walls have received some
architectural embellishment of a different type.

When anyone objects to the introduction into the library of what the
colleges call "extra-curriculum activities," I prefer to explain and
justify it in this larger way, rather than to take up each activity by
itself and discuss its reasonableness--though this also may be undertaken
with the hope of success. In developing as it has done, the Library in the
United States of America has not been simply obeying some law of its own
being; it has been following the whole stream of American development. You
can call it a drift if you like; but the Library has not been simply
drifting. The swimmer in a rapid stream may give up all effort and submit
to be borne along by the current, or he may try to get somewhere. In so
doing, he may battle with the current and achieve nothing but fatigue, or
he may use the force of the stream, as far as he may, to reach his own
goal. I like to think that this is what many American institutions are
doing, our libraries among them. They are using the present tendency to
eclecticism in an effort toward wider public service. When, in a
community, there seems to be a need for doing some particular thing, the
library, if it has the equipment and the means, is doing that thing
without inquiring too closely whether there is logical justification for
linking it with the library's activities rather than with some others.
Note, now, how this desirable result is aided by our prevailing American
tendency toward eclecticism. Suppose precisely the same conditions to
obtain in England, or France, or Italy, the admitted need for some
activity, the ability of the library and the inability of any other
institution, to undertake it. I submit that the library would be extremely
unlikely to move in the matter, simply from the lack of the tendency that
we are discussing. That tendency gives a flexibility, almost a fluidity,
which under a pressure of this kind, yields and ensures an outlet for
desirable energy along a line of least resistance.

The Englishman and the American, when they are arguing a case of this
kind, assume each the condition of affairs that obtains in his own
land--the rigidity on the one hand, the fluidity on the other. They assume
it without stating it or even thoroughly understanding it, and the result
is that neither can understand the conclusions of the other. The fact is
that they are both right. I seriously question