The Library and Society Part 24

The monk's occupation as a librarian was gone, and he was succeeded by the collector, the keeper, the scholar. In the centuries immediately succeeding the invention of printing there was a growing diffusion of knowledge by means of libraries. We smile at the restrictions imposed, and look upon them as so many fetters on the intellect. It is, however, to be borne in mind that at this time books were costly and rare, and on this account were guarded with great jealousy.

When the Bodleian library was founded it was stipulated by law that under no pretence should any book be lent to any one, no matter what his station. A Fellow of Corpus Christi College could not enter the sacred alcoves alone, and he was under oath not to remove a book. The books were there for use, there can be no question; and in the Bodleian, to which we have just referred, a person could have six books at a time to consult, and the library was open for six hours during the day.

About 1650 Humphrey Chetham bequeathed 1,000 for a public library in Manchester, England. He was a firm adherent of the fixed location. "My mind and will is," he says, "that care be taken that none of said books be taken out of the said library at any time, and that the said books be fixed or chained." After specifying certain religious books, and annotations on the Bible, he adds, "and other books proper for the common people." It was two hundred years after this, in this last half century, before the Public Libraries Act was introduced into the English Parliament; and from this period we may date a new era, both in England and in this country, in the dissemination of books and improved library methods. The last decade, commencing with the formation of the A.L.A.

and the beginning of our second century as a nation, has witnessed results. .h.i.therto unachieved in library economy. It is not necessary to enlarge here upon the work that has been accomplished. The important thing to note is that the librarian of to-day should be _en rapport_ with all that pertains to his profession. He should acquaint himself with schemes of cla.s.sification, and elect from them that which is best adapted for the purposes of his own library. He should adopt the best system for charging, acquaint himself with the most approved library appliances. Whether he adopt the cla.s.sed catalogue, the dictionary, the alphabeto-cla.s.sed, or any other form, let it be one that shall be abreast of the progress that has been made in this department of library science. The librarian can scarcely keep pace with his fellow-librarians unless he receives the right hand of fellowship of the American Library a.s.sociation, and is a reader of the _Library journal_ or the _Library notes_, just launched and designed to cruise along the coast into the smaller ports. The advantages which the librarian receives from these sources will qualify him better for his profession, but the greater advantage will accrue to his readers: knowledge will be made more available, and a bright, cheerful atmosphere will pervade the alcoves of his store-house.

The librarian of to-day is developing to the full the utilitarian principle. He is practical,--practical in his library management, practical in his choice of books. His const.i.tuency is either a particular cla.s.s or the great public. To supply the ma.s.ses with reading, and to make books helpful in all the vocations of life, is the librarian's aim. It is just here that we need to emulate our predecessors, the monks and the collectors and bookworms of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries.

He must have the spirit of the collector, the animus of the scholar. He must not forget that he is an antiquarian in his zeal for utility. His const.i.tuency is not confined to the present; he is building for posterity as well. His library will live after him. He therefore needs to be a wise master-builder.

If the choice of books is in the librarian's hands, or if he occupies an important position in connection with the selection, his best effort should be given to this department. The responsibility is not small. He will find it more difficult often to reject than to select. He must consult the wants of his readers; but there is a limit to that.

Everything that is in print may be called for, but that is no reason why it should be honored with a place in a library. The librarian's personal equation is not to be the standard, but the foundation principles of morality, truth, and sound sense must guide him. No quarter should be given to books of doubtful morality. Fiction now finds a place in most libraries open to any extent to the public, and this cla.s.s of books forms so large a part of the circulation of many libraries that it is becoming a question of no small importance as to how far public funds should be expended for such books as afford little else than pastime. A public library is a public educator. It is not a sluice into which every publisher may dump his entire wares; as educators, librarians and managing boards have the right to maintain the purity of their collections, and to protect them from inundations of worthless books.

The librarian should be alert to supply his readers with all they require that will be helpful, as we have said; but, more than this, he should lead them. He may do so by procuring works of standard worth, new and old, that represent the best thought in any department of literature or science.

