little empty talk about being run by London is sufficient to sway your judgment and dictate your policy-will you be loyal to the parochial idea and disloyal to the imperial one? Cannot you-cannot we all-forget our petty little domestic interests and domestic squabbles, and fix our eyes not upon ourselves but upon the great public outside, asking what is best to be done in order that we may move that, educate that, tell that what a municipal library ought to be, and what is the true function of books and reading in the local and national life. What, after all, are you asked to give up? A field of work which as an organization you may occupy but which you cannot till. I don't despair of the future, indeed I look forward to it full of hope, I believe that by pulling together, sinking our departmental interests in order that we may make ourselves a thoroughly efficient mechanism for shaping public opinion on the right lines, that we shall in the course of the next half dozen years make the future progress of the municipal library absolutely secure. No; if I am inclined to despair at all, it is of librarians. Our cause is sound; our case is strong; it is of the human material with which the fight is to be conducted that one is a little uncertain. All great achievements, all movements which achieve, depend on some sort of sacrifice, personal and collective. So far as you are concerned you are asked to sacrifice a portion of your territory, because it is too big and too unworkable by any single branch of the Library Association, and with that sacrifice of territory goes a sacrifice of members. True you will gain, are bound to gain in the end more than you will lose, by intensive cultivation of the area which remains. But for the moment it is a sacrifice. I do not pretend otherwise. But if I have convinced you that the larger issue will be served by accepting the proposals of the Council in this matter, it is your duty, nay it is your privilege to make the sacrifice which is demanded, and so help forward, and not hinder, the great and difficult work which lies before us.

THE LIBRARY OUTLOOK: AN ADDRESS TO MUNICIPAL LIBRARY ASSISTANTS.1

BY L. STANLEY JAST.

N a paper which I read at the last Annual Meeting of the

ate future, I ventured to refer to the present period as a critical one, both for municipal libraries and municipal librarians. For the interests of what we usually speak of as the library movement and the interests of the library profession are identical; whatever advances the movement as a whole must react to the advantage of the profession as a whole, and the opposite is equally true. In considering, therefore, briefly, what I might call the library outlook, one must necessarily consider the various questions involved both from the standpoint of the public, and the narrower standpoint of the official.

During a period which we may estimate roughly as the last quarter of a century the municipal public library has passed through a period of great development. Those of us who have been engaged in library work during this time have seen the growth of a conception of the public library very much wider than that which obtained and dominated public libraries during their earlier years. It was possible not so many years ago for a prominent librarian to assert at an Annual Meeting of the Library Association that the public library was not an educational institution. He would be a bold man who would say so to-day. While the recreative side still remains a characteristic feature of the work of the public library, and must always remain, it is no longer regarded by most people as the important side; the emphasis

1 Delivered to the North-Eastern Branch of the Library Assistants' Association, at Sunderland, 17 January, 1912; and to the Yorkshire Branch of the same Association, at Leeds, 18 January, 1912.

is laid to-day upon the workshop, the educational, the university side. The result of this change of emphasis is seen in many different directions. Twenty-five years ago it is doubtful if any municipal public library was systematically classified; certainly not the great municipal reference libraries, which needed systematic arrangement most. Twentyfive years ago what was considered to be the most efficient type of library catalogue was represented by such examples as Mr. Haggerston's catalogues of the Public Library of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which gave the type to a whole series of libraries, including the one in which I myself was trained, viz. Halifax. Compare such a catalogue with many of the author and classified catalogues of to-day, and you will see how enormously this kind of bibliographical work has been improved, and how much more intelligently the needs of the student as well as of the general reader have been met. Consider again the difference between then and now in the matter, the all-important matter, of book selection. Twentyfive years ago the buying of books on the principle of the largest number of volumes for the smallest payment was comparatively common; but no self-respecting library authority buys books by weight now. Twenty-five years ago work with children was represented by the old juvenile collections, the contents of which, as remembered by the older ones amongst us, and as recorded in their catalogues, were of an extremely mixed order. Granted that we are perhaps too much inclined in these days to overload our juvenile collections with purely juvenile books, forgetting that the best type of reading boy reads a good deal that is not specially written for him, at all events this was true of his father, and if it is not true of him so much the worse for him; still there is no doubt that our collections of works for children are very much better in every way than they were at the time to which I refer. And then of course we have seen the development of the school library, one of the most important and definite links between the public educational system of the country and the municipal library.

If we narrow our outlook and consider the state of affairs within the library profession itself, we find a parallel develop

ment no less remarkable and no less full of promise for the future. The educational training of assistants by the Library Association has been developed, and is gradually but surely eliminating the untrained man. And we have seen the recognition of our education work by at least one university, the University of London. Quite recently also we have seen a definite step taken towards the organization of the profession by that re-classification of the members of the Library Association into professional and non-professional members, which we refer to, if not with technical, at all events with practical correctness, as professional registration. Nor must I forget, at all events before this audience, to mention the coming of the library assistant as an articulate element in the movement as one of the characteristic signs of the times. Here then are a few of the outstanding evidences of the new spirit which has infused libraries in recent years. Let me add that not the least of the factors responsible for this development is the tremendous activity in library housing, which has followed upon the unparalleled munificence and public spirit, and far-sighted recognition of the great part which the public library can play in the national life, of Dr. Andrew Carnegie.

I was asked by one of the library assistants in the North, who was speaking to me about my visit, to strike an optimistic note. I gather from this that some of you are inclined to take a gloomy view of the future, at any rate as it concerns yourselves. Gentlemen, in the rapid picture which I have sketched there is obviously no foothold whatever for pessimism. But it would be foolish to deny that there are certain features both in the movement as a whole, and in the condition of the library profession, which are by no means reassuring. Let us see what these are, not that we may find therein grounds for gloomy anticipations, but rather that we may ask ourselves what is necessary to be done in order that such obstacles as may exist to future satisfactory development may be overcome.

The worst feature about the present condition of affairs, and the fundamental cause of much else that is unsatisfactory, is the fact that after more than half a century of successful

working the limitation of the library rate to one penny in the pound remains. In every other department of municipal activity the resources obtained from the rates have been increased in some sort of rough proportion to the increase in the demands made by the public upon the various municipal services. Not so in the department of the public library. There demands of every sort have been increasing, demands for better and more buildings, demands for better and more books, demands for extension work of many kinds, demands for better catalogues, and demands also for better trained and educated library staffs. But with all this there is an unconcealed reluctance on the part of the public to so finance libraries that these good things may be supplied, and that librarians may be remunerated on a scale bearing some reasonable relation to the general and technical knowledge which the power to serve the public as they wish to be served implies. This question of remuneration is one in which you all feel naturally a very particular personal concern, but it is not merely a personal question; obviously the nature of our human material vitally affects the nature of the work which the libraries do; the man behind the book, like the man. behind the gun, counts for a good deal; and it may be further said that it is not and cannot be in the interests of public ethics that they shall seriously under-pay any body of public servants. I have referred to our system of library education, and to the fact that the University of London has recognized this work by organizing a department of library instruction at the London School of Economics and Political Science. There is no need to labour the value of this recognition, as setting the official seal of approval of the highest educational authority upon our efforts to make ourselves more efficient public servants. Unfortunately we are witnessing now a state of arrested development in our educational affairs; and I regret to say that it is quite on the cards that unless more students attend the classes in London that they will be closed. But where are those students to come from? I confess I hardly know. It is clear that both the quality and the number of possible library students depend upon the opportunities for remunerative work which