VOL. 4 Published quarterly in the interest of the libraries of the State This bulletin is sent without cost to all libraries and members of library boards in the State making due application. To others it will be mailed postpaid for 25 cents a year, or 10 cents In order that the mailing list may be kept up to A saving heresy.. PROMOTING EFFICIENCY IN THE SMALLER LIBRARIES, Mary L. Davis...... JUVENILE READERS AS AN ASSET, E. W. SOCIALIZED BIBLIOGRAPHY, Adelaide R. SOME RECENT BOOKS WORTH BUYING, RECENT NEW YORK STATE PUBLICATIONS Index and title page to New York Li- braries. With this number we issue a title page to volume 3 of "New York Libraries and a cumulated index to the first three vol- umes, covering the years 1907-1913. As an- nounced in the August number, it is sent with- out special application to all libraries and library commissions on our mailing list. To personal subscribers it is sent only on special request. All institutions or individuals desir- the State in replacing and strengthening its collection of local history. It is of evident value to the State and its people that there should be such a single collection of books and pamphlets on New York State history, both general and local, as this library aims to pro- vide. Many libraries will be in a position to help by sending their duplicates or by putting. the State Library in touch with owners of material which throws light on some phase, no matter how minute, of the history of the State industrial, military, ecclesiastical etc., or of some locality. Especially at this time the Library will welcome assistance in build- osition to establish a public library or to appropriate money from taxation for library support is often opposed and criticised, not on the ground that a free library is not a desirable and welcome acquisition to a community but on the ground that it is at best a thing whose benefits are enjoyed by only a part of the people, in most cases much the smaller part, and that it is unfair to compel by popular vote every property owner to contribute to the support of an institution which may be of no interest or benefit to him. A registry of active borrowers that includes 25 per cent of the whole population is an unusually large one. How unjust, say the opponents of the tax, to compel the whole community to provide the money to supply books to this quarter of the population. Let those that want the library pay for it, and keep tax money for purposes which are of equal benefit to the whole community. The plea has certainly an element of plausibility and has been effective in the defeat of many propositions for an initial or an increased library tax. It needs but a little examination and analysis, however, to show that it is fundamentally unsound both in its assumptions and its logic, and friends of the library have nothing to fear in meeting it if they will but clearly and boldly set forth its inconsistencies and disregard of essential facts. The most obvious weakness of the argument is, of course, that it proves too much. If money from taxation were to be applied only to such objects as should yield directly to all the people or to all taxpayers an equal return, there would be no taxation whatever. There is no public institution from which all the people or nearly all the people get an equal benefit. The public school is of direct benefit only to families that have children of a particular age, yet every taxpayer in the community is compelled to help support it. The free college, the technical school, the public park, museum, recreation center, each ministers directly to only a small minority of the taxpayers, but the burden is laid alike on all. Taxpayers of every community are compelled to pay for many public works, as pavements, almshouses, public buildings, the maintenance of departments and offices, from which a majority never receive any individual return. How absurd then, on this ground, to discriminate against the library, the one civic institution which, of all others, is most universal in its appeal, and which at least offers to every man, woman and child in the community, many times the value of what the largest taxpayer has contributed! The fundamental trouble with the argument is that it is based on a misconception as to what constitutes a just or equitable ground for a public tax. The justification of a tax is that it is levied primarily for the benefit of society as a whole, not for the benefit of individuals, be their number great or small. A civilized society is an organized body, a body politic, and it is the health or well-being of the whole body that is the main concern in legislation and taxation. The public school, the museum, the park, the library, the various administrative, judicial, corrective, and charitable departments in the organization of a city, all rest for their justification, not on the good they do either to the few or the many, but on the good they do for the whole body politic. The question is not, is a school, a library, a fire department, or a court of law, a good thing for such and such persons, but is it a good thing for the community. If so, it is entitled not only to individual but to community support. How the library benefits all the people. Tried by this test, the free library has little difficulty in demonstrating beyond question its right to tax support. Even where but a minority of the people are actual borrowers or readers of its books, it yields its benefits to the whole community. The following facts and considerations may be cited in support of this claim: I A public library that is worth the name helps every institution and every public enterprise of a community. It promotes better teaching in the schools, better preaching in the pulpits, better cleaning of the streets, better management of all public business. In these results, all the people benefit, whether or not they are enrolled at the library. NEW YORK LIBRARIES 2 A good library adds in some degree to the material value and salability of property within the range of its service. Corporations interested in the development and sale of real estate often build and equip libraries for the sole purpose of thus increasing values, and in advertisements put forth both by individual agents for their clients and by boards of trade or chambers of commerce for their communities, libraries are treated as positive assets of recognized value. 3 Man is essentially a social being and the value of his life depends greatly on the degree of intelligence and wealth of ideas that he finds in his environment. Every man is impoverished when compelled to live in an atmosphere of impoverished ideas; every man is enriched when the world of ideas in which he moves is enriched. Every influence that promotes thought, intelligence, that enriches or enlarges the common stock of ideas of a community, makes life more valuable for every one in that community; and every good book that goes out of the library is such an influence. A man is often enriched by the book his neighbor reads as truly as by the book he reads himself. 4 The public library provides the means by which exceptional minds have often found their first awakening, resulting in productions which have made life richer and better for hundreds and thousands of their fellows. Often by ministering to a single person the library is most effectively ministering to its entire constituency. Many examples of this could be cited from library annals. 5 By providing freely healthful, attractive reading, society protects itself from the effects of evil, vicious, demoralizing books. Recent investigations made in several communities where good libraries have been in operation for some time, show that a certain type of vicious book which was much in vogue before the advent of the library, has almost entirely disappeared. The public library is thus doing for the mental and moral health of the community much the same service as the governmental bureaus established to protect society from impure food and drugs are doing for its bodily health. 6 In this capacity the library shows itself to be, in reality, not an object of expense to taxpayers but a means of saving to them. Everything that acts as a check on the spread 66 3704 88773 81 of vicious ideas, helps in its degree to prevent vice, crime, pauperism, and degeneracy, and there is nothing that is so expensive to taxpayers as these things. No less an authority than Lord Avebury has expressed the belief that in England, the expense to taxpayers involved in the maintenance of free libraries has been more than paid back in the reduction effected through their influence in the budgets for charitable and correctional institutions. Estimated even in pounds and shillings, the public library is a public economy and benefits all taxpayers. But Providing for entire constituency. while it is thus true that a library which is ministering directly to only a small minority of the population may yet be of positive and great benefit to the whole community, it must be remembered that the degree of this benefit is likely to be closely proportioned to the degree of its direct service. A library which has enrolled as borrowers only one-tenth of the people within its reach may be worth to the community what it costs, but a library which is directly serving one-fourth, one-half or three-fourths of the population increases in the same degree the possibility of its service. Exact equality of benefit to every person in the community or to every taxpayer is an impossibility for any public institution, but such equality and such universality are perhaps more nearly attainable by the library than by any other institution and this ought to be the goal for every public library. Every reading man, woman or child has a need for something that ought to be in the public library. Why is not the use of the library as universal as that need? Mainly because those in control are managing it in ignorance or disregard of the manifold character of that need. A small registry of borrowers means almost invariably a narrow, undemocratic library management, a narrow, unrepresentative stock of books. It means that the library is being run in the special interest of some section or some special range of tastes or interests and is responding to and providing for the wants of but a minor part of the people. Where nine-tenths or four-fifths of the population of a place make no direct use of the public library, they are indeed not proving |