largely general and descriptive; as regards the students it is that of a friend and counselor; as regards the other officers of the college it is that of an ally and co-operator.
It is necessary to emphasize at this point the wide divergence between the work of the reference librarian in the college or the university and that of the reference librarian in the public library however large or small it may be.
In the public library the demand made upon the reference librarian is for definite information for immediate use; the library patron wishes, not training in acquiring information by and for himself, but the information itself; no substitution of deferred dividends will satisfy his insistent demand for immediate cash payment; he cares not at all for method but he cares very particularly for instant results. Moreover, no one intervenes between the reference librarian and the library patron,—he alone is responsible for giving the information desired. And again, the reference librarian has to deal with an irregular, constantly fluctuating clientele. The man who wants to know who first thought the world was round and whether he was a vegetarian or perchance a cannibal may never visit the library again, but the effort must be made to satisfy his curiosity. The reference librarian of the public library must always be more or less of a purveyor of miscellaneous information to an irregular fluctuating public.
But the functions of the college reference librarian are altogether different. It is often his duty not to give, but temporarily to withhold information; not to answer but to ask questions; to answer one question by asking another; to help a student answer his own question for himself, work out his own problems, and find a way out of his difficulties; to show him how to find for himself the material desired; to give training rather than specific information; to be himself a teacher and to co-operate with other instructors in training the students who seek his help. All this is possible for him for he deals with a regular constituency and he can build up each year on the foundations of the previous year. But while progression comes for the students, there is always the solid permanency of subject with which the reference librarian deals. With the regularity of the passing calendar there come the questions of the feudal system and of the frontier, of the renaissance and of how to follow a bill through congress. The personnel of the student body changes, but there is always an unchanging residuum of subject matter. On the side of the regular college work there is therefore practically no demand whatever made on the college reference librarian for the miscellaneous information demanded of the public reference librarian,—he is not the one who writes for the daily papers the description in verse of the daily life of the reference librarian.[9] Just what his work is in the college, from the students' point of view is indicated by a recent experience.
[9] Library Journal, Oct., 1912. Public Libraries, June, 1913.
A class of seventy in American history was recently asked to what extent the members of it had availed themselves of the services of the reference librarian in that particular course and the replies seem to show that their inquiries had chiefly related to the use of government publications, early periodical literature, material not suggested by the titles of books, out-of-the-way material, source material, and current newspaper material not available through indexes. The many tributes to the help received from the Vassar College reference librarian are perhaps best summed up, so it seems to the teacher, in the statement of one student "she shows you how to go about finding a book better the next time."
If then it must be evident that the work of the college reference librarian differs widely from that of the public reference librarian, it remains to consider specifically what division of the field should be made between the college reference librarian
and the college instructor. Here a clear line of demarcation seems evident. The college instructor must know the student personally and intellectually, as he must know the conditions from which he has come and the conditions to which he presumably is to go. He must help the student relate all the various parts of his college work and help him relate his college work to the general conditions in which he is placed. Hence he cannot separate for the student the bibliography of a subject from the subject itself. Nor can he turn over to the librarian the instruction in bibliographical work. The reference librarian is the only member of the library staff who in the capacity of a teacher comes into direct personal relationship with the student, but his work, as has been seen, is entirely different.