Chapter XI: Part 11

It should hardly be necessary to warn both parties to such cooperation as this, that the obtrusion of considerations of personal advantage, where this conflicts with public service, will be fatal to its success. For instance, a clergyman who is preparing an address on some rather unusual subject must not expect the librarian of a small city to expend public money for books which will aid him, and him alone, in his work. Fortunately, this particular issue can generally be avoided, owing to the growth of facilities for inter-library loans. Altho the librarian might properly refuse to buy these particular books, he would doubtless offer to attempt to borrow them from some larger library, and this attempt would have a good chance of success. Interlibrary service of this kind is bound to increase largely in the future and offers a most promising field for the rendering of aid by the smaller libraries to the scholar, literary worker, and investigator, including, of course, the clergyman.

The getting-together of public library and church has possibly been hampered in the past by an idea, common to both librarian and clergyman, that religious bodies and their work ought to be ignored by all public bodies, and that this is in some way a part of our American system of government and public administration. It is, of course, a feature of that administration to treat all religious bodies with absolute impartiality; but that does not involve ignoring their existence any more than treating all citizens with impartiality involves the ignoring of the individual. One way of being impartial, of course, is to turn one’s back equally upon all, but that is not the only way. One may treat one’s children alike by starving all of them equally, but our idea of impartial treatment would be better satisfied by an equality of adequate supplies.

It is time that the public library and the Church stopt the starvation treatment and began to mete out to each other a supply of the aid and good-will that each has at its disposal. Each has its fight to make against the forces of darkness; neither is in a position to neglect an ally.

THE FUTURE OF LIBRARY WORK

When a railroad train is on its way, its future history depends on which way it is heading, on its speed, and on whether its direction and its speed will remain unchanged. With these premises, one may confidently predict that a train which left Chicago at a given hour on one day will reach New York at a given hour on the next. Of course, something may happen to slow the train, or to wreck it, or even to send it back to Chicago, in which cases our predictions will come to naught. This is what the weather man finds. His predictions are based on very similar data. Our weather conditions travel usually across the continent from west to east at a fairly uniform rate. If that rate is maintained, and the direction does not change, and nothing happens to dissipate or alter the conditions, we can predict their arrival at a given place with a fair degree of accuracy. Those who rail at the weather man’s mistakes are simply finding fault with our present inability to ascertain the causes that slow up storm centers, or swerve them in their course, or dissipate them. When we know these things, and know in addition what starts them, we can give up making forecasts and write out a pretty definite weather time-table--as definite and as little subject to change, at any rate, as those issued by the railroads.

My business at this moment is that of a forecaster. We know just where and what the library situation is at present, and some of us think we know where it is headed. If it should keep on in the same direction and at the same rate, we ought to be able to describe it as it will be, say, in 1950. Of course, it may get headed in some other direction. It may slow down or speed up; it may melt away or strike a rock and be irrecoverably wrecked. If I see any chances of any of these things, it is my business to mention them. If my forecast should turn out a failure no one can prove it until 1950 arrives, and then I shall not care.

To begin with the necessary preliminaries of our forecast--what and where are we now? I have said that I know; probably you think that you do; but as a matter of fact our knowledge is neither comprehensive nor accurate. We need a general library survey. We have, as a sort of statistical framework, the figures now printed annually in tabular form in the A.L.A. Proceedings, but probably no one would maintain that these do, or possibly could, give an adequate idea of the character or extent of the work that our libraries are doing. Those of us who think we know something of it have gained our knowledge by experience and observation and neither is extensive enough in most cases to take the place of a well-considered and properly-managed survey of existing conditions and methods.

In default of a survey, we must, as I have said, fall back upon observation and experience. I can certainly claim no monopoly of these, and what I say in this regard is, of course, largely personal. But it seems to me that the distinguishing marks of library work, as at present conducted, include the following. As you will see, they are all connected and overlap more or less. They are all growth-products. They are:

1 Size and expense.
2 Socialization.
3 Professionalization.
4 Popularization.
5 Nationalization.

First, library work in our country to-day is large and costly. Extensively it covers a great territory and reaches a huge population. Intensively it embraces a large variety of activities--many that one would hesitate, on general principles, to class as “library work.”

Secondly, a large amount of this increase of activity has been of a kind that we are now apt to call “social.” It deals with bodies or classes of people, and it tends to treat these people as the direct objects of the library’s attention, instead of dealing primarily with books, as formerly, and only indirectly with their readers. In fact, the persons with whom the library now deals may not be readers at all, except potentially, as when they are users of club or assembly rooms.

