Municipal library

“ To be thoroughly successful, a municipal library should be staffed by educated and intelligent officers, trained specially for the work; and with the aid of a broad-minded committee, they can make the institution first in value to the inhabitants. The public library is practically the only department through which a municipality comes into direct and unrestrained contact with the people, and it is, therefore, the institution most likely to be criticized and consequently the one most requiring constant supervision. ”

“ All these matters lead up to the ultimate object of the librarian, which is to establish a natural pathway from the schools to the public library. Vouchers of admission should be placed at the disposal of the schools, and the recommendation of the head teacher may procure readers’ tickets for all children leaving school. Fortunately most teachers see the importance of the matter, and a properly systematized connexion is therefore made for the child between the school library and the much larger and more permanently useful stores of the municipal library. ”

“ The library of the immediate future for the American people is unquestionably the free public library, brought under municipal ownership, and, to some extent, municipal control, and treated as part of the educational system of the state. The sense of ownership in it makes the average man accept and use the opportunities of the free public library while he will turn aside from book privileges in any other guise. ”

“ The chief reason for this is no doubt the cherished tradition that libraries are to be made as large as possible, because they are the repositories of the literature of the ages and the storehouse for every kind of printed matter. The museum idea of a public library, however, is now giving place to the workshop idea, and few librarians nowadays of average-sized municipal libraries hold the view that it is their function to provide and retain every book, irrespective of its value or appeal, and to attempt to rival the British Museum or Bibliothèque Nationale on a reduced scale. ”

“ On the other hand, a library to each arondissement is a fair allowance, and no one has to go very far to reach his library. For the most part they are patronized by the small tradesmen of the neighborhood and their families. A large proportion of our reading public is missing from these municipal libraries—they buy their own books, in paper, at the department stores, and make no use whatever of the government libraries or of these small circulating centers. ”

“ If a measure has proved bad and dangerous for one city, modern science in the hands of a librarian should make it unnecessary for every other city to go through the same experience.
To help us in ending all this waste, and to help us, in short, in putting city government upon a thorough scientific and efficient basis, the municipal reference library is beginning to take its highly important place. Without a municipal reference library, it will in future be difficult for any administrative officer to do his best. ”

“ It is in this work that one can be alive; he can feel that he is a part of the great movement toward the betterment of his city and its people.
Dr. William H. Allen, director of the Bureau of Municipal Research, of New York, made the closing talk of the evening, taking as his subject, "What a city should expect and receive from a library." He made a plea that librarians as individuals should stand for something in the community, should take their place as persons in the affairs of the day as well as see to it that their institutions performed the work to be expected of a library. ”

“ But I venture some suggestions as to a reference library that, although general in their application, will indicate our reasons for establishing such a library in New York.
Our reasons for placing the library in our new Municipal Building—as we propose to do—apply everywhere. It must be made easy for officials to get information, and for the librarian to get the information promptly and directly to the officials. It is not enough to know that it may be had. To have important information an hour away from the office is almost as bad as to have it a thousand miles away. ”

“ Whatever may have been the original intention, for example, of the pioneers of the municipal public library movement, and there are still many who seem to regard that movement as a counter-attraction to the seductions of the saloon bar and similar places of recreation, the present public library is a many-sided, active civic institution, making its appeal to all classes of the community as a centre of education, culture and recreation, with a trained service to direct it. ”

“ The first free town library in America, or the world, supported by municipal taxation, was established by the efforts of Abiel Abbot, D.D., in Peterboro, New Hampshire, in 1833. A decayed social library and an operatives' library, and perhaps some other small collections, were thus gathered under the shelter of the town; and took on new life from its fostering care, and the small annual appropriation for new books which is the breath of life to all libraries. Here, as always, it was a man that inspired the advance movement and carried it on to successful fulfilment. ”

“ If a state already has a good library law which has worked and is working well and satisfactorily to all concerned, local libraries should be left in operation under the provisions of the law, precisely as the schools should be and generally are left, no matter what changes in the form of municipal government are contemplated or have been carried into effect. ”

“ Even the hundreds of itinerating libraries but meagerly meet the want. All the traveling libraries in all the United States have a total issue annually less than that of any one of twenty municipal systems that can be named. ”

“ Many public-spirited citizens, fortunately endowed with large means, have offered to erect library buildings in certain places, on condition that the local authorities would provide the books, and the means of maintaining a free library. Such generous offers, whether coupled with the condition of perpetuating the donor's name with that of the library, or leaving the gift unhampered, so that the library may bear the name of the town or city of its location, have generally been accepted by municipal bodies, or by popular vote. ”

