Foremost among them, I should say, must be a condition of receptivity on the part of business itself.
Again, and only second in importance, is the attitude of the library towards business. If the library shall cling to traditional aims; shall overestimate the importance of conventional methods; shall hold disdainfully aloof from those adaptations and changes which alone can make it useful to business, then its asset value will never be large or general.
Finally, assuming business and the library to agree as to their mutual helpfulness, the lines along which they are to co-operate, if the results are to be satisfying to both, must be susceptible of being easily seen and followed....
At no time in the history of the modern business world has the opportunity been so favorable for a lasting alliance between the library and business. Business was never more complex, nor more moral. Greater wisdom is required to develop it. It is more sensitive. Results come quicker, failure follows more promptly on the heels of error—success almost anticipates the footsteps of sound judgment. Consequences are more far reaching. Disaster to one involves many—while bankruptcy carries overthrow and panic to hundreds of others.
The greater demands of business are seen not only in the enormous growth of industrial enterprises, and the larger responsibilities of management, but in the increasing numbers of college and university men who are seeking business careers.
Again, an almost revolutionary change has taken place in the public attitude towards business of every kind. It matters not what it is. The idea now is that men live for service; that men organize socially, commercially, and industrially for service. And if any organization is unable to undergo this test it must reform, or stand aside and let a better take its place. This I take it is the interpretation of the great unrest which has possessed England and America in the last decade....
All these—this increasing complexity, growing sense of social responsibility, demand for an increasing inflow of college men into business—spell opportunity for the library as an indispensable adjunct for business enterprise. Answering for our first condition, then, it may be said that business is in a receptive mood, and that it stands ready today to welcome among its productive forces the library organization.
But if the library is to be truly an asset to business enterprise, the library itself must recognize not only its opportunity but its responsibility. The failure of the general library to lead in this work of aiding business in the solution of its problems has been inevitable. Business wants its own technology; it wants pamphlets, clippings, reports—all sorts of special things which no public library with all its other obligations could ever hope to get and to classify.
Hence the need of specialized libraries and special methods. It is evident that the special library has a whole field of methods yet to amplify, systematize and unify. If the library is to help business it must be organized as business is organized. To get everything on a subject may be necessary for some purposes, and is always interesting to the bibliographer; but to get the adequate thing is the business-librarian's ideal of service, and if he misses it he may wake up surprised to find his labor unappreciated.
Business is multiplying short-cuts, motion-savers, "efficiency" getters in every department; it will tolerate nothing less from the library. It is for the library to prove its value—to demonstrate its practical worth by adjusting itself to the business environment. It must not follow too closely the traditions of general library work. It ought to be familiar with general library methods; but it should never lose sight of the fact that general library methods were devised with an eye single to general library problems. The problems of a business library are different.