Of the Librarian's Profession

NOTHING is more difficult, for the beginning librarian than to discover in what profession he is engaged. Certain professions define themselves. Others are defined by those who practise them. The librarian’s profession is of neither nature. A librarian is so called not for what he does, as the farmer who farms or the lawyer who laws, but from the place in which he does it. And the definitions of the librarians, though they are eloquent in describing the librarian’s perfections, are reticent in saying what the librarian’s perfections are for.

Hugo Blotius, the sixteenth-century librarian of the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, defined his profession by saying that a librarian should be learned in languages, diligent, and quiet — adding by way of reminder to his master, the Emperor, that ‘if not of noble blood ho should be given a title to enhance the dignity of his office.’ Cotton des Houssayes told the general assembly of the Sorbonne in 1780 that when he reflected ‘on the qualifications that should be united in your librarian’ they presented themselves to his mind in so great a number, and in such character of perfection, that he distrusted his ability not only to enumerate but even to trace a true picture of them. Pressing himself to the point, however, the learned orator (who spoke, it should be noted, in the Latin tongue) supplied the following description of the office: ‘Your librarian should be, above all, a learned and profound theologian; but to this qualification, which I shall call fundamental, should be united vast literary acquisitions, an exact and precise knowledge of all the arts and sciences, great facility of expression, and lastly, that exquisite politeness which conciliates the affection of his visitors while his merit secures their esteem.’

One gathers that M. des Houssayes thought well of the librarian’s office, but beyond that, and a certain conviction of personal inadequacy, one is little wiser than before. To be at once a profound and learned theologian, the possessor of vast literary acquisitions, the exact and precise master of all the arts and all the sciences, a facile writer and a charming gentleman possessed of that exquisite politeness which wins heads as well as hearts, is to be an unusual and admirable human being — but even to be all these things at once is scarcely a profession.

And yet it is largely in the vein of the orator of the Sorbonne and the librarian of the llofbibliothck that the profession of the librarian is presented. Modern librarians — perhaps because they do not speak in Latin — have never been as eloquent as Cotton des Houssayes, but even modern librarians write as though the profession of the librarian had been defined when the scholarly attainments and linguistic achievements of the, perhaps, ideal librarian have been described.

The consequence is that the beginning librarian is thrown upon his own resources, upon the dictionary, and upon the familiar sentences of the great, founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. From Sir Thomas Bodley, besides learning that a librarian should not be ‘encumbered with marriage nor with a benefice of cure’ and that he should be ‘a personable scholler and qualified, if it may be, with a gentlemanlike speeche and carriage . . . able to interteine commers in aswel of other nations as our owne, with meete discourses for the place,’ the apprentice librarian will learn that a librarian is a Keeper of a library. From the dictionary he will learn that a library is ‘a large collection of books, public or private.’ And by his own resources he will attempt to deduce what the Keeper of a large collection of books, public or private, may, in actionable and intelligible language, be. Keeper, but how a keeper? Of books — but what, then, in this context is a book?

It is not an altogether simple question, and for this reason. There are two meanings of the word ‘ book ‘ and two relations, therefore, between a book and the man entrusted with its keeping. There is one meaning which signifies a physical object made of certain physical materials in a physical shape. There is another meaning which signifies an intellectual object made of all materials or of no materials and standing in as many shapes as there are forms and balances and structures in men’s minds. The two meanings overlap and are confused. Readers associate the intellectual book with the physical book, thinking of Plato’s vision of the world in terms of dark green linen and a gilded name. Collectors associate the physical book with the intellectual book, imagining that because they possess a rare edition of a poet’s work they somehow have possessed the poem. But the two meanings are nevertheless distinct. The physical book is never more than an ingenious and often beautiful cipher by which the intellectual book is communicated from one mind to another, and the intellectual book is always a structure in the imagination which may hang for a time above a folio page in ten-point type with a halfcalf binding only to be found thereafter on a different page above a different type and even in another language.

When it is said, therefore, that a librarian is a keeper of books, it must be determined first of which of these two books he is the keeper. Is he, for one example, the keeper of the small, clothbound object of 110 pages of text and vi of front matter manufactured by Macmillan and Co., Limited, in London in 1928 and called The Tower by W. B. Yeats? Or is he the keeper of that very different object created in many men’s minds before, and now in yours, by this — these words, these symbols, images, perceptions: —

It makes a difference whether the book is the cloth and paper or the intellectual image. If it is the physical book of which a librarian is keeper, then the character of his profession is obvious enough. He is a custodian as all keepers of physical objects are custodians, and his obligations are a custodian’s obligations. He is a sort of check boy in the parcel room of culture. His duty is to receive the priceless packages confided to him by the past and to redeliver them to the future against the proper stub. To perform that obligation he must be reliable, orderly, industrious, and clever. He must devise infallible and complicated ticket systems to find the parcels on the shelves. He must read the notations of origin and ownership in a dozen tongues. He must guard the wrappers from the risks of time and theft and matches and men’s thumbs. He must be courteous and patient with the claimants. And for the rest he has no duty but to wait. If no one comes, if no one questions, he can wait.

