as
to the sort of farmers we would benefit. As Sir Horace Plunkett has
said in his "Rural problem in America," "The New York City idea is
probably that of a Long Island home where one might see on Sunday,
weather permitting, the horny-handed son of weekday toil in Wall
Street, rustically attired, inspecting his Jersey cows and aristocratic
fowls." These supply a select circle in New York City with butter
and eggs at a price which leaves nothing to be desired unless it be
some information as to cost of production. Full justice is done to
the new country life when the Farmers' Club of New York fulfills its
chief function--the annual dinner at Delmonico's. Then Agriculture
is extolled in fine Virgilian style, the Hudson villa and the Newport
cottage being permitted to divide the honors of the rural revival with
the Long Island home. "But to my bucolic intelligence," concludes Sir
Horace, "it would seem that against the back-to-the-land movement of
Saturday afternoon, the captious critic might set the rural exodus of
Monday morning."
To the New England librarian there probably comes the picture of
rugged, bean-clad hills with "electrics" in every valley eager to take
the intellectual rustics to the Lowell lectures or the Boston Symphony
Orchestra. That books are appreciated in the rural districts even
in a state that boasts a library in every town is shown by a letter
from one who had received the volumes sent out by the "Massachusetts
Society to Encourage Studies at Home." "I do not know where I should
stop if I tried to tell how much these library books have helped me
in my isolated life--I have craved so much and there seemed no access
possible to anything I wanted. I have lived always with a longing for
something different; life was a burden to be carried cheerfully, yet I
never quite conquered the feeling that the burden was heavy. Books have
taken away that feeling and before I was aware, the load was gone. I
have written thus of myself, not because my individual experience is of
importance enough to interest anyone, but because I believe the world
is full of people with the same wants that I have and it may be some
satisfaction to know how fully you are supplying them."
To the librarian of New Jersey, the isolated dwellers of the salt
marshes would come to mind. Maryland suggests to some librarian
epicures the oyster farm, with its succulent product, but to others
comes the vision of the "real thing" supplied as in Washington County
with the ideal arrangement of central library, branches, deposit
stations, traveling libraries, and automobile delivery to the very
doors of the Maryland farm homes--the most ideal arrangement of rural
extension that exists in America today.
To the Georgian, the "cracker" presents itself with its "Uneeda" book
appeal. The "mountain-white" of Kentucky, who comes to Berea in his
seventeenth year to learn his letters, would surely appreciate an
opportunity to go on with them when he gets "back home." In the north
middle west, where farms are still surrounded by a fringe of pine and
an "infinite destiny," a farmer's wife writes as follows: "For many
years I have lived on a farm on the cleared land of Northern Wisconsin,
and I have made an earnest study of the conditions that surround the
lives of the average isolated farmer and his family. I have seen all
of the loneliness and desolation of their lives, I have witnessed all
the dreariness and poverty of their homes. I have been with them when
our nearest railroad station meant a twenty-eight mile trip through
bottomless mud or over shaking corduroy; where our nearest post-office
was eighteen miles away, over the same impassable roads and where we
were often without mail for weeks at a time; when the nearest public
library was sixty miles away; when the only element of culture or
progress we possessed was the little backwoods school, housed in a
tumble-down log shack and presided over by careless or incompetent
teachers. I have watched civilization come to us step by step,--the
railroad, the rural mail delivery, the country telephone, and other
modern rural conveniences. But, before any of these, right into the
midst of our lonely backwoods life, came the traveling library, for it
is characteristic of the traveling library that it is not dependent on
modern conveniences for its appearance. I can recall the thrill of joy
with which we received our first case of books. I read their titles
over and over, handled and caressed them in a perfectly absurd manner.
Almost all of the books were old friends of mine; but, to our little
neighborhood of foreigners, they were "brand new" and the enthusiasm
over that library knew no bounds.
"We had a regular literary revival that winter. We talked books in
season and out of season; and from talking about the books in the
little library we fell to talking of other books; of books we had read
in our younger, happier days. It mattered little if in the course of
these conversations books and authors were hopelessly mixed.
"I cannot say that we derived any great amount of knowledge from our
first library, but I do know that it brought into our little backwoods
settlement, that which we needed much more--hope and courage and an
interest in life. That was my first introduction to the traveling
library, but during the years that have gone since then, I have seen
much of the work of these little cases of books. While it is true
that the traveling library does not always meet with as enthusiastic
a reception as our little settlement gave it that winter, yet it
always comes to our rural communities as a help and inspiration. My
appreciation of the worth of the traveling library has grown with the
years."
"Once a library meant nothing but rows of books and its influence
was confined to narrow limits. However with the establishment of the
traveling library, these books have become veritable missionaries
penetrating to all sorts of dreary, isolated places, carrying with them
a culture and a pleasure that will aid in illuminating the long, dreary
path of existence with the color of happiness."
As one farmer's wife has it in another locality, "Good books drive
away neighborhood discussion of the four deadly D's--Diseases, Dress,
Descendants and Domestics."
Olive Schreiner in her wonderful and heart searching study of "Woman
and Labor," has pointed out that at first woman hunted with the man,
and later when the race settled in one spot, the woman was the tiller
of the soil and the man the hunter and warrior. Then when man no longer
needed to hunt or fight, the woman moved within the house and the
man tilled the fields. The woman became the isolated one. Isolation
is the menace of farm life just as congestion is of city life. This
isolation has a depressing effect upon the intellectual life of those
who require the stimulus of contact with others to keep their minds
active. The woman on the farm, as Mr. Bailey has pointed out, is apt to
become a fatalist. Floods, drought, storms, tornadoes, untimely frosts,
backward seasons, blight, predatory beasts, animal and plant diseases
render a season's great labor of no avail, or destroy the fruits of it
within the hour. Along with these perennial discouragements comes the
interminable round of getting up before sunrise and cooking, baking,
dishwashing, sewing, mending, washing and ironing clothes from day to
day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, with additional
work peculiar to the seasons, such as at planting times, threshing and
harvesting, fruit gathering and preserving, etc., etc., etc. The work
of the farm is carried on in direct connection with the home, thus
differing from nearly all the large industries, such as manufacturing
and the like. The fact that agriculture is still a family industry
where the work and home life are not separated, differentiates it from
life in the city with its lack of a common business interest among all
the members of the family. This condition tends to make rural life
stable. The whole family stay at home evenings and one book is read
aloud to the entire family circle. We still find the big family in the
country where bridge whist and race-suicide--cause and effect--are as
yet unknown. But the big family puts cares and responsibilities upon
the mother on the farm and when one sees the "bent form, the tired
carriage, the warped fingers and the thin, wrinkled features" of so
many farmer's wives, one does not at first see anything but cruelty to
animals in urging recreation and reading upon such overburdened women.
But a brighter, industrial day is at hand. From perpetual motion to
hours of reasonable industrial requirements the daily working period
of the farmer is coming to be reduced by labor saving machinery. The
modern gasoline engine, to my mind the most important contribution to
civilization and culture in recent times, now pumps the water, saws
and cuts the wood, runs the lighting plant, the washing machine, the
milking machine, the cream separator, the churn, the sewing machine,
the bread-mixer, the vacuum cleaner, the lawn mower, the coffee
grinder, the ice cream freezer and even the egg-beater. These, with the
fireless cooker, have relieved the housewife and made time for reading
and other recreation. Good roads, rural free delivery, the interurban
trolley car, the automobile and the rural telephone are removing the
old-time isolation and are making possible enjoyment and a culture
and refinement equal to that of the business and professional classes
of the cities. One thing only is still withheld from distinctly rural
communities--the opportunity to get good books.
It has been said so often it has become a truism that the rural
districts are the seed bed from which the cities are stocked with
people. Upon the character of this stock more than upon anything else
does the greatness of a nation and the quality of its civilization
ultimately depend. The importance of doing something with and for these
people is paramount for the farms furnish the cities not alone with
material products but with men and women. Census returns indicate that
cities are gaining on the country all the time. We who wish to stop
the rural exodus must co-operate with other agencies to make farm life
more attractive and this we can do by opening our doors to farmers and
their wives, the makers of men. It is our city's self-protection that
there should come from the farms strong, well-educated minds, and we
each should contribute our share to this end. A Chinese philosopher
has said, "The well-being of a people is like a tree; agriculture is
its root, manufacturing and commerce are its branches and its life;
if the root is injured, the leaves fall, the branches break away and
the tree dies." State universities and other free educational agencies
are recognizing the fact that not the few but all, farm and city-bred
alike, must be educated for life and through life. Commencement day
is no longer the educational day of judgment for the individual. Rural
consolidated high schools are being built to supplement the little red
schoolhouse. Libraries, through extension of their service, must aid in
the great agrarian movement of the day. We cannot all, perhaps, have
the ideal arrangement as worked out in Maryland by Miss Titcomb. It
may not be possible to cover other states with book wagons as Delaware
proposes to do. We may not accomplish the California ideal of the
county as the unit. We may not be able to send traveling libraries on
their beneficent mission, but we each may try to let down the bars at
our own reservoirs so that whosoever is athirst may come and drink of
the waters of life freely.
The PRESIDENT: Whenever I become rash enough to venture a comment upon
any paper of Miss Stearns I always take the precaution to do it before
she presents it; afterwards it is entirely superfluous. Yet I venture
to express a thought which I am sure has occurred to you likewise; that
there is a very strong relationship between the two papers which have
been presented this morning; that there is cause and coming effect
in that the one activity of the library, as represented by the first
paper, is making possible the multiplication of these various devices
which shall make for the woman on the farm the new day of which Miss
Stearns has prophesied.
During the last few years the library has entered another new field, an
unsuspected field. Those of us who have had an opportunity to go about
to the various institutions where the defectives and the dependents and
other unfortunates are incarcerated have marvelled at the--shall we say
ignorance, which has been at the bottom of the book work with these
people. But scientific methods have been introduced and during the
last few conferences we have had something of the promise which has now
grown into fuller realization. I shall ask Miss JULIA A. ROBINSON, who
has done strong, splendid work in Iowa in this connection, to present
the next paper, on
BOOK INFLUENCES FOR DEFECTIVES AND DEPENDENTS: HELPING THOSE WHO CANNOT
HELP THEMSELVES
Needy humanity divides itself into three classes, those whom it is
said the Lord helps, those who will not and those who cannot help
themselves. In no form of need, however, are we interested today save
that of the book, nor with the willfully book needy.
For are not they served by the public libraries which go even into
the highways and byways and wellnigh compel the uninterested to come
to the feast freely offered to them? And though there are still rural
districts not yet supplied with public or traveling libraries, many of
them have the ability to provide themselves with books had they the
desire.
But there are those, not always removed by space but far removed by
condition from such privileges, because crime, weakness or misfortune
has deprived them of their freedom and for the safety of society,
their own restoration to health or their care and education they are
detained behind closed doors. These are the morally, mentally and
physically defective and the dependent upon the bounty of the state.
With this class of helpless are we concerned, with their needs and with
what is being done to bring to them the influence of books. Of their
needs let me speak briefly while I define and locate the different
classes, giving a few figures which perhaps may not be amiss in helping
us to realize their numbers.
Of the moral defectives 113,579 have heard the grated doors of prison,
penitentiary or reformatory close behind them, for some never to open.
For others in a few years perhaps these doors will swing outward to
freedom. Shall it be to useful citizenship, or to become a greater
menace to society and again to be put behind the bars? Most of these
are men who are employed during long working hours. There is much time
for idle thoughts during those hours, in addition to evenings and
Sundays spent alone in locked cells. Large is the opportunity here
for the book in its threefold mission of recreation, instruction and
inspiration to lives barren of pleasure and interest.
But these are not all. We must add 22,900 juvenile delinquents found
in the state industrial and training schools of the United States,
boys and girls whose steps have early found the downward path, in most
cases, I believe, because of the influences into which life ushered
them. But many of these are yet within the years of susceptibility and
to the other upward influences with which it is now sought to surround
them should be added the society of books which will bring wholesome
pleasure while they present high standards and make right living
attractive.
These numbers are exceeded by the mentally defective of whom 187,454,
disturbed or confused, dazed or depressed, look through grated windows
or sit in shadowed corners of the insane hospitals. To take their
thoughts from themselves and direct them into healthful channels may
mean a step toward mental healing and adjustment. This books will often
do and to fail to furnish them may mean to omit a remedial influence
in their treatment. Of the feebleminded, there are 20,199 in the
institutions for that class of defectives. With them the task is not so
encouraging, but a right to the pleasure of books is theirs and should
not be withheld.
There are 61,423 to whom the printed page must speak for they hear no
other voice, and 44,310 to whose touch the raised letters bring their
message. Shut out from so much which others enjoy shall these be denied
this means of recreation and instruction?
The charitable institutions shelter 268,656 dependents which include
the old, the sick and the children in the state public schools,
orphanages and homes. The former need books to cheer them in their
fight for health and strength, or to while away the hours of waiting
for their final summons. The children need them not only for the
enjoyment which comes from childhood reading, but as a means of
development of mind and character. I would lay especial emphasis on the
importance of libraries in these and in the industrial and training
schools. Useful as books are in the other institutions, there the
help which they bring is but to the readers themselves. Here we have
citizens in the making and the state has not only the opportunity of
laying the foundations of character, but by laying them deep and broad
and strong of receiving returns for their efforts in intelligent and
useful citizens. To librarians I need not speak of the value of books
in giving the education which makes for intelligence and the ideals
which make for usefulness.
To meet these needs what do the institutional libraries offer? I shall
not give you figures which at best would be inaccurate and incomplete,
but such information as could be obtained showing the efforts which are
being made to provide books and reading for defectives and dependents,
the adequacy and suitability of the libraries and their use of modern
library methods.
The list of states is incomplete, some failing to respond, others
giving vague information, and an omission may not mean that nothing
is being done along this line. What is given will serve to show the
general trend of interest in the work.
California plans to serve the institutions through the county system of
libraries, but just how this is to be done or whether any institutions
have libraries or have received assistance was not stated.
Colorado reports libraries in all the state institutions, the best
being that at the state penitentiary where the visitors' fees yield
a considerable income which is used for books. In Georgia two
institutions only have libraries, which are reported to be neither
well selected, kept up to date nor administered according to modern
methods.
The only information received from Idaho was that traveling libraries
are sent to the industrial school.
In Illinois libraries are reported in the eighteen charitable and
three penal institutions of the state, though not all are adequate or
suitable in selection.
In Indiana several institutions receive annual library appropriations
ranging from $1,000 down to $200. No institution is without a library
though not all are organized or well selected or large enough for the
needs of the institution. The library commission lends an organizer
to assist in this work and in some cases the book selection and the
affairs of the library are put into the hands of the commission. The
librarian from the School for Feeble Minded Youth will attend the
summer school.
In Iowa libraries exist in all of the fourteen state institutions;
all are classified, organized and administered according to approved
library methods. All except the penitentiaries have appropriations of
$300 to $500 each for the purchase of books. In the penitentiaries the
fund received from visitors' fees is used for this purpose. Reports
are made each month to the Board of Control showing the reading done
by classes in each institution. A trained librarian appointed by the
Board of Control gives all her time to the institutional libraries,
superintending the work, doing the book selection, supplying the
technical knowledge, instructing the librarians and stimulating the
reading.
In Kentucky the prisons and hospitals are under separate boards,
neither of which has done much for the libraries in the institutions
under their charge, but both have the matter under consideration and
better things are looked for in the future. The prison libraries are
represented as inadequate and unsuitable. One only has a fund for the
purchase of books and that only $50. The only books in the Houses of
Reform are the traveling libraries loaned by the library commission.
Two state hospitals have very small libraries and no fund. One has
about 800 volumes and an annual fund of $250.
The chairman of the Board of Control of State Institutions in Kansas
writes that considerable interest is taken in providing suitable
reading for the dependents and defectives of that state and that the
institutions are urged to systematic work, but does not state whether
all have libraries.
The Maine Insane Hospital has an endowment which yields an income
of about $600 annually which is expended for books for the general
library, periodicals and medical books. According to the chaplain of
the Maine state prison "additions are made to that library from three
sources, a few volumes by purchase, some by gifts from individuals, but
mostly by gifts from the state library of =books no longer useful in
the traveling libraries=."
The Massachusetts prison commission reports libraries in substantially
all the prisons. The larger ones are classified.
Michigan has a state appropriation for books. All the institutions have
libraries of some kind, but none are classified or organized according
to modern methods. The selections are made by the state librarian.
Minnesota has also an appropriation for books in the state
institutions. The public library organizer from the Library Commission
pays regular visits to the institutions, selects the books and
supervises the work. Not all are classified and several need new books.
The two asylums for incurable insane and the hospital for inebriates
have only traveling libraries.
In Missouri five institutions have no libraries. Traveling libraries
are sent to the insane hospitals. In the boys' training school
the library is managed without system. If a boy wants a book the
superintendent takes what may be at hand and gives it to him.
Nebraska has a state appropriation of $2,000 made directly to
the Library Commission to be expended by them for the thirteen
institutional libraries. This is used for books, supplies and
periodicals except in two institutions which supply their own
magazines. The institutions are asked to furnish cases only and some
one to loan the books. Books are selected by the commission and
prepared for circulation in the commission office.
In New Hampshire the legislature makes an appropriation for the
libraries in the state prisons and state hospitals.
The February number of New York Libraries was made an institutional
number and among other things contained reports from the institutional
libraries of the state showing libraries in all but two or three
institutions which are supplied by traveling libraries. The following
editorial comment is made on these libraries: "Of the thirty-six
institutions from whose libraries detailed reports are herewith
presented, there are not more than two or three whose library
conditions would be regarded as up to the standard commonly expected
and demanded for public libraries. For not one of them does the state
provide a sufficient appropriation for the attainment of such a
standard." The committee appointed by the State Library Association on
libraries in the penal institutions in the state of New York in making
their report recommend a change of title for the committee to include
the charitable as well as the penal and reformatory institutions and a
request that the legislature pass an act authorizing the appointment of
a supervising librarian for the state institutions.
The libraries in many of the state institutions of North Carolina are
reported so small and poorly cared for that they are practically
useless. The School for the Blind has a separate library building
called the Laura Bridgman Library and there is a good library in the
School for the Deaf classified by the teachers. The value of this work
is appreciated by the Board of Charities but there is a lack of funds.
The North Dakota Library Commission has recently been asked to assist
in selecting books and organizing a library for the state penitentiary
where a thousand dollars is to be expended. No libraries exist in the
other state institutions.
The Oregon Library Commission reports libraries in all the state
institutions except one just opened. All the institutions are located
at Salem and receive direct assistance from the commission in
organization and book selection and management of their libraries.
Purchases are made from a general fund. All are reported adequate
except one to be made so. Three are classified and the rest are to be.
Pennsylvania has libraries in all the state institutions but none are
organized, classified or administered according to accepted library
methods. The Library Commission takes the position (wisely it seems
to me) that their part lies in stirring up the boards in charge of
the institutions to active interest in these libraries, rather than
themselves mixing in the affairs of another organization, though as yet
little has been accomplished in that direction.
Tennessee has a library in the School for the Blind, the School for the
Deaf and the state prison, but none in the insane hospitals. These are
organized and classified to a limited extent only.
From the biennial report of the Texas Library Commission I quote
the following: "Only a few of the institutions have libraries and
as a rule these are small and without reference to the purpose they
are to serve. Some have nominal librarians, but none trained and a
library without a trained librarian is like a piano without a pianist,
valuable, even expensive, but of little use or pleasure."
In Vermont an appropriation of $500 was made in 1910 and $200 is now
appropriated annually. This is divided between the libraries in the
State Prison, House of Correction, State Industrial School and Insane
Hospital and is under the control of the Free Public Library Commission
which purchases the books and oversees the cataloging. A card catalog
of each institution is kept at the commission office. The State Prison
also has a printed catalog.
Washington has a library of some kind in all its institutions, but in
none is it a real factor. None are classified.
In Wisconsin no institution is wholly without a library. They are
organized and classified in a limited way only. The commission assists
to some extent in book selection.
From these reports we may draw the following conclusions: (1) Libraries
of some kind exist in many state institutions. (2) Probably most of
these libraries are only partially adequate, if not wholly inadequate
and unsuitable. (3) Few are organized or administered according to the
best methods, have proper rooms or a librarian in charge to render
even their present collection useful. (4) In a few states only is
there trained supervision or systematic library work undertaken in
the institutions. (5) Where appropriations are made they are seldom
sufficient to properly maintain the libraries.
The responsibility for this work lies (1) with the governing bodies,
the Boards of Control and other boards to whom is committed the
care and welfare of the defectives and dependents of the state and
the superintendents of the various institutions who are directly
responsible for this care, and (2) with the librarians entrusted
with library extension and the carrying of books to those who would
otherwise be bookless, the state library commissions.
That the superintendents partially appreciate the value of the book
is evidenced by library beginnings in many institutions and their
readiness to co-operate in movements toward the improvement and
increased usefulness of the libraries. But they are busy men with many
departments on heart and mind and the boards are charged with many
interests.
It is not surprising, therefore, that it is the librarians who have
recognized the importance of these libraries and the fact that if they
are to become a real force in the institutions the work must be given
to some one whose business it shall be, who is trained for it, and who
has the time to give it proper attention.
As few institutions are yet in a position to individually employ a
trained librarian, the solution of the problem has seemed to be a joint
or supervising librarian for all the institutions of a state or of a
kind in a state.
Iowa through the influence of Miss Tyler and Mr. Brigham was the
first to undertake this work and is still the only state in which
institutional library work is done by a librarian working under the
Board of Control and giving all her time to the institutions. The other
states having institutional supervision are Indiana, Minnesota, where
an officer from the commission gives part and Nebraska the whole of her
time to the institutional libraries, and Oregon, Michigan and Vermont
where the work seems to be done directly by the secretary.
If the Board of Control and the institutional heads are not affected by
party changes the advantage, it seems to me, lies with the librarian
employed by them, who goes into the institutions with authority from
the board to do what needs to be done and not as a guest, who is
sometimes unwelcome. The book selection can thus be better guarded and
I believe books purchased with institution funds will be better cared
for by both officers and inmates than those received by donation.
Appropriations are also likely to be larger if made directly to each
institution than if made in a lump sum to the commission.
The initiative, however, will undoubtedly lie with the library
commission and the importance of institutional library work is such
that should the boards fail to use their opportunity it may become the
part of the library commission to at least inaugurate the work, which
having begun they will probably be allowed to continue.
Before closing may I emphasize very briefly three important points in
connection with institutional library work. I wish I might elaborate
both these and the other points which I have touched so hurriedly, but
time forbids.
1. If the libraries are to become a real factor for good in
institutional work, the book selection must be differentiated to meet
the needs of the different classes of readers, and great care used to
exclude the harmful and include helpful books only. 2. To make these
libraries most useful there should be suitable rooms, not only for
the proper shelving of the books, but for use as reading rooms where
the atmosphere of book lined walls may yield its helpful influence
and prepare the way for public library use by the boys and girls at
least when the opportunity shall come to them. 3. Though there may
be a supervising librarian in the field, there should be a competent
institutional librarian who shall not only do the routine work, but
have sufficient knowledge of books and readers to be able to fit them
together and sufficient time to do the work properly.
Thus shall these libraries, not only bring brightness and cheer to
lives otherwise dull and colorless, for
"This books can do;--nor this alone; they give
New views to life, and teach us how to live;
They sooth the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise;
Their aid they yield to all: They never shun
The man of sorrows, nor the wretch undone;
Unlike the hard, the selfish and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things.
But show to subjects what they show to kings."
The PRESIDENT: I am very glad to be able to announce that Miss Rathbone
has kindly consented to exhibit some extremely interesting charts
which have been prepared and exhibited in connection with the work of
the library school at Pratt and I am sure that all of you will miss
something if you do not avail yourselves of the opportunity which is
here presented to see them and to hear the explanation concerning them.
Miss RATHBONE: I am very glad indeed to tell you a little about our
exhibition because we found it an interesting thing to do and the
people who saw it were interested in it. The genesis of the matter
was this: When Miss Alice Tyler was at the school this spring we were
speaking about budget and other exhibitions and she said, "I do wish
librarians could find some way of graphically presenting library work
so that people could understand it as the child welfare work has been
presented." That remark of hers, coupled with the fact the library
school has never taken part in the exhibition that Pratt Institute has
held for a great many years, at the end of the third term, suggested
to me the idea of putting the problem to the class of devising an
exhibition that should be a visual presentation of the school course
and also of library work in general in a form that would be interesting
and intelligible to the general public. After a visit to the Bureau
of Municipal Research, where Dr. Allen gave them a talk on the value
of graphic presentation of facts, I told the students that they were
to have the entire responsibility of the planning and execution of
this exhibition as a problem in the library administration seminar. It
was, of course, an experiment but I was sufficiently convinced of its
success after the class made their first and only report of progress,
to invite the staffs of the neighboring public libraries to the
exhibition. When the material was assembled and installed it created a
good deal of interest both in the Institute among the librarians who
saw it, and, best of all, on the part of the public at large. We had
about five hundred visitors in the four days it was open and it seemed
to awaken in the minds of the people who saw it some conception of
what library work means. We heard many comments of this kind, "Well,
now that I understand the work the library does, I am going to use it
more intelligently." One high school boy said, "Gee! I've had an awful
time trying to use this library before, but I think I know what it is
about now." That sort of a thing made me realize that the exhibition
might be of value to some of you as showing one way by which people
could be interested in the actual work done in a library, so I wrote to
see if space could be had to install it here. It was too late, however,
so I simply brought up a few of the charts as examples.
The exhibition began with the technical work of the library--the
progress of a book through the various steps was illustrated by a
ladder the rungs of which were labeled, Book Selection, Ordering,
Receiving, Accessioning, Classification, etc. Books were shown running
toward this "Library Ladder," nimbly climbing the rungs, while at the
top they acquire wings and fly "off to the public." This chart hung
over a table on which the successive operations were shown in detail
the same book being used as an illustration throughout. The successive
steps were numbered to correspond to the rungs of the ladder. For
example, Book Selection was shown by a group including the A. L. A.
