The American Scene; Role of the Library

Good morning, each year more and more books are being written and published throughout the world. And each year, contrary to some opinions, more and more people are reading books than ever before. Because of this increased use of books, the job of the library is becoming more complex. And in some respects, the role of the library in our American scene is changing. And this is what we would like to investigate this morning. And to do so, we are pleased to welcome two guests, Ms. Gertrude Geshidle, librarian for the Chicago Public Library, and Mr. Herman H. Henkel, librarian for the John Krierar Library. This morning, we have two different types of libraries represented here, and yet they are both free to the public. Perhaps to begin with, we might establish what the function of these libraries is. Ms. Geshidle, what is the function of the Chicago Public Library? The Chicago Public Library is an educational, cultural, recreational center for all the people of the city of Chicago, regardless of age. Mr. Henkel, is this

near your function? No, I would say the objectives of Krierar Library are much more limited. Ms. Gertrude, the Krierar Library at the present time is primarily operating in the field of service to education and research. The general cultural and educational functions served by the public library are not as apparent in our organization. Also, our library, for the most part, is not limited to use by residents of Chicago. There are no restrictions anyone from anywhere can come into our library and make full use of its resources. And yours is a private library, however. The Chicago Public Library is a tax -supported library, and ours is supported primarily from endowment, but has other supplementary sources of income as well. It's a privately endowed public library. But both free to the public, anyone can try to use them. Well, why is it necessary, or why

is it advantageous to have two such libraries in the city here? Why couldn't all of this be in the Chicago Public Library? Well, of course it could all be in the Chicago Public Library. It's a matter of how the two libraries were established to begin with, and also the functions which the two libraries serve are complex. And we can say that in their subject fields, Kerr begins where the Chicago Public Library leaves off. We could cite the New York Public Library, in which the kind of a library that Kerr is, and the kind of a library that the Chicago Public is, are united in a single institution. Well, are there special problems involved? For instance, the quantity of material in the scientific field. Is this perhaps one reason why the Chicago Public Library does not have as complete a collection as Kerr are? Historically, I think the explanation would have to be this, that

the Kerr Library was established at a time when the Chicago Public Library was just getting well organized and was just a rapidly growing municipal public library. And Mr. Kerr, looking about for a contribution that he could make to the city of Chicago, which he was very fond, decided that an additional public library would be an important service to the city. And he made no specifications as to what kind of a library it should be, however, other than it should be a free public library. And after the trustee, left to the trustees, the decision. After the trustees had studied the library facilities and services that were available in the city, they came to the conclusion that the one area in which they could make the greatest contribution would be in the field of science and technology. Because at that time, the Chicago Public Library

had no special service in this field. I think, too, while we're talking about the histories of the two institutions, it might be interesting to point out that we started at about the same time. And we have had a very close cooperation over the years so that we didn't duplicate our services so that each of us grew independently in their own areas and yet coordinated our service to give the fullest possible coverage to the people of Chicago. That's right. I think as of 1959, it's important to note, in comparison to the two institutions, that while the Chicago Public Library has a Department of Applied Science and Technology, which appears to be a duplication of Kerar Library, there actually is relatively little duplication. The Chicago Public Library attempting to serve the general public interest, the Kerar Library attempting to concentrate on the more intensive research interests or more intensive research needs for library resources. Is this coexistence of two distinct libraries in a

city unique to Chicago or can this be found in other parts of the country? No, it can be found in many subject fields and cities in different ways. It goes back to the way libraries were established, the tradition of their development and so on. Another distinguishing feature of our service in the same subject field that a science and technology is that we circulate books for home use to the general reader, whereas Kerar is a reference library. Well, what are some of the problems that libraries are facing today? Let's get shadow. Well, one of them is a problem of space, the tremendous growth in the production of printed materials, also the fact that ideas are no longer communicated entirely on the printed page. A library now is not a book center, it is a communication center, and we have very important collections of recordings,

motion picture films, of visual materials, which is another way of communicating ideas from one human mind to another. Also, the tremendous development in the complexity of knowledge all of us sitting here today could talk about a dozen subjects which didn't exist 30, 50 years ago and which we have vast collections at the present time. Television, for example, is one of them. Mr. Henkel, are these similar problems to your situation? The volume, increased volume of scientific publications is I think a common problem of all libraries. I think with respect to the field of science and technology, all aspects of science insofar as this problem is present and queer are, it's very interesting and striking to look at some of the factors which have led to such an increase.

