And then when we have done all this—have librarians who know, and the things in print the business man needs, this one thing more we must do, we must let the business man know what we have for his particular problem and how we can serve him. The library must advertise the utility of ideas and of knowledge in the every day work of the world as well as advertise its resources and its service.
The best advertising is that which comes from a well served patron. But our libraries have thrown away one of the best means of publicity by locating their buildings where people must go out of their way to find them and by so arranging them that the passerby sees nothing but stone, brick and glass—things that suggest nothing of the joy and usefulness of books. Seeing great crowds enjoying and using books, as well as seeing attractive things in print through properly arranged show windows, would appeal to the average library user in a way that would simply compel his interest and attention in the things we have for him.
The architecture of the average library building suggests a tomb—a place for dead ones—rather than a place chock-full of the things that appeal with tremendous force to the soul that is alive with the throbbing impulses of this wonderful time in which we live.
Since our buildings deny us this great means of publicity which the show window enables every merchant to use to such great advantage, we must use as best we may such means as we find available. In a general way I may state my conviction that we should make a much larger use of the specific personal appeal as over against general publicity, though the latter is also necessary. When a man has a definite task assigned him put the resources and service of your library directly up to him for his particular problem, especially if the problem is one a little outside the circle of his regular business. It will come to him at the psychological moment and he is most likely to act on your suggestion; whereas had it come to him as a general statement before he was personally interested most likely it would have been promptly forgotten. As a part of our regular routine letters from the library go to all such persons, as we see their names in the newspapers, on programs, etc.
At the meeting of the Associated Advertising Clubs of America early this month in Baltimore I had the pleasure of "getting next" to some of the livest business men in the country. The thing that impressed me most was not the interesting exhibitions there shown or the various "stunts" that were pulled off, but the new note that some of the men were striking. It was this: "Business and business efficiency for service rather than for profit." This is a high ideal, worthy of any profession, and I venture the prediction that it will be men of this type who will more and more dominate the business world of the future. Such men will appreciate and support the public library more than business men have ever done before; but they will also require more. To get their support we as librarians must think less of measuring our efficiency in terms of circulation statistics, a kind of impersonal, bookkeeping standard, but more of measuring it in terms of human service—human service not only for the business man, but for every man, every woman and every child in all this vast continent of America.
The PRESIDENT: Great as is the opportunity of the public library to serve the business man, it can't do it all, for so highly specialized are some of the departments of interest of the various business houses that no public library without a treasury like that of our millionaire concerns could hope to undertake a work ofthat character. Therefore, each large business concern necessarily must supplement the resources of the public library by means of library facilities of its own. We shall hear something of this form of work this morning in the paper which is to be presented by one of the most successful of the libraries of this type, that of H. M. Byllesby & Co. of Chicago, whose librarian, Miss LOUISE B. KRAUSE, will give us the paper.
The service which books render mankind may in general be designated as falling into two classes; namely, books for inspiration and books for information. Dismissing the use of books as a means of inspiration, because the subject does not fall within the scope of this paper, let us consider the most important use to which printed information can be put, in the service of mankind. At first thought it might seem that the use of the printed page for purposes of information reached its highest service in the function of education, but granted that it does not play an important part in education, we know education to be something vastly larger than a mere knowledge of facts, and we also know that many men and women who are repositories of information derived from the printed page do not always put it into operation for the best welfare of their fellows; for, as James Russell Lowell has said, "There is nothing less profitable than scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship;" and truly scholarship without the ultimate purpose of practical service is one of the most selfish possessions in the world.
