College and Research Libraries


By J A C Q U E S B A R Z U N 

The Scholar Looks at the Library1 

IN THE course of reading about Andrew 
Carnegie the other day, I came across a 

remark he made that, if he had his life to 
live over again, he would want to be a 
librarian. I am tempted to ask this dis-
tinguished group for those who, if they had 
their lives to lead over again, would want 
to be Andrew Carnegie! T h e question is 
designed to show you that I have a great 
deal of sympathy for librarians. 

I know from friends who are librarians 
something of the trials and hidden difficul-
ties of the art—the great variety of demands 
made upon you and the inadequacy (as 
always) of budgets and assistance. So that 
it is with a kind of divided mind that I, as 
an outsider, come before you to make sug-
gestions concerning the library. I should 
like you to remember that when I say 
"outsider," I don't mean a person who 
stays outside the library. O n the contrary, 
as you know, the scholar wants nothing bet-
ter from life than to be allowed to be totally 
surrounded by books. But the very title 
of the subject assigned to me, " T h e Scholar 
Looks at the Library," suggests a kind of 
"outsideness" which perhaps can be best de-
scribed by saying that the scholar is outside 
the system which makes the library work. 

N o w this means that in everything I am 
going to say you will have to reinterpret 
my impression in the light of your inside 
knowledge. You may say, "Yes, he has ob-
served something; perhaps he describes it 
inaccurately here or there, but there is 
something for us to thrash out together." 

1 P a p e r presented at the T h i r t y - s e c o n d C o n f e r e n c e 
of E a s t e r n C o l l e g e L i b r a r i a n s , N o v . 24, 1945. 

I want to make my remarks very brief 
because I think that discussion brings out 
wisdom much more than talk from a single 
source. W h a t I wish to say will fit under 
two general headings, equally important, it 
seems to me, though the first consists of 
trifles—trifles which add up to a good deal; 
and the second is more obviously important. 
T h e two heads are Attention and General 
Knowledge. 

Since the librarian is a person who tech-
nically or theoretically is behind the desk, 
it is perfectly clear that the relations be-
tween him or her and the public are com-
parable to those, let us say, of a bureaucrat, 
or of a person in a shop who has at hand 
certain desirable goods, meets a more or less 
anonymous public, and has to distribute 
those goods to that public. T o do so re-
quires a system, and the system is never so 
firmly registered in the mind of the public 
as it is in the mind of the librarian. Conse-
quently, there occur all the possible frictions 
and misunderstandings which we are fa-
miliar with in the other forms of our life 
that fit the same pattern. But there is a 
difference, of course, in the library, for the 
librarian is a person trained to be as compe-
tent in dealing with the goods in his or her 
keeping as the public is in consuming them. 
T h a t is why it seems to me the very first 
virtue of the librarian should be that of at-
tentiveness. 

Attentiveness is a widely ramified thing. 
I think if we listen to any casual conversa-
tion among friends, we can almost at once 
distinguish between the people who attend 
and the people who are merely there, inter-

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jecting random remarks out of their deep 
unconscious. And it strikes me that the 
librarian must not belong to the second cate-
gory. T h e librarian must attend. Perhaps 
what I have in mind will be a little clearer 
if I give you some examples—examples 
which I shall try to wrap up in the feeling, 
in the impression that I frequently have 
when I go to a strange library where I 
don't know the officials or when I see, in 
the several libraries that I know, a person 
on whose attention I cannot count. 

T o begin with the scholar. H e is in a 
kind of purposeful daze. T h e world would 
call him "absent-minded," but, as William 
James pointed out, that is only because he is 
"present-minded" somewhere else. Conse-
quently when he strikes a snag, he wants a 
kind of instant response which will clear it 
up and enable him to go on with what he is 
thinking about. I t is at this point that the 
librarian comes in, either to make the transi-
tion just as smooth as a train going over a 
switch on a good road, or just as awkward 
and deplorable as a derailment. T h e scholar 
is working from inside his own idea and he 
wants something immediately. If he is at 
all considerate, he words his question so it 
can be understood. O n his part, the li-
brarian ought to have that kind of tact and 
intuition and quickness, either to wait to 
find out what he wants in full, or to give him 
the feeling that if the book or fact can't be 
got at once, it can be reached fairly soon. 

