| Reprinted from Tue Liprary Journal, January, 1910.] 
 
 THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AS AN EDUCATOR* 
 
 By Louis Rounp Witson, Librarian of the University of North Carolina 
 
 In an assemblage of educators such as this, 
 it may seem unnecessary to give an expost- 
 tion of the nature of education; for :t is the 
 daily theme of our life, and whether it be 
 the education of self, or of student, or of 
 community about which we are sclicitous, it 
 is the ever shining goal towards which our 
 calm reason, as well as our ardcnt enthusi- 
 asm, impels us. But inasmuch as we are 
 to consider the public library in the capacity 
 of an educator, setting for itself the same 
 high objective to which, as educators, our 
 finer impulses drive us, it is necessary to 
 review briefly the nature of the objective 
 which this the newest recruit te the educa- 
 tional ranks, has set for its task. 
 
 Education is the process by n:cans of which 
 the individual is brought through training to 
 an understanding of himself, of the life about 
 him, and of the infinitely numerous relations 
 which connect him with it. It is the pro- 
 cess through which he passes in gaining for 
 himself a proper knowledge of the various 
 circumstances of life; from which he ac- 
 quires the ability to adjust himself prop- 
 erly to them; and by which he learns to 
 know the standards of the true, the good, 
 and the beautiful with which to measure 
 them. It is the highway over which the 
 individual passes in reaching an ultimate 
 point from which he can view with greater 
 clearness than he otherwise could life and 
 the issues of life in their true perspective. 
 To pass this way, is to become educated; to 
 help another on this course, is to be an 
 educator; and to be an educator in this 
 sense, is to be Godlike. 
 
 Under whatever conditions the extension 
 of this the great work of life is possible, the 
 lot of the worker will be one of rare privi- 
 lege. In a democracy such as ours, in which 
 every individual is a sovereign, the oppor- 
 tunity to work this good work carnot be 
 treated merely as a privilege, but as an 
 imperative duty. Whatever may be our con- 
 
 *A paper read before the Department of Libraries 
 of the Southern Educational Association at Char- 
 lotte, N. C., Dec. 28, 1909. 
 
 ception of the duties of our zcevernment as 
 to the extent of its paternal relations to our 
 citizenship and to the direction of our indi- 
 vidual affairs, we are unanimously agreed 
 that it is its clear duty to give security to 
 the persons and property of the members of 
 the government. In order that it may do this 
 without the possibility of disappointment and 
 failure we are also equally unanimously 
 agreed that the best means our government 
 has to protect these rights is through the 
 education of every sovereign individual; for 
 if his eye be single his whole body shall be 
 full of light, but if evil, his whole body shall 
 be full of darkness. 
 
 Accepting education then to be the agency 
 for. promoting the kind of good inclicated and 
 recognizing it as the foundation upou which 
 our form of government must stand or fail, 
 as a people we have spared no thought or 
 means whereby it might best be promoted 
 among us and by which its benefits might be 
 more generally conferred on all. Our think- 
 ing and planning have resulted tn the estab- 
 lishment and maintenance of the school, the 
 museum, and the lecture platform. which, 
 together with the press, the church, and the 
 home, stand out as the great educational 
 agencies in our American life. Each has 
 its definite place and each, in the way best 
 suited to the furtherance of its specific pur- 
 poses, is working out as a specific, yet co- 
 operative agency, the salvation of the Amer- 
 ican people. Each in the way which kas been 
 found the surest and best attempts to con- 
 tribute its parts to the making of the com- 
 plete man, furnished unto all good works. 
 
