So, having provided for the mass the interest has of late centred upon the individual.
Meantime, with the evolution from homogeneity to heterogeneity the individual himself has become more and more diversified in trait, aptitude and need; so that the treatment of him by the agencies acting for the community as a whole has also had to become varied. Not merely that, but pursuing its responsibilities, to become affirmative, where before, so far as it existed, it was merely responsive.
Now the service of school and college furnishing definite instruction and perhaps training, to an organized body of youth, within a limited age, and under control, can be reasonably systematized and standardized. But the library is to furnish not merely education but enlightenment, and even culture, to the community at large—without respect to age, and without subordination to control. It cannot impose, it does not control. It may recommend, but it cannot direct. It must still respond to a need voluntarily expressed; but its duty is held to go further: it must remind that the need exists,—it must even inspire the need,—that is to say, the consciousness of it. In this way it is engaged in creating the very demand which later it seeks to satisfy.
Now this duty upon it accounts for the prodigious energy in the effort itself, and the activity and range of the discussion, which are the characteristics of the modern library movement, particularly in English speaking America. It accounts for the incessant repetition of explanation, of exhortation, of recited experience, which give to a present-day library conference something of the aspect of a revival meeting.
To librarians of the older school these are somewhat distasteful; to librarians of the more modern school already convinced and experienced, they may be tedious; but they seem necessary still for the enlightenment and encouragement of others newly entering upon the problem, of a public not yet fully familiar with the relations of it to their own welfare, and to the helpful solution of local problems where the idea meets conditions still impeding: for the field is vast and conditions are still very unequal.
The efforts, still inchoate, include also many devices which are crude and of doubtful expediency: especially many designed chiefly to attract—in which the library seems to compete with other enterprises courting popularity in a way scarcely dignified for a public institution maintained by government. They shock the conservative in somewhat the same way as an advertisement by a lawyer or physician shocks the traditions of those reticent professions: and they include not merely schemes of advertising—which might seem to impair the dignity of the book, but auxiliaries for attracting attention such as savor of the devices of a business house in exploiting its goods. The ultimate aim is, of course, the commendation of the book itself,—and the justification lies—or is sought—in this. But the means,—well, the means often afflict the conservatives in the profession, and even cause uneasiness to certain of us among the progressives.
The compensating assurance is that they are the promptings of an enthusiasm in itself meritorious; that they are experiments; that they may prove to be expedients merely temporary, and that later they may be dispensed with after they have served their purpose. They are to rouse the dormant, stir the stagnant: but there are also other agencies at work to rouse and to stir; and the time may well come when the operation of these in combination will have achieved the creation of a spirit in the community safe to act upon its own initiative.
Apart from the portions of our programs devoted to the discussion of such methods and devices—which concern the direct action of a particular library upon its own constituents, is the portion—a large one—devoted to schemes of co-operation among our institutions as such in the interest of economy and therefore of efficiency—in their administration. These are necessarily technical, and their immediate interest is to the librarian rather than to the reader. But their ultimate benefit is to reach the reader,—particularly in freeing to his use a larger measure of the direct personal service of the administration, in interpreting the collections to his need. In proportion as they succeed in this they will achieve a reversion to that service held precious in the library of the older type,—which, lacking the modern apparatus, and with an imperfect collection, at least put the reader into direct contact with what it had, and gave him also the inspiring personal touch with an enthusiast already saturated with its contents: and which accordingly sent him forth with a grateful glow, too little, alas! evident in one relegated to the mere mechanism of modern library practice.
The mechanism became inevitable: the increase of the collections, the increase of the constituency, the greater diversity of the need, and the demand that this should be met promptly, have required it. This isn't so apparent to the public, who think of the problem—of getting the right book to the individual reader—in only its simplest terms. But to us librarians it is not merely apparent but urgent. And accordingly we expend upon it a length and a zest of discussion that quite mystify the portions of our audiences outside of the craft.
What impels us is that the mechanism is not merely elaborate: it is expensive. It is the more so in proportion as it is variant in form and involves a multiplication of expense by each library acting independently in its own behalf. Our effort, and the purpose of our discussions, is therefore to promote a standardization of the form and a co-operative centralization of the work itself, in which our libraries as a whole may secure a participating benefit.