Part 5

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 exercise its supremity in what may be called the American manner. The people constitute the supreme authority both in Great Britain and in the United States. In the former country, however, this authority is symbolized by the person of a monarch, who reigns but does not govern; and the minutest details of administration are attended to by the people in the persons of their parliamentary representatives and of the cabinet, which is, in effect, a parliamentary committee. In this country, on the other hand, we entrust administrative details very largely to our chief magistrate and his personally appointed advisers. We tell him what to do and leave him to do it as he thinks best; and though Congress is disposed at times to interfere in the details of administration, these usually consist more largely of departmental decisions and rulings than of definite provisions of a legislative act. The President of the United States is the people’s general executive officer and administrative expert in precisely the same sense that the librarian occupies that office in his own library. Congress and the board of trustees bear similar relations to these officers. And although this may be carrying the comparison of small things with great to the point of absurdity, it shows clearly that the American idea of delegated authority is to make the authority great and the corresponding responsibility strict. That the best results have been attained in this country by following out this plan in all fields, from the highest government positions to the humblest commercial posts, seems to be undoubted; and I believe that the library has been a conspicuous example.

Appoint a good man, then, as your administrative expert; give him a free rein, but not in the sense of following him to dictate the whole policy of your library. Decide for yourselves the broad lines of that policy, relying on your own common sense together with his expert advice; require him to follow out those lines to a successful issue, and hold him responsible for the outcome. So doing you shall fulfil, so far as the limited vision of one librarian enables him to see, the whole duty of a trustee.

THE DAY’S WORK: SOME CONDITIONS AND SOME IDEALS[5]

What is the library for? What are we, who are in charge of it, to do with it? What point are we striving to reach, and how shall we get there?

First of all, the library is a collection of books. Books are to be used by reading them. The whole machinery of the library, its buildings, its departments, its regulations, its disciplined staff, are to bring together the reader and the books. Whatever auxiliary work the library may undertake, this must be its first task.

Now to what end is this done? A book from the material point of view is so much leather, paper and printer’s ink, but on the intellectual and spiritual side it is a storage battery of ideas. To put a book into a reader’s hand is to complete a mysterious circuit between the writer’s and the reader’s mind. This charging of the mind with ideas is what we call education. To the physiologist it is a mere modification of brain structure; to the economist and the historian it spreads further out; it is a modification of the individual’s action toward the whole world; it is the alteration of the world’s present status and future history. Education cannot be accomplished by books alone; it can even be accomplished wholly without them; but if they are used properly, there is no one agent that can do more for education than these devices for the storage and transmission of ideas. That the library is an educational institution is now generally recognized. It is common to call it an adjunct to the school, or to speak of it as continuing the work of the school. That the school and the library should work hand in hand where it is possible, goes without saying. But I think we may properly object to any phraseology that implies the subordination of the library to the school. The library stores books and makes them available. Part of the school’s work also is to make available the contents of books. The library may continue the work of the school; but so in some cases may the school merely complete the work of the library. Many a student has received his first inspiration and instruction in the library and has been thereby stimulated to enter a regular course of study. It is better to let the library stand on its own merits as an instructional agent. The difference between it and the school, fundamentally, is that the library’s educational energy is chiefly potential while that of the school is, or should be, dynamic. Yet though the library is only a potential force--energy in storage--the library plus the librarian may and should be dynamic too. We then have in both school and library the book and the teacher, with the difference that in the school the book is only the teacher’s tool, while in the library the librarian exists to care for the book, to place it in his hands who needs it, and to make it effective.