Thirdly, librarians are beginning to think of themselves as members of a profession. At first sight this may seem to be a fact of interest only to library workers, and not at all to the public. Its significance may appear if we compare it to the emergence of the modern surgeon with his professional skill, traditions and pride, from the medieval barber who simply followed blood-letting as an avocation. Professionalism is a symptom of a great many things--of achievement and of consciousness of it and pride in it; of a desire to do teamwork and to maintain standards; to make sure that one’s work is to be carried on and advanced by worthy successors.

Fourthly, libraries are now conducted for the many; not for the few. It is our aim to provide something for every one who can read, no matter of what age, sex, or condition. We do not even limit ourselves to readers, for we provide picture books for those who are too young to read. We are transferring the emphasis of our work from books to people. This characteristic is closely connected with what I have called “socialization,” but it is not the same thing. An institution may deal with all the people without dealing with them socially or in groups; and it may deal entirely with groups without dealing with everybody. The library now does both.

Fifthly, the library is now a national institution, at least in the same sense as is the public school. It is national in extent, national in consciousness, if not national in administration. Our own association has played its part in this development; the present war has given it a great stimulus. Those who see no nationalism without complete centralization and who say that we are not yet a nation because all our governmental powers are not centered at Washington, will doubtless deny the nationalization of the library. They take too narrow a view.

We may now combine two or more lines of inquiry. In what direction is the library moving in each of these respects? Is it speeding or slowing up? Is there any reason to look for speeding or slowing up in the future?

As regards size and cost, our development has been swift. We cannot, it seems to me, keep up the rate. Twenty years ago the institutions now constituting the New York Public Library circulated a million books. They now circulate ten million. Does anyone believe that twenty years hence they will circulate one hundred million? There must be further increase, because we are not now reaching every person and every class in the community, but it will not and cannot be a mere increase of quantity. We must do our work better and make every item and element in it tell. We must substitute one book well read for ten books skimmed. In place of ten worthless books we must put one that as worth while. There are already signs of this substitution of quality for quantity in our ideals.

Extension, as opposed to intension, has appealed to many enthusiastic librarians as “missionary work.” Perhaps the term is well chosen. Some of it is akin to the missionary fervor that sends funds to convert the distant heathen when nominal Christians around the corner are vainly demanding succor, material, mental and spiritual. We have too much of this in the library; attempts to form boys’ clubs with artificial aims and qualifications when clubs already formed to promote objects that are very real in the members’ minds are ignored or neglected; the provision of boresome talks on “Rubber-culture in Peru” and on “How I climbed Long’s Peak,” when members of the community would be genuinely interested in hearing an expert explain the income tax; the purchase of new books that nobody wants when an insistent demand for old standards of sterling worth has never been adequately met; all sorts of forcing from the outside instead of developing from the inside. This kind of thing, like charity, begins properly at home, and the real missionary takes care to set his own house in order before he goes far afield--to fill the nearby demand, when it is good, before attempting to force something on those who do not want it.

It is in this direction that our promise of continued progress lies when we cannot see grounds for expecting great future increase of income.

This leads us naturally to discuss what I have called our socialization, which is just beginning. It is running strong, but there is room for a long course, and that course, I believe, it will take. In the first place, we are functioning more and more as community centers, but there is enormous room for advance. We are straggling all along the line, which is one sign of an early stage. Some of us have not yet awakened to the fact that we are destined to play a great part in community development and community education. Others are reluctantly yielding to pressure. Others have gone so fast that they are in advance of their communities. Take, if you please, the one item of the provision of space for community meetings, regarded by some as the be-all and the end-all of the community center idea. It is really but one element, but it may serve as a straw to show which way the wind blows. Some libraries are giving no space for this purpose; some give it grudgingly, with all sorts of limitations; others give quite freely. None of us give with perfect freedom. I suppose we in St. Louis are as free as any. In 15 assembly and clubrooms we house 4,000 meetings yearly. Our only limitations are order and the absence of an admission fee. I incline to think that the maintenance of order should be the only condition. If an admission fee is charged, part of it should go to the library, to be devoted to caring for the assembly and clubrooms and improving them. There are many community gatherings that can be best administered on the plan of a paid admission. These ought not to be excluded. Most of our restrictions are simply exhibits of our reluctance to place ourselves at the complete social disposal of the community. A community is not a community unless it has political and religious interests. If we are going to become socialized at all, why balk at these any more than we should exclude from our shelves books on politics and religion? I look to see socialization, in this and other directions, proceed to such lengths that the older library ideals may have to go entirely by the board. Some of them are tottering now. I have said that I consider this matter of the use of assembly rooms only one item in what I have called socialization. It may all be summed up by saying that we are coming to consider the library somewhat in the light of a community club, of which all well-behaved citizens are members. Our buildings are clubhouses, with books and magazines, meeting rooms, toilet facilities, kitchens--almost everything, in fact, that a good, small club would contain. If you say “then they have ceased to be libraries and are something else,” that does not affect me any more than when you show that we are no longer speaking Chaucer’s language or wearing the clothes of Alfred the Great.

