Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

When I speak of the exclusion of a class of persons, I do not mean that they are formally kept out or even consciously discouraged; this is why it is so easy to be a librarian of the day before yesterday. That day was a comfortable day; an easy day to be self-satisfied in; it had its libraries for the rich and its libraries for the poor. Some class was always named, even if some were always left out.

It may be that the exclusion operates through features that are in themselves excellent. I have seen, in a small community, a library building so fine, with such an atmosphere of quiet good-taste and so lady-like a librarian, that the great public no more dared to enter therein than if a fierce lion had stood in the doorway. I have known libraries, too, in which the books were too good. Certain classes in the community where not intellectually up to them.

I have also known libraries that were never used by the foreigners in their communities, or by the colored people. These latter, strange to say, were largely in the North. The South recognizes the Negro and pays him much attention—in its way. It settles his status and sees that it is observed. He has the last four seats on the trolley car and he has his separate library accommodations. In the North he is on an equality with the white man—in everything but reality. He is welcomed to the library in theory and he does not use it in practice. I fear that in this respect too many of us belong to the day before yesterday.

I trust that I have made it clear that the librarian of day-before-yesterday is not a bad librarian. He or she is just a librarian of day before yesterday—that is all.

Now we will step into one of Mr. H.G. Wells’ “Time machines” and take a short spin ahead into yesterday. The librarian of yesterday excludes no one at all from his library; for he is within one step of being up-to-date. He discourages no person nor any class of persons. He stands in his doors with outstretched arms and announces that his library is free to all, that it has books for all—rich and poor, old and young, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free. The selection of books is well thought-out and adapted to the community in which it is. The accommodations are ample and fitting. Everyone is welcome. What more could you ask? Nothing at all; provided you are still in yesterday. Yesterday this sort of library was regarded as the last word in the popularization of the book, and it is indeed a long step in advance of day-before-yesterday. The librarian’s material is before him; he has good books; is more needed than this? Yea, verily. One may have a nail and a hammer to drive it; also an egg, and a pan to fry it, yet one cannot fry the egg with the hammer. Some selective action is necessary before we can attain the result that we want. A minister, presiding at a wedding, in which several couples were to be united at once, read the marriage service and then exclaimed: “I pronounce you men and wives; now you can sort yourselves.” The trouble is that things will not “sort themselves”; they must have some one to sort them—and this is what is the matter with the library and the librarian of yesterday. They fail to make connection between the man and the book, so that part of the fine collection remains wholly or relatively unused, and part of the community that it ought to serve remains apart from the library, despite the librarian’s outstretched arms and his words of welcome. If he had read his Bible as his great-grandparents used to do, he would have realized that to fill the table at the wedding feast of literature and life a simple invitation sufficeth not. We must go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. The attitude of passive expectancy, of ability and willingness to serve those who come, was well enough for yesterday, but not for the new library day that has dawned in these United States of America. Apparently the library dawn moves eastward as the physical day moves westward, for over in the mother country only a few lofty peaks are yet gilded by its sunshine. Even in our own land there are gorges where the dusk lingers; there are even grottoes where darkness will always be. But we are mostly in the light. We realize that if we have a book on the dyeing of textile fabrics and if there is an unheeding man in our community who would be helped by that book, all the complacent receptivity that we can muster will not suffice to bring them together. And with this knowledge comes an awakening of conscience. Long ago we stopped crying out “Am I my brother’s keeper?” We realize that as members of the community we must bear our share of responsibility for what is done in the community and that collectively we must take measures for the community’s welfare. Each of us is a Roman dictator, in that it is our business to see that the Republic suffers no harm. Thus the community appoints special officers to look out for the interests of its members in certain directions. We public librarians are such officers. We are proud of saying that we stand on the same plane as the teachers in our schools and the professors in our colleges; nay, even a little higher, for the facilities for education over which we preside are offered long after school and college years are over.

Now the teacher does not stand in the doorway and announce that she is willing and ready to instruct all who may so desire in reading, writing and arithmetic—that she has a well-equipped schoolroom, blackboards, globes and textbooks for all who will take advantage of them. Not so; the community goes out and compels its members to take advantage of all these things. In like manner, also, the community makes all sorts of laws for its own preservation and betterment; it does not say “See, here are good laws; come ye who will and obey them.” On the contrary it goes out into highways and hedges and sees that all its members obey.

I would not push this analogy too far. No one expects that the community will require that every one within its borders shall use the public library so many times a month, or, indeed that it shall be used at all. The nature of the institution precludes such compulsion. But it should require that every effort be made to see that no section of the books on the library shelves shall lie idle and that no section of the community shall fail to use books, either through ignorance or through doubt of a welcome.

The librarian should say: Here is an unused book. Is it without value in this community? Then let it make place for a better. Has it value? Then why is it not used? Somewhere, in this community, is the man, woman or child, who, whether realizing it or not, would derive pleasure or profit, or both from reading it. It is my business to seek out that person.

Again: Here is a man who does not read books. Is this because no book would appeal to him? Impossible! He may think so, but there lives no one to whom the soul of some fellow man, speaking through the printed page, will not bring a welcome message. Is there such a book on my shelves? If so, it is my business to get it into that man’s hands; if not, I must buy, beg or borrow it as soon as I may.

When the librarian has begun to talk in this fashion, lo! the dawn is shining, he is a librarian of to-day. The librarian of to-day frowns on no one, discourages no one; and he stands not passively at his door with open arms. He walks through his library; he walks through his town. He knows the books in one and the dwellers in the other, and he knows both in their relationships, actual and possible. If there are disused books on his shelves or non-readers in his community, it is not because he has made no effort to bring them together; his failures are not those of negligence.