 In 1850, or thereabouts, the public library 
 presented itself in America as a claimant for 
 a place along with these agencies in the 
 nation’s educational work. {t asked to be 
 allowed to become an educator, to be per- 
 mitted to contribute something jiurther to 
 the individual’s outlook upon the life around 
 him, By 1876, a date made memorable in 
 America by the founding of the American 
 Library Association as well as by the celebra- 
 tion of the one hundredth anniversary of 
 
 of 
 
American independence, its request for ad- 
 mission had been granted, and in 1907, when 
 representatives from every section of the 
 country gathered at Asheville in the twenty- 
 ninth annual meeting of the Association, it 
 was brought home to us of the South as it 
 was to the entire country that every objec- 
 tion to its admission had been swept away 
 and it stood accredited as one of the fore- 
 most institutions in the dissemination of pop- 
 ular education. 
 
 It is in the capacity of an educator, then, 
 a capacity to which it holds un undisputed 
 right, that I wish especially to view it with 
 you. As schoolmen, we have doubtless come 
 to look upon the library, whether for the 
 rural school, high school, college, city or 
 state, as secondary to the school as an ag- 
 gressive educational agency. Consequently 
 we may have fallen into the habit of thinking 
 and speaking of the library as supplementary 
 to the school. We insist in driving two of 
 our educational forces tandem fashion with 
 the school in the lead, rather than both 
 abreast, each pulling its proportionate share 
 of the load. As librarians we have possibly 
 insisted more than has been reasonable upon 
 this latter method of pulling, and consequent- 
 ly the load, through misunderstanding and a 
 lack of co-operation on the part of the 
 forces concerned, has not been carried ‘for- 
 ward as far as it might. 
 
 Whatever may have been our theory in 
 the case, we are agreed to-day that each is 
 indispensable to the other and that each in 
 certain particulars supplements the other and 
 is complemented by the other. The specific 
 functions or missions of both, and the rela 
 tion which each institution bears to the othe 
 I conceive to be as follows: I quote, in part, 
 from Mr. W. A. Millis in his paper read 
 before the National Educational Association 
 in 1902, and from Mr. H. E. Legler, in the 
 current number of the LiprAry JOURNAL: 
 
 “The work of the school is threefold: 
 
 “1, To awaken aspiration, both general and 
 specific, 
 
 2. To give the alphabet of learning and 
 activity —that is, to give the child such in- 
 troduction to the several lines of learning, 
 art, and enterprise as will reveal to him and 
 nourish his special aptitudes, and at the same 
 time put him into position to live sympa- 
 
 thetically with those who follow other activi-. 
 ties than his own, art 
 
 “3. To train the powers of thought and 
 expression.” 
 
 Or, stating the ideas of Mr. Millis in a 
 slightly different way, it is required of the 
 school to awaken in the child an ambition to 
 be well developed, to be a somebody; to 
 quicken his impulse to know what the world 
 has thought and done; to teach him to read, 
 and, to some extent, to develop his taste for 
 proper literature. When the child has been 
 equipped with the rudiments of science, his- 
 tory, language, and mathematics, has been 
 awakened to the possibilities of culture and 
 is ambitious to possess it, when he has 
 learned how to read and think, the school 
 has done the most it can do. Its primary 
 business is to equip him with tools of learning 
 and culture and the impulse for larger at- 
 tainments. Beyond this point other agen- 
 cies must take him. 
 
 From the viewpoint of social science, the 
 library has a twofold mission. It is the 
 agency specially organized and maintained 
 by the community to serve as an aid to the 
 material progress of the individual and to 
 promote the culture of a community through 
 the individual. “Perhaps,” to quote from Mr. 
 Legler, “ it may be said more accurately that 
 its first mission is to give scope to its sec- 
 ond. For, first of all, man must minister 
 to his physical wants. Before there can be 
 intellectual expansion and cultural develop- 
 ment there must be leisure, or ut least condi 
 tions that free the mind from anxicus care 
 for the morrow. So the social structure, 
 after all, must rest, to some extent, upon 
 a bread and butter foundation. Thus it fol- 
 lows, as a logical conclusion, that society 
 as a whole cannot reach a high stage of 
 development until all its industrial mem- 
 bers are surrounded with conditions that 
 permit the highest self-development. Until 
 a better agency shall be found it is the pub- 
 lic library which must serve this need.” In 
 giving skill to the hand of labor, in offering 
 cheer and a wider outlook upon life to the 
 home, in rendering acute the thought of the 
 community at large, it lays the true founda- 
 tion of culture. 
 