When we were trying to explain to the architects of the New York branch buildings exactly what we wanted in those structures and met with the usual misconception based on medieval ideas of a library, one of the most eminent architects in the United States suddenly sat up and took notice. “Why, these buildings are not to be _libraries_ at all,” he said, “they are to be reading clubs.” He had learned in a few minutes what many of us still see through a glass darkly.

An even more important manifestation of what I have called socialization is the extension of occupation groups to which the library is giving special attention and special service. The library has always had in mind one or more of these groups. Once it catered almost entirely to a group of scholars, at first belonging predominantly to the clergy. In later years it added the teachers in schools and their pupils, also the children of the community. These are definite groups, and their recognition in the rendition of service is a social act. Other groups are now being added with rapidity, and we are recognizing in our service industrial workers, business men, artists of various kinds, musicians and so on. The recognition of new groups and the extension of definite library service to them is progress in socialization, and it is going on steadily at the present time.

Just now the most conspicuous group that we are taking in is that of business men. In adjusting our resources and methods to the needs of this group we are changing our whole conception of the scope of a library’s collection. As Mr. Dana has pointed out, we now collect, preserve and distribute not books alone, but printed matter of all kinds, and in addition records of other types, such as manuscripts, pictures, slides, films, phonograph discs and piano rolls. Some of these of course are needed to adapt our collection to others than the business group--to educators, artists or musicians. We shall doubtless continue to discover new groups and undergo change in the course of adaptation to their needs.

The recognition of special groups and the effort to do them service has proceeded to a certain extent outside the pubic library, owing to the slowness of its reaction to this particular need. The result has been the special library. I am one of those who are sorry that the neglect of its opportunity by the public library has brought this about, and I hope for a reduction in the number of independent special libraries by a process of gradual absorption and consolidation. The recent acquisition of some formerly independent municipal reference libraries by the local libraries is a case in point. There must always be special libraries. The library business of independent industrial and commercial institutions is best cared for in this way. But every group that is merely a section of the general public, set apart from the rest by special needs and tastes, may be cared for most economically by the public library. If its service is not adapted to give such care, rapid and efficient adjustment is called for.

In a library forecast made several years ago, Mr. John C. Dana stated his opinion that the library, as it is, “an unimportant by-product,” is to be of importance in the future, but will then have departed from the “present prevailing type.” Without necessarily agreeing to our present insignificance, we may well accept, I think, this forecast of future growth and change.

Professionalization, too, has by no means reached its limit. As has been pointed out, it is a symptom, rather than the thing itself. It is like a man’s clothes, by which you can often trace the growth or decay of his self-respect. Pride in one’s work and a tendency to exalt it is a healthy sign, provided there is something back of it. The formation of staff associations like that recently organized in New York is a good sign, so is the multiplication of professional bodies. The establishment of the A.L.A. in 1876 was the beginning of the whole library advance in this country. It was only a symptom, of course, but with the healthy growth of libraries I look for more signs of our pride in what we are doing, of our unwillingness to lower it or to alter its ideals.

The familiar question, “Is librarianship a profession?” reduces to a matter of definition. We are being professionalized for the purposes of this discussion if we are growing sufficiently in group consciousness to let it react favorably on our work.

One of the earliest developments of a feeling of professional pride in one’s work is an insistence on the adequate training of the workers and on the establishment of standards of efficiency both for workers and work. Here belongs a forecast not only of library school training, but of official inspection and certification, of systems of service, etc. Standardization of this kind is on the increase and is bound to be enforced with greater strictness in the future. In our professional training as in other professions the tendency is toward specialization. With us, this specialization will doubtless proceed on the lines of facilities for practice. An engineering school cannot turn out electrical engineers if the only laboratories that it has are devoted to civil and mechanical engineering. A specialist in abdominal surgery is not produced by experience in a contagious disease ward. Similarly we ought not to expect a school remote from public library facilities to specialize in public library work, or a school in close connection with a public library to produce assistants for the work of a university library. Increasing professional spirit among us will demand specialization according to equipment.

