Frank C. Patten, librarian Helena (Mont.) public library
The modern library movement is embodying ideas that are yet to make public libraries about as common as public schools, and correspondingly important in educational value. After a generation of most remarkable growth of public libraries in number, size, and recognized usefulness, experience can now enlighten us in regard to plans of library support and organization. The best interests of the movement are served by embodying the results of this experience in law. Such a law, by setting forth a good plan, encourages the establishment and promotes the growth of these popular educational institutions.
Outline of a good law
The following outline (with explanatory notes) embraces the important provisions of a good state library law:
1 Establishment and maintenance.—Authorize the governing body in connection with the voters of any city, town, county, school district, or other political body that has power to levy and collect taxes, to establish and maintain a public library for the free use of the people. Provide also for joint establishment and maintenance, for aiding a free library with public money, and for contract with some existing library for general or special library privileges. Provide for maintenance by regular annual rate of tax. Authorize special tax or bonds to provide rooms, land, or buildings. Provide that on petition of 25 or 50 taxpayers the questions of establishment, rate of tax, and bonds shall first be decided by vote of the people at general or special election, to be changed only by another vote.
Note.—It is believed that there need be no limit of rate placed in the state law, as a community is not at all likely to vote to tax itself too high for library support. The people of a small place will, in fact, often fail to realize that in order to raise money enough to accomplish their object the tax rate must be higher than in a large place. It is not impossible that communities will, by and by, spend about as much in support of their public libraries as in support of their public schools.
2 Management.—Establish an independent board of trustees and place the management wholly in its hands. Constitute the library a public corporation, with power to acquire, hold, transfer, and lease property, and to receive donations and bequests. Secure a permanent board with gradual change of membership, the number of members to be not less than three, and the term of office certainly to be not less than three years.
Note.—In order to remove public library management from the influences of party politics, the library and its property should be wholly left to the control of trustees selected from citizens of recognized fitness for such a duty. Ex-officio membership in a library board should generally be avoided, especially in case of a small board; fitness for the position alone should be considered. Experience seems to show that in cities the proper board of trustees can best be secured through appointment by the mayor and confirmation by the council. It is a good way to provide for five trustees, one to be appointed each year for a term of five years. This number is large enough to be representative, and small enough to avoid the great difficulty in securing a quorum if the number is large. The length of term in connection with gradual change of membership encourages careful planning, and it secures the much needed continuity of management and political independence. And yet there is sufficient change of officers so that the board will not be too far removed from the public will.
3 Miscellaneous.—State the purpose of a public library broadly, perhaps in the form of a definition. Make possible the maintenance of loan, reference, reading room, museum, lecture, and allied educational features, and of branches. Prescribe mode for changing form of organization of an existing library to conform to new law. Impose penalties for theft, mutilation, over-detention, and disturbance. Provide for distributing all publications of the state free to public libraries.
Note.—It is probably most convenient to have the library year correspond with the calendar year. It is well to have the trustees appointed and the report of the library made at a different time of the year from either the local or general elections. The library is thus more likely to be free from the influences of party politics. To have a library treasurer is probably the better plan, but library money may be kept in the hands of the municipal treasurer as a separate fund, and be paid out by order of the board of trustees only.
Libraries for schoolrooms, to be composed of reference books, books for supplementary reading, class duplicates, and professional books for teachers, should be provided for in the public school law. School funds should be used and school authorities should manage these libraries. The business of lending books for home use is better and more economically managed by a public library, having an organization that is independent of the school authorities.
4 A state central authority.—Establish a state library commission; appointments on this commission to be made by the governor and confirmed by the senate, one each year for a term of five years. Make the commission the head of the public library system of the state with supervisory powers. Let the commission manage the state library entirely, and center all its work at that institution. Let it be the duty of the commission, whenever it is asked, to give advice and instruction in organization and administration to the libraries in the state; to receive reports from these libraries and to publish an annual report; to manage the distribution of state aid, and to manage a system of traveling libraries.
Note.—Within a few years each of several states has provided for a state library commission, to be in some sense the head of the public library system of the state, as the state board of education is the head of the public school system of the state. By having small traveling libraries of 50 or 100v. each, to lend for a few months to localities that have no libraries, and by having a little state aid to distribute wisely, the state library commission is able to encourage communities to do more for themselves in a library way than they otherwise would. There may be cases where the work of the commission might better be centered at the state university library. The state library commission has proved to be a useful agency wherever tried, and the plan seems likely to spread throughout the country. In Wyoming the income from 30,000 acres of state land forms a library fund. It would seem probable that other states will adopt this plan. By far the most complete and successful state system that has yet been organized is that of New York, where all centers in the state library at Albany as headquarters.
Reading matter on library legislation
The report of the United States commissioner of education for 1895-96 contains a compilation of the library laws of all the states. Every year new laws and amendments are enacted in several of the states, and the advance is very marked. The laws of New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Illinois are among the best.
Essentials of a good law
The three most essential things to be provided for in a good state library law are:
1 A sure and steady revenue.
2 Careful and consecutive management.
3 A central library authority.
In attempting to alter or make new laws, these essentials should be kept clearly in mind, but special conditions peculiar to each state dictate modifications of any general plan. Anyone interested in the matter could read the general articles upon the subject and the various state laws, and then, with the assistance of the best legal talent to be obtained, frame an act appropriate to the conditions of his state.