Part 4

Evidently the abolition of fines in these cases would mean a reduction of income that would make itself felt at once.

Now, of course, the knowledge that the detection of wrongdoing is financially profitable to the detector results in increased vigilance. So far, that is a good thing. But it goes farther than this: it makes the authorities strict regarding technicalities; it may even lead to the encouragement of infraction of the law in order that the penalties may reach a larger amount. In the town that is supported by bicycle fines we may fairly conclude that no resident calls the attention of the unwary cyclist to the warning sign, past which he wheels toward the sidewalk. To do so would decrease the village revenue and raise taxes. So too, what librarian would wish to adopt any course that will certainly reduce the money at his disposal for salaries and books?

Supposing, however, that this loss can be made up in some way, is there anything that can be substituted for the fine? It has already been stated that suspension from library privileges is in use as a penalty to a considerable extent, and there seems to be no reason why this should not be extended to the case of overdue books. There might, for instance, be a rule that for every day of illegal retention of a book the holder should be suspended from library privileges for one week. The date of expiration of the suspension would be noted on the holder’s card, and the card would not be returned to him before that date.

This plan would probably have interesting results which there is not time to anticipate here. But as long as books cost money and librarians refuse to work altogether for love, financial considerations must play a large part in library changes. The only way in which fines can be abolished without decreasing income is to make the abolition a condition of an increased appropriation, which, of course, could be done by the appropriating body. The making of such a condition is extremely unlikely. Hence, if we agree that fines are undesirable we must regard their abolition as an unattainable ideal. We may, however, treat them so as to minimize their bad effect, and this, I believe, may be done in either or both of the following two ways:

(1) We may emphasize the punitive value of the fine and at the same time increase its value as a source of revenue by making it larger. This would doubtless decrease the number of overdue books, and the exact point where the increase should stop would be the point where this decrease should so balance the increase of fines as to make the total receipts a maximum; or, if this maximum should greatly exceed the revenue received from fines under the old arrangement, then the rate could be still farther increased until the total receipts fell to the old amount. The practical method would be to increase the fines by a fraction of a cent per day at intervals of several months, comparing the total receipts for each interval with that of the corresponding period under the old arrangement; and stopping when this sum showed signs of decrease.

(2) We may give the librarian the option of substituting suspension for the fine whenever, in his judgment, this is advisable. This is the course pursued by the law when it gives to the trial judge the option of fining or imprisoning an offender. In cases where a fine is no punishment at all, and where books are kept overtime deliberately, suspension from library privileges would probably prove salutary. A variant of the second plan would be to allow the culprit himself to substitute suspension for his fine. This in effect is what the offender in the police court does when he avows that he has not the money to pay his fine and is sent to jail to work it off. At present when a library offender is manifestly unable to pay his fine there is usually no alternative but to remit it or to deny the culprit access to the library until it is paid--in many cases an unreasonably heavy punishment.

Of course there is no reason why all these modifications of existing rules should not be made together. According to this plan fines would be raised and suspension would be substituted in any case at the librarian’s option and in all cases where the person fined avows that he is unable to pay his fine. The rates can be so adjusted that under this plan there is no decrease of revenue, but rather a net increase.

Of course the adoption of such rules would be regarded by a large portion of the public as a curtailment of privileges, but such an outcry as it would probably raise ought not to be objectionable as it is a necessary step in the instruction of the users of a library regarding the proper function of penalties for infraction of its rules. These rules are for the benefit of the majority and the good sense of that majority ought to, and doubtless would, come to the rescue of the library authorities on short notice.

As long as the library fine is a recognized penalty, numerous petty questions will continue to arise regarding its collection, registration, and use. Any exhaustive treatment of these is impossible in the limits of a single paper and I have chosen to neglect most of them in order to dwell on the question in its larger aspects. It is the exaction of the fine, after all, that is the library penalty--the money is part of the library income and its collection and disposition are properly questions of finance. One point, however, regarding the disposition of the fines bears directly on what has been said. In municipal public libraries like that of Boston, where the city requires that the fines shall be turned directly into the public treasury and not retained for library use, the substitution of a different penalty would presumably involve no diminution of income. From ordinary considerations of equity, however, it seems to me that this disposition of the fines is objectionable. If the fines are to be turned into the city treasury they should be placed to the credit of the library appropriation as they are in Brooklyn.

Regarding the collection of fines there are one or two points that bear directly on their efficiency as a punitive measure. First, shall fines be charged? It seems a hardship to refuse a well-known member a book because he does not happen to have with him the change to pay a 15 cent fine. This point of view, however, loses sight again of the element of punishment. When the delinquent who is fined a dollar in the police court does not have the money with him, does he request the magistrate to charge it and send in a bill for the month’s penalties all at once? The true method, I am convinced, is to insist on cash payment of fines, and if this is done promptly their character as penalties will be more generally recognized.

Another point in regard to the collection of fines is their effect on the assistants themselves. In every library a stream of money passes in at the desk in very small amounts. This must all be accounted for, and we have the alternative of requiring vouchers for every cent or of simply keeping a memorandum account and seeing that the cash corresponds with it at the close of the day.

