Arthur E. Bostwick

Not all the information required of the Public Library is asked by those engaged in laboratory research or by experts in commerce and industry. Much of it is homely stuff, greatly desired and more or less easy to find. Much of it can be given offhand by the capable reference assistant, who thereby becomes what the writer of this article calls a “library friend” to her neighborhood.

Miss Winifred Louise Taylor was born in Freeport, Ill., Feb. 24, 1846. In 1874 she organized the first circulating library in Freeport and acted as librarian for twelve years. It was eventually incorporated in the Freeport Public Library. In 1900-01, Miss Taylor was in charge of the information desk at the Pratt Institute Free Library, Brooklyn. For many years she gave much of her time to work in the prisons, and in 1914 she published “The Man Behind the Bars,” describing some of this work.

“The library friend” is the term that seems best to apply to that member of the modern library's staff whose work is a development of the service ordinarily rendered through the “information desk.” Information-desk service as usually conceived, it is not; for the library friend deals with the tendencies, tastes, and aspirations of readers as much as if not more than with the definite question and answer respecting facts. The office indeed may be regarded as finding its first expression in the circulating libraries maintained by subscription in many of the smaller cities twenty-five years and more ago, when the free public library of to-day was comparatively rare. In those libraries every subscriber knew the librarian, and the librarian was personally acquainted with every book on the shelves. To bring the books and readers into congenial relationship was the business and usually the pleasure of the librarian. The personal element was the heart from which the circulation of the books radiated—if the presiding personality lacked vitality and enthusiasm the library was a failure.

With the era of the democratic free libraries, with their more rapid growth, with their doors open to men, women and children of all classes, the human element, the personal relation of librarian to the reader suffered a gradual eclipse, until, in some libraries more perfectly developed on the technical side, the personal equation vanished altogether. The library became a great machine, into which a number was dropped, and out of which a book was dropped like corn from the hopper. We all know how formidable this mechanism is to those unaccustomed to modern library methods. To the uninitiated the card catalog is an abomination, an unsolved problem, a delusion and a snare. The boy who is interested in athletics, fumbling over the card catalog in Micawber-like fashion, hits upon the title “Morning and evening exercises”; he straight away hands in the number thinking he has found a prize. It is discouraging and depressing when the machine shoots out to him a volume of devotional compilations. He has tried his luck and it has failed, and as he was reminded only last week that a book cannot be exchanged the same day on which it is drawn out he retires with “Morning and evening exercises,” a sadder, but not a wiser boy. It is in accord, therefore, with the process of library evolution that a closer personal relation between reader and librarian should be developed through some such medium as is here outlined under the designation “the library friend.”

One of the library problems just now is this: given on the one side 100,000 books and on the other 50,000 people. How is each individual to be brought into contact with the particular book that he wants? Where open shelves are practicable a great advantage—to the discriminating reader, an inestimable advantage, is gained; but the majority of librarians have not room to throw any department open to the public; and even among open shelves the person whose judgment of books is wholly untrained often misses what he is looking for.

The assistance given by the reference room is invaluable. There no one goes away unsatisfied; but the reference room reaches only those in pursuit of a definite subject. Beyond its range is the drifting, aimless reader, the searcher after something he knows not what. The dull, the diffident, the beginners in the use of libraries, those who read purely for amusement and those who want the new books—new spelled with a capital n and book with a small b—old persons, those whose eyesight is defective and whose glasses strike the card catalog at the wrong angle, foreigners who use English with difficulty and diffidence—all these gather together in the delivery room at once, and efficient as the assistant may be—and sometimes they effect miracles—it is impossible for them to give the different individuals the help each one needs. In the libraries where the human element is most withdrawn the case of these people is hard.

To bring the personal relation again into the library and to develop it with the growth of the needs of the public, with this end in view, a number of libraries have introduced the information desk. By common consent, perhaps in the eternal fitness of things, this position so far seems to have been relegated to woman.

“She is a reading lady, and far gone in the pleasures of friendship.” So wrote Sir Roger De Coverley of the object of his affections, and no one could more felicitously describe two of the qualifications for the one presiding at the information desk. A reading lady she must be; and it is no less important that she be far gone in friendship for the public. To study their needs; to be receptive as wax to their impress, and responsive with heart and soul as well as with mind. This all around sympathetic power is the fundamental requisite of true service in this position. She may be a person of many words or of few; a good listener she must be. Success depends less upon temperament or gifts than upon an attitude of inward receptivity and outgoing friendliness—the attitude that radiates a home-like atmosphere and insensibly sets the stranger at ease. Emerson quaintly described certain faces as “decorated with invitation.” This style of decoration will be permanently in fashion in this position if the invitation from the heart is a magnet strong enough to draw within its circle those who are in need of help. It is most necessary, also, that a certain poise be preserved. To be ready but not over anxious to assist; to be responsive but not intrusive; to be suggestive but never insistent; to recommend books without forcing one's own literary tastes or standards upon others; while helping new comers, to seek to make them independent in their use of the library instead of leading them to rely on some one else to do the work and use all the judgement for them, all this requires a nice adjustment of balances. And it is well to have on hand the tact which is the art of lessening social friction, and the sense of humor so invaluable as a lubricator in human relations. When any one comes to the information desk with a grievance, irritated, if not angry, to be met with simple good nature, and not to be taken too seriously, and yet to find instant readiness to adjust the cause of annoyance if possible, soon dissipates the feeling of antagonism or injury. Such encounters ought not to tax one's patience. They sometimes turn out to be rather interesting.

