The Library and Society Part 29

Sam Walter Foss was born in Canadia, N.H., June 19, 1858, graduated at Brown University in 1882 and served on the editorial staff of various papers. In 1895 he left that of the _Boston Globe_ and from 1898 to his death, Feb. 26, 1911, he was librarian of the Somerville, Ma.s.s., Public Library. He published several volumes of popular verse.

A library has no especial reason for self-felicitation simply because it distributes a large number of books. In fact, it is possible for it to give out a very large number of books and do more harm than good. The test question to ask is: Is it grinding out a product of enlightened and symmetrical men and women? Is it transforming the community into intellectual, thoughtful, better equipped, more roundly developed citizens? Is it making life any ampler, is it making men any manlier, is it making the world any better? If there is any library that cannot answer these questions affirmatively, its librarians are doddering their lives away in useless activity, and receiving a salary without rendering any real service in return. The activities of such a library are useless contortions, and the taxpayers have a right to protest its further existence.

What can a librarian do to make his library an inspirational force? In the first place he must be as accessible as a turnpike road. It seems to me that he can do more good by talking to people than in any other way.

To do this, of course, it is a prerequisite that he should know something. I have no faith in the miserable heresy that a librarian who reads is lost. A librarian who does not read would better not be found in the first place. A librarian who does not read is simply a stable keeper for books. He may see to it that they are well blanketed, groomed, and put in the proper stalls, and that the various implements about his stable are kept in good order; but such a librarian will never be mistaken for an intellectual giant in his community. Let him know the books he handles so that he can talk with schoolgirls about Sophie May and Virginia Townsend, and with boys about Henty and Brooks and Knox and b.u.t.terworth. Let him be able to discuss Herbert Spencer and David Harum with equal zest, and know something about Kant and a good deal about Kipling, and venerate Marcus Aurelius, and not despise Mark Twain. His mind should be a live coal in its love for books, and then nestle up to other minds and let them get ignited also.

But it may be said that a librarian hasn't the time for such extensive reading. Did you ever know a boy who couldn't find time to play? One always finds time to do the thing he loves to do; and a man who has a genuine love for reading will find time for it even in a library.

One of the greatest longings that any soul can have is a longing for some one to talk with who is interested in identical subjects.

A librarian, through personal intercourse, can become a powerfully educative influence in his community, and start intellectual impulses that will not subside during his lifetime, but go on widening and blessing indefinitely. Let him become the father confessor of minds in his town or city; the priest of the intellect, to whom all men shall bring all their mental problems, all their dubious enigmas of the brain.

He will not be able to solve all their puzzles or untie all their knots; but perhaps he will be able to hold the candle for a little while, while they struggle with the knots themselves. Let him always hold the candle, and talk pleasantly while he is holding it.

This matter of being pleasant in a library is really the first and great commandment. There should be an air of welcome inside that is pleasanter than the sunshine outdoors. The deathlike stillness and tomblike hush, the sepulchral gloom, the graveyard silence that sometimes prevails in libraries, should not be encouraged. Make people feel at home. The library here can learn a good lesson from the barroom.

There are no signs up in a barroom intimating that loud talking is not allowed, n.o.body walks on tiptoes, everybody is welcomed heartily and encouraged to stay, and men find a sympathetic friendliness there who find it nowhere else. John Wesley said we should not allow the devil to monopolize all the good tunes. The library should not allow the barroom to monopolize all the spirit of human friendliness and good cheer. I am sincerely glad that the old type of librarian is pa.s.sing out--a man so dignified that children were afraid of him, whose face was so long that his chin dragged on the floor. We want human men with blood in them in a library; men who like men and love children; men who can make themselves agreeable to men, women, children, and dogs. Let us make life as pleasant in a library as a mother's twilight hour with her children, and we shall raise up great families for the afterdays, who shall look back upon us as their intellectual parents, and rise up after we are gone and call our memories blessed.

There are three cla.s.ses of books--books that give pleasure, books that give information, and books that give inspiration. The first cla.s.s has its thousands of readers, the second its hundreds, and the third its tens. It is a good thing to read books for pleasure--it is the most innocent kind of drunkenness I know about; but that reading books merely for pleasure may develop into a kind of intellectual dissipation is something that we know from experience; for who is there of us who has not sinned? But reading books merely for pleasure is something we should outgrow in childhood, just as we do stilts and marbles and the game of tag. It is a better thing to read books for information. It is one of the healthiest joys of the normal mind to be forever learning something; forever learning and forever coming to the knowledge of the truth. It is the best thing, however, to read books for inspiration. And this is a cla.s.s of readers into which many of the frequenters of the public libraries never graduate. Ah! the pity of it! Books that lift us out of ourselves and the fogs and fumes and dust of our little treadmill routines into the ampler ether of loftier alt.i.tudes--into the grandeurs of life! Emerson and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Whitman--do men love such as these and remain little men? No, this is the meat from which giants are grown; here is the food for souls. Now it seems to me it is the duty of the good librarian, one who believes in the august nature of his profession, to lead up his readers by all devices within his power, by imperceptible gradations, through the books that please and the books that inform, to the books that inspire. And the librarian who drops a boy before he learns to love John Milton has only brought him half his journey, and has dropped him before he has reached the destination to which his fare was paid.