Unless he has something of the spirit of the collector very much will elude his grasp, and be, perhaps, utterly lost to his library. There are the limited editions, now so limited in number; the privately printed book; the first numbers of periodicals; the first reports of societies; local histories and genealogies; memorial volumes, and the like,--works whose value is enhanced by time.

A librarian, to be successful, must be a lover of books. The novice, in applying for a librarianship, often puts it down as one of his cardinal qualifications that he is fond of reading. To the active, toiling worker this is not suggestive of business. A love of books very naturally suggests a taste for reading, except when bibliomania is in the blood. A true friend of books is not such because his collection embraces Elzevirs and Aldines, or because they are in Grolier or Bedford bindings, or printed on Whatman or Holland paper,--these are matters of just pride,--but because the army of silent authors, marshalled under his leadership, will diffuse light and knowledge wherever they go. The librarian imbued with this spirit, if he finds time to read, will reflect what he has read. It is to be feared that the librarian who reads in these times is the exception; and yet there can be no question that, if he could have each day an hour or two for reading,--time enough to acquaint himself with the thought of the times, and occasionally commune with the authors of the past,--his efficiency would be greatly enlarged, and his readers would have a supplemental catalogue in him, corresponding, to some extent, to the good work contemplated by our Cooperative Committee.

There are in every library very many books that are what we might term, to use a mercantile phrase, dead stock. From the very necessities of the case there must be many books that will be called for only at great intervals, while others never have a friendly consultation. But, aside from these, libraries will often have works of great practical value that are standing idle, because it is not generally known that the library possesses them. There may be a choice lot of works on electricity, a rare collection on ceramics, a fine selection of engravings, representative works in the various industrial arts; the call for them not being popular and large, they might be brought to the notice of a larger const.i.tuency by calling the attention of certain readers to them, or by sending a polite invitation to some manufacturing firms, to some professional electricians, or to art schools and scientific schools.

Periodicals, before the days of Poole's Index, were sealed books.

Libraries have been wonderfully expanded where this index is used.

Further cooperation in this direction, as planned by the Cooperative Committee, should receive hearty encouragement. The books of a library may be further enlarged in their use by publishing, on the library bulletin, the works in the library that ill.u.s.trate important events, after the admirable plan initiated by Mr. Foster, of Providence.

If the librarian has not the time at his command to read he has rare opportunities for reading character; and to be on good terms with his varied const.i.tuency he will have to be like St. Paul,--all things to all men. He must be polite, accommodating, possess his soul in patience, and be unselfish in his devotion to his readers. Generally, his contact with his const.i.tuency will be pleasant and agreeable, but he will have to deal with certain typical characters that will vex and fret him.

There is the rummager, who snarls at all catalogues, and wants the freedom of the library, not for studious research, but to gratify his bookish propensity. "Five minutes with authors" is his watchword.

The crank, who has been defined as a person with an idea, without brains to carry it out, is a frequenter of libraries. His inquiries are for what the library does not possess. This affords him a text for lecturing the librarian and the managers. If the librarian's sentiments are not in accord with that idea of his he threatens to expose him in the newspapers.

The curiosity-hunter is another representative reader. He is brother to the rummager, but he does not despise catalogues. They exhibit the oddities of the library, at least the odd t.i.tles, such as Luther's "Vagabonds and Beggars," "The Foundling Hospital for Wit," or "The History of the Tread-mill." He pa.s.ses quickly from one to the other, gleaning here and there till curiosity is satiated.

Another reader helps the librarian materially in his statistics; if he calls for one book he calls for an armful. The subject he is investigating may require all the light the library can focus upon it; but he disposes of his armful so quickly that the query is, by what alchemy knowledge is appropriated so rapidly. It must be put to the credit of this age.

The intelligent tramp is another _habitue_ of libraries. He is sometimes a desultory reader, sometimes he is a specialist, and he investigates with a profound air the most difficult problems; but that is as far as he goes. He is const.i.tutionally lazy. He has some love for literature and science, but a far more appreciative love of leisure. He does nothing, produces nothing.

