Regarding the second failure, you may get some idea of that if you will compare the growth of your registration list with that of your circulation. The circulation never grows as fast as the membership. It may even be stationary or decreasing while new users are coming in daily. The fact is, of course, that former users are all the time dropping off. Why do they drop off? It is your business to find out and to keep them if you can. The librarian in a small community has a great advantage in this respect, for she can know her constituency personally and keep track of them individually.

But the personal relations of the librarian and her assistants with the public belong as much in the third section of our subject as in the second. The importance of them cannot be exaggerated. I am not sure that I should not prefer a sunny-faced, pleasant-voiced, intelligent, good-tempered assistant in a tumble-down building with a lot of second-hand, badly arranged books, rather than the latest Carnegie library stocked with literary treasures if these had to be dispensed by a haughty young lady with monosyllabic answers and a fatigued expression. I know of no more exasperating duty than that of continually meeting a library public—and I know of no pleasanter one. For the public is just you and me and some other people, and like you and me it is various in its moods. The mood of the public in a library is often a reflection of that of the librarian. The golden rule here is direct personal contact; and don’t forget the last syllable—tact. Don’t force your services or your advice on people that neither wish nor require them, but don’t forget that you may have pleasant, intellectual intercourse without offering either aid or advice. When an aged man who knows more of literature than you dreamed of in your wildest visions wants “The Dolly dialogues,” don’t try to get him to take “Marius the Epicurean” instead. But if you get into the habit of talking with him it may make the library seem pleasant and homelike to him, and, besides, he may tell you something that you do not know—that is a not remote and certainly fascinating possibility.

I need not say that no library can be useful or attractive unless it is properly arranged and cataloged, and unless it has a simple and effective charging system; and unless the public is admitted directly to the shelves and allowed to handle and select the books. But I do need to say—because some of us are apt to forget it—that these things are not ends in themselves, but means to an end, namely, the bringing together of the man and the book, the distribution of ideas. Do not assume that for some occult reason you must classify and catalog your library precisely like some large public library with which you are familiar. Do not assume, if you are a trained cataloger, that there is any virtue, for instance, in subject cards. One subject heading that brings the book in touch with your public outweighs a dozen that do not affect it. To bring together man and book break all rules and strike out in all kinds of new directions. Your particular locality and your particular public may have special requirements that are present nowhere else. Rules were made for the aid and comfort of the public, not for their confusion and hindrance. Methods are the librarian’s tools, not his handcuffs and shackles. To do anything well we must do it with method and system; but these, like a growing boy’s clothes, need frequent renewal. If your library has stopped growing and has reached senility, then the same suit will fit it year after year, but premature old age is not a good goal to strive for.

LAY CONTROL IN LIBRARIES AND ELSEWHERE[3]

The system by which the control of a concern is vested in a person or a body having no expert technical knowledge of its workings has become so common that it may be regarded as characteristic of modern civilization. If this seems to any one an extreme statement, a little reflection will convince him to the contrary. To cite only a few examples, the boards of directors of commercial or financial institutions like our manufacturing corporations, our railways and our banks, of charitable foundations like our hospitals and our asylums, of educational establishments like our schools and colleges, are now not expected to understand the detail of the institutions under their charge. Their first duty is to put at the head of their work an expert with a staff of competent assistants to see to that part of it. Even in most of our churches the minister or pastor—the expert head—is employed and practically controlled by a lay body of some kind—a vestry, a session or the like. Government itself is similarly conducted. Neither the legislative nor the executive branch is expected to be made up of experts who understand the technical detail of departmental work; all this is left to subordinates. Even the heads of departments often know nothing at all of the particular work over which they have been set until they have held their position for some time.

It is hardly necessary to say that this system of lay control is of interest to us here and now, because it obtains in most libraries, where the governing body is a board of trustees or directors who are generally not experts, but who employ a librarian to superintend their work.

To multiply examples would be superflous. Lay control, as above illustrated, is not universal, but I postpone for the present a consideration of its antitheses and its exceptions. It looks illogical, and when the ordinary citizen’s attention is brought to the matter in any way he generally so considers it. In certain cases it is even a familiar object of satire. The general public is apt, I think, to regard lay control as improper or absurd.

With the expert and his staff, who are concerned directly with the management of the institution in question, the feeling is a little different. It is more like that of President Cleveland when he “had Congress on his hands”—a sort of anxious tolerance. They bear with the board that employs them because it has the power of the purse, but they are glad when it adjourns without interfering unduly with them.

Are either of these points of view justified? Should lay boards of directors be abolished? Or, if retained, should those without expert knowledge be barred?

Now at first sight it certainly seems as if the ultimate control of every business or operation should be in the hands of those who thoroughly understand it, and this would certainly bar out lay control. I believe that this view is superficial and will not bear close analysis.

The idea that those who control an institution should be familiar with its details appears to originate in an analogy with a man’s control of his own private affairs, when his occupation and income make it necessary that he should attend to all those affairs personally. The citizen who digs and plants his own garden must understand some of the details of gardening. The man who does his own “odd jobs” about the house must be able to drive a nail and handle a paint brush. This necessity vanishes, however, as the man’s interests become more varied and his financial ability to care for them becomes greater. At a certain point personal attention to detail becomes not only unnecessary but impossible. To expect the master of a great estate to understand the details of his garden, his stable, his kennels, as well as the experts to whom he entrusts them, is absurd. He may, of course, as a matter of amusement, busy himself in some one department, but if he tries to superintend everything personally, still more to understand and regulate matters of detail, he is wasting his time.

We must seek our analogy, then, both for lay control and for the attitude of the ordinary citizen toward it in that citizen’s management of his private affairs. He knows his own business—or thinks he does—and he finds it hard to realize that the details of that business could ever grow beyond his personal control.

