Part 26 (1/2)
Now, for closing ill.u.s.trations, let me show you how libraries at great distances help one another. I will choose the relations of the library in Worcester to the Public Library of Denver, Colorado. Mr. Dana, the librarian of that library, sent to me to borrow one of the publications of the Browning Society of London. It was sent to him by registered mail and returned, safely, in the same way.
Next he wanted, for some student of mining, an extract from one of the volumes of the _Comptes Rendus_ of the French Academy. The extract was copied from the volume and sent to him. There has since occurred the following transaction. A gentleman in Chicago had written to Mr. Dana, in Denver, to ask him whether he knew of a translation of the report of a government railroad commission in Holland which had recently been engaged in considering what kinds of paint are best to use in preserving iron, and whether he could tell him where to find the results of certain experiments which had been made in one of the bureaus of the U.S. Navy Department. Mr. Dana pa.s.sed along the question to me, knowing that I had often to answer questions of that kind. In order to find an answer to the first question, I at once set a young man at work looking at the indexes of the late volumes of the _Railroad and Engineering Journal_, and soon an important article was unearthed giving the results of the investigations of the Dutch commission. This piece of information was sent to Denver. I then wrote to Mr. Henry C. Baird, the Philadelphia publisher, to see if he knew of the publication of a translation of the report. He wrote back that he did not know of the publication of such a translation, but that there was a long article on paints useful in the preservation of iron in one of the most recently issued volumes of Spons's ”Receipts.” He promised, however, to make further inquiries. So he went to the rooms of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences and inquired there what gentleman in the city was most likely to have the information sought for. He was referred to some one connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad Co., who told him that he was not aware that the report had been translated, but referred the inquirer to an elaborate article extending through several numbers of the well-known periodical, _Iron_. Mr. Baird transmitted the information he had got to me and I sent it and other pieces of information gained since my last letter to the library of Denver. The information sent to Denver was sent to Chicago. So by the aid of two far separated librarians a person in Chicago, an intermediate city, distant from the homes of both, received information which he desired through Denver, Worcester, and Philadelphia. For an answer to his second question, this inquirer from Chicago was referred to the Navy Department at Was.h.i.+ngton.
A clergyman in Colorado Springs, and this is a final ill.u.s.tration, applied to the librarian of the same public Library in Denver for an old book by Goldwin Smith. He referred him to me. I knew him, having met him on my way to California. To my surprise I found we did not own the book.
So I wrote to Mr. Winsor, the Librarian of Harvard University, and told him that the applicant could be trusted and would make good use of the information afforded him, and that he needed the book in preparing a course of lectures which he was to give at once at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Then I asked Mr. Winsor if he felt at liberty to lend the book. The next thing I heard in regard to the matter, a letter came from the gentleman in Colorado Springs thanking me for the aid rendered, and saying that Mr. Winsor had sent the book and that it had reached him just in time to use in preparing a lecture. The library in the United States which was earliest in the field in doing the work of lending to other libraries systematically and on a large scale, in so far as I know, was that of the Surgeon-General's Office in Was.h.i.+ngton, long administered so intelligently and with so keen an eye for usefulness by Dr. John S. Billings.
Now, how can libraries in towns of the size of North Brookfield become bureaus of information?
Let them approach as nearly as they can to the ideal of seeing to it that everybody needing information gets it.
The first thing to do is to let it be understood that a library desires to have inquirers come to it for information, and that its librarian is ready to take time to find out whether the library contains books which will give the information desired.
If it does not have the needed books, the librarian tries to think where they can be had. Does anybody in town own them? If not, can they be had from a library in a neighboring town?
If these resources are not adequate, then let the librarian send to the nearest large centre to borrow books from the library there to answer the questions asked. Worcester would be the natural centre for North Brookfield to send to.
Individuals should not send to Worcester, but the librarian, having exhausted resources at hand, should send for the books, the library agreeing, of course, to make good damage and loss and pay the cost of carriage. An out-of-town librarian does not know the individual users of a library in a smaller town, but the librarian in that town does know his const.i.tuency and for whom it is safe to borrow books. Libraries should lend to one another, but the work of lending should be systematic.
As a member of the Free Public Library Commission of Ma.s.sachusetts, I wish to say that the commission likes to come into close contact with the libraries of the state, and that the smaller libraries may from time to time find it helpful to put questions to its chairman at the state house in Boston, in person, through a representative, or by letter, about library administration.