Then there are walking encyclopaedias. You cannot name any author or work that they have not an acquaintance with. They can talk glibly on any subject; they absorb like sponges, but they give out nothing. They have a pa.s.sion for reading; but they either do not, or will not, make their knowledge available to others. The colored man who not long since applied to me for something on the toothache, as he was to deliver a lecture upon this interesting topic, was not of this non-productive cla.s.s. If his monograph has been published it will be a good book for close cla.s.sification.

The librarian who feels the obligations of his position realizes that his influence as an educator is far-reaching, telling effectively upon the community in which he lives, and destined to extend far down the years to come. It becomes him, therefore, to fully equip himself for his work, and to give to his const.i.tuents the results of his ripest experience and his most unselfish attention.

THE USEFULNESS OF LIBRARIES IN SMALL TOWNS

A few books in a small town may exert as much influence as many books in a large one; and the personal influence of their custodian and administrator may count for more. An early statement placing emphasis on this fact by Miss West of the Milwaukee Public Library (now Mrs. Henry L.

Elmendorf) appears in the subjoined paper read at the Buffalo Conference of the American Library a.s.sociation in 1883.

Theresa West Elmendorf, who as the writer of this paper was Theresa Hubbell West, was born at Pardieville, Wis., Nov. 1, 1855, educated in Milwaukee and served on the staff of the public library of that city, being deputy librarian in 1880-92 and librarian in 1892-96. In that year she married Henry L. Elmendorf, then librarian of the Buffalo Public Library, and since his death in 1906 she has been vice-librarian there. In 1911 she was chosen president of the American Library a.s.sociation--the first woman to hold this office.

There is still, as in the days when the story of the "wicked and slothful servant," who contemptuously hid his one talent in a napkin, was told, something discouraging in the sight of incomparably greater opportunities than our own in the hands of another.

The librarian of a small town or village may not cherish the envy of the man in the parable in his heart, and yet feel a certain depression, a sense that the small things he is striving--perhaps with all his might--to accomplish amount to very little, as he listens to plans for the construction of a building which will commodiously and conveniently house two millions of books; as he ponders over a printed scheme which will intelligently order upon the shelves a hundred thousand volumes, and is yet so flexible, so elastic, that this number may be indefinitely increased with no confusion, no necessity for rearrangement; as he sees a method of charging which has been slowly evolved to meet the ever-varying, ever-increasing needs of a circulation whose daily issues are counted by thousands.

Possibly this feeling has something to do with the small representation in this a.s.sociation of the hundreds of lesser libraries which are scattered through the land. Whether it has, or not, the fact of this meagre representation remains, and remains to be regretted. That such a state of things is to be deprecated by the society goes without saying.

Every new member, in one way or another, brings an added power and influence, which is by no means always to be measured by the size of the library which he represents, or the active part he bears in the deliberations. He may even be utterly silent, and yet an actual force; for no speaker fails to feel the inspiration which radiates from an attentive and enthusiastic listener. In ordinary society the accomplishment of being "a good listener" is one of the most enduring of charms. It does not lose its power among librarians. The prosperity of a paper as truly as a jest's "lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it."

To ask these unattached librarians, if perhaps an echo may reach them, to consider whether their isolation from their profession is not only a deprivation to themselves which they can illy afford, but a r.e.t.a.r.ding of the progress of the true library spirit as well, and to suggest a thought which may possibly prove a stimulus to counteract the discouragement and depression before spoken of, is all that I have even hoped to accomplish in the few words which have, somewhat too ambitiously, been called a paper on "The usefulness of libraries in small towns."

In regard to the interest and profit of these meetings to the lesser libraries, I have heard it a.s.serted, and it is, I think, true, that the papers and discussions were almost exclusively directed to the consideration of the aims, methods, and needs of great libraries. If the fact needs explanation, or justification, an ample one is found in the register of the names of the composing members, with their positions.

That there would be a ready and cordial response to any general call for the discussion of topics specially pertinent to small libraries is not to be doubted. Over the editorial columns of one of our most-used periodicals runs the legend, "Every man is a debtor to his profession."

It was a most wise choice of mottoes by our friend, the editor and publisher, for in no profession is it more true than in our own. The constant missionary work which Boston and Chicago, and indeed every library of any repute in the country, has done and is doing, is proof enough that the obligation is appreciated. If the smaller libraries want the discussion of simpler, less technical methods, they have, probably, but to ask.