But, after all, this progress is one towards the normal. Attention to details in the case of the poor man is forced upon him. Except in rare cases, he does not really care to shovel his own snow; he would prefer to hire a man to do it, and as soon as he can he does do so. So long as his sidewalk is properly cleared he is willing to leave the details to the man who clears it. He does not care whether that man begins at the north or the south end, or whether his shovelfuls are small or large.

Here, if we examine, we shall find a common characteristic of those kinds of work where laymen are in control—the persons for whom the work is done care very much about results; they are careless of methods so long as those results are attained. And in a very large number of cases the persons for whom the work is done will be found to be the public, or so large a section of it that it is practically a group of laymen so far as the particular work in question may be concerned.

A lay board of directors or a lay departmental head, then, is simply and properly a representative of a greater lay body that is particularly anxious for results and not particularly anxious about methods. Lay control is thus not illogical, but is the outcome of a regular and very proper development. But, as has been said, it is not the only method of controlling a great institution. An institution may be managed by a graded body of experts. So were the old guilds of craftsmen managed. So are many ecclesiastical bodies, notably the Roman Catholic Church. We may call this method of control hierarchical. It has some advantages over lay control and some disadvantages. We may imagine such a system applied to libraries. All the libraries in a state, we will say, would then be managed by the state librarian, and all these officers would be subject to the orders of the librarian of the national library, who would be supreme and accountable to no one. Without going into detailed discussion of this extremely supposititious case, we may say that the objection to it would be that the persons who are especially interested in the results of the work done are not represented in the controlling hierarchy. Where the persons interested are all experts, as in a guild of craftsmen, there can perhaps be no objection to control by experts; though even in this case we are leaving out of consideration the persons, generally laymen, for whom the craftsmen do their work.

In fact, any trouble that may arise from the lay control of a body of expert workers lies just here—in the failure either of the controlling authority or the trained subordinates to recognize and keep within their limitations. It should be the function of the supreme lay authority to decide what results it wants and then to see that it gets them—to call attention to any deviation from them and to replace those who cannot achieve them by others who can. It should be the part of the expert staff of subordinates to discover by what methods these results can best be reached and then to follow out these methods.

When the lay head attempts to direct the details of method, or when the trained subordinate thinks it his duty to influence the policy of the institution, then there is apt to be trouble.

Such results are apt to follow, on the one hand, the inclusion in a board of trustees of a man with a passion for detail and a great personal interest in the work under him, but without a keen realization of the necessity for strict organization and discipline in his expert staff; or, on the other hand, from the presence in that staff of a masterful man who cannot rest until he is in virtual control of whatever he concerns himself about.

I say trouble is apt to follow in such cases. It does not always follow, for the organization may adapt itself to circumstances. The interested trustee may play with ease his two roles, fitting into his board as a lay member and becoming practically also a part of the expert staff. The masterful subordinate may dominate his board so as to become its dictator, and thus do away for a time with his lay control. We have all seen both these things happen, not only in libraries, but in banks, in hospitals, in charitable institutions. In some cases it has been well that they have happened. But although an occasional stick is flexible enough to be tied into a knot, it would be hazardous to try the experiment with all sticks. Some may bend but more will break.

Is it not better to accept frankly the division of labor that seems to have been pointed out by the development of our institutions for the guidance of their management?

Boards of trustees in this case would find it necessary to decide first on the desirable results to be reached in their work. This is a phase of library discussion that has been somewhat neglected. What is the public library trying to get at? Not stated in vague terms, but in concrete form, so that the trustees can call the librarian to account if he fails to accomplish it? It is only fair to the librarian that he should be informed at the outset precisely what he is expected to do, and then it is only fair that he should be left to do it in his own way.

This is an unoccupied field, and it would be an eminently proper one for the Trustees’ Section of the American Library Association. We librarians should be very glad to know just what you expect us to accomplish, for on that depends our manner of setting to work. Do you wish us to aim at decreasing the percentage of illiteracy in the community? or the arrests for drunkenness? Are we to strive for an increased circulation? And will an absolute increase be satisfactory, or must it be an increase proportionate to population? Is it definitely demanded of us to decrease our fiction percentage? Shall we, in any given case, devote our attention chiefly to the home use or the reference use of the library? Shall we favor the student or the ordinary citizen? These questions, of course, cannot receive a general answer; they must be decided differently in different cases, but at least we may agree on the type of question that it is admissible to answer at all and on the degree of detail to which it is permissible to go in stating a requirement.

For instance, is it admissible for a board to say to its librarian, “The results that we require you to show include the following: A well-ordered collection of books classified according to the Dewey system, bound in half duck and distributed with the aid of the Browne charging system?” I think it will be granted that this would be an attempt to control the details of method in the guise of a statement of desired results. But where shall we draw the line? How specific may be the things that a board may properly require of its expert staff? That is the question whose solution by this Section would be an inestimable benefit to all libraries and librarians. At present there is wide difference of opinion and of practice on this point. Many people would not agree at all with the limitations that have just been laid down; even those who do agree would differ widely over their interpretation.

There is hardly time to anticipate and meet criticism. I shall be reminded, I suppose, that the funds for carrying on the library’s work are in the hands of the trustees, and that one of the main objects of their existence is to see that the money is honestly spent, not stolen or wasted. How can they do this without close oversight of methods? To this I would reply that this important function of the board is distinctly the requirement of a result, that result being the honest administration of the library. The method by which it may be administered most honestly is best left to the expert head. Naturally, if evidence of peculation or waste comes before the board the librarian will be held to account as having failed to achieve the required result of honest administration. In this and in other respects the necessity that the board should know whether or not the desired results are being attained means that the work of the executive officer should be followed with attention. It must be evident, however, that this does not involve control and dictation of methods.

It must also be remembered that what has been said refers only to the administrative control of the institution. The duties of trustees as custodians of an endowment fund, if such there be, or in soliciting and receiving contributions as well as other financial considerations, are separate from this and have not been considered.

