OLD PROBABILITIES IN THE LIBRARY—HIS MODEST VATICINATIONS[6]

OLD PROBABILITIES IN THE LIBRARY—HIS MODEST VATICINATIONS[6]

“Don’t never prophsey onles ye know,” says Hosea Bigelow. I beg to call attention to the fact that this means “Don’t prophesy at all”—perhaps it was so meant by the shrewd Hosea. We never can know—and yet we continue to prophesy. The best we can do, of course, is to estimate probabilities. Probabilities! That is a good word. They have dropped it from the weather reports and call their estimate a “forecast.” I like the old word better. Let us see, then, what some of the probabilities are in library work.

“Everything flows,” said the Greek philosopher. Nothing in the world is stable; change is the order of the day. But note the word he uses. That which flows is in a state of orderly change in a definite direction. Everything progresses; and the library and its work are being borne along in the general current. Now the writers on hydro-dynamics, who are experts on blow, tell us that there are two ways of studying a current, which they name the “historical” and the “statistical”: In the former the attention is fixed on a definite particle of the moving fluid whose change of velocity and direction is noted as it passes along; in the latter a definite locality of the stream is selected and the fluid’s changes of form and density at that particular place are observed. In like manner we may study the library movement historically or we can select a definite point in its course—the present time—and note the conditions and their alteration. The latter plan, I venture to think, is the more favorable one for the would-be prophet.

Let us, then, take a few of the salient features of library work as they exist to-day and inquire: (1) What is the present situation with regard to each; (2) Is that situation changing; and whither and how fast; (3) Is its rate of change altering, and (4) are the conditions that affect it and its alteration, likely to remain as they are. If we can answer all these questions we can at least make an attempt at estimating the probable situation at a given future time. We must bear in mind, however, that in the library world, as elsewhere, there are sudden or abrupt changes, or catastrophes, and that these generally defy prediction. And this is equally true of unexpected aids or beneficient influences. The library benefactions of Mr. Carnegie would have upset the most careful and logical estimate of library progress made twenty years ago.

First let us take up the status of our stock in trade—our supply of books. President Eliot warned us two years ago that our books are piling up too fast. His warning has met with scant heed because experience has not brought it home to most of us. Malthus warned us long ago that the progress of population was toward overcrowding the world. We laugh at him because there is still plenty of room and means of utilizing it unknown in his time. Yet population increases, and it will overcrowd the world some day unless something occurs to prevent. In like manner our stock of books increases faster and faster. The ordinary American public library is a thing of yesterday; small wonder that it does not yet begin to feel plethoric. Our oldest large libraries are those of our universities, and Harvard’s president has told us that to them the evil day is within sight. Librarians have not received with favor President Eliot’s plea for getting us out of our future difficulty but this is neither here nor there. To judge by our present attitude either our library buildings must increase indefinitely in size or our stock must be weeded out. It must be remembered, however, that our books are perishable, and are growing more so. I do not regard this as an unmixed evil. Rather than to make our books unwieldy for the purpose of preserving them we prefer to make them usable and to rely on reprinting for their perpetuation. Thus what is not wanted will pass away. Perhaps this will solve our problem for us. But in any case it looks as if the future library building and its contents were to be greatly larger than those of to-day.

What are to be the style and arrangement of the future library building? The present situation can hardly be described in general terms. As in all building operations, there is a strife between the architect, representing aesthetics, and the administrator, representing utility. At present the architect seems to be having his way outside and the librarian his way inside. But why this contest? Is it not the architect’s business to make utility more beautiful but not less useful? And should not the administrator wish his surroundings to please the eye? Apparently the two are drawing a little closer together of late. We are having fewer temples of art that have to be made over to fit them for use as libraries and fewer buildings that are workable but offensive to the eye. The tendency seems to be toward simple dignity, although we certainly have some surprising departures from it. Probably the library of the future will be a simple and massive structure of much greater size than at present, with its decorations largely structural, and combining ample open-shelf and reading facilities with greatly increased capacity for book-storage.

