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of names on your registration list with the population you serve, even making allowance for the fact that each book withdrawn may be read by several persons, and deducting young children who cannot read, you will be surprised at the discrepancy.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.
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