Again, I shall be told that the head of the executive staff is not only a subordinate but also an expert adviser of his board. This is true; and as a consulting expert it is his duty to give advice outside of his own administrative field if he is asked for it. It may even be his duty to give it unasked occasionally, but this comes very near to the interference that I have deprecated. He who would tread this borderland must tread softly. On the other hand, the expert may and should ask the advice of members of his board as individuals or of the board as a whole when he needs it and when he feels that it would give him confidence or strengthen his hand. In this whole matter there is a clear distinction between the advisory and executive function on one hand and on the other.

In short, the view taken in this paper may be briefly summed up as follows: Lay control in libraries and elsewhere is a logical and proper development. It would not, on the whole, be well for one who should wish to endow a library to make an expert librarian sole trustee for life with power to select his successor. That would be a fine thing for the librarian, but it would be neither desirable nor proper. It is well that the trustees should be responsible representatives of the lay public, for whose benefit the library is to be conducted. But as the public is interested chiefly in results, the trustees should confine themselves largely to the indication and requirement of these results, leaving methods in the hand of their expert staff of subordinates. And it is eminently desirable that librarians should hear from a representative body of trustees some expression of opinion regarding the extent of this limitation.

THE WHOLE DUTY OF A LIBRARY TRUSTEE: FROM A LIBRARIAN’S STANDPOINT[4]

At a former meeting of this section the present writer had the honor of reading a paper in which he made an attempt to show that the trustee of the public library is the representative of the public and, as such, interested especially in results as distinguished from methods, which are the business of the librarian as an expert administrator. In making this distinction I urged trustees to give particular attention to the formulation of such results as they should consider desirable, that librarians on their part might confine themselves more to the consideration of appropriate methods for the attainment of these results. So far as I know, however, this work remains to be accomplished, and it is because I still think it desirable that I welcome this opportunity of restating the situation and making some attempt to illustrate it and to indicate what may and should be done in the premises. According to this view it is not only the duty of a board of trustees to consider what should be the results aimed at by its library, to formulate its conclusions, to communicate them to the librarian and then to hold him responsible for their attainment, but everything that the board may properly do may be brought under this head; and to state it broadly is therefore to set forth comprehensively the “whole duty of a trustee,” which may serve as the justification of my somewhat ambitious title.

The layman’s influence, control exercised by and through the viewpoint of the general public, is a most excellent thing, however much the expert may chafe under it. This is apparent in every art and craft. The expert, the man who has made a study of technique, of the way to do it, comes more and more to think of the method rather than the result—to elaborate detail and manner and to take keen joy in their recognition and comparison. So it is with the worker in art or in literature, and thus we have what are called painter’s pictures and musician’s music and poet’s poems—works that interest and delight those whose business it is to produce them, but which leave the general reader or hearer cold. It is evident that these, no matter how valuable or interesting they may be from one standpoint, are not the highest examples of their class. Better are the crude attempts of native genius which kindle enthusiasm and arouse the best impulses while breaking every canon of art. Best of all, of course, are the works where the technique and the result are both admirable and where the technical resources of the workers are brought to bear consciously, directly and successfully upon the attainment of the result. And to produce such works two forces must generally co-operate—the trained skill and enthusiasm of the artist and the requirement of the general public that his work must appeal to them, interest them, take them a message. Now this is of interest to us here and now, because, just as we occasionally have “composer’s music” and “architect’s buildings,” so, it is “to be feared, we may have librarian’s libraries—institutions that are carried on with the highest degree of technical skill and with enthusiasm and interest and yet fail of adequate achievement because the librarian makes the mistake of regarding the technique as an end instead of as a means—of thinking that if his methods be precise, systematic and correct, good results must needs follow, instead of aiming directly at his results and adapting his methods to their attainment.

It is here that the trustee, as the official representative of the general public, may apply a corrective influence. In the case of the artist or the writer this influence is brought to bear generally in a financial way—by a wealthy patron who will order a picture or statue provided it accords with his own ideas—by hostile criticism, public or private, that drives away purchasers. In a public library, public opinion rarely makes itself felt in this way; indeed, it could do so only in cases where disregard of the public amounted to mismanagement and led to the reduction of appropriations or the discharge of the librarian. Public criticism, as in the press, might also affect a librarian’s course; it undoubtedly often does, but it need not; and he may safely disregard it as a general thing. When, however, his board of trustees calls him to account, he must listen, and when it tells him what he is expected to do, it is then his business to devise the best way to do it.

A rough classification and analysis of the results that a librarian may be expected to accomplish may not be out of place here. We may treat them under four heads: financial, educational, recreational and social.

Financial results.—A library must show a good material return for money expended. By this is meant that its books and supplies must be purchased at fair rates, its salaries reasonably proportioned to quantity and quality of services rendered, its property economically administered. A board of trustees is derelict in its duty if it does not require all this, and also hold its librarian rigidly to such requirement. This means that it must, along the broadest lines, know the ratio of expenditure to return in these various departments; it does not mean that the librarian should be hampered by the prescription of details. It means, for example, that the expert administrator should be called to account if his bills for lighting and heating are excessive, and that he should be asked to show cause why they should not be kept within bounds; it does not mean that he should be required to use lights of a certain candle-power or turn off the light in a particular room at a given hour. In most libraries, the making of annual appropriations under designated heads and the requirement that cause shall be shown for a transfer from one of these categories to another, are sufficient measures of financial control.

Among the financial results that have already attracted the attention of the public and hence engaged the interest of boards of trustees is the attainment of a proper ratio of expenditure for books to the expense of administration. This ratio is generally regarded by the lay critic as abnormally small, but trustees have generally acquiesced in the librarian’s explanation of the causes that seem to him to make it necessarily so. It is undoubtedly the trustee’s duty to call his expert administrator’s attention to this and all other seeming discrepancies in expenditure, and to make sure that they are not carrying the library too far toward technical perfection at the expense of practical efficiency.

