One of the first principles of public library management is that of
adjusting it to the needs of its public, by whom and for whose benefit
and pleasure it is supported by the municipality. Upon this proposition
there has been no disagreement, as it is self-evident.
Questions of general policy arise when we attempt to decide what is
beneficial and what is detrimental, just how far we may go to supply
books for special and limited use, and just how far we may respond to
the popular taste in the demand for the expenditure of public funds for
pleasure.
The breadth and limitation of book buying should be determined by the
needs of the public rather than from the ratings of the books which are
being published. We should find the books that are best fitted for the
people who are to use them, rather than to try to fit the people to
the books which we may consider as the most desirable. The questions
so often raised as to the admittance to the library shelves of some
books of fiction of doubtful morals or the latest piece of erotic
literature seem very trivial when we consider the problems that face us
in the broad field of library work. The library is a public enterprise
for public good, and not merely a coöperative scheme for the purpose
of obtaining cheap reading, nor a bibliographical storehouse. The
important question is whether the books we are asked to buy will serve
any legitimate end of library service.
Most of our American cities resemble each other in the exceedingly
complex character of their population, each of whose varied elements
has more or less claim on the services of the public library. While
it is not possible to classify definitely the residents of a city for
library purposes, there are certain large groups which we may recognize.
In the first place, the public library has to serve, as libraries
of all times have served, those who have had all the advantages
of systematic education--those in the learned professions and in
other walks of life who have had given to them, through college and
university training, a wider vision than that of the average citizen;
those who have had given to them at least the knowledge of the
existence of the store of accumulated thought and of the records of
the past. Upon these more fortunate ones rests the responsibility, in
a large measure, of carrying the torch of knowledge and civilization
a little farther with each generation. The public library does not
pretend to act as a guide to this part of the community, but it must
serve as its laboratory and as its source of supply.
A second group which includes a large part of our population is made up
of those who have had the advantage of the full course of the grammar
school, with the smaller number who have had that of the high school.
From this group come not only the clerks in our stores and offices, but
men in the more skilled occupations, and also many business men and
employers of labor. Some of these are existing through gray, narrow,
uneventful, toilsome lives, while others take a large and leading part
in all that concerns the life of the community and in the moulding
of public opinion. It includes men of many creeds and civilizations,
prejudices, desires and ambitions; of many degrees of culture and
taste, high and low; influenced by very different inheritance,
associations and opportunities.
Some gain through application most of the advantages of the best
training, while others not only fail to make use of, but often
practically lose the education the city has given them. For the larger
number of this group there are great possibilities for good in the
means of education and cultivation which are now being provided by the
municipality.
How may the public library best meet the needs of these people, so many
and so diverse? How may it give to those who lack it that which will
enliven, improve, stimulate and cultivate, creating not only the desire
for what is best in life, but supplying the essence so far as it may
be gained from the stimulus and inspiration of books? How may we give
others the practical knowledge that is needed by them in their varied
occupations and activities?
Probably the most potential group in our cities is that large one
made up of the children of the immigrants. If they can be lifted by
education, if their taste can be guided and directed toward better
desires, the help which the library is able to give will act as a
tremendous force for good. If these children are left alone to indulge
in what is vicious and demoralizing in the life of the crowded sections
of the cities, they will become a menace to the municipal life. Their
parents have little to give them. The schools have on an average a
brief five years in which to influence these children, but they do send
them out with the power to read English. The public library may exert
its influence not only during their school life, but if it acquires a
hold upon them at that time, it will continue to be an influence for
good upon these future rulers of the city.
Is it not possible, in a small way at least, to cultivate their taste
and give them some desire to read what is worth while?
The broad base upon which city life rests is still another group made
up usually of the newcomers from many lands. A very large number have
little or no education excepting such as their toil has brought them.
Many are able to read their native tongue, but all their traditions and
all their lore is that of other lands and literatures. We find that
many of the more intelligent among them have brought, in addition to
their muscular strength, much that might enrich their adopted country
if it could find means of expression. They constitute a danger in our
life only when lacking the knowledge of our tongue, our ways and our
ideals, and when in ignorance of the adjustment of our government by
the popular will, they become the prey of the demagogue. He easily
gains a blind following among the ignorant by preaching class hatred
and a kind of discontent which is unrighteous.