Some time ago while I was working with 
letters dating back to the nineteenth cen-
tury which were dated sometimes only by 
the month and date, sometimes with a nu-
meral and day of the week, I wanted a 
perpetual calendar. I went up to the li-
brarian and said, "Can you tell me where I 
can find a perpetual calendar?" 

T h e telephone rang at that moment and 
as she went to pick it up she said, "Calen-
dar? Right over my desk." 

N o w that is irritating. I had to listen 
to her conversation over the telephone, and 
then when she came back I asked her again 
for what I wanted. She had never heard of 
a perpetual calendar; I might have been 
asking for a perpetual motion machine for 
all she knew. W h e n I explained what it 
was, she said she was quite sure that there 
was nothing in the library that contained 
such an item. I found out subsequently 
from another librarian—which shows that 
there are differences among them—that the 
World Almanac has a page which contains 
a perpetual calendar, to which I could have 
been directed. 

T o be sure, this kind of ignorance is not 
necessarily fatal, but the handling of it by 
the librarian was really a professional fault. 
O n another occasion I wanted something 
even more special which apparently does not 
exist. I wondered whether the British 
periodicals of the nineteenth century had 
ever been listed with the names of their suc-
cessive editors. T h a t sentence as I have 
said it takes a certain amount of time to 
utter. Before I got to the end of it, the 
attendant to whom I put my question broke 
in, "British periodicals, nineteenth cen-
tury?"—and gave me the title of a book in 
which there was a list of those periodicals. 

I thought to myself after that experience 
that the very next inquiry that I put would 
have to be worded something like this: 

"Miss—or Sir—I'm going to ask you a 
question. It is made up of three parts. . . ." 

But I needn't go on. You see what I 
had in mind—to calm down the impulsive-
ness and repress to a certain extent the 
knowledge which was bubbling up there 
much too soon. 

T h e r e is a third type of inattention, of 
nervousness, of incompetence, or what you 
will, which strikes me as connected with the 
difficulties of the profession. And remember 
that I know that the successive persons who 

114 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



come up to the desk ask for all sorts of 
things ranging from astronomy to the comics 
and that it is unreasonable to expect that 
everyone will be equally prepared to answer 
all those questions. I am not talking about 
the ability to give the answer but about the 
form in which it is couched and the degree 
of fellow feeling with the person who is 
asking the question. 

T h i s third fault is the worried look, the 
frown, the air of suspecting that either this 
next question is going to be perfectly in-
sane or, the opposite, too profound. It is 
often an excessive modesty which paralyzes 
the librarian and makes him feel, " I can 
never meet that requirement because I am 
not up to it." 

In pointing out these trifles—and I know 
that they are trifles in any single instance, 
though they do add up to a whole atmos-
phere—I am not suggesting that librarians 
should put on any kind of smooth manner 
or anything resembling the Jehovah complex 
of the nurse in the doctor's office who makes 
you feel that everything is all right when 
you are dying by inches. T h a t would be 
too bad. I don't think there is one manner 
for all persons, but I think that every per-
son who is behind a desk has a certain duty. 
I have had a little desk experience myself, 
so I know how irritating it can be to sup-
ply endless answers and how stupid people 
seem when one is on the receiving end. But 
one has an obligation, it seems to me, of 
putting one's knowledge at the disposal of 
the inquirer in a calm, collected, sympa-
thetic manner, without affectation and with-
out suggesting that the particular crisis is a 
crisis. Because it isn't a crisis; because, 
theoretically, anything can be found or an-
swered ; and, if something cannot be found, 
it is just as easy to state this fact in a man-
ner that leaves no scar from the encounter. 

So much for attentiveness which, let me 
repeat, is something that has to be culti-

vated. It doesn't come by itself. You have 
to be a kind of antenna receptive to all sorts 
of vibrations—the vibrations of personality, 
of intellectual quality and kind; it is almost 
a psychiatric job, particularly in modern 
times when neuroses are equal in number 
to the total of the population. 