Let us therefore exclude the use of printed information in the service of education as its highest form of usefulness and consider the following statement. The use of print in furnishing information performs its most important service in the function which it exercises in modern business, because it is business which lays hold of abstract science and knowledge and puts them into practical operation for the greatest benefit to mankind; for the commercial age in which we live is not a sordid age, but an age which is distinctly marked by the development and conservation of resources for the supplying of man's needs, by means of the extension of applied science into the field of business. Now lest this statement should be too abstract, and the speaker be accused in the words of Leonard Merrick of "voicing the sentiments of the unthinking in stately language," let us consider this proposition for a moment in the concrete. It is business enterprise that has brought about, through the perfection of the steam engine, the swiftness and convenience which we enjoy in twentieth century travel by railroad. It is business that has brought the service of the telephone and telegraph to their highest perfection. It is business that has developed artificial lighting by gas and electricity and emancipated us from candles and kerosene lamps. It is business that is transforming raw and waste materials by the application of pure science, into products of service and value for the needs of innumerable homes, in addition to perfecting agricultural machinery, and producing fertilizers to enrich the land, thereby making possible the production of better crops. Thus we might continue to multiply illustrations of how business enterprise has equipped us with the means of meeting great needs which at various times have seriously threatened the welfare of human life. This fact of the application of abstract science to the world's practical needs, through the medium of business enterprise, has become permanently recognized by institutions of learning, as seen in the establishment of technical schools, schools of commerce and finance, and instruction in business administration, for, as a recent writer in the Journal of Political Economy has said, "The methods of American industry are rapidly being intellectualized."
A variety of professional work of which engineering and chemistry are noteworthyexamples are also carried on by large business organizations, and we find professional men of the highest rank as prime movers in large commercial enterprises. (In this connection it might not be amiss to state that out of an experience as university librarian and business librarian the speaker is inclined to think that the professional business man keeps more adequately informed and up to date on his specialties than does the average university professor.)
An additional fact which bears directly on the general subject under discussion is, that the age in which we live is not only a business age, but that it is an age marked by the magnitude of its business organizations; an age of "big business," as some one has called it; and because of the economic conditions of our advancing civilization, business will undoubtedly continue to be "big business" even though subjected to federal and state regulation. Now correlating these two facts, namely, that modern business is conducted by means of large organizations and that its success is based upon the intelligent application of scientific knowledge to practical needs, we have cleared the way for an appreciation of the function of printed information as embodied in the work of libraries in business organizations.
The business organization builds up its own library, first, on account of the convenience of having close at hand the information constantly needed by its workers, and subject to no borrowing restrictions, which would be inevitable even if the facilities of outside libraries were available; and second, on account of the necessity for careful selection of material particularly adapted to its individual needs. Business organizations have for many years collected information in a desultory manner, but it has been only in the last few years that some of them have awakened to the fact that more was needed than mere collection of printed information, and for the same reason that they were availing themselves of all modern devices for the quick and adequate handling of their various products and were systematizing their methods to obtain more efficient results, so they must lay hold of modern library methods under experienced supervision if they were to keep up with the steadily growing and important mass of printed information. Therefore we find business organizations securing the services of professional library workers, trained to use books in the broadest and most practical manner. Some hesitation was at first expressed in various quarters as to whether so-called professional library methods used in public and university libraries were suited to business library needs, and as to whether library workers educated for general library work would adequately meet the business library situation. In fact it was intimated that the business librarian was a worker of a different brand than the ordinary librarian and therefore he had both knowledge and needs which set him apart from his library fellows, in a special class by himself. Out of four years' experience as a business librarian the speaker takes pleasure in stating that practical experience has proved the fallacy of both of these conceptions. It is true that business librarians are called upon to exercise certain functions which the librarians of public and university libraries are not, but which any efficient head of a public or university library would be quite capable of exercising if the occasion demanded it. In fact the recent rise of library interest in business men and their needs can be directly traced to the heads of some of our public libraries and the work they have inaugurated in making their libraries as helpful as possible to all classes of citizens.
The characterization of the function of libraries in business organizations by the word "expanding" in the title assigned to this paper by the President of the American Library Association, is most apt, and indicative of the real status of the case. The business library is in a process of evolution, and just what the final resultwill be, it is a little too early in its development to state.
The elemental idea of the function of a business library that was held by the officers of the business organization with which the speaker is most familiar, was to have the books and data which were the property of the company, classified and cataloged so that material could be found quickly, and a librarian was employed solely on the basis of this need.
With the acquisition of a librarian the library situation soon changed from the inquiry for certain definite books and periodicals, to the inquiry as to whether the company had any specific information on a given subject, and if not as to whether printed information on the subject was available elsewhere and how quickly it could be obtained.
The evolution in the function of a library from that of furnishing a definite book asked for, to furnishing all the information obtainable on a given subject as quickly as possible is decidedly expensive, and the what, how and where of the case would furnish ample material for a separate paper.