Why do not people read the best books? One reason is they never see them. It is a librarian's business to keep them in sight, his next business is to read them himself, and his next business is to talk about them whenever he can get an audience of fifty, or five, or one; to write about them in his monthly bulletins and let every man know he can get them, and welcome, by stretching out his hand. We all know how Tom Sawyer got his fence painted. He made all the boys in his neighborhood believe that fence painting was great fun. The librarian should make all the boys in his neighborhood believe that reading the best books is genuine pleasure. They can be brought to an appreciation of this pleasure as one is brought to the height of a tableland of a great continent, by gradations so gradual that they seem to be walking on a flat surface.

I believe that the great destiny of the public library is as yet but faintly foreseen. The plain truth is that the library has not tried yet to do its best. It has opened it doors and let people come in, if they so desire, or if they happen to be pa.s.sing that way. No successful auctioneer does business according to any such method. On the contrary he lifts up his voice to all it may concern, and to all that do not care that there are about to be great bargains at his place. The business man who opens his store and then forever holds his peace has his solitude very infrequently interrupted by customers. The church that has no missionary spirit is as tepid as the old church of Laodicea. The schoolmaster whose pupils absent themselves too frequently collects his daily audience, even if he has to call in the services of the truant officer. All this is written with something of the same wisdom. I do not believe it should always wait for people to come to it; it should go to the people. Every family in every city or town where there is a library should be offered a library card, or as many cards as it has adult members. Sometimes there is so much red tape prerequisite to obtaining a library card that a bashful man does not dare to make the attempt. Let us not shut the people off from the books that they have paid for by a barbed wire fence of red tape. Let every man or woman, yes, or child, too, that is old enough, be personally canva.s.sed and offered a library card. Then sell him a catalog at cost price, or better still, at less than cost, and tell him how to use it. Ah, but our trustees will say, this will cost something. Yes, it will cost something, but it will be a tremendously profitable investment, and pay immense dividends later on in a more intelligent citizenship and wiser and happier men.

From all this I wish it might be inferred that no librarian can be too great for his position. It is not easy for him to have too much knowledge, too much tact, too much consecration to his work, too exalted an estimate of his possibilities. He should not have a mind with a f.l.a.n.g.e on it, so that it forever runs on the small rail along the dusty roadbeds of routine. Let him originate, let him innovate, let him blaze his path with the pioneers--let him think.

THE USE OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

Part of an address by President Angell of the University of Michigan--educator, diplomat and statesman--at the dedication of the Ryerson Library Building in Grand Rapids, Mich., Oct. 8, 1904. To advise a reader, Pres. Angell thinks, one must know something of his personal apt.i.tudes.

General advice about "good reading" is seldom of great service. A modern note by a great man.

James Burrill Angell was born in Scituate, R.I., Jan. 7, 1829, graduated at Brown University, and after studying abroad, became eminent as an educator, holding first a professorship in his alma mater and then serving successively as president of the Universities of Vermont and Michigan. He was U.S. minister to China in 1880-81 and served on important international commissions. His works on international law and on education are standard. He died on April 1, 1916.

Now that your benefactor has so n.o.bly done his part, it remains for the city to see that the library is maintained and managed in an effective manner. It would not only be an act of ingrat.i.tude, but it would be a mockery, if in such an edifice as this we should not find a good and growing and well administered library. There is no more important commission in your city than the commission charged with the care of your library. Let us hope that they will always be chosen with special regard to their fitness for their official duty and without regard to their party affiliations.

Especially is wisdom needed in the selection of your books. It is not so difficult to choose books for the cultivated and scholarly readers.

But in a city library you must provide for all your population.

Particular care should be had to procure books attractive and useful to your artisans and mechanics and common laborers. They should be led to feel that this is the place where they can most profitably spend a spare hour and can find something to bring new brightness into their monotonous lives. The efforts which you have already initiated to make the library serviceable to the pupils in your schools must now be redoubled. The teachers and the library authorities must always contrive to cooperate heartily. The multiplication of libraries in this country has already elevated the work of the librarian to the dignity of a distinct profession. And no profession promises to be more useful. In addition to the proper organization and care of the library, the influence which a competent librarian can wield in his guidance of the reading and studies of the young is seldom outweighed by that of the teacher or the preacher. In no manner can a generous appropriation of funds for the support of a library be more wisely expended than in securing a competent librarian.