It may be objected that the great obviously includes the small, and that plans and methods which are good and suitable for the former need but to be reproduced in miniature for the latter. It is true, that, in many departments, the accident of size makes little or no difference in library economy; but in the administration of affairs, in the machinery of running, the director of a munic.i.p.al library has many and acc.u.mulating cares, of which his less burdened rural brother need never feel the weight. Prof. John Fiske, some years ago, at the time when he was a.s.sistant librarian of Harvard University, very graphically described a portion of the perplexing duties which fall to the lot of even a university librarian, striving to correct the erroneous but too prevalent notion that such a position is a sinecure. He confined himself to an enumeration and description of the duties which are essentially professional, the multiplicity of details of the ordering, cla.s.sifying, and cataloging of books. In this direction there is a difference only in amount between the greater and the less. But, in addition to all that Prof. Fiske described, a city librarian must needs oversee as well the thousand and one minutiae which go to make up the sum of a day's work in a circulating library. He must provide for the accurate identification and registration of his borrowers,--no light task when they number tens of thousands of the floating population of a western city, which has more active duties for her police than the following up of delinquent patrons of the public library. He must see to it that the thousands of books which flow over his counters are unerringly charged, and that tardy borrowers are warned of their remissness. These are but a few of the numberless details, many of which are trivial in the extreme, but which all go toward the making up of such a day's work as "none but he that feels it knows." As a machine increases in complications a constantly greater percentage of power is consumed in overcoming friction. This attention to the routine of daily work, which forms much of the severest, because least satisfying, work which a librarian does, may be compared to the friction of machinery; and just in the proportion that the power of his mind and the strength of his body are taxed in this direction, by just so much are they reduced for other duties, the importance of which is specially prominent in the minds not only of the profession, but of the public as well,--an actual knowledge of the books which the library buys, and the exertion of an active personal influence in raising the standard of literature which is drawn from the library.

It is precisely in this line of personal influence that there seem to me to be special encouragements to the librarians of small towns, that here, notwithstanding their limited resources, they have peculiar opportunities for attaining an almost ideal standard of excellence in the quality of their work.

It would be unjust to say that a city librarian actually works harder than his country brother. The duties of the former are mainly those of guiding, overseeing, and correcting the work of others. The latter, with his own hands and brain, does most of the work himself. It is as if the one were architect solely, and the other not only architect, but mason and carpenter as well. One of the severest trials of the lot of a city librarian, in the West at least, is that he must work through many a.s.sistants who are not only utterly lacking in any real love or enthusiasm for their work, but who are many times illy-educated as well.

The remedy for this state of affairs is not likely to be found until our boards of trustees take for their careful consideration the reply of a certain irate domestic to her remonstrating mistress: "You can't expect a good cook and all the Christian virtues for two dollars a week!" If the necessities of the work do not require the employment of more than one, two, or, at most, three a.s.sistants, the subtle electric current of the librarian's own enthusiasm may suffer the subdivision without being utterly dissipated. He can actually do much of the work himself. He comes into contact with his clientage, which is not so large but that he may hope to become personally acquainted with many of them, and, learning their tastes and needs, easily become their trusted friend and guide. His catalog, too, is his own work, and it is perhaps safe to say that no one ever properly appreciates a catalog but its maker. Certainly no one else ever handles it with equal ease and intelligence.

I am afraid the catalog has never been made, and never will be, over which the ignorant and indolent will not be perplexed and deceived; and, after all is said, it is to the ignorant to whom the gospel of the public library is specially sent. If the cataloger himself is constantly at hand to explain intricacies, to supplement deficiencies, with his own perfect knowledge of his library, to answer even foolish and stumbling questioners patiently and intelligently, he may make the puzzling way of finding and getting a book so plain that "The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein."

That this personal influence, when exerted, bears fruit, and that right soon, has been proved again and again. The following is from the last report of one of the largest libraries in the country: "The increasing public interest in the more scholarly books of the Library, and the large accession of visitors to the reference tables, are to be attributed partly to the Sat.u.r.day-morning cla.s.ses which have been conducted at the Library for the past four months." If such work makes so immediate and appreciable an impression upon a circulation which is numbered by hundreds of thousands, is there not a hopeful outlook, indeed, for small workers?