Library work among these people should not only act as a safeguard, but
may prove an opportunity for some at least to attain a broader life by
awakening the desire for knowledge and the ability to grow which comes
with the reading habit and the knowing how to use books.
The public library has not only to carry out its mission to the
individuals of these groups as its part in social advancement, but it
has to coöperate in the work of betterment with the schools, and with
clubs and "movements" and with all manner of philanthropic and social
endeavor.
There is no lack of appreciation of this function of the public library
and we need not emphasize it any more than the service which it renders
promptly and liberally to the scholars and other leaders of the mental
life of the community. If we should fail to recognize our duty in
either respect, objection would be promptly expressed.
The real value of a public library as a municipal institution can be
best measured by its service toward building up a more intelligent,
hopeful and happier citizenship.
It is possible to help the immigrant through the writers of his native
tongue which bring him pleasure and pastime. We may even now help
him in his material progress in his new home by giving him elementary
books in English, from which he may acquire some knowledge of American
institutions and American life, and the time may come when we will
be able to do far more with great effect by having American books
translated into other tongues for this purpose.
We need to help by far the greater proportion of foreigners to acquire
English, because it is a tool which all must have in this country for
intelligent bread-winning purposes. We need to study the race history
of those represented in the population, and we should know something of
their conditions before coming to America; something of their education
and their mental development. Many sections of our large cities have
different problems in the amalgamation of the population and the
library should do what it can to help solve them.
A library agency in the neighborhood of these newcomers is a center
of real service and helpfulness. No work shows more definite results,
or is appreciated more than that which we do among the immigrants and
their children, who are often used as go-betweens by the parents and
the library.
While there are many agencies at work upon the children of the
immigrant, the library has a very important place and much
responsibility. No matter what the other demands may be, we cannot
afford to neglect these children, and we must make generous provision
to get them interested in good books through the schools and the
library.
Between the immigrants and their children at one extreme, and the
educational institutions and the scholar at the other, there is that
very large group of the community made up of the more or less educated
people, concerning whose needs and desires most of the questions on
bookbuying are raised. This is a reading group. A certain part of it
consumes tons and tons of newspapers and cheap magazines, the very
names of which are strange in libraries. This is the reading--perhaps
the only reading--of many of them, and we find that they go to the
newspapers for the stirring and morbid records of crime, for scandal,
for gambling news and other sensational matter, and they are reading
the magazines for stories of much the same character.
Such readers crave excitement; they seldom read a book for pleasure,
and they have never used the printed page for the purpose of obtaining
information since their school days. It seems vital that the public
library should find some meeting place with this section of the
community. The plane of the cultivated reader has no temptation
whatever. One must get down to earth to start growth, and the danger of
bending down is far less than that of keeping aloof by reason of too
high a standard. It is possible to do this without wholly giving up
our demand for good quality, and we may find popular books free from
vulgarity and from any pernicious influence, which, if properly used,
may create a zest for better books when they are offered.
In selecting books of different grades for the purpose of leading
readers from the poorer books to the better, we do, of course, put
before the readers of the better books a selection of descending
quality. Fortunately, however, there is little danger in this, for
there is a safeguard in the fact that a taste for the better books
carries with it a dislike to those of inferior quality.
It is well to remember also that even the lightest fiction selected by
the library is free from most of the objectionable qualities of the
reading indulged in by many readers whom we hope to reach.
As we advance in the scale of our readers, the demands upon the library
increase. More and more the library is becoming of commercial use. Not
only men of the various industries are finding use for the recorded
experiences and the advice of experts in their own lines, but business
men are beginning to find great possibilities in the use of books as
time-savers and as a help to efficiency. The use of the book as a tool
is becoming constantly greater, and the public library, as a matter
of course, is to supply all books which may be so used. It is the
plain duty of the public library to make known its ability to help its
community in these practical ways.
