THE USEFULNESS OF LIBRARIES IN SMALL TOWNS

A few books in a small town may exert as much influence as many books in a large one; and the personal influence of their custodian and administrator may count for more. An early statement placing emphasis on this fact by Miss West of the Milwaukee Public Library (now Mrs. Henry L. Elmendorf) appears in the subjoined paper read at the Buffalo Conference of the American Library Association in 1883.

Theresa West Elmendorf, who as the writer of this paper was Theresa Hubbell West, was born at Pardieville, Wis., Nov. 1, 1855, educated in Milwaukee and served on the staff of the public library of that city, being deputy librarian in 1880-92 and librarian in 1892-96. In that year she married Henry L. Elmendorf, then librarian of the Buffalo Public Library, and since his death in 1906 she has been vice-librarian there. In 1911 she was chosen president of the American Library Association—the first woman to hold this office.

There is still, as in the days when the story of the “wicked and slothful servant,” who contemptuously hid his one talent in a napkin, was told, something discouraging in the sight of incomparably greater opportunities than our own in the hands of another.

The librarian of a small town or village may not cherish the envy of the man in the parable in his heart, and yet feel a certain depression, a sense that the small things he is striving—perhaps with all his might—to accomplish amount to very little, as he listens to plans for the construction of a building which will commodiously and conveniently house two millions of books; as he ponders over a printed scheme which will intelligently order upon the shelves a hundred thousand volumes, and is yet so flexible, so elastic, that this number may be indefinitely increased with no confusion, no necessity for rearrangement; as he sees a method of charging which has been slowly evolved to meet the ever-varying, ever-increasing needs of a circulation whose daily issues are counted by thousands.

Possibly this feeling has something to do with the small representation in this Association of the hundreds of lesser libraries which are scattered through the land. Whether it has, or not, the fact of this meagre representation remains, and remains to be regretted. That such a state of things is to be deprecated by the society goes without saying. Every new member, in one way or another, brings an added power and influence, which is by no means always to be measured by the size of the library which he represents, or the active part he bears in the deliberations. He may even be utterly silent, and yet an actual force; for no speaker fails to feel the inspiration which radiates from an attentive and enthusiastic listener. In ordinary society the accomplishment of being “a good listener” is one of the most enduring of charms. It does not lose its power among librarians. The prosperity of a paper as truly as a jest's “lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it.”

To ask these unattached librarians, if perhaps an echo may reach them, to consider whether their isolation from their profession is not only a deprivation to themselves which they can illy afford, but a retarding of the progress of the true library spirit as well, and to suggest a thought which may possibly prove a stimulus to counteract the discouragement and depression before spoken of, is all that I have even hoped to accomplish in the few words which have, somewhat too ambitiously, been called a paper on “The usefulness of libraries in small towns.”

In regard to the interest and profit of these meetings to the lesser libraries, I have heard it asserted, and it is, I think, true, that the papers and discussions were almost exclusively directed to the consideration of the aims, methods, and needs of great libraries. If the fact needs explanation, or justification, an ample one is found in the register of the names of the composing members, with their positions. That there would be a ready and cordial response to any general call for the discussion of topics specially pertinent to small libraries is not to be doubted. Over the editorial columns of one of our most-used periodicals runs the legend, “Every man is a debtor to his profession.” It was a most wise choice of mottoes by our friend, the editor and publisher, for in no profession is it more true than in our own. The constant missionary work which Boston and Chicago, and indeed every library of any repute in the country, has done and is doing, is proof enough that the obligation is appreciated. If the smaller libraries want the discussion of simpler, less technical methods, they have, probably, but to ask.

It may be objected that the great obviously includes the small, and that plans and methods which are good and suitable for the former need but to be reproduced in miniature for the latter. It is true, that, in many departments, the accident of size makes little or no difference in library economy; but in the administration of affairs, in the machinery of running, the director of a municipal library has many and accumulating cares, of which his less burdened rural brother need never feel the weight. Prof. John Fiske, some years ago, at the time when he was assistant librarian of Harvard University, very graphically described a portion of the perplexing duties which fall to the lot of even a university librarian, striving to correct the erroneous but too prevalent notion that such a position is a sinecure. He confined himself to an enumeration and description of the duties which are essentially professional, the multiplicity of details of the ordering, classifying, and cataloging of books. In this direction there is a difference only in amount between the greater and the less. But, in addition to all that Prof. Fiske described, a city librarian must needs oversee as well the thousand and one minutiae which go to make up the sum of a day's work in a circulating library. He must provide for the accurate identification and registration of his borrowers,—no light task when they number tens of thousands of the floating population of a western city, which has more active duties for her police than the following up of delinquent patrons of the public library. He must see to it that the thousands of books which flow over his counters are unerringly charged, and that tardy borrowers are warned of their remissness. These are but a few of the numberless details, many of which are trivial in the extreme, but which all go toward the making up of such a day's work as “none but he that feels it knows.” As a machine increases in complications a constantly greater percentage of power is consumed in overcoming friction. This attention to the routine of daily work, which forms much of the severest, because least satisfying, work which a librarian does, may be compared to the friction of machinery; and just in the proportion that the power of his mind and the strength of his body are taxed in this direction, by just so much are they reduced for other duties, the importance of which is specially prominent in the minds not only of the profession, but of the public as well,—an actual knowledge of the books which the library buys, and the exertion of an active personal influence in raising the standard of literature which is drawn from the library.

It is precisely in this line of personal influence that there seem to me to be special encouragements to the librarians of small towns, that here, notwithstanding their limited resources, they have peculiar opportunities for attaining an almost ideal standard of excellence in the quality of their work.

It would be unjust to say that a city librarian actually works harder than his country brother. The duties of the former are mainly those of guiding, overseeing, and correcting the work of others. The latter, with his own hands and brain, does most of the work himself. It is as if the one were architect solely, and the other not only architect, but mason and carpenter as well. One of the severest trials of the lot of a city librarian, in the West at least, is that he must work through many assistants who are not only utterly lacking in any real love or enthusiasm for their work, but who are many times illy-educated as well. The remedy for this state of affairs is not likely to be found until our boards of trustees take for their careful consideration the reply of a certain irate domestic to her remonstrating mistress: “You can't expect a good cook and all the Christian virtues for two dollars a week!” If the necessities of the work do not require the employment of more than one, two, or, at most, three assistants, the subtle electric current of the librarian's own enthusiasm may suffer the subdivision without being utterly dissipated. He can actually do much of the work himself. He comes into contact with his clientage, which is not so large but that he may hope to become personally acquainted with many of them, and, learning their tastes and needs, easily become their trusted friend and guide. His catalog, too, is his own work, and it is perhaps safe to say that no one ever properly appreciates a catalog but its maker. Certainly no one else ever handles it with equal ease and intelligence.

I am afraid the catalog has never been made, and never will be, over which the ignorant and indolent will not be perplexed and deceived; and, after all is said, it is to the ignorant to whom the gospel of the public library is specially sent. If the cataloger himself is constantly at hand to explain intricacies, to supplement deficiencies, with his own perfect knowledge of his library, to answer even foolish and stumbling questioners patiently and intelligently, he may make the puzzling way of finding and getting a book so plain that “The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein.”

That this personal influence, when exerted, bears fruit, and that right soon, has been proved again and again. The following is from the last report of one of the largest libraries in the country: “The increasing public interest in the more scholarly books of the Library, and the large accession of visitors to the reference tables, are to be attributed partly to the Saturday-morning classes which have been conducted at the Library for the past four months.” If such work makes so immediate and appreciable an impression upon a circulation which is numbered by hundreds of thousands, is there not a hopeful outlook, indeed, for small workers?

One has said that “A library is, after all, very much what its librarian makes it.” There are too many conflicting individualities at work in a municipal library to make this, to any considerable extent, true; but in a small town or village the personal equation of the librarian may easily become the exponent of the power of the library.

[numbered blank page]