This latter plan, in some form, is usually adopted. To misappropriate funds under these circumstances is not difficult, and I submit that it is not right to place a large number of young girls in a situation where such misappropriation is easy and safe. In spite of Mark Twain, who prays that he may be led into temptation early and often, that he may get accustomed to it, I do not believe that this is a good general policy to pursue. We all know of cases where assistants have fallen into temptation, and we should not hold the library altogether blameless in the matter. But on general principles such a plan is not good business. Every one who is responsible for money collected must show vouchers that he turns over every cent that has been given to him. Why should the library assistant be an exception? I look to see some form of cash register on every charging desk in the ideal library of the future, nor can I see that its use would be a reflection on the honesty of the assistants any more than the refusal of a bank to cash an improperly endorsed check is a reflection on the honesty of the holder.

This is on the supposition that we are to retain the fine as a penalty. Such considerations, of course, weigh down the balance still more strongly in favor of its abolition.

I have devoted so much space to the penalty for keeping books overtime because the rule on this subject is the one that is chiefly broken in a free public library. Other offences are usually dealt with by suspension, and very properly so. For the loss or accidental injury of a book, however, a fine is again the penalty, and here, as the offence is the causing of a definite money loss to the library, there is more reason for it The money in this case, indeed, is to be regarded as damages, and its payment is rather restitution than punishment. Even here, however, the argument against money transactions with a free institution seems to hold good. There is no reason in the majority of cases why he who loses or destroys a book should not give to the library a new copy instead of the price thereof, and for minor injury suspension is surely an adequate penalty.

Here we may pause for a moment to ask: What right has a library to inflict any penalties at all? I must leave the full discussion of this question to the lawyers, but I am quite sure that libraries, like some other corporations, often enact and enforce rules that they have no legal right to make. To cite an instance that came under my own observation, the Brooklyn Public Library’s rules were for more than a year, according to good authority, absolutely invalid because they had not been enacted by the Municipal Assembly, and that library had no right to collect a single fine. Yet during this time it did collect fines amounting to several thousand dollars, and not a word of protest was heard from the public. In this and similar cases we are getting down to first principles--the consent of the governed; which, whether based on ignorance or knowledge, is what we must rely on in the end for the enforcement of law in self-governing communities. I am afraid that it is this general consent, in a good many instances, that is enabling us to enforce our regulations, rather than any right derived from positive law. To take a related instance, it is by no means certain that libraries are not breaking the law of libel every time they send out an overdue postal notice. The courts have held that a dun on a postal is libellous, and our overdue cards specifically inform the person to whom they are addressed that he owes money to the library, and threaten him with punishment if the debt is not paid. Yet although occasional delinquents remark that the law is violated by these postals, public libraries in all parts of the United States continue to send them out by thousands daily with few protests. This seems clearly a case where the public consents to a punitive measure of doubtful legality, and approves it for the public good.

The second of the two classes into which we have divided infractions of library rules consists of those that are also contrary to statute law or municipal regulation. How far shall these be dealt with purely from the library standpoint, and when shall they be turned over to the public authorities? If a small boy yells at the desk-assistant through door or window he is a disturber of the peace; if he throws at her some handy missile, such as a vegetable or a tin can, as occasionally happens in certain sections of unregenerate New York, he is technically committing an assault; shall he be handed over to the police?

Of course one must not treat trifles too seriously. Yet probably libraries have been somewhat too timid about dealing with petty offences. There is an unwillingness to drag the libraries into the police reports that seems to be a relic of the days when all libraries were haunts of scholarly seclusion.

The modern public library cannot afford to be considered an “easy mark” by those who wish to indulge in horse play or commit petty misdemeanors, and in some cases it is in danger of getting this reputation.

When we come to more serious offences, the library’s duty is clearer. Theft, wilful mutilation of books, or grave disorder must of course be punished. In many cases, however, the detection of the first two offences is very difficult. Theft from open shelves is easy. For the thousands of books lost yearly in this way hardly a culprit meets punishment. I have known a professional detective to confess that the open shelf baffled him. “If you will only shut the books up,” he said, “I can find out who takes ’em; but here everybody is taking out books and walking around with them.” When the professional acknowledges himself beaten, what shall the librarian do? Mutilation is even harder to detect. In both these cases the offender has simply to wait his opportunity. Sooner or later there will be a second or two when no assistant is looking, even if the man is under long-standing suspicion, and in that brief time the book is slipped into the pocket or the leaf is torn out. Even when the offender is caught in the act, the magistrate may not hold, or the jury may fail to convict. A persistent mutilator of books in one of our branch libraries escaped punishment last winter because the custodian of the reading-room where he was caught did not wait until the leaf on which he was working was actually severed. The man asserted that the sharp lead pencil that he was using to separate the leaf was merely being employed to mark a place, and thus by confessing to a minor defacement he escaped the penalty of the more serious offence.