It would seem that wise book buying would result more often through a
study of the city rather than from the searching of book catalogs. The
public library perhaps more than any other educational institution may
receive help from social surveys, social engineering, and the records
of commercial organizations.
If a social survey has not been made of our city, we should at least
ascertain the elements which go to make up its population. Let us know
the types of people to be reached and their numbers. How many Americans
of native stock? How many residents of foreign birth? How many children
of foreign born parents? What are the races represented--English
speaking, Germanic, Slavic, Latin, etc.? What are the social and
economic conditions? What are their occupations? What of their
education and æsthetic development? These are pertinent questions for
the library.
Then let a search be made for the most attractive books for each group,
always remembering that there is a place for sound, clear, elementary
books on all subjects, and that these should be duplicated freely.
Let the business of the community be analyzed. Are there textile,
steel or wood industries? What manufacturing is done, and what raw
materials are used? What of its markets? What of its transportation?
What authoritative material may we find on all these subjects, and how
may we make it of valuable use? What is being done in our city for
the fine arts; for natural science; for the study of literature; for
religious and ethical teaching? How may we coöperate in all this work
by supplying the necessary books? Let there be a thorough understanding
of how and where good books may be used, and then let us consider the
breadth and limitation of our book buying.
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: One is tempted to linger over the flavor
which has been given to the wording of the next topic, "The open door,
through the book and the library; opportunity for comparison and
choice; unhampered freedom of choice," and if we do not linger longer
on this it is because we know that that flavor will be made permanent
after listening to the address itself of the speaker, Mr. CHARLES E.
McLENEGAN, librarian of the Milwaukee public library.
THE OPEN DOOR, THROUGH THE BOOK AND THE LIBRARY; OPPORTUNITY FOR
COMPARISON AND CHOICE; UNHAMPERED FREEDOM OF CHOICE
A professor in one of our large universities recently complained that
college students of the present day are so woefully ignorant of many
things that they could reasonably be expected to know. The exciting
cause of the professor's outburst was an attempt to get from his class
some information about Chanticleer. He was met by conservative and
judicious silence until one youth, who was not quite sure, ventured
the opinion that it was a popular song sung by Jane Addams. Of course
such an answer would irritate a Chicago man, and justly too, when we
consider that Miss Addams is what made Chicago famous.
But the wail of the professor provokes the question: Where do all the
scholars and thinkers of the world come from? What keeps up the breed?
What is it that fills in the ramshackle, ill-jointed, unpromising
frame of much of our school product, and returns us so much of fine
manhood and womanhood, and so much of the sound learning and ability
of the working world? We must, I think, admit that the world is fairly
furnished with men and women, intelligent and useful, whom no college
can claim. And every college has its quota of dunces who may never
be anything else. My professor made no discovery of an alarming
decadence, for what he complains of has always been true. We should not
be pessimistic about youth, and we must be fair to our schools. They
make better what we send them, but they have no science of alchemy.
Many men and women find their inspiration in schools. But after the
largest measure of allowance, it will be conceded that the amount of
scholarship and efficiency in the world far exceeds the output of
our scholastic plants. There are more of such people than schools
produce, and the surplus must be accounted for in some other way. This
surplus comes, somehow, from that vast throng who are, in a sense, the
forgotten children of modern education--those hundreds of thousands
who fall out of the ranks in school days, and yet who persist and
find themselves without the help of the schools. It is very fortunate
that this is so, for otherwise we might have to abandon some of our
weightiest political maxims. The world is governed by proverbs, but
as a rule of action, a proverb is as dangerous as dynamite. It is as
useful as a club in a political campaign. But Dr. Holmes was right:
proverbs should be sold in pairs so that one may correct the other as a
counter irritant.
One of the most venerable and mossy of these narcotic saws is that our
school systems are the bulwark of democracy. Undoubtedly presidents
could be elected on this platform alone, if you could find an opposing
party foolish enough to deny it. Yet schools can be the bulwark of
democracy only by a confusion of terms, by which we mean that education
and intelligence are the bulwarks of democracy. This we may grant;
but we are now speaking of something besides the three R's and things
that children learn in school. By education and intelligence, we mean
the resultant of many forces acting on one point. We may readily
admit that democracies like ours have only intelligence with which to
oppose the powers that tend to gather at the center or to fly off the
circumference.
