In this division of the field that leaves to the college instructor the actual instruction of students in the use of books, a large unoccupied territory is claimed by the reference librarian as peculiarly his own. This concerns the "extra-collegiate activities" and includes help on material needed in inter-class debates, dramatics, pageants, college publications, Bible classes, mission classes, commencement essays, and all the miscellaneous activities in which the student, not the instructor, takes the initiative. This work corresponds somewhat closely to that of the general reference librarian in a public library and it demands about one-half of the time of the librarian.
Instruction in the use of the library is facilitated by unrestricted access to the shelves and here the students are able to put their knowledge to the test and to work out their own independent methods.
What are the advantages and the disadvantages of unrestricted access to the library shelves? The question was recently asked a class of seventy students and their replies show an almost unanimous opinion that the advantages are overwhelmingly in favor of the open shelves.
Among the educational advantages enumerated are that this fosters independence and self-reliance, through encouraging personal investigation; that it enables students to see books in relation to other books, to make comparisons, and therefore to select those that are the best to use; that it shows the library resources and, to a certain extent, the breadth of the investigation that has been done in specific lines. "The open shelf is an instructor, a great indispensable helper, an education in itself," writes one student, while another states, "It gives an opportunity to form a closer acquaintance with books already known by name, and for casual acquaintance with books one has not time to draw out and read at length."
On the more personal side the students have found the advantages to be the pleasure found in handling books; the appeal made by titles and bindings; the inspiration that comes from the feeling of kinship with books; the opportunity given for wide acquaintance with books and authors; more extensive reading; the saving of time; the satisfaction of being able to find what is wanted, freedom from the limitations of specific references. "We become interested in subjects and in books we should not otherwise have known at all," writes one, while another asked a friend who replied, "Well, I don't know exactly what it means, but I guess it means that I for one use books I never otherwise would have used."
On the side of the library as a whole, many have found advantages in the opportunity it gives of doing general and special bibliographical work and in the knowledge afforded of the general plan of arrangement, classification, and cataloging. "If we had to stay in a reading room, how much idea of library organization should we have?" is the clinching question of one enthusiastic student.
The moral advantages are found to be the feeling of responsibility towards books and the training given in not abusing the privilege.
But it is in the failure of some persons to avail themselves of these opportunities for moral training that students find the disadvantages of the open shelf. There are the periodic complaints that books are lost, misplaced, hidden, and monopolized; that the privilege is abused; and that the social conscience is lacking. "The open shelf is the ideal system but it is designed for an ideal society," feelingly writes one, while another, more philosophical, finds that the open shelf has its annoyances, but no disadvantages, and that these are probably to be charged up to human nature, not to the system.
Only an occasional one sees any other disadvantages. One student finds herself bewildered and lost in irrelevant material, while another brought up in the atmosphere of Harvard, thinks that the closed stack encourages greater precision and carefulness, "for if you have to put in a slip and wait for a book you are more careful about your choice than you are when you can easily drop one found to be unsatisfactory and lay your hands immediately upon another one." "It may be," adds a third, "that we do not get all we might from a book when it is so easy to get others. I find myself often putting aside a book when I do not immediately find what I want."
With an occasional plaint about the increased noise and that the open shelf really takes more time since it is easier to ask for an authority on a specified subject than it is to look it up for one's self, the case for and against the open shelf, from the side of the student, seems closed, with the verdict overwhelmingly in favor of unrestricted access to the library shelves.