...to be responsive to calls for help, to divine and met unrecognized needs, to be suggestively helpful but never officious, to be hospitable to new ideas, at the same time cherishing records of outworn developing ideas.
Bertha E. Blakely
On the Function of the Library Staff
The officers of student government at a certain co-educational college once posted a notice on the bulletin board:
Beginning next Monday, it will be a college tradition not to walk on the grass.
This notice was far less fantastic than it sounds. In a college where new students arrive open-minded every autumn, it is possible for upper-classmen to start handing down a new so-called 'tradition' that only antiquarians can distinguish from the authentic hoary thing.
College traditions belong in three classes: the synthetic, as described above; the tradition of natural growth that has come to be consciously cherished; and the tradition so much a part of the place that it is taken for granted.
An excellent example of a synthetic tradition was the historical affair of 'Bill the Still.'
Some fifty years ago, during the chief librarianship of Miss Mary O. Nutting, the students 'started' the tradition that freshmen should be sent to the Library in quest of 'Bill the Still.' The truth of the matter was that a book called William the Silent had been written by Miss Nutting herself. It was a didactic history for young people, and 'Bill the Still' was its unofficial campus name. The card catalogue in those days was merely an author list, and the procedure of anyone who wanted a book was to go and ask Miss Nutting, who knew every volume in the collection. Therefore, instead of searching exhaustively under 'B' for 'Bill' and then under 'S' for 'Still, Bill the,' all freshmen went directly to the Librarian. Just where, would Miss Nutting, please tell them, could they find a book called 'Bill the Still'?
Synthetic traditions are rarely the most durable. No longer is William the Silent the patron saint of the sophomores. It is to the authentic tradition, consciously cherished, that one must look in order to discover the permanent soul of a library: for instance, Freedom of the Stacks.
Freedom of the stacks implies responsibility, but it also implies pure joy. Imagine being turned loose to look up your subject in the complete range of book-stacks - five floors of them - in a hand-picked working library, with help available if you need it, but no red tape whatever between you and the world of books.
Even in undergraduate days Mount Holyoke enjoys this privilege. Later one has a feeling of deprivation in other libraries, to think that one must order up volumes by title only - 'Blind Dates' in books. It seems like ordering unseen flowers over the telephone instead of going out to the garden and finding them where they grow. When a student on the trail of a subject is allowed to encounter a complete collection of books in the stacks, each book's neighbor contributes a new suggestion; mere juxtaposition of volumes often sets off a train of thought; and the very companionship of paper and bindings causes ideas to shoot. Probably there are experts who can get the same glow from a bibliography or a card index. But to those who love the physical aspect of books - the sheer look and touch and fragrance of the volumes - to those who literally like to 'nose out' a subject, a catalogue is no substitute for a towering forest of books.
Freedom of the stacks makes a great deal of extra work for the librarians, but it is a valuable factor in education, since every entering class is trained at the outset by the Library Staff in the competent use of the Library at first hand. The plan as it works out makes the fastnesses of the Library into a book-lover's paradise not to be forgotten in later years.
Another cherished tradition is the privilege, not only of untrammeled huntsmanship, but also of actually 'working in the stacks.' This used to be mainly a pedestrian rather than a sedentary art. You leaned against a stack, balancing first on one foot, then on the other, reading passages from book after book as you busily paged the shelves. If you took notes, you did it like an orchid, poising your notebook on thin air. Only a very few chairs and tables were available, and those had usually been snatched by early comers. Now, with the great new addition to the Library, there are more than eighty little chair-and-table alcoves in the stacks, besides forty individual retreats at the south of the range for members of the Faculty who need to work with easy access to the books.
Miss Blakely's comment at the dedication of the new building on Founder's Day, 1935, explains the use of these alcoves, and also the reason why they are officially called 'carrels.'
The building was planned to give readers freedom from distractions and consequent encouragement to bring active minds into direct contact with the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the ages. We have carrels in the book-stacks whose purpose is well expressed in a quotation dated 1593.'In every windowe three Pewes or Carrells, where every one of the old monks had his carrell, severall by himselfe, that when they had dyned they dyd resorte to that place of Cloister, and there studyed upon there Books, every one in his carrell all the after nonne.'
