Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1911-03-17

every person ought to be interested
in some particular subject of public i'm
portance, such as forestry, industrial
education, foreign missions, social set
Elements, etc. Very few persons in our
state can afford the money or time to
keep up with the current literature on
any one of these subjects. If he could
do so, it would be criminal waste for
him to keep so much valuable material
locked up in his own house. 1t ought to
be made available to a much larger
number. Almost every one is likely to
wish information very suddenly on some
topic of this sort. He could not foresee
six months before that he would wish to
consult the latest literature on agricul- |
tural education in rural communities. |
Only the library can anticipate the in
tellectual wants of a community as
whole and provide wisely for their rea-
sonable satisfaction.
Gust as soon as you get beyond few
miscellaneous volumes on all sorts of
subjects, and desire to have at your
elbow full and accurate knowledge of
the latest and best things the world has
produced on any particular subject, you
find yourself involved in very difficult
problem of arrangement and classified
ton of your material. The ordinary
citizen, even if he has plenty of money
to provide this material, has not the
knowledge or patience to make it avail
able, even for his own use. To know
where and how to find things is fully as
important as to be able to acquire and
store the volumes in which the informa-
ton is to be found.
"A building with bookshelves and
collection of books is not library. To
have library you must have your books
where you can put your hand upon what
you want when you want it. A library
is rs per cent librarian. The person is
three-fourths, the building and the books
make the other fourth. A library with
out librarian is like drug store with
out druggist.
"a great many people will not read if
they have to buy their own books, be-
cause it costs too much; or, if they do
read at all, the literature is cheap in
quality as well as in price. 1t requires
some effort and a good deal of training
to develop good reader. The modern
librarian is not sort of book policeman,
guarding a treasure-house of musty
volumes, any more than a modern
banker is watchdog over vault of
money. The good banker not only
knows how to induce people to bring
their money to his bank, but he is skill
full in loaning it out safely and profit
ably The larger part of the librarians
work is to get the books into the hands
of the people, and our modern libra
rians have all sorts of devices and
schemes to make readers out of people
who have been accustomed to read only
the patent insides of the weekly news
papers.
"Our Vermont people need informa-
ton, accurate and wide, on subjects i'm
portant to their welfare they need
elevation, lifting of life to a higher
plane; they need inspiration, vigor to
take hold of the problems that confront
US with resolution. Contact with the
best of our modern literature, which is
full of the vigor of the present human
race as it struggles upward and onward
at pace faster than has ever been set
before, would bring about this needed
change of spirit.
II urge you to broaden your ideas of
the library. 1t is not place to go now
and then for the pleasant spending of
ones leisure time. 1t should furnish
opportunities for consecutive reading
and thorough study of any important
, question. 1t should make available to a
community prompt information on any
subject in which it may be interested.
1.-THE library should study the needs
of its constituents. In marble town,
. the library should make much of eco
nomic geology and all that pertains to
quarrying. Where agriculture is the
chief industry, the latest bulletins and
, treatses should always be found. A
farmer who builds a barn or even a
. chicken coop in town where there is a
, library, and does not come to the libra
rian for books on this matter, condemns
the institution.
''In other places they are a little
: ahead of US in the public use of libraries.
In the city of Cincinnati 300 workmen
consult the department of industrial
arts in their pnblic library every day.
, In the city of Providence the library
7 has provided 10000 volumes on the
J leading industries of the city. In Buff
alo these requests came in in one day:
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