Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

Now I need not waste time in arguing here that this process can not be made to apply universally or be used indefinitely. To standardize a work of art would be to kill it. Standardization is valuable where interchangeability is necessary rather than adaptation to local conditions. Portable houses, for instance, with interchangeable parts, have been standardized to a certain extent, but only within the bounds of uniform climatic conditions. The standard houses for Michigan and Alabama would have to be different. It is important, therefore, as I have said, to know, when standardization is being carried out, the limits of its advisability and the conditions under which it becomes useless or injurious. This is of interest to us librarians because our methods and processes, our buildings, our book collections and the use of both have long been undergoing this very process. And it is surely desirable that almost all the routine processes of library work, and the others to some extent, should be standardized.

This standardization has been going on ever since librarians began to meet together and began to issue their own professional literature; in other words, ever since the formation of the A.L.A. in 1876 and the establishment of The Library Journal about the same time. The subsequent formation of State Library Associations and local library clubs, as well as the establishment of other library periodicals, has greatly multiplied the opportunities for librarians to talk over their work with each other, to learn of other and better ways of doing things, to compare existing methods and to determine, if possible, which of them best serves the purpose for which it was devised. These things having in some measure been decided, they were then crystallized and fixed by the rise and success of Library Schools, summer-schools and training classes, which selected the methods that had stood the test of time and had emerged from the crucible of discussion and formulated them into standards which were thenceforth taught to their students. This, I think, is a fair statement of the way in which our present library standards came to be standards.

It is a good way to select the best and to ensure that the best shall not be departed from. If the best always remained best, we should have no quarrel with it. Unfortunately there is flux and change all about us. A method is best when it best corresponds to the conditions. We can ensure that the method shall not be changed, but we have no control over a large proportion of the conditions. They change, in spite of us; and then the methods ought to change with them. In some instances we have erred, possibly, by making it a little hard to change them. We are now ready to consider some of the cases where standards ought not to obtain—where one library ought to try to be different from another instead of exactly like it.

It is evident from what was said above about portable houses, that difference of locality is apt to introduce important exceptions into any rule of this kind; and it is on these exceptions that we are to dwell particularly to-day. There are thousands of particulars in which it is desirable that a library in one town should be conducted exactly like one in another town. What are the particulars in which the library must or should be different?

First, let us consider the stock of books. If these have been selected properly, differences between the two towns will perhaps be first reflected in these, for a library’s ability to serve its community depends primarily on certain correspondences between the books and the readers. These correspondences may be summarized by saying that the books in a library must represent a combination of the readers’ wants and their needs. These might always coincide in an ideal community, but in practice no librarian thinks of paying attention to the one to the exclusion of the other. At the same time the demands of the readers should always be known and always considered even if they want what is unnecessary; and we must likewise try to ascertain what they need, even if they have no desire for it. The extremes in a community without library taste would be a library of trashy fiction and one of serious standard works at which no one ever looked. A book-selector who uses good judgment will of course steer between this Scylla and this Charybdis, and the result will be a collection that the community can use with both pleasure and profit. Moreover, as time goes on, the readers’ taste and the quality of their library will both slowly but surely rise. No two towns are alike. Where the books have been thus selected, the collections will reflect the character of the communities, not only in literary taste but in many other things. The industries of the towns are likely to differ. In one, perhaps, there are potteries; in the other, shoe factories. The workers in the industries and even outsiders interested in them for local reasons, should have an opportunity to consult their literature. The natural resources of the regions doubtless differ—their crops, their mineral output, their attractiveness to the summer tourist. Transportation facilities vary. All these things have their reflection in books and the differences of the towns have their corresponding reflections in their libraries.

Many years ago, your lecturer called the attention of librarians to the fact that they have in their own statistical tables a means of ascertaining whether they are keeping up with the reading-tendencies of their communities in book-purchase. Nearly every library classifies both its stock and its circulation, and tabulates both for the year, giving also the percentage of each class to the whole. Now suppose, for instance, that his tables show nine per cent. of history on the shelves, we will say, whereas the circulation of the same class is eleven per cent. Evidently his readers are fonder of history than he is. They read it in greater degree than he buys it. Moral: buy more history. Of course this would be the moral only where the tendency shown was to be encouraged. For instance the average percentage of fiction on the shelves in a public library is probably about thirty, whereas its circulation runs from sixty to sixty-five. We do not say here “Buy more fiction”, because fiction reading needs no encouragement, but rather judicious restraint, although I certainly am not one of those who condemn it. I wish, however, that we could divide our novels into three classes, good, indifferent and bad, and then test the public demand by the method outlined above. I am convinced that some surprises might be in store for us.

Among the subjects that differ totally in two localities, local history and biography are conspicuous. Both citizens and visitors are often interested in them. There are features of each that are of more than local interest, but the purely local side must generally be taken care of by the library or not at all. Sometimes there is a local historical society whose work, of course, the library will not try to duplicate; but there is always room for co-operation, stimulation and aid. A moribund historical body may often be galvanized into life by an interested librarian. The library may offer such a body the hospitality of its building and shelf-room for its collections with mutual benefit. But in scores of towns there is only languid interest in local history or local worthies, and the library itself must do all that is done. Material bearing on these local matters rarely consists of books. It will include local newspapers, clippings, a pamphlet or two, menus, leaflets, programs—all sorts of printed things issued by churches, schools, clubs and societies, and lost as soon as issued unless caught at once and preserved. Here is the library’s chance to possess a collection that is the only one of its kind in the world; for outside the home town no one would think of getting it together. Supplementing these printed records may be all sorts of manuscript material—letters, diaries, reminiscences or narratives written or dictated especially for the library by persons who have something locally interesting to tell. If there are maps showing the growth of the town or anything else of interest about it, the library is the place for it. The collection and arrangement need take none of the busy librarian’s time, for there is always someone in the town whose interest and labor can be enlisted. If nothing else can be done, at least a file of the local newspaper can be kept and indexed on cards, especially for names of localities and persons. Work of this kind done currently and not allowed to accumulate, does not take much time.

In these days of universal snapshots, local photographs are easy to get. The librarian may take a few herself and the library may well defray the expense. A hundred years from now, twenty views of your main street, taken at five-year intervals from the same point and showing the progressive changes, would be worth their weight in gold. Groups taken “just for fun” or for family reasons, are often worth keeping because they show the fashions of the day. These are of no particular interest to us now, but any of us would be glad to have in our libraries a collection of groups showing prevalent modes of dress in our towns during each year in the last century. Old buildings are often torn down to make room for new. These should be photographed before they go.

All material of this kind is peculiar to the library where it is preserved and helps to make that library’s collections a departure from standardization whose importance we need, perhaps, insist on no further.

It may not be possible to collect in the library all of the interesting local material in the town. Much of it may be in the hands of private owners who will not part with it. Some of it may be owned by clubs, churches or public bodies. In this case there should be an index somewhere to indicate where it is, and there is no more appropriate place for this index than the library. I have elsewhere suggested that where this privately-owned material consists of books, cards for them may be inserted also in the library’s public catalogue. But, in addition, there is no limit to the extent to which the library may go in indexing material, and this work may well enlist the interest and efforts of volunteers. There may be an index to old furniture, one of colonial houses, possibly illustrated and annotated like the fine one prepared by Mr. Godard for the Connecticut State Library, one of soldiers sent by the town to various wars, one of noteworthy storms or of very high or low temperatures, one to local organizations, past and present. The special interests of the community will guide those efforts, and here too the library of one town will differ materially from that of another.