But when we have emphasized the educational side of the library’s activity we have by no means exhausted its field. Its recreative function is hardly less important. A very large proportion of the library’s users go to it for recreation or relaxation. They obtain this, of course, in the same way that they obtain education from books, namely, by the acquisition of new ideas or mental images. The recreation comes in from the fact that these ideas temporarily distract the attention from other ideas connected with daily work and worry, and that they ease the brain in the same way that a strained muscle may be eased by gentle exercise. Evidently it is impossible to draw a line between these two classes of a library’s activity. A zoological or a botanical garden is an educational institution, so is an art museum. Yet the large majority of those who go to them do so for amusement, and the educational benefits obtained are incidental. Those benefits, however, are none the less real, and it would evidently be impossible to give separate statistics of those who have made educational and recreative use of the institution. Yet we find people trying to do this very thing in the case of the public library, which case is quite comparable with those stated above. It is assumed, in the first place, that the use of fiction is purely recreative, while that of non-fiction is educational; and, in the second place, that the recreative use of the library is to be condemned or at least discouraged, in comparison with the other. That either of these can be sustained is very doubtful. The attempted subordination of the recreative work of the library to the educational is at best invidious. Each has its place in the scheme of things and comparison in this case is worse than odious, it is misleading. Further, it is positively impossible to draw a line between educational and recreative books. So far as motives go, one may read Gibbon for entertainment and Madame de Stael’s “Corinne” as an Italian guide book. So far as results are concerned, the intelligent reader always acquires new ideas as he reads; and in most cases the very same idea may and does have both an educational and a recreative function. But although we can draw no line, it is quite possible to pick out books on the one side and on the other, and to assert that these are read chiefly for educational purposes and those for recreation. On which side shall the library throw its influence? There are many good librarians who feel that the popular tendency is too strong towards recreation and that the library should restore the balance by throwing its weight on the other side. Others see in the popular desire for recreative reading only a hopeful reaction from the mental tension and overwork with which, as a nation, we are doubtless chargeable. Between these two points of view I believe that the equilibrium of the public library is safe, and that it is in no danger of developing unduly either on the recreative or on the educational side.

Personally I have never felt that the user of libraries or any other type of the average American was in danger from too much recreation. If there is any use of a library that may have a vicious tendency it is its use for pure pastime in the etymological sense--the reading of books with absolutely no aim at all save to make the time pass. Now to make time pass pleasantly or profitably may be a most legitimate object. Not that, and not any lawful aim is objectionable. But aimlessness--the lack of an aim--the taking out of books to skim or to glance at, or to look at the pictures, with no desire for amusement, or profit, or anything else--that is certainly worthy of condemnation. There is more of it than we know, and it constitutes a menace to our intellectual future. Newspaper reading fosters it, but not necessarily. Newspaper reading with an aim is far better than aimless skimming and skipping of a literary classic, and I should rather see a boy of mine reading the most sensational dime novel he could lay hands on, with the definite desire and intention of finding out how Bloody Bill got his revenge, than lazily turning over the pages of Scott with no idea of what the story was about. The first would be the case of a good reader and a bad book; the second that of a good book and a bad reader. The library can easily deal with the book; it cannot so easily manage the reader, though it may try to do so. In the case of the bad reader the storage battery of ideas has lost its connection. It would be well for some of us if we should forget for the moment the difference between fiction and non-fiction and should try to mend this broken link.

And now a word about ourselves. What are we, who are engaged in this work, laboring for? Why are we working, and what do we expect to accomplish? In answering this question it will be better for us to free ourselves entirely from the bondage of words that mean nothing. Some of us--I hope very many of us--are in the library work solely because we love it and cannot keep out of it. Others are trying with more or less success to persuade themselves that this is their reason. Still others cannot truthfully say that they have had a “call to library work,” and some of these are conscientious enough to fear that they are in the wrong place and that the work is suffering thereby. To these I desire to address a word of consolation and encouragement. The impression is very general that the greatest work of the greatest minds had no motive but the productive impulse. The poet, according to this view, sings because he cannot help singing; the artist paints solely to satisfy the creative longing within him; the musician composes for the same reason. Now the fact is that a man who is capable of great work, or of ordinarily good work, may produce it under a variety of impulses. Some act more strongly on one man; others on another; or the same man may be more susceptible to a given impulse at one time or place than at another. Without a doubt, many of our immortal works were the result of simple inability to keep from producing them. But just as certainly, others were the work of men who had to school themselves by long practice and then to hold themselves to the work with iron determination. “Genius” says Carlyle, “is nothing but an infinite capacity for taking pains.” To which a modern critic replies, “On the contrary, genius is an infinite capacity for doing things without taking any pains at all.” Both are right. There are both these kinds of genius--and many others. The writer who attempts to bind down genius to rules and formulae will have a hard task. And what is true of genius is also true of ordinarily good work--the work that you and I are trying to do in our libraries. Some of us do it easily because we cannot help it; others do it with more or less difficulty under the pressure of one or another need. One, though the work itself comes hard to him, loves the result to be accomplished; another, perhaps, is toiling primarily to support himself and those dependent on him. What of that? We have been placed where we are, to secure certain results. We want the help of every one who can contribute a share of honest, intelligent work toward the attainment of these results, and we shall not ask for motives or inquire into the exact amount of effort that was necessary, provided the work has been done and done well.

