Part 23

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 ought to be ignored by all public bodies, and that this is in some way a part of our American system of government and public administration. It is, of course, a feature of that administration to treat all religious bodies with absolute impartiality; but that does not involve ignoring their existence any more than treating all citizens with impartiality involves the ignoring of the individual. One way of being impartial, of course, is to turn one’s back equally upon all, but that is not the only way. One may treat one’s children alike by starving all of them equally, but our idea of impartial treatment would be better satisfied by an equality of adequate supplies.

It is time that the public library and the Church stopt the starvation treatment and began to mete out to each other a supply of the aid and good-will that each has at its disposal. Each has its fight to make against the forces of darkness; neither is in a position to neglect an ally.

THE FUTURE OF LIBRARY WORK

When a railroad train is on its way, its future history depends on which way it is heading, on its speed, and on whether its direction and its speed will remain unchanged. With these premises, one may confidently predict that a train which left Chicago at a given hour on one day will reach New York at a given hour on the next. Of course, something may happen to slow the train, or to wreck it, or even to send it back to Chicago, in which cases our predictions will come to naught. This is what the weather man finds. His predictions are based on very similar data. Our weather conditions travel usually across the continent from west to east at a fairly uniform rate. If that rate is maintained, and the direction does not change, and nothing happens to dissipate or alter the conditions, we can predict their arrival at a given place with a fair degree of accuracy. Those who rail at the weather man’s mistakes are simply finding fault with our present inability to ascertain the causes that slow up storm centers, or swerve them in their course, or dissipate them. When we know these things, and know in addition what starts them, we can give up making forecasts and write out a pretty definite weather time-table--as definite and as little subject to change, at any rate, as those issued by the railroads.

My business at this moment is that of a forecaster. We know just where and what the library situation is at present, and some of us think we know where it is headed. If it should keep on in the same direction and at the same rate, we ought to be able to describe it as it will be, say, in 1950. Of course, it may get headed in some other direction. It may slow down or speed up; it may melt away or strike a rock and be irrecoverably wrecked. If I see any chances of any of these things, it is my business to mention them. If my forecast should turn out a failure no one can prove it until 1950 arrives, and then I shall not care.

To begin with the necessary preliminaries of our forecast--what and where are we now? I have said that I know; probably you think that you do; but as a matter of fact our knowledge is neither comprehensive nor accurate. We need a general library survey. We have, as a sort of statistical framework, the figures now printed annually in tabular form in the A.L.A. Proceedings, but probably no one would maintain that these do, or possibly could, give an adequate idea of the character or extent of the work that our libraries are doing. Those of us who think we know something of it have gained our knowledge by experience and observation and neither is extensive enough in most cases to take the place of a well-considered and properly-managed survey of existing conditions and methods.

In default of a survey, we must, as I have said, fall back upon observation and experience. I can certainly claim no monopoly of these, and what I say in this regard is, of course, largely personal. But it seems to me that the distinguishing marks of library work, as at present conducted, include the following. As you will see, they are all connected and overlap more or less. They are all growth-products. They are:

1 Size and expense. 2 Socialization. 3 Professionalization. 4 Popularization. 5 Nationalization.

First, library work in our country to-day is large and costly. Extensively it covers a great territory and reaches a huge population. Intensively it embraces a large variety of activities--many that one would hesitate, on general principles, to class as “library work.”

Secondly, a large amount of this increase of activity has been of a kind that we are now apt to call “social.” It deals with bodies or classes of people, and it tends to treat these people as the direct objects of the library’s attention, instead of dealing primarily with books, as formerly, and only indirectly with their readers. In fact, the persons with whom the library now deals may not be readers at all, except potentially, as when they are users of club or assembly rooms.

Thirdly, librarians are beginning to think of themselves as members of a profession. At first sight this may seem to be a fact of interest only to library workers, and not at all to the public. Its significance may appear if we compare it to the emergence of the modern surgeon with his professional skill, traditions and pride, from the medieval barber who simply followed blood-letting as an avocation. Professionalism is a symptom of a great many things--of achievement and of consciousness of it and pride in it; of a desire to do teamwork and to maintain standards; to make sure that one’s work is to be carried on and advanced by worthy successors.

