Centralization proved to be the only way of extending a library service to the rural districts. No village, unless through the largess of a plutocrat, could build up and maintain anything worth calling a library for itself. Given a centralized system, some sort of service can be run cheaply, and a first-class service can be run economically. Does it not follow that some measure of centralization would be good for urban libraries, enabling them to save in certain directions, and making their resources go a great deal further than they go at present in the direction of widest utility? The largest libraries have managed to be self-sufficing, not merely because they have more money to spend, but rather because their service is organized on the principle of a centralized group. There is a point beyond which it does not pay a library to provide from its own resources all that its users may possibly require. Each library must determine this point for itself. The everyday wants of its readers ought to be satisfied on the spot and at the moment; but to go far beyond that point even should a local Crœsus provide the wherewithal, would be extravagant, entailing surplusage, overlapping, and waste. Spending money on books only in occasional request is to spend too little on books in continual demand. The library of moderate means cannot pretend to satisfy both daily and exceptional wants, unless it is able to call upon outside resources, such as a Central Library for Students developed to such a capacity that it forms a sufficient reservoir for supplementing all the moderate-sized stocks in the country. If most of the urban libraries were brought into a co-operative network of libraries, with mechanism for interchange by which the book lacking here would be supplied there, or else from a larger regional library or a clearing-house at the centre, obviously a service equal to the pooled resources of the whole system would be provided without the present waste on overlapping.
Central organization exists in the big provincial cities; that is the reason for their superiority, and they are superior in a degree far beyond that of mere size. It does not exist in London; that is why serious readers must have recourse to the British Museum or the big special libraries, to satisfy their requirements; or if, like the great majority, they can rarely do this, they must go without. London is the most glaring illustration of the vices due to mere parochial methods; it suffers, not so much because its library resources are limited, as because they are not mobilized. For certain purposes, it has already been noted, both London and provincial libraries acknowledge the economic value of some centralization. Thus every municipal library has given up buying books in Braille type for the blind, and relies for this branch of its service upon the National Library at Westminster. A great many subscribe to the Central Library for Students, and draw upon that for books required by specialist readers. A large number help to provide the funds for the great Subject-Index to Periodicals, which makes the contents of reviews, magazines, technical and scientific journals, filed in their reference departments, available for instant use. This may not seem much compared with the results of joint effort or of State supervision in America, where they have co-operative cataloguing, co-operative publication of bibliographies and aids for readers, and elaborate facilities for professional training; but it is a beginning. The Adult Education Committee can think of no way to endow the industries of the country with an adequate series of technical libraries except by centralization. Although many librarians, represented by the Library Association, do not approve of the particular scheme put forward, they are at one with the Committee in admitting that co-ordination of the separate libraries and the establishment of a central supply is the only way to solve this problem.
Although, however, the partial and unequal development of public libraries which the Adult Education Committee by a slip in their logic put down to the rate limit, is due, as the report conclusively shows, to their having had to struggle along in isolation, it would be disastrous to take the control of the local libraries entirely out of the hands of the local authorities. This would stultify all efforts to inspire public opinion and evoke local pride. No institution in a civilized society is more sure to be an expression of corporate life and local individuality than a communal library, in the building up of which the actual users have had a hand. A system, however complete and efficient, bestowed by a Government department, however benevolent, would be sure eventually to stifle all such aspirations. The local communities in both town and country must have a decisive voice in the management of their libraries. They must have a larger voice, not a smaller, than they have had hitherto. Local initiative has never had free play. Why is it that public libraries rarely excite that interest and enthusiasm in which the promoters hopefully confided? The answer is obvious. Libraries have suffered from official repression, and have not had even the doubtful advantage of official tutelage. If a town wished to spend liberally on its library, it was pulled up by the rate limit. If it wanted lectures, the Government auditor put in his veto: he does so still. And so with any of the excursions from the programme prescribed from above that would have helped to realize a higher ideal. Library authorities have been confined to the unimaginative duty of exercising circumscribed and inadequate powers, and the library committee has enjoyed the least prestige of all the council’s departments. More local control, more powers of initiative, and more representation of the actual users of the library are needed, if a vigorous and useful life is to be maintained.
But this is fully compatible with healthy co-operation between the different authorities under the guiding supervision of a central department. Some authorities may require a stimulus; they should not be allowed to victimize those among their constituents who crave the very necessities of civilized life. Cases are not unknown where borough councils have failed to carry out, or have deliberately emasculated, a library scheme approved by a majority of the ratepayers. Education is compulsory: it is a question whether one of the chief instruments of education should be at the mercy of a local body to grant or withhold. For, so inconsiderable a place does the library take at present in local politics, the average borough council, elected to manage the trams, the streets, water, electricity, and other mundane affairs, seldom represents the views of the citizen on such a different matter as libraries; and the committee appointed by such a council hardly ever represents or is fully cognizant of the views of the people who actually use the library.
