e and brave--free because they are brave, and brave because they are
free, and both because they are true children of that eternal father
without whom both freedom and bravery are but empty names.

THE PEOPLE'S SHARE IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY[12]

[12] Read before the Chicago Woman's Club. January 6, 1915.

The change that has come over the library in the last half century may be
described, briefly but comprehensively, by saying that it has become
predominantly a social institution; that is, that its primary concern is
now with the service that it may render to society--to the people. Books,
of course, were always intended to be read, and a library would have no
meaning were it never to be used; yet in the old libraries the collection
and preservation of the books was primary and their use secondary, whereas
the modern institution exists primarily for public service, the collection
of the books, their preservation, and whatever is done to them being
directed to this end. To a social institution--a family, a school, a club,
a church or a municipality--the persons constituting it, maintaining it,
or served by it are all-important. A family without parents and children,
a school without pupils, a club without members, a church with no
congregation, a city without citizens--all are unthinkable. We may better
realize the change in our conception of the public library by noting that
it has taken its place among bodies of this type. A modern library with no
readers is unthinkable; it is no library, as we now understand the word;
though it be teeming with books, housed in a palace, well cataloged and
properly manned.

It is no longer possible to question this view of the library as a social
institution--a means of rendering general service to the widest public. We
have to deal not with theories of what the library ought to be, but, with
facts indicating what it actually is; and we have only to look about us to
realize that the facts give the fullest measure of support to what I have
just said. The library is a great distributing agency, the commodities in
which it deals being ideas and its customers the citizens at large, who
pay, through the agency of taxation, for what they receive. This
democratic and civic view of the public library's functions, however, does
not commend itself to those who are not in sympathy with democratic
ideals. In a recent address, a representative librarian refers to it as
"the commercial t