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LIBRARY TRACT, No. 10
Revised Edition of Tract No. 1
WHY DO WE NEED A PUBLIC LIBRARY?
MATERIAL FOR A LIBRARY CAMPAIGN
Compiled by CHALMERS HADLEY
Sec'y American Library Association
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION PUBLISHING BOARD
1 WASHINGTON STREET, CHICAGO
1910
* * * * *
PUBLICATIONS OF THE
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
PUBLISHING BOARD
_Postage on book publications extra_
Guide to reference books, by Alice B. Kroeger.
New and enlarged edition. Cloth, $1.50.
Literature of American history; edited by J. N.
Larned. Cloth, $6.00. Supplements for 1902,
1903, paper, each $1; for 1904, 25c.
A. L. A. Index to general literature. Cloth, $10.
A. L. A. Index to portraits. $3.
A. L. A. Catalog. Paper, $1.
A. L. A. Catalog rules. Cloth, 60c.
A. L. A. Booklist (monthly, 10 numbers) $1 a year
List of subject headings for use in dictionary catalogs.
Cloth, $2.
Books for girls and women and their clubs.
Paper, 25c. Also issued in five parts, small
size, 5c. each.
Reading for the young, with supplement. Sheets,
$1.
Books for boys and girls, by Caroline M. Hewins.
Paper, 15c. $5 per 100.
Children's reading. Paper, 25c.
Small library buildings. Paper, $1.25.
Library buildings, by W. R. Eastman. Paper, 10c.
(_Continued on 3rd cover page_)
* * * * *
LIBRARY TRACT, No. 10
Revised Edition of Tract No. 1
WHY DO WE NEED A PUBLIC LIBRARY?
MATERIAL FOR A LIBRARY CAMPAIGN
Compiled by CHALMERS HADLEY
Sec'y American Library Association
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION PUBLISHING BOARD
1 WASHINGTON STREET, CHICAGO
1910
Compiled from articles and addresses by
Sir Walter Besant 7
E. A. Birge, dean University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 18
William J. Bryan 38
John P. Buckley 32
Waller Irene Bullock, chief loan librarian Carnegie
Library, Pittsburg, Pa. 43
James H. Canfield, late librarian Columbia University
Library, New York 40
Andrew Carnegie 25, 41
Winston Churchill 16
Frederick M. Crunden, ex-librarian Public Library,
St. Louis, Mo. 4, 28, 47
J. C. Dana, librarian Free Public Library,
Newark, N. J. 10, 12, 37, 42
Melvil Dewey, ex-director N. Y. State Library, Albany 21
William R. Eastman, chief Division of Educational
Extension, State Library, Albany, N. Y. 22, 45
Mrs. S. C. Fairchild, ex-vice director New York State
Library School, Albany, N. Y. 10
W. I. Fletcher, librarian Amherst College Library,
Amherst, Mass. 6
W. E. Foster, librarian Public Library, Providence, R. I. 44
Chalmers Hadley, secretary American Library Association,
Chicago, Ill. 3, 29
Joseph Le Roy Harrison, librarian Providence Athenaeum,
Providence, R. I. 27
Caroline M. Hewins, librarian Public Library, Hartford,
Conn. 5
F. A. Hutchins, University Extension Department,
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 13, 19, 26, 36
J. N. Larned, ex-librarian Public Library, Buffalo,
N. Y. 20, 22, 34
Henry E. Legler, librarian Public Library, Chicago,
Ill. 17, 30
James Russell Lowell 18
William McKinley 30
Theodore Roosevelt 37
C. C. Thach, president Alabama Polytechnic Institute 9, 39
Alice S. Tyler, secretary Iowa Library Commission,
Des Moines, Iowa 47
Irene Van Kleeck 36
MATERIAL FOR A PUBLIC LIBRARY CAMPAIGN
One of the most effective means of conducting a library campaign,
especially in its early stage, is through the press. Not only will the
reading and thinking part of the people thereby be reached, but any
library editorial appearing in a newspaper, will, because of the public
notice given it, receive greater consideration than if printed
elsewhere. Library Commission workers and library supporters in general,
have felt the need of printed material which could be made immediately
available in a library campaign. Most library addresses and articles are
too long, too scholarly in treatment or have lacked that crisp style
necessary for use in the press.
Editors of newspapers are slow to accept for printing, signed editorials
which have seen service elsewhere. It is suggested that the material
here compiled be made as local as possible in its application to
individual communities, and that the editorials be sent to newspapers
unsigned by the original writers. The same editorials should not be sent
to neighboring communities, at least in their original form. Every
attempt should be made to have them appear as fresh and spontaneous as
possible. Different editorials should always be sent the several papers
in the same city.
The material here compiled is suggestive and sufficiently comprehensive
to meet ordinary conditions. Much valuable material has been taken from
circulars sent out by the Library Commissions of Oregon, Wisconsin and
Iowa.
