A Library Primer Part 17

I hereby declare that I am a resident of the City of Springfield, and in consideration of the right to use the Free City Library, agree to comply with all Regulations provided for its government.

George Brown.

I hereby certify that the above subscriber is a fit person to enjoy the privileges of the City Library, and that I will be responsible for any loss or injury the Library may sustain from the permission given to draw books in consequence of this certificate.

Signature (in ink)

Residing at No. Street.]

Double and special borrowers' cards are not needed under this system. It accommodates itself readily to a "two-book" system. On the book-cards belonging to the second book, and all other books after the first, which any borrower may take, the librarian writes the borrower's number preceded by any letter or sign which will serve to indicate that these books are charged, not on the borrower's card, but to the borrower direct, on the strength of a general permission to him to take more than one book.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 4. Overdue notice. (Postal card, reduced.)

The City Library a.s.sociation, Springfield, Ma.s.s. LITERATURE: ART: SCIENCE.

The Library: Circulating Department.

The rules of the library require all books to be returned in two weeks. Book No. G647.2 stands charged to you (Card No. 1906) as taken from the library Feb. 2. '99.

You are incurring a fine of two cents for every day's detention.

If you think a mistake has been made, please notify us.

A charge of two cents is made for sending this notice.

The City Library. Per B.

Present this notice with your library card.]

The postal notice no. 1, the registration cards 2 and 3, the notice that the book is overdue, no. 4, the fine slip, no. 5, all explain themselves.

In most places, certainly in all small towns, a sufficient safeguard against the loss of books is found in the signature of the borrower himself. No guarantee need be called for. To ask for a guarantor for a reputable resident is simply to discommode two people instead of one.

The application which the borrower signs should be brief and plain.

Name, residence, place of business, and any necessary references, should be written in by the librarian on one side; the signature to an agreement to obey the library rules can be written by the applicant on the other. All borrowers agreements should be filed in alphabetical order. They should receive borrowers' numbers in the order of their issue, and the date. The borrowers' cards should state that they expire in a definite number of years from the date of issue, and the date of issue should be stamped on them. An index of borrower's agreements should be kept by their numbers. This need contain only the borrower's number, his name, and, when necessary, his address. It is conveniently kept in a book. It is better to keep it on cards.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 5. Fine slip. (Reduced; actual size 12-1/2 x 7-1/2 cm.)

The City Library a.s.socation Springfield, Ma.s.s.

Fines received FEB 14

No. 34. 5-82 D.

4 2 16 6 22 8 2 4 6]

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

Meeting the public

If the public is not admitted to the shelves, it will be necessary to supply catalogs for public use as well as slips on which lists of books wanted can be made out; but the fullest possible catalogs and the finest appointments in the delivery room cannot take the place of direct contact between librarian or a.s.sistants and the public.

Wherever possible, the person to whom the borrower applies for a book should go himself to the shelves for it.

The stranger in the library should be made welcome. Encourage the timid, volunteer to them directions and suggestions, and instruct them in the library's methods. Conversation at the counter having to do with wants of borrowers should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

No mechanical devices can take the place of face to face question and answer.

The public like to handle and examine their books, and it is good for them to do it. They like the arrangements in the library to be simple; they object to red tape and rules. They like to have their inst.i.tutions seem to a.s.sume--through, for example, the absence of signs--that they know how to conduct themselves courteously without being told. They don't like delays. They like to be encouraged to ask questions. They like to be consulted as to their wants, and as to changes in arrangements and methods. They like to feel at home in their library.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