Fourthly, libraries are now conducted for the many; not for the few. It is our aim to provide something for every one who can read, no matter of what age, sex, or condition. We do not even limit ourselves to readers, for we provide picture books for those who are too young to read. We are transferring the emphasis of our work from books to people. This characteristic is closely connected with what I have called “socialization,” but it is not the same thing. An institution may deal with all the people without dealing with them socially or in groups; and it may deal entirely with groups without dealing with everybody. The library now does both.

Fifthly, the library is now a national institution, at least in the same sense as is the public school. It is national in extent, national in consciousness, if not national in administration. Our own association has played its part in this development; the present war has given it a great stimulus. Those who see no nationalism without complete centralization and who say that we are not yet a nation because all our governmental powers are not centered at Washington, will doubtless deny the nationalization of the library. They take too narrow a view.

We may now combine two or more lines of inquiry. In what direction is the library moving in each of these respects? Is it speeding or slowing up? Is there any reason to look for speeding or slowing up in the future?

As regards size and cost, our development has been swift. We cannot, it seems to me, keep up the rate. Twenty years ago the institutions now constituting the New York Public Library circulated a million books. They now circulate ten million. Does anyone believe that twenty years hence they will circulate one hundred million? There must be further increase, because we are not now reaching every person and every class in the community, but it will not and cannot be a mere increase of quantity. We must do our work better and make every item and element in it tell. We must substitute one book well read for ten books skimmed. In place of ten worthless books we must put one that as worth while. There are already signs of this substitution of quality for quantity in our ideals.

Extension, as opposed to intension, has appealed to many enthusiastic librarians as “missionary work.” Perhaps the term is well chosen. Some of it is akin to the missionary fervor that sends funds to convert the distant heathen when nominal Christians around the corner are vainly demanding succor, material, mental and spiritual. We have too much of this in the library; attempts to form boys’ clubs with artificial aims and qualifications when clubs already formed to promote objects that are very real in the members’ minds are ignored or neglected; the provision of boresome talks on “Rubber-culture in Peru” and on “How I climbed Long’s Peak,” when members of the community would be genuinely interested in hearing an expert explain the income tax; the purchase of new books that nobody wants when an insistent demand for old standards of sterling worth has never been adequately met; all sorts of forcing from the outside instead of developing from the inside. This kind of thing, like charity, begins properly at home, and the real missionary takes care to set his own house in order before he goes far afield--to fill the nearby demand, when it is good, before attempting to force something on those who do not want it.

It is in this direction that our promise of continued progress lies when we cannot see grounds for expecting great future increase of income.

This leads us naturally to discuss what I have called our socialization, which is just beginning. It is running strong, but there is room for a long course, and that course, I believe, it will take. In the first place, we are functioning more and more as community centers, but there is enormous room for advance. We are straggling all along the line, which is one sign of an early stage. Some of us have not yet awakened to the fact that we are destined to play a great part in community development and community education. Others are reluctantly yielding to pressure. Others have gone so fast that they are in advance of their communities. Take, if you please, the one item of the provision of space for community meetings, regarded by some as the be-all and the end-all of the community center idea. It is really but one element, but it may serve as a straw to show which way the wind blows. Some libraries are giving no space for this purpose; some give it grudgingly, with all sorts of limitations; others give quite freely. None of us give with perfect freedom. I suppose we in St. Louis are as free as any. In 15 assembly and clubrooms we house 4,000 meetings yearly. Our only limitations are order and the absence of an admission fee. I incline to think that the maintenance of order should be the only condition. If an admission fee is charged, part of it should go to the library, to be devoted to caring for the assembly and clubrooms and improving them. There are many community gatherings that can be best administered on the plan of a paid admission. These ought not to be excluded. Most of our restrictions are simply exhibits of our reluctance to place ourselves at the complete social disposal of the community. A community is not a community unless it has political and religious interests. If we are going to become socialized at all, why balk at these any more than we should exclude from our shelves books on politics and religion? I look to see socialization, in this and other directions, proceed to such lengths that the older library ideals may have to go entirely by the board. Some of them are tottering now. I have said that I consider this matter of the use of assembly rooms only one item in what I have called socialization. It may all be summed up by saying that we are coming to consider the library somewhat in the light of a community club, of which all well-behaved citizens are members. Our buildings are clubhouses, with books and magazines, meeting rooms, toilet facilities, kitchens--almost everything, in fact, that a good, small club would contain. If you say “then they have ceased to be libraries and are something else,” that does not affect me any more than when you show that we are no longer speaking Chaucer’s language or wearing the clothes of Alfred the Great.