For a library that is thus forced to appeal continually to the law to protect its assistants, its users, and its collections, a manual of library law would be useful, and I am not sure that the appointment of a committee of this Association to take the matter in charge would not be eminently justified.

It is the misfortune of this paper that it has been obliged to dwell on the darker side of library work. It is hardly necessary to remind an audience of librarians that this is not the prominent side. All users of a library are not delinquents or law-breakers, and the assistants have other and better work than to act as fine-collectors and detectives. The sombre effect of what you have just heard should have been dispelled by a paper on “Rewards and delights of library work,” but this the Program Committee has seen fit to omit, probably because it is not necessary to emphasize the obvious.

HOW LIBRARIANS CHOOSE BOOKS

The form in which this subject is stated removes it from the region of ethics and brings it down to the hard realms of fact I am not to tell you how librarians ought to select books, but how they do select them. I shall assume, however, that you do not care to have this paper filled with instances of abnormal and unprofitable selection, but that you wish to hear of the normal and the unobjectionable. Booksellers tell us that many buyers of books are governed in their choice by the color of the covers, and I have suspected that some librarians are influenced in the same way. Some librarians appear to object to works that are less than one century old; others are on record as discouraging the purchase of fiction less than one year of age. Some librarians have a prejudice against certain classes of books and an inordinate love for others.

The only things that should be considered by the librarian in buying books for his library are the needs of the community that he serves, the capability of the various books under consideration to satisfy those needs, and the financial ability of the library to secure what is needed.

I shall take up these points in order. First, the needs of the community. These are not necessarily to be measured by its demands, otherwise the librarian’s labor would be considerably lightened. Unfortunately, when a community needs a given class of books very desperately it is often serenely unconscious of the fact. To the librarian falls the task not only of determining what the need is and of filling it, but also of arousing a wholesome consciousness of it. In this educational work he may be, and often is, aided by the teacher, the clergyman, or even by the users of the library themselves. Hence the importance of getting in touch with all the agencies that may do work along this line. There is nothing that calls for more tact. With the children it is comparatively easy to point out a deficiency, but a direct attempt with a self-respecting adult may end in disaster, and a season or two of well-meant effort may result in weakening the librarian’s influence or even in losing him his position. But one can rarely teach tact to the tactless, and tact is something that every librarian must have, so that this lopping-off process, after all, may simply be regarded as a phase of nature’s elimination of the unfit. One way of ascertaining the proportional demand for various classes of literature in a community, is by examining the class-percentage of circulation. By comparing these with the corresponding volume percentages we may see whether the demands of the community are being met, and by comparison with the percentages of an ideal library we may see whether such demand ought to be met or not. Of course, the ideal is somewhat indefinite. One may accept the suggested proportions in the A.L.A. catalog, or average those of several libraries of high class; or one may construct an ideal of one’s own. In any case, the ideal proportions will evidently vary with conditions of place and time. To show how this test may be applied, consider the percentage of science circulated last year in the New York Public library. This varied from 3 to 28 per cent in the various branches, and was 9 per cent for the whole library. The percentage of science on the shelves similarly varied from 6 to 18 per cent, and was also 9 for the whole library. In our library sociology and philology are included in the science report, and the percentage of these three classes combined in the old A.L.A. catalog is 17. If this is to be taken as the standard, therefore, the library as a whole falls below it, though individual branches approach or even exceed it. As a whole, however, the demand and the supply balance pretty well. There is no doubt, however, that in this and most other libraries the demand in this class is too small and needs stimulation. Of course, this is brought up merely as an instance of how fertile this comparison of percentages is in information, and how valuable in ascertaining whether the demands of a community are supplied, and whether they ought to be supplied, along any given line.

We will assume that either in the ways indicated, or in some other, the librarian has satisfied himself that he understands what his community needs. How shall he find the books that will satisfy that need, and when they are found (or, still more, when they obtrude themselves on his notice) how shall he know that they are what they claim to be?

In order to find what he wants, the librarian naturally turns at first to such classed bibliographies as he has at hand, including publishers’ trade lists. Unfortunately, books very rapidly become out of print, and if his bibliography or list is even two or three years old he cannot be sure that his work of selection is not in vain. The value of the A.L.A. catalog has been much impaired by its inclusion of out-of-print books, and as, now that it is several years old, the number of these is increasing daily, its use has become more and more vexatious, both to librarians and publishers. It is to be hoped that in the new edition now preparing the out-of-print books will be omitted. Fortunately we now have at our disposal yearly alphabetical lists of in-print books. Such are the index to the Trade list annual and the United States catalog for American editions, and the Index to the reference catalog of current literature for British books.

If the needs of your library require that some one class should be largely replenished, you may call in expert knowledge. Some teacher or student who is a specialist in that subject is generally not hard to find, and his advice will be of the greatest value. Special bibliographies are valuable in inverse ratio to their length--a complete list of works on Egyptology, for instance, is hardly more valuable to the ordinary small library than a full, unclassified list of books in-print on all subjects.