There is one particular in which the architect has been specially out of touch with the administrator. The open-shelf is now all but universal, but many architects seem not to have heard of it. Many buildings, actually intended for administration on the free access system, seem yet to have been planned as closed-shelf libraries and opened to the public as an afterthought. A library without a special stack-room for book-storage is an unthinkable thing to most architects. And yet in many small libraries book-storage is not necessary, and in most branch libraries, where only books in general use are to be placed, it will never be necessary. To get the maximum advantage from open shelves, with a minimum of risk, the books should be placed on the walls as far as possible and such book-cases as stand on the floor should be as low as an ordinary table, so as to be easily overseen. A stack-room, it seems to me, is distinctly a closed-shelf arrangement. I believe this is coming to be recognized and that in the future library the books will be on or near the walls.

But how about the open-shelf system itself? At present there are few libraries that do not have it in some form, and some of these are libraries that continued strongly to disapprove of it even after it had become well and widely established. The indications are nearly all that it has come to stay. I say nearly all; for there is still a feeling among many people that it is not good administration to abandon so large a percentage of our books to thieves. In libraries in small communities where the loss is small, this question does not arise; but in New York, for instance, where we lost 5000 books last year, it is serious. We librarians may say and believe that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, but trustees and municipal authorities are hard to convince. In New York we have taken what many will consider a backward step, by partially closing, as an experiment, the shelves of two of our branches. So that although we may safely say that free access has come to stay, I do not look to see it applied very generally to large collections. One thing seems to me clear. Library administration is becoming increasingly business-like, and it is not business-like to accept a large annual loss without an attempt to minimize it. We must at least investigate regularly and rigidly the sources and character of this loss.

As for the other features that we have become accustomed to regard as distinguishing the new library era from the old—special work with children, co-operation with schools, travelling libraries, etc.—it is evident that these, too, have come to stay. Their spheres are widening and their aims are diversifying, however, so that he who should venture to predict their precise status in the future would be rash.

In fact, the library idea itself is beginning to suffer a sort of restless change that is quite distinct from its orderly progress. The activities of the library are at present a good deal like those of the amoeba—stretching out a tentacle here, withdrawing one there; improvising a mouth and then turning it into a stomach; shifting and stretching about; somewhat vague and formless, yet instinct with life, appetite and caution, and vitalized with at least the germ and promise of intelligence. Such a state is an unpromising one for prophecy. Is this or that new development of activity the beginning of an orderly march in a straight line, or is it to be withdrawn or reversed to-morrow? Is our work with children to include much that now seems to belong to the kindergarten, the museum, and the art gallery? Are our travelling library departments to sell books in the future as well as lend them? Are we to deliver books free at our user’s homes? Are our Boards of Education to turn over to us the superintendence of all such work as deals with books and their use? Many questions like these would have been answered in the affirmative yesterday but in the negative to-day. I might be inclined to say “yes” to some of them now, when to-morrow would prove them out of the question. But there is one assertion that we can make boldly. Whatever the library has tried to do or to be, whether success or failure has attended it, it has never ceased to be a library—a keeper and purveyor of books. Whatever else it may undertake, we may be sure that this will continue to be its chief reason for existence, and that its other activities, if such there be, will grow out of this and group themselves around it. Is the library to grow into a bookstore? I do not know, but if so its commercial functions are likely to be subsidiary. Certain libraries have already added to their duties as free institutions the functions of pay-libraries, and the commercial feature has thus been introduced. It seems to be spreading, and it may prove an entering wedge for a system of actual sales to supplement that of paid loans. A powerful deterrent, however, will be the influence of the book-trade. Following the line of least resistance, the activity of the library as an aid to the ownership as well as the reading of books is perhaps more likely to manifest itself in advice than in actual trade. Some libraries are now making special effort to give their readers information about book-prices, and about places and methods of purchase; and it seems likely that this kind of aid, since it can arouse no opposition, will increase.

