Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

One of the earliest developments of a feeling of professional pride in one’s work is an insistence on the adequate training of the workers and on the establishment of standards of efficiency both for workers and work. Here belongs a forecast not only of library school training, but of official inspection and certification, of systems of service, etc. Standardization of this kind is on the increase and is bound to be enforced with greater strictness in the future. In our professional training as in other professions the tendency is toward specialization. With us, this specialization will doubtless proceed on the lines of facilities for practice. An engineering school cannot turn out electrical engineers if the only laboratories that it has are devoted to civil and mechanical engineering. A specialist in abdominal surgery is not produced by experience in a contagious disease ward. Similarly we ought not to expect a school remote from public library facilities to specialize in public library work, or a school in close connection with a public library to produce assistants for the work of a university library. Increasing professional spirit among us will demand specialization according to equipment.

Popularization, some may think, has already gone to the limit. How can we be more of the people than we are to-day? Are we not, in sooth, a little too democratic, perhaps? Personally I feel that a good deal of the library’s social democracy is on the surface. Any member of a privileged class will assure you that his own class constitutes “the people” and that the rest do not matter. The Athenians honestly thought that their country was a democracy, when it was really an oligarchy of the most limited kind. England honestly thought she had “popular” government when those entitled to vote were a very small part of the population. A library in a city of half a million inhabitants honestly thinks that a record of 100,000 cardholders entitles it to boast that its use extends to the whole population. We cannot say that we reach the whole number of citizens until we really do reach them. The school authorities can go out to the highways and hedges and compel them to come in; we cannot. Herein doubtless lies one of our advantages. Our buildings are filled with willing users. It is our business to universalize the desire to read as the schools are universalizing the ability. But we have not yet done so, and popularization proceeds slowly. I cannot say that I see many indications of speeding up in the rate, although our increase in the recognition of groups, noted above, may have an influence here in future. As groups develop among that part of the population that uses the library least, our opportunity to extend our influence over that part will present itself. One such group is ready for us but we have never reached it—that of union labor. The recognition of the unions by the library and of the library by the unions has been unaccountably delayed, despite sporadic, well-meant, but ineffective efforts on both sides. No more important step for the intellectual future of the community can be taken than this extension of service.

Nationalization has just begun. It is speeding up and will go far, I am sure, in the next twenty years. Our libraries are getting used to acting as a unit. We should not like administrative nationalization and I see no signs of it; but nationalization in the sense of improved opportunities for team work and greater willingness to avail ourselves of them we shall get in increasing measure. For instance, one of our greatest opportunities lies before us in the inter-library loan. It knocks at our door, but we do not heed it because in this respect we have not begun yet to think nationally. But having begun national service in the various activities brought to the front by the war, we shall not, I am sure, lag behind much longer. The national organization of the A.L.A. has long provided us with a framework on which to build our national thoughts and our national deeds, but hitherto it has remained a mere scaffolding, conspicuous through the absence of any corresponding structure. The war is teaching us both to think and to act nationally, and after it is over I shall be astonished if we are longer content to do each his own work. Our work is nationwide, in peace as in war and our tardy realization of this fact may be one of the satisfactory by-products of this world conflict.

Now it is not beyond the possibilities that the library movement, headed right and running free, may still fall because it meets some obstacle and goes to pieces. Are there any such in sight? I seem to see several, but I believe that we can steer clear. If we split on anything it will be on an unseen rock, and of such, of course, we can say nothing.

One rock is political interference. The library has had trouble with it of old and some of us are still struggling with it. It is assumed by those who put their trust in paper civil service that it has now been minimized. This overlooks the undoubted fact that in a great number of cases the civil service machinery has been captured by politicians, and now works to aid them, not to control them. The greatest danger of political interference in public libraries, now lies in well-meant efforts to turn them over to some local commission established to further the merit system, but actually working in harmony with a political machine.

Another rock on which we may possibly split is that of formalism. Machinery must be continually scrapped and replaced if progress is to be made. It will not grow and change like an organism. The library itself is subject to organic growth and change, but its machinery will not change automatically with it. If we foster in any way an idea that our machinery is sacred, that it is of permanent value and that conditions should conform to it instead of its conforming to them, our whole progress may come to an end. I have called this a rock, but it is rather a sort of Sargasso Sea where the library may whirl about in an eternity of seaweed.

Another obstacle, somewhat allied to this of formalism, is the “big head”—none the less dangerous because it is common and as detrimental to an institution as it is to an individual. Just as soon as a person, or an institution, sits down and begins to appreciate himself or itself, to take stock of the services he or it is rendering the community, to wonder at their extent and value, those services are in a fair way to become valueless. The proper attitude is rather that of investigation to discover further possible kinds of service, with the exercise of ingenuity in devising ways to render them effectively.

We have occasionally been accused of taking the attitude of self-laudation, but I really do not think there is great danger of an epidemic of this malady. We do not receive enough encouragement. Once in a while, to be sure, someone tells us, or tells the public, what a great and valuable institution the public library is but the treatment that we receive is generally mildly humorous when it is not characterized by downright indifference and neglect. Whenever a book comes into my hands telling of some movement in which I know that the library has borne an honorable part I always turn first to the index and search for recognition under the letter L. Generally it is not there; when it is, it is almost always inadequate. If we are attacked by the “big head,” it will have to be a case of auto-intoxication.

Exploitation is another possible rock. I have already alluded to the danger of capture by a political machine, but there are other interests more subtle and quite as dangerous. Many a useful institution, intended to be nonpartisan, has been captured and used by some interest or other while remaining non-partisan on the surface. Our safety, so far, has resided in the inability of most interests to see that we are worth capture. When the drive comes, as I believe it will, our continued safety will lie, not in resistance, but in an equal yielding to all—a willingness to act as the agent for all isms, religious, economic, political and industrial without exalting one above another or emphasizing one at another’s expense. Something of this we are already doing, and in so far as we succeed in it we are placing ourselves in a position of vantage from which it will be very difficult to dislodge us.

Assuming the truth of all this—and it is something of an assumption, I grant you—what then, is our library of 1950 to be? An institution not very much larger or more expensively operated than our present maximum, although with a higher minimum, carried on with a more careful eye to economy and watching more jealously the quality of its output. It will have two units of service, as at present, the book and the citizen, but it will tend to regard the latter as primary, rather than the former and will shrink from no form of service that it can render him. The higher quality of its work will be reflected in the greater pride of the worker—in a spirit of professionalism that will insist on adequate training and proper compensation and possibly will use organization to enforce these ideals. It will reach out somewhat further among the people than it does now, although not so much that the difference will be notable. Finally the teamwork between different libraries will be more frequent and effective, assistants will be exchanged freely, readers’ cards used interchangeably and inter-library loans will take place easily and often.