No better advice could be given in opening a public library campaign
through the public press than the following, in the Wisconsin Free
Library Commission Circular of Information, No. 5:
1 Citizens of ---- believe in free public libraries. They need
organization and courage to attack local problems rather than long
homilies on the value of good literature.
2 Public sentiment needs time to ripen. Frequent short articles running
through the issues of a few weeks are better than a few long ones.
3 Make the articles breezy, optimistic, with local application. You can
get a library if you are in earnest.
4 Appeal to local pride. Civic patriotism is the basis of civic
improvement. Give the names of familiar towns of similar size which have
good libraries.
5 Do not rely solely on editorials. Get brief communications from
citizens, but have each letter make only one point, and that crisply.
6 Do not waste space rebutting trivial arguments. Refute them by
affirmative statements.
7 Get brief interviews with visitors from towns where they have good
libraries, and with your own townsmen who have visited neighboring
libraries.
8 Keep this fact in mind--Your people want a library and only need pluck
and a leader.
9 Remember that the worst enemy of the movement is the talker who wants
a library very much, in the "sweet bye and bye," when all other public
improvements are completed.
10 When it is time to strike--strike hard. Apologies and faint hearts
never won any kind of a contest.
CHALMERS HADLEY,
Secretary American Library Association.
WHAT A PUBLIC LIBRARY DOES FOR A COMMUNITY
1 It doubles the value of the education the child receives in school,
and, best of all, imparts a desire for knowledge which serves as an
incentive to continue his education after leaving school; and, having
furnished the incentive, it further supplies the means for a life-long
continuance of education.
2 It provides for the education of adults who have lacked, or failed to
make use of, early opportunities.
3 It furnishes information to teachers, ministers, journalists,
physicians, legislators, all persons upon whose work depend the
intellectual, moral, sanitary and political welfare and advancement of
the people.
4 It furnishes books and periodicals for the technical instruction and
information of mechanics, artisans, manufacturers, engineers and all
others whose work requires technical knowledge--of all persons upon whom
depends the industrial progress of the city.
5 It is of incalculable benefit to the city by affording to thousands
the highest and purest entertainment, and thus lessening crime and
disorder.
6 It makes the city a more desirable place of residence, and thus
retains the best citizens and attracts others of the same character.
7 More than any other agency, it elevates the general standard of
intelligence throughout the great body of the community, upon which its
material prosperity, as well as its moral and political well-being, must
depend.
Finally, the public library includes potentially all other means of
social betterment. A library is a living organism, having within itself
the capacity of infinite growth and reproduction. It may found a dozen
museums and hospitals, kindle the train of thought that produces
beneficent inventions, and inspire to noble deeds of every kind, all the
while imparting intelligence and inculcating industry, thrift, morality,
public spirit and all those qualities that constitute the wealth and
well-being of a community.
F. M. CRUNDEN.
WHAT A FREE LIBRARY DOES FOR A COUNTRY TOWN
1 It keeps boys at home in the evening by giving them well-written
stories of adventure.
2 It gives teachers and pupils interesting books to aid their school
work in history and geography, and makes better citizens of them by
enlarging their knowledge of their country and its growth.
3 It provides books on the care of children and animals, cookery and
housekeeping, building and gardening, and teaches young readers how to
make simple dynamos, telephones and other machines.
4 It helps clubs that are studying history, literature or life in other
countries, and throws light upon Sunday-school lessons.
5 It furnishes books of selections for reading aloud, suggestions for
entertainments and home amusements, and hints on correct speech and good
manners.
6 It teaches the names and habits of the plants, birds and insects of
the neighborhood, and the differences in soil and rock.
7 It tells the story of the town from its settlement, and keeps a record
of all important events in its history.
8 It offers pleasant and wholesome stories to readers of all ages.
CAROLINE M. HEWINS.
Let the boys find in the free library wholesome books of adventure, and
tales such as a boy likes; let the girls find the stories which delight
them and give their fancy and imagination exercise; let the tired
housewife find the novels which will transport her to an ideal realm of
love and happiness; let the hardworked man, instead of being expected
always to read "improving" books of history or politics, choose that
which will give him relaxation of mind and nerve--perhaps the "Innocents
Abroad," or Josh Billings's "Allminax," or "Samanthy at Saratoga."
W. I. FLETCHER.
WHY WE NEED A LIBRARY
A public library in our community would be an influence for good every
day in the week.
It would make the town more attractive to the class of people we want as
residents and neighbors.
It would mould the characters of the children in our homes.
A good library would get gifts from wealthy citizens. No other public
institution offers so fitting an opportunity for a public-spirited
citizen to help his neighbors and win their approval and affection.
A library in ---- would be the center of our intellectual life and would
stimulate the growth of all kinds of clubs for study and debating.
