THE LIBRARY AS A FACTOR IN MODERN CIVILIZATION
Read by President Faunce of Brown University, at the Narragansett Pier Conference of the American Library Association in 1906. Elaborates the library's three gifts to the nation—“knowledge, perspective and ideals.”
William Herbert Perry Faunce was born in Worcester, Mass., Jan. 15, 1859, graduated at Brown University in 1880, entered the Baptist ministry, and after holding several pastorates became in 1899 president of his alma mater. He is known as an effective writer and speaker, especially on religion and education.
We have long been accustomed to speak of three great factors in modern civilization—the school, the church, and the home. Must we, in view of such a significant meeting as this, add a fourth factor—the library? The modern library has in some places become a true school; in other places it has radiated something of the refinement for which we once looked to the home, and something of the idealism which is a peculiar gift of the church. The library is vastly more than a collection of books: it is a social, civilizing, moralizing force. We expect to find the library building in every city and town as much as to find the spire of the church or the flag of the schoolhouse. The visitor to Boston to-day finds the public library as commanding a pile as Trinity Church, and far more imposing than any schoolhouse. The visitor to New York finds the new public library building climbing into a mass and dignity as great as that of any cathedral. No smallest village is now complete without its library, and when some future Goldsmith shall sing the praise of another “Deserted village,” he will point out not only with the “noisy mansion” of the school-master, not only the church adorned with the meek and unaffected grace of the rural pastor, but the loaded shelves, the catalogs and reference lists, the chairs and tables, and the zeal unaffected, though not always meek, of the modern librarian.
These libraries have sprung into being throughout the land without specific legislation and without deliberate propaganda. The church missionary societies of the country have adopted the avowed policy of planting a church in every community, and appointing superintendents of missions to see that this is done. Every state in the Union has its laws for the establishment and maintenance of schools. But these multiplying libraries have come into being without enactment of law or the preaching of the crusade. They have spread from sea to sea by a happy contagion, they have become a noble American epidemic. The great inarticulate thirst for knowledge has demanded satisfaction, and created its own supply. Our wisest directors of public sentiment and philanthropic endeavor have realized that through the library may come a charity that does not pauperize, a help that induces self-help, light to irradiate the dark places of civilization, inspiration for every calling, and access and power to every worthy institution and noble cause. What then is the specific function of this new and powerful institution in modern life? What is the contribution of the library to modern civilization?
The library makes to the nation three gifts: the gift of knowledge, the gift of perspective, the gift of ideals. Putting the matter in another way, we may say it gives us facts, relations, values.
The library is primarily to conserve and disseminate knowledge. Indeed, the old conception of the library was purely that of a place of storage for written or printed material. No one thought of taking out a book from a mediaeval library any more than of removing a statue or painting from an art gallery. And still to-day the function of the library as a storehouse is most important. Modern democracy holds that knowledge is not for a few bright minds of each generation, not for an intellectual elite; but all that is knowable is to be made accessible to all that desire to know. If we allow knowledge to come only to a chosen few of each generation, how can we know that we have chosen the right ones to receive it? The genius that might turn the stream of history may be born in the lowliest cabin on the prairie, or in the darkest tenement of the great city. There may not be a village Hampden in every village, but there may be an Edison, a Fulton, an Eli Whitney, an Andrew Carnegie, a Carl Schurz in any village in America. Only when we make knowledge accessible to all shall we know what minds and hearts are among us.
But we must discriminate. The books which no longer convey knowledge, which state theories no longer held, and propound as facts things no longer believed; in other words, antiquated books of knowledge should be sharply separated from books abreast of modern thinking. Those books which have ceased to be of any use to mankind (except for antiquarian purposes) or which never were of any use to mankind—and their name is legion—have their place in a museum, but not in an working library. In an arsenal we keep only weapons now serviceable in actual war, and relegate flint-locks, catapults, and bows and arrows to the museum. No arsenal in the world would be large enough to accommodate weapons for a modern regiment mingled with all the weapons of all past generations. It is time for some one to say frankly that there is no inherent sanctity in paper and printer's ink. It may have been true in Milton's day that a book was usually the precious life-blood of a master spirit; but to-day a book is often the product of the least erected spirit that fell. An almanac put forth to advertise some nostrum, or a novel prepared purely as a piece of merchandise, does not acquire dignity or value simply because bound in leather and placed on the shelf with “Paradise Lost.”
We must apply to our libraries some higher standard than that of size. We never estimate the Uffizzi or the Louvre by the number of paintings they contain, yet we continue to grade modern libraries by the number of volumes groaning on dust-covered shelves. A library of five thousand well selected books may be of far more service than one of one hundred thousand composed largely of books outgrown and forgotten. Our public libraries must distinguish sharply between the library and the museum, to the advantage of both.
Secondly: Perspective. The library aims to show us facts in their large and permanent relations. There is no virtue in mere knowledge of facts (any more than in vast numbers of volumes). Most facts are not worth knowing, still less worth preserving. Doubtless the letter “p” occurs a certain definite number of times in “Idylls of the King,” and it may be that some deluded mortal in prison or asylum has ascertained that number; but we do not care to know that fact or have any one else know it. The exact number of grains in some ant-hill is doubtless discoverable, but only a lunatic would care for the discovery. Most facts in nature and in history are in our present stage of development without value. Only when these facts are collected, classified, seen in relation, and translated into truth do they become of value to men.