Fortunately, the times when a policy of rate-saving at all costs, or the selfishness of a leisured class enjoying their subscription libraries and not in favour of too much education for the lower orders, or the interested opposition of the liquor trade and the music hall proprietor, were able to keep out or keep down public libraries, are gradually passing away. They have not gone altogether; but it would be invidious to name the two or three distinguished boroughs where these influences are still rampant. The problem now is to bring the great crowd of under-developed and under-nourished libraries into line one with other, to assist the halt, help the blind to see, and by schemes for concerted action enable all to reach the same level of efficiency as the big towns have attained without undue exertion. A simple licence to spend more than a penny rate will not secure this by itself. Reorganization on a co-operative ground-plan will do as much as the mere expenditure of money, and money will not be spent lavishly in these frugal days. The merit of such a reorganization is that so many and so great values will be secured at a minimum cost. The material is in existence for an enormous improvement of the services.
Had not the sweeping proposals of the Adult Education Committee for making the local education authority the library authority been negatived before the late Bill came into Parliament, the heterogeneous units that constitute the library service of London would after the Act of 1919 have come under the unifying influence of the London Education Committee. It was such a near thing that we may pause to consider the probable results. As already noticed, library development in the metropolis has been unequal in the extreme. Certain boroughs are still destitute of a public library system. The total number of books in the remainder is about a million and a half. All these metropolitan libraries are established under the same Acts; till recently they drew their income from a uniform rate (except in certain boroughs where a high rateable value allowed the penny to be reduced to a halfpenny); the governing bodies are in each district a committee of the borough council. Yet each group of libraries is a distinct entity. Each authority is a law unto itself. A ratepayer in one borough is not permitted to borrow from the library in the next though interchange of privileges would have been, not merely a logical but a great economic advantage. There has been no consultation between the authorities to avoid overlapping in neighbouring reference libraries, though correlative specialization would have been easy and remunerative.[27] Every reference library develops on individual lines, perhaps as a British Museum in miniature, with the result that, out of a number much larger than the total number of boroughs, not one is above the standard of a second-rate library in the provinces. Some committees offer a cordial welcome to students at school or college in their boroughs. Others repulse such students unless they are ratepayers or at least residents in the borough.[28]
The immediate advantage of combining all the local libraries of London and Greater London into one system, all available to any one living or working in any quarter, and supplementing each other by a simple method of interchange, is manifest. The majority of the reference libraries should be shut up at once, and the space used for library purposes that have hitherto been neglected. Provided that every branch has a good collection of quick-reference books, there is no need for most of these—many of them are legacies of the still more parochial government of London before the present boroughs were formed. A proportion of the contents should be used to augment the stock of the Central Library for Students, which is now, in a small way, a central depot for the lending libraries of both London and the country. The remainder, after all useless and obsolete material had been sent to the destructor, would be brought together to form the initial stock of some six or eight really excellent reference libraries, so placed that every potential reader would be within the radius of a tram-ride. Six or eight large central libraries might be selected for the purpose, and would require little alteration beyond the removal of the lending department, for which room would have been found elsewhere.
Whenever the present haphazard library service of London is superseded by a unified system, there will be a possibility of incorporating into it, or associating as auxiliaries, various public or semi-public libraries not belonging to the municipalities. London is not poor in its bibliothecal possessions, though badly served. In 1910, Mr. R. A. Rye calculated that in the public and administrative libraries and those belonging to various institutions, Greater London had a total of eight and a half million volumes, of which one and a half million are inaccessible to the general public.[29] This gave a supply of one volume per head, which may be compared with Berlin’s two volumes, Dresden’s three, and the four per head in Paris. Such comparisons, it should be observed, are not a matter of simple arithmetic. A larger community may find its account in a smaller relative stock, be that organized for use. A family of five with ten books would be badly off. A town of 50,000 with 100,000 volumes would be opulent. London, with a system of centralization and distribution comprehending all these varied resources, would probably be as well off as any city in the world. It is largely a question of realizing the intellectual capital that is now paying such poor dividends. Special libraries, such as that of the Patent Office, the National Science and the National Art Libraries at South Kensington, the Public Record Office, and others, like the various economic and sociological, historical, medical, legal, and other libraries attached to technical or scientific institutions, would continue to stand apart, but would stand in a definite relation to the general service.
The proper balance between local control and the superintending departments—and sub-departments, if the nation’s libraries are reorganized as several great territorial systems—would not be difficult to contrive, so as to preserve and foster the rights of each community to self-expression. It is not proposed to work these out in detail here. Briefly, the functions of the central board would be:—(1) to install and operate the machinery for interchange and central supply, the latter ultimately superseding the former altogether; (2) to see that the local libraries and more especially the selection of books are maintained at a proper level; (3) to undertake such wholesale services as cataloguing and the compilation of aids to readers, work which is now done over and over again by individual library staffs at great expense, or else is neglected; (4) to organize and finance the training of librarians, and see that they are properly paid. Ultimately, librarianship might be organized as a sort of civil service; at any rate, librarians ought to be as carefully looked after by the State as are the teachers.
