John Cotton Dana

“ A free public library is not a people's post-graduate school, it is the people's common school.
The more I see and learn of free public libraries the more I am convinced that a public library can reach a high degree of efficiency in its work only when its books are accessible to all its patrons. The free public library should not be managed for the use of the special student, save in special cases, any more than is the free public school. ”

“ The few, of course, rule and must keep the lamp burning, but the many must have sufficient education to know how to walk by it if democracy is to endure. And the school for the many is, and is to be, if the opinions of librarians are correct, the free public library; but it cannot be a school for the many unless the many walk into it, and go among its books, handle them, and so doing come to know them and to love them and to use them, and to get wisdom from them. ”

“ That is to say, the public library is chiefly concerned not in the products of education, as shown in the finished book, but in the process of education as shown in the developing and training of the library users, of the general public. ”