It is a great part of our education to know how to find facts. No man
knows everything, but the man who knows how to find an indispensable
fact quickly has the best substitute for such knowledge. We need a
library to carry forward in a better manner the education of the
children who leave school; to give them a better chance for
self-education. We need it to give thoughts and inspiration to the
teachers of the people, those who in the schoolroom or pulpit, on the
rostrum, or with the pen attempt to instruct or lead their fellow
citizens. We need it to help our mechanics in their employments, to give
them the best thoughts of the best workers in their lines, whether these
thoughts come in books or papers or magazines.
WISCONSIN FREE LIBRARY COMMISSION.
The public library is an adult school; it is a perpetual and life-long
continuation class; it is the greatest educational factor that we have;
and the librarian is becoming our most important teacher and guide.
SIR WALTER BESANT.
WHAT A LIBRARY DOES FOR A TOWN
1 Completes its educational equipment, carrying on and giving permanent
value to the work of the schools.
2 Gives the children of all classes a chance to know and love the best
in literature. Without the public library such a chance is limited to
the very few.
3 Minimizes the sale and reading of vicious literature in the community,
thus promoting mental and moral health.
4 Effects a great saving in money to every reader in the community. The
library is the application of common sense to the problem of supply and
demand. Through it every reader in the town can secure at a given cost
from 100 to 1000 times the material for reading or study that he could
secure by acting individually.
5 Appealing to all classes, sects and degrees of intelligence, it is a
strong unifying factor in the life of a town.
6 The library is the one thing in which every town, however poor or
isolated, can have something as good and inspiring as the greatest city
can offer. Neither Boston nor New York can provide better books to its
readers than the humblest town library can easily own and supply.
7 Slowly but inevitably raises the intellectual tone of a place.
8 Adds to the material value of property. Real estate agents in the
suburbs of large cities never fail to advertise the presence of a
library, if there be one, as giving added value to the lots or houses
they have for sale.
A. W. in NEW YORK LIBRARIES.
HELPFUL THINGS DONE BY LIBRARIES FOR TEACHERS AND CHILDREN
1 Graded lists (sometimes annotated) of books suitable for children are
printed as part of the library's finding lists.
2 Bulletins of books for special days are printed.
3 Lists of books on special subjects are printed.
4 Topics being studied in the schools are illustrated by special
exhibits at the libraries.
5 Study rooms in the libraries are maintained for the pupils of the high
schools and the higher grammar grades.
6 Children's or young people's rooms are maintained at the libraries,
where the children may come into personal contact with a trained
children's librarian and with hundreds of books on open shelves.
7 Story hours or readings for children are conducted at the libraries.
8 Training in reference work, in the use of books and libraries, in the
use of finding lists, card catalogs, indexes, etc., is given by library
assistants: (a) to teachers at the library; (b) at the library to
individual pupils and classes that come there; (c) at the schools to the
pupils in their rooms.
9 Lectures on classification, bibliographies, and catalogs are given by
members of the library staff for teachers and normal school students.
10 Special study rooms for teachers are provided.
11 Special educational collections are shelved for use by the teachers.
12 Cases of about 50 books (traveling libraries as it were) are prepared
by libraries and sent to schoolrooms to remain for a year or less,
teachers to issue books for home use.
13 Branch reading--and delivery--rooms are opened in schools, in charge
of library assistants, with supply of books on hand for circulation and
facilities for drawing others from the main library.
14 Assistant librarians are placed in charge of work with schools.
15 In large cities complete branch libraries are established in schools
on the outskirts of the cities.
16 Special collections of books are furnished to vacation schools.
17 Special cards are issued to teachers on which they may draw more than
the usual number of volumes at a time.
18 Teachers and principals are allowed to draw a number of volumes for
(a) reading by children at school; (b) reading by children at home.
PUBLIC LIBRARIES.
LIBRARIES, A PUBLIC BENEFACTION
A library is not a luxury; it is not for the cultured few; it is not
merely for the scientific; it is not for any intellectual cult or
exclusive literary set. It is a great, broad, universal public
benefaction. It lifts the entire community; it is the right arm of the
intellectual development of the people, ministering to the wants of
those who are already educated and spreading a universal desire for
education. It is the upper story of the public school system, while it
is a broad field wherein ripe scholars may find a fuller training for
their already highly developed faculties. It is above all a splendid
instrument for the education and culture of those vast masses of boys
and girls that are denied the high privileges of the systematic training
of the schools.
C. C. THACH.
The function of the library as an institution of society, is the
development and enrichment of human life in the entire community by
bringing to all the people the books that belong to them.
SALOME CUTLER FAIRCHILD.
