EP 197.1

LIBRARY

An explanation. Two questions will be asked immediately by our readers on receipt of this issue of New York Libraries, why the promised index is missing and why the number is so greatly reduced in size. The answer to both questions is, lack of funds in the State Education Department for printing, the last Legislature having made a drastic cut in the Department's appropriation for this purpose for the current fiscal year, while cost of paper and printing has at the same time greatly advanced. It is our hope that the difficulty is only temporary and that we may soon be able to keep our promise as to the index and to resume publication on our former scale.

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A memorable conference. "Library week" at Roscoe will long remain a distinct memory to all who had the privilege of attending. It was as different from all previous meetings as this year is different from any other year of this generation. Alike in its personnel, its program and its undercurrent of thought and feeling, it gave constant evidence of the part that librarians are taking in the great events of the times. Faces most familiar to the members, leaders to whom they have been accustomed to look for guidance and counsel, were conspicuous by their absence; but their absence was as significant and eloquent as any personal message could have been. Every one understood why they

were not present, that in one form or another the peculiar duties of the hour were claiming their whole mind and effort; and this thought, with its many implications, gave a seriousness to the meeting which no outward appearance of gaiety or festivity and no charm of environment could obscure. No place in the State could have afforded a more perfect retreat from the world and its cares. Every outward condition combined to give the conference an aspect of perfect peace and repose, and its members came unconsciously and irresistibly under the sway of these influences. Every one present found it easier in that atmosphere and fellowship, to think large and generous thoughts, to face with new calm and quiet the duties and perplexities of his work, to undertake with new faith and courage the problems awaiting him. Each said in his heart, it is good for us to be here, and we are sure that the work of each in this coming year will give proof that this was no idle or transient sentiment.

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Certificates for librarians. trusion of so many new and pressing problems, it is but natural that the question of instituting a system of certificates for librarians in this State, the question which assumed such a leading place at the Richfield Springs conference last year, should be thrust somewhat into the background; and considering the many intrinsic difficulties involved in the working out of any satisfactory general plan, it is not surprising that little definite progress has been made. Neither the state association at its recent meeting nor the special committee which had been at work on the problem for more than a year, were at all ready to take definite steps toward putting any system into operation, and the whole matter has again been referred to a special committee for further study.

But while no definite working scheme has been evolved which the association is prepared to recommend and the time does not seem just ripe for such a scheme, there can be no doubt that very real and rapid progress has been made, both in the general conviction among leading members of the profession as to the logic and necessity for the reform proposed and in a general preparedness of mind among all classes of library

workers for its acceptance. The merit of the proposition itself is sufficient to have assured such progress wherever it has been given consideration, but in addition, the year has brought out unmistakable signs that both state and municipal authorities are moving strongly in the direction of civil service requirements for public library employees. In many communities the question is becoming, not whether certificates shall be required of library workers but under what authorities and rules such certificates shall be granted. Even those who may not be fully persuaded as to the need of grading or certifying of librarians, make no question that if civil service rules must be applied in our libraries, a system worked out by librarians themselves with the good of the work solely in mind, to be operated by the educational authorities of the State, is much to be preferred to a system in which librarians are grouped roughly with other civil service employees and the peculiar educational function and needs of the library are ignored.

The merit system for libraries is a reform that is surely coming, and at no distant day, and it behooves librarians who have the good of the profession at heart to anticipate by some practical and acceptable scheme the action of state and municipal authorities in this matter.

The camp libraries campaign. It is difficult to express the full measure of satisfaction and pride which librarians feel in the success of their nationwide campaign for camp libraries and in the thought of what this means both to the Nation and to the library profession. It is not too much to say that librarians in this undertaking have won a recognition for themselves and for their cause such as has been won by no other single achievement in their history. To librarians themselves the campaign has been almost as much a revelation of latent, unsuspected power and capacity as to the outside world. When the proposition was first made that the American Library Association should assume responsibility of taking care of the library needs of the Nation's soldiers, it was difficult for its more sober-minded members to take it as anything more than the idle, irresponsible suggestion of a few dreamers. The association was not organized for any

such work, it had no funds for such an undertaking; and all that individual members could do by personal gifts and pledges served only to emphasize the utter disparity between the resources available and the task proposed. But the call, at first timidly and uncertainly voiced, grew more and more clear as attention and thought were given to it. Reflection soon brought home the conviction that the question involved an indispensable service to the Nation, that the truth of our whole creed as to the need of expert service in the ministry of books was at stake and that the librarian was now as distinctly called to render this service as the trained soldier was called to fight our battles. Once that conviction became clear, the readiness and resolve to meet the responsibility became equally clear, and the campaign was undertaken with an enthusiasm, a faith and a thoroughness which proved more than equal to the task. Starting with a few hundred dollars contributed by a few of small means but large faith, in less than four months the fund had grown beyond a million and a quarter dollars, passing far beyond the goal set and providing a guaranty of such library facilities and service as no army in the world has ever before known. Long before the issue of the campaign was known, the work of turning this money into suitable books and library facilities was systematically begun; such was the faith of its leaders in the outcome, and already our soldiers and sailors are enjoying the benefits of this undertaking.

