VOL. 3

Commissioner of Education ANDREW S. DRAPER LL.B. LL.D.

Editorial Board

J. I. WYER, JR, Director of State Library W. R. EASTMAN, Chief of Division of Educational Extension

ASA WYNKOOP, Inspector of Public Libraries

This bulletin is sent without cost to all libraries and members of library boards in the State making due application. To others it will be mailed postpaid for 25 cents a year, or 10 cents for a single copy.

INCREASING THE EFFICIENCY OF

NO. 1

BRARY AS AN EDUCATIONAL FACTOR, A. H. Chamberlain ....

BOOK READERS IN PRocess.

CATALOGING IN A SMALL CITY LIBRARY, Artena M. Chapin..

THE LI

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In order that the mailing list may be kept up to date, it is requested that prompt notice be given of any change in library boards or officers.

EDITORIAL NOTES..

CONTENTS

Librarians and teachers at Albany.

Library tools.

Library efficiency..

The county library plan.

Relating library to the community.

QUESTION BOx.

Averages for city libraries.

tising.

NOTES AND NEWS OF NEW YORK LIBRARIES..

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Librarians and teachers at Albany. As will be seen by the program printed on another page, the Library Section of the State Teachers Association is preparing to follow the notable success achieved by it at the Rochester meeting last year, by an equally notable meeting at Albany next November. Speakers of national prominence have been secured, topics of the most practical and vital interest have been chosen for discussion and a comprehensive exhibit of all that is best and most helpful in library aids and appliances is being prepared. Best of all, there is in this new library movement among the teachers a zeal and enthusiasm, an aggressive confidence in its ideals and possibilities which

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labor in constructing with one's own hand a needed tool when a far better one has been provided by the labors of others, is to disregard the very first axiom of library economy. The man who will accomplish most in library work, or in any other work, is the one who knows how to make the best use of the labors of others. In the list to which we here call attention will be found the best products of recent professional labors in several fields of library activity, and no librarian can afford to be in ignorance of the helps thus placed at his service. None but the larger libraries will need them all, but some of them should be in the hands of every one who has to do with books and libraries.

The county library plan. Librarians and all who are interested in library extension in this State will follow with keen interest the workings of the new provision in the State law authorizing either the establishment by popular vote of a county library system, or the securing of library privileges for the people of the whole county by means of a contract between the county board of supervisors and any public library in the county. Heretofore the law has failed to make any provision for a county library system, save as such a system might be built up through the cooperation of all the towns of the county. Such cooperation, while possible, has been found to be entirely impracticable; hence the need of such a provision as has just been enacted to enable the county to act as a whole.

It is easy to see that there will be many difficulties in achieving any important results under the new law. The stronger centers in the counties are already supplied with libraries, and unless they look at the matter in a large public-spirited way, they will see little advantage in sharing their privileges with the people of the whole county, even though proper compensation be given. In many cases the problem is seriously complicated by the existence in the county of several strong libraries. A more serious difficulty still is the inertia of people living in the rural districts, and their feeling that they will not get their full share of privilege from a library situated at a distance. But the law has in it large possibilities, and all that is needed to realize some of these possibilities is a little public spirit and determination to bring the 1 A. L. A. Bulletin, July 1911, p. 131.

matter to an issue. It enables the people of any county to have a public library system free to the whole county, if they want it. It puts into the hands of two compact boards, the trustees of a public library and the board of supervisors, the power to extend to every man, woman and child in the bounds of the county, the benefits of a free library, on such terms as they think best. It thus points the way perhaps the only way in which the million and a half people in this State scattered in small hamlets and the open country who are now entirely without public library privileges, may be enabled to secure freely and conveniently these great privileges. There are a few counties which appear now to be ready to take the lead in this matter. Let them but demonstrate the success of the plan, and many others will follow in due order.

