Arthur E. Bostwick

“ The up-to-date library strikes out toward every member of the community and it strives to draw each one to itself. It sends its books into every home, its helpful aids to reading and to study, its library news and gossip in the local paper: but on the other hand, its cozy rooms, its well-stocked reference shelves, its willing and pleasant attendants exert on every man, woman and child in the community an intellectual attraction, and having let them taste of the delights it has to offer sends him out again as a willing missionary to lure in others. ”

“ We are accustomed to regard what we call standard literature as necessarily the standard of innumerable centuries to come, forgetful of the fact that other so-called standards have “had their day and ceased to be.” Some literature lasts a century, some a year, some a week; where shall we draw the line below which all must be condemned as ephemeral? Is it not possible that all literary work that quickly achieves a useful purpose and having achieved it passes at once out of sight, may really count for as much as one that takes the course of years to produce its slow results? ”

“ We boast that in our country public opinion is all powerful; but we are often apt to regard public opinion as we do the weather. Its balmy gales and its destructive vortices, its gentle dews and its devastating torrents, are alike, we think, beyond our power to regulate. Yet, though public opinion may be unjust or capricious, it is usually level-headed. So the library that covets that good reputation which public opinion alone can give it, must so act as to deserve that good opinion. ”

“ Did you ever see a chemistry that gave, or tried to give, an idea of the world of chemical knowledge that environs its board cover? One has to become a Newton before he feels, with that sage, like a child, playing on the sands, with the great, unexplored ocean of knowledge stretching out before him. Most students are rather like ducks in a barn-yard puddle, quite sure that they are familiar with the whole world and serene in that knowledge. ”

“ The one title that we have to call ourselves civilized is the fact that no set of traditions or customs—no institution—has yet become crystallized into the fixity that obtains with the savage races;—not the Church, not government, not science, nor art nor literature. All these are changing, despite efforts to pin them down. Our language, our social customs are altering; our fashions of dress change from year to year. Our old people, for a man often reverts to savagery in his old age, pass away with words of regret on their lips for the good old days of their youth, when things were different. ”

“ If we do not love the Grand Canyon and the Northern Rockies, the wild Sierras and the more peaceful beauties of the Alleghenies or the Adirondacks, simply because leaving these all unseen we prefer the lakes and mountains of foreign lands, we are like a man who should desert his own children, whom he had never seen, to pass his time at a moving-picture show, because he believed that he saw there faces and forms more fair than those of his own little ones. ”

“ Your library has had good leadership and it is to continue, adding the force and freshness of the new to the strength and experience of the old. The memory of your dearly loved poet will be brought to the mind of each library user—by the children’s room that bears his name, by the land that he gave to enlarge its site, by this enduring portraiture—by a thousand and one things, none the less cogent for being intangible. I look to see this library, in the home city of James Whitcomb Riley, grow into a place in the public heart comparable with that which was attained by Riley himself. ”

“ It should be loved for its broad minded humanity, for its sympathy with mankind, especially with little children, for its readiness to “rejoice with those that do rejoice and weep with those that weep,” for its quick response to the personal and spiritual needs of every reader, and above all for its firm hold on the realities of life and its appreciation of life as something that is lived on the farm, in the city street, in the office, the school and the club, not in the clouds, not in fog and mist, not with the improbable or the impossible. ”

“ You are changing every instant and the reality about you is the change, not what you see with the eye or photograph with the camera—that is merely a stage through which you pass and in which you do not stay—not for the thousand millionth part of the smallest recognizable instant. So our current American life and thought is not something that stands still long enough for us to describe it. ”

“ Look around you and you will see, for the most part, men in charge of large enterprises who are efficient, and who have put work before self—men who are engrossed in what they are doing, who love it and therefore do it effectively.
There never was a baser slander than the common assertion that we Americans love money. If we loved the dollar for itself alone, we should never sling it about as we do. We love the excitement and the fun of making money. Look at our working millionaires! They want no more money; they can not use what they have. ”

“ He lives because he took his wares to his audience. And without its public, as we have already said, the public library, too, would soon pass into oblivion. It must look to the public for the breath of life, for the very blood in its veins, for its bone and sinew. What, then, is the part that the community may play in increasing the efficiency of a public institution like the public library? Such an institution is, first of all, a medium through which the community does something for itself. The community employs and supports it, and at the same time is served by it. ”

“ I am frequently struck with the attitude of librarians toward their boards of trustees, not as shown in their public acts, but as revealed in conversation among themselves. A board is apt to be adjudged good or bad, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, as it takes a more or less passive part in the administration of the library. If it acts simply to approve what the librarian does and to see that he gets the necessary funds, it is regarded as ideal. All that most librarians seem to want is to be given plenty of money and then to be let alone. ”

“ One may thus intoxicate himself with history, psychology or mathematics—the mathematics-drunkard is the worst of all literary debauchees when he does exist—and the only reason why fiction-drunkenness is more prevalent is that fiction is more attractive to the average man. We do not have to warn the reader against over-indulgence in biography or art-criticism, any more than we have to put away the vichy bottle when a bibulous friend appears, or forbid the children to eat too many shredded-wheat biscuits. Fiction has the fatal gift of being too entertaining. ”

“ I do not quarrel with those who pursue this form of pleasure, but they certainly have no business to be librarians or teachers, or artists or authors, or to engage in any occupation which in itself constitutes to the worker the fullness of life and its illumination. The library profession will make its appeal in 1950, as it does today, to men and women who like to work with and among and through books; who also like to work with and among and through people; who enjoy watching the interplay of relations between the man and the book and using them for the advancement of civilization. ”