MEANING OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
Cities and towns are now for the first time, and chiefly in this
country, erecting altars to the gods of good fellowship, joy and
learning. These altars are our public libraries. We had long ago our
buildings of city and state, our halls of legislation, our courts of
justice. But these all speak more or less of wrongdoing, of justice and
injustice, of repression. Most of them touch on partisanship and
bitterness of feeling. We have had, since many centuries, in all our
cities, the many meeting places of religious sects--our chapels,
churches and cathedrals. They stand for so much that is good, but they
have not brought together the communities in which they are placed. A
church is not always the center of the best life of all who live within
the shadow of its spire.
For several generations we have been building temples to the gods of
learning and good citizenship--our schools. And they have come nearer to
bringing together for the highest purpose the best impulses of all of us
than have any other institutions. But they are all not yet, as some day
they will be, for both old and young. Then they speak of discipline, of
master and pupil, instead only of pure and simple fellowship in studies.
And so we are for the first time in all history, building, in our
public libraries, temples of happiness and wisdom common to us all. No
other institution which society has brought forth is so wide in its
scope; so universal in its appeal; so near to every one of us; so
inviting to both young and old; so fit to teach, without arrogance, the
ignorant and, without faltering, the wisest.
The public library is to be the center of all the activities that make
for social efficiency. It is to do more to bind into one civic whole and
to develop the feeling that you are citizens of no mean city, than any
other institution you have yet established or than we can as yet
conceive.
J. C. DANA.
PUBLIC LIBRARIES, A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT
The world-wide library movement of the past few years is an important
factor in the educational world. The public library is now recognized as
one of the most effective of the preventive measures advocated by modern
social students. It is considered an essential part of any system of
public education, affording opportunity for self-education, and
supplementing the average five years of school life. Educators now
realize that the school offers but the beginning of education, and that
the library is its necessary complement and supplement. This increase of
library facilities has greatly influenced school work, in bringing home
to teachers the fact that it is as important to teach what to read as to
give children the ability to read. The library of to-day is not wholly
for recreation, but it is the people's university. It is entitled to the
same consideration which is given to the public schools, and to the same
sort of support. The whole conception of the library has changed as
practical men of affairs have come to the realization of the fact that
they must have accessible the records of past experience and
experiments.
OREGON LIBRARY COMMISSION.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
We all believe in public libraries. We frequently discuss the library we
are to get "bye and bye." We do not find that it is helping the boys and
girls who are growing up in our town now. Will the next generation need
it more than this? Will the children of the next generation be dearer to
us than the boys and girls that now cheer our firesides? Will they use a
library better because their parents have not had such privileges?
We all want a library, for ourselves, for our neighbors, for the good
name of our village. Why not get it now and be getting the good out of
it?
It is only a question of method.
The library when built should benefit all the people, and therefore it
should be built by all the people. Give us all a chance to help, and
then the library will belong to all of us.
WISCONSIN FREE LIBRARY COMMISSION.
LIBRARIES AND HAPPINESS
The great purpose of a public library is to promote and unite
intelligence. It brings together the products of the wise minds of the
world. It holds within its walls a collection of all the wise and witty
things ever said: these it marks and indexes and offers to its friends.
It is in its community a sort of intellectual minuteman, always ready to
supply to every comer something of interest and pleasure. It puts good
books, and no others, into the hands of children. It tells about
Cinderella and informs you on riots in Moscow. It offers you a novel of
modern Japan and a history of Venice of the past. It knows about the
milk in the cocoanut, the floods of the river Nile, the advantages of
education, the evils of legislation, how to plan a home, why bread won't
rise, and can tell more about the mental failings that give Jamaica and
Venezuela trouble than most of our congressmen ever dreamed of.
Reading is the short cut into the heart of life. If you are talking
with a group of friends about, for example, different parts of the
United States, and some one happens to mention a city or town in which
you have lived, note how your interest quickens, and how eager you are
to hear news of the place or to tell of your experience in it. This is a
simple every-day fact. The same thing you have observed a thousand times
about any subject or talk with which you may be familiar. We learn about
many things just by keeping alive and moving round! Those things we have
learned about we can't help being interested in. That is the way we are
made. If we knew about more things our interests would be greater in
number, keener, more satisfying; we would talk more, ask more questions,
be more alert, get more pleasure.
The lesson from this is plain enough: if you wish to have a good time,
learn something. You like to meet old friends. Your brain, also, likes
to come across things it knows already, to renew acquaintance with the
knowledge it has stored away and half forgotten. The pleasures of
recognition and association; the delights of renewing your friendships
with your own ideas are many, easy to get, never failing. But if you
wish to have interests and delights in good plenty you must know of many
things. If you wish to be happy, learn something.
This sounds like advice to a student. It is not, it is a suggestion to
the wayfarer. For this learning process may be as delightful as it is to
gather flowers by the roadside in a summer walk.
