Part 7 (1/2)
The public library came to women at the precise moment when increased education disposed them to use it, and increased leisure gave them the opportunity. It fills a s.p.a.ce in their lives which would be otherwise void. But the present time is one of decreased leisure and increased intensity of work for all cla.s.ses of men. Perhaps I ought to except from this statement the wage-earner, who as eight hour laws and customs come into force will have more time for reading than the man of almost any other cla.s.s in the community. This movement toward lessened hours of labor is more effective where libraries are best organized and therefore presents an opportunity for the extension of library influence, both general and special. The opportunity must be improved, yet neither the wage-earner nor the business man will be easy to reach; neither has been among the active patrons of the library in the past. Their lives are already full, both with business and pleasure, and if the library is to reach them, it must attract them on lines which appeal to them more strongly than business or present pleasure. It must reach needs which they know and feel to be real.
I do not believe that men of the present generation will come to libraries in great numbers for the purposes that attract women. We might as well admit that they will not subst.i.tute the novel for the cigar, the printed story for the companions.h.i.+p of the club. They will not read good books because they ought to do so, and the number who will read them because they like to do so is unfortunately not great. Men have not thus acted since the world began, and man-like, they will not do so now, even though such conduct on their part would help our library statistics very greatly. Nor will any great number of them read in order to enlarge the basis of life, for, in spite of the greatness of the movement toward books, it affects at first hand only a few people in the community. The ma.s.s of workmen, now and always, will get their knowledge from tradition or at second hand. It will be the unusual man who will get his ideas from books at first hand and thus improve his work and that of his fellows.
The problem is then to reach these few, and through them the community; and this brings us to the second phase of the question. I do not find that the problem has been solved; perhaps it is too recent. But libraries have been attempting its solution by various methods and with varying success.
The first and most successful attempt is that of the large libraries, like that of Pittsburgh and the Pratt Inst.i.tute of Brooklyn, which maintain a technical library for the men--a library adequately housed in its own rooms and administered by a special librarian. These technical libraries for working men succeed in their aim of reaching many of the cla.s.s for which they are established. They offer not merely an opportunity for reading, but that guidance in the use of books which all cla.s.ses of the community need, if they are to use books for a serious purpose. They show us that success in this line of effort may be reached if the library has an income sufficient to enable it to undertake the task on a large scale.
This condition is, however, not that of most of the libraries which are represented here. Our incomes are none too large for the work which we must necessarily do for the general public. Such libraries must ordinarily content themselves with offering to men opportunities for reading without special guidance in the use of books. This work has been attempted in a good many of the smaller libraries. They attempt to provide masculine conditions for reading and reading material which will appeal to men. The first includes a well-furnished, comfortable room for men, where a man can come in his working clothes without feeling he is out of place; smoking may be allowed or not--both plans are tried without great difference in apparent result. The masculine reading comprises newspapers and magazines; good books of literature which can be left in the room (paper bound copies suggested); most important of all are trade journals; if possible, files of the recent volumes of these journals, selected according to the industries of each town; and the most readable and most recent reference books on similar subjects.
In a word, a room is furnished with reading which will appeal to the cla.s.ses of men who do not ordinarily use libraries and who are not greatly interested in literature.
This plan is good one and ought to be tried, but I believe the conditions are exceptional under which it will reach large numbers of men. Inertia and habit will keep most of them away from the library.
They will see the daily papers at their wonted places of resort, and the room, necessarily lacking in much of the freedom of the club, will fail to attract very many of them. They will not form the habit of visiting it, even though they might enjoy it if the habit were formed. It must also be remembered that increasing numbers of the manufacturing concerns are providing their employees with reading of this kind, and thus limiting the use of the city library.