But if it is not the physical book but the intellectual book of which the librarian is keeper, then his profession is a profession of a very different kind. It is not the profession of the custodian, for the intellectual book is not a ticketed parcel which can be preserved by keeping it from mice and mildew on a shelf. The intellectual book is an imagined object in the mind which can be preserved only by preserving the mind’s perception of its presence. Neither is the librarian’s profession the profession of the check boy who receives and guards and redelivers, — receives from the past, guards against the present, and redelivers to the future, — for the intellectual book is not a deposit of the past which the future has a right to call and claim. The intellectual book is a construction of the spirit, and the constructions of the spirit exist in one time only — in that continuing and endless present which is Now. If it is the int ellectual book rather than the physical book of which the librarian is keeper, then the profession of the librarian is not and cannot be the neutral, passi ve, negative profession of the guardian and fiduciary, but must become instead the affirmative and advocating profession of the attorney for a cause. For the intellectual book is the Word. And the keepers of the Word, whether they so choose or not, must be its partisans and advocates. The Word was never yet protected by keeping it in storage in a warehouse: the preservation of the Word is now, as it has always been, a cause — perhaps the greatest — not, I think, the least in danger in this time.

It makes a difference, therefore, — a very considerable difference in the understanding of the librarian’s profession, — which of these two meanings of the book is taken. Both are held. The librarian who asserts that the sole and single strength of his profession in a distracted world is its disinterested objectivity— meaning its negative and custodial detachment from the dangers which beset the Word — thinks of the book necessarily as a physical object on his shelves for which, in its intellectual aspects, he accepts no share of risk or credit. The library trustee or the moralizing editor who demands of librarians that they stick to the job of pasting on the labels and handing out the loans accepts, but with less honesty, the same assumption — less honesty because he speaks, not from love of the librarian’s profession, but from hatred of the Word, and fear of its persuasions.

Those who love the power of the Word and who defend it take the opposite position. Shortly after William Dugard was released, through the efforts of John Milton, from Newgate prison, he published two letters by John Dury, deputy keeper in 1649 of the King’s medals and library, which put the case with eagerness and passion: ‘For if Librairie-Keepers did understand themselves in the nature of their work, and would make themselves, as they ought to bee, useful in their places in a publick waie; they ought to become agents for the advancement of universal learning. . . . The end of that Imploiment, in my conception, is to keep the publick stock of Learning, which is in Books and MSS, to increas it, and to propose it to others in the waie which may bee most useful unto all. His work then is to bee a Factor and Trader for helps to learning, and a Treasurer to keep them, and a Dispenser to applie them to use or to see them well used, or at least not abused.’

As between these two conceptions of the profession a man can choose only for himself and not for those who practise the profession with him. But there are, notwithstanding, certain considerations which even a novice among librarians may propose. The chief of these considerations is the nature of the times in which men live. In a different time from ours — such a time as men a generation ago considered natural and normal — it made relatively little difference whether a librarian behaved himself as a custodian of volumes or as a ‘Factor and Trader for helps to learning, and a Treasurer to keep them, and a Dispenser to applie them to use.’ A generation ago the Word, the life of the mind, the Monuments of unaging intellect, were not under attack. It was agreed by all civilized nations, by all governments in power, that the cultural tradition was a common treasure, that truth was an end to be sought equally by all men, and that the greatest glory and final justification of human life was the creativeness of the human spirit. In such a world the librarian who considered himself a custodian, who devoted himself to the perfection of his catalogue and the preservation of his bindings, and who waited for the calls of those who had business with his collections, was not only prudent but entirely wise. There was no need for him to advocate the cause of learning or to assert the supreme importance of the contents of his library, for no one doubted the one or challenged the other. The librarian who presented himself in the years before the Great War as a champion of culture would have received the ironic welcome he deserved. What was required of him then (and what he practised) was discretion, dignity, and a judicial calm.