The evolution in the function of the library did not stop at this point; for it was soon expected that the librarian would understand the specific interests of the members of the organization, and to a certain degree think for them in keeping up with the field of print and in bringing to their attention, without a request on their part, certain facts of which they would like to be cognizant. To this duty was added the forecasting of possible future needs, and the collection of information in advance of rush demands.
The magnitude of the work of modern business organizations requires the division of labor into a number of departments, and the workers in any one department may not always be acquainted with the information which may be available in another department. The library, by keeping in touch with individuals in all departments, becomes a central bureau of information in being able to refer the members of one department to those in another who possess the particular information desired.
The business library also assembles and files the manuscript data of original research conducted by members of the organization, materials which constitute one of its valuable assets. Research data in the possession of business corporations is often a worthy contribution to scholarship. An illustration of this fact was recently brought to the attention of the speaker, by the statement of a university student, who said that in making a study of the drinking waters of a certain state the only analyses of waters on record were those which a railroad had made primarily for the purpose of ascertaining the suitability of the waters for boiler use on locomotives.
In addition to these briefly outlined functions, which are more or less technical, attention should be directed to several others, lest a mistaken impression be given that business library work is entirely technical in its nature.
Business men are often called upon to serve the public as good citizens in various capacities, and also to serve as officers or on committees of national business organizations, and thus have interests outside of their regular company work. Their librarian is expected to assist in any need which arises by reason of these outside interests, and not only may be called upon to furnish information but also to do editorial work in preparing material for publication.
The welfare and education of employees has also become a prominent feature in the work of many large business corporations, and the library is expected to be a prominent factor in this work, as it is the logical educational center of the organization. Some of our business libraries have recently been drawn rather deeply into welfare work with the result that certain phases of practical library service are being neglected. It does not seem advisable, however, that the business librarian should annex any line of welfare work which does not legitimately center in thelibrary; for the librarian is best fitted to serve the interests of the organization by maintaining high standards of efficient library service rather than by annexing other kinds of work belonging solely to the sphere of a social worker. This is particularly important at the present stage of business library development, as the business world in many sections has not yet learned what professional library service really is, and how to utilize it most effectively.
In view of the fact that the business world except for comparatively few organizations is not utilizing the undoubtedly valuable service which professional librarians are able to render, and that the American Library Association has always endeavored to extend the use of books and their widest application, it might not be amiss to suggest that it would be legitimate work for the American Library Association with its library prestige and well known motives of personal disinterestedness, to undertake a campaign of education to bring before business men the subject of what library work really is, and the character of service it is prepared to render; for in these days of the over-emphasized and often superficial cry for more efficiency, there is no line of work that is more genuinely efficient than that of the trained librarian. The information, to be put before business men, should be free from library technicalities and details, and its arguments should be framed, not to enlighten librarians, but to convince busy men of affairs possessed of shrewd judgment and large foresight, as to the practical worth of the matter as a business proposition. For library work in business organizations is no longer a theory or a tentative experiment, but has proved itself in the firms adopting it to be an integral part of the successful work of the corporation. This fact is well illustrated by a bulletin recently issued by a large business firm, in which it endeavored to put before the public, in a pamphlet entitled "Why it is qualified" the value of the consulting services of one of its departments, and among the prominent reasons given under "Why it is qualified" is the fact of the commercial library maintained by the company, with the library's particular resources under competent supervision.
Because printed information has proved to be an integral factor in the successful prosecution of business and because it can be most effectively utilized by means of professional library methods, therefore, the business library hopes to take its place in the ranks of the American Library Association as one in purpose with all libraries in the realization of a common ideal, namely, the largest possible use of books in the practical service of mankind.
The PRESIDENT: I have just received a message that Mr. McAneny will be here in a very short time. In the few moments intervening it might be well perhaps to discuss some of the trenchant papers which we have had this morning.
Miss AHERN: Mr. President, I would like to take exception to one thing Mr. Ranck said in his paper. I do not believe that the idea that the contents of books are useful to men in the business world is of recent date. I think, perhaps, the second statement that these things have only come recently into the arrangement of resources of the library is the truer one. We certainly have had knowledge of chemistry and of geology and technical knowledge in manufacture for many, many years, only many librarians have been more interested in the purely educational or inspirational part of the library and have neglected that large field of usefulness and that large company of people who contribute to the welfare of work and of the world, as Miss Krause has pointed out. The best chemists in the country are being sought by the business houses; the best knowledge of soils, of minerals, of woods, of lumber, of stone has long been sought by the men who are making a commercial use of these things. And their information is not held in reserve: it is all in printed form and only the scope of the librarian's knowledge of where things may be obtained in the world of print places the limit on this material for the library shelves. And so I hope that librarians will not say that books on these subjects, that material on these subjects is a recent product. It is our knowledge of them, a knowledge that this is a part of the province of library work, that makes for recent activity.