Library efficiency. It is easy to criticise the various tests that have been proposed for determining efficiency in library management. In the very nature of the case, it is impossible to measure in any exact terms the total value of a library's work or output, or to demonstrate by figures or percentages the relative worth to their communities of two libraries. As pointed out by Mr Dudgeon in his discussion of this question at the Pasadena conference, there are always two incalculable factors in a library's product, the book need of the reader and the quality and influence of the book read; and until libraries have some way of measuring these factors, there can be no fixed standard of library efficiency. "To deliver one book of great human value to one person greatly in need of it at a cost of one dollar for a single circulation might constitute a more efficient service than to deliver fifty less valuable books to fifty people needing books less at a cost of one cent only for each circulation."1 It is no more possible to tell what a library is worth to a community than to tell what the church or the school or a human character is worth to it.

But all this should not obscure the fact that there is such a thing as high efficiency in library management and also such a thing as low efficiency; and the conditions of such efficiency may be as definitely determined as in the case of an industrial plant or factory. Admitting that ultimate values are beyond

our tests, it is to be remembered that in measuring efficiency of management we are not attempting to deal with ultimate values, but with methods, processes, conditions and tangible facts. We can not tell the ultimate effect of the reading of a particular book, but we can tell the extent to which the reading of that book is facilitated and promoted. We can not tell just how many readers have the books they most needed, but we can tell when a library is so organized and equipped as to give readers the best aid in meeting such needs. We can not be sure that a great uplift for some particular reader may not be more important than a slighter uplift to many readers, but we can be sure that a library which is reaching but a small part of its possible constituency is inefficiently managed or equipped. No one can exactly tell what good may be done by the circulation of current fiction, but we know that the public library is but a weak and inefficient thing which does little or nothing but circulate such fiction. Thus the common statistics of our library reports, while there are many things which they do not tell, if interpreted in the light of local conditions, form a solid basis for judging efficiency in library organization and management, and librarians and trustees who are in doubt as to whether their library is making the most of its resources and possibilities will find nothing more helpful than a comparative study of the reports of libraries known for their efficient administration.

Relating library to the community. As to the conditions of library efficiency, it needs no study of library science or library statistics to name the first and most important, as it is the first condition of all efficient lifethe establishment of natural and vital relations with its environment. A splendid building, a trained librarian, a model system of internal economy, a notable collection of books, all will fail to make an efficient library unless the institution be brought into intimate relations with the people of the community. This explains why so many libraries which owe their existence or equipment or support to the benefactions of people unrelated to the community are so limited in their work or influence. It explains why ideal library machinery and ideal lists of books, conceived and put together by some far off

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providence and recommended for universal application, can never make a live library. It also explains why the library which has grown up out of the ideals, interests and sacrifices of the community itself has always such a large place in the life of the people. It is here that every central agency for library extension or improvement is weak. The State commission can fix standards, can devise model machinery, can compile selections of "best books" and provide organizers to put everything in good order; but the State can do little to bring that library into intimate and vital relations with the people it should serve. It may indeed produce a serious misfit. For this service there is no other effective agency than the local board and librarian. They alone can know the community, they alone can select the books which relate to the lives and interests of the people, and it is upon their skill and efficiency in thus adapting the library to its environment and in establishing personal relations between the people and the books on its shelves that the value of the library to the community primarily depends. As Mr Ranck has so aptly said, "A town is not safe because it has a sewer in every street, if the residents fail to connect their houses with it. Likewise a library, with the best collection of books in the world, will do nothing for the education of the people if the people and the books are not brought together."

Value of book reviews. The honesty and disinterestedness of the book reviews appearing in our leading literary periodicals is ably defended by Mr Browne, editor of the Dial, in the interesting paper contributed by him at the Pasadena conference and reproduced in part in this issue of the quarterly. Mr Browne maintains that this honesty is not merely a matter of conscience, but a matter of necessity, that a literary periodical could not long survive if it were to compromise its independence and integrity out of consideration for a publisher's interest or his advertising patronage.

We are not inclined to question the justice of this defense in respect to a few of the better periodicals at least, or to dispute the necessity for absolute honesty of purpose, for any continuous high standing in the literary world. But we suspect that the matter of