Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries — John Shaqi
Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public LibrariesBostwick, Arthur E. (Arthur Elmore)
Science
Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries
Bostwick, Arthur E. (Arthur Elmore)
Library science; Public libraries
This is an unoccupied field, and it would be an eminently proper one for
the Trustees’ Section of the American Library Association. We librarians
should be very glad to know just what you expect us to accomplish, for
on that depends our manner of setting to work. Do you wish us to aim at
decreasing the percentage of illiteracy in the community? or the arrests
for drunkenness? Are we to strive for an increased circulation? And will
an absolute increase be satisfactory, or must it be an increase
proportionate to population? Is it definitely demanded of us to decrease
our fiction percentage? Shall we, in any given case, devote our
attention chiefly to the home use or the reference use of the library?
Shall we favor the student or the ordinary citizen? These questions, of
course, cannot receive a general answer; they must be decided
differently in different cases, but at least we may agree on the type of
question that it is admissible to answer at all and on the degree of
detail to which it is permissible to go in stating a requirement.
For instance, is it admissible for a board to say to its librarian, “The
results that we require you to show include the following: A
well-ordered collection of books classified according to the Dewey
system, bound in half duck and distributed with the aid of the Browne
charging system?” I think it will be granted that this would be an
attempt to control the details of method in the guise of a statement of
desired results. But where shall we draw the line? How specific may be
the things that a board may properly require of its expert staff? That
is the question whose solution by this Section would be an inestimable
benefit to all libraries and librarians. At present there is wide
difference of opinion and of practice on this point. Many people would
not agree at all with the limitations that have just been laid down;
even those who do agree would differ widely over their interpretation.
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