ny. He is at once boss and beneficiary. Let us see
first what the public can do for its library through its relation of
control. Besides the purse-strings, which we have seen are sometimes held
directly by the public and sometimes by its elected representatives, we
must consider the governing board of the institution--its trustees or
directors. These may be elected by the people or appointed by an elected
officer, such as the mayor, or chosen by an elected body, such as the city
council or the board of education.

Let us take the purse-strings first. Does your public library get enough
public money to enable it to do the work that it ought to do? What is the
general impression about this in the community? What does the library
board think? What does the librarian think? What do the members of his
staff say? What has the library's annual report to say about it? It is not
at all a difficult matter for the citizen to get information on this
subject and to form his own opinion regarding it. Yet it is an unusual
thing to find a citizen who has either the information or a
well-considered opinion. The general impression always seems to be that
the library has plenty of money--rather more, in fact, than it can
legitimately use. It is probably well for the library, under these
circumstances, that the public control of its purse-strings is indirect.
If the citizens of an average American city had to go to the polls
annually and vote their public library an appropriation, I am sure that
most libraries would have to face a very material reduction of their
income.

The trouble about this impression is that it is gained without knowledge
of the facts. If a majority of the citizens, understanding how much work a
modern public library is expected to do and how their own library does it,
should deliberately conclude that its management was extravagant, and that
its expenditure should be cut down, the minority would have nothing to do,
as good citizens, but submit. The citizens have nothing to say as directly
as this, but the idea, so generally held, that libraries are well off,
does operate in the long run to limit library appropriations and to
prevent the library from doing much useful work that it might do and ought
to do.

It is then, every citizen's business, as I conceive it, to inform himself
or herself of the work that the public library is doing, of that which it
is leaving undone, and of the possibilities of increased appropr