Educational results.—It is only right to require that a library should be able to show that it is increasing the educational content of the community, or raising its educational standard, or at least that it is exerting itself to do so, both directly and by co-operation with other agencies, especially with the public schools. A board of trustees is certainly justified in ascertaining by any means in its power whether this is being done, and if not, in asking an explanation of its librarian. Does everyone in the community know where the library is? Is everyone who would be benefited by it making use of it? Is it a help to the schools, and do the teachers recognize this fact? Does the community in general regard it as a place where material for the acquisition of knowledge is stored and discriminatingly given out? These are questions that can be settled not so much by the examination of statistics as by ascertaining the general feeling of the community. It is much easier for a trustee to find this out than it is for a librarian; and trustees, both individually and as a body, should continually bear in mind the value to them of information along this line. Librarians are apt to talk a good deal about the educational function of the library as an adjunct and supplement to the school. It is to their credit that they have made it an educational force not under pressure but voluntarily, as a recognition of the necessities of the situation. But where such necessities have not yet been recognized or where their full import has been slow of realization, the educational side of library work remains undeveloped. Let the board of trustees notify its executive officer that it expects him to look to this feature of his work as thoroughly as to the condition of his building or the economical expenditure of his lighting appropriation, and all such institutions will experience a change of heart.

Recreational results.—Nothing is more important to the physical and moral health of a community, as of an individual, than the quality of the recreation that it takes. The question of whether recreation is or is not taken need not be considered. Everyone takes recreation; if means for the healthy normal variety are not provided, the other kind will occupy its place. And the healthy normal individual—child or adult—prefers the first kind if he can get it. With the physical variety the library has nothing to do; but to purvey proper intellectual recreation is one of its most important provinces. Is this adequately done? Is it done at all? Does the librarian exalt other functions of his great machine and neglect this one? The large amount of fiction circulated in most public libraries is generally taken as an indication that the quantity of its recreational content is considerable, whatever may be said of the quality; but this is a very superficial way of looking at the matter. There is educational material of the highest value in fiction and nearly every non-fiction class contains books of value for recreation. Moreover, what may be recreation to one man may be the hardest kind of study to another. The enthusiast in higher mathematics may extract as pure amusement from a book on the theory of functions as his neighbor would from the works of “John Henry.” In short, it is very difficult to separate education and recreation. Good work presupposes good play. It is simply our duty to view the library as a whole and to decide whether it contains the means of satisfying so much of the community’s demand for recreation as is wholesome and proper. Whether it does this may be judged from the freedom with which the library is used for recreational purposes compared with other agencies. A proper admixture of physical and intellectual amusement is required by everybody; is the library doing its share toward the purveying of the latter form? I do not know any better way of finding out than for the library trustees to use their eyes and ears, nor any more effective remedy for inadequate results along this line than the pressure that they can bring to bear on their librarian.

Social results.—Under this head we may group a very large number of results that are apt to be overlooked or taken for granted. They may perhaps be summarized in the statement that the library should take its proper place in the institutional life of the community. What this is will depend largely on the community’s size and its social content. In many small towns the library naturally assumes great social importance; in a city it may be relatively of less weight, though perhaps its influence in the aggregate may be even greater. Whether it is doing this part of its work properly may probably be best ascertained by comparison with the work of other institutions that go to build up the social fabric—the church, the home, the club, the social assembly. Does the dweller in the community turn as naturally to the library for intellectual help as he does to the church for religious consolation? Does he seek intellectual recreation there as he seeks physical recreation at his athletic club or social entertainment at a dance? And so seeking, does he find? Does he come to regard the library as his intellectual home and the librarian and his assistants as friends? What, on the other hand, is the attitude of the library staff toward the public? Is it inviting or repellent, friendly or coldly hostile, helpful or indifferent? Here is a whole body of results that are, in a way, the most important that a library can produce, and yet it is impossible to set them down in figures; they can scarcely even be expressed in words. The social status of a library is like a man’s reputation or his credit; it is built up by thousands of separate acts and by an attitude maintained consistently for years; yet a breath may blast it Of this position a board of trustees should be particularly proud and its members should do their best to uphold it. If they realize by those many delicate indications that we all recognize but cannot formulate, that the library is failing to maintain it, the librarian should hear from them. They should let him know that something is wrong and that they expect him to right it. If he does not know how, that is an indication that his personality and ability are parts of the failure.

This, then from the writer’s standpoint, is the whole duty of a trustee—or rather of a board of trustees—to see clearly what it wants, to give the librarian his orders, and to require an accounting.

I am frequently struck with the attitude of librarians toward their boards of trustees, not as shown in their public acts, but as revealed in conversation among themselves. A board is apt to be adjudged good or bad, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, as it takes a more or less passive part in the administration of the library. If it acts simply to approve what the librarian does and to see that he gets the necessary funds, it is regarded as ideal. All that most librarians seem to want is to be given plenty of money and then to be let alone. This is a view of the whole duty of a trustee with which I do not sympathize. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that boards of trustees have done much to encourage this attitude because when they are really active in their interest their activity looks too closely to detail. They are then apt to interfere in the regulation of methods rather than to require results and afterward ascertain whether and in what degree these results have been reached.

A board of trustees is the supreme authority in a library. I would have this fact realized in its fullest meaning by both trustees and librarian. And I would have the board exercise its supremity in what may be called the American manner. The people constitute the supreme authority both in Great Britain and in the United States. In the former country, however, this authority is symbolized by the person of a monarch, who reigns but does not govern; and the minutest details of administration are attended to by the people in the persons of their parliamentary representatives and of the cabinet, which is, in effect, a parliamentary committee. In this country, on the other hand, we entrust administrative details very largely to our chief magistrate and his personally appointed advisers. We tell him what to do and leave him to do it as he thinks best; and though Congress is disposed at times to interfere in the details of administration, these usually consist more largely of departmental decisions and rulings than of definite provisions of a legislative act. The President of the United States is the people’s general executive officer and administrative expert in precisely the same sense that the librarian occupies that office in his own library. Congress and the board of trustees bear similar relations to these officers. And although this may be carrying the comparison of small things with great to the point of absurdity, it shows clearly that the American idea of delegated authority is to make the authority great and the corresponding responsibility strict. That the best results have been attained in this country by following out this plan in all fields, from the highest government positions to the humblest commercial posts, seems to be undoubted; and I believe that the library has been a conspicuous example.