The public library for the public

The librarian of former times was almost invariably a bookworm, and was often a student properly so called. The older librarians of the present day, and the librarians of the great libraries of our cities, are also very commonly men of letters, men of learning, men who admire the student spirit and know how to appreciate it. The librarian of former days actually felt that the books of which he had charge were to be used, if they were used at all, chiefly, if not only, by persons who wished to make some careful and painstaking research; and the older librarians, and the librarians of the greater libraries of today, are also inclined to think that their libraries are best used, or at least are used as fully as they need be, when they are visited by those who are engaged in original investigation or serious study of some sort. As a fellow librarian once wrote me, for example, of one of his colleagues, "His whole trend is scholarly rather than popular; he appreciates genuine contributions to art, science, and industry, but has little taste for the great cla.s.s of books that the main body of readers care for." This view of literature, libraries, and the use of books, and this special fondness for what may be called genuine contributions to art, science, and industry, are proper enough in their time and place; but it cannot be too often impressed upon the library world, and upon those who contribute to the support of libraries, and upon trustees and directors generally, that the thing that is of great consequence in the work of the free public library is not its product in the shape of books which are the results of careful research, or of books which are contributions to science, art, and industry; it is the work that the library does from day to day in stimulating the inquiring spirit, in adding to the interest in things, and in broadening the minds of the common people who form 90 per cent at least of the public library patrons. 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.

It is from this common-folks-education point of view that the advocate of the open-shelf system looks upon the question of library administration. 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. That it should be solely or chiefly or primarily the student's library, in any proper sense of the word, is as contrary to the spirit of the whole free public library movement as would be the making of the public schools an inst.i.tution for the creation of Greek philologians. Everyone engaged in educational work, and especially those thus engaged who are most thoroughly equipped for the work in a literary way, and are most in touch with the literary and scholarly spirit, should have his attention called again and again to the needs of the crowd, the ma.s.s, the common people, the general run, the 90 per cent who either have never been within a schoolroom, or left it forever by the time they were thirteen years of age. And his attention should be again and again called to the fact that of the millions of children who are getting an education in this country today, not over 5 or 6 per cent at the outside, and perhaps even less than that, ever get as far, even, as the high-schools. 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Advice to a librarian

[From Public Libraries, June, 1897]

As a matter of fact the position of librarian is more of an executive business affair than a literary one. Let me give you fair warning--it is in no sense your business to dictate to others as to what they may or may not, should or should not, read, and if you attempt to a.s.sume such responsibility you will make unnumbered enemies, and take upon yourself a thankless and uncalled-for task.

Frankly, do you know what is good for me to read? Are you not very much in doubt what is best for yourself? Isn't there a doubt in the best and most candid minds upon this same subject? Let the board of directors a.s.sume the responsibilities, work carefully and cautiously for the things that are considered best by persons of some authority, the people with sound, healthy bodies and clean minds, and thoroughly distrust the literary crank. Don't be too sure of your own judgment; the other fellow may be right, especially as to what he wants and needs.

Hang on to your tastes and prejudices for yourself, but don't impose them upon others. Cultivate your own tastes carefully by reading but little, and that little of the best; avoid the latest sensation until you are quite sure it is more than a sensation; if you have to buy it to please the patrons, have some convenient (literary) dog of good appet.i.te and digestive organs, and try it on him or her and watch the general effect. You will be astonished how much you will find out about a book, its morals and manners, by the things they don't say.

Our mutual friend's father, Mr D----, used to utterly d.a.m.n a book to me when he said it was Just fair, and his It's a likely story, put things in the front ranks. Just get the confidence of as many readers as you can, grapple some of the most divergent minds with hooks of steel; and in finding out how little you know that is of any real value to anyone else, you will begin to be of some little value to yourself. Don't try to direct. The fellow that wants your direction will cause you to ooze out the information he needs, and you will hardly know that you have told him anything.

I may be, and doubtless am, saying much that is quite unnecessary, but I have tried to bear in mind some of my own mistakes, and of others around me. I have been impressed with the fact that librarians seem to think that they must or ought to know everything, and get to think they do know. It is a delusion. One can't know it all, and only a hopeless case tries.

Be more than content to be ignorant on many things. Look at your position as a high-grade business one, look after the working details, have things go smoothly, know the whereabouts and cla.s.sification of the books, and let people choose their own mental food, but see to it that all that is put before them is wholesome.