The whole experience has been an exhilirating and inspiring one and every librarian who has had a part in it is finding a new joy in his profession, a new confidence and consciousness of power in facing future problems. There is room for but one feeling of regret, and that is that there were some, even in high places, who failed in time to see the vision and to grasp the opportunity and who thus shut themselves and their libraries out of the peculiar moral and material benefits accruing from this work. But even these have now learned many lessons from the event and will share in the added power and prestige which the library cause has won.

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How success was won. The spirit in which the campaign was undertaken by local libraries, the initial difficulties to be overcome

and the public response it succeeded in calling forth are well illustrated in the two following typical reports sent in to the chairman of the national committee, one from the librarian of a prosperous city library, the other from a small and obscure village library, both of which exceeded their assigned quotas. The former writes:

Now that the campaign is over and the million, plus, is in sight, I want to tell you what fun it really was. The enthusiasm and spirit it put into my staff are more than worth all the footache and wooden-leg feelings produced. The whole city caught the spirit, all the way from three cents' worth up to one hundred dollars. No one gave more than the latter sum, and we had lots and lots of little bits of contributions. The children at one of the schools saved their chewing gum and ice cream cone money for three or four days, and sent me $9.20. The firemen took a pass-the-hat collection and sent in $15.60. The free academy faculty and students raised $100; the Women's Club $75; the D. A. R. $40, etc. Fourteen of twenty labor organizations to whom we made little talks at their regular meetings, sent checks of from $5 to $25, and so on. They all caught the spirit, and I shall very soon send a draft to cover the whole quota of this city. We also have 1200 volumes to contribute to the same cause.

The other letter tells the story of the problem to be solved and the secret of its successful solution in many village communities:

At the outset I had uphill work for I had no help from the trustees in organizing the work. They took the ground that it could not succeed because the people had already given to their limit for the Red Cross, Y. M. C. A. and other causes, arguing also that it was unnecessary because the Y. M. C. A. and other agencies were doing all that was needed in this line. Our local paper also took the same position and discouraged the undertaking, even refusing to print the public appeal which I prepared. However, I was bound not to be beaten, so I had typewritten copies made of this appeal which I gave to the pastors of the several churches of the town, with the request that it be read to their congregations the following Sunday. I also secured the cooperation of two of the pastors in making the campaign in their parishes. The head of one of the schools gave his assistance and enlisted his pupils in the campaign. Leading women of the town sponded cordially to the invitation to assist and made an effective house to house campaign in certain streets of the village.

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Thus our quota was more than raised, and I feel pretty good over the matter, not only for the sake of the good name of our library but also for the privilege of contributing in this way to the great cause.

Significance of the event. It will take years to reveal the full significance to the library cause of this recent bit of history, but a few things of vital and encouraging import have been emphasized as never before and may now be regarded as axioms of our profession, among which we may cite the following:

I Free facilities for good reading are not only a right of the American people but a necessity to any group of people who are to render their full service to the State or Nation. This truth received its final sanction when the United States Government in its hour of need officially declared, in effect, that its men can not fight with a full measure of strength without books, that they can not be kept from demoralizing thoughts and habits without books, that without the help of books they can not be returned to their homes and communities after the war with their full measure of manhood. It was in recognition of the fact that books are a necessity for the preservation and development of the elements of manhood, that the Government issued its call for library service and gave to that call something of the same high patriotic sanction that it gave to its call for men. After this there should be no more need of argument as to whether any community or any group of men needs a library for its moral or material well-being, or whether a library is a necessity for such well-being. If a free supply of suitable books is a necessity for the morale of an army, with its rigid discipline, its strenuous and healthful activities, its high incentives to duty, how much more so is it necessary to the morale of a peaceful community, knowing nothing of these restraints and incentives, where life is lived mostly according to individual impulse and disposition!

