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Page 4
The public library, then, is a means for elevating and refining the
taste, for giving greater efficiency to every worker, for diffusing
sound principles of social and political action, and for furnishing
intellectual culture to all.
The library of the immediate future for the American people is
unquestionably the free public library, brought under municipal
ownership, and, to some extent, municipal control, and treated as part
of the educational system of the state. The sense of ownership in it
makes the average man accept and use the opportunities of the free
public library while he will turn aside from book privileges in any
other guise.
That the public library is a part of the educational system should
never be lost sight of in the work of establishing it, or in its
management. To the great mass of the people it comes as their first
and only educational opportunity. The largest part of every man's
education is that which he gives himself. It is for this individual,
self-administered education that the public library furnishes the
opportunity and the means. The schools start education in childhood;
libraries carry it on.
CHAPTER IV
Suggestions as to general policy of the library
In general, remember always 1) that the public owns its public
library, and 2) that no useless lumber is more useless than unused
books. People will use a library, not because, in others' opinions,
they ought to, but because they like to. See to it, then, that the new
library is such as its owner, the public, likes; and the only test of
this liking is use. Open wide the doors. Let regulations be few and
never obtrusive. Trust American genius for self-control. Remember the
deference for the rights of others with which you and your fellows
conduct yourselves in your own homes, at public tables, at general
gatherings. Give the people at least such liberty with their own
collection of books as the bookseller gives them with his. Let the
shelves be open, and the public admitted to them, and let the open
shelves strike the keynote of the whole administration. The whole
library should be permeated with a cheerful and accommodating
atmosphere. Lay this down as the first rule of library management; and
for the second, let it be said that librarian and assistants are to
treat boy and girl, man and woman, ignorant and learned, courteous and
rude, with uniform good-temper without condescension; never pertly.
Finally, bear in mind these two doctrines, tempering the one with the
other: 1) that the public library is a great educational and moral
power, to be wielded with a full sense of its great responsibilities,
and of the corresponding danger of their neglect or perversion; 2)
that the public library is not a business office, though it should be
most business-like in every detail of its management; but is a center
of public happiness first, of public education next.
CHAPTER V
Trustees
[Condensed from paper by C.C. Soule]
1) _Size of the board_.--The library board should be small, in
small towns not over three members. In cities a larger board has
two advantages: it can include men exceptionally learned in library
science, and it can represent more thoroughly different sections of
the town and different elements in the population.
2) _Term of office_.--The board should be divided into several groups,
one group going out of office each year. It would be wise if no
library trustee could hold office for more than three successive terms
of three years each. A library can, under this plan, keep in close
touch with popular needs and new ideas.
3) _Qualifications_.--The ideal qualifications for a trustee of a
public library--a fair education and love of books being taken for
granted--are: sound character, good judgment, common sense, public
spirit, capacity for work, literary taste, representative fitness.
Don't assume that because a man has been prominent in political
business or social circles he will make a good trustee. Capacity
and willingness to work are more useful than a taste for literature
without practical qualities. General culture and wide reading are
generally more serviceable to the public library than the knowledge of
the specialist or scholar. See that different sections of the town's
interests are represented. Let neither politics nor religion enter
into the choice of trustees.
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