The PRESIDENT: Mr. Ranck is here to answer for himself. The statement has been challenged and he can answer it.
Mr. RANCK: I think there is not so much difference between the view I take and the view taken by Miss Ahern. I do not know that I followed my manuscript very closely at that point, but what I had in mind was the business man rather than the professional, technical man. I fully grant what Miss Ahern says with reference to technical subjects, scientific subjects, and so on. As I said, I think there is no radical disagreement between Miss Ahern's and my position. There may be a misunderstanding.
Miss AHERN: I was not questioning what Mr. Ranck had said, but, rather, removing any excuse that the library folk may put to themselves for a lack of interest or a lack of activity along this line by saying that the material was scant or hard to command.
Dr. ANDREWS: There is the other side, that Miss Krause's paper emphasized and which Miss Ahern seems to neglect. Miss Krause's paper states that American industry is becoming intellectualized, and that this is a great factor in the development of business life. It ought also to be an extra incentive to the public library to meet the demands. I think that much of this development in the technical side of library work has come from the increasing study by business men of their own world and that we ought to remember that while the public libraries have neglected in the past to furnish business men with what they wanted, yet the latter did not want it then as much as they do now.
The PRESIDENT: Those of us—and I assume that that means every librarian—who read the June number of the World's Work were impressed by one strong article therein concerning the growing magnitude of municipal administration and the great problems that confront those who are charged with such administration. Without repeating to you the very striking comparisons which the author made with some of the governmental functions of states and even some of the kingdoms of Europe, showing the tremendous problems confronting the municipal officials, problems of tremendous budgets, of great public works, and so on, it will be sufficient for me to say that it is a happy omen that we are now getting into the public service men of high civic ideals and constructive ability and who are replacing men whose self-seeking interests or vanity led them to seek the votes of their fellow citizens. I am glad that we have with us today a man of this high type. I need not say further concerning him because we took advantage of his absence to get from Mr. Bowker a pretty good who's-who bearing upon himself, and I shall simply introduce to you at this time to speak to us upon the subject of "The municipal reference library as an aid in city administration," the Honorable GEORGE McANENY, president of the borough of Manhattan, New York.
It is a very real pleasure to meet with the American Library Association, and to convey in behalf of my colleagues in the administration of the City of New York, and in behalf of other colleagues in public business throughout the country, our hearty congratulations and possibly a friendly warning and a word of appeal.
Congratulations are due you for having established on so high a plane and in so short a time the profession of librarian. Especially are you to be congratulated for having welcomed the new profession of municipal reference librarian; for your adaptability in the constant extension of the reference work, and for the resiliencywhich is showing again in another field that real Father Williams never grow old. Could Benjamin Franklin look upon this gathering, and hear your reports of social service, through circulating, home, reference and municipal reference libraries, I am sure that no fruit of his patriotism would seem to him more promising than the recent application of the circulating library idea to government affairs.
My friendly warning has to do with your requests to fiscal bodies for appropriations. In many parts of the country, there is the feeling that the less the library has to do with public officials the better it is for the library, consequently, as a short cut, we find compulsory minimum appropriations—so many mills or so many parts of mills for library development. We also find that too many towns are satisfied with this compulsory minimum tax, and that the only time their fiscal representatives hear about libraries is just before the budget appropriations are voted. You must be indulgent with those who vote the money, if the outcome of this habit suggests the man who was exasperated by his wife, who he said "just nagged and nagged him for money, when he came, when he left, on Sunday, always." Finally, when a neighbor summoned the courage to ask, "What in the world does she do with all the money?" he, perforce, must answer; "Well, I don't know; you see I haven't given her any yet." Councils and Mayors will understand your library problem best if you will help them understand at those quieter seasons of the year when they are not harassed, as they are at budget time, by appeals from every other city department and for every other thing.