When we were trying to explain to the architects of the New York branch buildings exactly what we wanted in those structures and met with the usual misconception based on medieval ideas of a library, one of the most eminent architects in the United States suddenly sat up and took notice. “Why, these buildings are not to be _libraries_ at all,” he said, “they are to be reading clubs.” He had learned in a few minutes what many of us still see through a glass darkly.

An even more important manifestation of what I have called socialization is the extension of occupation groups to which the library is giving special attention and special service. The library has always had in mind one or more of these groups. Once it catered almost entirely to a group of scholars, at first belonging predominantly to the clergy. In later years it added the teachers in schools and their pupils, also the children of the community. These are definite groups, and their recognition in the rendition of service is a social act. Other groups are now being added with rapidity, and we are recognizing in our service industrial workers, business men, artists of various kinds, musicians and so on. The recognition of new groups and the extension of definite library service to them is progress in socialization, and it is going on steadily at the present time.

Just now the most conspicuous group that we are taking in is that of business men. In adjusting our resources and methods to the needs of this group we are changing our whole conception of the scope of a library’s collection. As Mr. Dana has pointed out, we now collect, preserve and distribute not books alone, but printed matter of all kinds, and in addition records of other types, such as manuscripts, pictures, slides, films, phonograph discs and piano rolls. Some of these of course are needed to adapt our collection to others than the business group--to educators, artists or musicians. We shall doubtless continue to discover new groups and undergo change in the course of adaptation to their needs.

The recognition of special groups and the effort to do them service has proceeded to a certain extent outside the pubic library, owing to the slowness of its reaction to this particular need. The result has been the special library. I am one of those who are sorry that the neglect of its opportunity by the public library has brought this about, and I hope for a reduction in the number of independent special libraries by a process of gradual absorption and consolidation. The recent acquisition of some formerly independent municipal reference libraries by the local libraries is a case in point. There must always be special libraries. The library business of independent industrial and commercial institutions is best cared for in this way. But every group that is merely a section of the general public, set apart from the rest by special needs and tastes, may be cared for most economically by the public library. If its service is not adapted to give such care, rapid and efficient adjustment is called for.

In a library forecast made several years ago, Mr. John C. Dana stated his opinion that the library, as it is, “an unimportant by-product,” is to be of importance in the future, but will then have departed from the “present prevailing type.” Without necessarily agreeing to our present insignificance, we may well accept, I think, this forecast of future growth and change.

Professionalization, too, has by no means reached its limit. As has been pointed out, it is a symptom, rather than the thing itself. It is like a man’s clothes, by which you can often trace the growth or decay of his self-respect. Pride in one’s work and a tendency to exalt it is a healthy sign, provided there is something back of it. The formation of staff associations like that recently organized in New York is a good sign, so is the multiplication of professional bodies. The establishment of the A.L.A. in 1876 was the beginning of the whole library advance in this country. It was only a symptom, of course, but with the healthy growth of libraries I look for more signs of our pride in what we are doing, of our unwillingness to lower it or to alter its ideals.

The familiar question, “Is librarianship a profession?” reduces to a matter of definition. We are being professionalized for the purposes of this discussion if we are growing sufficiently in group consciousness to let it react favorably on our work.

One of the earliest developments of a feeling of professional pride in one’s work is an insistence on the adequate training of the workers and on the establishment of standards of efficiency both for workers and work. Here belongs a forecast not only of library school training, but of official inspection and certification, of systems of service, etc. Standardization of this kind is on the increase and is bound to be enforced with greater strictness in the future. In our professional training as in other professions the tendency is toward specialization. With us, this specialization will doubtless proceed on the lines of facilities for practice. An engineering school cannot turn out electrical engineers if the only laboratories that it has are devoted to civil and mechanical engineering. A specialist in abdominal surgery is not produced by experience in a contagious disease ward. Similarly we ought not to expect a school remote from public library facilities to specialize in public library work, or a school in close connection with a public library to produce assistants for the work of a university library. Increasing professional spirit among us will demand specialization according to equipment.

