feel and read the public pulse in
matters literary. It is in regard to the second and more important
factor that failure waits most insistently on the librarian. What are
the public's needs, as distinguished from its desires? What ought it
to read? Here steps in the "categorical imperative" with a vengeance.
The librarian, when he thinks of his duty along this line, begins to
shudder as he realizes his responsibility as an educator, as a mentor,
as a trainer of literary taste. Probably in some instances he takes
himself too seriously. But, no matter how lightly he may bear these
responsibilities, every selector of books for a public library
realizes that he must give some consideration to this question. In the
first place, there are general needs; there are certain standard books
that must be on the shelves of every well-ordered library, no matter
whether they are read or not. It is his business to provide and
recommend them. What are these standards? No two lists are alike. They
start together: "the Bible and Shakespeare"--and then off they go in
divergent paths! Secondly, there are special needs dependent on
locality or on the race or temperament of the users of a particular
library. The determination of these needs in itself is a task of no
small magnitude; their legitimate satisfaction is sometimes difficult
in the extreme. To take a concrete instance, the librarian may
discover that there is in his vicinity a little knot of people who
meet occasionally to talk over current questions, not formally, but
half by accident. They would be benefited, and would be greatly
interested, in the right sort of books on economics, but they have
scarcely heard that there is such a subject. That the public library
might be interested in them and might aid them would never occur to
any of them. The discovery of such people, the determination of just
what books they need, and the successful bringing together of man and
book--all these are the business of the librarian, and it is a part of
his work that cannot be separated from that of book selection.

In much of this work the librarian of a large library must depend to a
great extent on others. Both the desires and the needs of those who
use his library he must learn from the reports of subordinates and
from outside friends. The librarian of a small library can ascertain
much personally; but both librarians are largely dependent upon expert
opinion in their final selections. After co