When presenting your budget, give the fiscal officer credit for wanting to know the whole truth, and for wanting reasons for giving you the money you request. Seldom will it help to ask for a great deal more than you need. Always, it will help not to present in a single total items that do not belong together. Classify your budget. State your program clearly. If all the money you want is not voted this year, stick clearly to the plan that has been voted, and show both the fiscal authorities and the town where your service has been crippled, if at all, for want of funds. It will be well to begin your budget campaign so that the first idea which the public and the fiscal officers get is that of the service you wish to render, rather than the money you wish to get. Most library budgets, like most other budgets of the United States, are apt to be put in without the explanatory matter which alone will make the dollar-and-cent facts show social reasons for library support.
Now for my appeal. In asking you to consider certain needs of public business, I want to speak quite frankly, as a city official who, like thousands of other city and county officials, must step into other people's business, with no time for getting acquainted with detail, and with a public to deal with that not only expects us on the first day we take office to use all the machinery of our predecessor and to get better results, but also really expects us to fail. We inherit a stack of mail. We are flooded with suggestions and complaints; many of them in confidence and most of them confusing. We are urged to attend club and church meetings, and dinners, and graduating exercises. We are expected, without any change in subordinate personnel, while giving our attention to large community problems and to the political aspects of public works, to get an efficient product out of our employees, no matter who they are or what they have been. In most places, we find no disinterested adviser, either on the inside or on the outside.
Such a situation would not necessarily be serious if we stepped into a thoroughly efficient organization where every employee and supervisor had his place, and where the institution as such had its "continuing memory." When Mr. Rea succeeded Mr. McCrea as president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, he inherited a splendid organization, every part related to another part; a system under which experts had tabulated within a moment's reach the successes and the failures of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the costs of its various contracts, the difference between estimates and final costs, and an efficiency ranking both of its various employees and its stations. When the present administration in New York City stepped into office, we inherited an aggregation of departments and divisions then spending—if we count in installments and interest paid on the city debt—more than $160,000,000 for the expenses of a single year. There were ninety thousand employees. Side by side with one another were clerks paid one $600 and another $1,800 for the same kind of work; in another grade were clerks paid $1,600 and others paid $2,400 for the same kind of work. When salaries had been increased, and why, was not a matter of record. Supplies were contracted for by no standard form. Specifications, either for supplies or for construction work, were worded differently at different times, according to the individual wish or whim of the department officer preparing them. The public was but poorly protected at any point. Plans were made for new buildings, for new roads, and for other vast improvements, often without estimates of cost; often with assurances of only slight cost, where, too frequently, cost had been estimated as an entering wedge only. Thus a great city would stumble into an experiment or public improvement demanding millions of dollars, without ever reckoning the ultimate amount of its obligation. For example it may be fair in this presence to recall that the first bill for the New York public library carried with it an appropriation of $2,500,000. The city decided to spend this $2,500,000 and actually it spent $10,000,000. The New York public library is worth every dollar it cost, ten times over; I am merely emphasizing that the public should have had its eyes open and, in this case as in every other, should have known what it was doing. Although this same gap occurred over and over again—between estimate and actual cost—no steps were taken to recall the fact when each new amount was under consideration.
Ignorant as we have been of our own experience, still less informed have we been regarding the experience of neighbor cities. Some years ago, Denver, in operating its street railway, found it expedient to substitute electric motor power for the old cables. After Denver had discarded these cables, Baltimore adopted the cable. Rochester has recently adopted a device to attach drinking fountains to its ordinary fire hydrants. The idea is a new one, and may prove valuable. I say it merely by way of instance; but if it is a good idea, New York City and your city should adopt it. Each successive experiment of the sort should, at least, be brought promptly to the attention of public officials.
Again, New York City has worked out an improved system of accounting and budget making. The village of Dobb's Ferry, the cities of Duluth and Cincinnati have used an improvement upon New York's budget exhibits—recently called a new kind of "confidence game"—that is, taking the public into official confidence about the public's own business. Instead of waiting a generation for cities to adopt these new methods, their officials should promptly be given the facts they need.
Is it not criminal waste and error for one city to introduce a system of sewer disposal, or of milk regulation, which another city has found endangering the lives of its citizens? If a measure has proved bad and dangerous for one city, modern science in the hands of a librarian should make it unnecessary for every other city to go through the same experience.