Nor need stupidity tax one's patience. What more pathetic than the isolation of one who is slow to perceive and to grasp? It is a terrible handicap. To rescue the dull from their dullness should be the first impulse, and shallow is the sympathy that does not reach out to such instinctively. It is not enough to be able also to unlock the resources of the individual.

People come to libraries from all sorts of homes. To the man or woman living in the midst of ugly and sordid surroundings, where the days are crowded with drudgery, the weekly visit to the library becomes a social event; it is a lift into a fresh atmosphere, into another plane of life. A passing greeting from the information desk gives a sense of welcome and of relationship to the reading public. Five or ten minutes of cordial contact, a brief conversation with one unrelated to their world of worries, is a refreshing experience. To be recognized as a thinking, reading being, with opinions about books, instead of a human machine for cooking, scrubbing and sewing, or money-getting, puts new life into one.

But this social side of the work of the information desk must rest on the solid foundation of practical qualifications. One must possess the knowledge of a wide range of books, the power of concentration on the one person or the one subject in hand, and the mental alertness that perceives when another person is waiting. The more perfect the understanding of the system of classification of the books and of all the technical side of library work, the more effective will be the service at the information desk. There the resources of the library should be at command, and should be reached rapidly and accurately. When any imaginable or unimaginable question may be asked at any moment, from “May I use your pencil?” up through the whole range of history, art, literature, politics, science or religion, one must know the ground thoroughly in order to meet these demands. Topics requiring special research are passed on to the reference room, but the inquirer should be put on the right track when he wants but a single book from the delivery room.

The new-comer must be instructed in intelligent use of the catalogs and helped towards self-reliance from the start. The young people must be assisted in making out their first lists, and these lists should represent a variety of authors, in order that the author who pleases can be followed up independently through the card catalogs. A well selected first list for boys or girls should place at their command a range of 50, 60, or 100 books. It is surprising how few writers are known to the average boy or girl who comes to the public library for fiction. The field of the boy is often bounded by Alger, Ellis, Optic, and Henty, while the girls may know only Sophie May and Miss Olcott. Beyond are unknown seas. One of the early developments at the information desk will be carefully-selected lists of books for boys and girls. They grow under one's hand as the young people in turn recommend additions. This sense of co-operation wins the confidence of those who are quick to suspect and ward off any lurking desire for their improvement on the part of the library. Notwithstanding that the starting point must always be the taste and inclination of the reader, it is a simple matter to keep the pressure in the right direction. Carefully-selected fiction lists for older readers also meet a want. Such lists do not include the works of the standard, voluminous writers known to every one. Into them are gathered some of the old favorites of a generation ago, or later novels which may have happened to miss fame and yet possess an abiding charm and the indispensable element of interest. There are hundreds of such books, perennially delightful, novels just now submerged under the continually rising tide of new fiction. It is a piece of pure good fortune for the reader who turns in despair from the pursuit of “David Harum,” “Eben Holden,” or “Janice Meredith,” to find a fresh range of unheard-of novels of equal or more than equal interest. This enlargement of their circle of congenial authors is welcomed with every grateful appreciation. A list of good short stories is another resource, and one of cheerful books for invalids; stories that are neither morbid nor tragic. Young working men who can come to the library only at evening are glad of assistance in selecting books related to their work and they are quick to respond to any evidence of sympathetic interest in their pursuit. Young girls employed during the day who wish to make up for the lack of opportunities in school are eager and grateful for advice in outlining courses of reading and study; those studying music are glad of guidance into the more interesting pathways of musical literature, or it may be the amateur in some branch of art who reveals a cherished ambition in the hope of obtaining help in this direction, and delightfully friendly relations spring into being while these various lists are under way.

Often the chance encounter, the mere passing remark, brings the happy inspiration as to just the right books, as when one catches a glimpse of a deep enthusiasm for nature surviving in the breast of a man through fifty years spent between city walls. To introduce him to Richard Jeffries, most intense, nearest to nature's spirit, and least known of nature's lovers, is to enrich the remaining years of this man's life.

All who go to the library go as seekers. Some are seeking merely entertainment, others are searching for knowledge, but many are struggling with the deep problems that beset us all, perhaps in moral or spiritual darkness, and looking only for light. If one's heart is with the people, nothing so quickens perception as sympathy. One notes the trend of the reading of the individual, and often what he is seeking is intuitively divined. Perhaps the simple remark, “If you can tell me just what you want I may be able to find it for you,” results in a frank statement of the difficulty, or an outburst of sudden confidence is given from the impulse that makes it often easier to confide in a stranger than in a relative. And it counts for a good deal just then if the one at the information desk knows what writer has felt and thought most deeply and has written most clearly and helpfully on that subject. Few are the needs of the human heart or mind that are really beyond the reach of help from books—books in which we find the reflection of our every mood, the expression in our inmost aspiration, the conservation of the feeling, the experience and the wisdom of the race.

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