Appoint a good man, then, as your administrative expert; give him a free rein, but not in the sense of following him to dictate the whole policy of your library. Decide for yourselves the broad lines of that policy, relying on your own common sense together with his expert advice; require him to follow out those lines to a successful issue, and hold him responsible for the outcome. So doing you shall fulfil, so far as the limited vision of one librarian enables him to see, the whole duty of a trustee.

THE DAY’S WORK: SOME CONDITIONS AND SOME IDEALS[5]

What is the library for? What are we, who are in charge of it, to do with it? What point are we striving to reach, and how shall we get there?

First of all, the library is a collection of books. Books are to be used by reading them. The whole machinery of the library, its buildings, its departments, its regulations, its disciplined staff, are to bring together the reader and the books. Whatever auxiliary work the library may undertake, this must be its first task.

Now to what end is this done? A book from the material point of view is so much leather, paper and printer’s ink, but on the intellectual and spiritual side it is a storage battery of ideas. To put a book into a reader’s hand is to complete a mysterious circuit between the writer’s and the reader’s mind. This charging of the mind with ideas is what we call education. To the physiologist it is a mere modification of brain structure; to the economist and the historian it spreads further out; it is a modification of the individual’s action toward the whole world; it is the alteration of the world’s present status and future history. Education cannot be accomplished by books alone; it can even be accomplished wholly without them; but if they are used properly, there is no one agent that can do more for education than these devices for the storage and transmission of ideas. That the library is an educational institution is now generally recognized. It is common to call it an adjunct to the school, or to speak of it as continuing the work of the school. That the school and the library should work hand in hand where it is possible, goes without saying. But I think we may properly object to any phraseology that implies the subordination of the library to the school. The library stores books and makes them available. Part of the school’s work also is to make available the contents of books. The library may continue the work of the school; but so in some cases may the school merely complete the work of the library. Many a student has received his first inspiration and instruction in the library and has been thereby stimulated to enter a regular course of study. It is better to let the library stand on its own merits as an instructional agent. The difference between it and the school, fundamentally, is that the library’s educational energy is chiefly potential while that of the school is, or should be, dynamic. Yet though the library is only a potential force—energy in storage—the library plus the librarian may and should be dynamic too. We then have in both school and library the book and the teacher, with the difference that in the school the book is only the teacher’s tool, while in the library the librarian exists to care for the book, to place it in his hands who needs it, and to make it effective.

But when we have emphasized the educational side of the library’s activity we have by no means exhausted its field. Its recreative function is hardly less important. A very large proportion of the library’s users go to it for recreation or relaxation. They obtain this, of course, in the same way that they obtain education from books, namely, by the acquisition of new ideas or mental images. The recreation comes in from the fact that these ideas temporarily distract the attention from other ideas connected with daily work and worry, and that they ease the brain in the same way that a strained muscle may be eased by gentle exercise. Evidently it is impossible to draw a line between these two classes of a library’s activity. A zoological or a botanical garden is an educational institution, so is an art museum. Yet the large majority of those who go to them do so for amusement, and the educational benefits obtained are incidental. Those benefits, however, are none the less real, and it would evidently be impossible to give separate statistics of those who have made educational and recreative use of the institution. Yet we find people trying to do this very thing in the case of the public library, which case is quite comparable with those stated above. It is assumed, in the first place, that the use of fiction is purely recreative, while that of non-fiction is educational; and, in the second place, that the recreative use of the library is to be condemned or at least discouraged, in comparison with the other. That either of these can be sustained is very doubtful. The attempted subordination of the recreative work of the library to the educational is at best invidious. Each has its place in the scheme of things and comparison in this case is worse than odious, it is misleading. Further, it is positively impossible to draw a line between educational and recreative books. So far as motives go, one may read Gibbon for entertainment and Madame de Stael’s “Corinne” as an Italian guide book. So far as results are concerned, the intelligent reader always acquires new ideas as he reads; and in most cases the very same idea may and does have both an educational and a recreative function. But although we can draw no line, it is quite possible to pick out books on the one side and on the other, and to assert that these are read chiefly for educational purposes and those for recreation. On which side shall the library throw its influence? There are many good librarians who feel that the popular tendency is too strong towards recreation and that the library should restore the balance by throwing its weight on the other side. Others see in the popular desire for recreative reading only a hopeful reaction from the mental tension and overwork with which, as a nation, we are doubtless chargeable. Between these two points of view I believe that the equilibrium of the public library is safe, and that it is in no danger of developing unduly either on the recreative or on the educational side.

Personally I have never felt that the user of libraries or any other type of the average American was in danger from too much recreation. If there is any use of a library that may have a vicious tendency it is its use for pure pastime in the etymological sense—the reading of books with absolutely no aim at all save to make the time pass. Now to make time pass pleasantly or profitably may be a most legitimate object. Not that, and not any lawful aim is objectionable. But aimlessness—the lack of an aim—the taking out of books to skim or to glance at, or to look at the pictures, with no desire for amusement, or profit, or anything else—that is certainly worthy of condemnation. There is more of it than we know, and it constitutes a menace to our intellectual future. Newspaper reading fosters it, but not necessarily. Newspaper reading with an aim is far better than aimless skimming and skipping of a literary classic, and I should rather see a boy of mine reading the most sensational dime novel he could lay hands on, with the definite desire and intention of finding out how Bloody Bill got his revenge, than lazily turning over the pages of Scott with no idea of what the story was about. The first would be the case of a good reader and a bad book; the second that of a good book and a bad reader. The library can easily deal with the book; it cannot so easily manage the reader, though it may try to do so. In the case of the bad reader the storage battery of ideas has lost its connection. It would be well for some of us if we should forget for the moment the difference between fiction and non-fiction and should try to mend this broken link.