People are breaking away from their leaders to-day. There is an immense amount of crude thought and imperfect information in every community. I verily believe that not least among the instrumentalities by which thought may be matured and knowledge completed are public libraries when administered as bureaus of information by accomplished and earnest librarians, who will act as sympathetic friends and advisers to inquirers and help them to look at all sides of questions and form well-grounded judgments.
THE LIBRARY FRIEND
Not all the information required of the Public Library is asked by those engaged in laboratory research or by experts in commerce and industry. Much of it is homely stuff, greatly desired and more or less easy to find. Much of it can be given offhand by the capable reference a.s.sistant, who thereby becomes what the writer of this article calls a ”library friend” to her neighborhood.
Miss Winifred Louise Taylor was born in Freeport, Ill., Feb.
24, 1846. In 1874 she organized the first circulating library in Freeport and acted as librarian for twelve years.
It was eventually incorporated in the Freeport Public Library. In 1900-01, Miss Taylor was in charge of the information desk at the Pratt Inst.i.tute Free Library, Brooklyn. For many years she gave much of her time to work in the prisons, and in 1914 she published ”The Man Behind the Bars,” describing some of this work.
”The library friend” is the term that seems best to apply to that member of the modern library's staff whose work is a development of the service ordinarily rendered through the ”information desk.”
Information-desk service as usually conceived, it is not; for the library friend deals with the tendencies, tastes, and aspirations of readers as much as if not more than with the definite question and answer respecting facts. The office indeed may be regarded as finding its first expression in the circulating libraries maintained by subscription in many of the smaller cities twenty-five years and more ago, when the free public library of to-day was comparatively rare. In those libraries every subscriber knew the librarian, and the librarian was personally acquainted with every book on the shelves. To bring the books and readers into congenial relations.h.i.+p was the business and usually the pleasure of the librarian. The personal element was the heart from which the circulation of the books radiated--if the presiding personality lacked vitality and enthusiasm the library was a failure.
With the era of the democratic free libraries, with their more rapid growth, with their doors open to men, women and children of all cla.s.ses, the human element, the personal relation of librarian to the reader suffered a gradual eclipse, until, in some libraries more perfectly developed on the technical side, the personal equation vanished altogether. The library became a great machine, into which a number was dropped, and out of which a book was dropped like corn from the hopper.
We all know how formidable this mechanism is to those unaccustomed to modern library methods. To the uninitiated the card catalog is an abomination, an unsolved problem, a delusion and a snare. The boy who is interested in athletics, fumbling over the card catalog in Micawber-like fas.h.i.+on, hits upon the t.i.tle ”Morning and evening exercises”; he straight away hands in the number thinking he has found a prize. It is discouraging and depressing when the machine shoots out to him a volume of devotional compilations. He has tried his luck and it has failed, and as he was reminded only last week that a book cannot be exchanged the same day on which it is drawn out he retires with ”Morning and evening exercises,” a sadder, but not a wiser boy. It is in accord, therefore, with the process of library evolution that a closer personal relation between reader and librarian should be developed through some such medium as is here outlined under the designation ”the library friend.”
One of the library problems just now is this: given on the one side 100,000 books and on the other 50,000 people. How is each individual to be brought into contact with the particular book that he wants? Where open shelves are practicable a great advantage--to the discriminating reader, an inestimable advantage, is gained; but the majority of librarians have not room to throw any department open to the public; and even among open shelves the person whose judgment of books is wholly untrained often misses what he is looking for.
The a.s.sistance given by the reference room is invaluable. There no one goes away unsatisfied; but the reference room reaches only those in pursuit of a definite subject. Beyond its range is the drifting, aimless reader, the searcher after something he knows not what. The dull, the diffident, the beginners in the use of libraries, those who read purely for amus.e.m.e.nt and those who want the new books--new spelled with a capital n and book with a small b--old persons, those whose eyesight is defective and whose gla.s.ses strike the card catalog at the wrong angle, foreigners who use English with difficulty and diffidence--all these gather together in the delivery room at once, and efficient as the a.s.sistant may be--and sometimes they effect miracles--it is impossible for them to give the different individuals the help each one needs. In the libraries where the human element is most withdrawn the case of these people is hard.
To bring the personal relation again into the library and to develop it with the growth of the needs of the public, with this end in view, a number of libraries have introduced the information desk. By common consent, perhaps in the eternal fitness of things, this position so far seems to have been relegated to woman.
”She is a reading lady, and far gone in the pleasures of friends.h.i.+p.”