Popularization, some may think, has already gone to the limit. How can we be more of the people than we are to-day? Are we not, in sooth, a little too democratic, perhaps? Personally I feel that a good deal of the library’s social democracy is on the surface. Any member of a privileged class will assure you that his own class constitutes “the people” and that the rest do not matter. The Athenians honestly thought that their country was a democracy, when it was really an oligarchy of the most limited kind. England honestly thought she had “popular” government when those entitled to vote were a very small part of the population. A library in a city of half a million inhabitants honestly thinks that a record of 100,000 cardholders entitles it to boast that its use extends to the whole population. We cannot say that we reach the whole number of citizens until we really do reach them. The school authorities can go out to the highways and hedges and compel them to come in; we cannot. Herein doubtless lies one of our advantages. Our buildings are filled with willing users. It is our business to universalize the desire to read as the schools are universalizing the ability. But we have not yet done so, and popularization proceeds slowly. I cannot say that I see many indications of speeding up in the rate, although our increase in the recognition of groups, noted above, may have an influence here in future. As groups develop among that part of the population that uses the library least, our opportunity to extend our influence over that part will present itself. One such group is ready for us but we have never reached it--that of union labor. The recognition of the unions by the library and of the library by the unions has been unaccountably delayed, despite sporadic, well-meant, but ineffective efforts on both sides. No more important step for the intellectual future of the community can be taken than this extension of service.

Nationalization has just begun. It is speeding up and will go far, I am sure, in the next twenty years. Our libraries are getting used to acting as a unit. We should not like administrative nationalization and I see no signs of it; but nationalization in the sense of improved opportunities for team work and greater willingness to avail ourselves of them we shall get in increasing measure. For instance, one of our greatest opportunities lies before us in the inter-library loan. It knocks at our door, but we do not heed it because in this respect we have not begun yet to think nationally. But having begun national service in the various activities brought to the front by the war, we shall not, I am sure, lag behind much longer. The national organization of the A.L.A. has long provided us with a framework on which to build our national thoughts and our national deeds, but hitherto it has remained a mere scaffolding, conspicuous through the absence of any corresponding structure. The war is teaching us both to think and to act nationally, and after it is over I shall be astonished if we are longer content to do each his own work. Our work is nationwide, in peace as in war and our tardy realization of this fact may be one of the satisfactory by-products of this world conflict.

Now it is not beyond the possibilities that the library movement, headed right and running free, may still fall because it meets some obstacle and goes to pieces. Are there any such in sight? I seem to see several, but I believe that we can steer clear. If we split on anything it will be on an unseen rock, and of such, of course, we can say nothing.

One rock is political interference. The library has had trouble with it of old and some of us are still struggling with it. It is assumed by those who put their trust in paper civil service that it has now been minimized. This overlooks the undoubted fact that in a great number of cases the civil service machinery has been captured by politicians, and now works to aid them, not to control them. The greatest danger of political interference in public libraries, now lies in well-meant efforts to turn them over to some local commission established to further the merit system, but actually working in harmony with a political machine.

Another rock on which we may possibly split is that of formalism. Machinery must be continually scrapped and replaced if progress is to be made. It will not grow and change like an organism. The library itself is subject to organic growth and change, but its machinery will not change automatically with it. If we foster in any way an idea that our machinery is sacred, that it is of permanent value and that conditions should conform to it instead of its conforming to them, our whole progress may come to an end. I have called this a rock, but it is rather a sort of Sargasso Sea where the library may whirl about in an eternity of seaweed.

Another obstacle, somewhat allied to this of formalism, is the “big head”--none the less dangerous because it is common and as detrimental to an institution as it is to an individual. Just as soon as a person, or an institution, sits down and begins to appreciate himself or itself, to take stock of the services he or it is rendering the community, to wonder at their extent and value, those services are in a fair way to become valueless. The proper attitude is rather that of investigation to discover further possible kinds of service, with the exercise of ingenuity in devising ways to render them effectively.