No part of the new addition to the Library is more praised than these carrels. Students working for honors are given special shelves there with the privilege of reserving books, just as favored experts may do in the alcoves of the Library of Congress in Washington. A carrel set aside for a stated period of work is almost as good as a hermitage. There you are by your 'windowe,' with your working supply of books perched on the shelves over your desk, and the stacks at your elbow if you need to pounce out for more. And besides the carrels that have been assigned to individuals, there are always some tables left for emergency use when somebody, on short notice, needs to work with the collections in the stacks.
These traditions that have centerd around the stacks are genuine, and consciously cherished. But probably the oldest traditions, so old that they are taken for granted, have centered in the Reading Room.
Traditionally the Reading Room has been loved. Follow through any set of freshman themes and nine chances out of ten you will come upon the shadowy arches, and the carved angels leaning out from the dim roof of the 'Library.' The word 'library,' emotionally considered, has always meant the Reading Room with its tiers on tiers of open shelves of books. The building as a whole is called 'the Libe.' The architect of the Reading Room drew his inspiration from Westminster Hall in London, and there is every reason why impressionable students, sensitive to beautiful proportions, should love the place and celebrate it in prose and verse. One remembers particularly a poem by Roberta Swartz, 1925, 'To a Bee Flying Through a College Library':
What open window-space did you mistake
As leading into gardens?
That bee flying through just now would find some changes in the Reading Room. The busy little offices in the center have been taken out, the table space increased, and down the middle of each long reading table has been placed a screenlike partition, at forehead height, so that as you seat yourself you cannot see your opposite neighbor. No longer do the studying phalanxes camp at the tables, face to face. Upward you may look, as of old. Sidelong you may look if you will, at passing friends or foes. But at the worker across the table you cannot gaze, nor can the worker opposite stare at you. The neutral screen in front of you gives a pecular sense of safety. Prop your head in your two hands, using your cupped fingers like the old-time blinders on a carriage-horse, and you have a complete ocular solitude for steady work. Scientific reading-lamps can be snapped on at a touch of a finger; there is no confusion, no echo of radio, no telephone, no roistering extravert confronting you. This sheltered unit of working space is yours, with nobody to encroach upon it as long as you care to stay. The Reading Room has traditionally been a place for concentrated study, but never was it as secure a spot for getting things accomplished as it is today.
Traditionally also, the 'spare parts' of the Library below and beyond the Reading Room have always been the scene for varied sorts of work. That is still true, with the addition of many surprises in the new wings. The Treasure Room, a place for the 'archives,' an assembly room, press bureau quarters, seminar rooms for advanced groups, typing rooms in the basement, hallways for exhibition of rare volumes, and offices for members of the Faculty and Staff: the architects have collaborated with the librarians to make the building an expression of a composite scholarly aim, just as the librarians have collaborated with the members of the Faculty to make the collections of books adequate to the changing demands of college work.
Even the tower of the building has its purpose. It is not a mere embellishment or landmark for the countryside, but is designed as a storage-place for infrequently consulted books. More than thirty thousand extra volumes can be sequestered there. At present the book tower, like the Tower of London, holds no prisoners. But as years go on, now and then a volume will bring upon itself the mediaeval mandate, 'To the Tower!' A book tower of this sort is an imaginative turret for a literary critic to contemplate. Just which authors, too fine to be discarded but for some reason not demanded often, will spend their immortality in the Tower?
And which authors will spend their popular afternoons in the idyllic Stimson Room? There's a new library tradition in a thriving state of flourishment, ready to be handed down. The new Stimson Room is a Browsing Room gone speechless with utter joy. Nothing could look more peaceful, not even the Garber landscape on the wall. The great doors open into afternoons of tranquil silence, as becomes a browsing place. It has deep chairs, deep rugs, a deep fireplace, and deeply considered collections on its shelves. Books can be nominated for a sojourn in the Stimson Room - and if they are, their authors should sit purring like royal cats before the fire. When you enter the Stimson Room you leave your agitations, along with your overshoes, outside.