In some libraries the attempt to reach men has gone still further and has led to an inclusion of attractions which are ordinarily regarded as outside the work of a library. They have attempted to combine to some degree the privileges of a club with that of the public library. The Stevens Point Library has a club room, equipped with billiard tables, cards, etc., as well as with technical journals and similar books. This, the librarian reports, is very successful in attracting boys, many of whom learn to use the library. Men, however, do not come in large numbers, as they do not care to use a place frequented by boys, and in which smoking is not permitted. At Wausaukee a special room with games and where lunch is served has been established at the library as a means of furnis.h.i.+ng a sort of club room for lumber men who come to the village, especially on Sunday, and who have no other place of resort, except the saloon. How far such methods are advisable as a part of library work is a question which will often be asked during the coming years and which only experience can answer. At present such enterprises have not gone beyond the stage of early experiment.
Summing up the result, I would frankly confess that the reports which I have received are not numerous enough for a positive judgment, yet it is my impression that where there is an income large enough to provide a special librarian and a public large enough to warrant the expense, this movement for special libraries for men is likely to succeed. It seems also to be true that where the library provides the men with the opportunity for reading only, and does not furnish guidance for readers, no very large use is made of technical books and there is no greatly increased use of the library in general. How to guide the reading seems, therefore, to be the central factor in the solution of the problem.
In a small town a special librarian is impossible, for financial reasons, but there, as well as in large cities, lectures can be given which deal with practical subjects and the aid to their knowledge which the library affords. Many cities are giving such courses of lectures, notably perhaps New York, and with considerable effect on the use of the public library. I have no statistics regarding such lectures from the various cities, but undoubtedly this method offers the easiest plan for extending the use of the library in smaller cities and towns. I say the _easiest_, and it will not be difficult to secure good lectures on literature, history, or art, but lectures on the practical subjects are much more difficult to obtain, since it is hard to secure lecturers who know more about the trades than do the craftsmen who const.i.tute the audience.
If these movements are to succeed, they must not be attempted in an amateurish way. They must be well planned and well executed--planned and executed with careful reference to the wants of the men of the community. Above all, they must be persistently carried out with full vigor year after year, even though results are apparently small. Their purpose must be steadfastly maintained and the methods of execution continually readjusted, as success or failure indicates. It is no light or easy thing to change the habits of half the adult members of the community--to cultivate the reading habit in those who have reached maturity without acquiring it--and the work which the library proposes for itself involves such a task.
If men are to be reached at all it must be on a business basis, not on that of occasional effort. Nor must the missionary spirit prevail, for men, as a rule, do not wish to be reformed or to be helped. They must find in the library a place which appeals to their sense of comfort and which gives them things that they want, or, like other sensible people, they will not use it.
One word in closing this topic, and that in emphasis of what I have already said. It is easier to keep a boy reading as he grows up than to catch him again as a man after the library has lost him. Take a lesson from the church. The boy who graduates from Sunday-school rarely returns for a post-graduate course. In the wise administration of the work for children and youth lies the main hope not of reaching, but keeping men in the library.
But it should be definitely understood that this enlargement of library work which the times are forcing upon us means increasing expense, more room, more books--which must be more frequently renewed--and a larger library staff. It means the attempt to do efficiently several lines of intellectual work for the public instead of purveying literature for those who desire it. This new work the library can readily accomplish, but not with the staff which was sufficient for the old duties. Any library can provide, for example, the list of desiderata mentioned in the _Independent's_ article, which could easily be extended. They can all be furnished by the library as the public wants them and will pay for them. They cannot be, and ought not to be, supplied by an already overworked library staff of two or three persons.
The library, therefore, should not enter upon these duties blindly or ignorantly. It is a great task which is thus undertaken--to educate the community to use books and to guide it in that use. Although small beginnings are possible, the work will inevitably grow on our hands just as that of the schools and colleges has done, and for similar reasons.
But whatever difficulties lie in the way of their performance, it is plain that the library must a.s.sume these new duties. With many experiments, with many failures, with many partial successes, the library will extend its teachings, its conscious influences, until they touch the life of the community at every point.
