Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

We have been lightly skimming the surface of a subject vital to all who have to do with the production and distribution of books--to authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, a...

Especially is this desirable in making the distinction, already emphasized at the opening of this paper, between what the community wants and what it needs. The fever patient wh...

We have occasionally been accused of taking the attitude of self-laudation, but I really do not think there is great danger of an epidemic of this malady. We do not receive enou...

I like so much one of Mr. Hicks’s expressions that I desire to emphasize it at the close of what I am saying. A library, used for teaching purposes in a school, is indeed, “a co...

I am not proposing plans, here or elsewhere, to perform the addition of plus and minus quantities that is so easy in pure algebra; I am merely pointing out their existence. From...

But even this is not all. It is a maxim of this strenuous age that all things are good or bad according to the results to which they lead, not in the narrow sense that “the end...

There were doubtless poets before the invention of alphabets, and one may appreciate a symphony concert without knowing his musical alphabet or being able to use it; but we are...

As regards children’s work there seem to be at present two tendencies--one toward complete isolation and one in the opposite direction. Will our grandchildren, when they go to t...

A board of trustees is the supreme authority in a library. I would have this fact realized in its fullest meaning by both trustees and librarian. And I would have the board exer...

Possibly you think that I have been applying the principle of conflict between progression and stagnation somewhat carelessly--now to your own training as librarians and again t...

I am confident that any of the plans about which I have spoken unfavorably above would work better under a good librarian than the best would work under a bad one. But I forget...

Here we may pause for a moment to ask: What right has a library to inflict any penalties at all? I must leave the full discussion of this question to the lawyers, but I am quite...

“(1) A short time ago one of the patrons of Station 27 sent in a slip asking to have his book renewed, and requested that we send him information on peace conferences. The latte...

In this way; records stand, but the things that they record progress. We must go to the library to find out where humanity stands on the road and what lies before us. If our pub...

But there may also be mal-employment in the course of work of undoubted advantage to the library and its public. If in the course of such work something is done that sets it bac...

I once heard a man of great intelligence, the ex-president of a small college, firmly maintain that if one had a basketful of letters of the alphabet, written on cards, and dump...

The getting-together of public library and church has possibly been hampered in the past by an idea, common to both librarian and clergyman, that religious bodies and their work...

A lay board of directors or a lay departmental head, then, is simply and properly a representative of a greater lay body that is particularly anxious for results and not particu...

There is perhaps some doubt whether we should include in this sort of material musical records, either for the mechanical organ and piano or for the phonograph. These should pos...

In assignment of members of the staff to grades, existing conditions were recognized as far as possible, with no immediate attempt to remedy faults that might exist therein. Sta...

But what if two of our doctors disagree? Then follow the advice of both. It might be disastrous for a patient to take two kinds of medicine, but it can never hurt a library to c...

Books, or no books, his educational development goes on, at home, among his playmates, in his chosen work in shop, farm or office, but the use of books gives it a wider relation...

If we were allowed to charge for our privileges I believe we could turn ourselves into a money-making institution on this count of publicity alone. I believe that it would be pr...

Boundary regions are always interesting. Close to the line separating two regions of fact or of thought cluster the examples that fascinate us. Kipling’s stories of India are so...

I should be understood better, perhaps, if I said “Civil service in the library”; but the civil service is so called merely in distinction to the military service, and there can...

And how about the librarian of to-morrow? Perhaps it may be as well to leave him or her for future consideration; but I cannot help saying just a word. May it not be that in the...

The earliest efforts at standardization among librarians were directed toward cataloguing; and probably cataloguers are our greatest sticklers for a rigid adherence to rules. Th...

How may the librarian, or anyone else, bring system to bear on such an evanescent thing as this? It is a hard matter, indeed. But can it be denied that a well-oiled library mach...

Now the true lover is he who loves the soul--who sees beyond clothes and bodily attributes, and cherishes nobility of character, strength of intellect, loftiness of purpose, swe...

I have not lived west of the Mississippi long enough to know whether the same conditions obtain here as in the East; but there, comparing things to-day with what I remember of m...

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