Part 30 (1/2)
People are willing to sacrifice for something that they are very hungry for. Do you hunger and thirst to read Homer and Shakespeare, and Emerson and Arnold, and good histories and literature? Do you, when you are tired after a day's work, take home a scientific work or a treatise on civics? No, you are just a little sample of the public, and you think you need to read a pleasant, entertaining, restful book. You aren't hungry for information, and, as a matter of fact, the person who delights in study and has a fine taste for the best in literature has one of the ”gifts extremely rare.” Most of us are practical, everyday, working people, with a very limited time for reading, and this public whom we serve is just like us. A few of them will love to read the best, many of them will want information at intervals, a large proportion want recreative reading, and the vast majority use the library not at all.
Now the former, who want and love the library, you need not be troubled about. They will naturally come to the library, and you will find pleasure in serving them. But these latter cla.s.ses who either come for pleasure or come not at all must be drawn and held through the social instincts, and through their desire for pleasure. Every human being must have social life. We seek company and companions.h.i.+p with whom we can find mutual pleasure. We may find it in friendly gatherings, social clubs, or music or conversation or games, but social pleasure of some sort is sought by all of us, great and small, in town and country alike.
In the city there is usually plenty of opportunity--I might almost say that there is a surfeit--and one must pick and choose. But in the towns and villages it is often different; good amus.e.m.e.nt and profitable pleasures are not always to be had, and being social beings, the social craving is satisfied with whatever means may be at hand. Young people especially can not isolate themselves, or live unto themselves. Just where is the library going to stand in this matter? Is there anything which we can do to satisfy these natural desires and to enter more vitally into the lives of the people? This is the question to take home and think about.
As individuals, we are coming to have an enormous interest in other human lives, there is a sense of social obligation upon us; we have come to know that personal righteousness is not all that is required of us, but that we must help to realize the social righteousness. The library has the duty of being all things to all men. It is no longer simply a repository of books, it is exactly what Mr. Carnegie calls it, the cradle of democracy, filled with the democratic spirit, and it endeavors, as far as circ.u.mstances permit, to minister to all the needs of the community in which it dwells. The library stands for progress, the progress of its town, and this does not mean increasing the material prosperity of the people, though that may follow, but it chiefly means the raising of the moral, social and intellectual standards of all its people, and helping men and women to be more effective in every way. The library does not exist for one side only of the life of the people, but for every side, and if it fails to provide for those who seek amus.e.m.e.nt, it s.h.i.+rks a duty and renounces a privilege. The sooner we unveil the ”G.o.ds of joy and good fellows.h.i.+p” in our library the better; the sooner we make the library a centre for all the activities among us that make for social efficiency the better.
Of course there are natural limitations to the kind of work which a library can do, and in helping to further the spirit of good fellows.h.i.+p and to furnish pleasure, we must keep within such limits as are consistent with the spirit of a library. The library can appeal to people in other ways than by books alone, as we shall consider later, yet as books are our chief tools, it is natural to think first of giving pleasure by that method. One of our chiefest ways of late years has been through the children's room. The children get book instruction and supplementary reading and enforced book interests, all of which are needed for their development, in the schoolroom. But in the children's room at the library furnished especially for them, with low tables, picture books and low shelves containing fairy stories and all their favorite authors, they settle down to satisfy their own especial individual tastes. Then there is the story hour, of which we shall hear to-morrow. Many of the children have never learned the pleasure of reading. They do not belong to cultured homes and the presence of books.
Many of them never heard a Mother Goose jingle or a nonsense verse, and a book is an unlearned delight. But what child, even of this kind, does not love to hear stories, and listening breathlessly, would not come again and again. Somehow it seems as if we could not discharge our social obligation until we had gone into the by-ways and hedges and gathered in these sc.r.a.ps of society, and taught them the pleasures of a book. The children, once acquainted with the library, will always count it among their friends, and it will forever remain a social centre to them.
We grown ups are not so different from the children; we, too, like a story, and we, too, want to read the things that cheer and entertain us.
We agreed a moment ago that we, as well as our public, were liable to leave the serious books for the infrequent study hour and to spend our leisure evenings with the fascinating novel. Well, I do not know of any better way to give amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure than to furnish the people with the books they want, in which they can be interested and absorbed.
The ”cares that infest the day” will fold their wings better under the spell of a good story than any other way. I think we need not be frightened when libraries are accused of being only fiction distributors, for it is a library's function to amuse as well as to instruct, and if people will seek amus.e.m.e.nt through the library, so much the better for the people. It is natural that the people should feel a curiosity about the newest book and want to read what other people are talking about. This adds also to pleasant social intercourse, and gives people a common subject of conversation. Fiction is bound to be more and more an interpretation of life by which we see the motives and the currents in other souls. We need not be afraid to supply good, wholesome fiction and to use it in establis.h.i.+ng social relations with our people, so that the adults as well as the children shall feel a real pleasure in coming to the library.
Many of our libraries are now housed in beautiful buildings, in which case, the building as well as the books becomes a means of social influence. If there is need of a home for social intercourse and amus.e.m.e.nt, the library may legitimately attempt to furnish such a home within its walls. If there are social or study clubs, organized labor guilds or missionary societies, or any other organizations, encourage them to meet at the library, find out what they need, let them find out that the library is their cooperative partner. And so with the schools and industries, of which I have not time to speak. The whole building at all times should be managed in the broadest spirit of hospitality; the atmosphere should be as gracious, kindly and sympathetic as one's own home. Then do away with all unnecessary restrictions, take down all the bars, and try to put face to face our friends the books and our friends the people. Introduce them cordially, then stand aside and let them make each other's blessed acquaintance.