In this rambling talk I have discussed library work as it looks forward to new problems, and have devoted only a word, and that perhaps a rather disparaging one, to the traditional use of the library. I would not leave the subject in this way. For the traditional use of books remains and will remain the center of library work and the main source of its best influences. The problem of the library to-day, looked at from within and not from without, and in relation to other agencies, is essentially that which confronts the university. Both inst.i.tutions once stood for culture and for culture exclusively. Both are now challenged by the spirit of the newer time and are called upon to justify themselves as public utilities. This they must do, and that in full measure, but there is a real danger that both, in the multiplicity of the new duties thus forced upon them, may forget the weighty words, ”these ought ye to do and not leave the other undone.” For, after all, the highest public utility which the library offers, or can offer, is the opportunity to cultivate the friends.h.i.+p of books. This utility is none the less precious because it is intangible. Indeed, it is the unique privilege of the library among munic.i.p.al enterprises that it can provide a service which aids the higher life of the citizen so directly and so purely. In the spirituality of this function, the library stands second only to the highest inst.i.tutions of pure learning, and to the church.
No new undertaking, no extension of work, no plea of necessity can warrant or justify any loss of power on this highest level. The problem is not to discover how to sacrifice as little as possible of the old spirit to the new duties, but to learn how through the new duties we may make more wide-spread and more potent for good that oldest and best inheritance from the past--the love of books.
”The people's university,” the library has been called, but it would be as great a pity if the librarian so understood this term as to believe that people came to the library only to learn, as it would be if any went there who could not learn what they sought. That university which is a place to study rather than a place to live is missing its best possibilities, and in a similar way the library ought to be, first and always, a place to read rather than a place to study. I would not go so far as to say that I want to find it a place to ”loaf,” though I might be provoked into saying so; but certainly it must be a place where I can ”invite my soul”--such a place as the world gives me elsewhere only in the church or in the silence of nature. Trade journals and technical works are of great use; books for women's clubs are good things; the children's room is a necessity; but these of themselves no more make a library than a kitchen, dining room and bedroom make a home. Out of such utilities as these you may get a boarding house, but nothing better; the family makes it a home. Those are wholly wrong who believe that standard books are so cheap that anyone can buy them, and therefore the library could conceivably get on without them. Without the best literature you might get a very useful inst.i.tution, no doubt, but not a library, for in a library the great works of the great authors are the soul and theirs is the spirit which enables the library not merely to contribute to the advance of the community toward prosperity and intelligence, but also, in some degree, to touch its higher life to finer issues.
THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
AN ADDRESS AT ITS DEDICATION
This and the four addresses that follow it have little in common except that all were delivered at the opening exercises of libraries. Everett's address at the opening of the Boston Public Library appropriately heads the group. The reader will look in it in vain for any reflection of the conservative opinions expressed in the letter to George Ticknor printed on page 53 of this volume, unless perhaps in the total absence of anything radical. It is typical oratory of the day--ponderously graceful, if that is not a contradiction in terms.
Edward Everett was born in Dorchester, Ma.s.s., April 11, 1794. He graduated at Harvard in 1811 and served there as professor of Greek in 1819-25. He was a member of Congress in 1825-35, governor of Ma.s.sachusetts in 1836-40, minister to Great Britain in 1841-45, president of Harvard, 1846-49, U.S. secretary of state in 1852-53, and U.S. senator in 1853-54. He died in Boston, Jan. 15, 1865. His reputation as a scholarly orator was very high.
MR. MAYOR:--
In behalf of the Trustees of the City Library, I receive with extreme pleasure the keys which you have placed in my hands. The completion of the n.o.ble building, which the city government now confides to our care, is an event to which the Trustees have looked forward with the greatest interest, and which they now contemplate with the highest satisfaction.
They deem themselves especially honored in their connection with an inst.i.tution, for whose use this stately and commodious edifice has been erected, and which they doubt not is destined to be instrumental of the highest good to the community, and to reflect lasting credit upon the liberality, public and private, with which it has been founded and endowed.