Many other enterprises of vast public benefit could be, most appropriately, engineered by the central office; for example, the publication of large editions of non-copyright books in a form suitable for lending library use. Bookbinding is another item of local expenditure that calls urgently for mass treatment. It is not proposed, however, that the central library authority should set up a binding factory in opposition to the trade. This would be unnecessary, for it would be in such a commanding position, as by far the largest purchaser in the market, that it could dictate its own terms to publishers, printers, binders, and even to paper-makers. The fact is, the rebinding of books in public libraries might, for the most part, be done away with, if paper, covers, and binding were originally designed to stand the wear. As a leading authority on the subject, Mr. Douglas Cockerell recently said, “Publishers still design books to meet the fancy of the casual buyer, and very largely ignore the requirements of the libraries, which are for many books their largest customers.”[30] Light, fluffy paper is selected by publishers solely to bulk out books; the thicker the book the higher the price. “Now the public may like to pay for fluff and wind, but the librarian’s interests are directly opposed to this. Increased bulk means more shelf-room, and the use of this paper means that the books will fall to pieces after a very short time.” But our central authority would surely see to it that a book produced for library use should be printed on paper of good quality and cased in split boards, which “should last in ordinary library circulation until the librarian is forced to discard it on account of the dirt it has picked up.”
Another need of paramount importance to all engaged in the pursuit of knowledge is that the contents of the numerous periodicals produced throughout the world, registering advances in all branches of science and research, should be abstracted and indexed, so that the material should be rendered accessible or at any rate its existence fully known.[31] Mention has already been made of the Subject-Index to Periodicals, in which some hundred and fifty periodicals are systematically indexed. This important undertaking was initiated some years ago by Mr. E. Wyndham Hulme, late librarian to H.M. Patent Office; it has been carried on successively under the auspices of the “Athenæum” and of the Library Association. It is at present a heavy burden upon a few devoted shoulders, although a very large part of the labour is performed by volunteers; yet its scheme is susceptible of indefinite expansion, if all the requirements of scientific and technical workers are to be, even approximately, met. It is eminently a task pertaining to the library, the university and college library, the special library, and the research department of all types. Were there a central library department in existence, it would undertake this as part of its ordinary routine. It would also undertake the collateral task of preparing and publishing a union catalogue of the long sets of periodicals of all kinds to which the Subject-Index gives the references, and it would indicate where these sets are to be found. Besides the indexing, it would perhaps carry out the further but hardly less valuable work of drawing up and issuing systematic digests of important new knowledge contained in the learned periodicals. It has been recently proposed that the British Museum should carry out this necessary piece of national work, the cost of which, sales being allowed for, would not be excessive.[32]
Such results, however, invaluable as they would be to the whole nation, through the services rendered to several classes of workers, would be only a by-product of the centralizing and systematizing process, the immediate object of which would be the betterment of our libraries. Let us return then from this digression. In the middle of last century and towards its end, Edward Edwards and then his biographer, Thomas Greenwood, both stated their conviction that central control was necessary, and that one of its most useful instruments would be systematic inspection. Greenwood quotes the following from Edwards:—
“If every Library in this country on which the public has any fair claim, could be brought distinctly under public view, by a precise and periodical statement, comprising at least three particulars: (1) what it is; (2) what it has; and (3) what it does; a long train of improvements would inevitably follow. But the systematic inspection of Public Libraries to be effective must be national.”[33]
He goes on:
“The present writer is convinced that there will never be a full measure of health and vitality in libraries generally until some central control of this nature is established. The largest and best of the public libraries do not need it, but would welcome it to secure the welfare of the library body politic. But there is a class of libraries, and it is to be feared that it is not a small one, which seriously need to have light from the outside brought to bear upon their administration. Such libraries are managed in a narrow, illiberal manner, with rules which hamper rather than help the public. The staff is selected without regard to conditions of suitability, training, or merit, and every method adopted is of the tamest and least efficient kind. Only national and systematic inspection can alter this state of affairs. His Majesty’s inspectors of public schools perform an efficient and salutary work without curbing local aspirations, and similar inspectors of public libraries would be able to carry out an equally useful task in connection with the municipal libraries. But it is plain that no form of public Government inspection would be agreeable to existing library authorities, unless accompanied by some kind of substantial State aid.”[34]
Government inspection of libraries is not unknown in other countries, on both sides of the Atlantic, and appears to cause no friction but a spirit of good feeling and mutual help. It is carried on, for instance, in Canada, and it is one of the functions of the State library commissions in the United States. The libraries accept it in the spirit which Edwards saw would animate the efficient library authority, and, further, welcome it as a potent means for extending their benefits into regions hitherto unreached. In Ontario the Minister of Education is responsible for the administration of the Public Libraries Act, and assigns this part of his duties to the Public Libraries Branch, of which the Inspector of Public Libraries is superintendent. But in Ontario the local authorities are so whole-hearted in their zeal that the energies of the Branch are mainly confined to general work in the interest of libraries, to routine inspections, the collection of statistics, and the payment of grants. Yet, it is admitted, the majority of librarians and library trustees would welcome a demand for a minimum standard of efficiency.