The position in which we find ourselves, of opposition to those who make and sell books, is unfortunate. The situation has been growing more and more tense and it may continue so to grow, perhaps up to the point where all discount will be withheld from libraries and where new legislation may discourage importation, but I do not believe that it will keep on indefinitely. No one who looks into the matter closely can help believing that in the long run libraries advertise the book-trade and help it by promoting general interest in literature. This view of the matter was taken by a majority of the New York Booksellers’ League at a recent dinner at which the question was discussed. Even purely as a matter of business, the library deserves special privileges and it will doubtless continue in some measure to receive them.

It does not, however, seem probable that the average cost of books to a public library will ever be as low again as it was, say, ten years ago. In fact this may be said of all library expenses. Salaries are rising and ought to rise higher; our buildings are larger and finer and demand more expensive care. We are heating them with more costly apparatus and lighting them with electricity. The library of the future will doubtless cost more to maintain in every item than the library of the past—but the public will receive more than the difference.

As regards children’s work there seem to be at present two tendencies—one toward complete isolation and one in the opposite direction. Will our grandchildren, when they go to the public library, be segregated in a separate room, perhaps in a separate building; or will they be treated as a distinct class only so far as may be absolutely necessary for good administration? Probably complete separation is best for the library and best for the adults; I hesitate to say that it is best for the children. After all, childhood is but a stage and not a resting state at that—rather restless and progressive. Any special conditions that we provide for it must themselves be subject to constant change. In our schools the child passes from grade to grade. In our libraries the grades are only two; let us not make the leap from one to the other too great. I look to see special library work for children increase in importance, but with due recognition of the fact that some of the needs and aspirations of a “grown-up” are present in many a twelve-year-old and that it is better that the clothes of a growing child should be a size too large than an exact fit.

The travelling library deserves a special word, because its success is indicative of the tendency to bring the book and its user into closer contact. In New York we began, only seven years ago, to circulate a few hundred books monthly in this way among half a dozen schools. Now we give out nearly half a million a year from nearly 500 different points. We hear the same tale from all sides. And the cost of circulation per book is surprisingly small. In New York the circulation through travelling libraries is equal to that of three branches of the first class, while the number of assistants employed is about half the number required in one of those branches. The cost of operating three large branches in Carnegie buildings is about $40,000 yearly, whereas our travelling libraries for the last fiscal year cost us but $6400. Of course it must be remembered that a very large amount of the work of circulation in this case is done by volunteer assistants and that the users of the books have not the facilities and resources of a branch library—the number and variety of books, the pleasant surroundings, the trained aid. Of course the travelling library can never take the place of the fully equipped branch, but in supplementing branch work and in reaching those who live in sparsely settled communities its capabilities are great and it may be expected that its use will increase.

The broadening of library work illustrated by the successive appearance of the reference library, the circulating library, the delivery station, the branch and the travelling library suggests the thought that this series may be carried further in the future by the addition of some working plan that will bring the book still closer to its user. Such a plan would be the system in which books are delivered free of charge at the houses of those who use them, or the provision of a real library on wheels—a van supplied with shelving for a thousand books or more from which selection can be made as it moves about from house to house. It does not seem probable that any such device as this will be generally adopted for districts adequately provided with regular libraries, but for thinly settled regions they may supplement or take the place of our present travelling or home libraries. I believe for instance, that a moving library of 1000 books, calling once a week at each house in a farming district would be preferable to four travelling libraries of 250 books each, stationed at points in the same district, although, of course, the cost would be correspondingly greater.