It seems to me that what we call the education of our schools is a very
imperfect instrument for the work it is supposed to do. What do we say
first to that fifty per cent of the population who drop out of grammar
schools with only the most elementary and inadequate knowledge of the
three R's? What has the school given them with which to fight the
battles of democracy? It is not only the spur of necessity which drives
youth to labor so early. That is undoubtedly one cause. There are also
the profound weariness and distaste which come of forever seeking from
the text-book page, from the teacher's voice, and from the gradgrind
drill for something to awaken the mind where the mind has no interest.
Germany has been the first to see this failure of the common school
to equip the majority; the killing effect of one sort of training for
every type of mind. Witness the system of continuation schools for
those who find themselves after beginning the bread and butter work
of life. Witness the compulsion of the employer to devote part of the
apprentice time to special instruction in the chosen craft. Even the
unused moments of garrison life in the army are not wasted. Everywhere
the progress of Germany is prolonging the school day in the discovery
of aptitude, and in the cultivation of it after it has been discovered.
In our English-speaking world we are trying to find the same thing in
our trade schools, in our manual training, in our vocational education,
in the many things which we perhaps hastily call fads in education.
They all indicate a reaching after something which is not now attained;
a search for an awakening influence on minds that are now dormant; for
something to light the inward eye. In all there is the implication
of a need which has not been met. These things are the evidence that
the diet of public education is not varied enough to nourish all the
children of the commonwealth, to awaken the dormant power for SOME
THING that lies somewhere in most of humanity.
"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed."
Public education has given long and careful thought to those who
remain in school. It is just becoming conscious of the great majority
who do not remain--the great majority whom necessity, choice, or lack
of adaptation of the school to the child drive yearly into the rough
school of life. At present the best that schools do for these is to
provide each child with the means of self education--the ability to
read. But we are to remember that this is only one of the instruments
of education; it is not education itself. It is no discovery, and
it needs little observation to point out, that with this instrument
of reading, the newspaper, the magazine and the book are the potent
educators of our day. They are, or should be, the bulwark of democracy.
I am not concerned to discuss this further than to show that what we
have vaguely depended solely upon our schools to do, is not done by
them, and never has been done by them. For the great mass, our schools
give each child the one open sesame--reading. There they leave him to
open what doors he can and will.
Before I suffer as a heretic, let me quote a really thoughtful man,
Thomas Carlyle, called by a breezy miss in our last civil service
examination "the great English apostle of hope." You remember that, in
speaking of the origin of universities, Carlyle in his Heroes said,
"If we think of it, all that a university or final highest school can
do for us is still but what the first school began doing--teach us to
read. The place where we are to get knowledge is the books themselves.
It depends on what we read after all manner of professors have done
their best for us. The true university of these days is a collection
of books." Possibly there is a little something "proverbial" about
this, and perhaps it should be mixed with a trifle of Mark Hopkins on
the end of a log. But a collection of books, be it large or small, is
a library. That definition still holds, though we may have to include
"skittles and beer" after awhile. It is quite clear that this aspect
of a library as a distinct and active factor in education has only of
late impressed itself upon the public mind. It marks the library as a
vitalized public utility, from which we are to expect more than has yet
been received. Even the best of schools has its limitations because
of the inflexibility of its courses of study, and it may fail, often
does fail, to touch with any spark of living fire. But the library may
provide something for every type of mind. The library cannot create
mind or the will and disposition to use it, any more than the school
can. But where the desire to feed any mental craving exists, it would
be a very poor library indeed that cannot satisfy it in some degree.
