LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

would be punished if they were circulated. Beyond these there are many books that we do not circulate simply from our sense of general responsibility to the community.

      The difference between our work and that of the merchant in this regard lies chiefly in the more extended scope left for our own judgment. No librarian thinks of circulating illegal literature; his only care is to exclude such of the allowable books as he believes should not, for any reason, be placed on his shelves. Here, sometimes, popularity and usefulness part company. The librarian may yield entirely too much to the wants—the demands—of the community and neglect its needs. His aim should be to bring the wants and the needs into harmony so far as possible, to make his people want what will do them good. This might be dubbed “the whole duty of a librarian.” Few, I am afraid, attain to the full measure of it, and too many fail even to realize its desirability. Of course if you can bring the full force of a reader’s conscience to bear on his reading—if you can make him feel that it is his duty to read some good book that strikes him as stupid, you may make him stick to it to the bitter end, but such perfunctory reading does little good. The pleasure one gets in reading is a sign of benefits received. Even the smile of the boy who reads George Ade is a sign that the book is furnishing him with needed recreation. The pleasure experienced, we will say, in reading Shakespeare is of course of a far higher type; yet I venture to say that if that pleasure is absent, the benefit is absent too. Nine-tenths of the distaste felt for good standard books by the average reader is the result of the mistaken efforts of some one to force him to read one of these books by something in the nature of an appeal to duty. There is no moral obligation to read Shakespeare if you do not like it, and if a friend persuades you of such an obligation you are apt to end by rightly concluding that he is wrong. But with this conclusion comes an unfortunate distaste for good literature; a conviction that standard works are all dull, and that the only kind of pleasure to be had from reading is the most superficial kind. The moral for librarians is: cultivate in your readers a taste for good literature; get them into the frame of mind and the grade of culture where they like Shakespeare and then turn them loose. No injunctions will be necessary; they will not cease to read until they have devoured the utmost sentence.

      But how shall this taste be cultivated? I wish I knew. I wish I could give you a formula for causing the flower of literary appreciation to unfold. The rule is different in every case. First and foremost there must be something to cultivate. You cannot go out into the desert with watering-pot and raise strawberries or asparagus. But you can take a poor little spindling plant and dig about it and fertilize it until it waxes into a robust tree whose branches are laden with big, juicy ideas. If you are skilful enough to find out what intellectual germs there are in your reader’s mind you can cultivate them little by little, but if you throw Shakespeare and Milton at the heads of all alike they will be likely to fall on barren ground. The golden rule for making your library both attractive and useful (the two things go hand in hand) is to adapt your books to those aptitudes of your readers that need and will bear cultivation.

      This means that in selecting books for your library you must not disregard the demands and requests of your readers. It also means that you must have the acuteness to detect what they ought to request. It may be, for instance, that near your library is the home of some great industry employing large numbers of intelligent mechanics who would gain both enjoyment and benefit by reading some of the technical literature bearing on their work. Only it has never occurred to them to think that this literature, much of it perhaps expensive or inaccessible, can be obtained at the public library. It is your business to get it, if you can, and to let them know that you have it and that they are welcome to read it.

      Remember, too, that he gives twice who gives quickly. Much of the ephemeral literature of the day, which is purchased for recreative purposes, is rightly and properly read for curiosity. People like to read the latest book and talk to each other about it. We are all embryo critics. This desire to read the last thing out, just because it is the last, has had anathemas piled on it until it ought to be crushed, but it is still lively. I confess I have it myself and I cannot blame my neighbor if he has it too. Unless we are wholly to reject the recreative use of the library or to accept it with a mental reservation that the public shall enjoy itself according to a prescribed formula or not at all—we shall have to buy some of these books. I am afraid that otherwise some future historian of literature may say of us in parody of Macaulay’s celebrated epigram on the Puritans and bearbaiting, that the twentieth-century librarian condemned the twentieth-century novel, not because it did harm to the library, but because it gave pleasure to the reader. Now, if we are going to buy this ephemeral literature, we must get it quickly or not at all. The latest novel must go on your shelves hot from the presses, or stay off. And this is true of much other literature that is not ephemeral but that depends for its effect on its timeliness. It will certainly lose readers if it is not on your shelves promptly, and if it deserves readers, as much of it does, the net result is a loss to the community.

      So we come next to the question of readers. How shall we get them? What kind do we want, and how shall we reach that kind? In commercial systems of distribution the merchant gets customers in two ways: by giving good quality and good measure and by advertising. Some kind of advertising is generally essential. Even if your community is a very small one it is right that you should occasionally remind it of your existence and of what you have to offer. Legitimate advertising is simply informing people where they can obtain something that they are likely to want. The address of your library should be in your railway station; in the schools; in the drug store. Your latest accessions should be announced in the local papers and bulletined in the same places. When you have an item about your library that would interest the reader send it yourself to the paper. There is nothing undignified about this. Do not forget that you are in charge of certain articles that the public needs and desires and that it is your business to let the public know it. The new-comer to your town cannot know intuitively that your library is at such and such an address; the old resident who likes to read Howells cannot ascertain by telepathy that you have just received the last volume by his favorite author. You may even send a special card of information to a reader who you know will be glad to get it.

      One would think that if there was anything distinctive about our systems of distribution, commercial or otherwise, it was the great degree to which we advertise and the money that we spend in so doing. But with it all, this feature in its misdirected energy and lack of method is the weak point of the whole system. Much of the money spent in advertising is devoted to attempts to get people to buy what they do not want. Any one knows that when he desires a very special or definite thing it is often impossible to find it, though it may be next door. In our library work, so far as readers are concerned, our weak points are two: first, failure to make known our presence and our work to all who might use the library; second, failure to hold our readers. These things are both serious. We ourselves see so much of libraries that we find it difficult to understand how large a proportion of any community is ignorant of them and their work. In large cities, of course, this is more likely to be the case than in small towns. Yet if you will compare the number of names on your registration list with the population you serve, even making allowance for the fact that each book withdrawn may be read by several persons, and deducting young children who cannot read, you will be surprised at the discrepancy. There are many people who do not know of your library’s existence or who do not realize what it means. Your first duty is to find some way of giving them the information and of seeing that they shall not forget it.

      Regarding the second failure, you may get some idea of that if you will compare the growth of your registration list with that of your circulation. The circulation never grows as fast as the membership. It may even be stationary or decreasing while new users are coming in daily. The fact is, of course, that former users are all the time dropping off. Why do they drop off? It is your business to find out and to keep them if you can. The librarian in a small community has a great advantage in this respect, for she can know her constituency personally and keep track of them individually.

      But the personal relations of the librarian and her assistants with the public belong as much in the third section of our subject as in the second. The importance of them cannot be exaggerated. I am not sure that I should not prefer a sunny-faced, pleasant-voiced, intelligent, good-tempered assistant in a tumble-down building with a lot of second-hand, badly arranged books, rather than the latest Carnegie

Скачать книгу