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several university libraries in England that they were so engaged in writing books, that no scholar could get at them for aid in his literary researches. The librarians and assistants employed in the British Museum Library, where the hours of service are short, have found time to produce numerous contributions to literature. Witness the works, as authors and editors, of Sir Henry Ellis, Antonio Panizzi, Dr. Richard Garnett, Edward Edwards, J. Winter Jones, Thomas Watts, George Smith, and others. And in America, the late Justin Winsor was one of the most prolific and versatile of authors, while John Fiske, once assistant librarian at Harvard, Reuben A. Guild, William F. Poole, George H. Moore, J. N. Larned, Frederick Saunders and others have been copious contributors to the press.

In a retrospective view of what has been said in respect to the qualifications of a librarian, it may appear that I have insisted upon too high a standard, and have claimed that he should be possessed of every virtue under heaven. I freely admit that I have aimed to paint the portrait of the ideal librarian; and I have done it in order to show what might be accomplished, rather than what has been accomplished. To set one's mark high-higher even than we are likely to reach, is the surest way to attain real excellence in any vocation. It is very true that it is not given to mortals to achieve perfection: but it is none the less our business to aim at it, and the higher the ideal, the nearer we are likely to come to a notable success in the work we have chosen.

Librarianship furnishes one of the widest fields for the most eminent attainments. The librarian, more than any other person whatever, is brought into contact with those who are hungering and thirsting after knowledge. He should be able to satisfy those longings, to lead inquirers

in the way they should go, and to be to all who seek his assistance a guide, philosopher and friend. Of all the pleasures which a generous mind is capable of enjoying, that of aiding and enlightening others is one of the finest and most delightful. To learn continually for one's self is a noble ambition, but to learn for the sake of communicating to others, is a far nobler one. In fact, the librarian becomes most widely useful by effacing himself, as it were, in seeking to promote the intelligence of the community in which he lives. One of the best librarians in the country said that such were the privileges and opportunities of the profession, that one might well afford to live on bread and water for the sake of being a librarian, provided one had no family to support.

There is a new and signally marked advance in recent years, in the public idea of what constitutes a librarian. The old idea of a librarian was that of a guardian or keeper of books-not a diffuser of knowledge, but a mere custodian of it. This idea had its origin in ages when books were few, were printed chiefly in dead languages, and rendered still more dead by being chained to the shelves or tables of the library. The librarian might be a monk, or a professor, or a priest, or a doctor of law, or theology, or medicine, but in any case his function was to guard the books, and not to dispense them. Those who resorted to the library were kept at arm's length, as it were, and the fewer there were who came, the better the grim or studious custodian was pleased. Every inquiry which broke the profound silence of the cloistered library was a kind of rude interruption, and when it was answered, the perfunctory librarian resumed his reading or his studies. The institution appeared to exist, not for the benefit of the people, but for that of the librarian; or for the benefit, besides, of a few sequestered scholars, like himself, and any wide

popular use of it would have been viewed as a kind of profanation.

We have changed all that in the modern world, and library service is now one of the busiest occupations in the whole range of human enterprise. One cannot succeed in the profession, if his main idea is that a public library is a nice and easy place where one may do one's own reading and writing to the best advantage. A library is an intellectual and material work-shop, in which there is no room for fossils nor for drones. My only conception of a useful library is a library that is used-and the same of a librarian. He should be a lover of books-but not a book-worm. If his tendencies toward idealism are strong, he should hold them in check by addicting himself to steady, practical, every-day work. While careful of all details, he should not be mastered by them. If I have sometimes seemed to dwell upon trifling or obvious suggestions as to temper, or conduct, or methods, let it be remembered that trifles make up perfection, and that perfection is no trifle.

I once quoted the saying that "the librarian who reads is lost"; but it would be far truer to say that the librarian who does not read is lost; only he should read wisely and with a purpose. He should make his reading helpful in giving him a wide knowledge of facts, of thoughts, and of illustrations, which will come perpetually in play in his daily intercourse with an inquiring public.

CHAPTER 14.

SOME OF THE USES OF LIBRARIES.

Let us now consider the subject of the uses of public libraries to schools and those connected with them. Most town and city libraries are supported, like the free schools, by the public money, drawn from the tax-payers, and supposed to be expended for the common benefit of all the people. It results that one leading object of the library should be to acquire such a collection of books as will be in the highest degree useful to all. And especially should the wants of the younger generation be cared for, since they are always not only nearly one half of the community, but they are also to become the future citizens of the republic. What we learn in youth is likely to make a more marked and lasting impression than what we may acquire in later years. And the public library should be viewed as the most important and necessary adjunct of the school, in the instruction and improvement of the young. Each is adapted to supply what the other lacks. The school supplies oral instruction and public exercises in various departments of learning; but it has few or no books, beyond the class text-books which are used in these instructions. The library, on the other hand, is a silent school of learning, free to all, and supplying a wide range of information, in books adapted to every age. It thus supplements, and in proportion to the extent and judicious choice of its collections, helps to complete that education, which the school falls short of. In this view, we see the great importance of making sure that the public library has not only a full supply of the best books in every field, avoid

ing (as previously urged) the bad or the inferior ones, but also that it has the best juvenile and elementary literature in ample supply. This subject of reading for the young has of late years come into unprecedented prominence. Formerly, and even up to the middle of our century, very slight attention was paid to it, either by authors or readers. Whole generations had been brought up on the New England Primer, with its grotesque wood-cuts, and antique theology in prose and verse, with a few moral narratives in addition, as solemn as a meeting-house, like the "Dairyman's Daughter," the "History of Sandford and Merton," or "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain." Very dreary and melancholy do such books appear to the frequenters of our modern libraries, filled as they now are with thousands of volumes of lively and entertaining juvenile books.

The transition from the old to the new in this class of literature was through the Sunday-school and religious tract society books, professedly adapted to the young. While some of these had enough of interest to be fairly readable, if one had no other resource, the mass were irredeemably stale and poor. The mawkishness of the sentiment was only surpassed by the feebleness of the style. At last, weary of the goody-goody and artificial school of juvenile books, which had been produced for generations, until a surfeit of it led to something like a nausea in the public mind, there came a new type of writers for the young, who at least began to speak the language of reason. The dry bones took on some semblance of life and of human nature, and boys and girls were painted as real boys and genuine girls, instead of lifeless dolls and manikins. The reformation went on, until we now have a world of books for the young to choose from, very many of which are fresh and entertaining.

But the very wealth and redundancy of such literature

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