This power of the right book to supplement the school, or even to take
the place of it, is not yet comprehended in any fullness in our public
education. But it is just in this power of the book that a library has
one of its best reasons for being, and it is for this reason that, when
the library comes into its own, it will be a most important factor in
education. Let us see to it that one door is kept open for those who
discover themselves after school days are gone. There are thousands
who fail to grasp their opportunities in the way and at the time that
schools prescribe that they should. Some of these find themselves by
living, by working, by accident it may be, or by any of the infinite
ways in which humanity adjusts itself to its surroundings. For them the
library is a path into fields of learning, into avenues of power that
make all things possible. Here is the college of our self-educated man.
There is no mystery about it. It is the natural result of following the
inward light. We know that the better part of education is what we give
ourselves.
One should not use a single instance to prove a principle. It is not
merely bad logic; it is not logic. Yet the fact that everyone who deals
either with people or with books knows many such cases shows that
the experience is universal. One day not long ago, as I sat alone
in the office, a lad came in. "Mister, do you buy the books here?" I
admitted complicity. "Will you buy one that I want?" I asked what it
was. "Chickens." To cut the story short, I asked him to sit down and
we talked about chickens, for I am something of a farmer. I found that
he had read everything in the library on poultry and was hungry for
more. He knew the hen intimately. He had mastered the genealogy, the
sociology, the psychology, and the "Why" of hens. Furthermore, while he
was doing time in school, he was also carrying on a successful chicken
business on a city lot, from which business he had wrung two thousand
hard dollars, which he had safely in the bank. He had already marked
down a little farm near the city which would be his as soon as he had
"completed his education" in the grammar school, and then he would make
the feathers fly. I am glad to say he got his book, and I added another
lesson to the many my boys have taught me.
What is our concern with this lad? He is a type of what I have in
mind. I do not value him for his ability to make money. Men make money
who aren't worth a cent. I measure him by his value as a producer, by
his value to humanity as an example, and by his value to a library as
a walking delegate for free and unrestricted choice in books. He is
an educated man, joyfully occupied in something which engages every
faculty of his mind, which he loves, understands, and has mastered for
himself. Your country and mine will be the better the more they can
grow of that sort of man. He has made good; he has arrived. And to
arrive somewhere, under your own steam, is a great thing in life. You
might not get the answer you were looking for, but you could not get a
foolish answer, if you asked him of Chanticleer.
Lest I be misunderstood, I repeat for a moment. Schools must be
systematized. They must follow a course of study. Unhappily, what is
called economy dictates that the young must be herded together in
droves, graded by their ability to do one or two things into groups of
presumptively equal power, equal ability to comprehend and to labor,
and of similar tastes. It is the best that modern education has been
able to do in the schools. Yet every one of these presumptions of
equality is false. In spite of the Declaration of Independence, no two
people on earth are equal except in their right to live, move and have
their being. But on this educational bed of Procrustes each soul of our
Anglo-Saxon race lays him down to pleasant dreams. Alas for him whose
mental legs are too long, or too short, to fit the couch! Dreams? For
some they are nightmares! Just because of this narrowness of public
education, because of its inability to touch all types of mind, we have
that endless procession, out and ever out, from our schools.
It is not my wish to take a hopeless view of education. There is no
reason for taking such a view. I wish merely to emphasize a fact
which has always been true, but a fact of which we are just becoming
conscious. The problem of education in the days that are coming is to
adjust our machinery so that these lost products shall be lessened. In
this readjustment the library will have its place as a recognized and
systematic factor in "the greatest business of the state."
The open door through the library and the book has a pleasant sound.
