Sometimes the chief difference between two localities is in the character and temper of the readers. The whole scheme of relations between library and public needs often to be altered in moving from one place to another. This is perhaps most noticeable in a city where there is a system of branch libraries. The assistant who has been transferred from a Jewish to a Scandinavian district and then to one occupied by well-to-do Americans will understand what I mean without further explanation.
But this difference in readers is of course much wider than mere racial difference. It may be a difference in social status. We Americans are too apt to pretend that this sort of thing does not affect a public educational institution, but it decidedly does. Some librarians make the mistake of thinking that these differences are racial also. It is a matter of common knowledge among city librarians that in a “slum” library the problem of discipline is simplicity itself compared with a library where the readers are nearly all well-to-do. This is often asserted to depend merely on the racial difference between the newly arrived immigrant—Russian Jew, Italian or Pole—and the native American. But we find that when the immigrant has learned the customs of the country and has made enough money to raise him in the social scale and enable him to move from his slum surroundings, he quickly takes his place with the well-to-do library patrons. He is more exacting and his children are harder to manage. The difference is really a social one. The immigrant is accustomed to being looked down on in his native country, to living on little and having few principles. He is humble and thankful for small favors. What he gets at the library fills him with amazement and gratitude. Mary Antin has told us all about it. But the well-to-do citizen, whether by birth or recent acquirement, realizes that the library is being supported by his taxes. He realizes it, in fact, so keenly, that he gives it somewhat undue prominence in his mind and sometimes shows this in his treatment of the library staff. Knowing that the library belongs in part to him, he may often forget that it belongs in equal degree to others. He is impatient or even resentful of rules intended to maintain equality of service. His children unconsciously absorb this same attitude. They resent control and are hard to keep in order. Much of the librarians’ time must be given to smoothing down ruffled feathers and maintaining discipline—time which ought to be given to bettering the quality of service.
Evidently these two kinds of communities must be handled differently. They call for different training on the part of the staff—a different stock of books—almost for different buildings. Then there is the indifferent community, which may be anywhere in the social scale and which requires special handling. It is even difficult to tell at times whether or not a community is really indifferent. Their reaction to the library is often a phase of the local feeling that is the subject of this lecture. It is present in some communities and absent in others, but its presence does not always mean real appreciation of library privileges, nor does its absence mean lack of such appreciation.
Not more than a few months apart, about ten years ago, two branch libraries were opened in New York. One was in Greenwich Village, a district of strong local peculiarities, which I fear it is about to lose because writers have taken to describing them in the magazines. The other was on 96th street, which was a part of New York like any other. The “Village” took the greatest interest in the library from the moment when its site was selected. The building was watched from its foundation up. Bad little boys annoyed the workmen. Local politicians and merchants congratulated the neighborhood and told us how fine they thought it was all going to be. Everybody wanted to take part in the opening exercises and nearly everybody did. There were floods of oratory and crowds of visitors. But having obtained the library and done what it considered its whole duty in the premises, Greenwich Village, not being a community of readers, proceeded to leave us to our own devices and it was only after months of up-hill work that the Branch succeeded in getting anything like a respectable circulation.
On the other hand the establishment, construction and opening of the 96th Street Branch were treated by the surrounding residents with supreme indifference. No one had asked to have a branch located at this point, which had been selected solely for reasons of topography and population. As the building went up, no one asked whether it was a school or a bank. Nobody came to the opening exercises. And yet when the library began to circulate books the community responded to such an extent that in a short time the branch was giving them out at the rate of 40,000 a month. Here the interest and pride of a community in the possession of a library building and its disposition to make use of the library are clearly shown to be two different things. In this case the two communities were parts of the same city, but separate towns often show the same phenomenon. Some of the most indifferent library towns, for instance, are the ones where superhuman efforts were put forth to secure a Carnegie building.
A kind of standardization of which we can not have too little is that controlled by the man who takes himself as the standard—his own ideas, prejudices and habits. This kind of standardizer is not always aware of what he is doing. He believes that his methods are the best. They may be best for him and possibly for the particular environment in which he has been working. I am not sure that some of our most cherished library habits did not originate in this way—were not originally simply the personal whims of some able and forceful library administrator who was in a position, in the formative stage of library progress, to impress them on the fabric of our work. Fortunately for us, the men of this kind, in the early history of the library movement, were not only men of force but generally of common-sense as well. Possibly their habits and customs were as good as any others that we might have adopted. I am sure that they were better than some. But individual points of view may in some cases prove disastrous. I remember an English novel in which a local librarian personally interested in the history of the French Revolution, uses all the available funds of his institution for years to buy books on the subject, building up a fine collection, but making his library useless for its ordinary purposes. His successor, a man with other interests, threw out the whole collection. I have often wondered which of these two librarians one ought to condemn most. Both are examples of the injury that may be done by what we may call auto-standardization.
I am preparing this whole lecture with a fear that some one of this kind may think he is adapting his library to his locality when he is only standardizing it by himself. Self-deception may go far in matters of this kind, and there is something to be said in favor of hard and fast standardization without departure of any kind, in that it prevents aberrations such as I have just hinted at. I trust that no self-standardizer is in my present audience.
Our conclusion from all this should be, I think, that a library should not only assimilate its methods to those of other libraries—which is standardization, but should react to the needs and conditions of its own surroundings, which is localization. If you would know the extent of this local reaction and the character of its results, ask the members of the library’s community, especially if that community is small. And we must remember that no library community is large, so far as its direct popular use is concerned. Whether it is in a village or a city, whether it is a central library or a branch, it is effective as a community centre only within a small circle, of perhaps half a mile radius. The residents of this circle are in a position to give testimony regarding the library’s local services. If it has succeeded in adapting itself to local needs its reputation will be that of a valuable, helpful, well-disposed institution; if not, the neighbors will be hostile, or at least indifferent. Libraries that are in constant trouble with their readers—the object of continual complaint and controversy, generally have the feeling that the fault is with the public. Sometimes it is; for a maladjustment is seldom on one side alone. But more often it is chiefly due to the fact that the library has overlooked its purely local functions, while possibly at the same time conforming most admirably to what are considered the best library standards. No library can afford to neglect its special duties to its locality and if these conflict with standardization, it should be the general standards and not the local adjustments, that should go by the board.
INDEX
[A], [B], [C], [D], [E], [F], [G], [H], [I], [J], [K], [L], [M], [N], [O], [P], [R], [S], [T], [V], [W].