2 By the action of the Government in calling upon the American Library Association to establish and administer this library service for the Nation's soldiers, a principle

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has been established, for the recognition of which librarians have been striving forty years, that librarianship is a distinct calling or profession, and that library service pertains of right to librarians and not to workers in other fields, no matter what their qualifications may be in those fields. Doubtless there would have been some economy in making library service a part of the general service of the Y. M. C. A., the Knights of Columbus, the Red Cross, the army chaplains or other agencies already at work. less there was a great temptation to practise this economy. The Government had set itself firmly against any unnecessary duplication of machinery in the attainment of its ends and the erection of separate library buildings and the maintenance of distinct library service must have seemed to many as a waste of money and effort. But librarianship had established its claims so firmly, it had demonstrated both its theories and its practical efficiency so convincingly that even against the plea of economy and the charge of extravagance, the Government was compelled to give it recognition and full authority in its field of work. When it was seen clearly to be a question whether the soldier should have such book service as should represent the mind and ideas of the library profession, or only such as should be provided incidentally by officials and clerks of other agencies, no hesitation was possible by the Government. The soldier must have the best possible book service, which meant books selected and administered by the trained librarian under the auspices of the American Library Association. It takes no seer to foresee the far-reaching and stimulating effects which this action is likely to have on the profession in years to come.

3 By the decision of those in authority that the camp libraries must not be made up mainly of miscellaneous gifts and could not be so made up if regard was to be had to the ends to be served; that the books must be selected and distributed with as much care and regard for fitness as everything else designed for the soldier's use, nationwide declaration and emphasis are given to another principle which librarians have striven long and hard to establish. Here too there was a great temptation to compromise and to adopt the cheap and easy way to provide libraries

for the soldiers. Everywhere there was a readiness both on the part of individuals and libraries, to make liberal gifts of their old books for the camp libraries. It was such a pleasant way to fulfil one's patriotic duty to empty one's shelves of useless material, to send this material to the camps and to be credited with so many gifts to this worthy cause! Great collections could have been built up in this way, and had it not been for the insistent idealism, the uncompromising professional standards of the library profession, this is about all that the soldiers' libraries would have amounted to. But the occasion was one which offered librarians a unique opportunity for shattering this persistent fallacy that mere numbers of books constitute a library, and for bringing home to people throughout the Nation that the essential thing for a library is that it shall be not a collection but a selection of books.

4 Another lesson that has been brought home to all library workers as never before is the old and trite truth which they have too little applied to their own cause, that union means strength and that in systematic organized effort, they are capable of attaining ends quite beyond their power without such organization. Having had such a striking demonstration of this truth, it will be applied again and again. It will be applied directly in the interest of the library profession, in securing better recognition for its workers; it will be applied in educational movements to put the library in its proper place in public education; it will be applied in the interest of great civic and patriotic causes, making the library a factor to be taken into account in every movement and plan for civic progress and national preparedness. The consciousness of power developed through the camp libraries campaign has in it the promise of a new era for library development.

5 A final lesson, brought out most clearly in the reports of the campaign received from different centers, is that the library's power to secure response from its constituency to the Nation's call is in exact proportion to the quality and extent of service it is rendering to its own people. It is only as individuals have learned by their own experience how valuable, how indispensable the service of a library is that they can feel deeply the need of such service for the soldiers. People

who know nothing of what a good library means to a community will not concern themselves much as to what such a library may mean to the men in camp. In the success or failure of the camp libraries campaign in any community is written a judgment as to the character and work of the public library in that community. A library's power to serve the Nation is measured by the power it has exerted among its own constituents.

The library's part in the Government's war savings" plan. The public libraries of the State have rendered material help in the two great "Liberty Loan" campaigns, now so successfully concluded, and with the experience thus gained we are confident they will be ready and able to render a much greater service in similar campaigns yet to come. We regret to learn, however, that many librarians, in their excess of modesty and conscious lack of authority in financial matters, have felt that this kind of a campaign was outside their natural field of service and have either declined to take part or entered the work with a timidity and uncertainty which have rendered it of little effect. Such an attitude, we need hardly say, is quite unnecessary for any librarian and betrays a weakness that is sure to be as damaging to the library as to this particular cause. librarian has no call to assume financial wisdom or to act as an authority in great matters. It is his part merely to collect, arrange and attractively display the best wisdom of others in these matters, and this even the most modest librarian can do if he is at all fitted for his place.

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But whatever difficulties or objections may have been conceived to prevent the library's lending its active help in these campaigns, there can be no excuse whatever for any public library's failing to enlist in the unique and appealing "war savings" campaign, soon to be announced by the Government and organized in every city, town, school district and hamlet in the Nation. The aim of this campaign is to reach, not those who are capable of savings by fifty, a hundred or a thousand dollars, but those who can save only by pennies, nickels, dimes or dollars, and this means the ninety millions of people who as yet have done nothing with their money to help their Government. Details of the plan