One has said that "A library is, after all, very much what its librarian makes it." There are too many conflicting individualities at work in a munic.i.p.al library to make this, to any considerable extent, true; but in a small town or village the personal equation of the librarian may easily become the exponent of the power of the library.

ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Dr. Talcott Williams, the orator of this occasion, Feb. 7, 1891, was at that time a journalist in Philadelphia. He has always been a welcome writer and speaker on literary themes.

Talcott Williams was born in Abeih, Turkey, July 20, 1849, the son of an American missionary. He graduated at Amherst in 1873 and in that year entered journalism, becoming later an editorial writer on several large dailies until 1912 when he was made director of the School of Journalism of Columbia University, New York City.

For the first and for the last time, the voices of men are heard in this place, dedicated to the more eloquent silence of books. Nowhere is man more and men less than in the library. In the presence of books individual learning pales. The scholar dies; the library lives. Yet only in part. In this bookish age, we fondly impute immortality to books.

Nothing could be more false. Few books have the power of an endless life. Against these books of power stand a great mult.i.tude of books of use, which perish with the using. The vast ma.s.s of books, like the thoughts in our daily lives, sink into the background of the recollection of the race and furnish the soil from which fresh growths spring. Few there are who have written books of power. Not a score in all. Poets for the most part. High priests forever after the order of humanity, whose flaming message burns from age to age in the great tree of human existence, consuming and unconsumed. These books of power which live that humanity may not die, and books of use that die that others may live, divide literature between them. They const.i.tute the warp and woof out of which the university weaves the higher education. In its last a.n.a.lysis a liberal training is the mastery of books of use and a glad yielding to the mastery of books of power.

Controversy over the cla.s.sics, wrangling over Greek, vain jangling over required and elective courses--these are details. Direct contact between the growing minds of each generation and the great minds of the race--this is essential. We smile at the s.p.a.ce given Confucius in Chinese education; the Koran in Mohammedan schools; but this is only a perversion of the sound instinct which everywhere puts the young to school to the teachers of the race. Unless your education does this, it stands where the electric telegraph did before its wires were grounded--its batteries and instruments, its poles and wires useless until they were in direct contact with the elemental source of electric energy in the earth itself. So-called and mis-called practical systems of education, _realschulen_, which omit these eternal realities of the race, find when they have stuffed their pupils with the facts of the day that they are still insulated from the thinkers of all time. Fortunately for us and for our education, these books of power exist in more than one language and are accessible through more than one channel of learning. Thanks to the matchless translation of the Bible, one incomparable group of books of power is taught in every Sunday-school, though I doubt if this will be held sufficient reason for neglecting their study in every university. Greek holds another group. But it is the pitiful pedant's plea to urge their study because Greek is difficult. It is not because Greek is Greek, but because Homer is Homer that Chapman "spake out loud and bold" of the solitary text-book which has held its own for 2500 years, and links, as may it forever link, this university with the school of Athens.

"Yet still your Homer, living, lasting, reigning, And proves how truth builds in poets feigning."

It is because these books of power hold the truth that makes men free, working thoughts that perish never, that they live when the tongues in which they speak are dead. Books of power which transmit the spiritual life of the race keep the self-same spirit through all the transmigrations of speech. The scriptures of the race, no less than the scriptures of religion, enjoy a pentecostal gift of tongues, and are heard by every man in his own language. Where such books are few in number, which a shelf or two will hold, there is a liberal education, and no elective course which permits their exclusion offers intellectual salvation. Some such books every race has found in its own literature as it reached the full stature of universal humanity, as our own English-speaking race, well-nigh within this generation, has discovered in adding Shakespeare to our general schooling. By the production of such books of power nations are justly measured. This is the wisdom which keepeth a city from destruction. The ship of state, however weighted with worldly wealth, moves a trackless keel through the waters of history unless some poet wings its course with "the proud, full sail of his great verse." We have all heard to-day from one whose lifelong devotion has raised him to the foremost rank of scholarship.

"Weave a circle around him thrice And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise."