Libration

“ Each community has different needs, and begins its library under different conditions. Consider then, whether you need most a library devoted chiefly to the work of helping the schools, or one to be used mainly for reference, or one that shall run largely to periodicals and be not much more than a reading room, or one particularly attractive to girls and women, or one that shall not be much more than a cheerful resting-place, attractive enough to draw man and boy from street corner and saloon. ”

“ And that the aim of the library should be to contain every work which is worthy of being possessed, in every language and of every age; the whole amount of human thought, and of the experience of society. ”

“ After all the mechanical detail is done, when the cover has been labelled, when the catalogue notation has been figured, when the class distribution has been determined, the librarian stands middleman in a threefold capacity. She is a purveyor, in the sense that she passes a book over the counter; she is a custodian, in so far as books need protection; she is the high priestess, since the library is a temple of treasures, a storehouse for our literary heritage. ”

“ Purposes of a Library.—The purposes of a school library should be not only to provide laboratory material for the pupils’ work in literature and history, to enable the teacher to instruct them in the use of books as sources of information, and to assist the teacher in other ways, but also to instil in the pupils an interest in books as books, to cultivate a taste for reading. Too many high school graduates have no conception of a book, other than fiction, as anything but a task or a text. ”

“ In other words, a man with a library is a man respected!’ That was why I founded my own, sir. The Archdeacon himself contributed the first few volumes.”
“Is it a large library?” I asked, glancing furtively at my wrist-watch.
“No, sir; of very modest dimensions. But it is sufficiently large to be utilized by nearly all my friends.
“You lend them books, then?”
“Oh, no, sir. I would not do that. My books are everything to me—and you know what book borrowers are! My friends are welcome to tap my literary resources, but it must be through me as medium.” ”

“ There are however in this matter two factors—one’s self and the library. In order to sketch out one’s life work as librarian and live it, one must needs first know what libraries are, what they are capable of becoming and how one can best apply such knowledge and energy as one may have to making these libraries accomplish what they were intended to do for human society. This involves looking at libraries as a whole as well as at one’s life work as a whole, and the task of the library school is to give this view of the situation. ”

“ If the library is out of order it's going to be a very serious matter getting it all right again, because we have all the books in the world here, and that's a good many, you know—more'n a hundred by several millions. ”

“ In a sense, and in a very real sense, the key to the scientific pedagogy of the future lies in the group of studies summed up as library science, for the library is the late and complex object which sums up in itself the sciences of the book, the word, and all simpler elements of human expression and record, if there be any such. A fourth reason for the study of beginnings is, therefore, that it is the natural method of study and teaching. ”

“ There are relics of the age before circulating libraries, there are fragments of the lettered store of some scholarly great-grandfather, and these, with a few odd numbers of magazines, a few primers and manuals, some sermons and novels, make up the ordinary library of an English household. But the amateur, whom we have in our thoughts, can never be satisfied with these commonplace supplies. He has a taste for books more or less rare, and for books neatly bound; in short, for books, in the fabrication of which art has not been absent. ”

“ Every librarian of experience, every administrator of traveling libraries, will recall such instances. One boy comes upon the right book, and the current of his life is changed; another reads a volume, and in his brain germinates the seed that blossoms into a great invention; in a chance hour of reading, a third finds in a page, a phrase, a word, the inspiration whose expression sets aflame the world. ”

“ But I have shown you enough for you to see that our library is not a mere cemetery of dead books, but a living power, which supplies amusement for dull times, recreation for the tired, information for the curious, inspires the love of research in youth, and furnishes the materials for it in mature age, enables and induces the scholar not to let his study end with his school days. ”

“ But, in these days of cheap print and nasty paper, with a central library into which pours the annual cataract of literature, these little ancient libraries have no use left, save as repositories or store-rooms. They belong to the days when books were few and expensive; when few persons could acquire a library of their own; when lecturers accumulated knowledge that was not the property of the world; when notes were laboriously copied and handed on; when one of the joys of learning was the consciousness of possessing secrets not known to other men. ”

“ If all the books are in the 'Library' one has to endure the nuisance of demands for particular works, coming from the kitchen, drawing-room, or bedroom, and the difficulty of securing their prompt and accurate return. It also imposes upon the butler, the maid-of-all-work, or whoever admits and attends upon callers, the awful responsibility of procuring from the library a pass-time book to amuse the waiting visitor in the drawing-room. ”

“ But there is something more important than persiflage and gossip—there is the new novel to choose from the circulating library. For in the country the bookstall man is also the librarian and adviser; he not only sells papers but he controls the reading of the neighbourhood. ”

“ We must first understand that the nature of the library is changing. Traditionally, libraries have been conceived as protective vessels in a world where information is scarce. Our iconic library stories are romances of destruction, decay, and amnesia. ”

“ The encouragement of the Study of Bibliography, in its legitimate sense, and towards its true object, may be numbered among the most efficacious cures for this destructive malady. To place competent Librarians over the several departments of a large public Library; or to submit a library, on a more confined scale, to one diligent, enthusiastic, well-informed, and well-bred Bibliographer or Librarian (of which in this metropolis we have so many examples) , is doing a vast deal towards directing the channels of literature to flow in their proper courses. ”

