Читать книгу Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries - Arthur E. Bostwick - Страница 6

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We cannot too often remind ourselves of the fact that a circulating library is a distributing agency, and as such has points in common with other such agencies. The whole progress of civilization is dependent on distribution—the bringing to the individual of the thing he wants or needs. The library’s activities are, therefore, in the same class with commerce, and the tendency of modern changes in the library is to make the analogy closer and closer. To recognize this fact is by no means to degrade library work. All workers fall into the two great classes of producers and distributors. Civilization can get along without neither; we must have the farmer to grow the wheat and the railway to market it; we must have the author to write the book and the publisher and the bookseller and the librarian to place it in the hands of those who can use it. The librarian is not a producer; he takes the product of other people’s brains and distributes it; and his problem is how to do this most effectively.

Do not misunderstand me. There have been some recent protests against treating the library as a commercial instead of an educational institution. The free library is not a commercial institution, but it is an agency for distributing something, and there are also hundreds of other agencies for distributing other things. The objects and the methods of distribution are various, but certain laws apply to all kinds of distribution. Hence we may learn a good deal about library work by examining to see what it has in common with other kinds of distribution and in what respect it differs from them.

Now, the prime factors in any kind of distribution are: 1, the products to be distributed; 2, the persons to whom they are to be distributed; 3, the distributors and methods of distribution. I know no better way of laying the basis of an efficient and successful distribution than the brief study, in order, of these three factors.

First let us consider the things that we are to distribute, namely, books. And at the outset let us remember that although these things are apparently material, as much so as butter or hats, they are much more than this. They are the vehicles for conveying ideas, so that a library is a concern for the dissemination of ideas. This brings it in line with another great intellectual and moral distributing agency—the school. In the school the distributor is more often a producer than in the library, especially in the universities, where the discoverer of new facts or laws himself imparts them to his students. Yet the school is essentially a distributing rather than a producing agency. In the school, however the means of distribution are not limited, while in the library they are pretty strictly confined to the printed book. I know that there are some people who believe that the library is growing out of such restrictions, and that its mission is to be the distribution of ideas through any and all mediums—the spoken word, in lectures; the pictures, in exhibitions of art; the museum specimen; and so on. We should welcome all these as adjuncts to our own business, and when we have mastered that business thoroughly perhaps we may take them up each on its own account. Those who love books, however, will want to see the distribution of books always at the head of the library’s activities.

And it may be kept there, provided we make everything else in the library serve as guide-posts to the printed records on the shelves. A picture bulletin, for instance, may be both beautiful and useful, but it should never be an end in itself. It is the bait, if we may so speak, for the list of books that accompanies it. The pictures excite the interest of a child who sees them and he wants to know more about them. The list tells him where he can find out, and the result is increased use of the library. In like manner if you have a lecture course, or a loan exhibition in your library, see that it is made a means of stimulating interest in your books.

I have said that in distribution we bring to the individual what he wants or what he needs. That sounds a little tautological, but it is not. A man often wants whiskey when he doesn’t need it at all, and conversely a boy sometimes needs a whipping—but he doesn’t want it. So with the reading public. They often want fiction of a class that they do not need, and have no longing for books that would really benefit them. Here we may mote a difference between the free library and all merely commercial systems of distribution. As the purpose of the latter is to make money, wants are regarded rather than needs. But even with a store there are limitations. If any one wants an injurious article—for instance, a poison or an explosive—the law steps in to prohibit or regulate. And even outside the limits of such regulation, the personal sense of responsibility to the community that governs the actions of an honest merchant will prevent his attempting to satisfy certain wants that he believes would better remain unsatisfied. So, too, certain books are without the pale of the law—they would be confiscated and the librarian would be punished if they were circulated. Beyond these there are many books that we do not circulate simply from our sense of general responsibility to the community.

The difference between our work and that of the merchant in this regard lies chiefly in the more extended scope left for our own judgment. No librarian thinks of circulating illegal literature; his only care is to exclude such of the allowable books as he believes should not, for any reason, be placed on his shelves. Here, sometimes, popularity and usefulness part company. The librarian may yield entirely too much to the wants—the demands—of the community and neglect its needs. His aim should be to bring the wants and the needs into harmony so far as possible, to make his people want what will do them good. This might be dubbed “the whole duty of a librarian.” Few, I am afraid, attain to the full measure of it, and too many fail even to realize its desirability. Of course if you can bring the full force of a reader’s conscience to bear on his reading—if you can make him feel that it is his duty to read some good book that strikes him as stupid, you may make him stick to it to the bitter end, but such perfunctory reading does little good. The pleasure one gets in reading is a sign of benefits received. Even the smile of the boy who reads George Ade is a sign that the book is furnishing him with needed recreation. The pleasure experienced, we will say, in reading Shakespeare is of course of a far higher type; yet I venture to say that if that pleasure is absent, the benefit is absent too. Nine-tenths of the distaste felt for good standard books by the average reader is the result of the mistaken efforts of some one to force him to read one of these books by something in the nature of an appeal to duty. There is no moral obligation to read Shakespeare if you do not like it, and if a friend persuades you of such an obligation you are apt to end by rightly concluding that he is wrong. But with this conclusion comes an unfortunate distaste for good literature; a conviction that standard works are all dull, and that the only kind of pleasure to be had from reading is the most superficial kind. The moral for librarians is: cultivate in your readers a taste for good literature; get them into the frame of mind and the grade of culture where they like Shakespeare and then turn them loose. No injunctions will be necessary; they will not cease to read until they have devoured the utmost sentence.