 And by the culture which it is to promote 
 is meant more than reading and more than 
 
information. “It is that compounding of 
 learning, taste, judgment, wisdom, and pe- 
 culiar mental tone that come of being in 
 sympathetic acquaintance with what has been 
 thought, felt and done in the world, and of 
 companionship, even remote, with the men 
 and women who have thought. felt and ac- 
 complished.” 
 
 Thus both the school and the library have 
 the same objective. Their ways of approach 
 to it are frequently one and the same, and if 
 at times divergent they both bring the in- 
 dividual to the same desired end. The 
 school awakens wholesome personality and 
 social impulses, both general and specific, 
 trains the individual in the elements of 
 the social arts, trains him to think and 
 to study, equips him with the elements of 
 learning. It supplies him with the imple- 
 ments with which he may attain to cul- 
 ture and endeavors to fit him for a larger 
 and more permanent growth to come from 
 ‘activities beyond its doors. The promotion 
 of this larger growth beyond the school; the 
 addition of knowledge, power ana culture to 
 the individual’s store through the page of 
 the free open book; the development of 
 strong, truth-loving character both in the 
 child and the adult is the special field and 
 the larger opportunity of the iibrary. 
 
 However necessary it may be fot us as 
 schoolmen and librarians to define clearly 
 for ourselves the theoretical functions of the 
 school and the library as educators in order 
 that we may comprehend the nature of our 
 duties, it is equally necessary foz us to direct 
 our attention briefly to the practical methods 
 by which they may best fulfil their missions. 
 As the special problems of the school are 
 being discussed in other departments of this 
 Association, I shall pass at once to the con- 
 sideration of the particular lines of work to 
 which the library should devote itself. I can 
 enly hope to point out certa‘n groups or 
 classes with which the library should espe- 
 cially work without attempting to give any 
 methods in detail, 
 
 The library’s first duty, obviously, is to 
 aid in the education of the child. Although 
 its part in this special field is necessarily sec- 
 ondary to that of the school, its children’s 
 room should always be open; its tables and 
 shelves should be supplied with the best of 
 
 science, history, biography, literature and 
 story; a trained children’s librarian, who is a 
 teacher as well, should be at hand to direct; 
 the mysteries of the catalog should be re- 
 vealed; and the use of the book should be 
 made clear. If the child is not reached in 
 the library, the central library, provision 
 should be made for reaching it either by 
 school depository or branch library in the 
 school which the child attends or in the 
 branch library in the neighborhood in which 
 it lives. All of good which the library has 
 at its command shouid be placed at his hand. 
 Furthermore, it should be presented with 
 such knowledge and sympathy as will result 
 in the extension of the instruction imparted 
 by the school and in a definite contribution 
 of culture. 
 
 Its second duty is to the adult. It is a 
 fact with which we are painfully conversant 
 
 ’ that less than 25 per cent of the children be- 
 
 tween 14 and 20 are in the public schools, in- 
 cluding all the grades, and that but one Ameri- 
 can in a thousand claims a college or univer- 
 sity as his foster mother. It is just here that 
 the library finds its chief ground for exist- 
 ence. As soon as the child leaves the school 
 it should enroll him as one voi its benefi- 
 ciaries and it should sustain to him and his 
 father alike the relation of the great univer- 
 sity to her sons. Books of knowledge and 
 power, as defined by De Quincey, should be 
 furnished this individual who has passed 
 out of the doors of the school cr college to 
 stimulate his aspiration to fit himself for 
 larger, fuller life, the attainment of which 
 is wholly conditioned upon the increase of 
 his intelligence and the improvement of his 
 character, 
 
