OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH GENERAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION HELD AT BOSTON AND MAGNOLIA, MASS. JUNE 14-20 1902 PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 1902 BOSTON AND MAGNOLIA, MASS. JUNE 16-20, 1902. SOME LIBRARY PROBLEMS OF TO-MORROW: ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. By JOHN S. BILLINGS, Director of the New York Public Library. WHEN the American Library Association was organized its object was declared to be "to promote the library interests of the country by exchanging views, reaching conclusions, and inducing co-operation in all departments of bibliothecal science and economy; by disposing the public mind to the founding and improving of libraries, and by cultivating good will among its members." When the constitution was revised in 1900, the object of the Association was declared to be "to promote the welfare of libraries in America." This change is significant, not of a change in the purposes of the Association, but of a general opinion that verbose details of its purposes are now unnecessary. At first the Association undertook much direct missionary work, but this has gradually been taken in charge by state and local associations to such an extent that our work in this direction is now mainly to obtain records of the methods which have been found most successful, and to bring these to the attention of those directly engaged in interesting the people at large, and legislators and tax-payers in particular, in the establishment and support of free public libraries. It is the welfare of the free public library, and especially the library intended mainly for the circulation of books for home use among the people, and supported from public funds, to which we have given the most attention. This is especially an American institution and it has seemed more important that its uses and needs should be understood and appreciated by the general public than those of purely reference libraries, since these last are fairly well understood by those who most need and use them. The main argument in favor of the free public library is that it is an essential part of a system of free public instruction which is a necessary foundation of a satisfactory system of self government. It is not true, however, that any and every system of education tends to produce a stable democracy, and there are great differences of opinion among professional educators, and still greater differences of opinion among other thinking men who know something of the methods and results of our public schools, as to whether our present system is the best one. If the main object of the school and of the teacher is to furnish information and cultivate the memory, there is good ground for objecting to both the quantity and quality of some of the kinds of information supplied. If the object of education is to develop the intellect, to teach the student how to judge as to what is true and to know where to look for it, to recognize wise thought, and to distinguish the man who is qualified to lead from the incompetent man who wants to lead, then our public school system is not well suited to its purpose. The relations which should exist between the system of public libraries and the system of public schools in a state or city are not yet generally agreed upon by both librarians and teachers. In a general way it may be said that the librarian's view is that the public library should be entirely independent of the public school system as regards its funds and management, that special school libraries are apt to be badly managed, and inefficient for the purpose of interesting and instructing the children, that the librarian knows more about books than the teacher, and can supplement and broaden the teacher's work ; —and that teachers should recognize these facts, should be willing and anxious to receive instruction and advice from librarians by listening to lectures and talks at the library and repeating to their classes |