We have occasionally been accused of taking the attitude of self-laudation, but I really do not think there is great danger of an epidemic of this malady. We do not receive enough encouragement. Once in a while, to be sure, someone tells us, or tells the public, what a great and valuable institution the public library is but the treatment that we receive is generally mildly humorous when it is not characterized by downright indifference and neglect. Whenever a book comes into my hands telling of some movement in which I know that the library has borne an honorable part I always turn first to the index and search for recognition under the letter L. Generally it is not there; when it is, it is almost always inadequate. If we are attacked by the “big head,” it will have to be a case of auto-intoxication.

Exploitation is another possible rock. I have already alluded to the danger of capture by a political machine, but there are other interests more subtle and quite as dangerous. Many a useful institution, intended to be nonpartisan, has been captured and used by some interest or other while remaining non-partisan on the surface. Our safety, so far, has resided in the inability of most interests to see that we are worth capture. When the drive comes, as I believe it will, our continued safety will lie, not in resistance, but in an equal yielding to all--a willingness to act as the agent for all isms, religious, economic, political and industrial without exalting one above another or emphasizing one at another’s expense. Something of this we are already doing, and in so far as we succeed in it we are placing ourselves in a position of vantage from which it will be very difficult to dislodge us.

Assuming the truth of all this--and it is something of an assumption, I grant you--what then, is our library of 1950 to be? An institution not very much larger or more expensively operated than our present maximum, although with a higher minimum, carried on with a more careful eye to economy and watching more jealously the quality of its output. It will have two units of service, as at present, the book and the citizen, but it will tend to regard the latter as primary, rather than the former and will shrink from no form of service that it can render him. The higher quality of its work will be reflected in the greater pride of the worker--in a spirit of professionalism that will insist on adequate training and proper compensation and possibly will use organization to enforce these ideals. It will reach out somewhat further among the people than it does now, although not so much that the difference will be notable. Finally the teamwork between different libraries will be more frequent and effective, assistants will be exchanged freely, readers’ cards used interchangeably and inter-library loans will take place easily and often.

What effect will these changes have on the desirability of library work as a profession? The only conclusion can be that it will be greatly increased. By this I mean that it will be more interesting, more likely to give pleasure to the worker as a by-product. I do not mean that it will necessarily pay very much better. The most interesting and pleasurable occupations are generally, I think, those that do not pay well in money. One should not expect full payment in both cash and pleasure. The exception is where the acquisition of money is itself the feature of the occupation that gives the pleasure. I do not quarrel with those who pursue this form of pleasure, but they certainly have no business to be librarians or teachers, or artists or authors, or to engage in any occupation which in itself constitutes to the worker the fullness of life and its illumination. The library profession will make its appeal in 1950, as it does today, to men and women who like to work with and among and through books; who also like to work with and among and through people; who enjoy watching the interplay of relations between the man and the book and using them for the advancement of civilization. This is an intellectual and spiritual appeal, and it is not likely to be replaced by that which glitters on the metallic face of the dollar.

In taking leave of our subject we may go back to our opening simile of the railroad train. The flier that reaches New York is the same train that left Chicago; its passengers have not greatly changed, and yet its environment is wholly different, so that the outlook of those within it has totally altered. It is in some such fashion that the library of 1950 will differ from that of today. It will be the same institution with the same staff, but it will have traveled far on the rails of time. Its environment, its outlook will be different, and in its response to that variation it must needs do different things and render a different service. May its motive power never fail, its machinery be kept well oiled, and the crew maintain their strength, intelligence and sanity!

POPULARIZING MUSIC THROUGH THE LIBRARY[18]

The purchase of music by a public library is justified by the assumption that its use is to be somewhat analogous to that of printed speech. The analogy is, in fact, somewhat closer than most persons realize, and its consideration reveals some mistaken ideas about the use of music in a library and may give rise to suggestions for the improvement of that use. A page of music, like a page of written language, is a record of something whose primary expression is obtained through sound. Anyone who understands the notation in either case may reproduce the sounds. In one case this is “reading aloud”; in the other it is a performance of the music. In the case of the music the sounds may be made with the voice, or with an instrument or with one or several of both at once, but this is only an apparent complication and does not affect the principle. The reader, of course, may learn the language, or the music, by heart and then dispense with the written record. In practise there are important differences between the treatment of records of speech and music. As sound is readily imagined as well as actually produced, both speech and music may be enjoyed by a reader without making a sound. If the reader of a book cannot do this, he is not regarded as at all skilled. Most of us, I think, do not consider that a person knows completely how to read when he is not able to read “to himself”, but finds it necessary to make the actual sounds of speech, whether loudly, or only under his breath. In the case of music, however, only the skilled musician, as a general thing, is able to read a page of music “to himself”, as he would read a page of written language. This is especially the case with instrumental music and with music where there are several parts. An accomplished musician, however, may run over an orchestral score and hear the performance “in his mind”, with the quality of each instrument brought out, the harmonies and the shading of intensity.

