Classification and the study of subject-headings are in themselves so broadening, furnish so good an exercise of the reasoning powers, and afford such fine views of the inter-relations of fields of knowledge, that I doubt if they can ever or ought ever to be set aside as special studies. The study of works of reference, however, offers so large and comprehensive a field that it seems to need division; and this brings me to the other subject of my title, that of grading in the schools.
Probably no one thing has made teaching more difficult, than the wide range of age and experience among the students. In the same class may occur and do occur continually the girl of twenty without much reading beyond high school and college requirements and the summer novel (unless she has fortunately grown up in a cultivated family with the habit of good reading and of discussing books), and the man or woman of from thirty to forty with a knowledge of books, an experience of life and society, and of thoughtful mind, who may have been successful in teaching or in some other profession; and in between range students of all degrees of cultivation, varieties of experience, and types of education. The training fitted for the first class wastes much of the time of the student at the other extreme, and if it be adapted to that extreme may be too strong or too complicated a mixture for the youngest student.
Grading would be expensive, for it would mean more teachers or more specialized teachers. In some of the schools the classes are not large enough to admit of so costly a proceeding; yet without grading, under the conditions described, the school belongs where the ungraded school belongs in the scheme of general education—it is delivering a scattering fire that may or may not hit its object. The entrance examination has been the device employed for unifying student-material in some schools, and it is much better than any other means, it seems to me; but though it may show what is the greatest common divisor of the candidates in the way of education and offer a definite point of departure for instruction, those who examine the papers see such differences, quite apart from the mere answers to the questions, as warn them that they are about to deal with a very varied assortment of intellects, a wide range of cultivation, and with necessities ranging from those of the steady, plodding follower who will never go further than an average assistantship to those of the born administrator or scholar. There is, to be sure, in such a class great benefit for the younger and less experienced students from contact with the others, from discussions that are a little over their heads, but, all the same, teaching addressed to the maturer intellect leaves the other with gaps unfilled, while teaching brought down to the level required by youth and inexperience gets the older student nowhere for the time being. The process is a sort of hitching along that should not be necessary in professional or vocational schools.
Suppose that grading be practicable so far as money and teachers are concerned. Where should lines be drawn? Often the younger person has the more flexible as well as more open mind and the older student may be a little set and may have ceased to take in readily new ideas. How to distinguish the students who can receive and assimilate readily the best and most that can be given? I should say that perhaps a month might have to be spent in making the division by actual testing of the students in class together. With this secured, two curricula might be offered, one prepared for the needs of each class with appropriate methods of teaching, and offering varied proportions of the same subjects. And here I revert to the teaching of reference work. For the higher grade it would be more inclusive, more difficult, dealing more with books in foreign languages, with books on unusual and recondite subjects, such as would be found in large reference or college libraries, while the lower grade might be adapted to the more elementary work to be done in small libraries or in branches.
The "moral" of this plan lies largely in the application of it. If the large reference or college library could be deflected from its main object, the securing of a competent reference assistant, by a sunny smile on the part of a lower grade student, the school's work in preparing the better student would go for naught so far as that library was concerned, and if this happened several times it would result in a confusion of values in the minds of the students. A + a sunny smile - a knowledge of the books would seem to be more than equal to B + a thorough reference equipment - a sunny smile. We may paraphrase here a well-known saying by asserting that, taking all things together, a librarian who can make his own choice of assistants gets the assistants he deserves, with the further assertion that the word personality, as often used now, does not get its full meaning; we forget that it consists not only of what one looks like and sounds like and apparently feels like but of all that one has made one's own out of the realm of knowledge, and all that one has assimilated and made profitable from one's experience.
The charge that the one year's general course is too full would probably become less true if or when grading was adopted. Only those subjects would need be given to a grade and those amounts of a subject which the students were capable of profiting by and the time saved could be used in more effective ways.
There is a very general desire to study administration among both older and younger students. So far as this means covering the whole routine of a library, with lectures on library relationships, management, etc., a course can easily be given; the difficulty arises when students wish to go out as administrators on the strength of such preparation alone; and when library boards send to the schools for students to fill administrative positions and expect the training to ensure administrative ability which, under the circumstances, can not be guaranteed. No matter how friendly may be the attitude of the library connected with a school, it is hardly willing to turn over any of its administrative work to students, nor could it be expected to do so. The ideal thing, of course, would be for the school itself to own a small library as a laboratory in which students could be tested for administrative ability under supervision. But this, too, would take money. When one sees the splendid endowment of a School of Journalism, a School of Technology, etc., one cannot help hoping that some day a School of Librarianship may be endowed which may employ the best of teachers and plenty of them, have its own ample collections, adapted to its needs, and establish its own library as a laboratory in which it may try experiments.
I have not yet touched upon the kind of specialization of which we have heard most in late years—the kind to fit students to be librarians of special libraries. I do not believe that the most energetic critic of the library schools would require them to teach engineering, commercial methods, law and medicine. A demand there certainly is from business houses and manufactories for librarians, but that is not enough for the schools. There must be a corresponding demand from persons wishing to be trained for such places. This, so far as I can learn, has not made itself felt. When applicants begin to come to the schools saying, "I intend to go into an applied science library" (or "an insurance library") "and I want to be trained for that work and that only," then the schools will have to provide such training or declare definitely that that is not a part of their field. Until such a demand arises from would-be students, it would be foolish for a school which has plenty of demand for general training and certain well-defined extensions of it to go outside this province.
A committee of the Special Libraries Association, I learn, is investigating the matter of preparation for special library positions, and it is to be hoped that there may be a very thorough inquiry, and that the committee will state definitely just what the association wants and what it believes to be proper training for such positions. Then the existing schools can decide whether or not they can give such preparation.
Meantime, a suggestion that institutes of technology might take up this special technical work and commercial schools the business library courses, etc., may be worth considering.