The library’s status as an educational institution seems now to be well established. No one disputes it, and as this appears to be the chief ground on which its support by public funds is justified we may regard it as settled that the library is to continue to play its part in public instruction. This part, though not so definite and positive as that of the school, extends over a far longer period. While the library’s work is parallel and supplementary to that of the school in the case of those of school age, it must continue its work alone after its users have left school. Here it may settle its methods for itself, but in its earlier work when it deals with pupils, it has the teacher to reckon with. The necessity for constant consultation and co-operation between the authorities of two public institutions, whose work is so similar and can so easily result in wasteful duplication or still more wasteful conflict, is obvious. We need not be surprised that librarians and teachers are getting nearer together and we may confidently predict that the rapprochement will be closer in the future. But although the school is ceasing to look upon its younger sister as an interloper in the pedagogical family, there is still plenty of room for the definition of their respective spheres. And we have no right to complain that the school is still doing much library work, when we have ourselves sometimes tried to do school work. I look in the future for the definition of two clearly separated spheres of activity, one filled by the library and the other by the school, and for the closest co-operation between the two that is consistent with confining each to its own work. It is probably too much to expect that the school will give up the custodianship of books. It must at least control its own text books, and its collection of reference works should be complete enough to constitute a thorough guide and aid to proper study. But the distribution of supplementary reading should be the part of the public library. This and other related points are to be settled, if at all, in the future by two kinds of mutual understandings; namely, between the governing boards of library and school and between librarian and teacher. The due definition of spheres of work can come only from an official agreement between library board and school board; helpful aid on both sides can come only from an official agreement between library board and school board; helpful aid on both sides can come only from personal contact and acquaintance between teachers and library assistants—such a degree of acquaintance between teachers and library assistants—such a degree of acquaintance that each comes to have a practical knowledge of the other’s problems, trials and limitations. Most librarians have made more or less effort in this direction; some have met with distinguished success. We may safely predict further progress along this line.

The lessons of the past and of the present all point to the increasing use of the library as a great engine of popular education, using the noun in its broadest sense and emphasizing the adjective. The library is more and more a great humanizing influence; if this is so, nothing human must be alien to it. And much that is human and humanizing is nevertheless ephemeral. With some the implications of this word are wholly contemptuous. Of a day! Does nothing valuable pass quickly away, having done its little work? The day itself is a day only and vanishes with the evening and the morning; yet it has its part in the record of the years. So with “ephemeral” literature. As we have seen, a great deal of what we are wont to consider as standard and permanent will ultimately perish. Yet be its life that of a year or a century, a book may play its little part in the mental development of those who read it. Just at present the favorite vehicle of literary expression is fiction. People put into stories what they have to say of history, sociology and ethics; they embody in romance their theories of aesthetics, economics and politics. There is good doctrine with a poor literary setting and there are paste jewels in pure gold. But taking it by and large the much decried deluge of modern fiction has undoubtedly been educative in its tendency. This is why I cannot yield to logic and predict the gradual disappearance of all but a small residuum of fiction from the public library. There is a tendency in that direction but there are some signs of a reaction. The seer may hope, even if he dare not predict, that the great public library that can afford to do so will continue to purchase such fiction as will interest or entertain the average person of education, even if it is to stay on the shelves but a few months.

What will be the future distribution of libraries in this country? At present their numbers are large in the northern states and comparatively small in the southern. Growth has been unexampled in its rapidity and has been stimulated by large benefactions. So far as this growth may be looked upon as the direct result of Mr. Carnegie’s gifts it may doubtless be regarded as abnormal, although it should be noted that every Carnegie building means a present and future outlay on the part of the community in which it stands, of many times the amount given by the donor. Primarily, library expansion is the result of a popular conviction that the public library is a public necessity. Expansion has proceeded in proportion to the spread of that conviction and along the lines of its progress. If there are fewer public libraries in the South than in the North it is because the need for them is not felt there, even if it exists. Doubtless the race problem is a powerful inhibitory influence. Two things are certain; that library expansion is to go on for some time, and that a time will come when it must stop. When that time arrives, the library will have attained its majority and we shall have an opportunity to address ourselves to problems that can not be attended to during our period of growth.