Booklist, the Book Review Digest and two or three of the reviews. The
descriptive card read "No. 1. These are a few of the aids in book
selection."
Following that was a chart (exhibiting it) to illustrate the utility
of classification, on which was presented a group of ten scientific
books unclassified, followed by the same ten in D. C. order, with the
question, "In which group would it be easier to find the books on
insects." That was followed by another exhibit to prove the utility of
subject cataloging. Two copies of the same book were obtained, one new
and the other quite worn, the book being Gleason White's "Practical
designing," which is made up of a number of papers on minor arts, by
different authorities. The new book with a single author card lay on
the table surrounded by radiating interrogation points, questions
unanswered, and over the book hung this inscription: "This book looks
new. Why? Because nobody knows what is in it. It is poorly cataloged."
The worn copy lay on the next table and radiating from that were a
number of questions with the catalog cards that answer them attached.
Over that was the screed: "This book shows wear. Why? Because it can be
reached from twenty-four sources. It is well cataloged." People who had
not known before what a catalog meant studied that thing out and the
change of expression which came to their faces when they saw the new
book and the worn book side by side and understood what it signified
was delightful. It struck home.
The work of the reference department was tellingly illustrated by an
arch in which the reference library was the keystone, all intellectual
activities depending on it.
(Miss Rathbone then exhibited various other charts and described them
in detail.)
In addition to this, children's work, the field work, the courses
in binding and printing, the making of reading lists, the course in
fiction were represented.
Altogether we felt that graphic illustration of library work was not
only possible but distinctly worth while and that the exhibition had
done a good work in educating the library's public, as well as the
class, and we expect to make it a permanent feature of the year's work.
Adjourned.
FOURTH GENERAL SESSION
(Thursday morning, June 26, 1913)
The PRESIDENT: We begin this morning the fourth session of this
Thirty-fifth Annual Conference and I shall ask the chairman of the
Committee on Library Administration to submit at this time his report.
(Dr. Bostwick here read the report.)
The PRESIDENT: You have heard the report of the Committee on
Administration. This report embodies some recommendations which it
seems to the Chair should be acted upon. Therefore the recommendation
which suggests the appointment of a committee to undertake certain work
will be referred to the Executive Board for their attention, as, in
accordance with the terms of the Constitution, it devolves upon the
Executive Board to name the committees. The report will be printed in
the proceedings.
(This report is printed with other committee reports. See page 126.)
Mr. RANCK: Mr. President, there is just one item, about questionnaires,
if I may have a moment to state it, that I think the committee has not
referred to. It is a matter of some importance to us at our library.
I think we answer, in the form of questions of one kind or other, not
all from libraries however, about a thousand a year. I should like to
insist on the importance, when a blank is sent out on which spaces are
left for writing in the answers, that a duplicate be sent so that a
library can keep a copy of the answers sent. Again and again we have
to copy them because we feel it very important that we should know
just exactly what we are sending out in that way. And if possible, in
the printing of that report I should like to see the committee include
that, if they are willing to accept the suggestion.
The PRESIDENT: The suggestion is a very good one.
The PRESIDENT: I feel like congratulating you this morning upon the
program for this fourth session, the general theme being: "Children
and young people; their conditions at home, in the school and in
the library." No matter how splendid a structure may be reared nor
how beautiful it may be, without an adequate foundation it is most
insecure. We have learned to realize in library work that we must begin
at the beginning if our work is to have any perpetuity or any permanent
result. We feel that, splendid and admirable in every way as the work
with the adults is, that that alone is not enough. That work invites,
as it deserves, our respect and admiration, but in the work with
children is centered our affection. And when I say this I do not mean
to intimate for one moment that that work is enveloped in sentiment.
I believe most firmly that the work with children is constructive
work of the very highest order. If there are any in this audience who
doubt that I am sure that after we shall have heard the papers of
this morning the doubts will be dispelled. We shall have this work in
three volumes this morning, the first volume comprising two chapters.
The title of the first volume is The Education of Children and the
Conservation of their Interests, and Chapter One will be contributed by
Miss FAITH E. SMITH, of the Chicago public library, on
I. CHANGING CONDITIONS OF CHILD LIFE
It is now twenty-eight years since some one first recognized the fact
that children needed to have special libraries or special collections
of books in libraries, and thereupon opened a children's reading room
in New York City.
Some of the conditions affecting child life today existed then, but we
know more about them now than we did then. We have many specialists
in sociological fields who are making investigations, compiling
statistics, drawing conclusions, and telling other people how to
make the world a better place. Our rapid industrial development is
producing many problems concerning child welfare, some of which are
of vital interest to us as library workers; others we may well leave
to playground associations, juvenile courts, health bureaus, social
settlements, child labor committees, schools and churches. It is not
ours to change housing conditions or to do away with child labor, but
it is ours to meet these conditions, to be god-parents to those whose
natural parents are not inclined or not able to guide their reading,
to present to the children's minds other worlds than the tenement or
street, and to give to children worn with daily labor such books as
will be within their grasp, and will help them to permanent happiness.
In 1885 when a children's library was opened by Miss Hanaway in
New York City, there were fewer means of recreation than there are
now. There were no motion-picture shows, no children's theaters,
no municipal recreation parks with free gymnasiums, swimming pools
and baths. Child labor had only begun to be exploited by large
manufacturing establishments (1879). Then there were more homes,
permanent abiding places, where there was room for children both to
work and to play. There was more family life, where father and mother
and children gathered about the evening lamp, and father read aloud
while mother sewed and the children listened, or where each member of
the family had his own book in which to lose himself. There were daily
duties for each of the children, the performance of which gave them
training in habits of responsibility.
Today such conditions may be found only rarely, except in small cities
and villages.
Congestion in large cities has led even well-to-do families to live in
apartment houses. In Chicago this sort of life began only thirty-four
years ago, and today one-third of all that city live in residences
having six families per main entrance. (Chicago City Club-Housing
exhibit.) This tendency to apartment life means the loss of the joy of
ownership, the feeling of not-at-homeness and consequent restlessness,
due to frequent change of environment.
Book agents say that they cannot sell books to families in apartment
houses, because they have no room for books. Scott Nearing in his
"Woman and social progress" regrets "the woeful lack of provision for
the needs of the child in the construction of the modern city home.
Huge real estate signs advertise the bathroom, bedrooms, the dining
room and kitchen, the library, and reception hall. But where is the
children's room? Owners do not care to rent houses to people having
children. Many of the apartment houses exclude children as they exclude
dogs or other objectionable animals." Yet we say, and rightly, that
this is the century of the child.
The complexity of modern life, the tendency to materialism, the
multiplicity of interests, have deterred many parents from being
actively concerned in the growth of the minds and the souls of their
children. This part of their development is being left to teachers,
church workers, leaders of boys' and girls' clubs, etc. There is not
time for reading aloud to children at home, and little concern is
manifested by many intelligent parents, regarding their children's
choice of books. The "poor, neglected children of the rich" are not
allowed to use the public library books, because there may be germs
hidden among the leaves. They may have their own books, but they are
denied the joy of reading a book that some other boy or girl has read
and pronounced "swell".
Because of this lack of concern on the part of parents in children's
reading, are we not justified in our hitherto condemned paternalism?
Home life among the very poor in the congested districts of our large
cities is often such as is not worth the name. The practice of taking
lodgers which prevails among some foreign elements of the population,
means the undermining of family life, and often the breaking down of
domestic standards. (Veiler, "Housing reform," p. 33.) "Thousands
of children in Chicago alone are being exposed to the demoralizing
influences of overcrowded rooms, of inadequate sanitary provisions, and
of unavoidable contact with immoral persons."
"Bad housing is associated with the worst conditions in politics,
poverty, population density, tuberculosis, and retardation in the
schools. It is directly related to many cases of delinquency of
boys and girls, who have been brought before the juvenile court."
(Breckenridge and Abbott, "The delinquent child and the home.")
Furthermore wrong home conditions result in driving children to the
street. The child who finds no room at home to do the things that he
wishes to do, not even room to study his school lessons, is inevitably
forced into the street, "not only in the day time, but as common
observation shows, until late at night, not only in good weather but in
foul." Here he grows up, and is educated "with fatal precision." The
saloon and its victims, the hoboes and their stories, criminals dodging
the police, lurid signboards, a world of money-getting, all become only
too familiar to him. Sin loses its sinfulness, and gains in interest
and excitement.
Are we placing our attractive children's rooms, clean and orderly,
adorned with flowers and fine pictures, where they may be readily seen
from the street, where picture books placed in the windows may vie in
alluring powers with the nickel-novel window displays?
The boy of the street may be a member of a boys' gang, and if so, this
becomes one of the great influences acting upon his life, either for
good or for ill. Mr. Puffer makes the statement that three-fourths of
all boys are members of gangs. (Puffer, "The boy and his gang," p. 9.)
Those boys are fortunate whose gang is an organized body efficiently
directed, such as the Boys' Scout Patrol. This, Mr. Puffer says, "is
simply a boys' gang, systematized, overseen, affiliated with other
like bodies, made efficient and interesting, as boys alone could never
make it, and yet everywhere, from top to bottom a gang." Here lies
an opportunity for co-operation on the part of the library, and many
are the interests awakened by the Boy Scout movement which may be
encouraged by the library.
Another influence constantly appealing to children of the street as
well as to others, is the glaring advertisement of the moving-picture
show. Moving pictures are now the most important form of cheap
amusement in this country; they reach the young, immigrants, family
groups, the formative and impressionable section of our cities, as no
other form of amusement, and can not but be vital influences for good
or ill. In 1910 it was estimated that more than half a million children
attended motion pictures daily. (Juvenile Protective Assn. of Chicago,
"Five and ten-cent theaters"--pamphlet.)
Is it not possible for the library to make permanent whatever good,
though fleeting, impression may be made by educational pictures or
pictures from great books, by co-operating with the picture shows, and
being ready to supply to the children copies of the stories, nature
books, or histories to which the children may have been attracted by
the motion pictures?
During the meetings this week our interest in the adult immigrants and
their relation to the library has been aroused and augmented, and it
has been proven conclusively that the solution of the immigrant problem
must of necessity rest with the children. The change in the type of
immigration in recent years from a large percentage of English-speaking
and Scandinavian races having a low percentage of illiteracy, to a
leadership among races of eastern and southern Europe, with a very high
percentage of illiteracy, has had a decided influence on standards of
living.
These people of other lands do not adapt themselves to American ways as
readily as their children. Many do not know the English language, they
do not stir far from home or from work, and have few new experiences.
"Many things which are familiar to the child in the facts of daily
intercourse, in the street or in the school, remain unintelligible to
the father and mother. It has become a commonplace that this cheap
wisdom on the part of the boy or girl leads to a reversal of the
relationship between parent and child. The child who knows English is
the interpreter who makes the necessary explanations for the mother to
the landlord, the grocer, the sanitary inspector, the charity visitor,
and the teacher or truant officer. It is the child again who often
interviews the boss, finds the father a job, and sees him through
the onerous task of 'joining the union.' The father and mother grow
accustomed to trusting to the child's version of what 'they all do in
America,' and gradually find themselves at a disadvantage in trying to
maintain parental control. The child develops a sense of superiority
towards the parent and a resulting disregard of those parental warnings
which, although they are not based on American experience, rest on
common notions of right and wrong, and would, if heeded, guard the
child." (Breckenridge and Abbott, "The delinquent child and the home.")
Can books not teach children to honor their father and mother, and
"that the head and the hoof of the Law, and the haunch and the hump is
obey"?
We are told that one of the causes of crime among the children of
foreigners is transmitted ambition. "The father left the homeland
because he was not satisfied.... He worked hard and saved money, that
the dream of better things might be realized.... The son manifests this
innate tendency by a desire to excel, by the longings to rise and be
masterful, the ambition to beat the other fellow--these are the motives
which impel him to an intensive life that carries him to excess and
transgression." (Roberts, "The new immigration," p. 325.)
It is for us to interest this ambition and turn it into right channels.
We may also discover what special interests are uppermost in the minds
of those of different nationalities, things they wish their children
to love, traditions they have cherished, and which we may help the
children to cherish.
Driven by necessity or by the spirit of the age, the immigrant
quickly develops a strong ambition for acquiring money, supposing
that he landed on our shores without that impelling force. One of the
consequences is that he withdraws his children from school as soon as
they are old enough to secure their working papers. "To the Italian
peasant, who, as a gloriously street laborer begins to cherish a
vision of prosperity, it matters little whether his girls go to school
or not. It is, on the contrary, of great importance that a proper
dower be accumulated to get them good husbands; and to take them from
school to put them to work is, therefore, only an attempt to help them
accomplish this desirable end." (Breckenridge and Abbott.)
In 1911 the National Child Labor Committee conducted an investigation
of tenement house work in New York City. Among 163 families visited
having 213 children, 196 children ranging in ages from 3-1/2 to 14
years were working on nuts, brushes, dolls' clothes, or flowers. These
are truly not the good old-fashioned domestic industries in which
children received a good part of their education. Those working in
factories and tenement sweat shops, where labor is specialized and
subdivided into innumerable operations, do not get the variety of
employment that cultivates resourcefulness, alertness, endurance and
skill. (Child labor bulletin, Nov., 1912.)
We cannot expect these children, with bodies retarded in development by
overwork, and without proper nourishment, to be able to take the same
mental food that is pleasing to other children of the same age, who
have had all necessary physical care.
The hours when working children, those engaged in gainful occupations,
and those who are helping in the homes, are free for recreation,
are in the evening and on Sunday. Are we placing our most skilled
workers on duty at these times, and are we opening our story hours and
reading clubs on Sunday afternoons, when the minds of these children
are most receptive of good things, when the children are dressed in
their good clothes, their self-respect is high, and they are free from
responsibility?
It is a well-known fact that the need of money is not the only cause
of the exodus from school that occurs in the grades. An investigation
made by the Commissioner of Labor in 1910 (Condition of woman and child
wage-earners in the U. S., vol. 7), examining the conditions of white
children under 16, in five representative cities, showed that of those
children interviewed, 169 left school because earnings were necessary,
and 165 because dissatisfied with school. The Chicago Tribune (Nov. 11,
1912) stated that in 1912 there were in Chicago over 23,000 children
between 14 and 16 years of age, who were not in school. Over half of
these were unemployed, and the remainder had employment half the time
at ill-paid jobs, teaching little and leading nowhere. In 1912 there
were 34,000 children of Philadelphia not in school, and only 13,000
were employed. (Philadelphia City Club Bulletin, Dec. 27, 1912.)
The curriculum of our public schools is in a transitional stage. The
complaint of parents who take their children from school before they
have completed the high school course, is that it does not teach them
to earn a living. The desire of commercial men is to have such courses
introduced as will lessen the need of apprentice training in their
establishments. These changes may help boys and girls to earn a living,
but those courses which teach them how to live may be sacrificed. Man
does not live by bread alone. Mrs. Ella Flagg Young says, "The training
must also implant in the mind a desire to become something--I mean by
that an ideal.... It must make the boys and girls able to know that
they have possibilities of greater development along many lines." This
sort of training is within the sphere of the library as well as within
that of the schools.
The children in the rural districts (which the 1910 census interprets
as meaning people of towns of less than 2,500 inhabitants, and people
of the country) are the library's great opportunity. In these districts
may be found the old-fashioned home life, where parents are glad to be
aided in the direction of their children's reading. There are fewer
distractions in the way of amusements. Books are not seen by the
thousands, until they have become so confusing that one knows not what
to read or where to begin. Homes are owned, instead of rented, and a
library worker is not liable to lose her group of children each first
of May.
The pleasures of city life have been made easily accessible to children
and grown people by means of trolley lines, good roads, telephones,
etc., and the music of grand opera has been carried to the country
homes by means of talking machines. Still the distractions of modern
life have not absorbed a large part of the everyday life of the
children, so that their minds may be appealed to along the line of
their natural interests. As Miss Stearns told us yesterday, there
is less of drudgery in farm life today than there was thirty years
ago, and children have more time for study and reading; but they need
direction and assistance.
The consensus of opinion among writers on rural sociology is that the
great need of the people of the country is more education; education
that will make farming more scientific and efficient, and less
fatiguing, education that will help boys and girls to find amusement in
the life about them; education that will guide that passion for nature
which every normal child possesses.
* * * * *
Because children today have many more opportunities for recreation than
they had thirty years ago; because many leave school long before they
have acquired the education that will teach them how to live, as well
as how to earn a living; because in many homes mothers and fathers
cannot train their children in American ideals of citizenship, which
they themselves do not understand; because in other homes the physical
needs of children are held to be of most importance, while mental and
moral needs are left to the care of teachers and social workers, the
time seems ripe for the library to place emphasis upon the educational
side of its work, rather than upon the recreative. Let the recreative
be truly recreative, giving relaxation, new visions, higher standards
of living, and increased belief in one's self, but let the educational
work meet the children's needs, increase their efficiency, teach them
how to live, and to be of service in the world's work.
Mr. Bostwick, in the Children's section, mentioned three eras in
library work with children; first, the era of children's books in
libraries; second, era of children's room; third, era of children's
department. These concerned books and organization, the machinery of
getting the books to the children. We think we have learned something
about children's books, and we know approved methods of administration.
Possibly we are now on the verge of the fourth era, when we shall know
~children~. Not the child with a capital C, a laboratory specimen, but
living children, with hearts and souls. Do we know the conditions under
which the children of our own neighborhood live? Do we understand their
interests, and are we sanely sympathetic?
The PRESIDENT: We are glad to get Chapter Two: How the Library is
Meeting these Conditions, by Miss GERTRUDE E. ANDRUS, of the Seattle
public library.
II--HOW THE LIBRARY IS MEETING THE CHANGING CONDITIONS OF CHILD LIFE
Every month, if the mails are regular, we receive assurance that
the public library is an integral part of public education, and
the complacence with which we accept this assurance gives ample
opportunity to our critics for those slings and arrows with which
they are so ready. Ideas and ideals of education are rapidly changing
and it behooves the librarian, and more particularly the children's
librarian, to see that she keeps pace with the forward movement and
that the ridicule of her censors is really undeserved.
The old idea of education was to abolish illiteracy, "to develop the
ability, improve the habits, form the character of the individual, so
that he might prosper in his life's activities and conform to certain
social standards of conduct."
The new idea of education is that of social service, to train children
to be not mere recipients, but distributors, not merely to increase
their ability to care for themselves, but also their ability to care
for others and for the state.
This perhaps sounds a note of the millennium, but we have been told to
hitch our wagon to a star and although the star proves a restive steed
and often lands us in the ditch, we travel further while the connection
holds than we should in a long, continuous journey harnessed to a
dependable but slow-going snail.
It may seem a far cry from these comments on education to the topic of
my paper: How the library meets the changing conditions of child-life,
but in reality it is only a step, for just as in philanthropy the
emphasis is placed more and more upon prevention rather than remedy, so
in education the task is coming to be the training of the good citizen
rather than the correction of the bad citizen. And if the library is,
as we are anxious to claim, an integral part of public education, it
must have a share, however small, in the preventive policy of modern
educators, which will in time effect a change in present social evils.
Unless the library, as it meets these constantly changing conditions,
can do something to improve them and to make the improvement stable, it
has small claim to be included in the educational scheme of things.
In the conditions of child life which Miss Smith has outlined, the
breaking up of the home is the most serious handicap which the children
have to face. It is on this account that all social agencies working
with children endeavor, so far as each is able, to supply an "illusory
home" and to give, each in its own capacity, the training in various
lines which ought in a normal home to come under the direction of the
mother and father.
There is a spreading belief in the value of reading but there is a
woeful lack of knowledge as to what should be read, and the children's
library therefore fills a double rôle; it provides books which it would
be impossible for many of the children to get otherwise, and it selects
these books with thoughtful care of the special place each one has
to fill, so that it becomes a counselor, not only to the children but
to those parents who are anxious to assume their just responsibility
in the guidance of their children's reading, and yet feel their
inability to breast unaided the yearly torrent of children's books. The
stimulation of this feeling of responsibility on the part of parents is
one of the most effective means at the library's disposal of striking
a blow at the root of the whole matter, for it is on the indifference
of the parents that the blame for many juvenile transgressions should
rest, which is now piled high upon the shoulders of the children.
In this connection mention should be made of the home library, the
most social of all the library's activities. This small case of books,
located in a home in the poorer quarters of a city and placed in charge
of a paid or volunteer library assistant has been proved to be a potent
force in the life of the neighborhood, for the "friendly visitor," if
she be of the proper stuff, is not merely a circulator of books, she is
an all-round good neighbor to whom come both children and mothers for
help in their big and little problems, so that the results have proved
to be "better family standards, greater individual intelligence, and
more satisfactory neighborhood conditions."
But even granting that the mothers and fathers show a deep concern in
what their children read, the connection between books and children is
often left of necessity to the children's librarian who is selected
with special reference to her adaptability to this particular kind
of work. Now, no matter how strong a personality this young woman
may possess, no matter how high her literary standards, nor how
far-reaching her moral influence, it is obviously impossible for her to
come in contact with more than a few of the children in her community.
And in order to provide that intimacy with books from which we wish no
child to be debarred, she must depend not alone upon her children's
room, beautiful and homelike though that may be, but she must place
her resources at the disposal of other educational agencies, all of
which are working toward a common end. Of these the most powerful is
the school, and through the lessons in the use of the public library,
through the collections of books placed in the schoolrooms, and most of
all through the influence of the teacher, the public library will touch
the lives of thousands of children who might otherwise be in ignorance
of its resources, and who through this contact will receive a vivid
impression of their share as citizens in a great public institution. In
this correlation of school and library care must be taken to place an
equal emphasis upon the library as a place for recreation as well as a
place for study.
Contrary to the teachings of our Puritan forefathers, we are growing
more keenly alive to the imperative need of healthful recreation
as a means of combating existing social conditions, and our great
cities and our little villages are gradually making provision for
the gratification of the desire of the people to play. Nowhere does
the library find an alliance more satisfactory than with these
play-centers, for it is in the union of the physical and mental
development that education comes to its fullest fruition and the
striving to instill "imagination in recreation" can find no better
field than in these places where not only muscles but minds may be
exercised.
These are the well-worn channels through which the children's library
pours its stream of books into a thirsty land, channels into which
run the tributary streams of deposit stations, churches, settlements,
telegraph offices, newsboys' homes, and all the rest which it would
only weary you to repeat.
We are constantly engaged in deepening and broadening these channels
because we believe in the power of books to develop character and to
broaden the vision of that "inward eye which is the bliss of solitude."
Now the book that does this most effectively is the book behind which
lies some personality. We all know the popularity of "the book Teacher
says is good." But the problem of the children's librarian is not
limited as is the teacher's to two or three dozen children. She must
lay her plans to reach hundreds of children and she can do this only by
dealing with the children in groups: in other words, in clubs, reading
circles, and story-tellings.
The natural group of child life is the boys' gang or the girls' clique
which offer unlimited opportunities for good or ill. The tendency of
a =neglected= group is to develop strongly a regard for the interests
of the individual group and make it antagonistic, if not actually
dangerous, to the larger group of society.
The possibility of touching children's interests, enlarging their
horizon, and influencing their ideals through these groups has been
utilized in the club work of many libraries. Although all library clubs
lead eventually to books, the way may be a circuitous one and baseball,
basketry, and dramatics may be met on the way. But aside from the book
interest, without which no library club can be considered legitimate,
there is the opportunity of guiding the activities of the group by
means of debate work or similar interests so that their attention may
be directed outside of their immediate environment and made to include
the greater possibilities of the larger social group.
Very often in girls' clubs the charitable impulse is strong and may be
so led as to instill a very thoughtful sympathy for others.
It is for the things we know best that we have the most sympathy
and the truest devotion, and we may expect real patriotism and an
active civic conscience only when we have taught the children to
know thoroughly their country and the city in which they live. This
is some of the most valuable work that is being done by libraries,
and it may be well passed on, as has been done in Newark, to become a
part of the school curriculum. Indifference to the fatherland is not
the best foundation on which to build the superstructure of American
patriotism, and the confused and homesick foreigner welcomes with
gratitude the books in his own tongue provided by the library, the
opportunity to use the library's auditorium for the meetings of his
clubs with unpronounceable names, the respect with which his especial
predilections and prejudices are considered by the library in his
immediate neighborhood, the display of his national flag and the
special stories told the children on the fete day of his country. A
people without traditions is not a people, and if we expect these
strangers to respect our institutions, we must show them an equal
courtesy.
This regard shown by the library and other institutions for the
national characteristics of the parents reacts upon the children
and they grow to understand that though their elders may have been
outstripped in the effort to become Americanized they have behind them
an historical background which is respected by the very Americans whose
customs the children ape so carefully.
The reading circle and the story hour are similar in their purpose for
they are both intended to call the attention of the children to special
books and to open up the delights of a new world to imaginations
often starved in squalor and poverty. Both the reading aloud and the
storytelling have their rightful place in the home and are merely
grafted on the library in its attempt to supply its share of the
"illusory home" for which we are striving.
If the Sunday story-tellings and clubs meet the neighborhood needs more
efficiently as Miss Smith has suggested, the library schedule should be
so arranged as to accommodate them.
The time of childhood is a time of unbounded curiosities. Everything is
new and wonderful and open to investigation, and that library may count
itself blessed of the gods which can command the co-operation of a good
museum. Given an exhibit case containing a few interesting specimens,
a placard bearing a brief description of the specimens, and the titles
of a few books on the subject obtainable at the library, and we can all
of us picture a rosy dream of budding scientists, nature-lovers, and
historians.