“ The recent acquisition of some formerly independent municipal reference libraries by the local libraries is a case in point. There must always be special libraries. The library business of independent industrial and commercial institutions is best cared for in this way. But every group that is merely a section of the general public, set apart from the rest by special needs and tastes, may be cared for most economically by the public library. ”

“ The New York State Library is a model of what a great public library should be in the capital of a State. In it are gathered a great proportion of the best books in each department of literature and science, while indefatigable efforts have been made to enrich it in whatever relates to American history and polity. Its reading-room is freely opened to the public during many hours daily. But a State library should never be made a library of circulation, since its utility as a reference library, having its books always in for those who seek them, would thereby be destroyed. ”

“ It is not surprising in these circumstances that the rural population of the country is still deprived of the social and educational advantages of the public library. What is obviously indicated is a larger administrative authority, such as the County Council, which could group the parishes, pool the income from the rate, and administer from one centre a system of travelling libraries, combined with local stationary collections of books and the provision of suitable reading-rooms in the various districts. ”

“ They are elected every year from the members of the association, and have absolute control of the library.
Although our library is supported by the village, we make it absolutely free to anyone who desires to use it. Those outside the village or township are required to put up a nominal deposit, merely for the safe return of the book. We made this the ideal toward which we are working—that the friendship of books is like the friendship of men, it is worth nothing and avails nothing unless it is used constantly and improved constantly. ”

“ In the days before public libraries were common in this country, library associations were formed to secure good literature. Such associations are still useful in small communities that find it impossible to sustain a public library, and they serve as a medium for securing from the State a travelling library, which has the special advantage of frequent substitution of books. Or the school library may be the nucleus of a literary collection for the whole community—advantageously so if the school building is kept open as a community centre. ”

“ They can go from their homes into the library and take the books into their hands. If they are in the city almost every day they can utilize the large city library. When it comes to the question of sending books by mail or express we are all agreed that each state must have a state library and its own state commission. ”

“ If the staff is limited it would be better to have the civics room situated in a centralized locality, such as the state library, with easy communication with the smaller libraries. These could have an index of what the state library has, and when the need would arise the librarian could communicate her wants to the state librarian and the material could be sent as a package library upon short notice.
And so we find that we can be of assistance to the members of the City Council, women's clubs, civic organizations, newspaper men and students. The future of the work is very bright ”

“ Finally, the city should insist that the library be an educational institution and not receive its appropriation for recreation mainly. The extraordinary demand for light fiction in public libraries has led to a very unsatisfactory condition of affairs, and it is not uncommon to find 300 copies of a new novel necessary to at all meet the demand. There is every indication that the public library will be furnished with a happy release from this call upon their resources by the institution of the Book Lovers' Library which has now extended its branches to all the important cities. ”

“ In a city of 400,000 inhabitants perhaps 40,000 or 10 per cent would make use of library privileges, and the circulation of a million volumes per year meant the use of only 21⁄2 books per year for each inhabitant. Then commenced the era of branch libraries, deposit stations, libraries in schools, libraries in factories, in fire-houses; a resort to every possible means to extend usefulness of the library throughout the whole community. ”

“ Give the people at least such liberty with their own collection of books as the bookseller gives them with his. Let the shelves be open, and the public admitted to them, and let the open shelves strike the keynote of the whole administration. The whole library should be permeated with a cheerful and accommodating atmosphere. Lay this down as the first rule of library management; and for the second, let it be said that librarian and assistants are to treat boy and girl, man and woman, ignorant and learned, courteous and rude, with uniform good-temper without condescension ”

“ Libraries for schoolrooms, to be composed of reference books, books for supplementary reading, class duplicates, and professional books for teachers, should be provided for in the public school law. School funds should be used and school authorities should manage these libraries. The business of lending books for home use is better and more economically managed by a public library, having an organization that is independent of the school authorities. ”

“ As to the principles that should govern and the limitations to be laid down, these will depend much upon the scope of the library, and the amount of its funds. No library of the limited and moderate class commonly found in our public town libraries can afford to aim at the universal range of a national library, nor even at the broad selections proper to a liberally endowed city library. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to point out that books which are not good enough or fresh enough for a central library, are not good enough for a branch library. Books proposed to be withdrawn permanently should be submitted to the library committee, and lists of the discarded books may be printed in the bulletin, if there is one, or, failing that, in a separate form. It is useful that readers likely to be interested should be afforded an opportunity of judging the proposals and action of the library committee in its work of weeding out the library. ”

“ There is hardly a county in England which can support two county collections, because rival collections are mutually inimical, and their competition for certain items causes the price of the latter to increase absurdly. The town is another matter. The one place where copies of books, pamphlets, photographs, etc., relating to a town ought to be found is its public library; and there are several principles, warnings and suggestions that may be enunciated in connexion with the work. The relative value of the material to be collected is hardly a matter for the librarian ”