Some have tried smoking rooms, had boy's club rooms and games, and many have tried simply to make the rooms homelike and cheery, and all of their experience is valuable to us.
It may be that no one of the plans used by other libraries may fit your case, for it is not necessarily good for you because some one else has used it successfully. But with any plan do not expect immediate results, for almost everything that succeeds permanently has a slow, gradual development; that which flashes up quickly usually dies down suddenly.
Be willing to work out a good plan if you have one, and be willing to study your people and all of their interests before you shape your plans.
THE LIBRARY AND THE SOCIAL CENTRE
By a great expert in library field-work as done by one of our most active library commissions. Miss Lutie E. Stearns, of whom a sketch will be found in Vol. I. of this series, is now a lecturer at large, but at the writing of this paper, which is reprinted from _The Wisconsin Library Bulletin_ for May, 1911, she was in the service of the Library Commission of that state.
It is coming to be an axiom in library economy that ”the worth of a book is in its use.” For this reason, librarians everywhere are devoting themselves to what is called ”library extension” through the building of branches, and the establishment of deposit stations in schools, factories, stores, club-houses, police stations, fire-engine houses, etc. Experience has shown that where no efforts are made along the line of library extension only 10 per cent. or at the most 20 per cent. of the people are reached in any given community. If we wish to have wholesome literature become ”the burden of the common thought” we must place good books within easy reach of all. Libraries should be quick to realize that the social centre offers a most excellent opportunity to reach those that might not otherwise take the time to avail themselves of library privileges. The free public library should therefore be made an important part of social centre work through active and sympathetic cooperation.
Where libraries can afford proper facilities, there is no reason why the library building should not serve as the social centre for the community, as this inst.i.tution differs from the schoolhouse, in cities where parochial schools exist, in being neutral on the religious question and therefore acceptable to all denominations. Wherever the social centre may be, whether in library building or schoolhouse, strong emphasis should be placed on the use of books. A special librarian, of peculiar fitness, should be appointed either by the library or the social centre authorities. This man or woman should be earnestly altruistic in his or her desire to fit the right book to the right person at the right time. It may be that this will mean the issuance of a primer in English to an adult Slav who has recently arrived in this country, or it may be the loan of a novel more wholesome in tone though just as sentimental as one by Bertha M. Clay, the author requested.
Again, the leader of the boy gang may be persuaded to give up the reading of the lurid ”nickel library” in favor of Custer and Grinnell's truthful Indian experiences. Such selection involves a wide range of books in the social centre library, from well-bound and attractive editions of the cla.s.sics down to the latest, most wholesome novel. The boys that frequent the gymnasium may be won by Barbour's latest football story. The raffia worker should find interest in Priestman's Handicrafts. An up-to-date and authoritative encyclopedia, a good dictionary, a World almanac, and other popular reference books should be supplied and instruction given in their use. Debating material should be sought and every inducement offered for individual research.
Those who cannot afford to take correspondence courses in the various trades and crafts should find material in the social centre library for self-education. James Russell Lowell has said that the best part of every man's education is that which he gives himself, and it is for this that the library at the social centre should furnish the opportunity and the means. Again, there should be books of a cheerful sort for tired workers so that, as in William Morris's Earthly Paradise, they may
”Forget six counties overhung with smoke, Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke.”
Wholesome novels should be found in plenty for both men and women, together with books that inspire with courage for life's daily round, such as Hugh Black's Work, Gannett's Blessed be drudgery, Hyde's Art of optimism, Emerson's Character and heroism, and Wagner's Courage. Each book in the library's collection should serve one or all three purposes--to inform, to inspire, or to refresh.
The rules for the issuance of books should be made as simple as possible. Borrowers should not be restricted to one book at a time if more can be used; that is, a novel should be loaned with a book for study. No guarantee should be required except the borrower's signature.
A reading room should be made an attractive feature in connection with the issuance of books. The library and reading room should be well lighted and heated, and order and quiet should be insisted upon. The reading table should be supplied with an abundance of the best of the popular magazines. The Technical World, Popular mechanics, Amateur work, and the Scientific American, will be found to be strong magnets for attracting the interest of the boys and young men. The World's work, Collier's weekly, and the American magazine, are the three great exponents of optimism in our national life which should find a place on the reading room tables, as should McClure's, Everybody's, Hampton's, Scribner's, Harper's, Century, and the Atlantic. In the small towns the local paper and one or two of the near-by metropolitan dailies should also be taken.
Attractive libraries and reading rooms make less attractive the seductions of other places. George Eliot said long ago, ”Important as it is to direct the industries of men, it is not so important as to wisely direct their leisure.” It is indeed true, as a critic of our national life has said, that ”The use of a nation's leisure is the test of its civilization.” To win people to a love of good literature, to bring back the old days of reading and meditation, are two of the great problems that confront the present-day librarian. In the words of one earnest library worker, ”The modern library movement is a movement to increase by every possible means the accessibility of books, to stimulate their reading and to create a demand for the best. Its motive is helpfulness; its scope, instruction and recreation; its purpose, the enlightenment of all; its aspiration, still greater usefulness.”
WHERE NEIGHBORS MEET
Extracts from a special report on the social work of the St.
Louis Public Library made in 1917 by Margery Quigley, then librarian of its Divoll Branch.