But the world in which we live is not that world. The world in which we live is a world that world would have believed impossible. In the world in which we live it is no longer agreed by all governments and citizens that truth is the final measure of men’s acts and that the lie is shameful. There are governments abroad and there are citizens here to whom respect for truth is naive — governments and individuals who, when it is proved they lie, have not been shamed ‘either in their own or in their neighbors’ eyes.’ In the world in which we live it is no longer agreed that the common culture is a common treasure. There are governments abroad and there are citizens here to whom the common culture which draws the peoples of the West together is a common evil for which each nation must now substitute a private culture, a parochial art, a local poetry, and a tribal worship. In the world in which we live it is no longer agreed that the greatest glory and final justification of human history is the life of the human mind. To many men and many governments the life of the human mind is a danger to be feared more than any other danger, and the Word which cannot be purchased, cannot be falsified, and cannot be killed is the enemy most hunted for and hated. It is not necessary to name names. It is not necessary to speak of the burning of the books in Germany, or of the victorious lie in Spain, or of the terror of the creative spirit in Russia, or of the hunting and hounding of those in this country who insist that certain truths be told and who will not be silent. These things are commonplaces. They are commonplaces to such a point that they no longer shock us into anger. Indeed it is the essential character of our time that the triumph of the lie, the mutilation of culture, and the persecution of the Word no longer shock us into anger.

What those who undertake to keep the libraries must consider — or so it seems to me — is whether this profound and troubling alteration of the times alters also their profession. Granted that it was not only possible but desirable for the librarian to think of his profession in negative and custodial terms in the quiet generations when the burning of books was a mediaeval memory, is it still possible for librarians to think of their profession in these passive terms in a time in which the burning of the books is a present fact abroad and a present possibility at home?

Granted that it was not only prudent but wise as well for the librarian to admit no positive, affirmative duty to the cause of learning in a time when learning was universally honored and the works of great art and great scholarship were admired monuments, is it still wise for librarians to admit no positive duty to learning in a time when governments abroad teach ignorance instead of knowledge to their people, and fanatical and frightened citizens at home would, if they could, obliterate all art and learning but the art and learning they consider safe?

In a division which divides all men, because it is a division drawn through everything that men believe, can those who keep the libraries — those who keep the records of belief—avoid division? In a struggle which is truly fought, whatever the economic interpreters and the dialectical materialists may say to the contrary, across the countries of the spirit, can those who hold those countries remain neutral? In an attack which is directed, as no attack in history ever was directed, against the intellectual structures of the books, can those who keep the books contend their books are only objects made of print and paper?

I can answer only for myself. To me the answer is not doubtful. To me the changes of the time change everything. The obligations of the keepers of the books in such a time as ours are positive obligations because they have no choice but to be positive. Whatever the duty of the librarian may have been in a different world and a more peaceful generation, his duty now is to defend — to say, to fight, and to defend. No one else — neither those who make the books nor those who undertake to teach them — is bound as he is bound to fight in their behalf, for no one else is charged as he is charged with their protection. No one as much as he must say, and say again, and still insist that the tradition of the written word is whole and single and entire and cannot be dismembered. No one is under obligation as he is under obligation to meet the mutilators of the Word, the preachers of obscurantism, the suppressors — those who would cut off here and ink out there the texts their prejudices or their parties or their churches or their fears find hateful. And these obligations are not obligations which are satisfied by negatives. The books can be protected from the preaching demagogues and the official liars and the terrorizing mob not by waiting for attack but by forestalling it. If the cultural tradition, the ancient and everpresent structure of the mind, can still be saved, it can be saved by reconstructing its authority. And the authority of art and learning rests on knowledge of the arts and learnings. Only by affirmation, only by exhibiting to the people the nobility and beauty of their intellectual inheritance, can that inheritance be made secure.

Some years before his elevation to the bench, Mr. Justice Brandeis referred to himself as ‘counsel for the situation.’ The librarian in our time, or so it seems to me, becomes the counsel for the situation. His client is the inherited culture entrusted to his care. He — he more than any other man — must represent this client as its advocate. Against those who would destroy the tradition he must bring the force of the tradition. Against those who would mutilate the monuments he must bring the beauty of the monuments. Against those who would limit the freedom of the inquiring mind he must bring the marvels of the mind’s discoveries.

Keepers of books, keepers of print and paper on the shelves, librarians are keepers also of the records of the human spirit — the records of men’s watch upon the world and on themselves. In such a time as ours, when wars are made against the spirit and its works, the keeping of these records is itself a kind of warfare. The keepers, whether they so wish or not, cannot be neutral.