J. C. DANA.
LIBRARY WORTH SELF-DENIAL
An inexhaustible mine of pleasure is open for the boy or girl who loves
good books and has access to them. Without effort on the part of the
parent they are kept off the street and from the company of the idle and
vicious and are storing their minds with useful knowledge, or are being
taught high ideals and noble purposes. Thus they develop into men and
women who are an honor to their parents and worthy citizens of our great
republic.
Such is the product of a Free Public Library. Is it not worth the small
pittance it will cost? Many a laboring man spends more money in a week
for tobacco than the maintenance of a library would cost him in a year.
Is not the education and the development of our bright boys and girls
worth a little self-denial?
We all desire that our children shall have better opportunities than we
have had, and not have to work as we have worked. Here is an opportunity
to help them help themselves, which is the very best help that can be
given any one. Let's be "boosters" and help ourselves, help our town,
and help our boys and girls by unitedly supporting the library
proposition.
IOWA LIBRARY COMMISSION.
REASONS FOR HAVING A FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY
Public libraries have without delay become an essential part of a public
education system and are as clearly useful as the public schools. They
are not only classed with schools, but have generally become influential
adjuncts of the public schools. The number of readers is rapidly
increasing and the character of the books is constantly improving.
Not infrequently the objection is heard that the public libraries are
opening the doors to light and useless books; that reading can be, and
often is, carried to a vicious and enervating excess, and therefore that
the libraries' influence is doubtful and on the whole not good. This
argument does not need elaborate exposure.
The main purpose of the library is to counteract and check the
circulation and influence of the empty and not infrequently vicious
books that are so rife. A visit to any news-stand will disclose a world
of low and demoralizing "penny dreadfuls" and other trash. These are
bought by boys and girls because they want to read and can nowhere else
obtain reading material. This deluge of worthless periodicals and books
can be counteracted only by gratuitous supplies from the public library.
Whether these counteracting books be fiction or not, they may be pure
and harmless, and often of intellectual merit and moral excellence. The
question is not whether people shall read fiction--for read it they
will--but whether they are to have good fiction instead of worthless and
harmful trash.
The tendency to read inferior books can soon be checked by a good
library. If the attention of the children in school is directed to good
books, and the free library contains such books, there will be no
thought of the news-stand as the place for finding reading matter.
The economical reason for establishing free public libraries is the fact
that public officers and public taxation manage and support them
efficiently and make them available to the largest number of readers. By
means of a free library there is the best utilization of effort and of
resources at a small cost to individuals.
While a private library may greatly delight and improve the owner and
his immediate circle of friends, it is a luxury to which he and they
only can resort.
A library charging a fee may bring comfort to a respectable board of
directors by ministering to a small and financially independent circle
of book-takers, by its freedom from the rush of numerous and eager
readers, and by strict conformity to the notions and vagaries of the
managers. But such a library never realizes the highest utility. The
greater part of the books lie untouched upon the shelves, and compared
with the free library it is a lame and impotent affair.
The books of a public library actively pervade the community; they reach
and are influential with very large numbers and the utility of the
common possession--books--is multiplied without limit. Before several of
our towns lies the question of opening to all what is now limited to
those who pay a fee. This is not merely a limitation--it is practically
a prohibition.
Whether right or wrong, human beings as at present constituted will not
frequent in large numbers libraries that charge a fee. The spirit of the
age and the tendency of liberal communities are entirely in favor of
furnishing this means of education and amusement without charge.
Certainly towns which can maintain by taxation, paupers, parks, highways
and schools have no reasonable ground for denying free reading to their
inhabitants.
These towns spend vast sums of money in providing education, and yet
omit the small extra expenditure which would enable young men and women
to continue their education.
The experience of Library Commissions of various states has amply
demonstrated that libraries and literature are sought for and
appreciated quite as much by rural communities as by the larger towns,
and not infrequently the appreciation is apparently keener, because of
the absence of interests and amusements other than those provided by the
library. There is now no real reason why every part of this state may
not enjoy the advantages and pleasures of book distribution, for
concentration of effort in the small towns elsewhere has provided
efficient, attractive and economical libraries, and could as well do so
here.
F. A. HUTCHINS.
MISSION OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
It is our business in this country to get at the best methods to govern
ourselves. How many of our best people have paused to reflect on what
that means, and on all it means? It means that now we have about
80,000,000 of sovereigns. It was all very well when we were a little
confederation of homogeneous stock stretching along the Atlantic
sea-board. We had our dissensions then, but our population was permeated
with the principles of our government. In one hundred years we have
swelled from a handful to 80,000,000, and a large part of them made up
of additions from the nations of the earth, and not the self-governing
nations. And the problem is to educate the children of these, as well as
our own children, in the principles of that government of which they are
an essential and vital part.
This is the first problem, and if it is not attended to, our government
will crumble away and decay from neglect. We do not want denizens in
this state and this nation, we want citizens. We do not want ward
politics, but we do want government as our forefathers understood it.
