The architecture of the average library building suggests a tomb—a place for dead ones—rather than a place chock-full of the things that appeal with tremendous force to the soul that is alive with the throbbing impulses of this wonderful time in which we live.
Since our buildings deny us this great means of publicity which the show window enables every merchant to use to such great advantage, we must use as best we may such means as we find available. In a general way I may state my conviction that we should make a much larger use of the specific personal appeal as over against general publicity, though the latter is also necessary. When a man has a definite task assigned him put the resources and service of your library directly up to him for his particular problem, especially if the problem is one a little outside the circle of his regular business. It will come to him at the psychological moment and he is most likely to act on your suggestion; whereas had it come to him as a general statement before he was personally interested most likely it would have been promptly forgotten. As a part of our regular routine letters from the library go to all such persons, as we see their names in the newspapers, on programs, etc.
At the meeting of the Associated Advertising Clubs of America early this month in Baltimore I had the pleasure of "getting next" to some of the livest business men in the country. The thing that impressed me most was not the interesting exhibitions there shown or the various "stunts" that were pulled off, but the new note that some of the men were striking. It was this: "Business and business efficiency for service rather than for profit." This is a high ideal, worthy of any profession, and I venture the prediction that it will be men of this type who will more and more dominate the business world of the future. Such men will appreciate and support the public library more than business men have ever done before; but they will also require more. To get their support we as librarians must think less of measuring our efficiency in terms of circulation statistics, a kind of impersonal, bookkeeping standard, but more of measuring it in terms of human service—human service not only for the business man, but for every man, every woman and every child in all this vast continent of America.
The PRESIDENT: Great as is the opportunity of the public library to serve the business man, it can't do it all, for so highly specialized are some of the departments of interest of the various business houses that no public library without a treasury like that of our millionaire concerns could hope to undertake a work of that character. Therefore, each large business concern necessarily must supplement the resources of the public library by means of library facilities of its own. We shall hear something of this form of work this morning in the paper which is to be presented by one of the most successful of the libraries of this type, that of H. M. Byllesby & Co. of Chicago, whose librarian, Miss LOUISE B. KRAUSE, will give us the paper.
LIBRARIES IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS: THEIR EXPANDING FUNCTION
The service which books render mankind may in general be designated as falling into two classes; namely, books for inspiration and books for information. Dismissing the use of books as a means of inspiration, because the subject does not fall within the scope of this paper, let us consider the most important use to which printed information can be put, in the service of mankind. At first thought it might seem that the use of the printed page for purposes of information reached its highest service in the function of education, but granted that it does not play an important part in education, we know education to be something vastly larger than a mere knowledge of facts, and we also know that many men and women who are repositories of information derived from the printed page do not always put it into operation for the best welfare of their fellows; for, as James Russell Lowell has said, "There is nothing less profitable than scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship;" and truly scholarship without the ultimate purpose of practical service is one of the most selfish possessions in the world.
Let us therefore exclude the use of printed information in the service of education as its highest form of usefulness and consider the following statement. The use of print in furnishing information performs its most important service in the function which it exercises in modern business, because it is business which lays hold of abstract science and knowledge and puts them into practical operation for the greatest benefit to mankind; for the commercial age in which we live is not a sordid age, but an age which is distinctly marked by the development and conservation of resources for the supplying of man's needs, by means of the extension of applied science into the field of business. Now lest this statement should be too abstract, and the speaker be accused in the words of Leonard Merrick of "voicing the sentiments of the unthinking in stately language," let us consider this proposition for a moment in the concrete. It is business enterprise that has brought about, through the perfection of the steam engine, the swiftness and convenience which we enjoy in twentieth century travel by railroad. It is business that has brought the service of the telephone and telegraph to their highest perfection. It is business that has developed artificial lighting by gas and electricity and emancipated us from candles and kerosene lamps. It is business that is transforming raw and waste materials by the application of pure science, into products of service and value for the needs of innumerable homes, in addition to perfecting agricultural machinery, and producing fertilizers to enrich the land, thereby making possible the production of better crops. Thus we might continue to multiply illustrations of how business enterprise has equipped us with the means of meeting great needs which at various times have seriously threatened the welfare of human life. This fact of the application of abstract science to the world's practical needs, through the medium of business enterprise, has become permanently recognized by institutions of learning, as seen in the establishment of technical schools, schools of commerce and finance, and instruction in business administration, for, as a recent writer in the Journal of Political Economy has said, "The methods of American industry are rapidly being intellectualized."
A variety of professional work of which engineering and chemistry are noteworthy examples are also carried on by large business organizations, and we find professional men of the highest rank as prime movers in large commercial enterprises. (In this connection it might not be amiss to state that out of an experience as university librarian and business librarian the speaker is inclined to think that the professional business man keeps more adequately informed and up to date on his specialties than does the average university professor.)
An additional fact which bears directly on the general subject under discussion is, that the age in which we live is not only a business age, but that it is an age marked by the magnitude of its business organizations; an age of "big business," as some one has called it; and because of the economic conditions of our advancing civilization, business will undoubtedly continue to be "big business" even though subjected to federal and state regulation. Now correlating these two facts, namely, that modern business is conducted by means of large organizations and that its success is based upon the intelligent application of scientific knowledge to practical needs, we have cleared the way for an appreciation of the function of printed information as embodied in the work of libraries in business organizations.