Part 35

On the other hand the establishment, construction and opening of the 96th Street Branch were treated by the surrounding residents with supreme indifference. No one had asked to have a branch located at this point, which had been selected solely for reasons of topography and population. As the building went up, no one asked whether it was a school or a bank. Nobody came to the opening exercises. And yet when the library began to circulate books the community responded to such an extent that in a short time the branch was giving them out at the rate of 40,000 a month. Here the interest and pride of a community in the possession of a library building and its disposition to make use of the library are clearly shown to be two different things. In this case the two communities were parts of the same city, but separate towns often show the same phenomenon. Some of the most indifferent library towns, for instance, are the ones where superhuman efforts were put forth to secure a Carnegie building.

A kind of standardization of which we can not have too little is that controlled by the man who takes himself as the standard--his own ideas, prejudices and habits. This kind of standardizer is not always aware of what he is doing. He believes that his methods are the best. They may be best for him and possibly for the particular environment in which he has been working. I am not sure that some of our most cherished library habits did not originate in this way--were not originally simply the personal whims of some able and forceful library administrator who was in a position, in the formative stage of library progress, to impress them on the fabric of our work. Fortunately for us, the men of this kind, in the early history of the library movement, were not only men of force but generally of common-sense as well. Possibly their habits and customs were as good as any others that we might have adopted. I am sure that they were better than some. But individual points of view may in some cases prove disastrous. I remember an English novel in which a local librarian personally interested in the history of the French Revolution, uses all the available funds of his institution for years to buy books on the subject, building up a fine collection, but making his library useless for its ordinary purposes. His successor, a man with other interests, threw out the whole collection. I have often wondered which of these two librarians one ought to condemn most. Both are examples of the injury that may be done by what we may call auto-standardization.

I am preparing this whole lecture with a fear that some one of this kind may think he is adapting his library to his locality when he is only standardizing it by himself. Self-deception may go far in matters of this kind, and there is something to be said in favor of hard and fast standardization without departure of any kind, in that it prevents aberrations such as I have just hinted at. I trust that no self-standardizer is in my present audience.

Our conclusion from all this should be, I think, that a library should not only assimilate its methods to those of other libraries--which is standardization, but should react to the needs and conditions of its own surroundings, which is localization. If you would know the extent of this local reaction and the character of its results, ask the members of the library’s community, especially if that community is small. And we must remember that no library community is large, so far as its direct popular use is concerned. Whether it is in a village or a city, whether it is a central library or a branch, it is effective as a community centre only within a small circle, of perhaps half a mile radius. The residents of this circle are in a position to give testimony regarding the library’s local services. If it has succeeded in adapting itself to local needs its reputation will be that of a valuable, helpful, well-disposed institution; if not, the neighbors will be hostile, or at least indifferent. Libraries that are in constant trouble with their readers--the object of continual complaint and controversy, generally have the feeling that the fault is with the public. Sometimes it is; for a maladjustment is seldom on one side alone. But more often it is chiefly due to the fact that the library has overlooked its purely local functions, while possibly at the same time conforming most admirably to what are considered the best library standards. No library can afford to neglect its special duties to its locality and if these conflict with standardization, it should be the general standards and not the local adjustments, that should go by the board.

INDEX

Administration, Cost of, 217

Advertising. General, 277; In the library, 35, 172

Age limit for children, 210

Allen, James Lane, quoted, 66

A. L. A. catalog, 422; President’s address, 121

American Library Institute, 418

American idea of delegated authority, 57; Of propriety, 133

Americans as money-lovers, 156

Antin, Mary, quoted, 423

Appointments, 95

Appropriation for books, 24

Architecture of libraries, 315

Art, Not intellectual, 331

Assassins, Persian sect, 129

Autograph collections, 398

Auto-standardization, 425

Badness, Three kinds in books, 207

Beginners, Message to, 357

Beresford, J. D., quoted, 372

Best books defined, 141

Biblia abiblia, 288

Bibliographies for book selection, 19

Binding, Choice of, 25