(This work was planned by Brown.)

INTRODUCTION
LIBRARIANSHIP IN GREAT BRITAIN. THE PRESENT SCOPE OF THE LIBRARY PROFESSION. METHODS OF THIS BOOK

I. Library economy is a term covering every branch of work concerned with libraries; and libraries may be defined in a phrase as institutions devoted to the collecting, conserving and exploiting of literature. Originally the prevalent character of libraries was that of conserving rather than exploiting institutions, and much of the technical equipment of the modern librarian has come into being as a result of their progress from their original “museum” to their present “workshop” character. Our subject, then, covers the founding, organizing, administration and routine of libraries. It is one of much wider compass than is commonly supposed. Whatever may have been the original intention, for example, of the pioneers of the municipal public library movement, and there are still many who seem to regard that movement as a counter-attraction to the seductions of the saloon bar and similar places of recreation, the present public library is a many-sided, active civic institution, making its appeal to all classes of the community as a centre of education, culture and recreation, with a trained service to direct it. Nearly every other type of library also is most concerned with the best means of attracting people to make use of literature, and is an active force in the community rather than a passive one.

II. Libraries have been recognized as important in all ages, and a brief study of the early civilizations of the East and of the Mediterranean countries, as well as all later periods, shows the existence of state, public, ecclesiastical and monastic libraries for which there was some sort of librarianship, with even such seemingly modern appliances as classification and cataloguing of a kind. But the library as we know it to-day, and librarianship in particular, may almost be said to be the creation of the last half of the nineteenth century. Earlier town libraries indeed existed, the first, it is believed, being that at Norwich, which was opened to the public in 1608; but although there were individual instances, the municipal public library (commonly but erroneously called the “free library,” because no charge is made for its use) was a result of the Libraries Act of 1850 promoted by William Ewart, M.P., who had at his back the real pioneer of public libraries, Edward Edwards, whose Memoir of Libraries is the most monumental of treatises on library history and administration. The Act of 1850 had in view the needs of the poor, sanctioned the levying of a halfpenny rate, and, with curious want of vision, left the provision of books to the generosity of private donors. The debates upon the bill before it became law are curious and entertaining reading; and it appears that the special purpose of libraries was the prevention of crime! Progress was slow at first, but in 1853 it was stated that thirteen towns had adopted the Act. In 1855 its provisions were extended to Ireland, and in this amending bill the amount that might be levied for libraries throughout the kingdom was increased to a limit of one penny in the pound.

III. We need not follow the history of the movement, as an excellent monograph by J. J. Ogle, The Free Library, is available on the question; nor need we go into the parallel and in some respects more wonderful development of the movement in America. So far as this country is concerned libraries have grown up in every considerable town, with very few exceptions; but the whole movement has been retarded, even crippled, by the retention of the limit of one penny in the pound as the amount a local authority may spend on library provision. The advance in general education—it must be remembered that in 1850 not more than one-seventeenth of the children of the people were receiving an education which could be called satisfactory even when judged by the low standards of that time—has created a new reading public more vast than was contemplated by the promoters of the Act; but the only legal help towards meeting its demands has come from the increased product of rate assessments; the limit remains sixty-five years after its imposition. But the increase we have mentioned has not been negligible, even if it is entirely insufficient, and it has been assisted in a remarkable way by private generosity. Amongst many who have provided towns with public library buildings, Passmore Edwards, Lord Brassey, Henry Tate, Colonel Gamble and Professor Sandeman may be mentioned; but the greatest impetus to the movement was given by the systematic and almost universal munificence of Andrew Carnegie, which began in 1886 and has been continued by him and by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, which he has endowed, to the present. His system has been to provide a suitable building on the condition that the authority accepting it adopted the Libraries Act and provided a site from other charges than the library rate. By this means scores of towns which were without or had only inferior library buildings now possess one in some way worthy of the name.

