Books and the American Image

BY

GEORGE V. ALLEN

THE United States has done many fine things for Mexico,” the Mexican foreign minister once said to me. “You spent fifty million dollars helping us eradicate hoof-and-mouth disease; you have constructed sewage systems in each of our towns along the border; and you have helped us build health clinics and other public works throughout the country. But the finest single thing you have ever done for us, in my opinion,” he went on, “was the establishment of the Benjamin Franklin Library.”

In my own view, U.S. Information Service libraries, of which the Benjamin Franklin in Mexico City is one, are the finest things we have done in many foreign countries. We maintain these libraries in 162 principal cities throughout the world, in every important country except the U.S.S.R. and Red China, where we are forbidden to operate.

Paradoxically, our overseas libraries are more admired and appreciated by the people who use them, and at the same time are more often attacked, and more bitterly, than any other American installation abroad. They have been pillaged by mobs in Bogota, Baghdad, Athens, Beirut, Algiers. Calcutta, Taipeh, Cyprus, and, to a lesser degree, in half a dozen other places. To mention just one example, a mob of young hooligans stormed the U.S.I.S. library in Algiers on November 11, 1960; they smashed windows, demolished furniture, and looted or destroyed books, magazines, and phonograph records. Yet local citizens had found this same library so useful that during the same year it had served nearly 40,000 patrons. With a collection of under 7000 volumes, its circulation totaled more than 18,000 books.

The attackers were French colons who thought that the United States was too favorably inclined toward the Arab nationalists. In Athens, the assailants were Greek nationalists who wanted Cyprus and felt that the United States was not sympathetic enough to their cause. In both cases, the attackers were right-wingers and strongly anti-Communist. The Communists concentrate just as intently on our libraries; indeed, such attacks are a testimonial to the enhanced position of the United States in world affairs.

When a library is destroyed or damaged, we usually rebuild it as soon as tempers cool. Sometimes the local authorities concerned assume responsibility for rebuilding. On occasion the local people have spontaneously raised funds to restore the library. In Athens, the cadets in the Greek Naval Academy started a campaign to raise funds, which was carried on in the public schools. In Algiers, the French government assumed responsibility.

When we ourselves have decided to close a library, for budgetary or other reasons, the local community has almost always petitioned us to keep it open. Several German cities have provided buildings free of charge or have built new ones to prevent libraries from closing.

Around the globe, from Akureyri to Zanzibar, more than 80,000 people visit our libraries every day. With a total of 2,280,000 volumes, they served an audience of more than 26 million readers and loaned nearly 8 million books for home reading during 1960, while at least twice as many were used by readers on the premises. This means that, on the average, each library served about 156,000 patrons, and each volume in the system was circulated about three times. Students form a considerable part of our clientele.

THE 1953 McCarthy investigation into alleged subversive activities and influences in the information program centered its heaviest attack on the overseas libraries, alleging that the books and personnel were soft on Communism. A cutback in appropriations resulted in the firing oF a number of library employees, the closing of several libraries, and a general reduction in services.

But, despite this temporary setback, the libraries have continued to grow in size, in number, and in influence. During recent years, many of them have been moved into new locations with better facilities for serving their patrons. The book collections have been expanded and improved in quality, and the local — that is, non-American — employees of the libraries are receiving more intensive in-service training, to equip them with knowledge of American library techniques.

On the average, the overseas libraries arc open to the public about forty-eight hours a week. The majority are open in the evenings and on Saturdays, and some are also open for a brief period on Sundays. We try to locate them near the sidewalk, on street level, in a rented building in a central area of the city, easily accessible to the general public. Equipped with standard American library furnishings, they provide library and reference services and such programs as lectures, seminars, concerts, documentary film showings, exhibits, and special activities for children. The book collections average 14,000 volumes, of which 30 per cent are in the local language, and the periodical collection includes about 200 American magazines and newspapers, selected from more than 1600 periodicals currently in use in the overseas program.

The overseas libraries are plagued by problems similar to those which beset libraries in the United States: they are perpetually short of money, manpower, and space. In addition, they are faced with other difficulties, owing to their location abroad and their relationship to Congress. Because their relatively small collections must retain balance, the libraries are never able to stock enough books on any one subject to satisfy specialists. Visiting Americans, including historians, educators, musicians, artists, religionists, economists, sociologists, and experts in other fields, frequently complain about the lack of books and magazines representing their specialties. Liberals tend to find a preponderance of material on the conservative side, while conservatives see the opposite. This is particularly true of religious groups, some of which go through our catalogues with great care and complain loudly if they think we lean toward Catholic or Protestant authors. Congressmen, apart from expressing their own preferences, are obliged to serve as outlets for opinions expressed, often in strong language, by their constituents. Selection of books requires a combination of common sense and courage. It is not an easy task.

