STATE-WIDE INFLUENCE OF THE STATE LIBRARY
The writer of this paper would be more than Protæan if he could say anything new on this topic. All our associations, at least the half dozen I belong to, meet so often that repetition is forced upon us. In the interim very few experiences or ideas worth recording come to us. Biennial or triennial sessions would lead to better results and save money.
The personality and attainments of the librarian (and his staff) are of prime importance in making the state library a dominating influence in the commonwealth. He is the man behind the gun. I put him first. From the negative side,—his position should not be subject to partisan or personal influence. That is a blight to start with and will ruin any institution. We are still afflicted with that curse in places, not only in the state libraries but in official positions generally.
Affirmatively, the head of the state library ought to be a person of scholarly acquirements or at least in deep and appreciative sympathy with scholarship and knowledge. If he is a scholar in a limited field he should be in accord with all who are trained in other departments. He should be able to represent the state in its educational and scientific undertakings, by papers and addresses, whenever called upon. It goes without saying that he should be a trained man in educational or library or literary work and of course an executive officer. His library is a laboratory of all for all in the state and he must be in touch with the work of that laboratory. His library is the distributer of blessings to a great commonwealth, and according to the motto of the "Library Company" of Philadelphia, that is divine (Communiter bona profundere deum est). I'll not quote the Latin—it would be classic, and to be classic is against the regulations of the Zeitgeist. I want him to be an inspirer for all to love art and poetry, and study and history and politics (real); and not merely skilled in the knowledge of card indexes and catalog rules. A certain famous general in the Confederate Army spent so much of his time on details of drill and quartermaster's regulations that he forgot how to fight his army.
I have put the librarian first in this broadening influence of the state library. All the volumes and equipment and staff will be comparatively a failure without this scholarly, well-trained, wide-awake executive officer.
As to the various ways in which the state library can extend its influence and make itself useful, permit me to suggest a few. This institution can well be the bibliographical center of the state. Every club, school, library, society, and all citizens can be made to know that here information can be obtained about books.
Our own demand is quite large and ought to be larger. There are libraries with meagre equipment, schools with none, people with none, colleges with little—all these may be taught to turn to the central institution for bibliographical information. I consider this a source of wide-spreading influence, valuable and helpful to the whole state. I have placed it second more because I deem it important, not because I think all of these points can be listed accurately as to their relative positions.
Our states heretofore have been very slow in preserving their history, both of the commonwealth and municipalities. This has led, perchance, to the unspeakable commercial county histories with their unspeakable portraits and unspeakable cost, which we are compelled to purchase in order to have something.
The state library's influence should extend over the entire state in an attempt to teach the preservation of history. The library is the natural place for the collection and organization of the history of the state. The archives may well be kept here for reference and use, though some states have a separate archives and history department.
I wish we knew how to preserve history. We don't keep or build memorials, we tear down and throw away. What we want is the new, the fresh, the raw. The old, the seasoned, the ripe, we think is effete (how we like that word in referring to the old advanced civilization of Europe). The state library has a great, unploughed field to cultivate. Personally, I find people ready to burn up newspapers or manuscripts, or sell volumes for junk rather than give them to an institution where they may be preserved. I am trying to teach them otherwise, but succeeding very slowly indeed. I trust some of you are doing better.
The women's clubs are a source of help in extending the influence of the library. They are asking for information of all kinds at all times. We laugh at them, I know. They have papers on Shakespeare, Goethe or Homer at one sitting and dispose of them all. But what shall we do? They are the conservers of culture and reading. Men don't want them, i. e. culture and reading. They are bourgeois, "practical," (à bas with that word and up with refinement and culture which is just as meaningful in books as in a field where we know culture is everything). I know many prosperous country towns without a men's reading organization or club in them, but many women's. If the state library in its state-wide influence, could convert men to reading, it would do a great work. Send your bulletin to the clubs, suggest topics for discussion, and thus distribute the leaven.