And it is the duty of every right-minded citizen to work unfalteringly
for this end. The question is one of expediency.
We want citizens. And the public school and the public library are the
places where citizens are made. Therefore we must labor for and support
these institutions first and foremost. To a very great extent, the
librarian is the custodian of public morals and the moulder of public
men.
The librarian must, and he usually does, feel his responsibility. The
word "responsibility" should be given equal weight with the word
"liberty" and emblazoned beside it, and it is these two things that the
public librarian through his knowledge of good literature must impress
upon our coming generations--"liberty and responsibility."
WINSTON CHURCHILL.
LIBRARY EXTENSION
Our public schools are doing a great work, but, after all, "the older
generation remains untouched, and the assimilation of the younger can
hardly be complete or certain as long as the homes of the parents remain
comparatively unaffected." For those whose early education has been
neglected either by reason of family circumstances or because of wayward
disposition, and who realize their need before it is too late, there are
night schools, business courses and correspondence school courses, with
the minor advantages and stimulus offered by public lecture courses.
Volunteer study clubs and societies for research are being organized in
great numbers. And, more potent and more forceful, more universal in its
application than all these because better organized, better equipped and
readier to avail itself of all existing affiliating agencies, is that
national movement which has become known for want of a better term as
library extension.
Library extension aims to supply to every man, woman and child, either
through its own resources or by co-operation with other affiliated
agencies, what each community, or any group in any community, or any
individual in the community may require for mental stimulus,
intellectual recreation or practical knowledge and information useful in
one's daily occupation.
HENRY E. LEGLER.
The opening of a free public library is a most important event in the
history of any town. A college training is an excellent thing; but,
after all, the better part of every man's education is that which he
gives himself, and it is for this that a good library should furnish the
opportunity and the means. All that is primarily needful in order to use
a library is the ability to read; primarily, for there must also be the
inclination, and after that, some guidance in reading well.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
THE LIBRARY--PLEASURE AND PROFIT
We cannot remind ourselves too frequently that a fundamental purpose of
good books, and so of the library which possesses them, is to give
pleasure, and that the library ought to be more closely and peculiarly
associated with pleasure than any other institution supported by the
public.
Life for most of us is sufficiently dull and colorless. The workday
aspect of the world is always with us and oppresses us. For the average
man and woman, whose education has been limited, whose imagination has
lacked all wider opportunity for cultivation, the easiest escape from
the cares of daily life, from the depressing monotony of daily routine,
will be through the avenue opened by the story, the people's road out of
a care-filled life, ever since the days of "Arabian Nights." Such
readers as these desire fiction and ought to have it. If their
imagination can be cultivated to the point of reaching similar freedom
from care through poetry, through the drama, or through any of the
higher forms of literature, so much the better. The library's message is
to men and women cramped by toil and narrowed by routine, ever seeking
some way out of this troublesome world into that larger realm which is
more truly ours because it is our creation and that of our fellows. This
wider world, in its friendliness and homelikeness, the library must
represent.
The library is where the readers are introduced to the friendship of
authors and their books. There they are at home and there we too may be
at home. Old and young, rich and poor, wise and simple, men and women
and children, there we may meet new friends on kindly and familiar terms
and widen our thoughts as we learn of their wisdom and their wit. Still
better, there we may renew our acquaintance with old friends and feel
the contracted horizon of our lives again enlarge as we meet them once
more. New friends and old, they all greet us with an assured welcome and
yield to us the best which they can give, or we receive. We come to them
not to learn lessons but to be with them for a little while and to live
with them that larger and truer life which their presence creates for
us.
Thus the library performs its high and noble duty of helping men to
live, "not by bread alone, but by every word of God," who, through good
books, has been speaking to the generations of men not only for their
instruction but even more for their delight.
E. A. BIRGE.
VALUE OF FREE LIBRARIES
The best proof of the value of public libraries lies in the cordial
support given them by all the people, when they are managed on broad,
sensible lines. Such institutions contribute to the fund of wholesome
recreation that sweetens life and to the wider knowledge that broadens
it. They give ambition, knowledge and inspiration to boys and girls
from sordid homes, and win them from various forms of dissipation. They
form a central home where citizens of all creeds and conditions find a
common ground of useful endeavor.
Libraries are needed to furnish the pupils of our schools the incentive
and the opportunity for wider study; to teach them "the art and science
of reading for a purpose," to give to boys and girls with a hidden
talent the chance to discover and develop it; to give to mechanics and
artisans a chance to know what their ambitious fellows are doing; to
give men and women, weary and worn from treading a narrow round,
excursions in fresh and delightful fields; to give to clubs for study
and recreation, material for better work, and, last but not least, to
give wholesome employment to all classes for those idle hours that wreck
more lives than any other cause.