This child-like interest is the secret of the popularity of the
moving-picture show. Here we see unfolded the processes of nature,
the opening of a flower, the life of a bee, we ride in a runaway
train and in an aeroplane, and we see enacted the daily human drama
of love and hate. Here is an opportunity which many libraries have
grasped, and slides are furnished the picture theaters announcing
the location of the library and bearing some such legend as this:
"Your Free Public Library has arranged with this management to select
interesting books and magazine articles upon the historical, literary,
and industrial subjects treated in these pictures. It is a bright idea
to see something good and then learn more about it." Mr. Percy Mackaye
in his recent book on the Civic Theater, comments on this as follows:
"A brighter idea--may we not add?--if the founders of the library had
recognized the dynamic appeal of a moving-picture house, and endowed
it to the higher uses of civic art! Truly, a spectacle, humorous
but pathetic: Philanthropy in raiment of marble, humbly beseeching
patronage from the tattered Muse of the people!"
So far as the writer knows, but one library has as yet made moving
pictures a permanent addition to its activities, although a small town
in Washington State has intimated that it would do so, provided the
Carnegie Trust Fund would give it money. It is a sign of the times, and
one of which note must be taken, for it gives the library a chance to
deepen the benefit of such good pictures as there are and to raise the
standard of the others.
Unfortunately the interest of many boys and girls is forced prematurely
to the subject of how they may aid in the family support. They leave
school untrained and unfitted for the life they have to live, and go
into shops, factories, department stores, and other service. Whether
they leave because of economic pressure or because of a lack of
interest in their school work the fact remains that 32 per cent of the
children entering school drop out before they reach the sixth grade,
and only 8 per cent finish the fourth year of high school. Manual
training and vocational guidance are taking a hand in the matter and
the part of the library is evident, not only in its supply of books on
these topics but in the personal interest of the library assistants and
in their suggestions and advice to the young folks who are struggling
to find themselves. This is of course but a drop in the bucket but it
is an effort in the right direction.
So many of these young people leaving school prematurely are shut
up at the crucial age of adolescence in huge factories and stores,
creeping home at night too tired to move unnecessarily, or letting the
individuality which has been so sternly repressed all day burst forth
in excesses and indiscretions. Only a few will come to the library, so
to make sure the library must go to them.
One of the most notable examples of this kind of work is in the main
plant of Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago. The company furnishes room,
heat, light, and librarian's salary and the public library provides
the books. This type of library may combine the intimate personal
relationships of the small branch, the club, the story hour, and the
vocational bureau. It may, as the Sears, Roebuck library has done,
publish lists of books covering certain grades of a school course in
grammar, rhetoric, history of literature, and study of the classics,
and through the personal influence of the librarian it may make these
courses really used, for always in work of this kind it is the personal
equation that counts.
Some commercial houses have independent libraries of their own,
sometimes in connection with their service department, as does the
Joseph & Feiss Co. of Cleveland, in which case the direction of the
library comes under the charge of a person whose duty it is to use
every means to deepen, strengthen, and broaden the capacity of every
employe so that he may remain an individual and not become a machine.
This is an age of industrialism which has early placed upon the boys
and girls the responsibilities of life, and the love of books is one of
the most important of the influences which will keep the pendulum from
swinging too far upon the side of materialism and purely commercial
ambition.
These are some of the ways in which the library is trying to meet the
changing conditions of child life in the city through the children's
rooms, the homes, the schools, the playgrounds, the factories, and
other institutions which have to do with the employment, amusement, or
education of children.
From many of these problems the life of the country child is mercifully
free, but in place of them there is the isolation of farm life and
the idleness on the part of the children so often found in country
villages. As more than half of our population is in the country, it is
but logical that libraries should long ago have made some attempt to
reach a class of readers who, as Mr. Dewey says, "have a larger margin
of leisure, fewer distractions, and fewer opportunities to get the best
reading. They read more slowly and carefully and get more good from
books than their high-pressure city cousins whose crowded lives leave
little time for intellectual digestion."
Long before the formation of the Country Life Commission, librarians
were sending traveling libraries to farm-houses and rural communities,
and library commissions are now scattering broadcast the opportunities
for reading which will do so much to "effectualize rural society."
When we think of books and the country, we think also of Hagerstown
and the book wagon, an institution which in its influence on country
life may well be added to the famous trilogy of "rural free delivery,
rural telephones, and Butterick patterns." Greater attention is being
paid in these days to conditions of country life, both on farms and
in villages, and the work of the country librarian is as broad and as
interesting as that of her city co-worker.
But whether the work is done in the city or the country, in a crowded
tenement district or on a thousand-acre ranch, it has as its foundation
the same underlying principle: that of co-operation with all other
available agencies to the end that the boys and girls may have a fuller
opportunity to become good citizens. We cannot be progressive if we
are not plastic, and in the adaptation of our work to the changing
conditions of child life lies the secret of the value of the children's
library.
The PRESIDENT: We give a sigh of satisfaction and one of regret:
satisfaction over the pleasure we have had in listening to these fine,
moving chapters; regret that they have been so brief. We are reconciled
only by the fact that there are two fine companion volumes still to
come. Mr. WILLIS H. KERR, of the Kansas State Normal School, will give
us the first one, the subject being:
NORMAL SCHOOLS AND THEIR RELATION TO LIBRARIANSHIP
That there is a close relation between librarianship and the forces
of education is implied both in the special topic of this paper and
in the general theme of the morning: "Children and young people;
their conditions at home, in the school, and in the library." Indeed
librarian and teacher have more in common than we yet think. For real
library work is teaching, and real teaching is guidance in living, and
to live well for thy neighbor and thyself is--real library work.
The burden of this discussion will be, not whether the library is an
integral part of education, but rather what modern education, as an
art, science, and practice, has to say about the attitude and method
and practice of library work. With open mind and modest, may we attempt
a statement of "library pedagogy" to parallel current educational
practice? How may we librarians knit our work more effectively into the
educational fabric? How best correlate people and books?
If such a statement of library pedagogy is possible, even though
tentative, it is worth our while. From college days there rings in my
ears the topic of an address by Dr. Samuel B. McCormick, now President
of the University of Pittsburgh: "We can achieve that which we can
intelligently conceive and adequately express." We must see our whole
job through and through if we are to cope with our friends who do not
yet see what we are at. The good brother, a Ph. D. of one of our best
universities, a successful city school superintendent, now a fellow
professor, who said, "I can see how instruction of our normal school
students in library methods will help them in their work here, but
how will it help them as teachers? Anyone can find a book in a school
library." The superintendent who complained that all his pupils got
at the public library was sore eyes and ruined minds from reading
trashy fiction; the library trustee who likened library work and
salary to dry-goods counter service and wage; the typewriter salesman
who objected to open shelves and book wagons and story hours, because
they cost--I won't say how much he said; what infinite patience, what
skillful teaching power must we librarians have, to turn this tide and
use it?
Lest we paint the picture too darkly, let it be said with all
thankfulness and cheer that multitudes of teachers, superintendents,
boys, girls, men and women, do understand. There is Superintendent
Condon, formerly of Providence, now of Cincinnati, of whom Mr. Foster
says in the last (1912) Providence report: "Mr. Condon's co-operation
with the library was constant, intelligent, and effective." There is
Mary Antin and her brothers and sisters, Americans all, to whom one of
the richest gifts of the "Promised Land" is the public library. There
is State Superintendent Alderman, of Oregon, and Mrs. Alderman. There
is the United States Commissioner of Education, Mr. Claxton, and Mrs.
Claxton. In every state are men like a western Kansas superintendent
(way out next to Colorado, on the prairies), who found his community
destitute of books; even school books and tablets had to be ordered by
the drug store from a distant city; no community interest, no debating
societies, no class plays, no school athletic teams. He made school
vital to the boys and girls. Then because to his thinking education
does not end with school days, and because he had the library vision,
before he was there a year he passed the subscription paper, organized
the library association, got the books and magazines, and opened
the public library. He gave that town something to live for. And
every state has librarians like the little Kansas lady in a country
community who does reference work and draws patrons from sixteen
surrounding school districts by the use of the rural telephone.
What have the normal schools to do with all this? Before answering
this question, it may be well to note that the term "normal school"
has not always the same significance. In the United States there are
194 public normal schools. Scholastic standards are of three general
types: First, the old-time normal school, whose graduates have little
more than completed a high school course including some required
pedagogy. Second, the largest division, the two-year normal school,
which requires two years of college cultural and professional work,
high school graduation being required for entrance. Third, the normal
college or state teachers' college, which grants the bachelor's degree
for the completion of four years of college cultural and professional
work. As a rule the graduates of the high school normal course go into
the rural or the small-town schools; the graduates of the two-year
college course, into elementary schools and special subjects; and the
graduates of the four-year college course, into high school subjects,
principalships, and superintendencies. The four-year state teachers'
colleges of the United States can be counted on the ten fingers, and
their ultimate sphere of influence is being debated. It would seem,
however, that the adequate teacher-training institution must be as
broad in its facilities and standards as are the conditions of modern
life with which teachers must cope.
In the normal schools of these three types, student attendance varies
from 100 to nearly 3,000, the average being about 600. Faculties
vary from 8 or 10 members to 125. Equipment varies correspondingly,
the better schools having very complete facilities. For example, the
Eastern Illinois State Normal School, at Charleston, which is said
to have a faculty ranking in scholarship with the universities, has
1,200 students, 31 members of faculty, offers two college years of
teacher-training, has three buildings, a library of 16,000 volumes, and
like many other normal schools of its type has an assured future and
a fine field of influence. You will pardon another example, I hope,
cited because I can be still more definite in describing it: The Kansas
State Normal School, at Emporia, is a type of the four-year normal
college. It was established in 1865. Last year it had 2,750 students,
350 in the training school (comprising kindergarten and grades one
to eight), 1,100 in the normal high school, and 1,300 in the college.
It had a faculty of 100, nearly half of these being men, many of the
best universities being represented. It has 11 buildings, including an
enormous gymnasium, a library, a hospital, a training school, science
building, etc. It has a department of library science, in charge of
a professor giving full time to that department, and on the same
plane as other departments of instruction. Of this same general type,
in equipment, numbers, and standards, are the schools at Ypsilanti,
Michigan; Cedar Falls, Iowa; Kirksville, Missouri; Greeley, Colorado;
Terre Haute, Indiana;--I do not mean to slight other worthy examples.
Aside from these three types of public normal schools, another
important type of teacher-training organization is the department
of education and psychology in our best colleges and universities,
exemplified notably by the School of Education of the University of
Chicago, and Teachers' College of Columbia University, the last-named
being perhaps the most efficient teachers' college in the world. I
hasten to add mention of the conspicuously helpful work in educational
psychology, pure and applied, which is being done at Clark University,
Massachusetts, under the inspiring leadership of Dr. G. Stanley Hall.
Now, using the term "normal schools" to include all of these types
of institutions and as representing their practices and ideals, may
we ask the question we left a moment ago, "What have the normal
schools to do with librarianship?" This: The normal schools have now
consciously taken up the task of preparing teachers who understand the
life that now is and can teach boys and girls to live that life and
to be useful members of society here and hereafter. These organized
institutions of teacher-training take themselves seriously, they accept
the responsibility of their task, and they are measurably succeeding;
despite the declarations of popular magazines and investigating
committees that our schools are a colossal failure. Which they are not,
for didn't they train Mary Antin, and Miss Stearns, and you and me?
If librarianship is educational work, and it is, the normal schools
may therefore have some suggestion of educational practice worthy the
consideration of librarians.
What is the educational world thinking and doing? Examine the program
of the National Education Association, to meet week after next at
Salt Lake City. I group some of the topics from the general sessions:
=First=, What is education?; Education for freedom; The personal
element in our educational problems; Teaching, and testing the teaching
of essentials; Measuring results. =Second=, What shall we do with the
single-room school?; The rural school; Fundamental reorganizations
demanded by the rural life problem; Rural betterments; The schoolhouse
evening center. =Third=, moral values in pupil self-government, The
high school period as a testing time, Public schools and public health.
Relate these groups of topics with this definition of education from
the late Andrew S. Draper, of honored memory:
"Education that has life and enters into life; education that
makes a living and makes life worth living; education that can
use English to express itself; education that does not assume
that a doctor must be an educated man and that a mechanic or
a farmer cannot be; education that appeals to the masses,
that makes better citizens and a greater state; education
that supports the imperial position of the State and inspires
education in all of the States--that is the education that
concerns New York."
Mingle with educational men and women, search the educational
periodicals and programs, scan the educational books, visit the normal
colleges; and I think you will discover that something like this is
happening in the educational world: The content of education is being
adapted to meet the needs of all the classes and the masses. The method
of education is being adapted to the individual. The result is that
education is being universalized, socialized, democratized.
In this adaptation of educational material and method, all eyes are
upon the individual child. We are studying this child, working for
him. We are playing for the batter, tackling the man with the ball. We
believe it is more important to develop the undiscovered resource than
to run all boys and all girls through the same hopper. A phrase used
in the =School Arts Magazine= for May, 1913, in describing a notable
Boston exhibit of art illustration, breathes this spirit: "Instruction
in illustration, should be creative and individual from the outset.
Models are posed to help in expressing more truthfully the conception
of the illustrator rather than as a discipline in abstract drawing."
The true teacher never gives up a boy or a girl. But mind you, we are
saving the individual, making a man out of him, not that he may be a
self-centered unsocial phenomenon, but that he may be a fellow among
men, a useful social unit. We want strong individuality willing and
able to live in society.
Perhaps the biggest word in current education is motivation. That word
motivation covers a multitude of sins and a multitude of virtues.
Motivation does not mean coddling. It does not mean allowing the child
to do as he pleases. On the other hand, motivation does not mean
forcing an unnatural process or situation upon a helpless child or a
helpless public. It does not mean that we are to give something to the
child. Motivation is not didactic in attitude.
The spring of action in all of us is impulse. There is no time here to
go into the psychology of instinct, impulse, emotion, motive, action,
and all that. Suffice it for example that through the play instinct and
impulse the wise teacher leads the child to a respect for fair-play,
order, law, justice. The child never knows where he got it, but he
has what he needed, and he has it indelibly. This process assumes a
God-given wisdom on the part of the teacher: to know how that little
mind is working, what it needs, how it may be brought to feel the need,
and then to lead, draw out, educate that mind--O, miracle of miracles!
A step further in the consideration of the educational process: Perhaps
there have been committed more atrocities, more crimes in the name of
education, in the high school than in any other period of school life.
More fairly stated, the crimes have been in the upper six years of the
usual twelve,--in that period which is called adolescence. Why do so
many boys and girls drop out of the upper grades? Why do so many youths
never complete high school? The vocational training people have one
answer, and it consists in letting the boy work at something of which
he feels the need. They motivate his work. The boy from the farm can't
read Tennyson's "Princess;" set him at the =Breeder's Gazette= or the
testing of seed-corn; you can teach him English as readily through one
task as the other. Only that boy never would learn English from "The
Princess,"--and I love Tennyson.
As an example of skillful motivation in teaching may I describe a case
which is also an object-lesson to librarians in correlating people
and books? It is a third-year high school class in argumentation.
After some preliminary study, one day the teacher remarks rather
inconsequentially, "Do you know I believe the 'Boston tea party' was an
unjustifiable destruction of property, and that unprejudiced historians
now admit it?" Now that won't "go" in Kansas any easier than it will
in Massachusetts. Teacher is immediately challenged, and she replies,
"Well, I'll debate it with you; and I'll be fair and square with you
and tell you of some material on your side. But there is one man whose
authority I would not want to dispute; you'll surely treat me fairly,
won't you?" A young lady member of the class at once puts a motion to
the class that it will not be considered fair to use the writings of
Edmund Burke against teacher. Does that class depend upon bluffing
its way through that debate with teacher? No, it keeps us busy at
the library to get material out fast enough, even though we had been
previously informed by the teacher that the material would be wanted.
Even Dr. Johnson's "Taxation no tyranny" is read with eagerness.
Teacher finally agrees to debate even against Burke. Is Burke a bore to
that class? Why, the library has to buy additional copies. Of course,
the end desired by the teacher all the time was Burke.
More and more, in the instruction of adolescent and adult, the
teacher's effort is being directed toward arousing a problem to be
solved. Whether by a class lecture, by a class discussion, or by a
personal conference, the pupil is brought to feel that it is important
for him to find the answer. Is it not important, then, for the
librarian to be skilled in drawing out a statement of the problem,
or, changing the figure, to recognize accurately the symptoms and to
prescribe unerringly? I think librarians having to do with high school
and college students should rather frequently visit classes and attend
lectures. If this were done, the pupil would less often be ground
between upper and nether millstone, and the millstones would think more
of each other.
Thus far, educational ideals and practices. Now will they help us any
in attempting to formulate a library pedagogy? I believe they will. I
believe that the teaching attitude, the study of the individual, the
putting of the individual's needs far and away before the observance of
inflexible rule and practice, and the determination to correlate people
and books and life to the very ends of the earth,--these four stones at
least will be in the foundation of library pedagogy.
I am not sure that all educational people will agree entirely with
the foregoing statement of educational principles and methods. I am
quite sure that I may as well gracefully hand my head now to some of
you because of the following library corollaries of the preceding
educational doctrines. Some of these are my own beliefs, some are
beliefs of educational men regarding libraries:
In the training of librarians, would it be more in accord with
modern pedagogy to have less lecturing, less practice work done in
the this-is-the-only-way-to-do-it attitude, and to have more of the
come-on-and-let's-find-out, the learn-by-doing laboratory spirit?
Educational administration is being remodeled, centralized. If library
work is to be more and more educational, school men have said to me,
why not make the public library an integral part of the city school
system, and the state library and state library commission an arm of
the state department of education? It is a terrible thought, but it
will not drown by denying it.
When library work becomes educational through and through, and all
library assistants are experts in psychology and human nature, the
fines system will be a thing of the past.
Conservation of the individual means that it is better to have a
book in use than to have it lying peacefully on the shelf entirely
surrounded by unbroken rules.
Conservation of society means that it is better to have the library
open on holidays and Sundays, when the working man isn't "dead tired,"
than to report an increased circulation of fiction.
The PRESIDENT: For an object lesson as to the strenuous life we go
to Oyster Bay. For library buildings we go to East Ninety-first
street, New York, or when he is in Europe we go to Skibo Castle. For
information as to the latest inventions we go to the laboratory of Mr.
Edison. For full information as to the best in high school work we go
to the Girls' High School in Brooklyn. Miss MARY E. HALL.
Miss Hall spoke extemporaneously upon the enlarging scope of library
work in high schools. Some of the points discussed were treated by her
in a paper before the section on Library Work with Children at the
Ottawa conference, 1912. See Ottawa Proceedings in Bulletin of the
American Library Association, v. 6, p. 260-68.
The PRESIDENT: As my eye roves over this audience I see it is thickly
sprinkled with punctuation marks. It has been suggested that some of
our papers ought to be discussed from the floor. We shall be glad to
hear from any librarians who are in this audience, either in the form
of experiences or comment.
Mr. OLIN S. DAVIS: While I approve fully all that the last speaker has
said, I feel very strongly that the college or high school library
should not be too complete and that the student should be encouraged
to use the public library. Work should be given to the students in
high schools and girls' schools that would require their coming to the
public library, because if the children in the grades and high schools
do not learn to use the public library in those years they will not be
apt to use the library in later years when they have left school.
Miss HALL: I would like to say that the first thing we do with pupils
is to take a census of the entering class to find out how many do
not have cards in the public library; interview them to see why they
have not; even to write letters to the parents and urge them to allow
their children to have cards; and to see before the end of the first
term that every student in the entering class has a card in the public
library, has a note of introduction from the school librarian to the
branch librarian of the public library, and to see that the branch
librarian of our big cities and the high school librarian work together
four years with that student. We have the very closest co-operation.
Miss AHERN: Most of you reading library literature lately have seen
considerable criticism of the fact that when students go out from
college they do not know how to use the library. That is sometimes
the student's fault, but most often it is the fault of the college
curriculum. That is a topic we need not discuss here. But I believe
librarians will do a great service to those who are going into college
activities if they emphasize and elaborate that idea of putting into
the requirements for college entrance, a knowledge of how to use
library machinery.
There are a good many things that are necessary for students to know
before they are able to take up the work in colleges, particularly in
literature and language. I am not saying that these should be any
less. But here is something that I wonder no one has ever thought of
before. It means a good deal more to a student to know how to use the
various reference books in the college library on, say, the works of
John Milton, than to have read some of the things which are included in
the entrance examination. I think the idea of requiring a knowledge of
how to use the library for college entrance is the best thing I have
heard at a library meeting for a long time, and I hope the librarians
who are present will impress that idea on their superintendents
of schools, on their high school principals, and on the college
authorities, as far as they can. It is a good thing. If we should
not get anything else out of this 1913 meeting but to impress on the
school people that a knowledge of how to use the library is a necessary
requirement for a college course, we shall have gained a great point.
Mr. RANCK: I should like to ask Miss Hall about her experience with
reference to the use of the library on the teaching of English and
literature in the high school.
Miss HALL: I have been very much interested in this. Our school has
been so large it has been very difficult to do all we would like to
do. We have not been able to do what has been done in the Detroit
or Grand Rapids high school in the way of instruction. But I have
been interested in seeing what it has done for the English and the
history departments. In the first place, our teachers are coming with
their classes for instruction and the teachers are learning a great
many things which they are putting in practice. For the last year we
have done more with the Reader's Guide in history than ever before.
Teachers are assigned to help me in my work. After they heard the talk
on the Reader's Guide they said, "We can do this: we will go through
the Reader's Guide and we will bring out everything that is really
interesting on the history of France, Germany, China, Russia and the
Balkan War; we will look over those articles and make a card of the
best things." They are using the Reader's Guide in English more than
ever before; they are using reference books more. After the talk on the
Statesmen's Yearbook and on the almanacs and some of the yearbooks,
such as the New International Yearbook, they are using them almost as
textbooks. The Statesmen's Yearbook is in use nearly all the time, as
is the New International Yearbook, since that talk. They are using
the Reader's Guide for new material--essays that they want on special
subjects, and are using it for debate work, informal debates on all
sorts of interesting current problems for English work, training the
students to do oral debating without any notes, and talks on the topics
of the day. They are using encyclopedias more wisely than they used to.
Teachers used to send scholars to encyclopedias for everything. And
when we talked about the real use of encyclopedias and bibliographies,
how the encyclopedia simply gave you a certain amount of definite
information and often led to more important things, they began using
those bibliographies.
Miss HOBART: I do not know that any librarian has been trying to work
out the problem which I have of reaching the public school pupils
and teachers. Some of the best things that I have found in that way
are these: I made myself familiar, as early in the term as possible,
with the teachers and the conditions of their home life. I found that
some had very poor places to room, as they are apt to have in small
communities, and to those I offered the use of the library rooms for
evening use and for time out of school when they wished to correct
papers. Our library is warm and light in the winter and cool and
light in the summer. And the teachers were extremely glad to have a
place where they could come and be quiet and comfortable and do their
own work. I think that last year the teachers in our small village
practically lived in the library. Even those who had homes there used
to make it their abiding place most of their waking hours. For the
high school pupils, at the time of their graduating essays, we laid
books aside in different places in the library. Many of those children
had no proper places at home where they could write. They came to the
library and did their work; almost all the work on their graduating
essays was done evenings. For six weeks we gave the use of our catalog
rooms to two girls who had their books sent there. There were several
out-of-town children; to those we gave a room in the basement. They
came from school as quickly as possible at noon, ate their luncheon in
a very short time and spent the rest of the intermission in the library
doing reference work. The expressions of appreciation we have received
and the consciousness of the help given to those children in the use of
the library has been a great source of satisfaction.
Adjourned.
FIFTH GENERAL SESSION
(Friday morning, June 27, 1913.)
The PRESIDENT: We begin this morning the fifth session of this
conference and the theme covering the papers is, "The library's service
to business and legislation." Ten years ago it would not have occurred
to anyone perhaps that it would be possible to have a series of papers
upon this subject, and the surprising expansion of the service in these
directions is evidenced by the fact that we have, in order at all to
attempt to cover this subject adequately, a larger number of papers on
this morning's program than we have on the program for any other of
the subjects which have been scheduled. I will ask Mr. C. B. LESTER to
start the program with his paper upon
THE PRESENT STATUS OF LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE WORK
It is now more than twenty years since the need of specialization in
the library's work on subjects of legislation was recognized in New
York in the creation of a special staff for such work, and it is just
about ten years since the successful combination in Wisconsin of such
special reference work with the formulation of bills aroused most of
the states to the possibilities of usefulness in this field. It would
therefore seem worth while to examine the work so far done to discover
if possible such principles and tendencies as may be subject to
generalization.
It is at once obvious that any such generalization in a broad sense
must be difficult, for this present year shows in legislation both
east and west that we have not yet come to rest on such fundamental
principles as to method even though there may be substantial unanimity
as to policy. The new laws in Vermont (and I think in New Hampshire)
in the east--in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in the middle west--and
in California on the Pacific coast show such differences that it is
evident that local conditions must still be very largely controlling.
And to go back a full year or more would bring to notice the new work
organized in several states through university bureaus but without
special legislation, and the proposals before the Congress.
Comparatively little examination shows that the conception of the work
to be done differs widely. Mr. Kaiser of the University of Illinois,
who is preparing a detailed study of the subject, writes me: "I find
that in practically thirty-two states it is attempted in some form or
other--the state library as a whole, a division of the state library
created within the library, a division created by law, a separate
bureau, library commission bureaus, state university bureaus, etc."
Obviously this must include practically all states where the state
library is other than a law library only or a historical collection
only, and must credit with doing legislative reference work those
states where general reference work is done on subjects of legislation.
But there is a more exact use of the term which takes account of the
fundamental principle well suggested in the statement of the Librarian
of Congress in his communication to Congress in 1911. "A legislative
reference bureau goes further [than the Division of Bibliography].
It undertakes not merely to classify and to catalog, but to draw off
from a general collection the literature, that is the data, bearing
upon a particular legislative project. It indexes, extracts, compiles."