To help us in ending all this waste, and to help us, in short, in putting city government upon a thorough scientific and efficient basis, the municipal reference library is beginning to take its highly important place. Without a municipal reference library, it will in future be difficult for any administrative officer to do his best. I will not attempt to review the laborious steps of my colleagues in the present board of estimate and apportionment—our governing municipal body—to incorporate into standard specifications, standard salaries and standard contracts the memory of our past failures, so that we may hold the gains that we have made and avoid the weaknesses and the errors of our experience. But I venture some suggestions as to a reference library that, although general in their application, will indicate our reasons for establishing such a library in New York.
Our reasons for placing the library in our new Municipal Building—as we propose to do—apply everywhere. It must be made easy for officials to get information, and for the librarian to get the information promptly and directly to the officials. It is not enough to know that it may be had. To have important information an hour away from the office is almost as bad as to have it a thousand miles away. It must be easier for the busy official to get the information he wants than to endure the thought of going without it. In putting the library where the users are, instead of where they are not, we are following the simple rule of trade that meters city property by the foot instead of by the acre.
The municipal library is a place not for everything, but for particular needed things. If it were true that Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other constituted a college, it is even more true that a librarian in a bare room, anxious to serve the public via the public official and knowing where the material is, constitutes an infinitely better municipal reference library than a place perfectly equipped which suggests erudition rather than immediate help. There is great danger that our municipal reference libraries will become junk shops, as interesting and as helpful, as out of date or as unrelated to today's problems as an encyclopedia or a "compendium of useful knowledge." A municipal reference library should suggest answers to today's questions; not answers either to yesterday's questions or to next year's. Will you, the librarians, consider the importance and the advisability of keeping these libraries workshops, as they ought to be, and of using your general reference libraries as the place for the storage of materials.
The ordinary city official hasn't the time to plough through a mass of pamphlets looking for what he wants. He wants the facts collated and marshalled, ready for use—and "he wants what he wants when he wants it." Some time ago I was interested in drawing an ordinance to license all vehicles using the New York streets, and to regulate the weight, the width and size of tires, etc., of our great trucks that have been tearing up our pavements. I wanted to know about the policy of other cities in this matter, and to devise, if possible, a way of making those vehicles that destroy the streets help pay for their maintenance. Similarly, today, as Chairman of the committee on the height, size and arrangement of buildings within the city limits, I am interested in the adoption of some reasonable basis for regulating our modern skyscraper in order to keep the city, literally, from choking itself to death.
Again, we have had to restore to the public many miles of city sidewalks that had been preempted by stoops, and other encroachments. We have wanted to plan our public buildings and related matters with a view to the future, and to the grouping of building sites in a "Civic Center." So, in dealing with our transit problem; in investigating the health department, and in improving the type and quality of street pavements, I have wanted not all the information there was to be had—not books or formal reports—but concrete answers to immediately pressing questions. I wanted to be referred to the latest article or report which would make it unnecessary to go through twenty or a hundred other articles, books or reports. It is enough to know that in a great central library are all the working materials for scientific research. Frankly, I feel that the actual use that will be made of the municipal reference library will be in inverse ratio to the number of books that are in evidence, and that require the time of the librarian.
I would go so far as to say that anything that a public official has not just called for, or that the librarian is not about to call to the attention of a public official for departmental study or report, or for the drawing of ordinances, should be kept in the general library, and out of the municipal reference library.
Comptroller Prendergast and Librarian Anderson are even planning to have New York's official correspondence "clear" through the municipal reference library—so far as the writing and answering of letters calling for special information goes. I am told that when Portland recently started its municipal reference library the mayor promptly availed himself of its facilities for answering innumerable sets of questions and special questions that came from outside the city, and advised his heads of departments to follow his example. I wish the Carnegie Institution for Scientific Research or some other great foundation interested in the conservation of national resources and human energy would investigate what it is now costing this country to fill out the innumerable blanks from college boys wishing help on their commission government debate; college students writing theses; national organizations compiling reports, etc. Niagara unharnessed was wasting much less power than are we officials, school superintendents, mayors, and engineers who are answering such questionnaires. It would be lamentable enough if we always answered right; but most of us answer quite inadequately, and many of us answer wrong. Last year, a certain national society wrote me, asking certain questions about civil service reform. I had had more or less to do for some years with that line of public service. My instinct was to take time from pressing duties to answer these questions; but a neighbor who had received a similar set of questions was thoughtful enough to write to this national body and suggest that before he answered he would like to know how many other New York officials and private agencies had received the same set of questions. It appeared then that twenty different people, including a dozen officials, had been asked to fill out that blank. Whereupon it was suggested that instead of drawing upon twenty people who did not possess the facts, the investigator might turn directly to the Civil Service Commission that did possess the facts, and there, no doubt, he readily found what he wanted.