Who will use our great library of the future? Who uses the library of to-day? I have been asked that question by reporters and have been puzzled to answer it. For whose use is the public library intended? It will be logical to answer “the Public, of course,” but there are a great many people who will give this answer with mental reservations. With them “the Public” means some particular part of the public. Some think that the libraries are for the poor, or at any rate for those who cannot afford to buy books for themselves. This is a survival of the origin of some of our circulating libraries, which were originally charities. But a public foundation and a charitable foundation are two different things. Our parks are free, yet we do not object to their free use by the wealthy, nor do the wealthy classes themselves seem to shrink from it. Some again would limit the use of a library to students, or at all events to those who do not care to withdraw books for home use. These are people who do not believe in the circulating library—and there are still such. Others again would have the public library cater only to those of educated literary taste. For these reasons and for others it is a fact that our public libraries, even those with the largest circulations, are not used by the entire public. Probably, however, they are being used more and more freely. In a library that uses the two-book system it is impossible to tell exactly from statistics, how many persons are drawing from the library at one time. Assuming, however, that the number is proportional to the number of books outstanding, we find in the New York Public Library that it has been increasing a little faster of late years than the circulation. In other words, individual reading has not increased, and the great recent increase of circulation in our library and presumably in others also, is due to an increase of readers. The size of the library’s public is therefore increasing and there is no reason to suppose that it will not continue to do so. Of course there must be a limit. For instance, certain sections of the public will not use a library—as they will not use a school—in conjunction with other sections. This may be because of social or racial feeling, or personal uncleanliness or offensiveness, even when the latter is not carried to the point where the librarian can properly object to it. In such cases the lower element will drive out the higher. The remedy seems to be sought in segregation. This may be either open and acknowledged as in those southern cities where the library has a separate department for colored people, or it may be virtual, as where a convenient lounging room with newspapers is provided for the tramp element, sometimes with the privilege of smoking. In large cities the branch library system acts in the same way. The character of the card-holders is determined by that of the surrounding district and we thus get practically separate libraries for separate sections of the community. I look to see this separation proceed to a somewhat greater degree, not perhaps systematically but automatically and almost involuntarily. In spite of the apparent concession to class feeling, it will certainly increase the aggregate use of the library and thus make it more truly a public institution. So far as the branch system is concerned, of course, this is only one of the ways in which it increases the size of the library’s public. Even in a section where the population is perfectly homogeneous, more people will always be served by two libraries than by one. The number of branch library systems is rapidly increasing and the prospects are that the greatest possible use is to be made of them in the future. And they will be made up of true branches. Delivery stations have their uses, but they can never take the place of buildings with permanent stocks of books and all the conveniences of a separate library. Where a branch building is also a delivery station, as it always should be, that is, where the users of a branch are allowed to draw on the stock of the Central Library or of the other branches, it is found that the branch use vastly exceeds the station use. In our own library a branch that circulates 500 to 1000 of its own books daily will give out only two or three from other branches. This is sufficiently indicative of the preferences of the public, and in a matter of this kind public preference will ultimately govern. These branch libraries will have limited stocks of books, mostly, though not entirely, on open shelves, and will include small reference collections which will be more important as the branch is farther removed from the central library. These predictions, it seems to me, are all warranted by present tendencies.

How will the future library be governed and administered? The governing body at present is almost universally a board of trustees who are men of standing and responsibility but usually without expert knowledge. These are sometimes semi-independent and sometimes under the direct control of their municipal government. The present tendency seems to be to minimize municipal control but to increase the number of governing bodies subject to it. In other words private libraries are doing more public work than formerly under contract with municipalities, becoming thereby subject to the control of the city or town but not so closely as to bring politics into the management. This state of things is so desirable that we may expect it to be multiplied in the future. As regards the lay or inexpert character of the governing board, though it is looked upon by some as objectionable, it is shared by the library with great numbers of other public and semi-public institutions. Such a board may be regarded as representative of the great lay public, on whose behalf the institution must be operated, and whose members are interested in results rather than in the special methods by which these results may be obtained. That the members of such a board should be mere figure-heads is certainly not to be desired; that they should, either as individuals or collectively, take part in the details of administration is equally undesirable. There are boards that are doing the one or the other of these things, but the tendency is to lean neither in the direction of laxity nor of undue interference—to require definite results and to hold the librarian strictly responsible for the attainment of those results, leaving him to employ his own methods.

And the librarian of the future; who and what will he be? The difference between the modern librarian and him of the old school has often been the subject of comment. The librarian nowadays is less the scholar and more the man of affairs. Is change to go on in this direction? There are rather, it seems to me, signs of a reaction. Perhaps reaction is hardly the word. The librarian, while keeping in touch with the times, is reaching back for a little of the spirit of the old-time custodian and incorporating it with his own. Is it too much to hope that the heads of our future libraries, will keep in the forefront of library progress, alert to appreciate the popular need and to respond to it, may yet have something of the sweet and gentle spirit of the old scholars who used to preside over our storehouses of books?

Who are to be the assistants in our library of the future? At present our staffs are recruited from the following sources:

(1) The library schools. The best of these have supplied chiefly the heads of the smaller libraries, and heads of departments or assistants of the higher grades in the larger libraries. Few heads of the large libraries are school-graduates and few lower-grade assistants. There are, however, schools of the second class whose graduates have gone into the lower grades both in small and large institutions.

(2) Apprentice classes, generally formed to instruct untrained persons in the work of a particular library, so that those who enter its lower grades may be at least partially fitted for their work. The best of these rise by promotion to the upper grades.

(3) Appointment of totally untrained persons. If such persons are thoroughly well educated they may enter the work in the higher grades or even as the heads of libraries. B If not they generally enter at the bottom, although of course some obtain higher positions through political or local influence.

This, I believe, states the situation fairly. What are the tendencies? There can be no doubt that the library school is growing in favor. The increasing numbers of those who apply for school courses, the raising of requirements, both for entrance and for graduation, the second class schools that have sprung up in limitation of those of higher grade, making necessary the appointment of committees by various library bodies to examine and report on them—all point in this direction. At the same time we have had numerous instances, of late, of the selection of non-graduates to fill high library positions and at least one instance of frank statement on the part of a librarian of acknowledged eminence, in favor of taking college men of ability into the library immediately on graduation, instead of putting them through a library school. The library schools aim, and very properly so, at occupying the same position toward the library profession that the medical and law schools do toward the medical and legal professions. Statistics show that they have not yet reached that position. Still, it is probable that they will continue to approximate to it as a limit. In the future, more and more of the higher library positions will doubtless be filled by library-school graduates—and so also will more of the lower positions. When the demand for assistants in the higher grades begins to slacken, proportionately to the supply, as it is sure to do some day, the library school graduates will be willing to enter the library force in the lower grade, and will thus crowd out the untrained or partially trained applicants to some extent. They may even make the apprentice class a superfluity, in which case I am sure librarians will abandon it without a sigh.

In these somewhat desultory forecasts the object of the prophet has been not so much to impress upon others his own beliefs as to stimulate a taste for prophecy—a desire to glance over the rail and see which way the current is setting. Without being fatalists, we may hold that there are certain great tendencies in human affairs, vast social currents, against which it is well-nigh hopeless to struggle. Those who desire to accomplish results must work with these currents, not against them. Success has almost always been won in this way. Even when a few bold spirits have seemed to stem and turn back the whole tide, it will generally be found that an unseen undercurrent was in their favor. Learn therefore to judge of the currents; so shall we avoid the rocks and shoals and bring our craft safely to port.