Mr. Hadley makes one suggestion which has often been under discussion in library school alumni associations, and which I happen to know was very seriously considered by the faculty of one library school some five years ago. This suggestion is that the schools provide courses of instruction in general library administration for those who look forward to administrative positions. Most of the schools have lectures each year from librarians of various sorts of libraries—large, small, public, university, etc.,—in which they are asked to tell in general terms how their libraries are administered. The question is, can the schools go further than this? Is there a science of administration which can be taught? The qualities needed for administrative work, library or other, are the gift of the gods, not of the schools. The schools can give the students a firsthand knowledge of the various phases of library work, and this is important. But they cannot give breadth of view to a mind naturally narrow; nor can they endow the student with personal force and poise, tact, savoir-faire, sympathy, a sense of justice,—in a word with gumption. Now a course of formal instruction in administrative gumption is one that no librarian with any gumption would attempt to give. The whole school of life is devoted to this course, and few degrees are conferred. He would be a god-like instructor indeed who could impart to his students the gifts of the gods as developed and perfected by the great school of experience. Anything less than the thunders of Sinai would be an inadequate introduction to such a course. What I am trying to emphasize is that the essential qualities for administrative work are too general and intangible to be taught formally in any kind of school. The schools cannot give their students a knowledge and love of books; these, for the most part, they must bring with them. Neither can they give them a knowledge of life. Are they not, therefore, by the very nature of the case, restricted to teaching chiefly the technique, I had almost said the mechanics, of library work? A knowledge of the technique is necessary to the administrator; but the ability to make the best use of this technique is a natural endowment developed by experience and environment through the course of years. Have we any right to expect a library school to provide more than a small part of that experience and environment? Are we not asking of the library schools what no other profession expects from its special schools? Do we get our bankers from business colleges, or the managers and presidents of our railroads from schools of engineering?
Some one has said that knowledge is the material with which wisdom builds. The library schools can impart a knowledge of library methods. They can hardly teach the wise use of those methods. They can suggest and illustrate it; but courses of instruction in administrative wisdom are, I fear, an iridescent dream.
The CHAIRMAN: This subject is open to discussion if there is any one who feels moved to contribute to our wisdom.
Mrs. ELMENDORF: Mr. Chairman, may I put in one straw from the outside world to show that other technical concerns are taking up this point of view also. One of the great universities is about to establish a technical school. They have called to the aid of the faculty three men very high in the technical world, all of them having attained great practical success. Those three men have agreed in recommending to the faculty that they reduce the technical hours in the schools, as compared to other technical schools, and devote more time to the humanities.
Dr. BOSTWICK: May I say just a word from the standpoint of one who is interested in the product of the library school, as making use of that product? I do not think this point has been alluded to at all this morning, which is my excuse for intruding it upon you for a moment.
I want to emphasize the value of library schools as selectors, which it seems to me is very great, transcending even, perhaps, their great value as trainers. I know a great many persons who use library school students, who, if they were asked why they preferred one library school to another, would say it was not because the training in that school was so much better, or because the instructors in that school were so much better, but simply because they always got better people from that library school. Why? Because those persons, who exist in great numbers, who are congenitally unfit to become librarians, are not allowed to get into such schools, and, if they do, they are not allowed to graduate. Consequently, if you choose graduates of those particular schools you are always sure of getting good persons. Therefore, I regard the selective function of a library school as extremely valuable. No matter how good the training you give, no matter how good the instructors you have, if you allow people in your schools who are unfitted for library work, your product will be worth little.
Miss RATHBONE: The cap that Mr. Hadley has constructed, fits so well that I could not forbear putting it on. I want to assure you all, however, that its conical shape is not the result of inheritance but of evolution. The curriculum of the particular school I have the honor to be associated with has been a growth, and a growth very largely made up from suggestions, the solicited suggestions, of its own graduates who have worked in the library field. Subjects have been added, others have been omitted, others have been reduced in time given to them, according as our students have found in their practical work that they needed things they did not get, or that certain things that we gave them were not of the greatest practical value. Again and again we have sent out circular letters, and have requested in personal interviews, the frankest possible criticism from our graduates of the preparation that they received in the school. I have seen a great many such letters, and have talked with a great many people. I must confess, however, that I have never yet had the criticism from any of the graduates that too much time was devoted in the school curriculum to cataloging. That criticism may come, and when it does we shall be glad to meet it, but I have not yet happened to receive it.
One other point I want to make, and that is that I think the libraries depend upon library schools for general assistants. That is one reason why a one year school, I think, should give all of its students experience in all of the different departments of library work, because, though after they go out into the field, some become catalogers, some children's librarians, some reference librarians, and a few, administrators of large libraries, the average graduate that goes out, three-fourths of our product certainly goes at first into a public library as a general assistant. The heads of such libraries want assistants who can go one week into the children's room; who, if a shortage occurs in the reference room, can be put there; and if in the meantime the work has piled up in the cataloging department, can be transferred from the children's room, or the reference department, to that department. I think that kind of all-round instruction, and the flexibility that results from it, is one of the most valuable assets that the trained librarian can take with him into general library work.