Dr. HILL: Mr. Chairman, in the first place, I would like to ask Mr. Brett if he will give us the name of the college which is allowing the library course to be taken as part of the rating.
Mr. BRETT: It is the College for Women of the Western Reserve university of Cleveland, and the school that co-operates with it is the Western Reserve library school.
Dr. HILL: In the second place, Mr. Chairman, the note in Mr. Hadley's paper which attracted and arrested my attention, related to men, naturally. Now, I want to say that as mere men we are not afraid of anything, we are not afraid that we are going to be crowded out of the library profession by our women friends, but we are looking around to see that we do not get crowded too much; and this subject of bringing into the profession more men and better men—although I would say to the ladies that there are a good many good men among us still available,—was taken up by the American Library Institute last fall, and presented very clearly by Dr. Dewey. He said in a paper which was submitted to the Institute that it was the duty of the American Library Association to interest the universities so that the work of our association might be brought to the attention of the students, and that we ought to arrange to have lectures given by librarians at the various universities. I became interested in this subject and last winter, talking with a president of one of the Eastern universities, asked if such lectures would be acceptable. He said that he would be very glad as president of that university to extend an invitation to the library association to send representatives there to place before students the advantages of the library profession, and to carry on a course which would enable interested students to direct their work along library lines. He said, further, that he had no doubt but what every college and university in the land would welcome such co-operation. Such being the feeling of the president of one university, it seems to me that it is time for the committee named by Mr. Anderson to take some active measure to have the country divided in such way that librarians in the neighborhood of the various universities will arrange to lecture before the students. I think the matter should be given immediate attention.
Miss KELSO: Mr. Chairman, I have made a study also this last winter, not with college presidents, but with certain members of the graduating class of Columbia university and Harvard university. In the dogma expressed here it seems to me you treat the university graduate, who has had four years' earnest study, as if he were in kilts, and the girl in short skirts. Those men and women have wrested from the college tradition the right to say what they are going to do, in their junior, if not their sophomore year, and to come out after their graduation from economical and sociological courses and to be presented to the curriculum you have, is little short of absurd. Go to the professors at the head of the economics departments of our universities, men or women, and they will tell you that their students have known for two years what they were going to be. I know several undergraduates that, before their graduation, had opportunities of national importance, as executive secretaries, to go in and organize a national office. To ask those fellows, who have been taking volunteer practice work, as numbers of them do, in health department work, in tuberculosis and a thousand and one things, to go and take up this library school curriculum,—they will not. Bring an undergraduate who is in his senior year to talk to you; go to the professor at the head of one of these departments and ask him to send you a young woman or a young man to talk to you about what the aims of their classes and fraternities have been.
I do believe there is a way out, and that is to admit frankly that the library schools can select, as Dr. Hill has well said, and send students to the libraries for the trying-out process, and above all to have the library association show very much more interest and attention to what the library schools are doing. And I can say to you, as an old librarian, that you are reaping what it seemed to me was a whirlwind sowed some years ago. For a long time past, and when we first had the schools, we shut the door on the possible entrance of politics into libraries,—a very serious menace, as we all know. We all rushed forward and talked about the library school, and if a community had a man or woman who could fill the place, who had special literary ability, had been well educated and was proved to have some executive ability, we all roared, "You're lost if you don't take some one who has gone through a library school training." You know we did. And the poor old committee succumbed and got a library school candidate. We cannot prepare librarians unless we relate them to the great field of human endeavor and social affairs to which the library belongs, if it is used in a proper way, and we must find other means in the library association to evolve some system to afford the trying-out process.
Mr. WALTER: Although we get at the matter from different points of view, I am quite certain that Miss Rathbone, Miss Kelso and I are in exact accord on some points. One is in the recognition of the real responsibility for the curricula of library schools. The library school courses are what they are because the libraries want them so. Miss Kelso may probably not be quite so familiar with the special demands of libraries as those who are on library school faculties are. A great demand exists at present along two lines. The most frequent demand, I think, is for college or university graduates, who are masters of every branch of library technic, and who possess as well a wide and extensive knowledge of all subjects, which will make them valuable in varied lines of work and in different departments; in other words, universal specialists. This demand comes repeatedly from the smaller libraries and not infrequently from the larger ones. The library school is forced in many ways to make a concession to that demand and to teach many things rather than a few specialties. I am not sure that the concession is always as great or as harmful as has been asserted, and one reason why I am not so sure of this is because I have been studying the curricula of several schools of philanthropy (whose practical character has just been commended) in order to make some improvements in a proposed course in the institution with which I am connected, and the differences in the general plans of the two kinds of schools are so far from being radical that we have been able to take over many of their specialized ideas and put them in our curriculum, with so little change that I defy you to find where the joints are.
Another demand is for real specialists to put in charge of special departments of large libraries. I believe that demand is growing. But you must remember, if you are going to have them, that two things are necessary. If you want specialists trained in different subjects, you must give them time to get their training and you must pay them enough to attract them and to keep them when you get them.
In an engineering school you have lengthy courses full of engineering technic, because you demand engineers. No good school would cut out that technic simply because you needed an engineering student in your technology department and couldn't afford to wait or to pay for a graduate. Why should we have to stop doing what experience, and the experience of years, has proved necessary, what most of the people who go out of the library schools say is necessary—why should we cut out general subjects simply because of a temporary or limited demand for short-cut semi-specialists? You do not give time to prepare specialists. You are prone to send in a letter on Saturday saying you must have a man in charge of a special department next Tuesday, that he must be a graduate of one of the best technical schools of the country and that he must also have a thorough knowledge of library technic. At present I do not believe there is enough demand for those people to attract many of them, because, these specialists, in most cases, are obliged to come into general library work and to keep in general work until the special positions for which they are particularly fitted become vacant or are created.
I believe thoroughly in the missionary spirit. I believe every librarian ought to have in him the spirit of St. Francis, to enable him, if need be, to go barefoot and get along with almost no food at all, but I do not believe in the right of the public to demand that he work for a salary so small that he must wear the habit and eat the food of St. Francis. If you expect to find these exceptional men you must pay for them and have places ready for them. You cannot expect the impossible. The question of technic is a serious one but it is not going to be solved entirely by omissions and short-cuts.
I might also say that the institution with which I happen to be connected depends very largely, so far as the changes in its curriculum are concerned, on the suggestions of the people who have gone out from the school and who are working in libraries, and it often plans its courses in accordance with what they suggest, as the result of their own experiences. What is more,—and I am not speaking for ourselves only, for similar conditions exist in other schools—in this way we have (among others) the experience of more than thirty men and women who are at the head of libraries in cities of the United States in either the first or the second class.