F. A. HUTCHINS.
"Even now many wise men are agreed that the love of books, as mere
things of sentiment, and the reading of good books, as mere habit, are
incomparably better results of schooling than any of the definite
knowledge which the best of teachers can store into pupils' minds.
Teaching how to read is of less importance in the intelligence of a
generation than the teaching what to read."
THE BOOKLESS MAN
The bookless man does not understand his own loss. He does not know the
leanness in which his mind is kept by want of the food which he rejects.
He does not know what starving of imagination and of thought he has
inflicted upon himself. He has suffered his interest in the things which
make up God's knowable universe to shrink until it reaches no farther
than his eyes can see and his ears can hear. The books which he scorns
are the telescopes and reflectors and reverberators of our intellectual
life, holding in themselves a hundred magical powers for the overcoming
of space and time, and for giving the range of knowledge which belongs
to a really cultivated mind. There is no equal substitute for them.
There is nothing else which will so break for us the poor hobble of
everyday sights and sounds and habits and tasks, by which our thinking
and feeling are naturally tethered to a little worn round.
J. N. LARNED.
THE LIBRARY'S EDUCATIONAL MISSION
To the great mass of boys and girls the school can barely give the tools
with which to get an education before they are forced to begin their
life work as breadwinners. Few are optimistic enough to hope that we can
change this condition very rapidly. The great problem of the day is,
therefore, to carry on the education after the elementary steps have
been taken in the free public schools. There are numerous agencies at
work in this direction--reading rooms, reference and lending libraries,
museums, summer, vacation and night schools, correspondence and other
forms of extension teaching; but by far the greatest agent is good
reading. An educational system which contents itself with teaching to
read and then fails to see that the best reading is provided, when
undesirable reading is so cheap and plentiful as to be a constant menace
to the public good, is as inconsistent and absurd as to teach our
children the expert use of the knife, fork and spoon, and then provide
them with no food. The most important movement before the professional
educators to-day, is the broadening going on so rapidly in their duties
to their profession and to the public. Too many have thought of their
work as limited to schools for the young during a short period of
tuition. The true conception is that we should be responsible for higher
as well as elementary education, for adults as well as for children, for
educational work in the homes as well as in the schoolhouses, and during
life as well as for a limited course. In a nutshell, the motto of the
extended work should be "higher education for adults, at home, during
life."
MELVIL DEWEY.
THE FREEDOM OF BOOKS
The free town library is wholly a product of the last half century. It
is the crowning creature of democracy for its own higher culture. There
is nothing conceivable to surpass it as an agency in popular education.
Schools, colleges, lectures, classes, clubs and societies, scientific
and literary, are tributaries to it--primaries, feeders. It takes up the
work of all of them to utilize it, to carry it on, and make more of it.
Future time will perfect it, and will perfect the institutions out of
which and over which it has grown; but it is not possible for the future
to bring any new gift of enlightenment to men that will be greater, in
kind, than the free diffusion of thought and knowledge as stored in the
better literature of the world.
The true literature that we garner in our libraries is the deathless
thought, the immortal truth, the imperishable quickenings and
revelations which genius--the rare gift to now and then one of the human
race--has been frugally, steadily planting in the fertile soil of
written speech, from the generations of the hymn writers of the
Euphrates and the Indus to the generations now alive. There is nothing
save the air we breathe that we have common rights in so sacred and so
clear, and there is no other public treasure which so reasonably demands
to be kept and cared for and distributed for common enjoyment at common
cost.
Free corn in old Rome bribed a mob and kept it passive. By free books
and what goes with them in modern America we mean to erase the mob from
existence. There lies the cardinal difference between a civilization
which perished and a civilization that will endure.
J. N. LARNED.
GOOD BOOKS
The library offers the advantages of good society to many who could not
otherwise enjoy them. This is one of the most important influences that
tells on individual character. A man is not only known by the company
he keeps, but to a great extent he is made or unmade by his associates.
A great part of what we learn and much of what we are is absorbed
unconsciously from our environment.
Now books are written--at least the good books--by men and women of the
better sort. They are people of marked intelligence and refinement. They
have just views of truth and duty and are able to reveal to us many
secrets respecting the life that is being lived around us. They are
interpreters and guides in all lines of human activity and service. To
be intimate with them is good society. If then we can bring all these
choice spirits by their books into our village and introduce them to our
children and our neighbors, even to the poorest, and let them talk to
all who will listen, we have done something, we have done much to raise
the tone of general intelligence and refinement.
Here is the great opportunity to reach the homes of the poor and the
careless and even of the baser sort with new light. The books will
interest and meet the craving for knowledge which everybody has, and
then will come into confidential relations with many a reader, starting
new trains of thought, suggesting new ideas, offering sympathy and
kindling faith. The friendless will gain friends and these friends will
do them good.
In such ways, this institution, the public library, is calculated to
enlarge and enrich the community's life.
WILLIAM R. EASTMAN.
PLACE AND PURPOSE OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
The place now assigned the public library, by very general consent, is
that of an integral part of our system of public and free education. On
no other theory has it sure and lasting foundation; on no other theory
may it be supported by general taxation; on no other theory can it be
wisely and consistently administered. A public tax can be levied for the
maintenance of a public library only upon the principle which underlies
all righteous public taxation, not that the taxpayer wants something
and will receive it in proportion to the amount of his contribution, but
that the public wants something of such general interest and value that
all property-owners may be asked and required to contribute towards its
cost.
The demand for intelligent and effective citizenship is increasing
daily, for two reasons: First--The problems of public life and of public
service, of communal existence, are daily becoming more complex, more
difficult of satisfactory solution. Second--We are recognizing more
clearly than ever before that our present success and prestige are due
to the fact that more than any other people in the world's history have
we succeeded in securing that active participation and practical
co-operation of the whole people in all public affairs. In the whole
people are we finding and are we to find wholesomeness and strength.
But coincident with this discovery, this keen realization of the place
and value of all in advancing the common interests of all, has come the
feeling: First--That the common public schools must be made good enough
for all; and, Second--That even at their best they are insufficient. The
five school years (average) of the American child constitute a very
narrow portal through which to enter upon the privileges and duties of
life, as we desire life to be to every child born under the flag. There
is need of far more information, instruction, inspiration and uplift
than can possibly be secured in that limited time.
Casting about for a satisfactory supplement and complement for the
public schools, we find the public library ready to render exactly this
service; to make it possible for the adult to continue through life the
growth begun in childhood in the public school. Only in this way and by
this means can we hope to continue the common American people as the
most uncommon people which the world has yet known.
Henceforth, then, these two must go hand in hand, neither trenching upon
the field of the other, neither burdening or hampering the other, each
helping the other. The public school must take the initiative,
determining lines of thought and work, developing in each child the
power to act and the tendency to act, making full use of the public
library as an effective ally in all its current work, and making such
use of it as to create in each pupil the library habit, to last through
life. The public library must respond by every possible supplementary
effort, by most intelligent co-operation, by most sympathetic and
effective assistance, and by giving pupils a welcome which they will
feel holds good till waning physical powers make further use of the
library impossible.
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASS'N REPORT, 1906.
The most imperative duty of the state is the universal education of the
masses. No money which can be usefully spent for this indispensable end
should be denied. Public sentiment should, on the contrary, approve the
doctrine that the more that can be judiciously spent, the better for the
country. There is no insurance of nations so cheap as the enlightenment
of the people.
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
PUBLIC LIBRARY IS PUBLIC CO-OPERATION
A public library is the flower of the modern forms of co-operation,
which secures for the individual, luxuries which he could not afford
otherwise.
Instead of buying so many books and magazines which wear out on the
shelves after one reading, let us "pool our issues" and put the
multitude of small sums in one fund, buy the best at the lowest prices,
and then use the volumes so bought for the good of all. We need spend no
more money each year for literature, but we need to save the wastage due
to unused books, foolish purchases, book agents, commissions, and
needless profits--and we can have a public library without other cost.
A good public library in this town may help our neighboring farmers as
well as our townspeople. They cannot support public libraries in their
small communities. Their small school libraries give the children a
taste for reading, but give them nothing to gratify that taste when
they leave school. Let us join our forces for mutual advantage and get a
better library and a wider community of interests.
WISCONSIN FREE LIBRARY COMMISSION.
USE OF LIBRARIES FOR REFERENCE
An ability to glean information quickly and accurately from books and
periodicals, to catch a fact when it is needed and useful, is an
indispensable factor in that self-education which all citizens should
add to the education obtained in the schools. The schools cannot give a
wide range of knowledge, but they can give the desire for knowledge, and
the library can give the opportunity to gain it.
Nearly every branch taught in the schools may be lightened and made more
interesting by supplementary information gained from a good library. The
pupil who is studying the life of Washington should find many
interesting facts concerning him and his time and associates, not given
in any of the formal biographies. He will find an article on Washington
in the "Young Folks' Cyclopedia of Persons and Places," but if he knows
how to use the index he can find fourteen other articles in the same
volume in which Washington is mentioned. A large encyclopedia will give
scores of facts wanted, under various articles treating of important
events in the latter colonial and earlier national history of our
country, in articles on places, customs, epochs, battles, and soldiers
and statesmen who were Washington's contemporaries.
A teacher cannot train a large number of young people to habits of
thorough investigation in a brief time, but she can easily train a few,
one or two at a time, and they will help to train others.
F. A. HUTCHINS.
THE MODERN LIBRARY MOVEMENT