That is the business to which we are appointed in this world. Let us be careful that we do not misconceive it in one most important particular! It is not the mission of books that we are charged with, but the mission of good books. And there lies a delicate, difficult, very grave duty in that discrimination. To judge books with adequate knowledge and sufficient hospitality of mind; to exercise a just choice among them without offensive censorship; to defend his shelves against the endless siege of vulgar literature, and yet not waste his strength in the resistance—these are really the crucial demands made on every librarian.
For the first condition of successful work is a good tool; and our tools are not books, but good books. These given, then follow those demands on us which we sometimes discuss as though they came first of all: the demands, that is, for a perfected apparatus in the working library, for a tireless energy in its motive forces, and for a large intelligence in the directing of them.
Not many years ago, our missionary undertakings from the library seemed to be bounded by its own walls. The improving, annotating, and popularizing of catalogues; the printing and distributing of bulletins and reference lists; the surrounding of readers and seekers in a library with willing help and competent suggestion; these labors seemed, only a few years ago, to include almost everything that the librarian most zealous as a missionary could do. But see what doors have been opening in the last few years, and what illimitable fields of labor now invite him! Through one, the great army of the teachers in the common schools is coming into co-operation with him. Through another, he steps into the movement of university extension, and finds in every one of its servants a true apostle of the library mission of good books. From a third, he spreads his beneficient snares about a city in branches and delivery stations; and by a fourth he sends “traveling libraries” to the ends of his State.
The arena of our work is large enough already to make claims on every faculty and power we can bring to it; and yet our plainest duty is to enlarge it still. I think we may be sure that there are portals yet to open, agents yet to enlist, alliances yet to enter, conquests yet to make. And in the end—what?
Those of us who have faith in the future of democracy can only hold our faith fast by believing that the knowledge of the learned, the wisdom of the thoughtful, the conscience of the upright, will some day be common enough to prevail, always, over every factious folly and every mischievous movement that evil minds of ignorance can set astir. When that blessed time of victory shall have come, there will be many to share the glory of it; but none among them will rank rightly before those who have led and inspired the work of the public libraries.
THE LIBRARY AS AN INSPIRATIONAL FORCE
What a librarian may do to direct the attention of his readers to the really great writers and thinkers—a plea for original work and for innovation in the library—a note frequently heard in 1920, but new in 1899 when Mr. Foss, librarian and popular poet, sounded it in Public Libraries for March.