So much of our reading and study is done through periodicals of every description that it is made necessary for one central institution to be well supplied with these publications. The periodicals not taken in the average library, college or club, the foreign, like Revue de Deux Mondes, and Dublin Review, for example, and particularly the learned periodicals used only occasionally, should be found in the state library.
The state library can become a source of information, widespread over the state, by this process. Demands come sometimes from remote corners, from a teacher or some ambitious student, and he should never be neglected. This department, I fear, has been in a measure overlooked. We have about a hundred from foreign countries secured through exchange for the Indiana Academy of Science. They are not commonly called for but they form a tie between the library and the scientific men and students over the state.
By no means limit this list to scientific periodicals. Make the selection as broad as human interest, if funds and space permit.
It is commonplace to say that the state library is the document depository of the commonwealth. You know that now. Many people do not realize it, however. Every official publication of the state, counties and municipalities, if preserved here, will be a source for historical research in the future. Nothing of the kind should be thrown away. Many state libraries were founded with this particular purpose in view. The state library is the logical place for the preservation of all documents of the state. From it the municipal authorities, students of state history and political science, teachers, legislators and citizens gather the information needed on the documentary history of the state.
All the states have institutions of various kinds—colleges, hospitals for insane, the epileptic, the tubercular, reformatories, etc., etc. Why should the state library not at least supplement the small or large collections in these institutions? Their purpose is not to purchase books, though some are needed. The state library's influence and assistance should enter here, also. Much can be done to enlarge the views and inform the heads of these institutions and to make happy many of the inmates. No demand by a superintendent of a state institution for books to be purchased for and referred to by him would be overlooked in the Indiana state library. The institutions are scattered over the state and the library's influence would be spread in gathering material for the people connected with these institutions. The libraries of the state universities can be supplemented to great advantage, as has been done at least in our own state and in yours, I have no doubt.
The newspapers of the state are not kept with any regularity in the different localities. They are a valuable fund of information for the historian, who must sift rigidly of course. Our attempt is to preserve the papers from each county. We have many instances already of the value of our collection. We believe that a state-wide service is done in this way. I know the newspaper is not what we think it ought to be, but certain conditions of politics, business and social customs are pictures which will otherwise be lost. The librarian in the state library has imposed upon him here an important duty to the commonwealth, and the possibility of rendering great service.
The high schools are fond of debating. The boys are more easily aroused to reading by the discussion of a public or social problem. The local library is usually meagre. If the school principal is kept in close touch with the central library he will know where to send for material. A bulletin on "Debates" with bibliographical lists is of great service to the school men. The state library extends its work to educational centers by this method. The Indiana state library for several years has followed this system and as a result has almost been swamped with requests for debate material. As many as forty high schools in one week tried to overwhelm us, but our staff stood the test womanfully and won.
There are state-wide associations of all kinds in every state. Many of them publish reports or proceedings. The state librarian may well keep his institution in touch with all of these. The library may even be a member of some of them, especially educational, social, literary or artistic. The presence of a member of its staff at their meetings or correspondence may lead to the use of the library by these organizations in a way that will show that the library is the thing to be used—a tool for every man.
Common as it may be to say it, the assistance to the blind of the state by the central library must not be passed by. It is a great joy for any one to note the pleasure these unfortunate people obtain from the collections from which they draw daily. Very few, if any, are able to purchase their own books. The number assisted is small, but the benefit and happiness are great and lasting.
As the state library is the document and the political science center, it follows that legislative and official information are to be secured here. The officials and members of the Assembly ought to be made to know that the state library is, as it were, the fountain head from which to draw. If the library is worth anything or its head and staff worth anything, they should be consulted frequently by these persons in their work of lawmaking. The library has gathered and organized the material and by means of its use by the legislator, the library exerts a state-wide service.
It is the province of the traveling libraries department to lend collections of books to groups of citizens in localities apart from libraries. This does not hinder the state library from doing much for the farmer individually and in farmers' institutes. Addresses may be delivered, bibliographical lists on agricultural subjects sent and books loaned if the law permits it, and I think it should.
