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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.