And now a word about ourselves. What are we, who are engaged in this work, laboring for? Why are we working, and what do we expect to accomplish? In answering this question it will be better for us to free ourselves entirely from the bondage of words that mean nothing. Some of us—I hope very many of us—are in the library work solely because we love it and cannot keep out of it. Others are trying with more or less success to persuade themselves that this is their reason. Still others cannot truthfully say that they have had a “call to library work,” and some of these are conscientious enough to fear that they are in the wrong place and that the work is suffering thereby. To these I desire to address a word of consolation and encouragement. The impression is very general that the greatest work of the greatest minds had no motive but the productive impulse. The poet, according to this view, sings because he cannot help singing; the artist paints solely to satisfy the creative longing within him; the musician composes for the same reason. Now the fact is that a man who is capable of great work, or of ordinarily good work, may produce it under a variety of impulses. Some act more strongly on one man; others on another; or the same man may be more susceptible to a given impulse at one time or place than at another. Without a doubt, many of our immortal works were the result of simple inability to keep from producing them. But just as certainly, others were the work of men who had to school themselves by long practice and then to hold themselves to the work with iron determination. “Genius” says Carlyle, “is nothing but an infinite capacity for taking pains.” To which a modern critic replies, “On the contrary, genius is an infinite capacity for doing things without taking any pains at all.” Both are right. There are both these kinds of genius—and many others. The writer who attempts to bind down genius to rules and formulae will have a hard task. And what is true of genius is also true of ordinarily good work—the work that you and I are trying to do in our libraries. Some of us do it easily because we cannot help it; others do it with more or less difficulty under the pressure of one or another need. One, though the work itself comes hard to him, loves the result to be accomplished; another, perhaps, is toiling primarily to support himself and those dependent on him. What of that? We have been placed where we are, to secure certain results. We want the help of every one who can contribute a share of honest, intelligent work toward the attainment of these results, and we shall not ask for motives or inquire into the exact amount of effort that was necessary, provided the work has been done and done well.

I have the greatest sympathy for the conscientious library assistant who feels that she ought to love her work in the same way perhaps that she loves music or skating, or a walk through the autumn woods, and who, because she does not sit down to paste labels or stand up to wait on the desk with the feeling of exhilaration that accompanies these other acts, is afraid that library work is not her métier.

Such workers should possess their souls in peace. It is very common for routine work to pall upon him who does it, and we are all apt to think that no work but ours has any routine. Our weary eyes see only the glorious moments of success in the lives of other toilers; we are blind to the years of drudgery that led to them. The remedy is to look forward. You may not enjoy climbing the mountain step by step, but the view from the summit is glorious. And if to sustain yourself on the climb you think of the bread and cheese that you have in your lunch basket, I cannot see that there is aught to complain of.

All over the world there are workers who feel that they are not worthy of their work. It is dull; it palls on them. But if their lot had only been different! If their work had been that of the musician or the artist! Then toil would become pleasure, and the hours that now drag heavily would flit on wings. Very little of this feeling is justifiable, and these dissatisfied workers will do better work if they are made to realize that it is only the favored few who can bring enthusiasm to the daily routine. The most that we can ask of the average worker is a conviction of the usefulness of his work and a determination to make it as useful as possible. More: such a determination honestly lived up to is sure to beget interest—that concrete interest in one’s work that is worth much more, practically, than an ideal love for it. The woman who goes into slum work impelled only by a vague love for humanity is apt to give up after a little when she discerns that humanity in the concrete is offensive in so many ways. But if she forces herself to keep on, and to make herself as useful as possible, there comes the personal interest that will bind her to her task and that will increase its usefulness. So it is with library work; you need not love it ideally to succeed in it; you need only buckle down to it until you feel the personal interest that will carry you through triumphantly.

And what is it all about? In the broadest sense, as I have already said, we librarians are the purveyors of ideas stored up in books. These ideas are more to man than mere education—they are life itself. Life is growth, not stagnation—it involves change and acquisition. “Life is change,” says Cardinal Newman, “and to be perfect, one must have changed many times.” To contribute the opportunity and the stimulus for such change is our business. The child cries out to his environment—“Give me ideas and experiences; good and pleasurable if you can, bad or painful, if you must, but give me ideas and experiences.” Part of this craving it is the duty of the public library to satisfy. The craving may grow less keen as we grow older, but it never really ceases to exist. To satisfy that craving in legitimate ways and to guide and control it if we can is our business, stated in the broadest possible terms. That is what we are aiming at. The librarian should be the broadest minded of mortals. He should be a man in the widest sense—to him nothing human should be alien.

This is decidedly broad and correspondingly vague. Being so, it may be interpreted by every worker in the way that appeals to him most. To one, the educational work of the library will make the strongest appeal; to another its recreational function. One may prefer to lay stress on the guidance of children’s reading; another on reference work with adults. These are all phases of one and the same general class of acts—the imparting of ideas by means of books—and there is no reason why each worker should not gain interest in that work by and through the particular phase that appeals to him.

“I wish,” says one of James Lane Allen’s characters, “that some virtue—say the virtue of truthfulness—could be known throughout the world as the unfailing mark of the American. Suppose the rest of mankind would agree that this virtue constituted the characteristic of the American! That would be fame for ages.” We librarians, in like manner, not only wish but strive to make some one virtue characteristic of our work—say the virtue of usefulness. “As useful as a librarian,” “As indispensable as the public library”—these are not yet, I am afraid, household phrases. But why should we not make them so?

