Joint session with the Professional training section. Mr. James I. Wyer, Jr., director of the New York state library, and ex-president of the A. L. A., occupied the chair.
The CHAIRMAN: Your temporary chairman for the morning has but one compunction in accepting this pleasant privilege, and that is that it inevitably deprives you of the gracious presence of your rightful presiding officer, even though it be only for a few minutes.
Miss MARY E. HAZELTINE, preceptor of the University of Wisconsin library school, will speak to us on
THE ASSISTANT AND THE BOOK
The library movement is no longer a crusade, it is a movement of peaceful education. In truth, the library movement is not a movement at all, it is an achievement. The library has come to be a center of personal interest. People, one by one, are the object of our labors. They are to be brought, through the personalities of those who preside over books, into touch with the personalities that dwell within books.
There are many militant movements today, those for universal peace (strange paradox), equal suffrage, labor reform, and for human betterment in crowded cities—great social movements that are being promoted through the vigorous propaganda and the emphatic zeal of their leaders. Over against these dynamic social movements, the library operates as a quiet force, at once personal, intellectual, educational, persuasive but powerful, studying community interests, serving community needs it is true, but accomplishing the work through the individual. These other movements will, after their first victories are won, likewise take on an educational aspect, but they will become strong and far-reaching only as people are touched and served by them.
No cause can be greater than the personality which interprets it. It matters little how proud the ideals of the leaders, or how great the possibilities of the work itself, nothing can really be accomplished except through the vision, ability, and knowledge of those who have actual contact with the public. Technique and method in library work are of less importance than the personality of the assistant, his preparation for the work, his continued renewing of himself in interest and knowledge, his immediate contact with affairs of the day, and his ability to share his interest and information with others.
If this be true, behind the library must lie a personal force. This must be secured, first, through the personality of those who labor within its walls; then, through the personalities of the books themselves that are ready if permitted, to answer every human need. The vital connection between these depends upon the person that can stimulate a love of books, or arouse a feeling for their need. Are our libraries today manned by such assistants?
The plain matter of fact is that we are still over-technical. For petty details in devotion to routine and technique, we crucify personality; we kill the love of books among our library workers, for there is no time to read, no opportunity to make or keep a real acquaintance with books. Schemes to induce others to read are constantly being devised, red tape is ever being wound around our system of details, professional duties are allowed almost brutally to shut us out from contact with the best in literature. There are too many meetings to attend; too many papers to write; have you ever been obliged to forego an open-air performance of Electra at your very door that would have brought interpretation and understanding, because you had to rival Euripides and prepare a paper for the American Library Association? Librarians, alas, take their work too seriously, and too painfully do their duty.
"For each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word."