Between attentiveness, which is the appli-
cation of a system to a demand, and the 
second head under which I want to make 
a few remarks, that of General Knowledge, 
the bridge is the technique of librarianship. 
I mean the Dewey Decimal System, the 
stack numbers, and all the paraphernalia, 
classifications, and cards. It seems to me 
that, important as those things are, they are 
like the technique of any art—they should 
be concealed for the art to be successful. I 
know that here I am in opposition to some 
of the members of my own craft who think 
that scholarship, to be good, must be dis-
played. I think it should be hidden, and I 
think it should be hidden because it is the 
scaffolding, and not the edifice. 

A t any rate, I should think that it would 
be worth considering whether librarians 
ought not to conceal as much as possible 
their knowledge of the system. If, for ex-
ample, I ask for a certain kind of book in 
the reference room, I think it would be 
better not to hear the wheels going around 
by which the librarian arrives at the correct 
answer. I confess that as a reader of books 
I am somewhat annoyed when I hear a li-
brarian half audibly mention the class num-
ber of a work I happen to mention. T h e 
system should be hidden, and one good way 
to achieve this is to have it absolutely clear 
in the minds of everybody, so clear that it 
can be forgotten like all the automatic things 
we do. W h y , for example, is there not in 
every library a chart posted, indicating to 
the stranger how he can find his way around 
the library without asking any questions? 
Remember that the reader and scholar is 

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bent upon something else than "using the 
library." H e is bent on reading a book, 
which is rather a different thing. W h e n we 
are bent on eating, we are not at the festal 
board to manipulate knives and forks. 
T h e y are instruments, and they are more 
instrumental when we don't even know 
that we are using them at all. Similarly 
with library technique, the link between at-
tentiveness, which is a human quality, and 
the intellectual substance that forms my sec-
ond heading: General Knowledge. 

O n this second point, let me say at the 
outset that the ideal would be to have no 
distinctions whatever between librarians and 
scholars: scholars should be librarians and 
librarians should be scholars. T h e y should 
be merely emphasizing one or the other side 
of a single operation, i.e., the using of books. 
And books are the repository of knowledge. 
General knowledge, by its very nature, can-
not be given precise limits. You cannot 
make a list of what a person should know; 
but I confess that I have been struck again 
and again, and rather sadly impressed, by 
the want of general knowledge among li-
brarians. I am aware of how much they 
would have to know in order to make every 
person who comes to the library feel that it 
was in charge of a person exactly as well in-
formed as the user. Besides, we may all 
have exaggerated notions of how much we 
know. Yet it seems to me that there are 
certain things—certain kinds of knowledge 
and, in the absence of knowledge, kinds of 
apprehending, of enlightened guesswork— 
which come from handling books and read-
ing them. Let me illustrate. 

Some time ago I was at a small college 
for a few days giving a short series of lec-
tures, and I made a habit of going to the 
library and doing some reading and note-
taking. T h e librarian seemed to me a very 
charming and well-informed woman who, 
on the third or fourth day, greeted me by 

saying, " W h a t can we do for you this morn-
ing?" 

I said, " W e l l , you can, if you want, save 
my looking something up in the catalog. 
D o you happen to have Tooke's Diversions 
of Parley?" 

H e r reply w a s : " W e have very little on 
games." 

I had to say, " I t ' s not a book about games, 
it's a book about words and grammar." 