“ The message of literature as art may thus be to the crowd or to a select few. I could even imagine intellect and feeling of such exquisite fineness, such acknowledged superiority, that appeal to it alone might be enough to fix the status of a work of art, though it might leave all others cold. Still, in general I believe, that the greatest literature appeals to the greatest number and to the largest number of types. I believe that there are very few persons to whom Shakespeare, properly presented, will not appeal. In him, nevertheless, the learned and those of taste also delight. ”

“ It is always a pleasure to watch things grow, to be able to keep them on and guide their growth in useful directions. A library is no exception to the rule. Even growth in size—the simplest kind—has its satisfactions, but extension of service is still more interesting. It is well that there should be a little mystery between the librarian and his public—a consciousness of problems yet to solve, of service yet to be rendered. It is well that he should be on the lookout for latent demands—those hungers and thirsts that he knows must exist somewhere and that he is eager to satisfy ”

“ Here, of course, is where we make connection with the moving picture, whose fascinating realism and freedom from the taint of the footlights have perhaps been sufficiently insisted upon in what has been already said. In the moving picture, with the possibility of realistic backgrounds such as no skill, no money, no opportunity could build up on the ordinary stage—distant prospects, marvels of architecture, waving trees and moving animals—comes the ability of passing from one environment to another, on the other side of the globe perhaps, in the twinkling of an eye. ”

“ If we are ever to govern our cities properly, hold the balance evenly betwixt capital and labor, develop our great natural resources without undue generosity on the one hand or parsimony on the other—solve the thousand and one problems that rise to confront us on every hand—we shall never accomplish these things by struggling singly—one man at a time or even one State at a time, but by concerted, united effort, the perfect union of which our flag is a symbol, and which we need to-day even more than we did in 1776 or 1861. ”

“ The mood of the public in a library is often a reflection of that of the librarian. The golden rule here is direct personal contact; and don’t forget the last syllable—tact. Don’t force your services or your advice on people that neither wish nor require them, but don’t forget that you may have pleasant, intellectual intercourse without offering either aid or advice. When an aged man who knows more of literature than you dreamed of in your wildest visions wants “The Dolly dialogues,” don’t try to get him to take “Marius the Epicurean” instead. ”

“ A label pasted awry may ruin the library’s reputation in the eye of a casual user; a mis-sent card may cause trouble to dozens of one’s fellow assistants. Routine work is dull only when one does not understand its purport. Dullness is in the worker, not in the work.
Are libraries, indeed, introducing too much organization into the work—is it becoming too machine-like? Now, it should not be forgotten that there is in a machine something akin to personality—individuality, at any rate, is not too strong a word. ”

“ Had he been brought up in a library where he could make literary friends and develop literary enthusiasms, his course with the dry as dust teacher would have been only an unpleasant incident, instead of the wrecking of a part of his intellectual life.
Still again, a boy on a farm has vague aspirations. He knows that he wants a broader horizon, to get away from his cramped environment—that is about all. How many boys, impelled by such feelings, have gone out into the world with no clear idea of what they are fitted to do, or even what they really desire! ”

“ He has good books on plumbing and nobody reads them. Evidently the more advanced grade of the librarian has not affected the plumbers—they still remain in ignorance of the public library. But what is he to do? Here is the library; here are the books; here is the librarian, ready and willing to distribute them to all who may come. If the generation—or any part of it—is so wicked and perverse that it comes not, what is there to do? What, indeed! And so library and community remain in the twilight of yesterday just before the dawn. ”

“ Literature is becoming daily more of a dynamic and less of a static phenomenon. In other days the great body of written records remained more or less stable and with its attendant body of tradition did its work by a sort of quiet pressure on that portion of the community just beneath it—on a special class peculiarly subject to its influence. To-day we have added to this effect that of a moving multitude of more or less ephemeral books, which appear, do their work, and pass on out of sight. They are light, but they make up for their lack of weight by the speed and ease with which they move. ”

“ More, a chain is no stronger than its weakest link; a fleet is no faster than its slowest ship; and we may almost say that a library is no better than its worst book. And we must not forget that a book may be bad in three ways: it may give incorrect information, teach what is morally wrong, or use language that is unfitting. It may be necessary that a library should contain any or all of these, but if they give it its atmosphere and control its influence as an educational institution, even unwittingly, it is anti-social and those who administer it are mal-employed. ”

“ Meanwhile, there can be no doubt that the hope for the future efficiency of all our public institutions, including the library, lies in the success of democracy, and that depends on the existence and improvement of the conditions in whose absence democracy necessarily fails. Foremost among these is the homogeneity of the population. The people among whom democracy succeeds must have similar standards, ideas, aims and abilities. Democracy may exist in a pack of wolves, but not in a group that is half wolves and half men. Either the wolves will kill the men or the men the wolves. ”

“ Does he come to regard the library as his intellectual home and the librarian and his assistants as friends? What, on the other hand, is the attitude of the library staff toward the public? Is it inviting or repellent, friendly or coldly hostile, helpful or indifferent? Here is a whole body of results that are, in a way, the most important that a library can produce, and yet it is impossible to set them down in figures; they can scarcely even be expressed in words. The social status of a library is like a man’s reputation or his credit ”