Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries - Arthur E. Bostwick

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is the library doing its share toward the purveying of the latter form? I do not know any better way of finding out than for the library trustees to use their eyes and ears, nor any more effective remedy for inadequate results along this line than the pressure that they can bring to bear on their librarian.

      Social results.—Under this head we may group a very large number of results that are apt to be overlooked or taken for granted. They may perhaps be summarized in the statement that the library should take its proper place in the institutional life of the community. What this is will depend largely on the community’s size and its social content. In many small towns the library naturally assumes great social importance; in a city it may be relatively of less weight, though perhaps its influence in the aggregate may be even greater. Whether it is doing this part of its work properly may probably be best ascertained by comparison with the work of other institutions that go to build up the social fabric—the church, the home, the club, the social assembly. Does the dweller in the community turn as naturally to the library for intellectual help as he does to the church for religious consolation? Does he seek intellectual recreation there as he seeks physical recreation at his athletic club or social entertainment at a dance? And so seeking, does he find? Does he come to regard the library as his intellectual home and the librarian and his assistants as friends? What, on the other hand, is the attitude of the library staff toward the public? Is it inviting or repellent, friendly or coldly hostile, helpful or indifferent? Here is a whole body of results that are, in a way, the most important that a library can produce, and yet it is impossible to set them down in figures; they can scarcely even be expressed in words. The social status of a library is like a man’s reputation or his credit; it is built up by thousands of separate acts and by an attitude maintained consistently for years; yet a breath may blast it Of this position a board of trustees should be particularly proud and its members should do their best to uphold it. If they realize by those many delicate indications that we all recognize but cannot formulate, that the library is failing to maintain it, the librarian should hear from them. They should let him know that something is wrong and that they expect him to right it. If he does not know how, that is an indication that his personality and ability are parts of the failure.

      This, then from the writer’s standpoint, is the whole duty of a trustee—or rather of a board of trustees—to see clearly what it wants, to give the librarian his orders, and to require an accounting.

      I am frequently struck with the attitude of librarians toward their boards of trustees, not as shown in their public acts, but as revealed in conversation among themselves. A board is apt to be adjudged good or bad, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, as it takes a more or less passive part in the administration of the library. If it acts simply to approve what the librarian does and to see that he gets the necessary funds, it is regarded as ideal. All that most librarians seem to want is to be given plenty of money and then to be let alone. This is a view of the whole duty of a trustee with which I do not sympathize. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that boards of trustees have done much to encourage this attitude because when they are really active in their interest their activity looks too closely to detail. They are then apt to interfere in the regulation of methods rather than to require results and afterward ascertain whether and in what degree these results have been reached.

      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.

       Table of Contents

      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

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