The United States was spending about the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, something in the order of, say, $800 million a year on scientific research and development. It is spending at the present time in the order of 10 times that amount, or over $8 billion a year. Now, there isn't a direct relationship between amount of money spent on research and the volume of publication, but after all, one of the net results of research is publication of the results of that research. As a consequence, there has simply been a vast increase in the volume of scientific publication. There are hundreds of new scientific journals born every year that are absolute necessity in any good technical library. The volume of books, I mean the total number of the size

of the books. I can remember when I was taking physics and chemistry. The standard handbook was about four inches high and a couple of inches thick, and you could stick it in your pocket. The same book now in some 30th edition or something like that is, we'll weigh two or three pounds, and that's typical of the whole field of science and technology. An instance arose just this morning in a discussion we were having in my office about the problem of translating certain foreign journals. There's a great deal of interest in that problem today. Whereas a given Russian journal was publishing maybe 2 ,000 pages of material a year or two or three years ago, it will have two or three times that much at the present time, even the individual journals

that come out once a month. There's still one title of a journal, but they may have grown from an inch or an inch and a half volume per year up to the point that you'll have three or four volumes each year. Mr. Henkel has this problem only in one subject field. We have it in the whole universe of knowledge, including the social sciences which are growing as rapidly. That's right. Mr. Henkel doesn't have to be concerned with literature for children and we do, and young people are very knowledgeable today. We have to have books on atomic energy and space travel, beginning with children in almost in the preschool age. They begin to look at picture books about these subjects. What kind of library today hope to have all of the books written in a particular area? No, that raises the important question of book selection. How to select from this vast amount of material that is flowing off of the presses, the material that is most useful

to a community or to a city, and not only for current use, but for preservation. There's another problem in our field. We have the problem of book selection too. We can't require everything, but in the field of research libraries, and in all fields, but in the area in which I'm particularly familiar with science and technical libraries, it has also led to a much greater emphasis on cooperation between libraries in order to assure that although one library can't have everything, that all of us together comprehend the whole field of scientific and technical literature. There are many cooperative programs. Well, this is true in your field. Is it also true in the general library? Yes, indeed. And what Mr. Henkel is talking about now is cooperation and selection, which is the prime basis of cooperation between the public library and the career library in this one field. But there are other ways of making material available

through microfilm, where you can, or photostat copies of material, actually any library in the world can really provide material in any other library in the world by one means or another with the modern technical developments in print reproduction. Well, if I wanted a book and the Chicago public library did not have it, would there be some way that they could help me? Yes, indeed. We do that every day in the week by interlibrary loan. We borrow books from other libraries throughout the country and a great many from the Library of Congress. We do this for scholars and research workers rather than for the general reader. After all, it is a costly process to borrow books from one library to another and we're not anxious to do it for a novel or for a piece of a femoral literature, but we would do it for any kind of important material. An interesting development in that field, winter library loan is being experimented with by the National Library

of Medicine in Washington. Here to for the as a National Library in the field, they have lent very liberally books from their collection to medical libraries and other research libraries all over this country and even abroad, but they're now experimenting with a procedure whereby when you send in requesting to borrow a volume of a particular journal and indicate the special article you're interested in, they will send you a photocopy of that article without charge in lieu of sending the loan. And as a consequence, that enables them to keep their collections in much better, much more closely intact and also it's beginning to feel or appear to be quite clear that it can probably be done about as inexpensively and that's the wrong word. No more expensively than interlibrary loan. Is this a recent

development or have interlibrary loans existed for quite a long time? Well interlibrary loans have existed for decades as a matter of fact, there is an interlibrary loan code which has been developed by libraries which establishes the rules and regulations and procedures under which libraries do this sort of thing. Of course, some of the technical developments have helped libraries in other ways too. For example, one of our very valuable collections are the collections of Chicago newspapers which we have for over 100 years. Until 10 or 15 years ago, they occupied several rooms in the central library building. All of these newspapers are now available on microfilm and the entire collection is housed in a 15 or 20 vertical file cases which is very helpful to libraries. Also to the reader where they formerly had to handle bound volumes of newspapers which were heavy and dirty and disintegrating over

years of storage, they now put a small role of film on a reader and can turn the pages rapidly and easily. Well, this has helped the storage problem. I imagine there are other areas where a storage problem is important too. Are there other techniques for controlling this problem? Well, one that in which career our library is very much interested in which we are a participant is the Midwest Inter Libraries Center which you know. The organization was started for the purpose of a cooperative effort between a group of libraries which now numbers 20 research libraries and they built out on Cottage Grove Avenue a 3 million volume capacity library. The purpose of which was primarily to provide storage space for little used materials but materials which still had

some importance as research source of research information. The this program has gone further than that however by having an acquisitions program of its own whereby it collects material which aren't in any of the other libraries. For example in the field of chemistry which pervades practically every industry. Today the literature of chemistry is becoming voluminous and chemical abstracts currently indexes some 6 ,500 or 7 ,000 different journals. Well even in all of the 20 libraries together not all of those 7 ,000 journals are represented. So the Midwest Inter Libraries Center has a program whereby it attempts to acquire the current subscriptions, the journals that are not in any one of the member libraries. So then all of us together

can we can say that of the currently published scientific journals index in chemical abstracts you can get anything in the Midwest area either through the center or through one of the research libraries affiliated with it. Are there other centers like this throughout the country? Yes, so rare. There are none that are operating just this way. There are a number of cooperative centers of this kind now in the country. It seems to be a pattern which will almost certainly expand and become much more important in the future. Are the problems of today differed from the problems of a few years ago? Has there been an increase in problems or have the problems themselves just become more severe as time goes by? Well a public library is a big business. It gives service not only through a single building in the center of the city but through branch libraries, through mobile libraries that go all over the city.