In our own library we have letters and requests from farmers; we preserve the records of their institutes and granges. One who had only half an hour a day to read asked for a volume of Jefferson, Shakespeare, or a good book on chiggers. If he could find out how to get rid of the chiggers, I would prefer that book to Jefferson, whose apotheosis is sadly overworked. That farmer's request was not so fascinating as that of a teacher who wanted a book on "the history of the human people." This is a sample of Indiana readers. Indiana, the home of authors! (I want to express my opinion in parenthesis here, that this Indiana literature talk is also sadly overworked.)
All this concerns special classes of people and books. But the general reader must be looked after. If democratization of books and reading is our keynote, and I think it is, then the citizen who wants to read on history, poetry, art, sociology, religion, must not be neglected. State-wide means much. It means an open mind for all the demos.
Our central library shall not be a trade shop, not for the bourgeoisie, but a mentor, a guide, a place of refinement and culture. Not for the practical man only—he usually does not know anything and does not want to; he has no breadth of view. Looking up a trade item or a report or some figures is good and useful; so is loving a poet because it is at the foundation of character and education.
We have recently been informed—no, we have been told—that to talk about reading, culture, the love of knowledge, is "flapdoodle." A citizen may be benefited by knowing how many miles of railroad are in his county, or what amount of money his city spends, but he will be just as much benefited by reading a lofty poem of André Chénier, Le Jeu de Paume for example, or a stanza of William Dwight Moody's, not that he will make money, but something far better.
What I want to say is that the state library shall extend the love of learning, of literature, or art and all their kin to the furthest boundaries of the state in order that all may know that here is a fountain whence all may receive instruction and refreshment. Why should the business man not read something besides the newspaper, the statements of which are denied the next day? Yet most men read nothing else. If his own town library is small let him call upon the state library and let the state library be ready to help. I believe that lending books must still be granted to the state library. We have calls from lovers of reading from every corner of Indiana, from men who love culture, knowledge and literature. These we propose to accommodate as long as the law permits. This observation is made because it has been said repeatedly that the state library shall deal in documents, reports and reference books.
We have many foreigners in Indiana. When these cannot secure what is wanted at their local library I want them to come to us, as recently happened when the Roumanians wanted the text of their native poets and something about their provincial capital Nagygebin.
I trust that we may all have one great library for reference with a minimum of popular fiction—a library that is a guide to scholarship and knowledge, a library where every man who loves to read may turn himself out to grass and browse, browse deeply. Herein will we have state-wide influence.
May I group these influences as a summary:—the personality, fitness and scholarship of the State Librarian; the bibliographical center may well be the state library; the legislative reference for the Assembly and officials; the gathering and preserving of the history and archives of the state along with the encouragement among the people to preserve local historical material; the collecting of newspapers representing the entire commonwealth; the creation of a periodical center in the state library; close connection with schools, colleges and all kinds of organizations, social, literary, commercial, etc.; assistance for all the state institutions, educational, charitable, and correctional; close relation with the women's clubs; assistance to the farmer and the foreigner in isolated localities; the center for general culture and love of knowledge where every citizen may continue to go to school.
The PRESIDENT: Mr. Lester in his paper referred to the bill-drafting department of a legislative reference bureau and Mr. Brown has just referred to the man behind the counter. We may perhaps feel that modern conditions require two men behind the counter in government: the one who prepares the ammunition and the one who fires it; and perhaps the more important is the one who prepares the ammunition; the one who draws up the law, leaving to the legislature the more perfunctory service of applying the match. Mr. MATTHEW S. DUDGEON has served in the capacity of director of the bill drafting department of the Wisconsin legislative bureau and I believe that since he has assumed the duties of the executive officer of the Wisconsin Library Commission he has continued to perform that service. We shall be glad to hear from him this morning as to