The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses

by Unknown

Not all the information required of the Public Library is asked by those engaged in laboratory research or by experts in commerce and industry. Much of it is homely stuff, greatly desired and more or less easy to find. Much of it can be given offhand by the capable reference assistant, who thereby becomes what the writer of this article calls a “library friend” to her neighborhood.

Miss Winifred Louise Taylor was born in Freeport, Ill., Feb. 24, 1846. In 1874 she organized the first circulating library in Freeport and acted as librarian for twelve years. It was eventually incorporated in the Freeport Public Library. In 1900-01, Miss Taylor was in charge of the information desk at the Pratt Institute Free Library, Brooklyn. For many years she gave much of her time to work in the prisons, and in 1914 she published “The Man Behind the Bars,” describing some of this work.

“The library friend” is the term that seems best to apply to that member of the modern library's staff whose work is a development of the service ordinarily rendered through the “information desk.” Information-desk service as usually conceived, it is not; for the library friend deals with the tendencies, tastes, and aspirations of readers as much as if not more than with the definite question and answer respecting facts. The office indeed may be regarded as finding its first expression in the circulating libraries maintained by subscription in many of the smaller cities twenty-five years and more ago, when the free public library of to-day was comparatively rare. In those libraries every subscriber knew the librarian, and the librarian was personally acquainted with every book on the shelves. To bring the books and readers into congenial relationship was the business and usually the pleasure of the librarian. The personal element was the heart from which the circulation of the books radiated—if the presiding personality lacked vitality and enthusiasm the library was a failure.

With the era of the democratic free libraries, with their more rapid growth, with their doors open to men, women and children of all classes, the human element, the personal relation of librarian to the reader suffered a gradual eclipse, until, in some libraries more perfectly developed on the technical side, the personal equation vanished altogether. The library became a great machine, into which a number was dropped, and out of which a book was dropped like corn from the hopper. We all know how formidable this mechanism is to those unaccustomed to modern library methods. To the uninitiated the card catalog is an abomination, an unsolved problem, a delusion and a snare. The boy who is interested in athletics, fumbling over the card catalog in Micawber-like fashion, hits upon the title “Morning and evening exercises”; he straight away hands in the number thinking he has found a prize. It is discouraging and depressing when the machine shoots out to him a volume of devotional compilations. He has tried his luck and it has failed, and as he was reminded only last week that a book cannot be exchanged the same day on which it is drawn out he retires with “Morning and evening exercises,” a sadder, but not a wiser boy. It is in accord, therefore, with the process of library evolution that a closer personal relation between reader and librarian should be developed through some such medium as is here outlined under the designation “the library friend.”

One of the library problems just now is this: given on the one side 100,000 books and on the other 50,000 people. How is each individual to be brought into contact with the particular book that he wants? Where open shelves are practicable a great advantage—to the discriminating reader, an inestimable advantage, is gained; but the majority of librarians have not room to throw any department open to the public; and even among open shelves the person whose judgment of books is wholly untrained often misses what he is looking for.

The assistance given by the reference room is invaluable. There no one goes away unsatisfied; but the reference room reaches only those in pursuit of a definite subject. Beyond its range is the drifting, aimless reader, the searcher after something he knows not what. The dull, the diffident, the beginners in the use of libraries, those who read purely for amusement and those who want the new books—new spelled with a capital n and book with a small b—old persons, those whose eyesight is defective and whose glasses strike the card catalog at the wrong angle, foreigners who use English with difficulty and diffidence—all these gather together in the delivery room at once, and efficient as the assistant may be—and sometimes they effect miracles—it is impossible for them to give the different individuals the help each one needs. In the libraries where the human element is most withdrawn the case of these people is hard.

To bring the personal relation again into the library and to develop it with the growth of the needs of the public, with this end in view, a number of libraries have introduced the information desk. By common consent, perhaps in the eternal fitness of things, this position so far seems to have been relegated to woman.

“She is a reading lady, and far gone in the pleasures of friendship.” So wrote Sir Roger De Coverley of the object of his affections, and no one could more felicitously describe two of the qualifications for the one presiding at the information desk. A reading lady she must be; and it is no less important that she be far gone in friendship for the public. To study their needs; to be receptive as wax to their impress, and responsive with heart and soul as well as with mind. This all around sympathetic power is the fundamental requisite of true service in this position. She may be a person of many words or of few; a good listener she must be. Success depends less upon temperament or gifts than upon an attitude of inward receptivity and outgoing friendliness—the attitude that radiates a home-like atmosphere and insensibly sets the stranger at ease. Emerson quaintly described certain faces as “decorated with invitation.” This style of decoration will be permanently in fashion in this position if the invitation from the heart is a magnet strong enough to draw within its circle those who are in need of help. It is most necessary, also, that a certain poise be preserved. To be ready but not over anxious to assist; to be responsive but not intrusive; to be suggestive but never insistent; to recommend books without forcing one's own literary tastes or standards upon others; while helping new comers, to seek to make them independent in their use of the library instead of leading them to rely on some one else to do the work and use all the judgement for them, all this requires a nice adjustment of balances. And it is well to have on hand the tact which is the art of lessening social friction, and the sense of humor so invaluable as a lubricator in human relations. When any one comes to the information desk with a grievance, irritated, if not angry, to be met with simple good nature, and not to be taken too seriously, and yet to find instant readiness to adjust the cause of annoyance if possible, soon dissipates the feeling of antagonism or injury. Such encounters ought not to tax one's patience. They sometimes turn out to be rather interesting.

Nor need stupidity tax one's patience. What more pathetic than the isolation of one who is slow to perceive and to grasp? It is a terrible handicap. To rescue the dull from their dullness should be the first impulse, and shallow is the sympathy that does not reach out to such instinctively. It is not enough to be able also to unlock the resources of the individual.