The fact that there is more print is being produced all the time is one problem but more people are using books than ever before and are using books more purposefully than ever before. It makes the role of a public library in a community or a city much more important. For example, you hear a great deal about how to do it projects where people have to learn how to do all of these projects and one of the places they learn to do it, perhaps the most important places through the public library. That's just one example. Another thing I think that has made the role of the public library more significant is the emphasis on education and the quality of education which is taking place at the present time and a good deal of the emphasis and improved education is in the use of books. I

think it's interesting that the career of our library was started as a private and doubt library and yet was open to the public. Is this a unique occurrence in the United States or is this happened elsewhere? No actually there were such libraries before the tax -supported public library system was ever started in this country. Actually public libraries began as exactly the type of library that career I know is. They were association libraries in which people took out memberships and paid either on an annual basis or a monthly basis for the use of the library and those libraries gradually became tax -supported and public libraries as we consider them now. The type of library that career is very common throughout the country and we have one very important one in Chicago which we haven't mentioned the Newberry Library. Has this thing happened in England or other countries in

Europe? Yes, in many cases have continued to be important sources of book material. Actually the public library as we think of it in the United States is uniquely American. It really originated here and one of the interesting things today is that we have visitors from all over the world coming to America expressly to see the American public library in action and coming to our library schools to learn how to establish public libraries in all of the countries of the world. We've had visitors here just this week from India, from Japan and from some of the countries in Africa studying the American public library. As far as the philosophy of a library is concerned, is there an obligation on the part of the library to induce the public to come in and use its facilities? Yes, to encourage the use of books and libraries is one of the very important

functions of the public library and one at which public libraries work very hard. We begin with the children in school. We actually visit all of the classrooms in the public and private and prokyl schools in Chicago, the elementary schools at least twice each year talking to the children and rolling them with public library cards and starting them out to become readers, good readers. We issue all kinds of publications, reading lists, folders about our services. We talk to groups, we sponsor programs and activities to introduce readers to the resources of the public library. For example, we have programs of recorded concerts and film programs which are in effect communicating ideas in themselves but also encouraging people to use those materials in their own way. Does the research library feel the same obligation? I think the obligation of the research library probably finds

its expression in a somewhat different form. While we certainly would agree that a primary responsibility of the library is to encourage the use of library materials, our emphasis is on the acquisition of those materials and their organization for use. I think in a research library such as Krurar has become through the years, the emphasis in terms of use is much more heavily in connection with providing information, factual information related to shop or manufacturing problems or basic scientific information related to fundamental laboratory research or to developmental research in industry or government or any other organization that's engaged in scientific and technical research so that this kind

of use of our collections imposes on us a much heavier responsibility for a comprehensive coverage of the world's literature and that's where we devote and feel that our primary responsibility rests. But you do have an obligation for letting the public know that the collection exists. That certainly is an obligation I would say. I can't speak for all libraries but I think Ms. Kishital and I would agree on that point certainly. That's an obligation of all libraries to make their resources known. None of us probably do as good a job as we should. I know Krurar hasn't. We've been making a special effort in that field just this last year with the help of the members of 20 or 25 scientific societies. We've just distributed information about the library to some 12 or 13 ,000 scientists, many of whom I'm sure knew very little about our resources before that. I think in some ways a public library educates people to the use of

books so that they ultimately become the kind of people who will use the John Krurar public library or other public libraries of that kind. We're concerned with showing people, helping people to learn and to know the important role which books can play in their lives and to become interested in the kinds of professions and activities in which books will play an important part. A very important development in research library in this country and in many other countries too. But it's typical of a substantial growth in library resources has been the extent to which industrial organizations have established their own library facilities, governmental departments establishing their own library facilities. So it is a consequence some of the larger more concentrated collections of library materials in the field of

research are becoming increasingly supplementary rather than primary sources. There was a time 50 years ago where when Krurar library was the only place that you could get most technical information out of the scientific literature. Today there's a very substantial body of scientific literature which you can find in any one of not three or four but dozens of libraries. Another interesting comment on that very fact is that you would think that with the development of special libraries and research libraries that the role of the public library might become less and yet it becomes more. One of the biggest users of the public library are the special librarians of the city who are using our resources to supplement their own in serving a particular business or industry with which they're associated. As the librarian has become increasingly

a kind of an information officer with responsibility not only for acquiring material in their own library but for knowing where ever it can be found and seeing that it is found. Thank you very much. Our discussion this morning has indicated that there are really several roles for several types of libraries in the American scene today. With a vast increase in the quantity of publications of all types it has become impossible for any one library to maintain an inclusive collection in all fields. Thus specialized libraries such as the John Krurar Library play a particular and important role today. But whatever the needs of the public and whatever the methods used, libraries will continue to fulfill their most important role in society. That of housing and making available to all of us the fascinating world of the printed page. Good morning for the American scene.