Mr. CARR: Many of us appreciate the work done in days past by Frederick W. Faxon, in personally conducting our post-conference tours. Business obliged him to take another course this year and cross the water. It has been suggested that we send him a wireless despatch of appreciation and felicitation in the name of the association. Madam President, I move the authorization of such a telegram.
The motion was carried unanimously, and the cablegram ordered sent.
The PRESIDENT: Now, we will proceed with the regular program, which brings us to the last of our series growing out of the idea of service to the individual, and we shall take pleasure in hearing Mr. CARL B. RODEN, assistant librarian, Chicago public library, on
BOOK ADVERTISING: INFORMATION AS TO SUBJECT AND SCOPE OF BOOKS
At my first A. L. A. conference, that of Waukesha, now eleven years ago, I heard discussed that topic ever fruitful of discussion: the librarian's attitude toward those books which are technically known as 'off-color.' The Indignant resentment of that part of the public which failed to appreciate the censorious solicitude of the librarian was vividly set forth, and there were those who felt that the only permanent way out was, in the words of George Ade, to "give the public what it thinks it wants." But the Librarian of Congress, in defending the library's point of view, uttered a remark which, as his remarks have a habit of doing, clarified the atmosphere as a Chicago lake breeze lifts a fog, and we settled back again serene in the knowledge that our orthodoxy had once more been vindicated and set upon its firm foundations.
He said, in effect, that the duty of the librarian was not exclusion but selection and that in the full consciousness of his responsibility to the entire community he, the librarian, must exercise fully and freely his prerogative of selecting, out of the multitude of books, those which best suited his purpose and served his ends.
The phrase "not exclusion but selection" struck at least one in that audience as so clear and telling a characterization of the librarian's business that he has kept it in mind, and well within reach for instant use, ever since. Many times it has served to confound the irate patron who combatively insisted that he was old enough to judge for himself what was good for him. Not a few times has it been the stone offered the facetious newspaper man who came seeking for bread in the form of a "story" on the "barring out" of the latest shady novel. Today it recurs again as a fitting text upon which to base a plea for the more effective advertising of books as to subject and scope, and I trust that my exegesis may not prove too violent to establish the relation between my text and my topic, which to my mind is close and intimate.
A library, of the kind with which we are now concerned, is first of all—and after all—a collection of books, selected and assembled by the librarian. It may be so administered as to become a great civic force, a social instrument, an educational agency, but first of all it is a collection of units, brought together upon certain principles as they operate in the mind of the library's administrator. Now, the word "administer" is a transitive verb, one definition of which is: "to manage, to conduct, as in public affairs," and another, "to serve, to dispense, as in medicine." We may so administer—manage, conduct—the library as to render it a power for the advancement of humanity, and when we do that we are responding to the impulse which is generated in the very air which we in this age of advancement breathe.
Or we may administer—serve, dispense—the books, as in medicine; knowing the powers and the virtues of each; perceiving the stimulating effects of one, the acceleration of heart action induced by another; this one as an emollient and an anodyne, that one as a vesicatory or an excitant; here a bromide, there a sulphite, yonder a tincture blandly dissolved in a vehicle of simple syrup, next a pill, sugar-coated, but none the less a stern and bitter dose. And when we do that we are returning to the habits and practices of that "old librarian" so useful to use now as a horrible example and a subject for humorous divagation, but we are also returning to the faith once delivered to the saints, for after all, the Fathers believed with Lord Bacon that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested" and they did love to administer them "as in medicine."
It is far from my intention to imply that the new librarian does not know his books. Certainly he has not surrendered one ounce of his faith in their potency. Rather does he impute to them, collectively, greater powers than ever before, regarding his library as a moral unit of large influence and seeking to extend its operation to the uttermost limits of his jurisdiction. But is it not thus collectively that he prefers to regard and administer it; as a great, powerful moral force which shall permeate the community and envelop it so that, by a sort of intellectual pantheism, we may all be in tune with the Infinite if we but open the windows of the soul? Is he not being borne along in the modern trend in therapeutics which is replacing doses and cordials, tinctures and bitter pills with a state of mind?