We may go a step further as a matter of curious interest. Language is not necessarily connected with sounds at all. A deaf mute, who has never heard a sound, and is incapable of understanding what sound is, may nevertheless learn to read. He is, however unable to appreciate a page of written music, and I do not know how it would be possible to explain to him what it is like, except the rhythm of it, which may be made to appeal to the senses of sight and touch, as well as to that of sound. In general, however, the reader of music must at least imagine the sounds represented by the notation before him. This is not the case with the reader of speech. Anyone who can read fast and well enough may, like the deaf mute, understand what he reads without even imaging the sound of the words. One may even read so fast that the mere speed forbids any thought of the corresponding oral language. Skilled readers may take in a sentence, a paragraph, almost a page, at a glance. This is the sole point of difference between reading language and reading music; and it does not greatly concern us here because all that it practically affects is speed of appreciation.

Something that is of greater importance is the difference of purpose usually found between those who read words and those who read musical notes. When we say of a child that he is studying music we usually mean that he is learning how to sing or to play on some instrument with the special view of being able to perform before some kind of audience. A music-teacher in like manner is one who teaches his pupils how to play on the piano or the violin, or how to sing.

But when we teach a child to read we are not primarily concerned with his future ability to read aloud or to recite so as to give pleasure to an audience, what we are thinking of is his ability to read rapidly to himself so as to understand what is in books. Looked at in the same way the main thing in musical instruction would be to teach rapid sight-reading so that the reader should get the ability to become acquainted with as large a number of musical masterpieces as possible. One learns to talk by talking; one learns to read by reading; and the same is true of reading music. And as the omnivorous reader of books always wants to express his own thoughts in writing, so the omnivorous reader of music will want to compose. Neither the one nor the other may produce anything great, but the effort will aid in mental development. As a matter of fact, the child begins to put his thoughts into words before he knows how to read. He is encouraged to do so. No mother ever tried to stop her baby from learning to talk because its first efforts were feeble, halting and unintelligible. How differently we treat the child’s attempts at musical expression--for that is the explanation of many of the crude baby noises that we hear. As the child grows, its expression in this direction is discouraged, and seldom is any effort made at encouragement or development. Is it not a wonder that anyone succeeds in composing original music? How many great poets or novelists should we have if every baby were discouraged in its efforts to express itself in words; if it were never taught to talk and never to read?

By the time we librarians are able to exert an influence on the reader, this period is past, but it is still possible to do something. Our first job is to disabuse the public of the idea that enjoyment of music has necessarily something to do with mastering the technique of some musical instrument. The phonograph has done good work in removing this impression, but we should never be content with the phonograph any more than we should consent to do away with all printed books and rely wholly on works “read aloud” on the victrola. There will always be pleasure and profit in doing one’s own reading, whether in speech or in music. One must understand musical notation of course, just as one must know the notation of written speech before he can read books. He must also understand a little of some instrument, preferably the piano; though only enough for sight-reading, his object being to understand and appreciate the music himself, not necessarily to bring understanding and appreciation to others.

I think I have gone far enough along this train of thought to show the principle on which I should select the music for a public library collection. I should form such a collection in precisely the same way as my collection of books. A very large proportion of the books in a public library are properly intended for those who will read them for their own delectation, enjoying and appreciating and profiting personally by what they read. A much smaller proportion are books for study and research. A still smaller number are dramatic or other selections intended principally for recitation or declamation. So, in selecting my music I would acquire chiefly selections for reading. I do not mean elementary reading--one does not limit his language books to primers. I should buy works of all grades of difficulty, but I should have always in mind the primary use of these for sight reading. Comparatively few would be pieces written solely for display--to dazzle the hearer or to show off technique. Few would be pieces whose interest is chiefly historical or academic. I do not say that I should exclude either of these kinds, but I certainly should not include them in greater degree than I should include analogous material in buying ordinary books. Bear in mind also that I am speaking of an ordinary public library, of average size, not of a university library nor that of a music school; nor a public library so large that it may properly have some of the functions of both of these.

Just as it is a conspicuous duty of the library to raise and maintain the level of literary taste in its community and to keep this fact in mind in the selection of its books, so it is the business of its musical collection to raise and maintain the level of musical taste.