The American State commissions usually include the State librarian, other professional librarians, prominent educators, literary men, library trustees, and business men interested in the work. “Instead of regarding with jealousy the assumption by the State of powers like these, librarians generally welcome the increase of systematic work fostered by State aid and control. They are active everywhere in efforts to establish State commissions, where such do not exist, and the opponents of their efforts are usually persons unfamiliar with the modern library movement, or politicians who see in such action no benefit to themselves. In some cases, where legislatures have refused to enact a proper State library law, State library associations, voluntary bodies of librarians, have agreed to initiate and carry on, at their own expense, some of the activities usually supervised and financed by the State.”[35]
“A former agent of the Massachusetts Free Library Commission won for himself the title of ‘the travelling bishop,’ descriptive both of the estimation and affection with which he was regarded.” “State library commissions exist at present in thirty-seven states. In a few states such as in California, New York, and Utah, the State library or the State board of education, in lieu of a library commission, exerts the functions that such a commission would have.”[36]
The question of State grants to local authorities is perhaps important, but certainly not so important as some critics would make out. Equalization of burdens would of course have to be arranged. Yet, on the other hand, there should be nothing to prevent a very enterprising authority from spending a great deal more if it chose on further developments of its library service. Progress would ultimately come to a standstill if there were not this liberty; uniformity, at any level, is ultimately stagnation. The Adult Education Committee speak of State grants to local exchequers; but, apparently, these were to have been calculated on the measure of a local authority’s zeal in co-operating with educational work in the narrow sense, and not made a handle for beneficent central control. It might or it might not be advisable to assist local effort or reward enterprise by a policy of grants in aid. Anyhow, it should be borne in mind that the material benefits of such a scheme of centralization as has been roughly outlined would be tantamount to a large financial contribution by the State, though it should cost the State nothing. Apart from equalization of burdens[37] and, perhaps, rewards for noteworthy efficiency—or the converse, fines or refusal of grants for failures in efficiency—there seems to be little use in discussing what proportion of the cost of our systems of libraries should be defrayed by local rates and contributions from local authorities and what by the State. Both rates and taxes come ultimately from the same source, and, so far as that source, the rated and taxed individual, is concerned, he might as well spend his time debating which pocket he should keep his purse in. Inspections and grants from the local exchequer would, obviously, go hand in hand; but the allotment of grants would certainly not be the sole or the principal end of the system of inspection.
If all the libraries in the kingdom were linked together in a national system, the division into urban libraries and rural systems would to a large extent disappear. A large number of the urban libraries would be absorbed into groups of town and country libraries, analogous to the American county groups; and large rural areas, with small village libraries and a service of boxes, would have their focus in new central institutes easily accessible to readers in the vicinity and available for occasional visits by students at a greater distance. Many populous areas would remain much as they are at present, with some increase of facilities. But, instead of one Central Library for Students, there would have to be, sooner or later, several large supplemental libraries in convenient spots, forming magazines supplying, not individual readers, but the scattered libraries; and, probably the British Isles would have to be divided for library purposes into several provinces, each centering in one of these. Supervision of library activities in such provinces would devolve upon regional committees, elected by the county and borough authorities in each province, the central board exercising co-ordinating functions and carrying out such work as is for the general welfare.
These central supplemental libraries would be built up largely by a careful redistribution of existing resources. There is hardly a library of any size that does not contain many books which are very seldom used, books, however, which no librarian would dare to jettison, because he knows that some fine day a reader is sure to come along to whom one volume or another will be of priceless importance. There are many other books so infrequently called for that it would be an immense convenience to store them elsewhere, and utilize the valuable shelf-space for books in continual request. Books of this sort should be kept at the supplemental library, duly catalogued, and ready to be sent to any library throughout the area served, when readers require them. The supplemental libraries would, of course, be always buying more books; they would have to keep abreast of the latest advances in all subjects; but the works just described would form an important part of their original contents, and would be transferred to them free of cost. Local libraries are constantly put to the expense of buying books for one or two users; such users are, no doubt, among the most deserving of all their clients, and it is but just that their urgent wants should be satisfied. But it is a tax upon the capacities of small libraries that should be met somehow else; they would be spared it by the new system, and the cost of the supplemental library would be saved over and over again, the local library then having more funds to maintain the stock of books in regular demand.
The present Central Library for Students is a step in the right direction, but it is only a step; the work will have to be done on a very large scale. This library was an outgrowth of the efforts to supply students attending university tutorial and W.E.A. classes with books to carry on systematic reading. At the end of 1915, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust undertook to provide £600 to assist in the establishment of the library, £2,000 for additions to the stock, and £400 yearly for five years, if £320 were raised by subscription. The subvention was afterwards raised to £1,000 a year, and in 1920 the issues of books numbered 15,500. The Adult Education Committee were deeply impressed by the exceptional value of the work performed by this library, and proposed that it should be made the nucleus of a central circulating library to supplement the local library service all over the country. With an assured income of £2,000 a year for ten years, they calculated that an annual circulation of at least 40,000 volumes would be attained; their estimate being based on an estimated cost of 1s. per volume issued. The actual cost of each issue, under our present benevolent postal regime, is considerably more. The figure is now probably not less than 1s. 6d. Add return postage to this, and you will see that, after borrowing a book two or three times, you might as well have bought it outright. The method of sending out books singly is too expensive. And a circulation of 40,000 a year would be a mere drop in the ocean; any small provincial library has an annual circulation of at least 40,000; a large borough library system in London expects an annual circulation of about a million. The thing must be done on a vast scale to be worth doing at all, and then it can be done cheaply, even if, as might reasonably be expected, the Post Office declines to grant a large rebate on the transmission of books issued from the national libraries. The proper method is to make our central library or libraries an integral part of the whole machine, supplying to all other libraries all, or nearly all, of the books that are not imperatively necessary on the spot for everyday purposes. Then the issues from the central library will not be in twos and threes, but in large batches, and the average cost will be reduced to an economic amount.
Mr. John McKillop produced a workmanlike scheme in 1907 for such a supplemental library in London as would have provided all the students and other hard working readers throughout the twenty-eight municipal boroughs with all the books required in the most exacting course of study. He proposed that it should be established by the Education Committee of the London County Council, since its greatest immediate effect would be to supply students with expensive works not now within their reach.
“With eighty-five municipal libraries already established in London, it would be useless duplication for the Education Committee to undertake all the work of registering borrowers and issuing volumes to them and safeguarding their return. It is suggested that the contents of the Council’s collection should be lent on application to the public libraries and the libraries of educational institutions which could then lend them to their clients. This method would avoid the necessity for a very large staff. The central collection would have as borrowers merely the eighty-five libraries and branches already established, and those which may be added from time to time by the boroughs in the future, together with the fifty or so polytechnics, and such other of the institutions for higher education as may care to avail themselves of the facilities offered. In any case its borrowers could not exceed a couple of hundred, and though each of these might daily draw and return large numbers of books, the clerical labour required would be but a fraction of that necessary in a smaller library, where a large number of borrowers withdraw and return one or at most two volumes each.”[38]
Mr. McKillop based his estimate of cost on the number of volumes contained in the Patent Office Library, viz., 105,000 volumes, which comprehend a very large proportion of modern scientific works. “If we take 35,000 as the number of volumes required for a modern working science library of reference (i.e., excluding the smaller text-books and class-books), and if we allow four times this number for the needs of departments other than science, we get a total of 165,000 volumes as the size of the collection. As a basis to calculate the capital cost of the collection probably 5s. is too little and 10s. too much per volume. Taking 7s. 6d. as a working figure the total cost would be about £62,000 (one penny rate in London produces £171,000). But it would be impossible to spend for this purpose wisely and economically such a sum as £62,000 within less than ten years, and the collection could be got together with reasonable rapidity by the expenditure of not more than £10,000 in any one year. The average expenditure would probably be nearer £5,000. In regard to administration the cost would be probably easily covered by £5,000 a year when in full working order, but would be four or five years in getting up to that figure.”[39]
If the cost of Mr. McKillop’s scheme was to be £5,000 a year in pre-war money, we can hardly expect much from £2,000 a year now, especially when the whole of the United Kingdom, and not London alone, is to be supplied. Further, it is hardly too optimistic to conjecture that the number of students and other serious readers in the population is a great deal higher now than it was in 1907, and, accordingly, that the demands upon our supplemental libraries would be proportionately more exacting. No, the Adult Education Committee have not looked far enough: a much bigger scheme is required, and the expenditure of much larger sums than they contemplate. But there is no need to be frightened by the cost; one may safely affirm that the general economic saving will be in direct proportion to the outlay on the establishment and upkeep of the experimental libraries. Whatever is spent at the centre, will be far more than made up by savings at the circumference.
Mr. McKillop put the case of the student of science and technology, for whose difficulties he felt most concern, although there are numerous others whose state of destitution is no less pitiful, with a cogency that cannot be bettered.
“These students may be either those whose means enable them to pursue courses of study in the splendid laboratories of University College, the Royal College of Science, the City and Guilds Institution, and other schools of equal rank, or they may be young men and women whose circumstances compel them to earn their living by daily work, and have only access to the culture and improvement offered by evening study. While the former presumably have access to the best literature of their subject in the libraries of the institutions in which they work, the latter, although, it is suggested, showing probably greater devotion and sacrifice in the pursuit of knowledge, are debarred by the hours of opening and closing from the use of the magnificent collections in the British Museum, Patent Office, and other public libraries of reference. The polytechnics, it is admitted, do make great efforts to supply the books required by their students; but it cannot be contended that at present they can compete in this respect with the other institutions named, which provide for the student who has all his day for study. It is precisely for this latter class that the public rate-supported libraries of London ought to provide, and it is a well-established fact to those who know something of the inner working of the public libraries in London, that it is one of the great sources of discontent among London’s public librarians that insufficient funds, and sometimes also unsympathetic borough council committees, prevent their doing more than is done for this class. But there are inherent difficulties which have to be taken into consideration. London is not a unit; it is twenty-eight independent units without even a semblance of federation, and it would impose an insupportable financial burden on the ratepayers if every one of the twenty-eight boroughs were to attempt to supply, through the public libraries, the books required by advanced students in science, technology, history, literature, art, and other domains of study which can be pursued in London.”
... But why should London provide twenty-eight sets of all these works? There is no probability that one student in, say, Bermondsey, and one in, say, Finsbury, will require the same volume of the Philosophical Transactions at the same time, and, therefore, it is not necessary that both Bermondsey and Finsbury, and every other library in London, should possess a set. But there is a probability that more than one student in the same borough might require the same volume at the same time; for instance, a teacher at the Battersea Polytechnic might recommend the half-dozen or so students in his advanced class in chemistry to read some classical memoir; and Battersea Public Library, to meet this demand efficiently, would require two or three sets of the Philosophical Transactions, which would be an obviously absurd arrangement. The absence of any system of co-operation between the metropolitan libraries renders it impossible for them at present to co-operate in any way in meeting this difficulty.[40] Mr. McKillop went on to show that it might be possible for the local libraries, trusting to the central collection for an adequate supply of what may be called students’ works, relatively seldom used, to work with a standard collection of popular works which would be the same in all boroughs. “When this point is reached, it might be possible to have a common catalogue for all the libraries.... The way is, in consequence, easy for a local authority which decides to establish a collection. It can procure for a very small sum the catalogue of all its collection ready made on the best lines, and all it has to do is to purchase the books, etc.”[41] Without endorsing this idea of stereotyped libraries, an idea which is obviously contrary to the vital principle that a local library, if it is truly alive, will by the predominant character of its contents show itself to be the expression of local individuality, we must admit that it opens up suggestive possibilities.
Another proposal of the Adult Education Committee lies open to more severe criticism. This was a project for assisting industries and technical students and research workers by setting up a great chain of industrial libraries forming “a technical library system for each industry,” independently of the municipal library system. Side by side with the latter, not yet, and perhaps not even then, organized as a reciprocating system, there would be erected a complex and highly expensive series of special collections, open, apparently, to members of the particular industries alone. “In the case of general libraries the unit of organization and administration is the local authority, in the case of the technical library system it should be the industry.”[42] The amount of costly and unnecessary duplication, both of contents and of machinery, in such a cumbrous scheme dumbfounds the experienced librarian, especially when he reflects that all the libraries in the kingdom could be put on a scientific basis, and all the wants of both the general public and the special industries amply satisfied, at much less the price. Such a scheme must obviously have been framed by persons having but a rudimentary idea of the library arts, or they would have thought out a much more practical and economical plan. The extravagant cost and the impracticability of the proposal have been exposed in a special Memorandum by the Library Association, representing the trained librarians of the country, who, strange to say, were not consulted before the scheme was evolved. The gist of their criticism is contained in the following paragraphs:—
“The Library Association is not prepared to admit that this policy is sound or economical. Clearly, extensive overlapping cannot be avoided, because a large number of industries require general technical libraries and not special technical libraries. For example, the motor industry is special, but a library for that industry must contain books special to many other industries, on metallurgy, chemistry, physics, and other subjects. An industrial library should comprise information, not only on the industry itself, but on subjects and industries in contact with the industry for which the library is intended. As a rule the industrial and technical student, unless he is a beginner, needs information just off the line of his special work. Hence, libraries formed round an industry will tend to become general technical libraries. Few industries are confined to one area. Birmingham is usually regarded as the centre of the hardware trade, which, however, is spread widely over the country. A technical library for an industry must have a centre and branches with all the machinery of inter-communication and exchange. Even so, the books could not be so readily accessible as by an extension of the present library service, which has developed naturally in response to the people’s demand for information. A better plan, therefore, would be the proper organization of the existing libraries of technical societies, and an extension of the present service of public libraries, the technical collections of which (so far as funds have allowed) have been selected to aid the industries of the locality. The public library service is already extensive; improvement on it is essential; but to organize another parallel service would be a regrettable waste of money in view of the great need at this time of obtaining the best technical library service at the least cost.
“The Library Association is strongly of opinion that scientific and technical information should be freely available to people who are not yet enrolled in or who are outside an industry; otherwise that industry would tend to be impervious to new ideas, except from within. They earnestly press for the efficient equipment and expansion of the existing public technical collections, and for the foundation of technical libraries, in large provincial cities, on the lines of the Patent Office Library in London.”
The all-important question remains to be discussed: If a centralizing authority is required to enable the libraries of this country to take their proper share in reconstruction and in carrying on civilized life in an intelligent and orderly way, who is to be this centralizing authority? What Government department is fit for such a charge? Unless a new one is to be created, the Board of Education obviously has sole claim. This was the unhesitating conclusion of the Adult Education Committee. The Library Association, the membership of which is made up principally of salaried officers or elected representatives of the present municipal authorities, took alarm at this proposal, and especially at the corollary that the library authority should be the local education committee. The objections are, briefly and summarily, two: That the interests of the libraries might tend to be subordinated to those of the schools, and that bureaucratic control would stifle local interest and local initiative. But, as was urged in the chapter dealing with the interaction of libraries and schools, if the Board of Education undertook this wider responsibility, it should, and doubtless would, become a board of something more than scholastic education. Libraries must not be allowed to take a second place to the schools, the work of which at an early period of life they are destined to transcend. Let the local education committee attend, as now, to the schools, which will be, and should be, its first consideration. But let another body, appointed definitely for the purpose, partly no doubt from the same personnel, but well seasoned with co-opted members representing the wider intellectual interests of each locality, be responsible for managing the public library.[43]
American librarians, who have had experience of administration of both libraries and schools by boards of education, are not in favour of vesting the control of libraries in the education authorities. “Too close an administrative connection ... has not been beneficial to the library ... it has generally been found that when the control of a public library is vested in a body created originally for another purpose it is regarded as of secondary importance and its development is retarded. It is better that the library should have its own board of trustees, and that the two institutions should co-operate in the freest manner. Such mutual aid is, of course, founded on the fact that the educational work of both school and library is carried on largely by means of books. That of the school is formal, compulsory, and limited in time; that of the library is informal, voluntary, and practically unlimited. It is greatly to the advantage of the scholar, and of those informal processes of training that are going on constantly during life whether he wills it or not, that he should form the habit of consulting and using books outside of the school. When books are thought of merely as school implements their use is naturally abandoned when school days are over.”[44]
Similar views were submitted by the Library Association to the Adult Education Committee. Part of their resolution ran as follows:—
“The aim of the library as an education institution is best expressed in the formula ‘self-development in an atmosphere of freedom,’ as contrasted with the aim of the school, which is ‘training in an atmosphere of restraint or discipline’; in the school the teacher is dominant, but the pupil strikes out his own line in the library, which supplies the written material upon which the powers awakened and trained in the school can be exercised; furthermore, the contacts of the library with organized education cease where the educational machinery terminates; but the library continues as an educational force of national importance in its contacts with the whole social, political, and intellectual life of the community....”
“In speaking to the resolution, Mr. L. Stanley Jast, formerly Secretary of the Library Association, developed the argument—“The work of the librarian is sharply contrasted with that of the teacher. The teacher deals with human material, the librarian with the written record, and only incidentally with the people who come to consult and use it. But not only is there this wide difference in the nature of the material upon which the teacher and the librarian respectively work; there is a difference of immediate aim of so basic a character that one is almost the negative of the other, and therefore are they perfectly complementary to one another.... The library and the school supplement and complement each other. And the virtue of each is that it is not the other.... The material of each is different, the aims are different, and the administrative machinery of the one has no real relation to that of the other.... The resolution has a second thesis, which is that it is after all only a portion of the library field which touches education.... We outgrow the school; we cannot outgrow the library.”[45]
“We have examined these arguments with the care to which the policy of the Library Association is entitled. The first argument, however, rests upon a sharp distinction between the library and the school which should not, in our opinion, exist. A school is a more complex and many sided institution than the argument would appear to assume, and its functions are too narrowly confined by the phrase ‘training in an atmosphere of restraint or discipline.’ The class-room is but part of a school. Other institutions—the workshop, the gymnasium, the playing field, and the library—are essential features, each of them making its peculiar contribution to that self-development which is claimed to be an end of the library. The school in fact, is a community which fulfils its end through a variety of agencies of which the class-room is one and the library another. The ideal school is one which seeks to aid self-development through the medium of ‘discipline’ on the one hand, and by providing opportunities for the pupil ‘to strike out on his own line’ on the other.
“The antithesis between the teacher and the librarian is also, in our judgment, too sharply defined. Powers are trained by their exercise, and the printed book is an integral part of the equipment of the school. If the librarian deals with the written record, it is but as a means to self-development in the scholar. In other words, the library is part of the educational fabric, just as much as the art room or the school clinic. The school and the teacher will perform their true function only in so far as they enter into the closest co-operation with the library and the librarian. The latter will fill their real place only through co-operation with the former. Both school and library will be immeasurably strengthened when the artificial line of demarcation is obliterated.
“It is sometimes argued that the libraries would lose by the process and become subject to an over-rigid systematization, to which librarians are rightly opposed. This attitude of mind appears to us to be based on a want of knowledge of the strong trend towards greater freedom and initiative within the publicly provided schools of the country. This movement, we believe, would receive a valuable stimulus from closer association with the libraries, without necessarily imposing a mechanical organization upon the libraries.
“The provision of children’s rooms in libraries, the assembling of books bearing upon the work and interests of students, library lessons and other developments and proposals will forge strong and necessary links between the school and the library; but it is difficult to see how this intimate relationship can be generally established unless there is an organic connection arising from a single policy based upon the complex needs of the pupil. Under certain circumstances the frank interchange of experience and inter-relation of interests may be possible with dual control. But it is at least open to doubt whether they will be generally and permanently attained without a common administration.
“The second argument in support of independent administration for libraries is, in the words of the resolution referred to above, that ‘the contacts of the library with organised education cease where the educational machinery terminates.’ The Education Act, 1918, provides for compulsory continuation education up to the age of 16, and ultimately 18. Further education of this character must lead to a growth of both technical and general education beyond these ages. There is certain to be an extension of technical education after the war, and there will be a growing demand for non-vocational education to be met. With the latter question we shall deal at greater length in our Final Report. A greater call than in the past will undoubtedly be made upon our educational resources, and the necessity will arise for that close co-operation between educational institutions and libraries which is admittedly desirable in the case of school pupils if the school and the library are to fulfil their functions.
“It is true that we cannot outgrow the library: but it is equally true that we cannot outgrow the school, in other words, that we cannot outgrow the need for systematic education. The whole purpose of our inquiries into adult education has been directed towards formulating recommendations based upon this truth. Our inquiries, further, justify the view that there is a growing recognition of the need for education and an increasing desire for it on the part of men and women.
“But though the public library has an important function to perform in relation to educational institutions, its activities travel beyond assistance to formal education. It exists to serve the needs of a public with varied interests. It must satisfy the requirements of the serious student; but it must also cater for that large class of people who are ‘general readers,’ and those who go to books for recreation. The unsystematic and recreative reading which the libraries have stimulated do not, however, it seems to us, provide any argument for maintaining the public libraries as an independent municipal service.”[46]
In the present writer’s opinion, the distinction drawn by Mr. Jast is a sound one, and is corroborated by the reluctance of American librarians to placing libraries under an authority primarily appointed to administer schools. But, since there remains so much in common in the aims of the two sets of institutions, if the supreme authority were entrusted with a scheme of education in the larger sense—call it culture, humanism, or personal development, since the term education smacks too much of the school and college—then it would be logical and salutary to put our public libraries under a department of that authority, making this responsible, side by side with the education department in the narrower sense, to the supreme Board—which may or may not continue to be called the Board of Education. Dread of bureaucratic control has become almost instinctive with thoughtful people. The habit of working in watertight compartments, and repressing every spontaneous activity that cannot be forced into the strait-jacket of official routine, inspires observant critics with distrust even of rural library schemes conducted on strictly official lines under education committees. To put the control of both urban and rural libraries in the preoccupied hands of those whose attention is centred in schools, discipline, and organized education, would be a blow at the freedom and elasticity of the library. After all, the problem of the young person is much the same everywhere, and education may for the most part be reduced to a system. People who have grown up and developed personality, however, will not submit to have their intellectual nutriment doled out on a system. They must have a say in managing and developing their own libraries, and in choosing the books they are to read.
The notion of a Libraries Board side by side with and independent of the Board of Education would find no support in this country. Nor are we likely to see State library commissions on the American model, though we may as well digest the lesson from the United States, where they certainly know how to manage libraries so that they bulk large in the social consciousness. Co-operation, but not subordination, must be the watchword. The department of the general Board of Education charged with supervision of the national system of libraries would contain, besides those who are educators in the widest sense of the term, representatives of those versed in the government and the actual administration of public libraries, from the British Museum and the university libraries downwards. Such a combination would be less likely than the mere education committees of to-day to negative the proposals of those who understand the needs of libraries and of the people who use them. The local committees would likewise be well-seasoned with co-opted members representing all the varied intellectual interests of each locality, and, above all, representing the actual readers, the people most concerned in each library’s well-being. Local initiative must be welcomed, not merely tolerated: it is the vital element of progress. In between would come the regional committees, charged with the maintenance of the central supplemental libraries, and with all the general activities carried on throughout each great library province. Thus, surely, the proper equilibrium between the central co-ordinating body and local volition would be safely established.