She said, " W h o is the author?" 
"John H o m e Tooke. It may be filed 

under H o m e or Tooke." -
T o which she said, " O h , it would be 

Tooke here." 
She didn't know what the Diversions of 

Purley w e r e ; she didn't know that John 
H o m e was his real name and Tooke an 
adopted name and that, in some older collec-
tions, the original name is listed. T h e r e is 
no great crime in not knowing these facts; 
but when you pile up omissions of that 
character—when you ask for the Greek 
Anthology, and you are asked, " W h o made 
the collection?"; when the Anatomy of 
Melancholy is thought to be a medical book 
—you begin to have an uncomfortable sense 
that the person is not well-read or well-
educated. And such persons, wherever they 
may have their place in our vast and demo-
cratic universe, do not, as I see it, belong 
in libraries. Libraries are not just a great 
system, but collections of books. They 
have, or should have, an atmosphere of 
learning. I am quite sure that those of you 
who have studied in the Paris Bibliotheque 
Nationale have been offended, as I have been 
inwardly offended, by the fact that the at-
tendants who deliver the books are 
absolutely illiterate, ill-bred, rude, and in-
competent persons. T h e r e is something 
wrong with the atmosphere they create, 
quite apart from the bald question of in-
efficiency and of constant mistakes and con-
fusion. In France, of course, it is a political 

116 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



difficulty, and here it is some other kind of 
difficulty, which I shan't characterize be-
cause I am sure you know more about it 
than I do. I t may be that the training in 
the system is too arduous or too long; it 
may be that libraries haven't staffs large 
enough. If that is so, it seems to me that it 
behooves the profession as a whole to make 
this representation to the authorities and 
provide opportunities for librarians to read, 
to become well-informed, and to serve their 
.public in that intangible, yet important, way 
of being the same kind of person. 

I should like librarians even to share the 
prejudices of scholars—and I shall give you 
some few instances of what I mean. 

Some months ago I read Fremont Rider's 
book about microcards, which struck me as 
very interesting, beautifully thought out, 
and very well written. I was shocked, how-
ever, by two things—one large and one 
small. T h e large thing was the author's 
reinforcing the views of someone whom he 
quotes to the effect that, for the research 
scholar, secondary materials and writings of 
small merit are very important. T h a t is, a 
man who is doing research in cultural his-
tory wants to know what all sorts of unim-
portant scribblers said about Keats or 
Shelley, and he also wants to know what 
critics and writers of textbooks may have 
said on his subject, narrow or wide. T h e 
fact that this truth had to be pointed out to 
the library profession came to me as a shock. 
Apparently, librarians formerly thought 
that only original materials—only the Ca-
pitularies of Charlemagne—could possibly 
come under the heads of research materials. 
T h i s argues an ignorance not of fact, but 
an ignorance of perception, which I think a 
lamentable sign of the cleavage between 
scholar and librarian. 

T h e trifling thing I want to add is prob-
ably one that you will give me no mercy 
about. I noticed throughout M r . Rider's 

APRIL, 1946 

book, and I have since noticed in other pub-
lications relating to libraries, that the word 
"catalogue" is spelled "catalog." T h a t ' s 
fine; "programme." with one m; "dialogue" 
ending in g; but then when I get to the 
combined forms and get "cataloging," I 
balk! I want to pronounce it "cat-a-
lodging, cat-a-lodger." And I think that is a 
prejudice shared by almost every one who has 
been brought up in a certain tradition. 

Maybe I am reading too much into this. 
Yet the kind of prejudice I refer to is of 
some importance; generalize it to other 
things, to more indescribable attitudes, and 
you will see that in your own lives you 
would, I think, be happier if you could 
approximate to the attitude of those whom 
you serve. Note, in passing, this word 
"serve:" from prejudice, again, I should 
like to leave it in its verbal form. O n the 
same grounds as I object to "cataloging," 
so I object to "library service." T h e phrase 
reminds me unpleasantly of service stations 
for gasoline and oil. These are books that 
we are dealing with, and I want, not li-
brary service, but librarianship—a fit paral-
lel to musicianship. You do not say, " T h e 
Budapest Quartette gives excellent musical 
service." 

In short, I am talking about tone, and tone 
is always related to trifles. Trifles, moreover, 
always have two aspects—the way which 
technique or system or a certain kind of in-
difference to ultimate consequences directs; 
and the other way, the way that comes from 
reflection, from meditation, from reading— 
from all the things which, if we shared them 
in common, would make my existence here 
entirely unnecessary. T h e scholars and the 
librarians would then be one group of peo-
ple, at harmony with one another—insofar 
as there is harmony in human groups—and 
only at each other's throats for the good 
reasons, of which you are now going to 
inform me. 

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