I have the greatest sympathy for the conscientious library assistant who feels that she ought to love her work in the same way perhaps that she loves music or skating, or a walk through the autumn woods, and who, because she does not sit down to paste labels or stand up to wait on the desk with the feeling of exhilaration that accompanies these other acts, is afraid that library work is not her métier.

Such workers should possess their souls in peace. It is very common for routine work to pall upon him who does it, and we are all apt to think that no work but ours has any routine. Our weary eyes see only the glorious moments of success in the lives of other toilers; we are blind to the years of drudgery that led to them. The remedy is to look forward. You may not enjoy climbing the mountain step by step, but the view from the summit is glorious. And if to sustain yourself on the climb you think of the bread and cheese that you have in your lunch basket, I cannot see that there is aught to complain of.

All over the world there are workers who feel that they are not worthy of their work. It is dull; it palls on them. But if their lot had only been different! If their work had been that of the musician or the artist! Then toil would become pleasure, and the hours that now drag heavily would flit on wings. Very little of this feeling is justifiable, and these dissatisfied workers will do better work if they are made to realize that it is only the favored few who can bring enthusiasm to the daily routine. The most that we can ask of the average worker is a conviction of the usefulness of his work and a determination to make it as useful as possible. More: such a determination honestly lived up to is sure to beget interest--that concrete interest in one’s work that is worth much more, practically, than an ideal love for it. The woman who goes into slum work impelled only by a vague love for humanity is apt to give up after a little when she discerns that humanity in the concrete is offensive in so many ways. But if she forces herself to keep on, and to make herself as useful as possible, there comes the personal interest that will bind her to her task and that will increase its usefulness. So it is with library work; you need not love it ideally to succeed in it; you need only buckle down to it until you feel the personal interest that will carry you through triumphantly.

And what is it all about? In the broadest sense, as I have already said, we librarians are the purveyors of ideas stored up in books. These ideas are more to man than mere education--they are life itself. Life is growth, not stagnation--it involves change and acquisition. “Life is change,” says Cardinal Newman, “and to be perfect, one must have changed many times.” To contribute the opportunity and the stimulus for such change is our business. The child cries out to his environment--“Give me ideas and experiences; good and pleasurable if you can, bad or painful, if you must, but give me ideas and experiences.” Part of this craving it is the duty of the public library to satisfy. The craving may grow less keen as we grow older, but it never really ceases to exist. To satisfy that craving in legitimate ways and to guide and control it if we can is our business, stated in the broadest possible terms. That is what we are aiming at. The librarian should be the broadest minded of mortals. He should be a man in the widest sense--to him nothing human should be alien.

This is decidedly broad and correspondingly vague. Being so, it may be interpreted by every worker in the way that appeals to him most. To one, the educational work of the library will make the strongest appeal; to another its recreational function. One may prefer to lay stress on the guidance of children’s reading; another on reference work with adults. These are all phases of one and the same general class of acts--the imparting of ideas by means of books--and there is no reason why each worker should not gain interest in that work by and through the particular phase that appeals to him.

“I wish,” says one of James Lane Allen’s characters, “that some virtue--say the virtue of truthfulness--could be known throughout the world as the unfailing mark of the American. Suppose the rest of mankind would agree that this virtue constituted the characteristic of the American! That would be fame for ages.” We librarians, in like manner, not only wish but strive to make some one virtue characteristic of our work--say the virtue of usefulness. “As useful as a librarian,” “As indispensable as the public library”--these are not yet, I am afraid, household phrases. But why should we not make them so?