My own opinion, which some may regard as heretical, is that taste can not be cultivated, in literature, or art, or music, to any considerable extent by study. The study of these things must have to do largely with history and technique, and while a knowledge of these is desirable it can not affect taste, although we may imagine that it does. We may reduce this matter to its lowest terms by thinking for a moment of something that depends on the uncomplicated action of an elementary sense--physical taste. If one does not like an olive when he eats one for the first time, that judgment can not be reversed by studying the history of olive culture. If he dislikes cheese, it will be useless to take him into a cheese factory and explain to him, or teach him the technical processes of manufacture. The only way to make him change his mind is to induce him to keep on eating olives, when one of two things will take place--either his dislike of olives will be confirmed, or it will disappear. As most people like olives when they become accustomed to the taste, the latter result is to be expected. Now suppose that someone does not care for Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. My contention is that he cannot be made to like it by studying the history of music, or that of this particular selection, nor by analyzing its structure, but that he may be led to do it by listening to it repeatedly. As persons familiar with good music do generally enjoy this piece, it is probable that this result will follow.

I know that I must now justify this comparison. When I make it I am accustomed to indignant protest on the part of some of my students. Is it not unworthy to compare the music of the Moonlight Sonata to a mere physical sensation like the taste of an olive? Only as it may be considered unworthy to compare the great and the small; the complex and the simple. Both the taste of the olive and the sound of the sonata, have a physical origin and impress the brain through the agency of the sense organs. And as a matter of fact I doubt whether the sensation of the music is much more complicated than that of the taste. We know that an acoustic sensation is a unit. When a chorus is singing with orchestral accompaniment the result is not a hundred sound waves, but one; it strikes the ear drum as a unit, and that vibrates as a unit, so that the impression on the brain, about whose mechanism we are ignorant, must also be a unit. The popularity of the phonograph enables us to illustrate this familiarly. Examine with a microscope a record of a complicated musical performance, with many voices and many different kinds of instruments, and you will find a single wavy line. When the needle causes the disk to vibrate by following this line, it vibrates as a unit, just as the ear-drum does. There is but one disk, yet its vibration enables us to pick out separately the different voice parts, and to recognize the separate quality of the stringed instruments, the woodwinds and the brasses, with the drums, bells, and what not. When we taste the olive, we get a sort of chemical effect. We do not know what happens as definitely as we do in the case of a musical sound, but the various atoms, each vibrating in its own way, act upon the taste-buds of the tongue so that a sensation is transmitted to the brain--transmitted as a unit, just as the sound is. I want to be fair, so I will acknowledge that instead of comparing a single sensation of taste to a sequence of sounds, I should have likened it to a musical chord. To get a taste analogy with a sonata we should have to use a sequence of taste sensations, possibly that presented by a course dinner. I submit, however, that this does not affect my argument.

Let me repeat my conviction, then, that art is primarily a matter of the heart and not of the head--of the feelings and not of the intellect, and that the feelings are trained by personal experience, not by study. One cannot learn to appreciate a poem, or a picture or a piece of music by examining it historically or structurally, only by experiencing it and others like it again and again, and also by experiencing in life the emotions that the art is intended to arouse. Of course I do not mean to say that knowledge of history and technique is not interesting and valuable. It is highly interesting to know the recipe for the pie and to watch the cook make it; but this does not affect the taste.

Knowledge obtained by study does affect ability to reproduce or create. One must know how the pie is made before he can make one himself. One can not write a poem or paint a picture or compose a song, without preliminary study. This should be understood, but it is outside the pale of our present discussion, which relates to the chief purpose of the music collection in a library and of its chief uses. My contention, to repeat, is that it is related to musical art precisely as the purpose of the book-collection is related to the art of literature.

Now the present status of the music collection is precisely what that of the book collection would be in a community where the percentage of literacy was small, where a considerable number of persons did not understand the language of the books, even when spoken or read aloud, where those who knew the language understood it only when spoken or read and where readers were obliged to read aloud before they could appreciate what they were reading. A community, moreover, where teaching generally meant solely teaching how to recite or read aloud acceptably to others, with only enough ability to read to get the sense of an extract and enable the reader to commit it to memory. A librarian set down with a collection of books in such a community would not be true to his vocation if he did not attempt to better this state of things, while admitting the elements of good that it contained. For instance, the imaginary situation that I have described would be quite comparable with a real appreciation and love of good literature.

