The librarian of former times was almost invariably a bookworm, and was often a student properly so called.  The older librarians of the present day, and the librarians of the great libraries of our cities, are also very commonly men of letters, men of learning, men who admire the student spirit and know how to appreciate it.  The librarian of former days actually felt that the books of which he had charge were to be used, if they were used at all, chiefly, if not only, by persons who wished to make some careful and painstaking research; and the older librarians, and the librarians of the greater libraries of today, are also inclined to think that their libraries are best used, or at least are used as fully as they need be, when they are visited by those who are engaged in original investigation or serious study of some sort.  As a fellow librarian once wrote me, for example, of one of his colleagues, “His whole trend is scholarly rather than popular; he appreciates genuine contributions to art, science, and industry, but has little taste for the great class of books that the main body of readers care for.”  This view of literature, libraries, and the use of books, and this special fondness for what may be called genuine contributions to art, science, and industry, are proper enough in their time and place; but it cannot be too often impressed upon the library world, and upon those who contribute to the support of libraries, and upon trustees and directors generally, that the thing that is of great consequence in the work of the free public library is not its product in the shape of books which are the results of careful research, or of books which are contributions to science, art, and industry; it is the work that the library does from day to day in stimulating the inquiring spirit, in adding to the interest in things, and in broadening the minds of the common people who form 90 per cent at least of the public library patrons.  That is to say, the public library is chiefly concerned not in the products of education, as shown in the finished book, but in the process of education as shown in the developing and training of the library users, of the general public.

It is from this common-folks-education point of view that the advocate of the open-shelf system looks upon the question of library administration.  A free public library is not a people’s post-graduate school, it is the people’s common school.

The more I see and learn of free public libraries the more I am convinced that a public library can reach a high degree of efficiency in its work only when its books are accessible to all its patrons.  The free public library should not be managed for the use of the special student, save in special cases, any more than is the free public school.  That it should be solely or chiefly or primarily the student’s library, in any proper sense of the word, is as contrary to the spirit of the whole free public library movement as would be the making of the public schools an institution