LIBRARY STATISTICS

It is a valuable exercise to examine into the origin and uses of the things that we have been accustomed to take for granted and to regard almost as part of the accepted order of nature. The result will often be startling and it will always be salutary, if the examiner be sane and conservative. Therefore a very good way to begin a discussion of statistics is to query whether they are of present value at all, or whether they are old fashioned rubbish and had better be discarded.

Statistics are the numerical statements of results or facts. Now thousands of individuals and thousands of bodies--families, clans, associations, that accomplish much in this world, go on very well without keeping any record at all of what they do. This is indisputable. On the other hand we shall see that as work is done well and carefully there is an increasing disposition to make and keep a record of results; and as the work extends in scope and complexity, the record, too, becomes more complex. Take, for instance, the record of so apparently simple a transaction as the payment and receipt of money. The individual who has little of it to receive and disburse may go all his life without keeping so much as a cash account, much less a set of books. He may even spend a considerable income in the same way, including the maintenance of a household and the support of a family, and he may, on the whole, do it wisely and well. Yet of two men of the same means, one of whom should conduct his affairs thus, while the other kept a rational system of household and personal accounts, the latter would universally be regarded as pursuing the better course. And as we pass from this to the conduct of a business we recognize that the man who engages in commerce without keeping proper accounts is a fool and courts failure, and that the larger the business and the more widespread the interests, the more complicated and extensive must be the bookkeeping. A large commercial concern may thus employ a special department with a large staff of men simply to keep record of its financial transactions. This is probably the most ancient kind of statistical record and the one whose usefulness is most generally recognized.

In like manner another common and useful statistical record--the inventory, or list of articles on hand--although not commonly and regularly taken by the individual, becomes absolutely necessary in the smallest kind of business, and without it the merchant can have absolutely no idea, of whether he is conducting his business at a profit or a loss. When we go on further and examine, the conduct of great commercial or manufacturing concerns we find that the statistical department becomes of increasing importance, the details collected by it multiply and the staff of persons whose sole duty it is to collect and to discuss them may be very considerable. That a great manufacturing company would waste time and money on a task of no value is inconceivable, and there is thus a very strong presumption that statistics are worth something. Even where bodies of men have so little power or corporate action that they cannot collect statistics for themselves, it is generally deemed a proper expenditure of the public money to do so at the common cost, hence governments maintain great census bureaus, whose duty it is not only to count heads every few years but to tell the farmer how much he raises, the merchant how much merchandise he exports, and so on.

Is the free public library an institution that will be benefited by the collection, tabulation and discussion of the results of its work, so far as they can be numerically expressed? What are the objects of such collection in the instances above enumerated? In the first place, they are to satisfy mere curiosity. If such curiosity is trivial, the collection of statistics is evidently useless, and I am afraid that more than a little of it, public and private, falls under this head. But curiosity, even when it goes no further, may be perfectly legitimate. Especially is this so about one’s own affairs. When a man is attempting anything he is naturally curious to know whether he has succeeded or not; and to find out, if possible, precisely how far he has gone in the desired direction. He may have property enough to support him beyond all doubt, but it is quite right that he should want to keep a list of his stocks and bonds and to know whether they have risen or fallen in value during the year. Still further, curiosity about other people’s affairs may be legitimate, as, for instance, when one is responsible for their proper conduct in greater or less degree. In the same way the trustees of a free public library, representing the public at large, by whom the library is supported and carried on, have a right to know all possible particulars regarding the way in which their librarian has carried on his work and the results he has reached in it, and the municipality in turn should require of the trustees a strict account of the funds that they have administered. All this information, as far as it can be stated numerically, constitutes a mass of statistics, and this one reason amply justifies its collection and would justify a much larger number of tables than is usually given in a library report, provided only that the information is to the point and is or should be in public demand.

But we cannot stop here. A free library, it is true, is not a money-making concern, but it certainly should be run on business principles. The public puts into it a large sum of money and has a right to expect certain returns, which are none the less definite that they cannot themselves be represented in dollars and cents. The library statistic books are therefore, in a way, the records of the business; they show whether it is being conducted conservatively or wastefully, at a profit or at a loss. And as all these record books are open, they enable us, or should enable us to make instructive comparisons between the methods and results of one institution and those of another.