The selection of books is also a subject of much concern to authors and publishers, many of whom are not backward about promoting publications in which they have an interest. Most publishers are anxious for us to select their books, but once in a while the situation is reversed. The publisher of The Ugly American told me he sold 100,000 additional copies on the strength of press reports that U.S.I.A, had refused his volume. (U.S.I.A. is the United States Information Agency in Washington; its overseas arm is the U.S.I.S. — United States Information Service.)

The procedures for selecting books follow the pattern used by large public libraries in the United States. Each library selects those which are best suited to the reading interests of its patrons and which meet certain criteria established by U.S.I.A. The books must provide information about the United States, its people, culture, institutions, policies, problems, and achievements. They present diverse views on various national and international issues. Some are selected because of their utility in counteracting hostile propaganda; others are chosen because they demonstrate the interest of the United States in other nations, or because they furnish evidence of the American intellectual, artistic, and spiritual heritage.

There is a similarity in the initial collections, since certain basic Americana and reference books are required in all libraries, but in the main, the development ol each library is the responsibility of the American officer in charge. He knows the local situation and the reading interests, capacities, and needs of the local people. The Washington staff advises and recommends, but it does not often attempt to direct the operation of a library in alien surroundings thousands of miles away. Generally speaking, our libraries are intended for the special use of foreigners with a serious interest in the United States; light reading is minimized.

Because foreign peoples are intensely interested in acquiring American know-how which will enable them to improve social and economic conditions in their own countries, great importance is given to publications on science and technology, medicine, agriculture, and engineering, and on the social sciences, education, economics, and political science.

In addition to their primary task of making the United States better known and understood abroad, the overseas libraries also aim to symbolize and demonstrate the interest of the United States in other nations. One means of accomplishing this purpose is to include selected world classics which have had an important influence on American life and education. In general, the U.S.I.S. libraries include such classics only when they are not freely available to the reading public through other facilities in the community or when their inclusion may enhance the prestige and usefulness of the library. Thus, in Africa or the Far East, where public service by local libraries may be extremely limited or even nonexistent, the U.S.I.S. library may have on its shelves the works of Shakespeare or Descartes or Plato, whereas it would be unnecessary to offer such standard items in Western European communities. U.S.I.A. tries to avoid duplicating or competing with services available from local sources.

WHILE U.S.I.S. libraries are not intended to serve as substitutes for or to compete with national libraries in other countries, the U.S.I.S. library is in many cases the only institution to which people can turn for information they need in their day-today work. In such cases, the libraries play a dual role in projecting the United States and in demonstrating the value of a library to the community. In the latter capacity, U.S.I.S. frequently takes the lead in introducing modern library techniques into the community. The open-shelf library, with no fees charged for the use of books, is still a novelty in many countries, and visitors to our libraries often express astonishment at American generosity in placing books freely at their disposal. The libraries also encourage local librarians interested in improving local library services to make use of study and reference materials on library science and American practice and to observe and discuss with the U.S.I.S. library staff matters of interest to them, such as cataloguing, readers’ advisory service, reference work, and book selection. In addition, the agency sponsors workshops and seminars and invites local librarians from schools, universities, and other institutions to take part.

The U.S.I.S. libraries also advise and assist foreign librarians planning to come to the United States to study American library methods. Last year, thirty-one foreign librarians from twentyone countries came to the United States for study under grants from the State Department, and a far greater number came on their own or under foreign government or private auspices.

U.S.I.S. libraries are doing a superlative job in building international understanding. They should be recognized as indispensable assets and permanent adjuncts to American diplomatic activity, and housed in permanent quarters, built or acquired to meet their specialized needs and representative of the best America has to offer in library architecture and equipment. I do not foresee the need for them diminishing, although their contents will change according to the requirements of the countries they serve.

At present, many U.S.I.S. libraries are struggling along in makeshift quarters with barely enough staff to keep the doors open and the books dusted. Our library in Tokyo, for instance, is housed in quarters described by the American ambassador as a disgrace to the United States. In all countries, there is need for additional competent library officers who can speak with authority about the United States and who can exploit unlimited opportunities for increasing the use of American books.

The American-type public library, with open shelves and ease of borrowing, is still unique in the world. No other country, not even the most advanced, has equaled it, and few have come near.

The Communist countries, for all their emphasis on bookshops, education, and publishing, have nothing in the way of free choice and little that corresponds to our free-lending system, although they try to emulate our example.