LIBRARY STATISTICS

Statistics are the numerical statements of results or facts. Now thousands of individuals and thousands of bodies—families, clans, associations, that accomplish much in this world, go on very well without keeping any record at all of what they do. This is indisputable. On the other hand we shall see that as work is done well and carefully there is an increasing disposition to make and keep a record of results; and as the work extends in scope and complexity, the record, too, becomes more complex. Take, for instance, the record of so apparently simple a transaction as the payment and receipt of money. The individual who has little of it to receive and disburse may go all his life without keeping so much as a cash account, much less a set of books. He may even spend a considerable income in the same way, including the maintenance of a household and the support of a family, and he may, on the whole, do it wisely and well. Yet of two men of the same means, one of whom should conduct his affairs thus, while the other kept a rational system of household and personal accounts, the latter would universally be regarded as pursuing the better course. And as we pass from this to the conduct of a business we recognize that the man who engages in commerce without keeping proper accounts is a fool and courts failure, and that the larger the business and the more widespread the interests, the more complicated and extensive must be the bookkeeping. A large commercial concern may thus employ a special department with a large staff of men simply to keep record of its financial transactions. This is probably the most ancient kind of statistical record and the one whose usefulness is most generally recognized.

In like manner another common and useful statistical record—the inventory, or list of articles on hand—although not commonly and regularly taken by the individual, becomes absolutely necessary in the smallest kind of business, and without it the merchant can have absolutely no idea, of whether he is conducting his business at a profit or a loss. When we go on further and examine, the conduct of great commercial or manufacturing concerns we find that the statistical department becomes of increasing importance, the details collected by it multiply and the staff of persons whose sole duty it is to collect and to discuss them may be very considerable. That a great manufacturing company would waste time and money on a task of no value is inconceivable, and there is thus a very strong presumption that statistics are worth something. Even where bodies of men have so little power or corporate action that they cannot collect statistics for themselves, it is generally deemed a proper expenditure of the public money to do so at the common cost, hence governments maintain great census bureaus, whose duty it is not only to count heads every few years but to tell the farmer how much he raises, the merchant how much merchandise he exports, and so on.

Is the free public library an institution that will be benefited by the collection, tabulation and discussion of the results of its work, so far as they can be numerically expressed? What are the objects of such collection in the instances above enumerated? In the first place, they are to satisfy mere curiosity. If such curiosity is trivial, the collection of statistics is evidently useless, and I am afraid that more than a little of it, public and private, falls under this head. But curiosity, even when it goes no further, may be perfectly legitimate. Especially is this so about one’s own affairs. When a man is attempting anything he is naturally curious to know whether he has succeeded or not; and to find out, if possible, precisely how far he has gone in the desired direction. He may have property enough to support him beyond all doubt, but it is quite right that he should want to keep a list of his stocks and bonds and to know whether they have risen or fallen in value during the year. Still further, curiosity about other people’s affairs may be legitimate, as, for instance, when one is responsible for their proper conduct in greater or less degree. In the same way the trustees of a free public library, representing the public at large, by whom the library is supported and carried on, have a right to know all possible particulars regarding the way in which their librarian has carried on his work and the results he has reached in it, and the municipality in turn should require of the trustees a strict account of the funds that they have administered. All this information, as far as it can be stated numerically, constitutes a mass of statistics, and this one reason amply justifies its collection and would justify a much larger number of tables than is usually given in a library report, provided only that the information is to the point and is or should be in public demand.

But we cannot stop here. A free library, it is true, is not a money-making concern, but it certainly should be run on business principles. The public puts into it a large sum of money and has a right to expect certain returns, which are none the less definite that they cannot themselves be represented in dollars and cents. The library statistic books are therefore, in a way, the records of the business; they show whether it is being conducted conservatively or wastefully, at a profit or at a loss. And as all these record books are open, they enable us, or should enable us to make instructive comparisons between the methods and results of one institution and those of another.

But even this is not all. It is a maxim of this strenuous age that all things are good or bad according to the results to which they lead, not in the narrow sense that “the end justifies the means,” but in the broader sense that we must know things by their fruits. The man who said “I go, sir,” and went not, was judged by his acts, not by his words; and no matter how much knowledge we store up and how many tables of data we collect we shall be derelict in our duty if we regard this as an end in itself. The state of mind in which the Mahatma spends his life in impassivity, contemplating inward things and making no outward motion, may have certain advantages, but it is not consonant with the spirit of this age and this land. By which I mean that when we have found out something from our statistics we must do something with it. More; we must so direct our statistical investigations that they bear directly on a possible course of action. This is done by the great manufacturing concerns that maintain statistical departments; but we all use statistics in this way. If a boy wants to go to the circus he first looks through his pockets to see whether he has enough cash. Here is the germ of a statistical investigation conducted for the specific purpose of getting information on which future action is to be based. Here sometimes, where the opportunity of collecting statistics is very great, and expense is no object, is a good excuse for gathering a great deal that would seem to be useless, with the expectation that some of it may turn out to be interesting and may suggest some line of work that had not previously been thought of. To go as far as this, the institution must be large and rich.

But how many of us do anything with our statistics? How many collect statistics along special lines to assist in deciding what we shall do along those lines? How many of us, rather, consider that, when our statistics have been collected a disagreeable task has been done, and put them behind us till the year rolls round again?

Perhaps we have had enough now of the philosophy of statistics. Let us see what concrete kinds of statistics are necessary and in what order of importance.

First comes an itemized account of receipts and expenditures. This is so obvious that it is not generally considered as library statistics at all. But it may and should be extended a little. Look at all your other tables of statistics through financial spectacles. Compare your receipts with your population. How much does your town give per capita for library work? Compare this figure with the same for other towns. Compare your expenditures with your circulation. How much has your library cost you per book circulated? Compare your expenditure for books with the number purchased and tell us the average cost of a book and how this compares with the cost in former years. Do this for a half-dozen other phases of your work and put the result in as many brief, crisp sentences. If you haven’t room in your report, cut out some of the platitudes; we all insert them in moments of weakness and, once in, it sometimes requires an earnest search to detect and expunge them.