In the first place, the librarian would wish to see that all the members of his community were able to understand the language of his books, if not to read it. To remember our analogy for a moment, he would practically fit his books to his people. If they were predominantly French, for instance, he would buy many French books. But one can not do this with music, for music is a language by itself, for the most part untranslatable into any other. We must assume that in the world to which our imaginary community belongs there is but one language, and that to understand the books those who do not know that language must be taught it. School instruction in language is largely limited to reading. Children who go to school understand and talk their language already, having been taught it at home. It is to the homes, therefore, that the librarian would have to look for this instruction and he would have to bring to bear on parents whatever influence might be at his disposal to make them see its value and uses.

Secondly, he would have to see that as many as possible were taught to read the language. This would be the function of the schools.

Thirdly, it would be necessary to see that facility in reading proceeded so far that readers would not find it necessary to read aloud, but could when they desired, read rapidly “to themselves”. It would be necessary, of course, to show many of the teachers and almost all of their pupils, that reading is primarily not to enable the reader to recite to others, but to make an impression on his own mental equipment. It is quite possible for one to learn to read out loud after a fashion, in a foreign tongue, without understanding a word of it, but so that listeners may get a fair idea of it. The effect on the reader in this case is absolutely zero.

Musically, this kind of community is precisely the one that public libraries have to deal with. Many of our clients do not like or understand music at all, or they care for only the most elementary melodies, harmonies and rythms--comparable to the literature that one gets in a child’s primer. Of those whose range of appreciation and love is fairly wide, comparatively few are familiar with musical notation, and can not read music. Of those who can read, few can read rapidly and with assurance, and fewer still can read without audible utterance; that is, they can not read to themselves. It is common to hear persons who can sing or play on some instrument with a fair degree of success and taste say “Oh, I can’t read; I have to pick out the notes and get my teacher to help me.” This is exactly as if someone who had just recited an oration or a poem with some feeling should proclaim complacently: “Oh, I can’t really read. I had to pick out that piece word for word, with my teacher at my elbow to help me out.”

In the face of such a situation the librarian should feel and act precisely as he would feel and act if the situation existed with regard to books, as it has already been imagined and described.

First, he should try to influence the growth of musical appreciation through the home, so that all the children in a family shall come to understand and use musical language as they do the language of the spoken word.

Secondly, he should try to influence the schools so that they shall teach the reading of musical notation as thoroughly as they do the reading of the printed word, and to persuade teachers of music to teach music really and not simply the art of performing on some musical instrument.

Thirdly, he should point out to his musical clients that music may be read “to oneself”, just as language can, and encourage them to try it, beginning with easy examples. Note that reading to oneself can be done only by those who already know how to read aloud, and only by practise. There is no way in which it can be taught.

Fourthly, he should have in his library a selection of music picked out to a great extent to further the ends outlined above. Much of it should be for readers, not for performers. His lists should be made for readers and the comments on individual titles should be for readers. Moreover, they should at present be such as will help the beginner; for a very large proportion of our musical readers are beginners although they may be in the anomalous position of the reader who knows and appreciates his subject matter very thoroughly, while he can read about it only hesitatingly and haltingly. Imagine a well-informed and intelligent student of history who has completely forgotten to read, owing to some concussion of the brain which has not impaired his knowledge in any other way, and you have the situation of many music-lovers.

There were doubtless poets before the invention of alphabets, and one may appreciate a symphony concert without knowing his musical alphabet or being able to use it; but we are accustomed now to considering thorough ability to read as a prerequisite to the requirement of a general education; and I do not see why as complete an ability to read music should not be a prerequisite for such a musical education as all persons ought to possess.

The analogy between the reading of music and that of language is very close, as we have seen, and we may be guided by it largely; but there is one respect in which it fails. Music and poetry may both be bad in the sense that they are ugly, of faulty construction, or trivial. But poetry may also be bad because it conveys a bad moral lesson or causes one to accept what is false. I can not see that it is possible for music to do this, except by association. A tune that has always been associated with improper words may in time come to be considered as itself improper, but there can be nothing objectionable about the music in itself. Again, music may be improperly used. Anyone would say that a largo in a minor key was out of place at a wedding, or a jig at a funeral. Association may have, but does not necessarily have anything to do with this; but here again the music in itself is not objectionable. This simplifies the selection of music for a library; for it excludes at the outset almost all the problems of censorship. Music is rejected usually for negative reasons--because it is not worth buying; not for any active evil influence that it is likely to exert.