One curious difference between American and foreign public libraries results from our type of democracy. I recently asked an Arab student from Amman whether she had used the U.S.I.S. library there to prepare for her entrance into an American university. She said, with some hesitation, that she used it once. I said I hoped her experience had not been discouraging. She said, “In fact, it was, to be truthful. I took a book from the shelf and sat at a table to read. Next to me sat a Bedouin who looked as if he had just come from his cattle. His hands were filthy. I did not like to handle a book which had doubtless been held by hands like that, so I did not go back.”

Most people in Europe and Asia tend to choose libraries frequented by their own class. In many respects, Americans are the least class-conscious national group in the world today — not excluding the Communists.

A serious problem for U.S.I.A. is whether we should let an American-run library become the principal municipal library in a foreign city. The need for more libraries is so great everywhere that many communities would gladly unload on us the major burden of supplying their municipal library needs. But the U.S.I.S. library has a special purpose — basically, to tell about America, with emphasis on democracy and human rights.

When the U.S. government opens a public library on the main street of Athens or Rome or Bombay or Manila, we invite anyone to step in off the sidewalk and examine what we have to offer. We are clearly trying to establish direct contact with as many Greeks or Italians or Indians or Filipinos as we can, on their home grounds. Thus, we are inevitably accused of being instruments of propaganda.

Our aim is to make our libraries as objective as possible, to avoid legitimate accusations of bias or propaganda, but we must be realistic. No one is entirely objective.

I was accused by my Indian friends, during the McCarthy days, of book burning. The embassy in New Delhi had been instructed to take all the books by Howard Fast off our shelves. This seemed proof positive, not only to Krishna Menon but to men like Vice President Radhakrishnan, that our libraries were not objective. I pointed out that one of our earlier problems in India had been to decide whether to keep on our shelves Katherine Mayo’s Mother India, a book which had been banned by the government of India and which the police in South India had asked us to remove from our shelves to avoid civil disturbance. Somehow, our banning Fast and their banning Mayo had not been thought of as parallel. Two wrongs do not make a right, but the discussion was brought into perspective by the comparison.

There are perhaps a hundred libraries of one sort or another in the city of Calcutta, but Indian officials told me that the U.S.I.S. library there had more visitors each week, and lent more books, than all the other ninety-nine libraries combined! In Vienna, the municipal library system has a main installation and twenty-five branches throughout the city, yet there, too, the American library lends more books each month, from one location, than the combined municipal collections.

In Rome, our main U.S.I.S. library, on Via Veneto, is perhaps the swankiest we have, with beautifully paneled walls and ceilings. It is so elegant, in fact, that a man would not feel comfortable there unless he had on a coat and tie. Consequently, we decided last year to open a branch in the heart of the workers’ section, a block from Communist Party headquarters. We took a modest building, installed big windows and proper lighting, arranged a room in the basement for documentary films, exhibits, occasional social gatherings, recitals, and so forth. When I visited the place a few months ago, it was jammed with eager readers and borrowers. Probably a number of them were Communists. We didn’t ask. But I did learn that it was the only place in that section of town where Italian girls were allowed by their parents to go unaccompanied by a chaperone. If this be propaganda, let others profit by our example.

We have long had a flourishing information library and center in Cairo, Egypt. A few years ago, following the Nasser-Khrushchev entente, the Soviets decided to follow our example. They rented a big house, fixed it up, and opened for business, but few people came. After a week or so, they sent observers to the U.S.I.S. library to discover our drawing power. Word went back to the Soviet embassy that our single most attractive activity was our English language instruction. The Soviets promptly announced the opening of English classes at their center!

The most popular library we could open anywhere in the world would be in Moscow. The eagerness of Russians of all classes to learn about the United States was made abundantly manifest when we opened our exhibition in Sokolniki Park in the summer of 1959, when Khrushchev and Nixon engaged in their famous “kitchen debate.”Russians from all over the Soviet Union stood in line night after night to get a chance to buy an admission ticket. The reason for this is clear. In any totalitarian state, the people — hard Communists as well as anti-Communists — are eager to obtain information from any source other than their own government. Khrushchev himself is said to be an avid reader of America Illustrated, the magazine we print in Russian, which is sold out as soon as it hits the kiosks.

If we could open an information library in Moscow with the Soviet government’s permission, I am certain it would immediately become our most active operation anywhere. We have tried to negotiate an arrangement for such a library, but the Soviets have steadfastly refused. They say we can donate books to the University of Moscow or the Moscow Public Library, but this would not be our concept of a free library.

Xenophobia is a dangerous disease in the atomic age. We and the British and French have tried hard to find an accommodation with the Soviets for an exchange of libraries, or even very simple reading rooms, in Moscow, London, Paris, and New York. I doubt whether we shall gain it in one great leap unless tensions are relaxed markedly, but a step-by-step approach may succeed. It is a new frontier worth achieving, if the price is bearable.