Who are to be the assistants in our library of the future? At present our staffs are recruited from the following sources:
(1) The library schools. The best of these have supplied chiefly the heads of the smaller libraries, and heads of departments or assistants of the higher grades in the larger libraries. Few heads of the large libraries are school-graduates and few lower-grade assistants. There are, however, schools of the second class whose graduates have gone into the lower grades both in small and large institutions.
(2) Apprentice classes, generally formed to instruct untrained persons in the work of a particular library, so that those who enter its lower grades may be at least partially fitted for their work. The best of these rise by promotion to the upper grades.
(3) Appointment of totally untrained persons. If such persons are thoroughly well educated they may enter the work in the higher grades or even as the heads of libraries. B If not they generally enter at the bottom, although of course some obtain higher positions through political or local influence.
This, I believe, states the situation fairly. What are the tendencies? There can be no doubt that the library school is growing in favor. The increasing numbers of those who apply for school courses, the raising of requirements, both for entrance and for graduation, the second class schools that have sprung up in limitation of those of higher grade, making necessary the appointment of committees by various library bodies to examine and report on them—all point in this direction. At the same time we have had numerous instances, of late, of the selection of non-graduates to fill high library positions and at least one instance of frank statement on the part of a librarian of acknowledged eminence, in favor of taking college men of ability into the library immediately on graduation, instead of putting them through a library school. The library schools aim, and very properly so, at occupying the same position toward the library profession that the medical and law schools do toward the medical and legal professions. Statistics show that they have not yet reached that position. Still, it is probable that they will continue to approximate to it as a limit. In the future, more and more of the higher library positions will doubtless be filled by library-school graduates—and so also will more of the lower positions. When the demand for assistants in the higher grades begins to slacken, proportionately to the supply, as it is sure to do some day, the library school graduates will be willing to enter the library force in the lower grade, and will thus crowd out the untrained or partially trained applicants to some extent. They may even make the apprentice class a superfluity, in which case I am sure librarians will abandon it without a sigh.
In these somewhat desultory forecasts the object of the prophet has been not so much to impress upon others his own beliefs as to stimulate a taste for prophecy—a desire to glance over the rail and see which way the current is setting. Without being fatalists, we may hold that there are certain great tendencies in human affairs, vast social currents, against which it is well-nigh hopeless to struggle. Those who desire to accomplish results must work with these currents, not against them. Success has almost always been won in this way. Even when a few bold spirits have seemed to stem and turn back the whole tide, it will generally be found that an unseen undercurrent was in their favor. Learn therefore to judge of the currents; so shall we avoid the rocks and shoals and bring our craft safely to port.
THE LOVE OF BOOKS AS A BASIS FOR LIBRARIANSHIP[7]
Is the love of books a proper or necessary qualification for one who is to care for books and to see that they do the work for which they were made? First, let us ask a question or two. What is the love of books; and what is there in books that one may love? The same question might be asked and answered of the love of human beings; for between it and the love of books there are curious analogies. Of what, then, do man and book severally consist as objects of interest and affection?
First of all there is the man himself, the ego, the soul—which cannot indeed exist on this earth without its material embodiment, but which most of us realize is in some way distinct from that embodiment. So the book has its soul. The ideas or facts that it sets forth, though dependent for their influence on the printed page, exist independently of that page and make the book what it is. Next we have the material embodiment; that without which the man or the book could not exist for us; which is a necessary part of him or it, but necessary only because it is the vehicle through which man or book may be known by the senses. The body of the book is thus so much, and only so much, of its material part, its paper and its ink, as is necessary to present the contents properly to the eye. Lastly, we have the clothing of man and of book, having the function of protection or of decoration, or both; in the case of the book the protective cover, often highly decorated, and so much of interior elaboration as cannot be said to be strictly necessary to the presentation of the idea. The “body” and the clothing of the book, let it be noted, are not strictly separable as are those of the man. The line between them may be drawn in different places by different people. The same illustration, we will say, may be considered by one reader an absolutely necessary part of the book—an organ of its body—while to another it is but an ornamental embellishment—a decorative gewgaw. In spite of this vagueness, however, there is here an undeniable distinction between those material parts of the book that are necessary to its existence and those that merely embellish it or protect it.
The book therefore, like the man, is made up of soul, body and clothes. Which of these is the entity that may be loved? Now there are many kinds of lovers and many kinds of love. The belle of the ball may be surrounded with admirers, but if clad in rags and seated in a gutter she might excite no favorable notice. Still more may a pretty face be loved when it has no mental or spiritual qualities behind it. Yet these types of affection are inferior—no one would deny it. In like manner those who love the book merely for its fine clothes, who rejoice in luxurious binding and artistic illumination, and even those who dwell chiefly on its fine paper and careful typography, are but inferior lovers of books. The one loves his book for its clothes, and the other for its bodily perfection; neither cares primarily for its contents, its soul.