IV. The expansion of libraries gave rise to the modern profession of librarianship. The older libraries were usually in the charge of scholars, whose main work was that of “keeper” of the books, a title which the librarian in charge of the British Museum still bears, although it does not now comprehend his work. The municipal library required a man who was not primarily a scholar, although scholarship was an invaluable basis for his work; he was rather required to be an administrator, a purveyor of books, and, because of the very limited moneys at his disposal, something of a business man. For some years, however, there was no definite science or art of librarianship in this sense. Edward Edwards, in the second volume of his Memoirs of Libraries, laid firmly the foundations of present library economy in a résumé and exposition of the multifarious methods of cataloguing, classification, library planning and administration used in the various libraries of the world. Little followed in England until the growing needs of the work caused a few far-seeing librarians to find some means of bringing librarians together. This they succeeded in doing in the successive conferences of librarians, British and international, the first of which was held in London in 1877. Out of these sprang the Library Association in 1878, with Mr Henry R. Tedder and the late E. B. Nicholson as its first honorary secretaries, and the late Robert Harrison as honorary treasurer. In the first year the late E. C. Thomas succeeded Nicholson, and somewhat later he was associated in his office with Mr (now Sir) J. Y. W. MacAlister, one of the most significant and creative personalities in our work; while Mr Tedder assumed the office of treasurer, which he holds to this day, an office in which his wisdom and counsel as well as his unsparing industry have done much to create the present stability of the Association. By means of frequent gatherings, especially by its annual meetings, the Library Association gradually brought together the whole body of librarians in this country, who read and discussed professional papers, published proceedings, initiated scheme after scheme for the promotion and improvement of libraries, and generally became the controlling factor in library polity. It was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1898. For many years it was recognized that training in technical methods was necessary for librarians, and the Association has devoted much attention to this work. At first it held summer schools and, from 1898, other brief courses for library students, and examined the students upon them. Later it established, in connexion with the Governors of the London School of Economics, regular courses of lectures at that institution. A carefully-designed and remarkably helpful syllabus of instruction was drawn up, and on this examinations were held and certificates leading up to a diploma in librarianship were issued. The latest phase of the educational work of the Association has been the securing of a grant from the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust for the establishment of a School of Librarianship at University College, London, which it is expected will commence on 1st October 1919. This will primarily be a day school with courses of study founded on the syllabus of the Association, which has been carefully revised and extended to meet the new circumstances. It is ridiculous to prophesy, but if this School is a success it is probable that it will revolutionize the whole character of library service in this country.

V. There have been various definitions of the purpose of libraries and librarians, few of them entirely adequate. We shall not attempt another dogmatically, but we may suggest that that purpose is to provide a representative and systematically arranged collection of literature from the daily newspaper to the elaborate treatise and encyclopædic work of reference. The methods of doing this, and of exploiting in the public interest the collection when made, are the subject-matter of this manual. Until this primary purpose of a library is fulfilled any attempts at those added activities which are advocated by some librarians to-day are likely to be mistaken, or at least ill-advised. The Library Association has not issued a comprehensive manifesto covering this matter, and might very well do so, if care were taken, as no doubt it would be, to give considerable elasticity to the definitions. At the Annual Meeting in 1917, however, it did adopt a series of resolutions of great importance, which, as the almost unanimous pronouncement of the profession, must find a place here. In the light of the rough definition given, their inadequacy as a comprehensive statement of library work is obvious enough, but they have great value as showing the trend of that work in the effort to meet the remarkable intellectual, industrial and other conditions created by the European War; and this seems to us a justification for treating each of the resolutions at greater length in the following pages:

1. “That the aim of the library as an educational institution is best expressed in the formula ‘Self-development in an atmosphere of freedom,’ as contrasted with the aim of the school, which is ‘Training in an atmosphere of restraint or discipline’; in the school the teacher is dominant, because it is possible to pass on a form, to teach an art; but in the library the pupil strikes out his own line, and becomes his own teacher; the library supplies the material upon which the powers awakened and trained in the school can be exercised; the library and the school depend upon different ideas, deal with different material in different ways, and there is no administrative relation between the two; furthermore, the contacts of the library with organized education necessarily cease at the point where the educational machinery itself terminates, but the library continues as an educational force of national importance in its contacts with the whole social, political and intellectual life of the community; that the recognition of the true place of the library in education must carry with it the provision of adequate financial resources, which is impossible under the present limitation on the library rate; such limitation therefore should be removed at the earliest possible moment.”