Now, if a municipal reference library could have served as a clearing house, it would have been brought to light at once that one answer would have served the purpose of twenty, or that one answer, at least, would have served the purpose of the dozen official answers. Moreover, just as the official reports give fresher material than published books, such correspondence, manuscript reports of investigating committees, etc., give fresher material than published reports.
Such data should be kept properly classified, available upon call or when the librarian sees its time for usefulness.
Another practical suggestion I make from my experience as an official. While it seems to apply especially to administrative departments or to private agencies specializing in certain fields, I really do not see much prospect of getting it unless from a municipal reference library or from the municipal reference activity of a general library. I refer to an up-to-date "Poole's" or cumulative index of the passing subject matter of city government. You get, the library gets, once a month a list of all the articles in the principal books. Why should we not have a list of the advance steps taken in public affairs? Just as soon as a few librarians call for such information, it will become commercially possible to reduce it. The individual library can then add to the material the particular points that are of interest to its own community.
Similarly, it would be of the greatest assistance to every city official if the matters under his jurisdiction were listed and material grouped under proper heads. For example, the president of the Borough of Manhattan has jurisdiction over the streets and sidewalks; encroachments and encumbrances; street vaults and street signs; the sewer system; the public buildings; the baths and markets; and the control of private buildings through the enforcement of the buildings laws. If information in regard to what other cities were doing in all these matters were listed, plus suggestions and advance steps taken in these same matters at home, the reference librarian would be of incalculable help to that office.
Finally, just a word about the expense of the municipal reference library. The amount which it is justified in demanding will depend naturally upon the service it renders. The merit of our new segregated and classified budget is that it calls for the work needing to be done, as well as the cost of not having the work done, and that it shifts attention from the personality that requests the budget allowance. A circumscribed program means circumscribed budget. Frankly, I believe that extension of program should and must precede extension of budget. But this new kind of social work which serves a community at those points where it is now least equipped to serve itself, will not want for financial support when it talks about the work that should be done—and not about itself.
No municipal activity will, in my judgment, find it easier in the next twenty-five years to secure adequate financial support than the municipal reference library which is not a compendium of knowledge but a forecaster of service needed and an ever-present help in time of trouble.
The PRESIDENT: May I express to you, Mr. McAneny, the thanks of the American Library Association for your coming and the assurance that we have profited greatly from it.
Adjourned.
(Saturday morning, June 28, 1913.)
THE PRESIDENT: During the other sessions of the Conference we have been considering people—and books. At this concluding session the topics on the program have special reference to books—and people. The first paper invites our interest by its suggestion of the flavor which old books bring. Miss G. M. WALTON, of the Michigan State Normal College, will present this paper.
It was Mr. Lowell who reminded me the other day, by quoting Ecclesiasticus in one of his essays, that we owe the ideal of the man of leisure to a book of the Apocrypha wherein we read, "The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure."
Our profession standing as a guarantor of our wisdom and our learning, I am here today to bespeak a portion of our large opportunity of leisure for—The Friendly Book.
There is small fear that we librarians forget the books of power and the books of knowledge which DeQuincey (the ofttimes quoted) presses upon all men. And most of us undoubtedly possess that ardent zeal for knowledge which filled the soul of the literal-minded librarian who read quite seriously (and found therein a working category for her own improvement) Lamb's letter to an old gentleman whose early education had been neglected, where, among the qualifications of a preceptor, the following will serve to refresh your memories: "He must be a thorough master of vernacular orthography, with an insight into the accentualities and punctualities of modern Saxon. He must be competently instructed in the tetralogy, or first four rules. He must have a genius capable in some degree of soaring to the upper element, to deduce from thence the not much dissimilar computation of the cardinal points. He must instruct you innumeric and harmonious responses, and he must be capable of embracing all history, so as from the countless myriads of individual men, who have peopled this globe of earth—for it is a globe—by comparison of their respective births, lives, deaths, fortunes, conduct, prowess, etc., to pronounce, and teach you to pronounce, dogmatically and catechetically, who was the richest, who was the strongest, who was the wisest, who was the meekest man that ever lived; to the facilitation of which solution, you will readily conceive, a smattering of biography would in no inconsiderable degree conduce."