 In a peculiar sense the public library 13 
 the logical educator of what I may term spe- 
 cial classes. A million or more immigrants, 
 mostly adults, reach our shores annually, the 
 great majority of whom, either because they 
 are over age or because they are not masters 
 of our language, find our schools closed to 
 them. The library is the sole agency which 
 can touch their lives and aid in fitting them 
 for citizenship. It should teach the immi- 
 grant through books in his own tongue the 
 principles of our government and a love for 
 the Stars and Stripes which the school 
 teaches the immigrant child. Professor 
 
Munsterberg, of Harvard, in speaking of the 
 service rendered by the library to America’s 
 middle classes and especially to the foreign 
 laborer, says, “America is the workingman’s 
 paradise, and attractive enough for the rich 
 man; but the ordinary man of the middlz 
 classes, who in Germany finds his chief com- 
 fort in the Bierhalle, would find comfort in 
 America were it not for the nublic library 
 which offers him a home.” 
 
 I have already called attention to the ne- 
 cessity of training the laborer tor his work. 
 His head must be trained as well as his hand 
 if he is to win a competence for himself and 
 leisure for the acquisition of a larger cul- 
 ture. Speaking of this point, President 
 Roosevelt sounded a very true note when he 
 said, “Exactly as no other learning is as 
 important for the average man as the learning 
 which will teach him how to make his liveli- 
 hood, so no other learning is as important for 
 the average woman as the learning which 
 will make her a good housewife and mother,” 
 Here then the library has its greatest oppor- 
 tunity, the enlightenment of the workshop 
 and the worker’s home. 
 
 The last duty of which I shall speak is to the 
 municipality or state which appropriates con- 
 stantly increasing sums for library mainte- 
 nance. This service should be a direct one in ad- 
 dition to the indirect one of training individ- 
 uals for citizenship. I refer to that work of 
 the library or the library commission which 
 has as its special object the ccllection of 
 laws for the guidance of aldermen and legis- 
 lators for study and comparison in enacting 
 legislation which will consequently be bene- 
 ficent and wise. This field has not hereto- 
 fore been sufficiently well cultivated, but with 
 the more generally prevailing wish on the 
 part of citizens that knowledge shall grow 
 from more to more, that city and state shall 
 rule wisely and well, that laws shall find 
 their basis in equity and justice to all, the 
 
 demand for its cultivation becomes impera- 
 tive. 
 
 To summarize, it is the duty vf the public 
 
 library to co-operate with the school in its 
 
 endeavor to awaken in the citizen-to-be an 
 inspiration to make the most ot his powers; 
 to give him the alphabet of learning and 
 activity, to train his powers of thought and 
 expression; and to supply him with the im- 
 plements with which he may aitain to cul- 
 ture. Apart from its connecttoa with the 
 school, its chief function is to seive as the 
 lifelong university for the individual, in 
 which he may find freely, without money 
 and without price, an opportunity for the 
 continuous development of all his powers. 
 
 This is the task as an educator which the 
 public library has set itself. Although it 
 incurs constantly increasing expense in doing 
 its work, Professor Miinsterberg, in speaking 
 of its effectiveness, says: “Admittedly all the 
 technical apparatus of library administration 
 is expensive; the Boston Public Library ex- 
 pends every year a quarter of a million dol- 
 lars for administrative purposes. But the 
 American taxpayer supports this more glad- 
 ly than any other burden, knowing that the 
 public library is the best weapon against 
 alcoholism aud crime, against corruption and 
 discontent, and that the democratic country 
 can flourish only when the instinct of self- 
 perfection as it exists in every American is 
 thoroughly satisfied.” 
 
 Such is the work of the public library. 
 Such is its record of achievement. Granting 
 that it has not always met the 1equirements 
 made of it, the faults by which it has been 
 marred will be remedied, emotion and senti- 
 ment will be aided by reason in promoting 
 its cause, and we of the South, though tardy, 
 will join those of other sections in utilizing . 
 it as an institution making strong and perma- 
 nent the foundation of our democratic Amer- 
 ican civilization.