But how shall this taste be cultivated? I wish I knew. I wish I could give you a formula for causing the flower of literary appreciation to unfold. The rule is different in every case. First and foremost there must be something to cultivate. You cannot go out into the desert with watering-pot and raise strawberries or asparagus. But you can take a poor little spindling plant and dig about it and fertilize it until it waxes into a robust tree whose branches are laden with big, juicy ideas. If you are skilful enough to find out what intellectual germs there are in your reader’s mind you can cultivate them little by little, but if you throw Shakespeare and Milton at the heads of all alike they will be likely to fall on barren ground. The golden rule for making your library both attractive and useful (the two things go hand in hand) is to adapt your books to those aptitudes of your readers that need and will bear cultivation.

This means that in selecting books for your library you must not disregard the demands and requests of your readers. It also means that you must have the acuteness to detect what they ought to request. It may be, for instance, that near your library is the home of some great industry employing large numbers of intelligent mechanics who would gain both enjoyment and benefit by reading some of the technical literature bearing on their work. Only it has never occurred to them to think that this literature, much of it perhaps expensive or inaccessible, can be obtained at the public library. It is your business to get it, if you can, and to let them know that you have it and that they are welcome to read it.

Remember, too, that he gives twice who gives quickly. Much of the ephemeral literature of the day, which is purchased for recreative purposes, is rightly and properly read for curiosity. People like to read the latest book and talk to each other about it. We are all embryo critics. This desire to read the last thing out, just because it is the last, has had anathemas piled on it until it ought to be crushed, but it is still lively. I confess I have it myself and I cannot blame my neighbor if he has it too. Unless we are wholly to reject the recreative use of the library or to accept it with a mental reservation that the public shall enjoy itself according to a prescribed formula or not at all—we shall have to buy some of these books. I am afraid that otherwise some future historian of literature may say of us in parody of Macaulay’s celebrated epigram on the Puritans and bearbaiting, that the twentieth-century librarian condemned the twentieth-century novel, not because it did harm to the library, but because it gave pleasure to the reader. Now, if we are going to buy this ephemeral literature, we must get it quickly or not at all. The latest novel must go on your shelves hot from the presses, or stay off. And this is true of much other literature that is not ephemeral but that depends for its effect on its timeliness. It will certainly lose readers if it is not on your shelves promptly, and if it deserves readers, as much of it does, the net result is a loss to the community.

So we come next to the question of readers. How shall we get them? What kind do we want, and how shall we reach that kind? In commercial systems of distribution the merchant gets customers in two ways: by giving good quality and good measure and by advertising. Some kind of advertising is generally essential. Even if your community is a very small one it is right that you should occasionally remind it of your existence and of what you have to offer. Legitimate advertising is simply informing people where they can obtain something that they are likely to want. The address of your library should be in your railway station; in the schools; in the drug store. Your latest accessions should be announced in the local papers and bulletined in the same places. When you have an item about your library that would interest the reader send it yourself to the paper. There is nothing undignified about this. Do not forget that you are in charge of certain articles that the public needs and desires and that it is your business to let the public know it. The new-comer to your town cannot know intuitively that your library is at such and such an address; the old resident who likes to read Howells cannot ascertain by telepathy that you have just received the last volume by his favorite author. You may even send a special card of information to a reader who you know will be glad to get it.

One would think that if there was anything distinctive about our systems of distribution, commercial or otherwise, it was the great degree to which we advertise and the money that we spend in so doing. But with it all, this feature in its misdirected energy and lack of method is the weak point of the whole system. Much of the money spent in advertising is devoted to attempts to get people to buy what they do not want. Any one knows that when he desires a very special or definite thing it is often impossible to find it, though it may be next door. In our library work, so far as readers are concerned, our weak points are two: first, failure to make known our presence and our work to all who might use the library; second, failure to hold our readers. These things are both serious. We ourselves see so much of libraries that we find it difficult to understand how large a proportion of any community is ignorant of them and their work. In large cities, of course, this is more likely to be the case than in small towns. Yet if you will compare the number of names on your registration list with the population you serve, even making allowance for the fact that each book withdrawn may be read by several persons, and deducting young children who cannot read, you will be surprised at the discrepancy. There are many people who do not know of your library’s existence or who do not realize what it means. Your first duty is to find some way of giving them the information and of seeing that they shall not forget it.