It breaks up existing forms in which information is contained and
classifies the resulting parts, and often "adds to printed literature
written memoranda as to facts and even opinions as to merit."
Such work as the legislative reference staff should be qualified to do
is distinctly informational rather than educational in its reference
to the patron. It does the work of research, of gathering, sorting and
uniting the scattered fact material wanted and presents the results
ready for use. And to be fully effective this work must in some way be
co-ordinated with the formulation of legislation, so that the product
offered by the legislator may be both firmly founded and properly
constructed. This work is so evidently necessary that it will be
done in an increasing number of states whether the state library or
some other agency undertakes it and protects its efficiency by the
impartial, non-political and permanent organization of it which can be
there best provided.
Practically all legislation specifically providing for such work has
been passed in the years beginning 1907 and it is significant that most
of this emphasizes research and drafting. The laws specially providing
for such work are as follows:
Alabama, 1907, no. 255.
California, 1913.
Illinois, 1913.
Indiana, 1913, ch. 255 (1907, ch. 147).
Michigan, 1907, ch. 306 (1913, ch. 144).
Missouri, Stat., 1909, Sec. 8177.
Montana, 1909, ch. 65.
Nebraska, 1911, ch. 72.
North Dakota, 1909, ch. 157 (1907, ch. 243).
Ohio, 1913 (1910, no. 384).
Pennsylvania, 1909, no. 143 (1913).
Rhode Island, 1907, ch. 1471.
South Dakota, 1907, ch. 185.
Texas, 1909, ch. 70.
Vermont, 1912, ch. 14 (1910, ch. 9).
Wisconsin, Stat. Sec. 373 f.
An analysis of the work done, whether provided for by legislation or by
administrative practice, shows certain other facts. The number of the
staff in any state is often variable, temporary or part time assistance
is often used, and this is true where this work is not a part of the
work of a state library or other wider organization. Furthermore, the
cost in money is almost impossible to estimate accurately in many
places, because of this co-operation with other work. In starting a
new work this difficulty in answering the question of what it costs
elsewhere must be faced. The best way to meet it seems to be to make
the comparison on the basis of the work wanted, definitely planning
what is to be done, and asking for a lump sum to cover its estimated
cost.
The drafting proposition is a most important element. Some three or
four states already have official bill-drafting agencies, other than
legislative reference departments, and a number of others definitely
depend upon the attorney-general's office for this work. In some states
there is opposition to putting this in the hands of a non-legislative
agency, and in others the libraries, while ready to handle a
specialized reference work, are not ready to undertake drafting.
Obviously this work requires highly specialized training, and equally,
I believe, it will be agreed that this service should be rendered and
that it must be in the closest co-operation with the reference work.
There is no doubt in my own mind that the best condition is that of a
single agency to perform this dual work, where the establishment of
such is possible, and the usual organization seems to include both the
expert draftsmen and the special clerical and stenographic assistance.
This service in the primary formulation of bills must inevitably lead
to a similar assistance as bills progress toward final enactment. This
care as to form through the processes of amendment and revision will
ultimately be complete if the enacted statute law is what it should be
"to stand the test."
This leads me to certain suggestions of other fields of service in
the legislative process which should all tend to better the whole
legislative product. Of course, in much of this service the emphasis is
placed upon form and make-up of the final product, the discretion as
to subject matter resting elsewhere, but that discretionary judgment
is to be based upon the most complete information it is possible to
furnish. Most of these services are now performed by the libraries or
other non-legislative agencies in some states, but of course not all,
or indeed many, in any one state. They include editing, foot-noting,
side-noting, indexing of session laws, and the preparation of tables of
amendments, repeals and similar matter; the proper filing and care of
original bills, journals, committee records, and similar matter, after
the work of the session is completed; the editing and indexing of the
printed journal; editorial work of various forms upon the legislative
documents. These are all services needed by our states, useful to the
legislative bodies, and only properly handled through some permanent
agency. Is the state library that agency? I leave the question for
your consideration, and suggest that some uncertainty at present as
to just what may be most desirable is evident particularly in the new
legislation in Vermont, Ohio, Indiana and California. It has already
been brought out in prepared paper and in discussion at this conference
that the state library should not be a central public library in its
content or its method. It is rather possible to express the field of
its activities as that of a collection of special libraries. Into that
field would come quite naturally the varied services to the legislative
branch of the government which have been suggested. As already stated
some of them are now supplied in some states. What we shall ultimately
work toward in our states is a complete organization of these allied
branches of work, all of which focus about the work of the legislature.
Some of these services are at once recognized as within the field of
the library--about others there is a decided difference of opinion. But
they all have many common elements, many points of contact. They are
most effectively to be handled as a group. The tendency will surely be
toward a concentration rather than a scattering of these parts of one
general work. Plans for such a concentration, adapted to a particular
set of conditions, to be sure, have already been put into concrete bill
form in New York and the bill was before the legislature this year.
The question presents many new features, but is not something to be
answered perhaps in the distant future; it is rather, I believe, worthy
of a very real consideration in the present.
The PRESIDENT: The second paper this morning, which follows very
logically after the one which we have just heard, will be by Mr.
DEMARCHUS C. BROWN, state librarian of Indiana, on
STATE-WIDE INFLUENCE OF THE STATE LIBRARY
The writer of this paper would be more than Protæan if he could say
anything new on this topic. All our associations, at least the half
dozen I belong to, meet so often that repetition is forced upon us. In
the interim very few experiences or ideas worth recording come to us.
Biennial or triennial sessions would lead to better results and save
money.
The personality and attainments of the librarian (and his staff) are of
prime importance in making the state library a dominating influence in
the commonwealth. He is the man behind the gun. I put him first. From
the negative side,--his position should not be subject to partisan or
personal influence. That is a blight to start with and will ruin any
institution. We are still afflicted with that curse in places, not only
in the state libraries but in official positions generally.
Affirmatively, the head of the state library ought to be a person of
scholarly acquirements or at least in deep and appreciative sympathy
with scholarship and knowledge. If he is a scholar in a limited field
he should be in accord with all who are trained in other departments.
He should be able to represent the state in its educational and
scientific undertakings, by papers and addresses, whenever called
upon. It goes without saying that he should be a trained man in
educational or library or literary work and of course an executive
officer. His library is a laboratory of all for all in the state and
he must be in touch with the work of that laboratory. His library is
the distributer of blessings to a great commonwealth, and according
to the motto of the "Library Company" of Philadelphia, that is divine
(Communiter bona profundere deum est). I'll not quote the Latin--it
would be classic, and to be classic is against the regulations of the
Zeitgeist. I want him to be an inspirer for all to love art and poetry,
and study and history and politics (real); and not merely skilled in
the knowledge of card indexes and catalog rules. A certain famous
general in the Confederate Army spent so much of his time on details of
drill and quartermaster's regulations that he forgot how to fight his
army.
I have put the librarian first in this broadening influence of
the state library. All the volumes and equipment and staff will
be comparatively a failure without this scholarly, well-trained,
wide-awake executive officer.
As to the various ways in which the state library can extend its
influence and make itself useful, permit me to suggest a few. This
institution can well be the bibliographical center of the state. Every
club, school, library, society, and all citizens can be made to know
that here information can be obtained about books.
Our own demand is quite large and ought to be larger. There are
libraries with meagre equipment, schools with none, people with none,
colleges with little--all these may be taught to turn to the central
institution for bibliographical information. I consider this a source
of wide-spreading influence, valuable and helpful to the whole state. I
have placed it second more because I deem it important, not because I
think all of these points can be listed accurately as to their relative
positions.
Our states heretofore have been very slow in preserving their history,
both of the commonwealth and municipalities. This has led, perchance,
to the unspeakable commercial county histories with their unspeakable
portraits and unspeakable cost, which we are compelled to purchase in
order to have something.
The state library's influence should extend over the entire state in
an attempt to teach the preservation of history. The library is the
natural place for the collection and organization of the history of the
state. The archives may well be kept here for reference and use, though
some states have a separate archives and history department.
I wish we knew how to preserve history. We don't keep or build
memorials, we tear down and throw away. What we want is the new, the
fresh, the raw. The old, the seasoned, the ripe, we think is effete
(how we like that word in referring to the old advanced civilization of
Europe). The state library has a great, unploughed field to cultivate.
Personally, I find people ready to burn up newspapers or manuscripts,
or sell volumes for junk rather than give them to an institution
where they may be preserved. I am trying to teach them otherwise, but
succeeding very slowly indeed. I trust some of you are doing better.
The women's clubs are a source of help in extending the influence
of the library. They are asking for information of all kinds at all
times. We laugh at them, I know. They have papers on Shakespeare,
Goethe or Homer at one sitting and dispose of them all. But what shall
we do? They are the conservers of culture and reading. Men don't want
them, i. e. culture and reading. They are bourgeois, "practical,"
(à bas with that word and up with refinement and culture which is
just as meaningful in books as in a field where we know culture is
everything). I know many prosperous country towns without a men's
reading organization or club in them, but many women's. If the state
library in its state-wide influence, could convert men to reading, it
would do a great work. Send your bulletin to the clubs, suggest topics
for discussion, and thus distribute the leaven.
So much of our reading and study is done through periodicals of every
description that it is made necessary for one central institution to
be well supplied with these publications. The periodicals not taken in
the average library, college or club, the foreign, like Revue de Deux
Mondes, and Dublin Review, for example, and particularly the learned
periodicals used only occasionally, should be found in the state
library.
The state library can become a source of information, widespread over
the state, by this process. Demands come sometimes from remote corners,
from a teacher or some ambitious student, and he should never be
neglected. This department, I fear, has been in a measure overlooked.
We have about a hundred from foreign countries secured through exchange
for the Indiana Academy of Science. They are not commonly called for
but they form a tie between the library and the scientific men and
students over the state.
By no means limit this list to scientific periodicals. Make the
selection as broad as human interest, if funds and space permit.
It is commonplace to say that the state library is the document
depository of the commonwealth. You know that now. Many people do not
realize it, however. Every official publication of the state, counties
and municipalities, if preserved here, will be a source for historical
research in the future. Nothing of the kind should be thrown away. Many
state libraries were founded with this particular purpose in view.
The state library is the logical place for the preservation of all
documents of the state. From it the municipal authorities, students of
state history and political science, teachers, legislators and citizens
gather the information needed on the documentary history of the state.
All the states have institutions of various kinds--colleges, hospitals
for insane, the epileptic, the tubercular, reformatories, etc., etc.
Why should the state library not at least supplement the small or
large collections in these institutions? Their purpose is not to
purchase books, though some are needed. The state library's influence
and assistance should enter here, also. Much can be done to enlarge
the views and inform the heads of these institutions and to make
happy many of the inmates. No demand by a superintendent of a state
institution for books to be purchased for and referred to by him would
be overlooked in the Indiana state library. The institutions are
scattered over the state and the library's influence would be spread in
gathering material for the people connected with these institutions.
The libraries of the state universities can be supplemented to great
advantage, as has been done at least in our own state and in yours, I
have no doubt.
The newspapers of the state are not kept with any regularity in the
different localities. They are a valuable fund of information for
the historian, who must sift rigidly of course. Our attempt is to
preserve the papers from each county. We have many instances already
of the value of our collection. We believe that a state-wide service
is done in this way. I know the newspaper is not what we think it
ought to be, but certain conditions of politics, business and social
customs are pictures which will otherwise be lost. The librarian in
the state library has imposed upon him here an important duty to the
commonwealth, and the possibility of rendering great service.
The high schools are fond of debating. The boys are more easily aroused
to reading by the discussion of a public or social problem. The local
library is usually meagre. If the school principal is kept in close
touch with the central library he will know where to send for material.
A bulletin on "Debates" with bibliographical lists is of great service
to the school men. The state library extends its work to educational
centers by this method. The Indiana state library for several years
has followed this system and as a result has almost been swamped with
requests for debate material. As many as forty high schools in one
week tried to overwhelm us, but our staff stood the test womanfully and
won.
There are state-wide associations of all kinds in every state. Many
of them publish reports or proceedings. The state librarian may well
keep his institution in touch with all of these. The library may
even be a member of some of them, especially educational, social,
literary or artistic. The presence of a member of its staff at their
meetings or correspondence may lead to the use of the library by these
organizations in a way that will show that the library is the thing to
be used--a tool for every man.
Common as it may be to say it, the assistance to the blind of the state
by the central library must not be passed by. It is a great joy for
any one to note the pleasure these unfortunate people obtain from the
collections from which they draw daily. Very few, if any, are able to
purchase their own books. The number assisted is small, but the benefit
and happiness are great and lasting.
As the state library is the document and the political science center,
it follows that legislative and official information are to be secured
here. The officials and members of the Assembly ought to be made to
know that the state library is, as it were, the fountain head from
which to draw. If the library is worth anything or its head and staff
worth anything, they should be consulted frequently by these persons
in their work of lawmaking. The library has gathered and organized the
material and by means of its use by the legislator, the library exerts
a state-wide service.
It is the province of the traveling libraries department to lend
collections of books to groups of citizens in localities apart from
libraries. This does not hinder the state library from doing much for
the farmer individually and in farmers' institutes. Addresses may be
delivered, bibliographical lists on agricultural subjects sent and
books loaned if the law permits it, and I think it should.
In our own library we have letters and requests from farmers; we
preserve the records of their institutes and granges. One who had
only half an hour a day to read asked for a volume of Jefferson,
Shakespeare, or a good book on chiggers. If he could find out how to
get rid of the chiggers, I would prefer that book to Jefferson, whose
apotheosis is sadly overworked. That farmer's request was not so
fascinating as that of a teacher who wanted a book on "the history of
the human people." This is a sample of Indiana readers. Indiana, the
home of authors! (I want to express my opinion in parenthesis here,
that this Indiana literature talk is also sadly overworked.)
All this concerns special classes of people and books. But the general
reader must be looked after. If democratization of books and reading
is our keynote, and I think it is, then the citizen who wants to read
on history, poetry, art, sociology, religion, must not be neglected.
State-wide means much. It means an open mind for all the demos.
Our central library shall not be a trade shop, not for the bourgeoisie,
but a mentor, a guide, a place of refinement and culture. Not for the
practical man only--he usually does not know anything and does not want
to; he has no breadth of view. Looking up a trade item or a report or
some figures is good and useful; so is loving a poet because it is at
the foundation of character and education.
We have recently been informed--no, we have been told--that to talk
about reading, culture, the love of knowledge, is "flapdoodle." A
citizen may be benefited by knowing how many miles of railroad are in
his county, or what amount of money his city spends, but he will be
just as much benefited by reading a lofty poem of André Chénier, Le
Jeu de Paume for example, or a stanza of William Dwight Moody's, not
that he will make money, but something far better.
What I want to say is that the state library shall extend the love
of learning, of literature, or art and all their kin to the furthest
boundaries of the state in order that all may know that here is a
fountain whence all may receive instruction and refreshment. Why
should the business man not read something besides the newspaper, the
statements of which are denied the next day? Yet most men read nothing
else. If his own town library is small let him call upon the state
library and let the state library be ready to help. I believe that
lending books must still be granted to the state library. We have calls
from lovers of reading from every corner of Indiana, from men who love
culture, knowledge and literature. These we propose to accommodate as
long as the law permits. This observation is made because it has been
said repeatedly that the state library shall deal in documents, reports
and reference books.
We have many foreigners in Indiana. When these cannot secure what is
wanted at their local library I want them to come to us, as recently
happened when the Roumanians wanted the text of their native poets and
something about their provincial capital Nagygebin.
I trust that we may all have one great library for reference with a
minimum of popular fiction--a library that is a guide to scholarship
and knowledge, a library where every man who loves to read may turn
himself out to grass and browse, browse deeply. Herein will we have
state-wide influence.
May I group these influences as a summary:--the personality, fitness
and scholarship of the State Librarian; the bibliographical center may
well be the state library; the legislative reference for the Assembly
and officials; the gathering and preserving of the history and archives
of the state along with the encouragement among the people to preserve
local historical material; the collecting of newspapers representing
the entire commonwealth; the creation of a periodical center in the
state library; close connection with schools, colleges and all kinds
of organizations, social, literary, commercial, etc.; assistance for
all the state institutions, educational, charitable, and correctional;
close relation with the women's clubs; assistance to the farmer and the
foreigner in isolated localities; the center for general culture and
love of knowledge where every citizen may continue to go to school.
The PRESIDENT: Mr. Lester in his paper referred to the bill-drafting
department of a legislative reference bureau and Mr. Brown has just
referred to the man behind the counter. We may perhaps feel that modern
conditions require two men behind the counter in government: the one
who prepares the ammunition and the one who fires it; and perhaps the
more important is the one who prepares the ammunition; the one who
draws up the law, leaving to the legislature the more perfunctory
service of applying the match. Mr. MATTHEW S. DUDGEON has served in the
capacity of director of the bill drafting department of the Wisconsin
legislative bureau and I believe that since he has assumed the duties
of the executive officer of the Wisconsin Library Commission he has
continued to perform that service. We shall be glad to hear from him
this morning as to
THE LAW THAT STANDS THE TEST
In an address before the New York Bar Association the Honorable
Joseph E. Choate says that we in America are suffering seriously
from plethora of legislation. He suggests that this whole mass of
legislation pabulum that is made up and offered to the people from year
to year, ought to be more thoroughly 'Fletcherized,' more completely
masticated, before it is poured into the body politic for digestion.
"If that were done, I am sure," he says, "that we could get along
with half the quantity and it would do us just as much good." The
volume of legislation now being considered is, in fact, appalling. The
legislature of one Eastern state had before it at its last biennial
session four thousand and eighty-one distinct bills. A Western state
this year has asked its legislature to consider three thousand, seven
hundred and thirty-eight measures. A Southern state actually passed
at its latest session one thousand, four hundred and sixty different
enactments.
Unlike the hookworm, however, this disease is neither new nor newly
discovered, nor is it like the chills and fever, indigenous to our
newly settled American continent. Over three hundred years ago
Montaigne discovered a superabundance of legislation in France. "We
have more laws in France," he says, "than in all the rest of the
world." And going back still further to the first century A. D. we find
Tacitus complaining that there are too many laws in Rome. "So that as
formerly we suffered from wickedness," he says in his Annals, "so now
we suffer from too many laws."
We may safely conclude then that the enactment of many laws which are
not so fully "Fletcherized" as they should be, is a complaint which
long ago became chronic among bodies politic generally and that it is
high time that some cure be found for the ailment. How can the quantity
of laws be diminished and the quality improved? How can our legislative
acts be masticated so that one-half as many may do us as much good?
The problem of thus improving legislation and producing "the law that
stands the test" is indeed a most serious one.
=Requirements.= Let us suggest the proposition that a law that
stands the test must first be one which violates no provision of the
constitution; second, it must be founded upon a sound economic basis;
third, it should be capable of efficient administration: that is, it
should be a practical, workable, usable thing; fourth, it must fit
into its surroundings both legal and social. It must, as Blackstone
has suggested, fit the situation as a suit of clothes fits the man.
Some laws which are perfectly sound in good old occidental England have
been found to be entirely impossible in oriental India. A measure which
suits the Anglo-Saxon Yankee in Connecticut may be entirely out of
place among the mixed peoples of the Philippines.
The law that stands the test must have all these qualities and this is
the law which all the American states are striving to produce. Such a
law may, of course, possess these characteristics and yet not be in
every sense satisfactory. It may not accomplish all that was hoped for
it; it may contain errors; it may need amendments, and still it may be
a law which, in a proper sense, stands the test. To give a method by
which a law may be created which will stand the test will not therefore
be to suggest that a method has been discovered which will produce
perfect legislation.
=Nature of subjects considered.= It should be remembered also that
the difficulties of legislation arise not only from the multitude of
subjects presented, but because many of the subjects are in themselves
most difficult of comprehension. The Right Honorable James Bryce has
said that the task of legislation becomes more and more difficult and
that many of the problems which legislators now face are too hard
not only for the ordinary members but even for the abler members of
legislative bodies because they cannot be understood and mastered
without special knowledge.
To illustrate: The legislature of a middle western state has had
before it at a single session laws upon the following subjects: A
comprehensive code of court procedure, initiative and referendum,
recall of all officers except judges, home rule in cities, excess,
condemnation, woman's suffrage, workmen's compensation, regulation of
industrial accidents by commission, income tax, state aid to public
highways, conservation and control of water power, forest reserve,
system of industrial education, system of state life insurance, the
formation of farmers' co-operative associations, limitation of the
hours of labor for women, child labor, public school buildings as civic
centers, and teachers' pension.
There does not exist in any learned society nor in any university in
the land a single man who can do more than converse intelligently upon
all of these subjects; yet this state expected its absolutely untrained
legislators to understand these matters thoroughly, to express a wise
judgment upon them, and to record their judgment in such form as to
force it upon an entire state.
=Lack of training on the part of the legislators.= Of the one hundred
members of the lower house of the legislature which voted upon all
these measures sixty-five had never had any previous legislative
experience. Only thirty had had the advantage of any college education.
While nineteen of the one hundred were lawyers, they were for the most
part young, inexperienced men, whose contact with public questions had
been limited. Thirty of the one hundred were farmers, thirty-one were
in business, six were doctors or dentists, eight were mechanics, three
were school teachers. Yet these men, without experience, or training,
or special fitness were forced to vote upon all these difficult
economic and industrial problems, and also upon about two thousand
other more or less important measures.
=Necessity for unbiased information.= It is of course evident that what
the legislator must have is a source from which he can obtain complete
information upon all sides of a controverted question. A court which
purports to administer justice after hearing the contention of only
one party to a transaction would open itself to ridicule. Yet this is
precisely the method pursued in legislation. The legislator begins
without any independent knowledge of the subject. Such knowledge as
he obtains is brought to him ordinarily by a lobbyist. He receives
many private suggestions whose source he hardly knows. He attends a
committee hearing on a bill seeking to increase the taxes levied upon
railroad property, for example. Here the best data and legal arguments
that money can buy is ably and forcibly presented by the railroad
attorneys. They give figures to show that the railroads are already
taxed more than other forms of property. They quote economists to the
effect that the proposed taxation is unsound and unscientific. They
cite court decisions demonstrating to a certainty that the proposed
measure is unconstitutional. They argue, wheedle, misstate, and finally
convince the legislator that the measure is absurd. No similarly
exhaustive arguments in behalf of the bill can be presented, for no
talent comparable to that of the railroad attorneys, and in fact no
talent at all is retained by the people in behalf of public interests.
This is the legislative librarian's opportunity. As the Right Honorable
James Bryce has said: "No country has ever been able to fill its
legislatures with its wisest men; but every country may at least enable
them to apply the best methods and provide them with the amplest
material."
=Legislation elsewhere.= It is to be remarked that the legislative
questions before all civilized communities are essentially similar.
Everywhere are problems growing out of crime and pauperism; problems
relating to hours of labor, child labor, and wages; employer's
liability; compulsory insurance; workman's compensation; problems
arising out of inheritance, income taxation, and the regulation of
public service corporations. Nothing is so new, however, but that some
other legislature has worked upon the problem or is working upon it.
Take, for example, such a question as employer's liability or workman's
compensation. Fifty legislative bodies are working upon or have worked
upon this single question. In at least three foreign countries and in
one American state it has been adequately solved. The other forty-six
have failed in part or altogether, either because of uneconomic and
unscientific approach or because of constitutional limitations.
Formerly and up to within the last ten years no effort had been made to
profit by the experience of these fifty other legislative bodies. The
typical American way is to let the legislators stumble along, ignorant
of the results of similar experimentations elsewhere, trying out
expensive, independent experiments, which inevitably end in ineffectual
enactments.
What the legislator most needs to know, then, is what efforts other
communities are making to solve the problem before him and how they
are succeeding, to the end that good measures which have succeeded
elsewhere may be adopted and their failures not repeated. Where
successful legislative work is done the first effort is always to get
copies of every law on every subject which is likely to be legislated
upon at the current session. All data bearing upon the success or
failure of this legislation in other states and countries must be
collected, digested, tabulated and placed in such form as to be
readily available to the legislator. If a measure has failed or been
repealed the reasons for the failure or repeal are sought. If it has
been successful its provisions are carefully studied and analyzed
with a view to adaptability to local needs. Experience shows that in
some cases it is necessary to prepare a translation of good foreign
legislation which has never before been translated into English.
But no law from another jurisdiction can be safely transplanted without
careful consideration. The local constitution must be studied. In
such a case as the workman's compensation act referred to, it was
necessary for a commission to make a close, scientific study of the
causes and character of the industrial accidents within the state,
to investigate the rates of the casualty insurance companies in the
different industries, to discover what co-operation for the prevention
of accidents could be secured from employers and employees. Hearings
were held at various industrial centers within and without the state;
scores of witnesses were examined; manufacturers, labor unions,
engineering experts and economists were called upon. In short, the
problem was treated in a thoroughly scientific manner. Contrary to the
usual practice, the case was prepared and presented to the legislature
with the same thoroughness and care as is usual when an important case
is prepared and presented to the court. As a result the law, although
not perfect, stands the test.
=Drafting.= When the legislature has discovered what measures have
proved successful elsewhere and what local conditions demand, it is
still helpless because the members know nothing of legislative forms
and cannot use with sufficient accuracy the language expressive of
its conclusion. Assistance in bill drafting is necessary. Experience
has shown that the man who does this must be either a trained lawyer
who is also a practical political scientist or a practical political
scientist who is something of a lawyer. It is often found too that
in its original form a measure is unconstitutional and a lawyer's
knowledge is necessary in order to devise some means of whipping the
constitutional devil around the judicial stump. For example, the
workman's compensation law of England, enacted too literally in its
original form, is clearly unconstitutional in America and has been
so declared by the courts of our state. In another state, however,
the legislative lawyers who were engaged in drafting the bill, seeing
clearly the judicial stump and the constitutional devil, by a simple
but clever device passed what was in effect the English law, but in
such form that when it came before the Supreme Court it was not only
declared constitutional but was commended.
=Fault not with legislators but with the system.= If legislation be bad
the fault is, then, not with the legislator. The average legislator
is a keen, bright, honest man, who has been successful in at least a
small way in his business or profession. He is ignorant of legislative
subjects not because he is an ignorant man, but because his knowledge
is of other things. The fault is not with him. It is inherent in our
unscientific system of legislating.
We put a group of farmers, grocers, and mechanics at work upon some
great sociological problem. They can have no adequate knowledge of the
subject. We do not give them compensation enough to pay their living
expenses while they work. We allot them only a few hours to consider
a given question. We provide for them no information. We furnish them
with no legal counsel. Assuming, however, as is often true, that these
men are men of integrity and humanity and common sense and that their
ideas are sound, they enact a good law that forbids, for example, the
employment of children in hazardous and immoral surroundings. In this
they have accomplished an important and intelligent constructive work.
Then we hire the best trained minds in the state and put them in our
courts. We pay them higher salaries than any other public servants. We
give them large libraries in which is found the accumulated legal lore
of the past. We grant them, for the questions before them, all the time
they can use,--weeks, months, often literally years. These talented,
high-minded gentlemen, by dint of industrious delving and assisted
by highly paid and highly trained attorneys, discover at last in the
depths of their moth-eaten law books some mummified eighteenth century
idea which has become petrified into a constitutional provision. They
shake their heads and decide that the splendid, humane, up-to-date,
common sense legislation is unconstitutional and void because of some
minor constitutional objection. They cannot be, and should not be,
criticised, for they are clearly performing a duty. Neither can these
judges substitute anything in place of the law which they destroy, for
the work for which we pay them so well in money and honor and position
is only critical,--and their function is in this case destructive.
=The law making function as important as the judicial.= Now, creative
work the world over has always been recognized as requiring greater
intelligence, better training, keener initiative than the purely
critical. Yet, in legal matters this principle has been entirely
ignored. In every way we exalt the interpretive, critical, even
destructive, judicial process. We neglect and belittle the constructive
creative process of law making.
The conclusion of the whole matter is that the making of the law
is in principle as important,--in fact, more important, than the
interpretation of it.
The legislative function must be as carefully performed as is the
judicial. Men should be prepared for law making as are men for the
judicial bench. They must be men of the same calibre, of good ability,
of high intelligence, of absolute integrity, of broad sympathies, and
of big vision. Not until we have an agency of this type assisting in
law making, not until the making of laws is recognized as a distinct
and important governmental function, co-ordinate with, if not superior
to the judicial function, not until each state has a bureau which will,
as the Honorable James Bryce says, supply the legislators with the
amplest material and enable them to apply the best methods, can we hope
to have laws which in the highest sense "stand the test."
The PRESIDENT: We go now from the legislature to the business man,
the man who makes the wheels turn around. Those of you who had the
opportunity to hear the striking address, at a meeting of the Special
Libraries Association the other day, from a business man of Boston
need not be reminded of the tremendous possibilities that lie in this
extension of the library service. Mr. S. H. RANCK, of the Grand Rapids
public library, will discuss
MAKING A LIBRARY USEFUL TO BUSINESS MEN
On first giving consideration to this paper I was inclined to believe
that the story of the personal use of the library (the public library)
by business men would be almost as brief as the traditional story
of snakes in Ireland. Few librarians have the means of knowing how
many business men use their institutions, but where statistics of
registration indicate the occupation of card holders it would appear
that the library gets almost as many bartenders as bankers.
To get some definite data on this subject I had the library records
investigated of the 198 officers and committees of the Grand Rapids
Association of Commerce, the leading business organization of our city,
with a membership of 1,300. These 198 men (and a few women) represent
our most active business concerns, as well as a few professions. Of
this number only 53, or 27 per cent, have live library cards. In
looking over the names I recognized 38 of those without cards as
persons who either individually or through their employees in the
interest of the house, have used the library more or less for reference
purposes. There are of course others who use the library in this way
without my knowledge.
These figures indicate that the library is serving directly only about
50 per cent of the livest business men of the town. The specific
questions I propose to discuss are, Why do business men use the library
relatively little? What can the library do to get business men to use
it more?
Progressive business men use the library because they recognize the
enormous value of new ideas and of new knowledge to their business, no
matter where they get them. The trouble is that public libraries can't
always furnish them the knowledge they need. And furthermore not all
business men are progressive. There are standpatters in the business,
as well as in the political world. However, there is no class of men
who have a better idea of the potential power of print, rightly used,
than the business men who advertise. Such men are always ready to meet
the library more than half way.
In discussing this question I should have preferred to use the term
"business men" in a liberal sense. We are all more or less "business"
people at times, but for this occasion I am directed by our president
to limit it to that one of its 24 different meanings which applies to
employer rather than employee in "the occupations of conducting trade
or monetary transactions" and in "employments requiring knowledge of
accounts and financial methods."
Before proceeding further permit me to state my conviction that
the greatest service the library is doing for business men is not
to business men personally, but rather for them through their
employees,--in supplying knowledge and in promoting the general
intelligence and the social welfare of the community. These things
are of the greatest importance to every employer, for they are the
foundations on which all efficiency is built. The social welfare work
of the Panama Canal, much of it the kind libraries are doing, is a
conspicuous example of the immense financial value of such work.
The male portion of adult society we may roughly divide, so far
as occupations are concerned, into manual workers (laborers and
mechanics), professional men, business men, and drones (the idle class)
who, like the lilies of the field, neither toil nor spin, but who
frequently outshine Solomon in the gorgeousness and variety of their
array. They live a parasitic life on the productive labor of their
fellow men, giving no adequate return. In the administration of our
public libraries most consideration has been given to the idle class
and to the professional classes. Real service for the manual workers
and business men has been largely neglected until within recent years.
There are several reasons for this neglect. Among these may be
mentioned the following: Working men and business men are expressing
themselves in deeds and in things rather than in words and books; and
therefore until recently there has been relatively little worth-while
material available for the libraries to put on their shelves for the
men directly engaged in industrial or commercial pursuits. Furthermore
there has been a long standing prejudice on the part of these men
(those who are rule-of-thumb men) against the reliability and the
utility of things in print for their everyday work. And in certain
quarters this prejudice still exists to a very considerable extent.
They are inclined to look upon the writers and users of books as
theoretical and impractical.
A further handicap in the use of libraries by business men, is the
fact that so few of us in library work know the contents of books and
things in print that might be useful to them in their daily work; and
oftener we know still less of the problems business men must deal with.
Therefore we cannot relate the inside of books with their work.
Much of the work of the public library is a kind of salesmanship,
even though there is no direct exchange of the coin of the country.
Salesmanship in its best sense is service, and service is what a city
is buying for all its people when it puts into its annual budget a more
or less (usually less) adequate sum of money for its library. As things
are today I fear that in too many cases the public instead of drawing a
plum from the library pie is not infrequently handed a lemon.
Recently I had the pleasure of dining with the vice-president of a
department store that employs over 2,500 people to sell nothing but
clothes--wearing apparel. He told me that the great secret of the
success of his institution, through whose doors there enter from
30,000 to 40,000 people every day (and remember that nearly all these
people enter with the expectation of parting with some of their good
money), is the fact that every employee has instilled into him or her
the fact that the salesmanship that brings success is service and
that it is founded on knowledge; for, said he, "No one can sell goods
satisfactorily unless he knows all about them,"--where they are made,
how they are made, what they are, their history, etc. And these things
everyone in this store is systematically taught. Incidentally, I may
add that this department store starts its people at a minimum wage
higher than the minimum in many libraries, and the maximum for women in
this store is double the maximum of the highest paid women in library
work in this country. This store uses the public library of its city
and has a library of its own whose librarian is at this convention at
the expense of the store. When a department store finds such a policy
a wise one the business men responsible for its management will be
the first in the community to support a policy of library service
based on knowledge. But business men must be shown that the library is
delivering the goods.
The business man places his establishment so far as possible where it
will best serve the purposes of his business, and he spends loads of
good money in the first place, and annually in the form of taxation, to
get his building at the right place. Besides getting his establishment
at the right place he also spends more loads of good money to arrange
it for the economic and expeditious handling of his affairs in it.
So far as libraries relate to serving the business man, as well as
nine-tenths of the other people in the community, I am convinced that
95 per cent of the library buildings of the country are badly located,
and furthermore that the large proportion of these buildings are badly
arranged for the work they have, or ought, to do.
The place to serve the people is where the people daily congregate and
pass by in the largest numbers. This is never on a side street or in
the "best" residence section of the city. Your average "best" citizen
today gets more satisfaction out of his public library in showing his
visitor from out of town the Greek temple set back in a beautiful
grove or garden as he whirls by in his six cylinder, 60 horse-power,
seven-passenger touring car than in using the books and periodicals
inside. Such a building in such a setting has a value as a work of art,
but not as a library for service. Incidentally, it is only fair to say
that business men in most of our cities are largely responsible that we
have library buildings for show rather than for use.
Every block that separates the library from the principal lines of
the movement of the people, every foot that people must walk from the
sidewalk to the entrance of the building and then to its books, every
step that must be climbed above the level of the sidewalk to reach the
first floor, are all so many hurdles, barriers, which the people are
obliged to overcome before they can get to their own books, whether it
be to use them for business or pleasure, for education or recreation.
The bad location and arrangement of library buildings in the United
States are keeping hundreds of thousands of potential users and
supporters of libraries away from them and out of them every day of the
year. And there is no class of persons in the community more affected
by such things than business men, for they recognize (consciously or
unconsciously) better than any other class the commercial value of time
and convenience.
Let me put this a little more concretely. The library building in which
I work is better located and arranged than the average library building
of the country. And yet the total distance walked to and from the
sidewalk by all those who enter that building daily is nearly 35 miles
to the point where the library begins to serve them. Furthermore each
one of the thousand and more persons who daily enter this building,
in addition to the energy he uses in walking 180 feet to and from
the sidewalk must lift his own weight and the weight of the books he
carries seven feet above the level of the sidewalk. In other words
the location and arrangement of this building with reference to the
sidewalk requires the people who use it daily to take an extra walk of
almost the distance from Baltimore to Washington and at the same time
carry a weight equal to that of a ton of coal 350 feet to the top of
a skyscraper and down again. And all this is in addition to the walk
of 450 feet from the nearest car line, which few people use, 800 feet
from the car lines which are generally used, and over 400 feet from the
nearest thoroughfare. The library to be a friend to man, and to serve
him, must "live in a house by the side of the road where the race of
men go by."
The business man who studies usually buys his own printed matter that
deals directly with his work, and in this respect he is usually far
ahead of the library both in knowledge and in material at hand; and
the bigger his business the more is this likely to be the case. The
librarian will almost invariably find such a man a most helpful person
in the selection of things to be purchased and in the relative value of
both authors and books. It should be the business of every librarian to
know intimately, as far as possible, all such men in the community.
Our public libraries must largely increase on their shelves the number
of things in print that are of real service to the business man in his
work. First of all we must know what these things are, and next we
need to have the nerve to spend money for them much more freely than
we have ever done before. This is expensive and most such expenditures
will not show in the statistics of circulation. As an illustration of
this let me refer again to the institution I have the honor to serve.
For a number of years we have been spending $400 a year for books in
only one line of business. Besides the books, we take some two dozen
current periodicals on the same subject. All are used to a considerable
extent and the use made of them by only a dozen men is of the greatest
commercial and financial importance to our city. And yet so far as the
figures of circulation are concerned the expenditure of $450 of our
annual book fund for this one business is practically nothing.
We must get away from the idea of measuring the usefulness or the
efficiency of the library by the number of books issued for home use.
So long as this idea dominates our public library work we can never do
our best for the community, and especially the business part of it.
We need of course many books for the business man in our circulating
departments, but these by no means meet the need. Many of these
books are out of date in a few years at the best. To keep up to date
there is necessary a liberal purchase of yearbooks, transactions and
publications of industrial, technical and commercial associations
which bring down to date annually, and in convenient form, the latest
knowledge in their respective fields. For progressive business men
such works are vastly more important than encyclopedias, important as
encyclopedias of all kinds are.
Then too we must pay greater respect to the material published in
pamphlet form. On a multitude of subjects some of the latest and best
things have appeared in this form. Most of us do not handle this
material properly, if at all. In many libraries pamphlets are regarded
and cared for with about the same degree of disrespect as were public
documents in most libraries twenty years ago, and I regret to say, in
many libraries today. And as for the public use made of pamphlets, it
is practically nothing.
But more important for the wide-awake business man than books,
documents and pamphlets, is a large collection of current periodicals
relating to every kind of business activity in your city, with clipping
files on many subjects, for it is only through these that it is
possible to keep up with the latest information or for the library to
supply the thing that is most needed at the minute. As an illustration
of such use I recall several recent instances of business men getting
up briefs in connection with the proposed Underwood tariff bill.
The latest information, even when compiled sometimes by government
authorities, was secured from technical or trade journals before it
could be received from the Government Printing Office.
In short the best work the library can do for the business men
personally is in the building itself, supplemented by extensive use
of the telephone and the mails (reference or information work if
you please), and not by issuing to them for home use books whose
information at the best is rarely less than a year old, but in
reality is more likely to be five, ten, or even twenty years old.
The circulating book has a most important place and I would not for
one moment take from it the importance that is its due. My plea is
that we recognize more fully for our business man, and especially the
so-called small business man--the man of small business, or the young
man who hopes to establish a business of his own, the great importance
of library assistants who know the contents and the relative value of
books, pamphlets and periodicals, and who understand the art of library
salesmanship whereby the business man gets the things he really needs.
And then when we have done all this--have librarians who know, and the
things in print the business man needs, this one thing more we must
do, we must let the business man know what we have for his particular
problem and how we can serve him. The library must advertise the
utility of ideas and of knowledge in the every day work of the world as
well as advertise its resources and its service.
The best advertising is that which comes from a well served patron. But
our libraries have thrown away one of the best means of publicity by
locating their buildings where people must go out of their way to find
them and by so arranging them that the passerby sees nothing but stone,
brick and glass--things that suggest nothing of the joy and usefulness
of books. Seeing great crowds enjoying and using books, as well as
seeing attractive things in print through properly arranged show
windows, would appeal to the average library user in a way that would
simply compel his interest and attention in the things we have for him.
The architecture of the average library building suggests a tomb--a
place for dead ones--rather than a place chock-full of the things
that appeal with tremendous force to the soul that is alive with the
throbbing impulses of this wonderful time in which we live.
Since our buildings deny us this great means of publicity which the
show window enables every merchant to use to such great advantage, we
must use as best we may such means as we find available. In a general
way I may state my conviction that we should make a much larger use
of the specific personal appeal as over against general publicity,
though the latter is also necessary. When a man has a definite task
assigned him put the resources and service of your library directly up
to him for his particular problem, especially if the problem is one
a little outside the circle of his regular business. It will come to
him at the psychological moment and he is most likely to act on your
suggestion; whereas had it come to him as a general statement before
he was personally interested most likely it would have been promptly
forgotten. As a part of our regular routine letters from the library
go to all such persons, as we see their names in the newspapers, on
programs, etc.
At the meeting of the Associated Advertising Clubs of America early
this month in Baltimore I had the pleasure of "getting next" to some
of the livest business men in the country. The thing that impressed me
most was not the interesting exhibitions there shown or the various
"stunts" that were pulled off, but the new note that some of the men
were striking. It was this: "Business and business efficiency for
service rather than for profit." This is a high ideal, worthy of any
profession, and I venture the prediction that it will be men of this
type who will more and more dominate the business world of the future.
Such men will appreciate and support the public library more than
business men have ever done before; but they will also require more. To
get their support we as librarians must think less of measuring our
efficiency in terms of circulation statistics, a kind of impersonal,
bookkeeping standard, but more of measuring it in terms of human
service--human service not only for the business man, but for every
man, every woman and every child in all this vast continent of America.
The PRESIDENT: Great as is the opportunity of the public library to
serve the business man, it can't do it all, for so highly specialized
are some of the departments of interest of the various business houses
that no public library without a treasury like that of our millionaire
concerns could hope to undertake a work of that character. Therefore,
each large business concern necessarily must supplement the resources
of the public library by means of library facilities of its own. We
shall hear something of this form of work this morning in the paper
which is to be presented by one of the most successful of the libraries
of this type, that of H. M. Byllesby & Co. of Chicago, whose librarian,
Miss LOUISE B. KRAUSE, will give us the paper.
LIBRARIES IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS: THEIR EXPANDING FUNCTION
The service which books render mankind may in general be designated as
falling into two classes; namely, books for inspiration and books for
information. Dismissing the use of books as a means of inspiration,
because the subject does not fall within the scope of this paper, let
us consider the most important use to which printed information can be
put, in the service of mankind. At first thought it might seem that the
use of the printed page for purposes of information reached its highest
service in the function of education, but granted that it does not
play an important part in education, we know education to be something
vastly larger than a mere knowledge of facts, and we also know that
many men and women who are repositories of information derived from
the printed page do not always put it into operation for the best
welfare of their fellows; for, as James Russell Lowell has said,
"There is nothing less profitable than scholarship for the mere sake
of scholarship;" and truly scholarship without the ultimate purpose of
practical service is one of the most selfish possessions in the world.
Let us therefore exclude the use of printed information in the
service of education as its highest form of usefulness and consider
the following statement. The use of print in furnishing information
performs its most important service in the function which it exercises
in modern business, because it is business which lays hold of abstract
science and knowledge and puts them into practical operation for the
greatest benefit to mankind; for the commercial age in which we live
is not a sordid age, but an age which is distinctly marked by the
development and conservation of resources for the supplying of man's
needs, by means of the extension of applied science into the field
of business. Now lest this statement should be too abstract, and the
speaker be accused in the words of Leonard Merrick of "voicing the
sentiments of the unthinking in stately language," let us consider this
proposition for a moment in the concrete. It is business enterprise
that has brought about, through the perfection of the steam engine, the
swiftness and convenience which we enjoy in twentieth century travel by
railroad. It is business that has brought the service of the telephone
and telegraph to their highest perfection. It is business that has
developed artificial lighting by gas and electricity and emancipated us
from candles and kerosene lamps. It is business that is transforming
raw and waste materials by the application of pure science, into
products of service and value for the needs of innumerable homes,
in addition to perfecting agricultural machinery, and producing
fertilizers to enrich the land, thereby making possible the production
of better crops. Thus we might continue to multiply illustrations of
how business enterprise has equipped us with the means of meeting great
needs which at various times have seriously threatened the welfare of
human life. This fact of the application of abstract science to the
world's practical needs, through the medium of business enterprise,
has become permanently recognized by institutions of learning, as seen
in the establishment of technical schools, schools of commerce and
finance, and instruction in business administration, for, as a recent
writer in the Journal of Political Economy has said, "The methods of
American industry are rapidly being intellectualized."
A variety of professional work of which engineering and chemistry
are noteworthy examples are also carried on by large business
organizations, and we find professional men of the highest rank as
prime movers in large commercial enterprises. (In this connection it
might not be amiss to state that out of an experience as university
librarian and business librarian the speaker is inclined to think that
the professional business man keeps more adequately informed and up to
date on his specialties than does the average university professor.)
An additional fact which bears directly on the general subject under
discussion is, that the age in which we live is not only a business
age, but that it is an age marked by the magnitude of its business
organizations; an age of "big business," as some one has called it;
and because of the economic conditions of our advancing civilization,
business will undoubtedly continue to be "big business" even though
subjected to federal and state regulation. Now correlating these two
facts, namely, that modern business is conducted by means of large
organizations and that its success is based upon the intelligent
application of scientific knowledge to practical needs, we have cleared
the way for an appreciation of the function of printed information as
embodied in the work of libraries in business organizations.
The business organization builds up its own library, first, on account
of the convenience of having close at hand the information constantly
needed by its workers, and subject to no borrowing restrictions,
which would be inevitable even if the facilities of outside libraries
were available; and second, on account of the necessity for careful
selection of material particularly adapted to its individual needs.
Business organizations have for many years collected information in
a desultory manner, but it has been only in the last few years that
some of them have awakened to the fact that more was needed than
mere collection of printed information, and for the same reason that
they were availing themselves of all modern devices for the quick and
adequate handling of their various products and were systematizing
their methods to obtain more efficient results, so they must lay hold
of modern library methods under experienced supervision if they were
to keep up with the steadily growing and important mass of printed
information. Therefore we find business organizations securing the
services of professional library workers, trained to use books in
the broadest and most practical manner. Some hesitation was at first
expressed in various quarters as to whether so-called professional
library methods used in public and university libraries were suited
to business library needs, and as to whether library workers educated
for general library work would adequately meet the business library
situation. In fact it was intimated that the business librarian
was a worker of a different brand than the ordinary librarian and
therefore he had both knowledge and needs which set him apart from his
library fellows, in a special class by himself. Out of four years'
experience as a business librarian the speaker takes pleasure in
stating that practical experience has proved the fallacy of both of
these conceptions. It is true that business librarians are called
upon to exercise certain functions which the librarians of public
and university libraries are not, but which any efficient head of a
public or university library would be quite capable of exercising if
the occasion demanded it. In fact the recent rise of library interest
in business men and their needs can be directly traced to the heads
of some of our public libraries and the work they have inaugurated
in making their libraries as helpful as possible to all classes of
citizens.
The characterization of the function of libraries in business
organizations by the word "expanding" in the title assigned to this
paper by the President of the American Library Association, is most
apt, and indicative of the real status of the case. The business
library is in a process of evolution, and just what the final result
will be, it is a little too early in its development to state.
The elemental idea of the function of a business library that was held
by the officers of the business organization with which the speaker is
most familiar, was to have the books and data which were the property
of the company, classified and cataloged so that material could be
found quickly, and a librarian was employed solely on the basis of this
need.
With the acquisition of a librarian the library situation soon changed
from the inquiry for certain definite books and periodicals, to the
inquiry as to whether the company had any specific information on a
given subject, and if not as to whether printed information on the
subject was available elsewhere and how quickly it could be obtained.
The evolution in the function of a library from that of furnishing a
definite book asked for, to furnishing all the information obtainable
on a given subject as quickly as possible is decidedly expensive, and
the what, how and where of the case would furnish ample material for a
separate paper.
The evolution in the function of the library did not stop at this
point; for it was soon expected that the librarian would understand
the specific interests of the members of the organization, and to a
certain degree think for them in keeping up with the field of print
and in bringing to their attention, without a request on their part,
certain facts of which they would like to be cognizant. To this duty
was added the forecasting of possible future needs, and the collection
of information in advance of rush demands.
The magnitude of the work of modern business organizations requires the
division of labor into a number of departments, and the workers in
any one department may not always be acquainted with the information
which may be available in another department. The library, by keeping
in touch with individuals in all departments, becomes a central bureau
of information in being able to refer the members of one department to
those in another who possess the particular information desired.
The business library also assembles and files the manuscript data of
original research conducted by members of the organization, materials
which constitute one of its valuable assets. Research data in the
possession of business corporations is often a worthy contribution to
scholarship. An illustration of this fact was recently brought to the
attention of the speaker, by the statement of a university student, who
said that in making a study of the drinking waters of a certain state
the only analyses of waters on record were those which a railroad had
made primarily for the purpose of ascertaining the suitability of the
waters for boiler use on locomotives.
In addition to these briefly outlined functions, which are more or
less technical, attention should be directed to several others, lest
a mistaken impression be given that business library work is entirely
technical in its nature.
Business men are often called upon to serve the public as good citizens
in various capacities, and also to serve as officers or on committees
of national business organizations, and thus have interests outside of
their regular company work. Their librarian is expected to assist in
any need which arises by reason of these outside interests, and not
only may be called upon to furnish information but also to do editorial
work in preparing material for publication.
The welfare and education of employees has also become a prominent
feature in the work of many large business corporations, and the
library is expected to be a prominent factor in this work, as it
is the logical educational center of the organization. Some of our
business libraries have recently been drawn rather deeply into welfare
work with the result that certain phases of practical library service
are being neglected. It does not seem advisable, however, that the
business librarian should annex any line of welfare work which does
not legitimately center in the library; for the librarian is best
fitted to serve the interests of the organization by maintaining high
standards of efficient library service rather than by annexing other
kinds of work belonging solely to the sphere of a social worker. This
is particularly important at the present stage of business library
development, as the business world in many sections has not yet learned
what professional library service really is, and how to utilize it most
effectively.
In view of the fact that the business world except for comparatively
few organizations is not utilizing the undoubtedly valuable service
which professional librarians are able to render, and that the American
Library Association has always endeavored to extend the use of books
and their widest application, it might not be amiss to suggest that it
would be legitimate work for the American Library Association with its
library prestige and well known motives of personal disinterestedness,
to undertake a campaign of education to bring before business men the
subject of what library work really is, and the character of service
it is prepared to render; for in these days of the over-emphasized
and often superficial cry for more efficiency, there is no line
of work that is more genuinely efficient than that of the trained
librarian. The information, to be put before business men, should be
free from library technicalities and details, and its arguments should
be framed, not to enlighten librarians, but to convince busy men of
affairs possessed of shrewd judgment and large foresight, as to the
practical worth of the matter as a business proposition. For library
work in business organizations is no longer a theory or a tentative
experiment, but has proved itself in the firms adopting it to be an
integral part of the successful work of the corporation. This fact is
well illustrated by a bulletin recently issued by a large business
firm, in which it endeavored to put before the public, in a pamphlet
entitled "Why it is qualified" the value of the consulting services of
one of its departments, and among the prominent reasons given under
"Why it is qualified" is the fact of the commercial library maintained
by the company, with the library's particular resources under competent
supervision.
Because printed information has proved to be an integral factor in
the successful prosecution of business and because it can be most
effectively utilized by means of professional library methods,
therefore, the business library hopes to take its place in the ranks of
the American Library Association as one in purpose with all libraries
in the realization of a common ideal, namely, the largest possible use
of books in the practical service of mankind.
The PRESIDENT: I have just received a message that Mr. McAneny will be
here in a very short time. In the few moments intervening it might be
well perhaps to discuss some of the trenchant papers which we have had
this morning.
Miss AHERN: Mr. President, I would like to take exception to one thing
Mr. Ranck said in his paper. I do not believe that the idea that the
contents of books are useful to men in the business world is of recent
date. I think, perhaps, the second statement that these things have
only come recently into the arrangement of resources of the library
is the truer one. We certainly have had knowledge of chemistry and
of geology and technical knowledge in manufacture for many, many
years, only many librarians have been more interested in the purely
educational or inspirational part of the library and have neglected
that large field of usefulness and that large company of people who
contribute to the welfare of work and of the world, as Miss Krause
has pointed out. The best chemists in the country are being sought
by the business houses; the best knowledge of soils, of minerals, of
woods, of lumber, of stone has long been sought by the men who are
making a commercial use of these things. And their information is not
held in reserve: it is all in printed form and only the scope of the
librarian's knowledge of where things may be obtained in the world of
print places the limit on this material for the library shelves. And so
I hope that librarians will not say that books on these subjects, that
material on these subjects is a recent product. It is our knowledge of
them, a knowledge that this is a part of the province of library work,
that makes for recent activity.
The PRESIDENT: Mr. Ranck is here to answer for himself. The statement
has been challenged and he can answer it.
Mr. RANCK: I think there is not so much difference between the view I
take and the view taken by Miss Ahern. I do not know that I followed
my manuscript very closely at that point, but what I had in mind was
the business man rather than the professional, technical man. I fully
grant what Miss Ahern says with reference to technical subjects,
scientific subjects, and so on. As I said, I think there is no radical
disagreement between Miss Ahern's and my position. There may be a
misunderstanding.
Miss AHERN: I was not questioning what Mr. Ranck had said, but, rather,
removing any excuse that the library folk may put to themselves for a
lack of interest or a lack of activity along this line by saying that
the material was scant or hard to command.
Dr. ANDREWS: There is the other side, that Miss Krause's paper
emphasized and which Miss Ahern seems to neglect. Miss Krause's paper
states that American industry is becoming intellectualized, and that
this is a great factor in the development of business life. It ought
also to be an extra incentive to the public library to meet the
demands. I think that much of this development in the technical side
of library work has come from the increasing study by business men of
their own world and that we ought to remember that while the public
libraries have neglected in the past to furnish business men with what
they wanted, yet the latter did not want it then as much as they do now.
The PRESIDENT: Those of us--and I assume that that means every
librarian--who read the June number of the World's Work were impressed
by one strong article therein concerning the growing magnitude of
municipal administration and the great problems that confront those
who are charged with such administration. Without repeating to you
the very striking comparisons which the author made with some of the
governmental functions of states and even some of the kingdoms of
Europe, showing the tremendous problems confronting the municipal
officials, problems of tremendous budgets, of great public works, and
so on, it will be sufficient for me to say that it is a happy omen that
we are now getting into the public service men of high civic ideals
and constructive ability and who are replacing men whose self-seeking
interests or vanity led them to seek the votes of their fellow
citizens. I am glad that we have with us today a man of this high type.
I need not say further concerning him because we took advantage of his
absence to get from Mr. Bowker a pretty good who's-who bearing upon
himself, and I shall simply introduce to you at this time to speak to
us upon the subject of "The municipal reference library as an aid in
city administration," the Honorable GEORGE McANENY, president of the
borough of Manhattan, New York.
THE MUNICIPAL REFERENCE LIBRARY AS AN AID IN CITY ADMINISTRATION
It is a very real pleasure to meet with the American Library
Association, and to convey in behalf of my colleagues in the
administration of the City of New York, and in behalf of other
colleagues in public business throughout the country, our hearty
congratulations and possibly a friendly warning and a word of appeal.
Congratulations are due you for having established on so high a plane
and in so short a time the profession of librarian. Especially are you
to be congratulated for having welcomed the new profession of municipal
reference librarian; for your adaptability in the constant extension of
the reference work, and for the resiliency which is showing again in
another field that real Father Williams never grow old. Could Benjamin
Franklin look upon this gathering, and hear your reports of social
service, through circulating, home, reference and municipal reference
libraries, I am sure that no fruit of his patriotism would seem to him
more promising than the recent application of the circulating library
idea to government affairs.
My friendly warning has to do with your requests to fiscal bodies
for appropriations. In many parts of the country, there is the
feeling that the less the library has to do with public officials the
better it is for the library, consequently, as a short cut, we find
compulsory minimum appropriations--so many mills or so many parts of
mills for library development. We also find that too many towns are
satisfied with this compulsory minimum tax, and that the only time
their fiscal representatives hear about libraries is just before the
budget appropriations are voted. You must be indulgent with those who
vote the money, if the outcome of this habit suggests the man who was
exasperated by his wife, who he said "just nagged and nagged him for
money, when he came, when he left, on Sunday, always." Finally, when
a neighbor summoned the courage to ask, "What in the world does she
do with all the money?" he, perforce, must answer; "Well, I don't
know; you see I haven't given her any yet." Councils and Mayors will
understand your library problem best if you will help them understand
at those quieter seasons of the year when they are not harassed, as
they are at budget time, by appeals from every other city department
and for every other thing.
When presenting your budget, give the fiscal officer credit for wanting
to know the whole truth, and for wanting reasons for giving you the
money you request. Seldom will it help to ask for a great deal more
than you need. Always, it will help not to present in a single total
items that do not belong together. Classify your budget. State your
program clearly. If all the money you want is not voted this year,
stick clearly to the plan that has been voted, and show both the fiscal
authorities and the town where your service has been crippled, if at
all, for want of funds. It will be well to begin your budget campaign
so that the first idea which the public and the fiscal officers get is
that of the service you wish to render, rather than the money you wish
to get. Most library budgets, like most other budgets of the United
States, are apt to be put in without the explanatory matter which alone
will make the dollar-and-cent facts show social reasons for library
support.
Now for my appeal. In asking you to consider certain needs of public
business, I want to speak quite frankly, as a city official who, like
thousands of other city and county officials, must step into other
people's business, with no time for getting acquainted with detail,
and with a public to deal with that not only expects us on the first
day we take office to use all the machinery of our predecessor and to
get better results, but also really expects us to fail. We inherit a
stack of mail. We are flooded with suggestions and complaints; many of
them in confidence and most of them confusing. We are urged to attend
club and church meetings, and dinners, and graduating exercises. We are
expected, without any change in subordinate personnel, while giving
our attention to large community problems and to the political aspects
of public works, to get an efficient product out of our employees, no
matter who they are or what they have been. In most places, we find no
disinterested adviser, either on the inside or on the outside.
Such a situation would not necessarily be serious if we stepped
into a thoroughly efficient organization where every employee and
supervisor had his place, and where the institution as such had its
"continuing memory." When Mr. Rea succeeded Mr. McCrea as president
of the Pennsylvania Railroad, he inherited a splendid organization,
every part related to another part; a system under which experts had
tabulated within a moment's reach the successes and the failures of
the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the costs of its various contracts, the
difference between estimates and final costs, and an efficiency ranking
both of its various employees and its stations. When the present
administration in New York City stepped into office, we inherited an
aggregation of departments and divisions then spending--if we count in
installments and interest paid on the city debt--more than $160,000,000
for the expenses of a single year. There were ninety thousand
employees. Side by side with one another were clerks paid one $600
and another $1,800 for the same kind of work; in another grade were
clerks paid $1,600 and others paid $2,400 for the same kind of work.
When salaries had been increased, and why, was not a matter of record.
Supplies were contracted for by no standard form. Specifications,
either for supplies or for construction work, were worded differently
at different times, according to the individual wish or whim of the
department officer preparing them. The public was but poorly protected
at any point. Plans were made for new buildings, for new roads, and
for other vast improvements, often without estimates of cost; often
with assurances of only slight cost, where, too frequently, cost had
been estimated as an entering wedge only. Thus a great city would
stumble into an experiment or public improvement demanding millions of
dollars, without ever reckoning the ultimate amount of its obligation.
For example it may be fair in this presence to recall that the first
bill for the New York public library carried with it an appropriation
of $2,500,000. The city decided to spend this $2,500,000 and actually
it spent $10,000,000. The New York public library is worth every dollar
it cost, ten times over; I am merely emphasizing that the public should
have had its eyes open and, in this case as in every other, should have
known what it was doing. Although this same gap occurred over and over
again--between estimate and actual cost--no steps were taken to recall
the fact when each new amount was under consideration.
Ignorant as we have been of our own experience, still less informed
have we been regarding the experience of neighbor cities. Some years
ago, Denver, in operating its street railway, found it expedient to
substitute electric motor power for the old cables. After Denver had
discarded these cables, Baltimore adopted the cable. Rochester has
recently adopted a device to attach drinking fountains to its ordinary
fire hydrants. The idea is a new one, and may prove valuable. I say
it merely by way of instance; but if it is a good idea, New York City
and your city should adopt it. Each successive experiment of the sort
should, at least, be brought promptly to the attention of public
officials.
Again, New York City has worked out an improved system of accounting
and budget making. The village of Dobb's Ferry, the cities of Duluth
and Cincinnati have used an improvement upon New York's budget
exhibits--recently called a new kind of "confidence game"--that is,
taking the public into official confidence about the public's own
business. Instead of waiting a generation for cities to adopt these new
methods, their officials should promptly be given the facts they need.
Is it not criminal waste and error for one city to introduce a system
of sewer disposal, or of milk regulation, which another city has found
endangering the lives of its citizens? If a measure has proved bad and
dangerous for one city, modern science in the hands of a librarian
should make it unnecessary for every other city to go through the same
experience.
To help us in ending all this waste, and to help us, in short, in
putting city government upon a thorough scientific and efficient
basis, the municipal reference library is beginning to take its highly
important place. Without a municipal reference library, it will in
future be difficult for any administrative officer to do his best. I
will not attempt to review the laborious steps of my colleagues in the
present board of estimate and apportionment--our governing municipal
body--to incorporate into standard specifications, standard salaries
and standard contracts the memory of our past failures, so that we
may hold the gains that we have made and avoid the weaknesses and
the errors of our experience. But I venture some suggestions as to a
reference library that, although general in their application, will
indicate our reasons for establishing such a library in New York.
Our reasons for placing the library in our new Municipal Building--as
we propose to do--apply everywhere. It must be made easy for officials
to get information, and for the librarian to get the information
promptly and directly to the officials. It is not enough to know that
it may be had. To have important information an hour away from the
office is almost as bad as to have it a thousand miles away. It must
be easier for the busy official to get the information he wants than to
endure the thought of going without it. In putting the library where
the users are, instead of where they are not, we are following the
simple rule of trade that meters city property by the foot instead of
by the acre.
The municipal library is a place not for everything, but for particular
needed things. If it were true that Mark Hopkins on one end of a log
and a student on the other constituted a college, it is even more
true that a librarian in a bare room, anxious to serve the public via
the public official and knowing where the material is, constitutes an
infinitely better municipal reference library than a place perfectly
equipped which suggests erudition rather than immediate help. There is
great danger that our municipal reference libraries will become junk
shops, as interesting and as helpful, as out of date or as unrelated
to today's problems as an encyclopedia or a "compendium of useful
knowledge." A municipal reference library should suggest answers to
today's questions; not answers either to yesterday's questions or to
next year's. Will you, the librarians, consider the importance and the
advisability of keeping these libraries workshops, as they ought to
be, and of using your general reference libraries as the place for the
storage of materials.
The ordinary city official hasn't the time to plough through a mass of
pamphlets looking for what he wants. He wants the facts collated and
marshalled, ready for use--and "he wants what he wants when he wants
it." Some time ago I was interested in drawing an ordinance to license
all vehicles using the New York streets, and to regulate the weight,
the width and size of tires, etc., of our great trucks that have been
tearing up our pavements. I wanted to know about the policy of other
cities in this matter, and to devise, if possible, a way of making
those vehicles that destroy the streets help pay for their maintenance.
Similarly, today, as Chairman of the committee on the height, size and
arrangement of buildings within the city limits, I am interested in the
adoption of some reasonable basis for regulating our modern skyscraper
in order to keep the city, literally, from choking itself to death.
Again, we have had to restore to the public many miles of city
sidewalks that had been preempted by stoops, and other encroachments.
We have wanted to plan our public buildings and related matters with a
view to the future, and to the grouping of building sites in a "Civic
Center." So, in dealing with our transit problem; in investigating the
health department, and in improving the type and quality of street
pavements, I have wanted not all the information there was to be
had--not books or formal reports--but concrete answers to immediately
pressing questions. I wanted to be referred to the latest article
or report which would make it unnecessary to go through twenty or a
hundred other articles, books or reports. It is enough to know that in
a great central library are all the working materials for scientific
research. Frankly, I feel that the actual use that will be made of the
municipal reference library will be in inverse ratio to the number of
books that are in evidence, and that require the time of the librarian.
I would go so far as to say that anything that a public official has
not just called for, or that the librarian is not about to call to the
attention of a public official for departmental study or report, or for
the drawing of ordinances, should be kept in the general library, and
out of the municipal reference library.
Comptroller Prendergast and Librarian Anderson are even planning to
have New York's official correspondence "clear" through the municipal
reference library--so far as the writing and answering of letters
calling for special information goes. I am told that when Portland
recently started its municipal reference library the mayor promptly
availed himself of its facilities for answering innumerable sets of
questions and special questions that came from outside the city, and
advised his heads of departments to follow his example. I wish the
Carnegie Institution for Scientific Research or some other great
foundation interested in the conservation of national resources and
human energy would investigate what it is now costing this country
to fill out the innumerable blanks from college boys wishing help on
their commission government debate; college students writing theses;
national organizations compiling reports, etc. Niagara unharnessed was
wasting much less power than are we officials, school superintendents,
mayors, and engineers who are answering such questionnaires. It would
be lamentable enough if we always answered right; but most of us answer
quite inadequately, and many of us answer wrong. Last year, a certain
national society wrote me, asking certain questions about civil service
reform. I had had more or less to do for some years with that line of
public service. My instinct was to take time from pressing duties to
answer these questions; but a neighbor who had received a similar set
of questions was thoughtful enough to write to this national body and
suggest that before he answered he would like to know how many other
New York officials and private agencies had received the same set of
questions. It appeared then that twenty different people, including a
dozen officials, had been asked to fill out that blank. Whereupon it
was suggested that instead of drawing upon twenty people who did not
possess the facts, the investigator might turn directly to the Civil
Service Commission that did possess the facts, and there, no doubt, he
readily found what he wanted.
Now, if a municipal reference library could have served as a clearing
house, it would have been brought to light at once that one answer
would have served the purpose of twenty, or that one answer, at least,
would have served the purpose of the dozen official answers. Moreover,
just as the official reports give fresher material than published
books, such correspondence, manuscript reports of investigating
committees, etc., give fresher material than published reports.
Such data should be kept properly classified, available upon call or
when the librarian sees its time for usefulness.
Another practical suggestion I make from my experience as an official.
While it seems to apply especially to administrative departments or
to private agencies specializing in certain fields, I really do not
see much prospect of getting it unless from a municipal reference
library or from the municipal reference activity of a general library.
I refer to an up-to-date "Poole's" or cumulative index of the passing
subject matter of city government. You get, the library gets, once a
month a list of all the articles in the principal books. Why should
we not have a list of the advance steps taken in public affairs? Just
as soon as a few librarians call for such information, it will become
commercially possible to reduce it. The individual library can then add
to the material the particular points that are of interest to its own
community.
Similarly, it would be of the greatest assistance to every city
official if the matters under his jurisdiction were listed and
material grouped under proper heads. For example, the president of the
Borough of Manhattan has jurisdiction over the streets and sidewalks;
encroachments and encumbrances; street vaults and street signs; the
sewer system; the public buildings; the baths and markets; and the
control of private buildings through the enforcement of the buildings
laws. If information in regard to what other cities were doing in all
these matters were listed, plus suggestions and advance steps taken
in these same matters at home, the reference librarian would be of
incalculable help to that office.
Finally, just a word about the expense of the municipal reference
library. The amount which it is justified in demanding will depend
naturally upon the service it renders. The merit of our new segregated
and classified budget is that it calls for the work needing to be done,
as well as the cost of not having the work done, and that it shifts
attention from the personality that requests the budget allowance. A
circumscribed program means circumscribed budget. Frankly, I believe
that extension of program should and must precede extension of budget.
But this new kind of social work which serves a community at those
points where it is now least equipped to serve itself, will not want
for financial support when it talks about the work that should be
done--and not about itself.
No municipal activity will, in my judgment, find it easier in the
next twenty-five years to secure adequate financial support than the
municipal reference library which is not a compendium of knowledge but
a forecaster of service needed and an ever-present help in time of
trouble.
The PRESIDENT: May I express to you, Mr. McAneny, the thanks of the
American Library Association for your coming and the assurance that we
have profited greatly from it.
Adjourned.
SIXTH GENERAL SESSION
(Saturday morning, June 28, 1913.)
THE PRESIDENT: During the other sessions of the Conference we have been
considering people--and books. At this concluding session the topics
on the program have special reference to books--and people. The first
paper invites our interest by its suggestion of the flavor which old
books bring. Miss G. M. WALTON, of the Michigan State Normal College,
will present this paper.
THE FRIENDLY BOOK
It was Mr. Lowell who reminded me the other day, by quoting
Ecclesiasticus in one of his essays, that we owe the ideal of the man
of leisure to a book of the Apocrypha wherein we read, "The wisdom of a
learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure."
Our profession standing as a guarantor of our wisdom and our learning,
I am here today to bespeak a portion of our large opportunity of
leisure for--The Friendly Book.
There is small fear that we librarians forget the books of power and
the books of knowledge which DeQuincey (the ofttimes quoted) presses
upon all men. And most of us undoubtedly possess that ardent zeal
for knowledge which filled the soul of the literal-minded librarian
who read quite seriously (and found therein a working category for
her own improvement) Lamb's letter to an old gentleman whose early
education had been neglected, where, among the qualifications of a
preceptor, the following will serve to refresh your memories: "He
must be a thorough master of vernacular orthography, with an insight
into the accentualities and punctualities of modern Saxon. He must
be competently instructed in the tetralogy, or first four rules. He
must have a genius capable in some degree of soaring to the upper
element, to deduce from thence the not much dissimilar computation of
the cardinal points. He must instruct you in numeric and harmonious
responses, and he must be capable of embracing all history, so as
from the countless myriads of individual men, who have peopled this
globe of earth--for it is a globe--by comparison of their respective
births, lives, deaths, fortunes, conduct, prowess, etc., to pronounce,
and teach you to pronounce, dogmatically and catechetically, who was
the richest, who was the strongest, who was the wisest, who was the
meekest man that ever lived; to the facilitation of which solution,
you will readily conceive, a smattering of biography would in no
inconsiderable degree conduce."
I sometimes question if professions are not tinged with the culture
epoch epidemic. It is not so very long since we were half hesitatingly
taking a place among the other learned professions, almost with the
apologetic air of the young boy making his first appearance in long
trousers, and wondering if his fellow-men appreciate his coming into
their midst--but the youth soon assumes the aggressive attitude which
compels attention--and one symptom of this attitude which I feel
among ourselves is the large and learned talk about =new= books--the
self-satisfied air and monumental confidence in our sometimes
sophomoric knowledge and understanding of all things "in the heavens
above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth," until I
wonder if the pleasant counsel about reading "books at least a year
old, that we like, and that are great books" must be relegated with
the rest of our Emersonian philosophy to the lumber room of our many
youthful joys and dreamings.
I believe we all love best to mark the passing years by the friends
they bring us, and it were a barren year that brings not one more
friend, and so with our friendly books, which like all friendships
fill our lives with genial warmth and gratitude. Neither is really a
matter of choice, for a book like a person yields its intimate charm
only to the sympathizing heart. We have no care to answer why, other
than, "because"--"We love them because we =must= love them." A new
book friend comes to us now and then, and we cling to the old ones.
Sometimes we lose the personal touch, but we see their kindly faces and
after a separation from them we arrange them on the shelves, and we
rearrange them, and, as Mr. Arnold Bennett says, "The way we walk up
and down in front of those volumes, whose faces we have half forgotten,
is perfectly infantile."
I remember once in Rome a friend, selecting photographs, said, "I must
take a good Cicero to my son Frank, who used to say he felt as well
acquainted with Cicero as he did with Bishop Huntington," and dear old
Dean Hook, when a lad at Oxford expresses this same intimate feeling
in one of his lively inimitable letters, "I have got into a very
dissolute set of men, but they are so pleasant that they make me very
often idle. It consists of one Tuft, H. R. H., Henry Prince of Wales,
and a gentleman Commoner named Sir John Falstaff, and several others.
I breakfast with them, drink tea, and sometimes wine with them," and,
again, on hearing the good news of the recovery of his grandfather,
he writes, "The minute I opened the letter and saw the news, I pulled
down my Shakespeare and had a very merry hour with Sir John Falstaff.
I was determined to laugh heartily all that day. I asked Sir John to
wine with me. I decanted a bottle of my beloved grandfather's best port
and Sir John and I drank his health right merrily. Perhaps you will
want to know how my old friend Sir John drank my grandfather's health.
Why I took care to find out the place where he drank Justice Shallow's
health. And so when I said, 'Here's to Sir Walter,' I looked on the
book and the Knight said, 'Health and long life to him.'"
Among the oldest and dearest of my friendly books is the "Life and
Letters of Lord Macaulay," of which I became the happy owner, when
it was fresh off the press, during a sojourn in the west, far away
from my home library. The dates along the margins (one of Macaulay's
habits which I adopted as I read) bring pleasant thoughts of a journey
from Colorado to the western coast, and long before I knew Dean Hook
(whom I first met here as the Vicar of Leeds) I was pulling Macaulay
down from the shelf, not indeed to drink with Sir John, but to refer
to some particular talk of men or of books--always to read on and on
with equal delight whether he were breakfasting with a party of old
Trinity College friends, reading in his study, or acting as a guide and
escort on a half holiday of sight-seeing with his nieces and nephews,
with whom he was always the prince of playfellows. It was on one of
these excursions to the zoological gardens that Thackeray overheard
someone say, "Never mind the hippopotamus! Never mind the hippopotamus!
There's Mr. =Macaulay=!" When absent he exchanged long and frequent
letters with the children, sealing those to his nephew at Harrow
with an amorphous mass of red wax, which, in defiance of all postal
regulations, usually covered a piece of gold.
A scrap from one of his letters to a little niece will serve also as
an example of the poetry, which he usually attributed to the Judicious
poet, for whose collected works the children vainly searched the
library.
"Michaelmas will, I hope, find us all at Clapham over a noble goose. Do
you remember the beautiful Puseyette hymn on Michaelmas day? It is a
great favorite with all the Tractarians. You and Alice should learn it.
It begins:
'Though Quakers scowl and Baptists howl,
Though Plymouth Brethren rage,
We churchmen gay will wallow today
In apple sauce, onions and sage.
Ply knife and fork, and draw the cork,
And have the bottle handy;
For each slice of goose we'll introduce
A thimbleful of brandy.'
Is it not good? I wonder who the author can be? Not Newman, I think. It
is above him. Perhaps it is Bishop Wilberforce."
The Macaulays and the Wilberforces living at Clapham Common are
very real people to me, and my firm allegiance to Trinity College,
Cambridge, has never wavered since Macaulay's undergraduate days, not
even when Samuel Wilberforce, the future bishop, went up to Oriel
College, Oxford.
And how doubly precious is a book-friendship, whose introduction
claims a personal touch; as when, with the same friend who bought
the photograph in Rome, I afterwards visited Winchester Cathedral
and standing beside the chantry tomb of Bishop Wilberforce she said,
"When you go home, read his life. He was a great and good man," and
I have continued reading it for nearly thirty years. Wilberforce was
undoubtedly for twenty-five years the greatest figure in the English
Church. His great sorrows made him tender and tolerant, and many who
saw only the brilliant man little dreamed of the causes and depth of
his power. He was made Bishop of Oxford in the troublous times of the
Tractarian Movement, and so great was the work he accomplished and so
devoted to him were his clergy that when translated to Winchester,
Bishop Stubbs, who succeeded him, coming from quiet Chester, where his
history was his chief occupation, ruefully asked, "Why am I like the
Witch of Endor? Because I am tormented by the spirit of Samuel." His
quickness and humor flashed an unexpected light on many a question,
as when asked why he was called Soapy Sam he answered it was probably
because he was always in hot water and always came out with hands
clean. And his whimsical reply to "Who are the greatest preachers
in England?"--is one of those comical self-evaluations which it is
generally most hard to give--"I must refer you to an article on a
lady's dress--Hook and I." His absolute freedom from personal animosity
shows itself in the story I like best of all. During a stormy committee
meeting in which he and the Bishop of London were violently opposed
to each other, he threw a note across the table. Supposing it to be
some point on the business in hand, the Bishop of London read, "My
dear Bishop: You really should not wear such boots. Your life is too
precious and valuable to us all to allow such carelessness."
Nothing could more touchingly express the devoted and loving esteem in
which he was held than these words written at the time of his death:
"With others who loved him, kneeling reverently beside the body, was
Mr. Gladstone, whose sobs attested how deeply his feelings were moved
by the sudden loss of his long-tried friend."
The last time I was in England I made a Sussex pilgrimage to his
old home at Lavington. It was in June, and my companion smiled as I
exclaimed with enthusiasm, "St. Barnabas day, the eleventh of June--the
Bishop's wedding day!" We saw the trees he had planted and loved, the
spot whence he would turn for a last homeward look, saying he was as
proud of being a Sussex squire as a bishop; and best of all the great
clumps of rhododendron which he planted with his own hands.
Since so many librarians are gardening as a favorite recreation, why
not have a friendly corner in the garden, where we may "Consider the
lilies of the field," as we are bidden in that dearest of all books,
and where each mood, whether gay or somber, would find echo from the
"eternal passion" of the poets--"Rosemary for remembrance, or pray you
love, remember there's pansies, they're for thoughts." Growing next to
these in my own garden is the fragrant Carolina allspice, because it
was the best loved of flowers by Henry Bradshaw.
I sometimes question if a book is truly a friendly book unless I
possess it, and yet this in a way would cut off both Thackeray and the
friend whom he loved best of all, "dear old Fitz," for I gave away my
"Fitzgerald's Letters" to a friend with whom I exchange many friendly
books. A man of leisure and literary tastes, and in easy circumstances,
Fitzgerald avoided fame as earnestly as most men seek it. Living in a
country cottage with a garden, books, pictures and music, he cherished
his many lifelong friendships, which he says were more like loves, by
writing letters which have a touch of gentle humor and of tender and
unaffected charm, as in a letter to Frederick Tennyson: "I have been
through three influenzas; but this is no wonder, for I live in a hut
with walls as thin as a sixpence, windows that don't shut, a clay soil
safe beneath my feet and a thatch perforated by lascivious sparrows
over my head. Here I sit, read, smoke and become wise, and am already
quite beyond earthly things. I must say to you as Basil Montague once
said in perfect charity to his friends: 'You see my dear fellows, I
like you very much, but I continue to advance, and you remain where you
are, you see, and so I am obliged to leave you behind. It is no fault
of mine.' You must begin to read Seneca, whose letters I have been
reading, else you will be no companion to a man who despises wealth,
death, etc. I wish you were here to smoke a pipe with me. I play of
evenings some of Handel's grand choruses which are the bravest music
after all."
And again, to William Bodham Donne, when puzzled over his Agamemnon and
the line of signal fires from Troy to Mycenæ, he writes, "I am ignorant
of geography, modern and ancient, and do not know the points of the
Beacons, and Lemprière, the only classic at hand, doesn't help me. Pray
turn to the passage and tell me (quotes three lines of Greek) what,
where and why. The rest I know or can find in dictionary or map, but
for these:
Lemprière
Is no-where:
Liddell and Scott
Don't help me a jot,
When I'm off, Donnegan
Don't help me on again.
So I'm obliged to resort to old Donne again."
A postscript in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton reads--"Only a word,
to add that yesterday came Squire Carlyle from you, and a kind long
letter from Mr. Lowell; and the first nightingale, who sang in my
garden the same song as in Shakespeare's days."
And finally, to Lawrence the portrait painter: "Have we exchanged a
word about Thackeray since his death? I am quite surprised to see
how I sit moping about him, so little have I seen him the last ten
years, and not once for the last five. To be sure I keep reading his
'Newcomes' of nights and now I have got hold of 'Pendennis.' I keep
hearing him say so much of it; I really think I shall hear his step
coming up the stairs to this lodging, and about to come (singing) into
my room as in old Charlotte Street thirty years ago." And ten years
later he writes, "A night or two ago I was reading old Thackeray's
'Roundabouts,' and (a sign of a good book) heard him talking to me."
I am sorry that so many people know Fitzgerald only because of the
"Rubaiyat." I confess myself to be rather like-minded with
"That certain old person of Ham,
Who grew weary of Omar Khayyam,
Fitzgerald, said he,
Is as right as can be,
But this cult, and these versions,
O, Damn!"
And Thackeray, there is no one book which stands for him, save,
perhaps, the dear little old brown volume of letters to the
Brookfields. It is here that we learn much of "Pendennis." In one
letter he writes, "I am going to kill Mrs. Pendennis presently, and
have her ill in this number. Minnie says, 'O Papa, do make her well
again! She can have a regular doctor and be =almost= dead, and there
will come a nice homeopathic physician who will make her well again.'"
We who truly know and love him find him ever in his own pages as he
smiles kindly at us through his spectacles, or we feel the difficulty
with which he is keeping his spectacles dry, and we too say, "Dear old
Thackeray," as in the lines at the end of the White Squall, where with
pages of nonsense, he writes how the Captain
"Beat the storm to laughter
For well he knew his vessel
With that wind would wrestle;
And when a wreck we thought her,
And doomed ourselves to slaughter,
How gaily he fought her,
And through the hubbub brought her,
And when the tempest caught her,
Cried, George some brandy and water.
And when its force expended,
The harmless storm was ended,
And as the sunrise splendid
Came blushing o'er the sea,
I thought, as day was breaking,
My little girls were waking,
And smiling and making
A prayer at home for me."
One of these little girls, Minnie Thackeray, became the wife of Leslie
Stephen, of whom Mr. Lowell speaks as "that most lovable of men," whose
Life and Letters, so full of rich and wondrous friendships, and of deep
and subtle charm, is always a midnight companion if taken up in the
evening. While our serious-minded librarian may find its chief value
in the chapter on "The Struggle with the Dictionary," where as editor,
I presume many of us first met with Stephen, (and which would prove
invaluable to Lamb's old gentleman) she will find there only a small
part of the Real Leslie Stephen, who wrote one day to Edmund Gosse,
"No, R. L. S. is not the Real Leslie Stephen, but a young Scotchman
whom Colvin has found--Robert Louis Stevenson."
It is a temptation to linger over Stephen's letters to John Morley and
Charles Eliot Norton (perhaps his closest lifelong friends), and to the
rich list of literary men whom he knew so well through his long years
of literary and editorial work. Like those of Lowell and Stevenson, his
letters lead one constantly to the reading of his books, wherein again
one always finds himself. It were difficult to imagine more felicitous
titles of self-revelation than "Hours in a library," "The amateur
emigrant," and "My study window." I cannot leave Stephen without a word
from the "Letters to John Richard Green" (little Johnny Green) which
he edited. As Macaulay used to love to prove the goods he praised by
samples of quotation, I will content myself with Green's questioning
Freeman, in a long letter full of Early English history: "By the way,
have you seen Stubb's Hymn on Froude and Kingsley?
'Froude informs the Scottish youth
That parsons do not care for truth.
The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries:
History is a pack of lies.
What cause for judgments so malign?
A brief reflection solves the mystery,
Froude believes Kingsley's a divine,
And Kingsley goes to Froude for history.'"
Long years ago my eye caught the title, "From Shakespeare to Pope,"
Gosse, and as I took down the book, I asked, "Well, what was there
from Shakespeare to Pope?"--a question which the book answered so
delightfully that I read it straight through twice, while the Critical
Kit Kats is my particular joy in introducing to friendly books my young
student readers, whom I send off armed with it, together with a volume
of Fitzgerald, or Stevenson, or the Browning sonnets. Mr. Gosse has
such a comfortable and intimate way of saying things that makes one
feel it is one's own expression of one's own thoughts. I suppose most
of us own to a pocket copy of Shakespeare's sonnets, wherein we have
marked many a line, and then Mr. Gosse writes for us, as he sends the
sonnets to a friend:
"This is the holy missal Shakespeare wrote,
Then, on sad evenings when you think of me,
Or when the morn seems blyth, yet I not near,
Open this book, and read, and I shall be
The meter murmuring at your bended ear;
I cannot write my love with Shakespeare's art,
But the same burden weighs upon my heart."
Do your friendly books ever find each other out upon the shelves?
After reading in Mary Cowden Clarke's "My long life," of her childish,
reverent awe towards Keats and Shelley, who were often guests in her
father's house, the book found its place next to those poets, and was
it Keats who was sitting on the sofa when the same little girl crept up
behind and kissed his hand just because she had heard he was a poet?
Gilbert White's "Natural history of Selborne," much in the same way
stands beside Lowell, in whose "Garden acquaintance," I first learned
its "delightful charm of absolute leisure," and here too, when it
leaves my study table, stands that dear big book which still claims
my leisure hours, "Charles Eliot, landscape architect," one of those
rare books with a subtle and unconscious autobiographic touch, when one
chances upon the fact that the writer was Harvard's president, telling
the story as the brief fore-note says,
"For the dear son,
Who died in the bright prime--
From the father."
But this is all very personal and my only hope is that while I am
reading, you are following the example of my sometime youthful nephew,
who, on being asked about the sermon one Sunday after church, answered,
"Why really, Mamma, I don't know what it was about. I got tired
listening, and withdrew my attention and went fishing."
Finally, although we are admonished not to put new wine into old
bottles, there fortunately is no admonition against old wine in new
bottles, and friendliness is certainly the richest of wine both in men
and in books. Nor am I at all certain that in the last analysis it is
not the supreme grace which makes possible that joy in life, without
which we are of necessity cast into a limbo of outer darkness, and so I
commend to you the best of old wine which ever lingers in The Friendly
Book.
THE PRESIDENT: Our good old friend, Dr. Canfield, once told a story
about a critic who after a life devoted to the gentle art of making
enemies was gathered to his fathers. Those who had known him, and who
had for the most part been recipients of his buffetings gathered about
his bier, and compared notes and estimates of the special qualities
which the late departed had possessed. Yes, said one, "he loved us so
well that he chastised us frequently." True, said another, "he could
never catch sight of one of us without administering a vigorous kick."
At this the eyelids of the deceased were seen to flutter a bit, and he
sat bolt upright and his sepulchral voice made this response: "Yes, but
I always kicked towards the goal."
Now perhaps this introduction may not seem to be a very happy
preliminary to the paper about to be announced, and in some respects
its application may not be evident, for certainly the speaker who is
about to talk to us, on "How to discourage reading" is by no means
a dead one. He has, however, been somewhat active in the kicking
process--though always towards the goal. I present to you Mr. EDMUND L.
PEARSON, of the Boston Transcript.
Mr. PEARSON: The president has very kindly referred to the fact that
while I do not practice the profession of librarian, I tell other
people how they ought to do it. He might have made use of a quotation
or a sentence or two at the beginning of Mark Twain's "Puddin'head
Wilson," only I fear that Mr. Legler was too courteous to use it. I
have no hesitation in speaking of it myself. Mark Twain says of the
Puddin'head Wilson maxims: "These maxims are for the instruction and
moral elevation of youth. To be good is noble, but to tell others how
to be good is nobler and much less trouble."
Mr. Pearson read the following paper:
HOW TO DISCOURAGE READING
When the "Five Foot Shelf" of books were published, three of my friends
bought the set. One of them did so without any pretence that he was
going to read them. He is a somewhat naïve young man, able to indulge
his whims, and he said he thought that buying the books "would help out
President Eliot." That is a very meritorious sentiment to hold toward
the compilers or authors of books--I wish that there were more persons
who felt that way. I have no fault to find with him, at all.
Nor have I any complaint to make against the other two men. Blame
is not what they deserve, but commiseration. Like the girl in the
song, they are "more to be pitied than censured." The price was a
consideration with them, and they gave up their money for the sake of
being forever cut off from all those tremendous "classics." For that
is what it amounted to. One of these men has a very pretty office,
with some nice bookshelves, painted white. He added to the books of
his profession and some other works of general literature, this "Five
Foot Shelf"--which occupies, I believe, about eighteen feet of shelf
room. He tried to read one of the books--I know he did that, because he
admitted it--and he confided to me that he thought it was silly.
The third man bought the "Five Foot Shelf," and announced his
determination "to read the whole thing right through." He did this
with set teeth, as if he might have said: "I'll read 'em if they kill
me!" Well, he started one of them. He read a little in Franklin's
"Autobiography." I know he did, because he told me about it. He and I
belong to that irritating class of persons who get up early and take
long walks before breakfast, and then take care to mention it later in
the day, as if to cast discredit on other people. We have to go early,
too, because we intersperse the walks with runs, and he has dignity to
maintain, and it wouldn't do for him to dash about the streets after
other people are up. While we walked, or dog-trotted, about the country
roads he told me about the "Autobiography." But I have noticed that he
has left the "Five Foot Shelf." I doubt if he even finished that first
one of its volumes which he attempted. When he talks about books now,
it is about the "History of the American people." He is a Democrat, and
like many Democrats he has discovered that our history has been truly
written only according to Mr. Woodrow Wilson.
Will any one of those three men ever read =two whole= volumes from that
set? It is doubtful--very doubtful. And their cases are, I believe,
typical of thousands of others. And what is true of the "Five Foot
Shelf" is true of a score of other collections--the Hundred Best Books,
the Greatest Books of the Universe, the Most Ponderous Volumes of the
Ages, the Selected and Highly Recommended Classics of All Nations.
There are dozens of them--you all know them--these "standard" sets and
collections, in which learned and well-intentioned men have innocently
conspired with publishers to discourage reading.
The "Five Foot Shelf" is not picked out for especial disapprobation.
As a matter of fact, I suppose it is far better, far more human in
its selections, far more readable in some of its titles than most of
these sets of "great" books. But there is something about every one of
these collections of classics that acts like a palsy upon the reading
faculty. It is a little mysterious, rather hard to define, but that
it exists I have no manner of doubt. It would be impossible to doubt,
after seeing it demonstrated so many times.
Take, at random, the titles of five famous books--books which are
apt to turn up in these sets or collections. Plato's "Republic," the
"Odyssey," the "Morte D'Arthur," the "Anatomy of melancholy," and "Don
Quixote." Take the average man, the man usually known as the "business"
man. Suppose that he has not read any of these books in his school
days--that he has reached the age of forty without reading them. Now,
the chances are at least a hundred to one that he =never= reads them.
But let him buy one of the sets of thirty or forty volumes, in which
these five books are included, and the chances against his reading any
one of the five, instead of being diminished, are enormously increased.
It is now certainly three hundred to one that he never reads any of
the five books. There is something benumbing, something deadening,
something stupefying, to the average man to take into his house six
yards of solid "culture." And this I believe to be true as a general
statement, in spite of instances which may be adduced here and there.
But, mind you, if this same man happens to have his attention called to
one of the books--especially to either of the last two, as they are a
little nearer the temper of our time--and if he gets one of them, =by
itself=, there is now a fair probability that he may read at least part
of it. He =may= even finish it.
If he really wishes to read the so-called great books let him forever
beware of acquiring one of those overwhelming lumps of literature--the
publisher's delight and the book-agent's darling--known by some such
name as the Colossal Classics of the World. They breed hypocrites and
foster humbugs. He buys them and =thinks= he is going to read them.
They look ponderous and weighty and erudite upon his shelves--to the
innocent. People exclaim: "My! What fine books you have!" He tries to
smile a wise smile--to give the impression that they are the companions
of his solitude, the consolation of his wakeful hours. He knows that
these people won't ask if he has ever read any of them. They are afraid
he might come back at them with: "Oh, yes, of course. Now, how do =you=
like Milton's 'Areopagitica'?" After a time he begins to think he =has=
read them--because he has looked at the backs, and started to cut one
or two of them. Then it is all up with him. He never even tries to read
them again. They just stand there and occasionally make him a little
uncomfortable.
Making friends with books, and especially with those famous books which
require some concentration, is like making friends with people. You
can not do it in a wholesale, yardstick manner. If they come into our
lives at all, they come subtly, slowly, one at a time. If a man should
walk into this room saying: "All my life I have been without friends,
I have decided that I wish to have friends--I am going to adopt all of
you, every one of you, as a friend, here and now!"--you know how an
experiment like that would succeed. It is the same with books.
In the competition for the best method to discourage reading, the
second prize should be awarded to that pestilential invention--the
Complete Works of an author. There was a publisher--he still lives--who
told one of his agents: "Books are not made to read; they are made to
sell." He was probably the inventor of that discourager of reading, the
Complete Works.
If one of you wishes to keep a friend in total ignorance of any writer,
there is an almost certain method--give him one of the sets of the
Complete Works of that writer. It is a sure method to kill interest.
As in the case of the collections of classics, there is something
wholesale and overpowering about such a set. It is thrown at your head,
so to speak, in a chunk, and you never get over the blow. Imagine the
case of a man who had never read Dickens. If he is wise, he goes at
him one book at a time, he tests and he tries, and at the end of a few
years he owns eight or ten books--well-thumbed books, that have been
read, and that represent pleasure. But if he listens to the book-agent
he contracts for a yard and a half of Dickens, and when it comes he
gazes in despair at that rigid row of books--as unassailable as a
regiment of Prussian grenadiers. That is the end of all intercourse
between him and Charles Dickens.
"Oh, you might as well have them all," says the agent, "you needn't
read the ones you don't like." That is what the waiter told the man
when he brought him a breakfast-cup full of coffee, after dinner,
instead of a demi-tasse: "You ain't got to drink all of it."
Miles upon miles of these sets of Complete Works are sold every year,
and from one end of the land to the other, heads of families are
sinking back comfortably upon their Morris chairs, and gazing in
fatuous self-satisfaction at their bookcases, which they have just
filled, at one swoop, with nine yards of the Complete Works of Scott,
Cooper, Dumas, Dickens, and Thackeray.
"Look, Mother, we've got the bookcase filled up at last!" "Well, I am
glad to see it! It was distressin' to see all those shelves so empty
like."
Will they ever look at them? Never a look! It is even odds they do not
cut the pages. Now that the noble art of pressing autumn leaves has
gone out--you know how it was done, with wax and a hot flatiron, and
then you put them between the pages of a book--now that pastime is
forgotten, there isn't one remaining cause why those pages should ever
be opened. The insides of those books will be the most secret place in
that house henceforth. Talk about sliding panels and secret drawers in
old writing-desks--they are open and conspicuous in comparison. They
will be great for hiding places--I think I will write a melodrama and
have the missing will turn up in the fifth act, sixty years later,
hidden between page 1 and page 2 of one of the volumes in somebody's
Complete Works.
For the third place in the list of best methods to discourage reading
there are two competitors. They are so nearly tied that it is hard
to choose between them. I am inclined to think that the honor should
be awarded to the custom of setting up counsels of perfection in the
matter of recommending the so-called "classics" to possible readers,
of saying by word of mouth, or by printed page: "These are the great
classics, the great books of the world" and adding, by implication, "If
you don't like them, after making heroic attempts, then you have been
weighed in the balance and found wanting."
This word "classics" covers a multitude of nuisances and perplexities.
The "classics" include books which are still alive with humanity, which
are delightful today to any person who is at all bookish, and they
include books which are so utterly alien, so far removed from our time,
place and habit of mind, that it is absolutely absurd to pretend that
anyone in this year and land, except a few, a very few, specialists,
can read them with any pleasure, or can read them at all, in fact,
except under compulsion.
These lists of the great classics are too frequently compiled with
a cowardly obedience to tradition. It matters a little what some
great person of a hundred or a thousand years ago thought about a
book--but it does not matter much. Recently, I saw in a book a list
of great persons who had been influenced by this or that book. Some
book or other influenced Madame de Maintenon--what of it? Doubtless
other books, far less desirable, influenced her, too, so what does
it prove? The value of books, as a recent writer has pointed out,
shifts and changes with the changing years. What may have been truly
a great book a thousand years ago is not necessarily great today--no
matter how many famous personages have embalmed it in their praise,
and no matter how many other personages have praised it, not because
they enjoyed it themselves, but because the earlier ones did. Such a
book is interesting--to specialists--as a milestone in the history
of literature, but it is not to be forced, however gently, upon the
general reader as a book he "ought" to read.
Museums of art, like the Louvre, contain paintings which ignoramuses
like myself look upon with astonishment. Mediæval pictures of the most
hideous description--how came they in the same building with these
other beautiful works of art? Is it possible that anyone is so silly
as to pretend to admire them? And then the explanation dawns upon the
ignoramus: they are here to illustrate the development of the art
of painting. This is a museum, as well as a collection of beautiful
things. No one who is honest pretends to enjoy their beauty. It is
thus with books. A great collection of books may well contain those
writings which seemed full of meaning to people two thousand years
ago, but they are not to be held up--not all of them, at any rate--as
books which anybody "ought" to read today. The significance of any work
of literature, however noble, is a thing to ebb and flow, and finally
to vanish altogether. Professor Barrett Wendell reminded me once that
Shakespeare's plays and my daily themes would alike, one day, be dust
and atoms in the void of the centuries--but I do not think that he
meant unduly to compliment Shakespeare by this association.
Since it is always better to come down to tacks in speaking of books,
I will mention some of the classics which have little significance
today. It is always dangerous to do this--somebody is sure to hold up
his hand and exclaim: "Why, I like =them=, very much," or "I know an
old gentleman who reads =that=, every night before going to bed." But
I will take the risk, and say that the Greek and French dramas of the
classic periods are works of literature almost certain to appear on
most of these lists of Best Books, and that it is almost sheer humbug
to put them there. So few people can read them, there is so little
reason--especially in the case of the French plays--why anyone =should=
read them, today, that their inclusion is a pitiful example of lack
of courage. In the matter of the French drama I speak especially of
Racine and Corneille--names almost certain to appear on these lists of
the classics. Someone will relate the story about Napoleon saying that
if Racine (or was it Corneille?) had lived in his time, he would have
made him a marshal. Then some of his plays are smugly entered upon the
list. With their stiff, set speeches, their ridiculous unbosomings of
the leading characters of their "confidantes," they are as out of place
in our life as were their Caesars, Alexanders, and Pompeys, teetering
about the stage in high-heeled shoes, ruffles, wigs, and all the rest
of the costume of Louis XIV.
It is good to recommend the classics, but it must not be forgotten
that there are classics, and classics. There should be independence,
and an ability to look things in the face, to realize that a change
has come, when it is already here. Why should the people who deal with
books let the politicians get ahead of them? There is a bright, clean
air blowing through the nation, and those who worship fusty precedent
are correspondingly unhappy. We have a president who cares not a rap
for mouldy and senseless traditions--he has learned well the lesson
taught him by one of his predecessors. If President Wilson has the
courage to point out that the final authority on matters of factory
legislation and mine inspection in the year 1913 is not necessarily
Thomas Jefferson, is it not possible for the critics and choosers of
books to understand that Dr. Johnson and Madame de Maintenon have not
uttered the last word about literature? There might and should be a
"new freedom" of literary criticism--not yesterday, nor today, nor
tomorrow, but all the time.
Here is another way to discourage reading. You can do it by giving a
man one of these over-annotated editions of a book. I mean a book which
has so many footnotes that the text is crowded right out of bed; a book
in which the editor is so pleased with himself for discovering that the
father of Lady Hester Somebody (who is mentioned in the text) was born
in 1718 and died in 1789 that he simply has not the decent manners to
keep his useless knowledge to himself. No; he must tell it to you, even
though he elbows the author--a better man than himself--out of the way
to do it.
One of the best books of its kind--I speak under correction--is George
Birkbeck Hill's edition of Boswell's "Johnson." It is, I believe,
correct, and scholarly; it certainly represents a vast amount of labor,
and it is "very valuable for reference." Also it is admirably arranged
for driving a reader away from Boswell forever. It is positively
exasperating to see page after page on which Boswell occupies two lines
at the top, and Dr. Hill takes up all the rest of the room. Sometimes
he takes up the whole page! Yet that edition is recommended to readers
by persons who ought to know better.
Other excellent examples--I am speaking only of much-praised books--are
found in the Furness Variorum editions of Shakespeare. When one of
these volumes appears it is usually greeted by a chorus of "Oh's!" and
"Ah's!" as when a particularly gorgeous skyrocket goes up on Fourth of
July night. Such scholarship! Such a boon to earnest Shakespeareans!
Such labor! Such erudition! Well, a great deal of that praise is
deserved--each volume is certainly a tour de force. But I wish to
read you from a review of the latest of them--a review written for
the Boston Herald, by Mr. John Macy, the author of that vigorous and
sensible book, "The spirit of American literature." It deals with
"The tragedie of Julius Caesar" edited by Horace Howard Furness, Jr.
"This," writes Mr. Macy, "is the latest volume in 'A New Variorum
Edition of Shakespeare,' and is the first under the sole editorship
of the late Dr. Furness' son. From an enormous mass of commentary,
criticism, word-worrying, text-marring and learned guesswork, Mr.
Furness has chosen what seem to him the best notes. The sanity of his
introduction and the good sense of some of his own notes lead one to
suppose that he has selected with discrimination from the notes of
others. His work is a model of patience, industry and judgment. He
plays well in this game of scholarship. But what is the game worth?
What is the result?
"Here is a volume of nearly 500 large pages. The text is a literal
reprint of the folio. The clear stream of poetry runs along the tops
of the pages. Under that is a deposit of textual emendations full
of clam-shells and lost anchors and tin cans. Under that is a mud
bottom two centuries deep. It consists of (a) what scholars said
Shakespeare said; (b) what scholars said Shakespeare meant; (c) what
scholars said about what other scholars said; (d) what scholars said
about the morality and character of the personages, as (1) they are
in Shakespeare's play, and as (2) they are in other historical and
fictitious writings; (e) what scholars said about how other people
used the words that Shakespeare used; (f) what scholars said could be
done to Shakespeare's text to make him a better poet. I have not read
all those notes and I never shall read them. Life is too short and
too interesting. All the time that I was trying to read the notes, so
that I could know enough about them to write this article, my mind
kept swimming up out of the mud into that clear river of text. It is
a perfectly clear river. Some of the obscurities that scholars say
are there are simply not obscure, except as poetry ought to have a
kind of obscurity in some turbulent passages. Some of the obscurities
the scholars put there in their innocence and stupidity, and those
obscurities you can eliminate by blandly ignoring them."
These learned and over-annotated editions--they are not intended, you
say, for the casual reader. Yet they get into his hand--they are,
sometimes recommended to him. And, as Mr. Macy asks, are they worth
the labor they have cost--are they worth it to =anybody=? Looking at
them reminds me of the ideal ascetic of the Middle Ages, St. Simeon
Stylites. St. Simeon was considered the most religious man of his time
because for twenty years he lived upon a pillar that "numbered forty
cubits from the soil," and because he would
"'Tween the spring and downfall of the light,
Bow down one thousand and two hundred times,
To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the Saints."
In spite of that, St. Simeon is not the ideal religious man today. Will
these fact-collectors be the ideal scholars a century hence?
Are we sometimes acclaiming as great scholars men who are really doing
nothing but a tremendous amount of grubbing? Are some of the so-called
scholarly editions really scholarly, or are they simply gigantic
"stunts?" Whatever may be their value for reference, and that is vastly
over-rated, they discourage reading.