Judging by my own experience and by my observation of others, I doubt whether the guide books which have been written to tell one what works to read have been of great service. The simple reason why they are not very helpful is that to advise one what to read, you should know something of his apt.i.tudes and taste and something of his plans of life.

General advice is a shot in the air. It may hit nothing.

But a competent person may give helpful counsels to the young concerning useful methods of reading whatever one does read, and may indeed specify what are some of the best books on certain topics. A good librarian, if leisure enough is left him, may attract and help willing auditors by occasional lectures or informal talks on how to read in a library. But personal suggestions, to meet particular needs, are the most fruitful of good. And just here the school teachers, if competent to advise, can be of the utmost service. In no way can the library be made so valuable as by the hearty and systematic co-operation of the librarian and the teachers. It would be very useful if they could from time to time meet to confer upon the best methods of securing harmonious action. For it is the generation now coming on to the stage who are chiefly to profit by the use of this library. It is through them that the city is to receive its chief benefit. To incite them to read, to train them to right habits of reading, to inspire them with high ideals of what one should seek and love in reading, should be the aspiration of parents and teachers, if this library is to yield its largest harvest of good.

Like all good things, this library may to some persons bring no good; it may even be made an instrument of harm. It may bring no good, because it may be utterly neglected. No doubt there are many families who have never drawn a book from its shelves. It may bring no good, it may even cause intellectual, not to say moral injury, if it is misused. It is possible to choose from any great library such pa.s.sages from works and to peruse them in such a spirit as to gratify and stimulate prurient desires, or if one does not descend to so unworthy and shameful an act, one may read in such a manner as to be guilty of intellectual dissipation. What we may call the desultory readers are exposed to this danger. They pick up whatever book or magazine comes first to hand, provided they are sure that it makes no tax upon their mental powers.

They spend their time dawdling over a chapter of this book, then over a chapter of that, as men of the town now join this gay companion for an hour and then another for the next hour for frivolous talk and profitless gossip, and so wander aimless through the day without any fruitage to show for their time. They lose the power, if they ever had it, of consecutive study and thought and discourse on any theme whatever.

I do not mean to intimate that we should never come to this library to read for pleasure and entertainment. One of the great and proper uses of books is to refresh and amuse us in our hours of weariness and depression. Like the society of our choicest friends, they may wisely be sought for the sole purpose of diverting our minds from the flood of cares and troubles which come in upon all of us. The library may well be

"The world's sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil."

Or in our happy and merry moods we may seek congenial company in the creations of Cervantes and Moliere and Shakespeare and d.i.c.kens and Mark Twain. Reading for pastime is a commendable occupation, if wisely followed. Lowell in his paradoxical style tells us that what Dr. Johnson called browsing in a library is the only way in which time can be profitably wasted. But to browse profitably one should have an appet.i.te only for what has some merit. I have known lads born with a literary instinct as unerring as that of the bee for finding honey, to have the free run of a large library and come out with a wonderful range of good learning. Such instances show the unwisdom of having the same rules to guide every one in his reading. In such cases as those just cited, the example and taste of the parents often determine the success of the experiment. The books they talk about fondly at table and quote from freely and appositely are likely to arrest the attention of the child.

Therefore we may say that the home as truly as the school may largely determine what advantage shall be gained in this library. Parents who for their children's sake are careful what guests they admit to their house and what companionships they counsel the children to form may well consider what reading comes under their roof and what literary tastes they encourage in their household.

In these days when reviews and magazines and school histories of literature abound, there seems ground for one caution to youthful readers. It is, not to be content with reading about great books and great men, but to study the works themselves of great men. Many of the outlines of English literature, for example, which pupils in school are required to study, contain dates and names and brief descriptions of masterpieces, and from the nature of the case can contain little else.

But cramming the memory with these is not learning the literature.

Reading, mastering, and learning to appreciate and love the great works of a great author is better than to learn the dry facts in the lives of a score of authors. So our magazines and reviews treat us to criticism sometimes wise, sometimes unwise, of many authors. But all these are of little value until the works themselves of the authors have been studied. With the works the biographies of the authors should be read in order to appreciate the conditions under which the works were produced.

But far better is it to gain a thorough acquaintance with one great writer's life and works than to learn a few fragmentary facts at second hand about the lives and writings of many.