I sometimes question if professions are not tinged with the culture epoch epidemic. It is not so very long since we were half hesitatingly taking a place among the other learned professions, almost with the apologetic air of the young boy making his first appearance in long trousers, and wondering if his fellow-men appreciate his coming into their midst—but the youth soon assumes the aggressive attitude which compels attention—and one symptom of this attitude which I feel among ourselves is the large and learned talk aboutnewbooks—the self-satisfied air and monumental confidence in our sometimes sophomoric knowledge and understanding of all things "in the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth," until I wonder if the pleasant counsel about reading "books at least a year old, that we like, and that are great books" must be relegated with the rest of our Emersonian philosophy to the lumber room of our many youthful joys and dreamings.
I believe we all love best to mark the passing years by the friends they bring us, and it were a barren year that brings not one more friend, and so with our friendly books, which like all friendships fill our lives with genial warmth and gratitude. Neither is really a matter of choice, for a book like a person yields its intimate charm only to the sympathizing heart. We have no care to answer why, other than, "because"—"We love them because wemustlove them." A new book friend comes to us now and then, and we cling to the old ones. Sometimes we lose the personal touch, but we see their kindly faces and after a separation from them we arrange them on the shelves, and we rearrange them, and, as Mr. Arnold Bennett says, "The way we walk up and down in front of those volumes, whose faces we have half forgotten, is perfectly infantile."
I remember once in Rome a friend, selecting photographs, said, "I must take a good Cicero to my son Frank, who used to say he felt as well acquainted with Cicero as he did with Bishop Huntington," and dear old Dean Hook, when a lad at Oxford expresses this same intimate feeling in one of his lively inimitable letters, "I have got into a very dissolute set of men, but they are so pleasant that they make me very often idle. It consists of one Tuft, H. R. H., Henry Prince of Wales, and a gentleman Commoner named Sir John Falstaff, and several others. I breakfast with them, drink tea, and sometimes wine with them," and, again, on hearing the good news of the recovery of his grandfather, he writes, "The minute I opened the letter and saw the news, I pulled down my Shakespeare and had a very merry hour with Sir John Falstaff. I was determined to laugh heartily all that day. I asked Sir John to wine with me. I decanted a bottle of my beloved grandfather's best port and Sir John and I drank his health right merrily. Perhaps you will want to know how my old friend Sir John drank my grandfather's health. Why I took care to find out the place where he drank Justice Shallow's health. And so when I said, 'Here's to Sir Walter,' I looked on the book and the Knight said, 'Health and long life to him.'"
Among the oldest and dearest of my friendly books is the "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," of which I became the happy owner, when it was fresh off the press, during a sojourn in the west, far away from my home library. The dates along the margins (one of Macaulay's habits which I adopted as I read) bring pleasantthoughts of a journey from Colorado to the western coast, and long before I knew Dean Hook (whom I first met here as the Vicar of Leeds) I was pulling Macaulay down from the shelf, not indeed to drink with Sir John, but to refer to some particular talk of men or of books—always to read on and on with equal delight whether he were breakfasting with a party of old Trinity College friends, reading in his study, or acting as a guide and escort on a half holiday of sight-seeing with his nieces and nephews, with whom he was always the prince of playfellows. It was on one of these excursions to the zoological gardens that Thackeray overheard someone say, "Never mind the hippopotamus! Never mind the hippopotamus! There's Mr.Macaulay!" When absent he exchanged long and frequent letters with the children, sealing those to his nephew at Harrow with an amorphous mass of red wax, which, in defiance of all postal regulations, usually covered a piece of gold.
A scrap from one of his letters to a little niece will serve also as an example of the poetry, which he usually attributed to the Judicious poet, for whose collected works the children vainly searched the library.
"Michaelmas will, I hope, find us all at Clapham over a noble goose. Do you remember the beautiful Puseyette hymn on Michaelmas day? It is a great favorite with all the Tractarians. You and Alice should learn it. It begins: