Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1911-03-17
u1iooleburY REGISTER


The Valuetof the Library.
President John M. Thomas of Middle
bury College has a very interesting
article on 1.-THE Value of the Library
in the current issue of the Bulletin
of the Vermont Library commission as
follows
81 maintain that the library is COM
munity necessity, as truly required in a
wel-ordered town or village as the
store, blacksmith shop or post-oflice.
The social needs of a civilized man in
clude access to a collection of books
larger than any ordinary citizen can
afford to purchase or store in his home,
with expert service as to their selection
and use.
MAN is not man except in social rela-
tons. A Robinson Crusoe off alone by
himself on tropical island is not an
example of the genus homo, as he has
developed in the process of the centuries.
To be truly a man, one must be men,
Der of family, with intimate relations
to those of his own kin. He must be
citizen of some particular community,
receiving privileges from the organiza-
tons of the common life about him and
recognizing obligations to others in his
immediate environment. He must own
allegiance also to some government, the
larger state which makes laws for
his protection and establishes institu-
lions for his prosperity and advance
ment.
"Now what are the necessary institu
tions in a society in which man realizes
himself as the culture of the ages has
defined him? For example, in YER
mont village what do we require to our
social life? We must have an organiZa-
ton to look after our streets, to provide
water for our homes, to organize fire
protection, and look after other general
community needs. We require repre-
sentatives of the various industries, the
carpenter, the mason, the shoemaker
and besides, we must have merchants,
doctors, and perhaps a lawyer or two.
We must have school and churches, or
doubtless better, single church. Now,
assert that the library is as necessary
as any other institution in such a town
as we have imagined.
1.-THE community could get along with
out millinery store good deal better
than it could dispense with free public
library. A town without a library is
like house without chairs. It's neces-
sary that folks work together in the
matter of books and reading, just as
they must work together in looking
after their highways or attending to the
business of the mails. Let me prove
that this is true.
"There is great deal of valuable ma
terial in current literature, magazines,
weekly papers and the like. No one
editor, no two or three or four, can Sc
cure all of the valuable output that
even the average well-informed citizen
ought to read. The common practice
is for two or three magazines or weekly
papers to enter the family; and we miss
a great deal that other magazines have
secured, and read good deal that is
not profitable, or at least not necessary
for our own particular needs. A man
or woman becomes one-sided who feeds
his mind too steadily on even so good
magazine as the Atlantic or the Cen
fury, and one shrinks from picturing
the mental condition of a person who
feeds steadily on some of our less
worthy publications. What every citi-
zen ought to have is access to a large
number of the best reviews and papers,
so that he may select only the best, and
only that which is adapted to him.
1T is a good thing to read a novel
now and then; not only the classics, but
also goodly number of the current
stories are worthy of our attention. But
few citizens can afford to buy as many
of these books as he cares to read. One
copy ought to supply SO or 100 people,
instead of being read by three or four
and put upon the bookshelf, never to be
touched again. 1t is very wasteful to
depend for your fiction upon your own
purse.