THIRD GENERAL SESSION (Wednesday morning, June 25, 1913)

The PRESIDENT: There is a matter of business to come up this morning. At the last conference the Association adopted an amendment to the Constitution which, to become effective, must be ratified at this meeting. It may be added that the requisite notice required by the Constitution, of thirty days, has been given by the Secretary, through publication in the Bulletin, where you have doubtless seen the proposed amendment together with the by-law which is dependent, of course, upon the adoption of the amendment itself. The Secretary will please read the proposed amendment as adopted at the Ottawa conference.

The SECRETARY: I will also read that portion of Section 14 of the Constitution to which the amendment would apply:

"Council. Membership. The Council shall consist of the executive board, all ex-presidents of the Association who continue as members thereof, all presidents of affiliated societies who are members of the Association, twenty-five members elected by the Association at large, and twenty-five elected by the Council itself,"—

And the proposed amendment consists of the following words to be inserted at that place:

—"and one member from each state, provincial and territorial library association or any association covering two or more such geographical divisions which complies with the conditions for such representation set forth in the by-laws."

The PRESIDENT: The amendment is before you for consideration. What is your pleasure? Are you ready for the question?

(The question being called for and put, the amendment was adopted.)

The PRESIDENT: Dependent upon the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution there is now before you for consideration a proposed amendment to the by-laws. The Secretary will please read the suggested amendment which carries into effect now the Constitutional amendment which you have just adopted and which becomes effective, in that it has now been adopted by two successive conferences.

The Secretary then read the proposed amendment Section 3a, which is as follows:

"Sec. 3a. Each state, territorial and provincial library association (or any association covering two or more such geographical divisions) having a membership of not less than fifteen members, may be represented in the Council by the president of such association, or by an alternate elected at the annual meeting of the association. The annual dues shall be $5.00 for each association having a membership of fifty or less, and ten cents per additional capita where membership is above that number. The privileges and advantages of the A. L. A. conferences shall be available only to those holding personal membership or representing institutional membership in the Association."

The President then put the question and the above amendment to the by-laws was duly adopted.

Dr. ANDREWS: I move the addition of the words "or to members of other affiliated societies," in order not to bar these members from attendance at our meetings.

The PRESIDENT: Dr. Andrews' amendment is to include the words "or to members of other affiliated societies."

Mr. RANCK: I think, as a member of the Committee that had something to do with the drafting of the proposed by-law, that I can say that the purpose of that provision was that there should be some advantage to persons holding membership in these organizations, to get the railroad rates, hotel rates, etc.; in other words, to have some pecuniary advantage in their becoming members and not to be able to come and get those advantages without holding any kind of a membership.

If I may be permitted, Mr. President, I should like to give a few figures with reference to the distribution of the members of the Council as it now exists, as given in the last handbook. There were 72 members of the Council, counting the one or two who have died, representing 48 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. However, in the Council only 20 States in the Union have representation. In other words, there are 28 states in the Union that are not represented in the Council. The population of these 28 states is nearly thirty-three millions and their area is nearly two million square miles, whereas the area of the states that are represented is a little over a million square miles. The point is, Mr. President, the purpose of the amendment to the Constitution and these amendments is to give a wider geographical distribution of representation in the Council; in other words, that more than half of the area of the United States may be brought in, on account of this geographical representation, and that the thirty-three millions of people who live in those states may be able to get a representation which it seems at the present time they do not have.

The PRESIDENT: The question before the conference is on the proposed amendment of the by-law as offered by Dr. Andrews.

(The President put the question and the amendment was duly adopted.)

The PRESIDENT: The question now is upon the amendment to the by-laws as amended.

(The President put the question and the amendment to the by-laws was duly adopted.)

The PRESIDENT: The Association during the past year suffered grievous loss in the passing of two of its notable members, members who had long been identified with the Association and its work, and I may add the loss of a friend of librarians everywhere, that splendid gentleman, Mr. Francis Fisher Browne, of The Dial,—a man gentle of soul, keen of intellect and fine of fiber. While perhaps we are not called upon to take official notice of his passing it seems to me very well that we should group him with those whose loss we mourn at this time. By request of the Executive Board and of the Council a committee consisting of Dr. Putnam, Mr. Bowker and Mr. Wellman have been asked to draft memorial resolutions on the passing of Dr. Billings and Mr. Soule and I would ask Dr. Putnam to report at this time.

Dr. PUTNAM: With your permission I will ask Mr. Wellman to read the suggested minute with reference to Mr. Soule. And the Committee would suggest that if the expression in these minutes appears to you just, that they be adopted by a rising vote.

Mr. Wellman then read the following resolution which was unanimously adopted by a rising vote.

CHARLES CARROLL SOULE

With profound sorrow, we record the death of Charles C. Soule, whose services and relation to the American Library Association were in many ways unique. Though himself not a librarian, yet in the early days of the public library he was one of those who foresaw the great force which it might be made to exert in our democratic civilization; and to promote the wise realization of this vision, he labored unceasingly as a member of this Association for more than thirty years and was a constant attendant at the meetings. He served as vice-president in 1890, as member of the Institute for six years, as member of the Council for eight years, as trustee of the endowment fund for twelve years, and as a member of the Publishing Board for eighteen years. But his distinctive contribution was in efforts towards the improvement of library architecture; and here by his study and writings, as well as by creating the office of advisory expert in building, he did more than any other man to further the planning of library buildings for library work.

In reciting the tale of his accomplishment, it is impossible to forget the man. Unselfish and high-minded, a good counsellor and a consistent friend, he ever showed eager and affectionate interest in the work of his fellow members, and especially in the success of those beginning their careers. Above all, he possessed a generous faith in his associates and an unfailing good will. These were but a few of the qualities which enabled him to achieve so much for the public library, and which endeared him to hosts of librarians throughout the land.

Dr. PUTNAM: Mr. President, this is proposed as a minute for the records of the Association. It is therefore headed "John Shaw Billings."

The resolution was unanimously adopted by a rising vote.

JOHN SHAW BILLINGS

April 12, 1838—March 18, 1913

A member of the American Library Association 1881-1913—Its President, 1901-02

It is seldom that the death of an individual removes from two professions a unit of singular power in each. But such was the loss in the recent death of John Shaw Billings; a scientist in a department of science intensive and exacting, a librarian rigorously scientific in a profession broadly humane. To the former he made original contributions which constituted him an authority within special fields; but also in his great Index-Catalog of Medical Literature, one which assured certainty and promoted advance in every field—and left the entire medical profession his debtor. As a librarian, having first brought to preeminence the professional library entrusted to him, he was called to the organization into a single system of isolated funds and institutions, achieved that organization, and lived to see it, under his charge develop into the largest general library system in the world, with a possible influence upon our greatest metropolis of incalculable importance to it, and through it, to the welfare of our entire country.

The qualities which enabled him to accomplish all this included not merely certain native abilities—among them, penetration, concentration, vigor, tenacity of purpose and directness of method, but others developed by self-denial, self-discipline, and a complete dedication to the work in hand. It was through these that he earned his education and his scientific training; and they hardened into habits which attended him to the end of his days, when he concluded in toil that shirked no detail a life begun in toil and devoted to detail.

Such habits, a keen faculty of analysis, and a scientific training kept him aloof alike from hasty generalizations and from the impulses of mere emotion; while his military training induced in him three characteristics which marked alike his treatment of measures and his dealings with men; incisiveness, a distaste for the superfluous and the redundant, and an insistence upon the suitable subordination of the part to the whole. In this combination, and in the knowledge of, and power over, men which accompanied it, he was unique among librarians; in his complete lack of ostentation he was unusual among men. His mind was ever on the substance, indifferent to the form. A power in two professions, to have termed him the "ornament" of either would have affronted him; for he was consistently impatient of the merely ornamental. Any personal ostentation was actually repugnant to him; and he avoided it as completely in what he suffered as in what he achieved; bearing, with a reticence that asked no allowances, physical anguish in which most men would have found ample excuse from every care.

If such a combination of traits assured his remarkable efficiency, it might not have seemed calculated to promote warm personal or social attachments. Yet there was in him also a singular capacity for friendship; not indeed for impulsive and indiscriminate intimacies, but for those selective, deep, steady and lasting friendships which are proof of the fundamental natures of men. And however terse, austere, and even abrupt, his manner in casual relations, where a really human interest was at stake he might be relied upon for sympathies both warm and considerate, and the more effective because consistently just and inevitably sincere.

The testimonies to these qualities in his character, to these powers, and to his varied achievements, have already been many and impressive. The American Library Association wishes to add its own, with a special recognition not merely of the value to the community of the things which he accomplished, but of the value to individuals in the example of a character and abilities so resolutely developed and so resolutely applied to the service of science and the service of men.

The PRESIDENT: To offer a telegram as a substitute for a long and pleasurably anticipated paper is cause for regret, but such must be the case this morning as Miss Arnold finds it impossible to be with us. The telegram reads as follows:

"Emergency meeting of Simmons College Corporation has been appointed for Wednesday and prevents me from attending library meeting. Extreme regrets.

SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD."

The general theme of this morning's session is "Library influence in the home, in the shop, on the farm, and among defectives and dependents." We shall begin the morning's program with a paper on "The working library for the artisan and the craftsman," by EDWARD F. STEVENS, librarian Pratt Institute free library, and director of the school of library science, Brooklyn.