Popularization, some may think, has already gone to the limit. How can we be more of the people than we are to-day? Are we not, in sooth, a little too democratic, perhaps? Personally I feel that a good deal of the library’s social democracy is on the surface. Any member of a privileged class will assure you that his own class constitutes “the people” and that the rest do not matter. The Athenians honestly thought that their country was a democracy, when it was really an oligarchy of the most limited kind. England honestly thought she had “popular” government when those entitled to vote were a very small part of the population. A library in a city of half a million inhabitants honestly thinks that a record of 100,000 cardholders entitles it to boast that its use extends to the whole population. We cannot say that we reach the whole number of citizens until we really do reach them. The school authorities can go out to the highways and hedges and compel them to come in; we cannot. Herein doubtless lies one of our advantages. Our buildings are filled with willing users. It is our business to universalize the desire to read as the schools are universalizing the ability. But we have not yet done so, and popularization proceeds slowly. I cannot say that I see many indications of speeding up in the rate, although our increase in the recognition of groups, noted above, may have an influence here in future. As groups develop among that part of the population that uses the library least, our opportunity to extend our influence over that part will present itself. One such group is ready for us but we have never reached it--that of union labor. The recognition of the unions by the library and of the library by the unions has been unaccountably delayed, despite sporadic, well-meant, but ineffective efforts on both sides. No more important step for the intellectual future of the community can be taken than this extension of service.

Nationalization has just begun. It is speeding up and will go far, I am sure, in the next twenty years. Our libraries are getting used to acting as a unit. We should not like administrative nationalization and I see no signs of it; but nationalization in the sense of improved opportunities for team work and greater willingness to avail ourselves of them we shall get in increasing measure. For instance, one of our greatest opportunities lies before us in the inter-library loan. It knocks at our door, but we do not heed it because in this respect we have not begun yet to think nationally. But having begun national service in the various activities brought to the front by the war, we shall not, I am sure, lag behind much longer. The national organization of the A.L.A. has long provided us with a framework on which to build our national thoughts and our national deeds, but hitherto it has remained a mere scaffolding, conspicuous through the absence of any corresponding structure. The war is teaching us both to think and to act nationally, and after it is over I shall be astonished if we are longer content to do each his own work. Our work is nationwide, in peace as in war and our tardy realization of this fact may be one of the satisfactory by-products of this world conflict.

Now it is not beyond the possibilities that the library movement, headed right and running free, may still fall because it meets some obstacle and goes to pieces. Are there any such in sight? I seem to see several, but I believe that we can steer clear. If we split on anything it will be on an unseen rock, and of such, of course, we can say nothing.

One rock is political interference. The library has had trouble with it of old and some of us are still struggling with it. It is assumed by those who put their trust in paper civil service that it has now been minimized. This overlooks the undoubted fact that in a great number of cases the civil service machinery has been captured by politicians, and now works to aid them, not to control them. The greatest danger of political interference in public libraries, now lies in well-meant efforts to turn them over to some local commission established to further the merit system, but actually working in harmony with a political machine.

Another rock on which we may possibly split is that of formalism. Machinery must be continually scrapped and replaced if progress is to be made. It will not grow and change like an organism. The library itself is subject to organic growth and change, but its machinery will not change automatically with it. If we foster in any way an idea that our machinery is sacred, that it is of permanent value and that conditions should conform to it instead of its conforming to them, our whole progress may come to an end. I have called this a rock, but it is rather a sort of Sargasso Sea where the library may whirl about in an eternity of seaweed.

Another obstacle, somewhat allied to this of formalism, is the “big head”--none the less dangerous because it is common and as detrimental to an institution as it is to an individual. Just as soon as a person, or an institution, sits down and begins to appreciate himself or itself, to take stock of the services he or it is rendering the community, to wonder at their extent and value, those services are in a fair way to become valueless. The proper attitude is rather that of investigation to discover further possible kinds of service, with the exercise of ingenuity in devising ways to render them effectively.