These questions are being asked by somebody and being answered in a fashion by somebody. Very often that "somebody" is the editor of the query column in the newspaper. The newspapers of the country have educated the people to turn to them with their questions. How many of those questions could be answered just as well or better by the public library? How often the newspaper itself turns to the public library for the answers? Here is truly an unnecessary duplication of work and a loss of time. Here is also a high-road to popularity and an opportunity for usefulness to a community clearly seen by newspapers and worth cultivating by public libraries.
While we are making laws, librarians might conspire to put through a city ordinance to compel all questioning people to call on the public library as the first source of information. As that is manifestly impossible, something must be done to attract the business and trade interests of a town to the public library as a bureau of information. Why? Because the citizens pay taxes to support an institution—the public library—that they may be, by that institution, helped to become not simply better, but also wiser; not simply wiser, but also better informed; not simply better informed in general, but also better informed in city affairs; not simply in city affairs, but also in the affairs of each industrial unit. In a word, the city supports a library that the library may help it to become more harmonious, better governed and more productive.
As the institution is supported for specific purposes, it should not only be prepared to fulfill these purposes; it should also let it be known to all that it is thus prepared.
It should let those who support it know that it can not only help one who seeks general culture; but can also help one who seeks knowledge of city management in any of its countless aspects, or knowledge of methods of productive or distributive processes in any of their countless forms.
Possibly the first thing to do in thus letting its practical powers be known is to introduce into its vocabulary the phrase "business department" or "information department." A wider range of questions comes to a library that uses the words "information" or "business department" instead of "reference department." The words "public library" do not convey to the mind of the average person a suggestion of a tenth of the resources for information that are locked up in the collections of printed things which our cities now maintain.
An inquiring Newarker once said to me "Why should a public library advertise itself? Surely everyone knows where it is and that it contains books."
"Yes," said I, "but, do you yourself know what those books contain? Would you go to the library to learn the elevation above sea level of the street corner on which you live, or for the width of the street? Would you go there to plan your next business trip by using the maps of the cities you will visit, so that time will not be lost in going from one factory to another? If you are trying to sell a patented ticket punch, do you go to the library for the names of purchasing agents of railroads? If you have lost the address of a business correspondent do you telephone to the library or do you set the whole office force on edge hunting for the lost letter? Would you turn to the library for the date of Wilson's Chicago address, or the launching of a new battleship?"
He went away wiser; and left me quite pleased with myself.
Many public libraries have undertaken the task of collecting manufacturers' catalogs from all parts of the United States. Our experience indicates that this is a heavy expense with comparatively slight return. Would it not be better to spend the same amount of time and money compiling information about the industries of one's own town? It is a hopeless task to represent adequately the manufacturers of the United States. It is not a hopeless task to compile information about local manufacturers that will prove of great value. No business directory gives the specific information that is a daily need among the business men of a community. The directory gives, for example, a list of paper-box manufacturers, but does not indicate those who make egg boxes, hat boxes, jewelry boxes, etc. It lists the jewelry manufacturers, but is useless if you want the names of those who make 22-karat wedding rings. Many manufacturers and dealers are sending to distant cities, through habit, for articles made equally well and at the same cost within their own city, for no other reason than that they lack detailed information of the products of their own city. In some places the Board of Trade is the natural clearing house for this information. This is as it should be.
But what about the towns that are without Boards of Trade or whose Boards of Trade are not equipped to give this information? It is safe to say that there are not ten cities in the United States where one can find on file for the use of the public complete and specific information about the industries of that city. To secure this information is not an easy task. It requires circular letters, follow-up letters and possibly personal calls; but the value of thus creating an interest in the public library among those citizens who are paying the heaviest taxes, coupled with the real importance of the information itself, makes it an undertaking of peculiar value to a tax-supported public library. Fortunately the smaller the city the fewer the manufacturers and the easier the task, so that here indeed is a piece of work that may well be undertaken by libraries of many towns and cities.