The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses
History
The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses
Libraries and society; Library science -- Social aspects
There is a third difficulty, which is a very real and palpable one. The
librarian himself may have a fairly high ideal of the library which is
shared by perhaps one or two assistants. The bulk of the work in a
library with a large circulation is done by young persons of less
opportunity and training. Each has a distinct part of the work to do
with little idea of its relation to the whole. Unfortunately the
loan-desk, registration-desk, and reading-room are usually manned in
this way. I have often stood amazed at the delivery-desk of librarians
whose names represent all that is best in the library profession. I
would not be understood as depreciating the work of the lower assistants
in our libraries. I know well that this service, as a whole, represents
an amount of faithfulness and devotion which it ill becomes me to
undervalue. The responsibility lies with the head of the library and the
failure comes from lack of organization. The appointing power should be
practically in his hands. The man whom we have described above does not
need to seek this power. It comes to him. It is surely possible to
secure for the library service young men and women, boys and girls, of
fair intelligence, quick wits, responsive minds, and human sympathies.
The making of these units into an organism is the severest test of a
librarian's power. The ability of a general is not enough. He must
himself have the real human touch or he cannot call it forth from
others. There must be the promptness, the accuracy, the despatch which
marks military discipline; there must be also an intelligent conception
of the purpose of the library, a strong sense of personal responsibility
and of the dignity and beauty of the public service. It is sometimes
said that spirit of the library should be that of a merchant and his
well-trained clerks, anxious to please their customers. It should be
rather the fine spirit of a hostess with the daughters of the house
about her greeting her guests.
There is a fourth failure which is perhaps the root difficulty. It is
the failure to make the most of time. The day opens. The man hastens to
his place and finds a score of voices calling him to as many different
tasks. He hastily begins the one which seems to call the loudest, and
has just begun to gather up the threads of thought when there is a
peremptory call in another direction. And so he is driven through the
day, not controlling, but controlled, and constantly lashed by the
thought of neglected duties. By dint of keeping at it all through the
day and often into the night much work is done. The man gets and
deserves the reputation of a hard-working man, deliberately sacrificing
health, ease, leisure, and the joys of a scholar's life for the public
good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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