Yet probably the most surprising fact in actual experience is the
helplessness of even intelligent people in using books. The address
of Prof. Chamberlain, delivered before this association a year ago,
did not overstate the case of the schools. But schools are beginning
to meet the issue, and in time they will remedy the conditions for
those who are fortunate enough to remain in schools. But always for
us will remain that contingent who drop out of school, in days before
the school can reach them with this gospel of the book. The school has
lost them, and, if ever they find the open door through the book, it
will be by chance, or because the library itself opens the door. It
rests with us to proclaim our mission to them. Of course every good
library has always taught those insistent ones who knocked at its
doors. But the library has been a passive agent of this education, not
an active one. A public library, in my judgment, should be equipped
with the necessary apparatus to conduct this work systematically, to
propagate its own use, to spread the gospel of the open door among the
people whom it serves. If this seems a violent innovation, I beg you
to consider it from the schoolmaster's point of view, as well as from
the librarian's. Here is a great body of people in every community
whom other agencies have taught to read, who depend upon reading to
return service to the state and to promote their own welfare. On
the other side, the library, with the admitted duty of furthering
education through the book. Does it not rest with the library to teach
persistently, systematically, and by every practicable means, how
and where to find what to read? The means of doing this is another
matter, but for the expediency of it, and the need of it, examine in
any considerable community, the roster of the great correspondence
schools, and reflect how many people are groping their way out of
darkness toward the light. What people pay for, as they do for this
instruction, they want; and what these learners get for their money,
they should have for nothing in any public library. When we teach how
and where to find what to read, the open door through the library and
the book will have some meaning for every man, woman and child who can
simply read. All the artificial barriers that stand between the reader
and his book will go; the barrier in the book itself will largely be
removed, and the library will reach through intelligent choice many of
those who are counted down and out by the schools: the thoughtful man
who has come to realize the possibilities of his work: the one who has
waited long to find his aptitude; the timid; the hesitant; the shy and
distrustful; the misunderstood; those who see the "dawn of a tomorrow."
The procession is endless, and each has his human need, which runs the
gamut from utility to the highest joys of life. We talk so much about
the struggle for existence that we forget that the best thing in life
is just to live. Not all reading is for material profit; some of it is
for happiness, and that happiness is purest and most complete which we
find for ourselves. It is the discovery of one's own light that brings
the abiding joy. What man or woman cannot look back to the inspiration
of some finding of his own for which he owes no one but his Creator?
These are the finest moments of life.
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken."
So said Keats upon first looking into Chapman's Homer. To express the
rapture of the poet is given only to the poet. But the pure joy of
finding for ourselves some of the true and beautiful with which we are
in harmony, is reward enough. Whether we look upon our library as a
source of recreation, of happiness or profit (and it is all of these)
this army, who have fallen out of the ranks in the onward march of
education in the school, seem to be our especial wards. To open the
door through the book for them is a work worth doing, not as a means of
salvation, but as a means of sowing more efficiency and more happiness
among men. Ours is not the schoolmaster's task of teaching things: it
is the nobler task of showing humanity how to teach itself.
And, while we speak of missions, the library need not take itself too
seriously. The world is not looking to us for the salvation of mankind.
When all is done that can be done, there will still be those who will
not read, and who will follow the primrose path after their natures.
There are many agencies in life that work for good and the library is
one, not the only one. Our field is clear-cut and well-defined--to
extend the use of books. There seems to be a sort of nervous notion
abroad that one of the chief ends of libraries is to draw a crowd
and put a nice book into every hand. I do not know about all these
enrichments of our libraries as I read of them. Have books any
compelling power over those who merely come into their presence, unless
such people love the books or at least wish to read them? Of this I
have no doubt: There are enough who care to use our libraries, if we
can take away that helpless bewilderment which overcomes those who are
cast adrift, without rudder or compass, upon a sea of books. Teach them
the ways in which books may be made to yield their treasures. Open
that door in youth if possible, and it will be the best possession
which youth carries into manhood. But open it sometime, for the real
harvest time is when he who wishes to read, reads what he wants. It
might be more soul-satisfying to me to hand out to my chicken boy books
that minister to more attenuated needs--but what about the boy? Is he
not better that he finds for himself in the book what feeds his mind?
The glory and power of the library is that he who can merely read,
may there find what the in-dwelling spirit asks for. It is good that
there should be one place in education where there is no brimstone and
treacle, no Mr. Squeers, and no Smikes. "For books are not absolutely
dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active
as the soul whose progeny they are."
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: A curiosity which has existed since libraries
were first started is about to be gratified. We are to get the answer
to the question, "What do the people want?" from MISS JESSIE WELLES, of
the Carnegie library of Pittsburgh.