During these latter days of enormous library activity, we have been conscientiously examining the functions of a library; we have been trying all sorts of methods to popularize it, to advertise it. We have asked for and listened to the criticism of outsiders, and by the light thrown upon it through this prism have separated our work into its elemental parts and seen its various hues.
We used to erect a library as an altar to the gods of learning; now, to use Mr. Dana's words, we erect it as an altar to the “gods of good fellowship, joy and learning.” So you see, our ideals are constantly rising, our horizons ever broadening, and our work continually increasing, both in extent and in depth. We might well have considered our hands fairly full to have dealt alone with this god of learning, but we find ourselves embracing the opportunity for additional service to the gods of good fellowship and joy.
It might do us good to consider tonight what we are doing for the cause of learning, what the library has done to increase serious reading and study, and how it may further the educational work of the world. This question is ever present with us, and can stand any amount of discussion. But it is the gods of good fellowship and joy that we are discussing tonight, the library not as a center of learning but as a social center.
We are dealing with a small crowd of people whom we call “our public.” Who are the public? Why, you and I, and my family, and others just like us. They want just the same things that we do, and to be accommodated in just the same way that we do. The public is no indefinite, intangible somebody, it is just “we.”
We talk about the people being hungry for books and information. Have you found it so? Then why do we have free libraries and free schools? People are willing to sacrifice for something that they are very hungry for. Do you hunger and thirst to read Homer and Shakespeare, and Emerson and Arnold, and good histories and literature? Do you, when you are tired after a day's work, take home a scientific work or a treatise on civics? No, you are just a little sample of the public, and you think you need to read a pleasant, entertaining, restful book. You aren't hungry for information, and, as a matter of fact, the person who delights in study and has a fine taste for the best in literature has one of the “gifts extremely rare.” Most of us are practical, everyday, working people, with a very limited time for reading, and this public whom we serve is just like us. A few of them will love to read the best, many of them will want information at intervals, a large proportion want recreative reading, and the vast majority use the library not at all. Now the former, who want and love the library, you need not be troubled about. They will naturally come to the library, and you will find pleasure in serving them. But these latter classes who either come for pleasure or come not at all must be drawn and held through the social instincts, and through their desire for pleasure. Every human being must have social life. We seek company and companionship with whom we can find mutual pleasure. We may find it in friendly gatherings, social clubs, or music or conversation or games, but social pleasure of some sort is sought by all of us, great and small, in town and country alike. In the city there is usually plenty of opportunity—I might almost say that there is a surfeit—and one must pick and choose. But in the towns and villages it is often different; good amusement and profitable pleasures are not always to be had, and being social beings, the social craving is satisfied with whatever means may be at hand. Young people especially can not isolate themselves, or live unto themselves. Just where is the library going to stand in this matter? Is there anything which we can do to satisfy these natural desires and to enter more vitally into the lives of the people? This is the question to take home and think about.
As individuals, we are coming to have an enormous interest in other human lives, there is a sense of social obligation upon us; we have come to know that personal righteousness is not all that is required of us, but that we must help to realize the social righteousness. The library has the duty of being all things to all men. It is no longer simply a repository of books, it is exactly what Mr. Carnegie calls it, the cradle of democracy, filled with the democratic spirit, and it endeavors, as far as circumstances permit, to minister to all the needs of the community in which it dwells. The library stands for progress, the progress of its town, and this does not mean increasing the material prosperity of the people, though that may follow, but it chiefly means the raising of the moral, social and intellectual standards of all its people, and helping men and women to be more effective in every way. The library does not exist for one side only of the life of the people, but for every side, and if it fails to provide for those who seek amusement, it shirks a duty and renounces a privilege. The sooner we unveil the “gods of joy and good fellowship” in our library the better; the sooner we make the library a centre for all the activities among us that make for social efficiency the better.
Of course there are natural limitations to the kind of work which a library can do, and in helping to further the spirit of good fellowship and to furnish pleasure, we must keep within such limits as are consistent with the spirit of a library. The library can appeal to people in other ways than by books alone, as we shall consider later, yet as books are our chief tools, it is natural to think first of giving pleasure by that method. One of our chiefest ways of late years has been through the children's room. The children get book instruction and supplementary reading and enforced book interests, all of which are needed for their development, in the schoolroom. But in the children's room at the library furnished especially for them, with low tables, picture books and low shelves containing fairy stories and all their favorite authors, they settle down to satisfy their own especial individual tastes. Then there is the story hour, of which we shall hear to-morrow. Many of the children have never learned the pleasure of reading. They do not belong to cultured homes and the presence of books. Many of them never heard a Mother Goose jingle or a nonsense verse, and a book is an unlearned delight. But what child, even of this kind, does not love to hear stories, and listening breathlessly, would not come again and again. Somehow it seems as if we could not discharge our social obligation until we had gone into the by-ways and hedges and gathered in these scraps of society, and taught them the pleasures of a book. The children, once acquainted with the library, will always count it among their friends, and it will forever remain a social centre to them.