“ He writes, "Every year many young readers begin their experiences with the library. They find all the instructive [Pg 83] reading they ought to have in their school books, and frequent the library for story books. These swell the issues of fiction, but they prevent the statistics of that better reading into which you have allured the older ones, from telling as they should in the average." ”

“ But the value of such a Library to a youth, just starting into life, would be incalculable. And no better service could be done the cause of pure speech, correct diction, and earnest thought, than a general effort to put a Library of this kind within the reach of every intelligent boy in the country, of 15 years of age. ”

“ By securing the right books from the library for home reading, by providing picture material and reference sources for class room use, by conducting story hours and reading clubs, by giving instruction in the use of the library and the keys that open books, by giving stimulus to the ambitions and capacities of individual pupils, by intimate co-operation with the work of vocational guidance, the librarian would prove her worth. ”

“ In getting notices of the library's work in the newspapers, or in securing mention of it from the lecture platform, or in clubs, and literary, artistic, and musical societies, it is better to refrain from figures and to deal chiefly in general statements about what the library aims to do and what it has done. ”

“ No novels are [Pg 82] admitted into the library. The following is a passage from the librarian's report of 1874: "In watching the use of our library as it is more and more resorted to by the younger readers of our community, I have been much interested in its influence in weaning them from a desire for works of fiction. On first joining the library, the new comers often ask for such books, but failing to procure them, and having their attention turned to works of interest and instruction, in almost every instance they settle down to good reading and cease asking for novels. ”

“ But the unpopular library must not be overlooked, for, after all, libraries are for the learned. We must not let the babes and sucklings, or the weary seamstress or badgered clerk, or even the working-man, ride rough-shod over Salmasius and Scaliger. ”

“ In selecting, classifying, and preparing the books, in examining and mending them, the work will ordinarily be better done if it is under the charge of a trained librarian, and it will be done more economically if it is done in a good public library. ”

“ CHOICE OF BOOKS But when the doors of the public library are thrown open to the young, and they are recognized as an important class of its patrons, the question comes up, What shall the library furnish to this class in order to meet its wants? If the object of the library is understood to be simply the supplying of the wants of the reading public, and the young are considered as a portion of that public, the question is very easily answered by saying, Give them what they call for that is not positively injurious in its tendency. ”

“ Many who will not identify themselves with clubs, from an aversion to organization, will appreciate the freedom from it here, for there will be no officers, no rules, no fees.
If there is no especial note that the librarian thinks it would be well to sound, he may let it be known that the first of a series of entertainments to be given by the library, at the library, will be, for instance, a talk upon the Child in History, Our American Illustrators, or some attractive subject. ”

“ A preliminary lesson may consist of a simple demonstration of the purpose and means of access to the library—its divisions, cataloguing and classification, and an exercise in finding books; and this may be followed by other lessons on the making, use and care of books; and other lessons may follow on reference work, subject-hunting, the use of periodical indexes, bibliographical aids, dictionaries, maps, etc. They must be purely objective to succeed, and everything described should be placed before the children. ”

“ It is inevitable that in starting a library there should be some mistakes made; but with a trained librarian in charge, these mistakes will be fewer in number. For example, what does the novice know of classification? He realizes that the books, for convenience in use, must be grouped in classes. If he has had the use of a good library (as a college student would) he has some idea as to how the class divisions are made, and knows also that there must be some sort of notation for the classes. ”

“ In those constantly arising questions which form the subjects of essays or discussions in all institutions of learning, the well-furnished library is an unfailing resource. The student who finds his unaided mind almost a blank upon the topic given out for treatment, resorts at once to the public library, searches catalogues, questions the librarian, and surrounds himself with books and periodicals which may throw light upon it. ”

“ Reference work in libraries large and small has for its first rule: Meet the inquirer more than half way. To the stranger a library is often an oppressive place, an awesome place—in his imagination. He comes in shyly; everyone appears busy, his question suddenly seems to him trivial; he won't trouble these wise and busy people with it—and goes out. ”

“ Not that I entirely approve of library methods in these large cities. So careless, letting tramps and all sorts of dirty persons practically sleep in the reading-rooms."
"I know, but the poor souls⸻ Well, I'm sure you will agree with me in one thing: The chief task of a librarian is to get people to read." ”

“ The most which one man can hope to effect, in this department, is to examine and describe books, in some special branch of knowledge, or books of some particular class, as palæotypes, books privately printed, a selection of books most esteemed by collectors, &c. It is too much to expect, that every librarian can find time, or possess learning, for such a description of all books under his care. Besides, this would be a waste of labor and of money. ”

“ There is the matter of themes for the writing of compositions; by selecting subjects on which information can be had at the library, the teacher can send the pupil to the library as a student, and readily put him in communication with, and excite his interest in, classes of books to which he has been a stranger and indifferent. ”

“ They require a sound preliminary education in the candidate, a knowledge of the broader lines of general library administration, and, added to [450] these, a study of the child mind, practical social service work, the study of the bibliography of juvenile literature, and practice—usually gained by actual work in children’s rooms—in story-telling, subject-hunting, bulletin-making, and similar matters. Cataloguing, classification, the preparing of attractive lists, etc., for children are all somewhat modified from the forms in use in the grown people’s departments, and all are treated specially. ”