It is also possible to drive people away from books, or make it
difficult for them to get near books, by printing confusing things
about them. It is possible to catalog a book--according to the best
rules--in such a fashion as to make it an exceedingly unattractive,
not to say repellant object. This is bad enough when it is done in
the formal catalog, but when it is done in little leaflets, and
book-lists--things which ought to be informal and inviting--the case is
very sad. The other day I saw an entry in a book-list which read like
this: "Dickens. Whipple, E. P. Charles Dickens." The expert is in no
doubt; the uninitiated may well be confused to know which is the author
and which the subject. When someone defends such practices by saying:
"But the rules!" someone else, whose voice is a voice of authority
ought to say: "Fudge! And also Fiddle-de-dee!"
The general subject today is "the World of Books." It is a delightful
world--one so different from that into which we emerge every morning
that it seems hard, sometimes, to realize that the one exists inside
the other. It is a place of entertainment within the reach of any of
us. There are a few obstructions around the entrance--some of which
I have tried to describe. People have built up walls of impossible
"classics"; publishers have tried to string a barbed-wire fence of
Complete Works around it. Pedants stand outside, calling upon you to
swallow a couple of gallons of facts before you go into the great tent.
You can walk by them all. Inside, everything is pleasant. Over in
one corner are the folk who like to play with first editions, unique
copies, unopened copies, and all the rest of those expensive toys. Some
of these gentlemen have about as much to do with the world of books as
have the collectors of four-post beds and old blue china, but many of
them are very good fellows. Most of them do not belong in here at all,
but, like boys who have crawled in under the tent, now they are inside
they think they have as much right as anybody. Some of them, indeed,
are quite uppish and superior, and inclined to look down on the rest of
us who have a vulgar notion that books are made to =read=.
Here is all you require--a comfortable chair, and a pipe. And the
company! Well, look around:
Dear Lamb and excellent Montaigne,
Sterne and the credible Defoe,
Borrow, DeQuincey, the great Dean,
The sturdy leisurist Thoreau;
The furtive soul whose dark romance,
By ghostly door and haunted stair,
Explored the dusty human heart,
And the forgotten garrets there;
The moralist it could not spoil,
To hold an empire in his hands;
Sir Walter, and the brood who sprang,
From Homer through a hundred lands,
Singers of songs on all men's lips,
Tellers of tales in all men's ears,
Movers of hearts that still must beat,
To sorrows feigned and fabled tears.
At the conclusion of Mr. Pearson's paper a book symposium was conducted
in which the following members of the Association briefly discussed the
respective books here indicated:
Hine. Modern organization. Reviewed by Paul Blackwelder.
Crispi's Memoirs and the recent literature of the Risorgimento.
Reviewed by Bernard C. Steiner.
Goldmark. Fatigue and efficiency. Reviewed by Katherine T.
Wootten.
Tarbell. The business of being a woman. Reviewed by Pearl I.
Field.
Antin. The promised land. Reviewed by Althea H. Warren.
Brieux. La femme seule. Reviewed by Corinne Bacon.
The great analysis. Reviewed by Josephine A. Rathbone.
Weyl. The great democracy. Reviewed by Frank K. Walter.
The PRESIDENT: Before inducting into office the president-elect I shall
ask the secretary whether there are any announcements to be made or if
any new business is to come up at this time? Is there any business for
the Council to consider?
Dr. ANDREWS: There are some resolutions from the Documents Round Table
to come before the Council and perhaps other routine work.
The PRESIDENT: They will be referred to the Council. We will receive
the report of the tellers concerning the election.
The SECRETARY: The report of the tellers states that you have elected
as your officers for the coming year the following persons:
REPORT OF THE TELLERS OF ELECTION
No. of Votes
President
E. H. Anderson, Director New York
Public Library 144
First Vice-President
H. C. Wellman, Librarian City Library,
Springfield, Mass. 141
Second Vice-President
Gratia A. Countryman, Librarian Minneapolis
Public Library 144
Members of Executive Board (for 3 years)
Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress,
Washington 146
Harrison W. Craver, Librarian Carnegie
Library, Pittsburgh 137
Members of Council (for 5 years)
Mary Eileen Ahern, Editor "Public Libraries,"
Chicago 140
Cornelia Marvin, Librarian Oregon
State Library 145
Alice S. Tyler, Director Western Reserve
Library School 146
R. R. Bowker, Editor "Library Journal,"
New York 144
A. L. Bailey, Librarian Wilmington
(Del.) Institute Free Library 142
Trustee of Endowment Fund (for 3 years)
E. W. Sheldon, President U. S. Trust
Co., New York 143
FORREST B. SPAULDING,
JOHN F. PHELAN,
Tellers of Election.
The PRESIDENT: You have heard the result of the election. I shall
ask Mr. Gardner M. Jones and Mr. Harrison W. Craver to show the
president-elect the way to the platform.
(The committee escorted Mr. Anderson to the platform.)
Mr. President-elect, it is with special personal satisfaction that I
have announced to you the result unanimously made by this conference in
choosing you to the honorable position of president. I am personally
gratified in that you represent, I think, so splendidly many of
the elements which have been talked about during this meeting. You
are yourself a graduate of a library school, yet you have sympathy
with those who have not attained to that distinction. You have been
associated with a great scientific library, you have been in charge of
a medium-sized library and are now at the head of the largest public
library in the world; and yet many of us have had evidences that you
have the deepest and warmest sympathy for the small and struggling
library, no matter where it may be.
Mr. President-elect, the retiring board of officers received this gavel
not as an emblem of authority, but as a symbol of service. As such we
commit it to your care for the next year.
For the retiring board of officers I may say, in the words of Wynken
DeWorde in one of his colophons, "And now we make an end. If we have
done well, we have done that which we would have desired; and if but
meanly and slenderly, we yet have done that which we could attain unto."
The wish goes from the ex-president to the president that the most
successful administration in the history of the Association may be the
one which is about to begin.
(Mr. Legler then handed the gavel to Mr. Anderson and retired from the
platform.)
PRESIDENT ANDERSON: Ladies and gentlemen, fellow members of the
Association: In the first place, I want to express my heartfelt thanks
for the gracious things the retiring president has just been pleased
to say concerning my humble self. Furthermore, I have to thank him for
giving me an opportunity to correct a mistake which has been current in
this Association for some twenty years, namely, that I am the graduate
of a library school. I was at the Albany library school--more years ago
than I care to tell--between seven and eight months. My money ran out
and I had to get a job. I did not even complete the first year. That is
a reflection on me, not upon the library school.
The exigencies of trains and luncheons would make it unfair if not
cruel for me to detain you here this morning with a speech and I shall
make none. But I want to beg you on this occasion to forget and forgive
the disagreeable things said or done by the officers-elect in the heat
of a bitter partisan campaign. (Laughter--There was no opposition
ticket.)
Seriously, I want to express to you all, not merely for myself but for
every member of the incoming executive board and the incoming members
of the Council, our appreciation of the honor you have conferred upon
us and of the responsibilities you have placed upon our shoulders. We
can only hope to maintain--and it will require a struggle and great
and arduous work on our part to maintain--the high standard set by our
predecessors. I thank you.
If there is nothing further to come before us the Conference will stand
adjourned.
ADJOURNED SINE DIE.
EXECUTIVE BOARD
Meeting of June 23, 1913
Meeting called to order by President Legler. Other members present were
Miss Eastman, Messrs. Anderson, Andrews, Putnam and Wellman.
Several matters of routine business were transacted, including the
reception and adoption of the report of the Committee on Nominations.
Upon motion of Mr. Anderson, seconded by Dr. Putnam, Mrs. H. L.
Elmendorf was elected member of the Publishing Board to succeed herself
for a term of three years.
In behalf of the Committee on International Relations, Dr. Putnam
reported that with such information as it had been able to gather
the committee felt unable to make any affirmative recommendation as
to participation by the American Library Association in the proposed
Exposition of the Book and Graphic Arts at Leipzig in 1914.
Adjourned.
Meeting of June 28th
Present: President Anderson, Miss Eastman, Messrs. Andrews, Wellman and
Craver.
Mr. Wellman presented his resignation as non-official member in view of
his election to the office of first vice-president, which, upon motion
of Dr. Andrews, was accepted.
Upon motion of Mr. Craver, it was unanimously voted that W. N. C.
Carlton be elected to the Executive Board to fill the unexpired term of
Mr. Wellman. Mr. Carlton was called to the meeting and took his place
as a member of the Board.
A meeting place for 1914 was next considered. Miss Edith A. Phelps,
librarian of the Carnegie library of Oklahoma City, appeared before
the board and invited the Association to meet in Oklahoma City, her
invitation being seconded by the Oklahoma Library Association and other
organizations of the State. Invitations were received also by letter
from the convention bureaus of New Orleans, Nashville, Wilmington,
Del., Milwaukee, and other places. After informal discussion it was
voted that the Secretary be instructed to investigate facilities for
holding the conference at Madison, Wis., and if, in the opinion of the
president and secretary, conditions at Madison are not favorable for a
meeting, that Mackinac and Ottawa Beach be investigated in the order
here named.
Invitations from the authorities of the Panama-Pacific Exposition
to hold the conference at San Francisco in 1915 were read and
from the California Library Association to the same effect, Mr.
Everett R. Perry, of Los Angeles, bearing the invitation from the
latter association. Invitations were also received from the library
authorities of Seattle, seconded by the business organizations of that
city and by the convention bureaus of other cities of the Pacific
Northwest. It was voted to refer this information to the next Executive
Board.
Mr. William Stetson Merrill presented the following report in behalf of
the Committee on code for classifiers, which, upon motion, was accepted
as a report of progress, and the request for an appropriation of $20
referred to the meeting of the Executive Board in January.
The Committee on code for classifiers begs to present a
report of progress.
During the past year no general meeting of the Committee has
been held, but the chairman has been in correspondence with
several members of the Committee and considerable data have
been collected for the proposed Manual for classifiers. Messrs.
Bay and Merrill are more immediately concerned with this
section of the work and over three hundred points have been
assembled for future consideration.
An appropriation of twenty dollars ($20.00) to cover
typewriting, postage and stationery is requested.
Respectfully submitted,
(Signed)
WM. STETSON MERRILL, Chairman.
At the request of the secretary a transfer of funds was authorized as
follows: From the contingency fund to conference fund, $75, and to
miscellaneous fund $75, leaving a balance in the contingency fund of
$95.
Upon motion of Dr. Andrews, it was voted that members joining the
Association after the annual conference shall only be required to pay
one-half year's dues together with the usual initiation fee of $1.
Consideration of the question of issuing the annual handbook in
biographical section form was postponed until the next meeting of the
Executive Board.
A letter was read from Dr. Frank P. Hill, suggesting that a special
committee be appointed to consider the matter of participating in
the proposed Leipzig Exposition and to ascertain the cost of such
participation as well as the possibility of securing a creditable
exhibit from American libraries. It was voted that a special committee
of three on this subject be appointed by the president, which committee
shall make the report to the Committee on international relations. The
president appointed as this committee Dr. Hill with power to add the
other two members.
It was unanimously voted that an appropriation of $30 from the
contingency fund be made to each of the three members of the Travel
Committee as partial compensation for expenses incurred in the
performance of association duties, and that the thanks of the Executive
Board be expressed with regret that the finances of the Association did
not permit a complete reimbursement of expenses.
A report was submitted from the Committee on cost and method of
cataloging, but owing to the lack of time for proper consideration the
secretary was instructed to have the report typewritten and copies sent
to the respective members of the Executive Board. At the request of the
Committee that two other members be added to the Committee, one of them
to be located in Chicago, the other to be the head cataloger of one of
the public libraries taking part in the investigation, the president
appointed the following persons: J. C. M. Hanson and Margaret Mann.
The request of the Committee for an appropriation of not to exceed $50
was referred to the January meeting of the Executive Board.
The report is as follows:
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON COST AND METHOD OF CATALOGING
The present report is preliminary only. Before a final report can be
made a more detailed inquiry must be undertaken of the way in which
the work is handled in libraries of various types. The methods used in
the libraries that have taken part in the present investigation vary
to a considerable degree, and do not always seem to lend themselves to
an accurate classification by character or size of library; in some
cases this is possible, for instance when we find that the receipt of
much duplicate material in the large public libraries having extensive
systems of branch libraries has developed a method of handling
these that is almost uniform for all. One element which disturbs
the cataloging work in these libraries is that the withdrawal and
cancellation of the records of lost and worn-out books is done by the
cataloging departments. Five of the twenty libraries do not at present
readily lend themselves to comparison in all respects with the others,
the Library of Congress and the New York public library on account
of their size and complicated organization, the libraries of Harvard
University and the University of Chicago because of the disturbances
caused by present work of reorganization and recataloging, and the New
York state library on account of its rapid growth since the fire two
years ago. In other libraries recataloging goes on simultaneously with
the current work, but it does not cause the same disturbances as in
the cases mentioned.
While most libraries count classification and shelf-listing as parts
of the cataloging, only four include accessioning, and three do not
include either of the four processes mentioned under point 2 in
the questionnaire sent out by the committee. Three libraries state
expressly that the assignment of subject headings is done by the
cataloging force, but this is probably also the case with some who do
not mention the fact. In one case the reference and cataloging work are
combined in one department; in general, reference work seems to be the
catalogers' favorite side line.
In some libraries the determination of headings and the form of entry
is determined by the heads of the department, in others all the
original work is done by the assistants and afterwards revised, while
in at least one case such work as classification and the assignment of
subject headings is done by specialists, each handling his particular
subject. Two or three libraries employ a special assistant for the
cataloging of serial publications. Two libraries have all statistical
recording done by a special assistant or clerk.
Whether a library prints its cards or has them written or typewritten
in several copies, does not seem to influence the method of work except
at the final point, but the growing use of cards printed by some other
library has introduced an element that did not exist when any of the
libraries taking part in the investigation were organized.
The cost of cataloging can not be determined until a definite unit has
been agreed upon. The way to reach such agreement might be in line with
the method employed by the Boston public library, where a considerable
number of volumes were set aside for this investigation and the time
and money spent on each work carefully computed. By employing a
similar way of investigating not only the cost, but also the routine
gone through with a book in a number of libraries on its way from the
unpacking room to the shelves, some definite unit might be found.
The work of the committee has only begun; it should be planned to
go much more into details than the present questionnaire indicates.
The purpose of the committee should be twofold; to find out whether
a method of handling the routine with a minimum expenditure of time
could be worked out that could be recommended as standard, and to
study how the work might be so arranged as to be made in some degree
less mechanical to those who are capable of more or less independent
handling of literary material for the purpose of preparing it for use
by readers in libraries.
AKSEL G. S. JOSEPHSON,
EMMA V. BALDWIN,
AGNES VAN VALKENBURGH.
Questionnaire
1. Give a short sketch of your catalog department indicating
the processes into which the work is divided.
2. How many of the following items do you include as part of
cataloging?:
(a) Accessioning.
(b) Classification.
(c) Shelf-listing.
(d) Preparation for the shelves.
3. Of how many persons does your cataloging force consist and
how is it graded?
4. What are the minimum and maximum salaries in each grade and
division of your cataloging force?
5. What was the total amount expended for salaries for the
catalog department in 1912?
6. a. How many of the assistants in the catalog department
spend full time on the cataloging work?
b. What other work are these engaged in in other departments
of the library?
7. a. How many volumes did you add to your library during
1912?
b. How many of these were added as new titles to your catalog?
c. How many of these were on printed cards from the Library of
Congress or from other libraries?
8. What do you estimate that it cost your library in 1912 to
catalog a book, including accessioning, classification,
shelf-listing and preparation for the shelves?
9. Give any special information about your library that will
enable the committee to understand particular phases of
your cataloging work.
Libraries Included in the Investigation
_University and Reference Libraries_
Columbia University Library.
Harvard University Library.
Princeton University Library.
University of Chicago Library.
Yale University Library.
John Crerar Library.
Library of Congress.
New York Public Library, Reference Department.
New York State Library.
Newberry Library.
_Public Libraries_
Boston Public Library.
Brooklyn Public Library.
Buffalo Public Library.
Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh.
Chicago Public Library.
Cincinnati Public Library.
Cleveland Public Library.
Philadelphia Free Library.
St. Louis Public Library.
Toronto Public Library.
A request was read from the catalog section, first, that the Executive
Board be asked to appoint a permanent cataloging committee to which the
questions in cataloging may be referred for recommendations; second,
that the Executive Board be asked to send a request to the Librarian
of Congress for the publication of the code of alphabeting used in the
Library of Congress.
Voted, on motion by Dr. Andrews that the president and secretary be
instructed to appoint a committee for this year to whom questions
of cataloging may be referred, and that the chairman of the catalog
section be consulted as to the proper form of a by-law providing for a
permanent committee.
Upon motion by Dr. Andrews, voted that the secretary be instructed to
ask the opinion of the Committee on code for classifiers as to the
desirability of a permanent committee to consider specific questions
of classification and as to the proper form of a by-law to provide for
such committee.
The appointment of members to the various standing committees was next
considered, and as a result of consideration at this meeting and of
later correspondence between the members of the Executive Board and
consultation with the chairmen of the various committees, the standing
committees for the year 1913-14 are announced as follows:
COMMITTEES, 1913-14
Finance
C. W. Andrews, The John Crerar Library, Chicago.
F. F. Dawley, Cedar Rapids, Ia.
F. O. Poole, New York City.
Public Documents
G. S. Godard, State Library, Hartford, Conn.
A. J. Small, State Library, Des Moines, Ia.
Ernest Bruncken, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
John A. Lapp, State Library, Indianapolis, Ind.
M. S. Dudgeon, Wisconsin Free Library Commission, Madison, Wis.
T. M. Owen, Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Ala.
S. H. Ranck, Public Library, Grand Rapids, Mich.
Adelaide R. Hasse, Public Library, New York.
C. F. D. Belden, State Library, Boston, Mass.
Co-operation with the N. E. A.
Mary Eileen Ahern, "Public Libraries," Chicago.
Mary A. Newberry, Public Library, New York City.
Irene Warren, School of Education, Chicago.
George H. Locke, Public Library, Toronto, Canada.
Harriet A. Wood, Library Association, Portland, Ore.
Library Administration
A. E. Bostwick, Public Library, St. Louis, Mo.
George F. Bowerman, Public Library, Washington, D. C.
John S. Cleavinger, Public Library, Jackson, Mich.
Library Training
A. S. Root, Oberlin College Library, Oberlin, Oh.
Faith E. Smith, Public Library, Chicago.
Alice S. Tyler, Western Reserve University Library School, Cleveland.
Adam Strohm, Public Library, Detroit, Mich.
A. L. Bailey, Wilmington Institute Free Library, Wilmington, Del.
Chalmers Hadley, Public Library, Denver.
Cornelia Marvin, Oregon State Library, Salem, Ore.
George O. Carpenter, trustee, Public Library, St. Louis, Mo.
International Relations
Herbert Putnam, Library of Congress, Washington.
E. C. Richardson, Princeton University Library, Princeton, N. J.
Frank P. Hill, Public Library, Brooklyn, N. Y.
W. C. Lane, Harvard University Library, Cambridge, Mass.
R. R. Bowker, "Library Journal," New York City.
Bookbuying
The committee has not yet been appointed.
Bookbinding
A. L. Bailey, Wilmington Institute Free Library, Wilmington, Del.
Rose G. Murray, Public Library, New York.
J. R. Patterson, Public Library, Chicago.
Federal and State Relations
B. C. Steiner, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore.
T. L. Montgomery, State Library, Harrisburg, Pa.
Demarchus C. Brown, State Library, Indianapolis, Ind.
Paul Blackwelder, Public Library, St. Louis, Mo.
C. F. Belden, State Library, Boston, Mass.
Thomas M. Owen, Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Ala.
W. P. Cutter, Library of Engineering Societies, New York City.
Travel
F. W. Faxon, Boston Book Co., Boston, Mass.
C. H. Brown, Public Library, Brooklyn.
J. F. Phelan, Public library, Chicago.
Co-ordination
C. H. Gould, McGill University Library, Montreal.
J. L. Gillis, State Library, Sacramento, Cal.
N. D. C. Hodges, Public Library, Cincinnati, O.
W. C. Lane, Harvard University Library, Cambridge, Mass.
Herbert Putnam, Library of Congress, Washington.
T. W. Koch, University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor.
J. C. Schwab, Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn.
Work with the Blind
Laura M. Sawyer, Perkins Institution, Watertown, Mass.
Lucile Goldthwaite, New York Public Library.
Mrs. Emma N. Delfino, Free Library, Philadelphia.
Mrs. Gertrude T. Rider, Library of Congress, Washington.
Julia A. Robinson, Secretary Iowa Library Commission, Des Moines.
Miriam E. Carey, Supervisor of Institution Libraries of Board of
Control, St. Paul.
Program
E. H. Anderson, Public Library, New York.
H. C. Wellman, City Library, Springfield, Mass.
George B. Utley, A. L. A. Executive Office, Chicago, Ill.
COUNCIL
Meeting of June 24th
The meeting was called to order by President Legler with 45 members
present.
The Chair announced the death since the last meeting of the Council
of Dr. John Shaw Billings and Mr. Charles Carroll Soule, and by
unanimous vote of the Council the Chair appointed Dr. Herbert Putnam,
R. R. Bowker and H. C. Wellman a committee to draft resolutions to be
presented to the Association at large.
Dr. Bostwick as chairman presented the following:
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RELATIONS BETWEEN THE LIBRARY AND THE
MUNICIPALITY
In presenting this final report, your Committee finds it necessary
to consider and to give expression to two points of view, both of
which are represented in its membership and neither of which can
be neglected--one that believes that, owing to diversity of local
conditions and of constitutional and other requirements in different
parts of the Union, it is impossible to frame definitely a model
library law or a model library section of a city charter, and the
other, that without some such expression as can be given only in the
form of a definite body of law of this kind, the recommendations of the
Committee will necessarily be vague and will largely fail of effect.
Your committee has therefore thought it best in the first place to make
a statement of the things that a library law or charter section should,
in its opinion, aim to do, giving reasons where necessary; and in the
second place to present a definite example of the way in which these
things may be done, accompanied by a warning that before adopting it
as a model in any specific instance, it should be carefully studied
by some competent person and modified to suit the necessities of the
case. Your committee realizes also that every state library law should
contain provisions, such as those regulating the State Library and
Library Commission, which do not fall within the duties assigned to
this committee and hence are not touched upon in this report.
And first, regarding the aims of a library law:
(a) We reiterate our statement of last year that the library is an
educational institution and that education is a matter of state rather
than of local concern. If a state already has a good library law which
has worked and is working well and satisfactorily to all concerned,
local libraries should be left in operation under the provisions
of the law, precisely as the schools should be and generally are
left, no matter what changes in the form of municipal government are
contemplated or have been carried into effect. If the state law is not
entirely satisfactory, it is better to amend it than to try to better
matters through the local charter. The charter may well contain, to
avoid the possibility of conflict, some such special disclaimer as
the following: "Nothing in this charter shall be so construed as to
interfere with the operation of the public library under the library
laws of the state." If the library law contains provisions seemingly in
conflict with new charter provisions, some additional definition may be
necessary.
(b) Possibly we are not yet ready for compulsory library establishment
throughout a state, but at all events it should be made simple and easy
for any public taxing or governing body to establish a free public
library and to tax itself for the support of that library, accepting
gifts where necessary and obligating itself to fulfill the conditions
under which these gifts are made. This would include municipalities,
counties, townships, school districts, boards of education, etc.
The library should be assured of reasonable and sufficient financial
support, either through the operation of a special-tax provision or by
the requirement of a minimum appropriation by the authorities. In no
case should the existence or value of the library be placed in jeopardy
by making possible a capricious withdrawal or lessening of support by
the local authorities.
(c) The library should be administered by an independent board of
trustees, not by a single commissioner, and, in particular, not by a
commissioner who has other matters on his hands. In case such grouping
appears necessary, the library should be placed with other educational
agencies and in no case treated as a group of buildings or a mere
agency of recreation. The board should be a body corporate, distinct
from other municipal organizations and departments, with powers of
succession, power to sue and be sued, to acquire and hold property,
etc. The terms of its members should not expire all at once, so that
reasonable continuity in policy will be insured. It should have power
to take over and manage other city libraries, school libraries and, by
contract, libraries in other municipalities or communities.
(d) The funds of the library, including those derived from taxation,
bequest, gift, and library fines and desk receipts, should be at the
board's free disposal for library purposes, including the purchase of
land and the erection of buildings. They should be received and held
by the municipal authorities, and disbursed on voucher, with the same
safeguards and under the same auspices as those required for other
public funds.
(e) The library should be operated on the merit system, in the same
way that the schools are so operated--not by placing the selection and
promotion of library employees in the hands of the same board that
selects clerks and mechanics for the city departments, but by requiring
that the library board establish and carry out an efficient system of
service satisfactory to the proper authorities.
The board should have entire control of its own working force and
should initiate its own policies, including selection of sites and
planning of buildings, its librarian being regarded both as its
executive officer and as its expert adviser, to whom the choice of
methods and the management of details are naturally left. He should be
present at meetings of the board and may serve as its secretary.
We regard as satisfactory any body of law that will accomplish the
results aimed at in the following sections, which your committee does
not regard as couched in legal phraseology. Before being used in any
state its provisions should be worded by a competent person experienced
in drafting bills for the legislature of that state.
Section 1
Any taxing body shall have authority to levy a tax, not less than ----
mills on the dollar, for the support of a free public library within
its jurisdiction, and such tax shall be levied if so ordered by a
majority vote of all voters at a general election, on petition signed
by ---- voters.
Any governing or taxing body shall have power to provide, by annual
appropriation, for the support of a free public library, whether or
not a tax is levied as above provided, or to enter into a contract for
library service with another governing or taxing body or with a private
corporation already maintaining such a library.