Page:The Question of Library Training by Lutie Stearns.djvu/5

3 executive ability; great power of discernment of the character and qualifications of persons engaged in library work; great tact and skill in dealing with the public; wisdom in practical affairs; trained for the special profession of librarian; great public spirit; in short, an all-around citizen who would be capable of shaping public sentiment in library matters, of taking an influential position in educational affairs, and one who would be deserving the respect and support of the whole community. The salary of the position, the circular stated, would be commensurate to the merits of the man finally selected.

In this connection, we would remind members of library boards of the trite saying among housekeepers that you cannot expect all of the Christian virtues in a domestic at $2.50 per week. Some trustees might retort that people who take pains never to do more than they get paid for, never get paid for more than they do. It is a fact, however, that librarians are the poorest paid professional people in the world. They must be content to "spare delights and live laborious days." Conditions have ever been favorable for librarians to be numbered among those fortunate individuals who can labor for the honor of being workers and not for the accumulation of wealth. Since time began, the work of the librarian has been considered of value except only as tested by a money standard. Brains and talent that would command large revenues in law and medicine are compelled to be content with meagre grants in the library profession. The mind and energy that manages a library system including a main library, branch libraries, and deposit stations, covering a tremendous area, ofttimes receives but a fraction of the salary paid to the manager of a department store, while the librarian of one of the world's foremost depositories receives less than one-fourteenth part of the salary paid the president of an "execrable" life insurance society. If a great philosopher is right when he says that "culture grows only under conditions of wealth and wealth only through accumulations of capital, and capital only through accumulation of the work of those who are not justly paid," then librarians are contributing more to the general culture of the world than any and all other classes combined. In 1876 the American Library Association took for its motto, "The best reading for the largest number at the least cost." While librarians everywhere are unsparingly and unceasingly working to provide the best reading for the largest number, they have been appropriating to themselves or rather have had meted out to them the "least cost" section of the slogan, as may be shown in Mrs. Fairchild's report in the St. Louis A.L.A. proceedings. In this particular, women are the greatest offenders and sufferers. Women will accept much smaller salaries than men of equal ability and preparation. This is not in any sense to underbid the latter, but arises from two causes—the general fact that women are paid less than men for equal service and the willingness of women to work for the love of it, "without money and without price." Commission workers all over the land have daily brought to their attention illustrations of self-sacrifice and heroism undreamt of by trustees or more highly favored members of the profession.

The words "library spirit" are used ofttimes glibly and thoughtlessly, and many claim it who have it not; but it is the "library" spirit that makes the underpaid and overworked librarian go and go and go, morning after morning, through storm, through headache and heartache to the appointed spot and do the appointed work and cheerfully stick to that work through eight or ten hours, long after rest would be so sweet. It should ever be remembered by trustees—and we cannot emphasize this point too strongly—that a worker in a small library ofttimes must possess a good many more qualifications than one in charge of a special department in a large library and that such service should receive compensation in proportion. In the question of library training is involved the question of adequate compensation. After a student adds two years at a library school to three or four years of university or college work, as required by at least two of our accredited library schools, the graduate cannot be expected in all reason to accept a salary that will scarcely keep soul and body together.

A good librarian is worthy of his hire; a poor librarian is dear at any price.