One of the most difficult questions to settle in these days in the selection of books for a library or in directing the reading of the young is, how large shall be the proportion of fiction in a library or in the reading of any one. Just now we are flooded with fiction, stretching from the short story of the magazine to the two-volume novel.

I observe that nearly two-thirds of the volumes drawn from this library in 1901-02 are cla.s.sed under the two heads of juvenile fiction and fiction. And I suppose the experience of other popular libraries is similar to yours. This shows at least that there is a great craving for fiction. That craving a library like this must to a fair degree strive to meet. Nor need we regret that there is a strong desire for sterling works of fiction. They stimulate and nourish the imagination. They give us vivid pictures of life. They portray for us the working of human pa.s.sions. They give a reality to history. Sometimes they cultivate a taste for reading in those who would otherwise be inclined to read little, and so lead them to other branches of literature. But, on the other hand, I think it must be confessed that a great deal of the fiction which is deluging the market is the veriest trash, or worse than trash. Much of it is positively bad in its influence. It awakens morbid pa.s.sions. It deals in most exaggerated representations of life. It is vicious in style.

It is a most delicate task for the authorities of a library like this to draw the line between the works of fiction which should be and those which should not be found on its shelves. As to the individual reader, the best we can do is to elevate his taste as rapidly as we can by placing in his hands fiction attractive at once in its matter and in its style. We must hope that with the cultivation of taste to which our best schools aspire, we can rear a generation which will prefer the best things in literature to the inferior. That is the reason why the teachers of languages and literature in our schools should be not mere linguists, but persons of refined literary taste, who will imbue their pupils with a love for the truest and highest in every literature which they can read.

I would like to commend to my young friends who desire to profit by the use of this library the habit of reading with some system and of making brief notes upon the contents of the books they read. If, for instance, you are studying the history of some period, ascertain what works you need to study and finish such parts of them as concern your theme. Do not feel obliged to read the whole of a large treatise, but select such chapters as touch on the subject in hand, and omit the rest for the time. Young students often get swamped and lose their way in Serbonian bogs of learning, when they need to explore only a simple and plain pathway to a specific destination. Have a purpose and a plan and adhere to it in spite of alluring temptations to turn aside into attractive fields that are remote from your subject. If in a note book you will on finishing a work jot down the points of importance in the volume and the references to the page or chapter, you will frequently find it of the greatest service to run over these notes and refresh your memory. If you are disposed to add some words of comment or criticism on the book, that practice also will make you a more attractive reader, and will make an interesting record for you to consult.

COMMUNITY CENTER SERVICE

This is the newest phase of library work and the most convincing evidence of its socialization. There is little in print about its early stages; its cla.s.sics are still in the making. We quote only three papers here.

THE LIBRARY AS A SOCIAL CENTRE

The opening address at the Red Wing meeting of the Minnesota Library a.s.sociation, Oct. 12, 1905, by Miss Countryman, librarian of the Minneapolis Public Library. The "public,"

Miss Countryman thinks, "is no indefinite, intangible somebody; it is just 'we'"--the statement of library socialization in a nutsh.e.l.l.

Gratia Alta Countryman was born at Hastings, Minn., in November, 1866, and graduated, with the B.S. degree, at the University of Minnesota in 1889. In that same year she entered the service of the Minneapolis Public Library, and she was a.s.sistant librarian at the resignation of Dr. James K. Hosmer in 1904, succeeding him as librarian.

During these latter days of enormous library activity, we have been conscientiously examining the functions of a library; we have been trying all sorts of methods to popularize it, to advertise it. We have asked for and listened to the criticism of outsiders, and by the light thrown upon it through this prism have separated our work into its elemental parts and seen its various hues.

We used to erect a library as an altar to the G.o.ds of learning; now, to use Mr. Dana's words, we erect it as an altar to the "G.o.ds of good fellowship, joy and learning." So you see, our ideals are constantly rising, our horizons ever broadening, and our work continually increasing, both in extent and in depth. We might well have considered our hands fairly full to have dealt alone with this G.o.d of learning, but we find ourselves embracing the opportunity for additional service to the G.o.ds of good fellowship and joy.

It might do us good to consider tonight what we are doing for the cause of learning, what the library has done to increase serious reading and study, and how it may further the educational work of the world. This question is ever present with us, and can stand any amount of discussion. But it is the G.o.ds of good fellowship and joy that we are discussing tonight, the library not as a center of learning but as a social center.

We are dealing with a small crowd of people whom we call "our public."

Who are the public? Why, you and I, and my family, and others just like us. They want just the same things that we do, and to be accommodated in just the same way that we do. The public is no indefinite, intangible somebody, it is just "we."

We talk about the people being hungry for books and information. Have you found it so? Then why do we have free libraries and free schools?