Next in importance comes an account of your books—how many there are in the library, on what subjects, and how many have been added during the year in each subject; how many gifts you have had; how many books have been lost. This involves taking a careful inventory at least once a year. You see I am putting this before any account of circulation. A good many libraries take no inventory or take it at too infrequent intervals, because they have no time. You might as well say you have no time to keep a cash account. This is business and comes first. Leave off counting your circulation if you must, but keep count of the public property in your care as conscientiously as you keep count of the money in your cash drawer. If you can do nothing else make a simple enumeration of volumes without taking account of classes, but do it thoroughly. The trouble with the inventory is that, like the old-fashioned housecleaning, it is usually done all at once and becomes an annual bugbear. One way of making it easier is to spread it over the year, counting and reporting one class every month and treating it as a part of the regular routine. In this category of statistical records comes the list of your books, which you must surely have in some form, even though you may not have accession book, shelf list and dictionary catalog. For statistical purposes indeed, the last-named may be left out of account.

Next in order of importance come statistics of circulation. You should know how many books are given out for home use every day and how these are distributed among the classes. Do not adhere too strictly to your classification. Subdivide and combine your classes so that the results will be of interest to your particular public. Always remember in discussing these statistics that they are not so much a record of work done as a rough proportional indication of that work, and are therefore of relative, not of absolute interest. You are not to attach any meaning to the fact, taken by itself, that your circulation was 5280 for the month of May, but if you find that it was only 3120 in the previous May you may justly conclude that the work of your library is increasing.

In the circulation category comes the record of the hall or library use of books, the reference use, and the books outstanding at any particular time. Hall use is very difficult to keep in a free access library, but an attempt should be made to do so. It is not quite synonymous with reference use. If a man sits down in your library and actually reads a novel without taking it home, that is hall or library use, but not reference use. If he merely refers to the same book to find out about some character, that is reference use. It is evidently hard to separate these and many libraries do not attempt to do so. In others, where there is a separate reference room, any use of books in this room is recorded as “reference use.” The number of books outstanding should be taken at least once a month, simply by counting the cards in the circulation tray. This item is very easy to ascertain, very accurate, and is interesting and useful in more than one way.

Last in the list of the necessary items of statistics comes that of readers or users of the library—the most interesting in some ways, and the most disappointingly vague. Presumably your users fill out some kind of blank form of application and have their names entered in a book. It is therefore easy to give, as is usually done, the total registration and its annual increase. But this is evidently not the number of actual users of the library. Who are the “actual users”? The expression itself is vague. To be complete you should have the numbers of those who have used the library within one, two, and three days, and so on back indefinitely. There is no place where the line may be drawn between “live” and “dead” cards. But such statistics are too elaborate to collect regularly, so that the ordinary library leaves this subject in its pristine mistiness. There are some pretty variations of it, however, which may be gone into if there is time. For instance, how are your users divided, according to occupation? This you can ascertain from your applications provided the applicant is required to state his occupation. Here again the result is for registered users, not actual users. Again, how are your users distributed topographically? The result of this inquiry may be shown graphically on a map, and it is particularly valuable when one is thinking of moving or of establishing a branch; but it takes more time than is at the disposal of most librarians.

Here, I believe, ends the enumeration of necessary kinds of statistics. In each kind the collection may be reduced to a minimum; but the librarian must, if the library is to be maintained at all, keep a cash account, count the books, and make some kind of a list of them. Also, if at all possible she or he must be able to tell how many books are circulated and how many users’ names are on the books. This is the minimum; the maximum is fixed only by considerations of time and usefulness. First among the kinds of statistics that are not absolutely necessary, but interesting and often useful, is that of routine work done—letters written, visits made, cards written. This may easily be carried to excess. Then there is the enormous class in which the data are obtained not directly, but by comparison of other data. To this class belong the financial comparisons already noted. For instance, by comparing the circulation of separate classes with the total we get class percentages—a very useful type of statistics; by comparing circulation with books on shelves we get the average circulation of each book, etc. There is no end to the varieties of this class of statistics, and they may be rated all the way from “very valuable” to “useless” or even “nonsensical”. The whole class would require a separate paper to discuss.

Let all these statistics tell the truth. Let them be clear. Tell exactly what they mean. Otherwise they will certainly mislead and are worse than useless. It is well to accompany every table with an explanatory note telling exactly how the data were obtained and whether they are of a high or a low degree of accuracy. In case you do not know, for instance, whether the word “juvenile” as generally used means the entire circulation among children, or the circulation in the children’s room, or is merely short for “juvenile fiction,” decide what it shall mean in your case and then state distinctly what it means. Read over other library reports critically and when you find any statistics that are vague, see to it that that particular kind of vagueness does not occur in your own tables.

And after it is all over, ask yourself, Now what shall I do with all this? In this paper only a few suggestions can be made. Take first, the financial data. If you find that your town is giving less per capita or less per book circulated than the average, let it be your business to make it give more. There is a task that will fill up your spare moments. If you are paying for books more per book than other libraries, try to buy more cheaply. If your inventory shows a great loss of books by theft, try to reduce it next year by greater vigilance. If your circulation is decreasing ask the reason why. Get at it if you can and remedy it if possible. If your circulation shows a sudden increase in a particular class, investigate that and meet it, if proper, by increased purchases in that class. If a class that should circulate well has fallen, try to find out why. Is your collection in this class small and poor? Make it richer and larger. Has interest in the subject fallen off? Try to stimulate it.

In short, instead of regarding your work in connection with statistics as done when they have been collected, think that it has not yet begun. So far as your own work is concerned, let them serve only as an indication of the weak spots that must be strengthened and of the promising growths that must be encouraged. There are statistics and statistics. Some are dead; some are alive—vitalised and vitalizing. Not all of the library’s work can be stated in figures. The largest part, the best part, you cannot put into statistical tables at all. Yet rightly used, your statistics may so guide and direct you along the lines of least resistance, even in this broader and finer work, that your energies may be put forth in it to the best effect—that you may aim right and that your shots may not go astray.