Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

The other day, sitting in a stalled trolley car, my eye fell upon a street-cleaner, and I began to watch him with interest. He was busy—apparently, I was going to say, but that does him injustice. He was really busy. While I watched him—and the car was delayed for some little time—he was constantly at work, pushing over the asphalt the broad scraper that was intended to rid it of dust and refuse. And yet he did not clean the street, for he took no account of the inequalities of its surface. These required intelligent adaptation of his movements at every instant, and to this he paid no attention. He went through the motions; his actual expenditure of physical energy was probably as great as if he had mixed a little brain-work with it, but it failed to accomplish what it ought, simply from that lack. And yet it would have been difficult for any overseer to give him orders that would have bettered the matter. It would have been hard to point out at any given instant, his errors of commission or of omission. The only way in which one could tell that he was not doing his work properly was by the result. He was put there to clean the street—and the street was not cleaned.

So with the librarians of yesterday and the day before. They are hard workers, not idlers. They have the tools, and they go through the motions. They may tire themselves out with their labor. Their library buildings may be attractive and clean; their technique perfect, their books well selected and in good order, their catalogs excellent. It is hard to point to any one thing that they are doing incorrectly or that they are omitting. And yet we must judge their work by its fruits; they are put into a community of actual or potential readers in charge of a collection of books. What are these for, if not to be read? Yet many remain untouched. For what purpose have the schools taught the townspeople to read? Thousands of them make no good use of that knowledge. To the librarian of to-day the non-realization of this and the lack of effort to remedy it mean failure. In order to make a little more definite our ideas of these three kinds of librarians, let us consider one or two very practical problems and see how each would probably view them and act upon them.

First. The library circulates no books on plumbing. For the librarian of the day before yesterday, this is no problem at all. Probably his library has no books on plumbing. His library is not for plumbers, and he has never suspected that it could be. As for the plumbers in his community, they too have never considered the possibility that they might learn something of their work from books in a public library. They are therefore silent and uncomplaining. Peace reigns and there is a general state of satisfaction all around—the satisfaction of blissful ignorance and of the day before yesterday.

The librarian of yesterday, on the other hand, sees the problem clearly and is concerned about it. He has good books on plumbing and nobody reads them. Evidently the more advanced grade of the librarian has not affected the plumbers—they still remain in ignorance of the public library. But what is he to do? Here is the library; here are the books; here is the librarian, ready and willing to distribute them to all who may come. If the generation—or any part of it—is so wicked and perverse that it comes not, what is there to do? What, indeed! And so library and community remain in the twilight of yesterday just before the dawn.

The librarian of to-day not only sees the problem and is concerned about it, but he proceeds to do something. Just what he does or how he does it is of far less consequence than the fact that he sees action in the matter to be necessary and possible. He may go personally and interview the plumbers; he may send them lists; he may get permission to address the plumbers’ union; he may do one or many of a thousand things to remedy matters, and although it is certain that what he does will not be completely effective, it is equally certain that it will have some good effect, which is the main thing.

Problem Second. Examination of the registry list shows that there are practically no card holders in a certain part of the town. As in the former case, this is no problem at all to the day before yesterday librarian. Its existence would in general not appear to him, certainly not as the result of any kind of statistical investigation. If he were informed of it he would regard the fact with complacency. The library is for readers, and if certain persons are non-readers they had better keep away. Nothing could be simpler. The librarian of yesterday, on the other hand, feels that all is not right. It is certainly too bad that when library privileges are offered free to all, so large a portion of the community should fail to take advantage of them. The library stands ready to help these people, if they will only come. Why don’t they?

The librarian of yesterday thus stops with a question; the librarian of to-day proceeds to answer it. He finds out why they don’t come. He may discover one or more of any number of things; whatever may be the causes, they are sure to be interesting, at least to him, for the to-day librarian is a born investigator. It may be that the non-readers are literate, but take no interest in books; perhaps they say they have no time to read; possibly the library has not the kind of books that they like; they may be foreigners, reading no English, and the library may have no books in their tongue. Whatever the trouble may be, the librarian of to-day sets about to remedy it. He may not succeed; but it is the diagnosis and the attempt at treatment, not its success, that constitute him what he is.

Problem Third. The reading done through the library is trivial and inconsequential. The fiction drawn is of low order, and there is little else read. The way in which this will affect the three types of librarian may be predicted at once. The librarian of the day-before-yesterday heeds it not; the librarian of yesterday heeds and perhaps worries, but does nothing. The librarian of to-day finds out the trouble and then tries to remedy it.

And so it goes: you may construct other problems for yourselves and imagine their solution, or lack of solution.

Now, it is obvious that there are great and evident objections to being a librarian of to-day and corresponding advantages in being one of the other kinds. In the first place the to-day variety of librarianship involves brainwork and it is always difficult to use one’s brain—we saw that in the case of the street-cleaner. Then this kind of librarian must be always looking for trouble. Instead of congratulating himself that all is going smoothly, he must set out with the premise that all cannot be going smoothly. There must be some way in which his books can be made to serve more people and serve them better; and it is his business to find out that way. Then the to-day librarian must use his statistics. The librarian of the day before yesterday probably takes none at all. The librarian of yesterday collects them with diligence, but regards any suggestion that they might be of use somewhat as the lazy wood-sawyer did the advice that he should sharpen his saw. “I should think I had a big enough job to cut up all this wood,” he replied petulantly, “without stopping to sharpen saws.” The librarian of yesterday has trouble enough in collecting and tabulating his statistics without stopping to use them—to make any deductions from them—to learn where the library machine is failing and where he should use the wrench or the oil can. All these things and many others make it easier for the overworked librarian to drop back into yesterday, or the day before. It should be borne in mind, however, that the difference between the three types of librarian is not so much difference in the amount of work done as it is in attitude of mind. The librarian of to-day does not necessarily expend more energy than the librarian of day before yesterday—but it is expended in a different direction and with a different object. It is to be feared that some librarians of small libraries allow themselves to become discouraged after reading of the great things that have been accomplished by large institutions with plenty of money to spend—the circulation of millions of books yearly, the purchase of additions by the tens of thousands, the provision of exhibitions for the children, the story-telling by professionals, the huge collections on special subjects, technology, art or history. It almost seems as if success were simply a matter of spending and as if without money to spend, failure should be expected as a matter of course.