Snow may be flying in a December squall outside the leaded windows; but here is warmth, and a reading-lamp, and a hushed interval with choice books. Nobody cares if you seldom turn a page. You may curl in a corner with a great folio in your lap, or perhaps a book of wild-flower pictures open at a delicately colored spray of mountain laurel, and with that for your sufficient eye-focus, you may collect your thoughts. You are remote enough from the general run of college traffic to feel yourself miles away. There is just enough of a climb to get here so that the casual crowd goes somewhere else. The chairs and davenports are deep enough so that the figures of readers in the middle distance are sunk in cushions almost out of sight. In consequence, the atmosphere of the Stimson Room is able to work a spell. The room is an illustration, in full color, of a Place for Peace.
Finally, there has always been an authentic tradition in the Library against precipitately casting off outdated books. They have been relegated to upper shelves, but cherished nevertheless as 'records of outworn developing ideas.' Consequently, in addtion to our more dignified treasure-books and fine collections, we have one battered little group of relics kept from Seminary days.
This is the collection of orginal textbooks, each one used by some student in the eighteen-thirties or forties or fifties. Some of them are annotated. At present they are in the Mary Cleveland Room, but when I consulted them they were in the stacks in a special 'cage.' The cage was kept shut so that the random wayfarer might not enter. The random wayfarer would not have wanted to enter if he could know how much of those old textbooks was once upon a time committed to heart. Playfair's Euclid, Butler's Analogy, Smellie's Natural Philosophy, Cornelius Nepos - some of the textbooks were basic in the curriculum not only of Mount Holyoke but also of Harvard and Amherst a hundred years ago.
One morning, by dint of making grateful noises in my throat to certain of the librarians, I got myself admitted to that cage. Curious to see what some of the classwork may have been like, I opened to the questions in Elements of Moral Science by Francis Wayland, D.D., President of Brown University and Professor of Moral Philosophy. Here are sample questions from the edition of 1835.
Suppose you wished to form a society, how would you do it?
Suppose one hundred men were cast away on a desolate island and wished to form a government, how would they proceed?
Promises and Contracts:
Give an example of a promise, and explain what it contains.
Suppose I promise to take you to ride, if you are ready at twelve o'clock to-morrow; if you are not ready till a quarter after twelve, am I bound by my contract?
Suppose the United States should make two treaties, one with the Indians, and the other with Great Britain; which would be the more obligatory?
Remembering the portrait of President Wayland as he comes sweeping out of the shadows with gown of state, in the gallery at Sayles Hall in Brown University - and then picturing the young ladies of Mount Holyoke pondering whether Doctor Wayland would still be 'bound by his contract' to take them to ride at a quarter after twelve, one prefers, on the whole, to answer the question about the Indians.
Putting Doctor Wayland back on the shelf, I opened Andrews's Latin Grammar at random. Out fell the sample of old-fashioned changeable shot-silk, with a dainty plaid pattern of rose and white and 'dove-color.' I caught it as it fell, and put it back where I found it, on the page giving 'exceptions in AR and UR: Furfur, bran; salar, a trout; turtur, a turtle dove; and vultur, a vulture, are masculine.'
Well, turtle does and bran may be masculine, but a bit of bonnet ribbon in the pages of a Latin grammar looked feminine, very. And on the inside cover of a textbook that was used in 1844 I found a note of spidery handwriting done in the tiny pointed quillmanship of our great-grandmothers. This was the note:
The chapter on idiocy is omitted in my volume, but I myself am a chapter on that subject, known and read of all men.
Evidently just the kind of note one scribbles in class and shows to one's neighbor to make her shake. It caused the academic past to seem quite human, and so did a tiny pressed spray of partridge-berry that I found in A Compendium of Natural Philosophy by Denison Olstead of Yale. There was also a little thin ghost of a red maple leaf pressed in Pope's Essay on Man.
Girls and books make variable combinations. Stroll out to the Reading Room and past the ends of the tables, glancing inconspicuously down the screened-off rows. An artist should do this some time and then draw a portfolio of etchings entitled 'Girls at their Books.' The assorted expressions would be a study in states of mind: states of bafflement that verge on blankness; states of concentration that verge on trance; moods of steady good workmanship that verge on the business-like; moods of flying inspiration, and moods that for one reason or another make the countenance look grim. The possible permutations and combinations are almost infinite between girls and books.
A 'Girl Reading for Pleasure' would probably not be sketched at any library table, if the artist were trying to portray sheer rapture over a book. But for purposes of study and note-taking and research, there is hardly a spot where a perfect combination with a book can be made more naturally, or more traditionally, than within the serenely ordered precincts of 'the Libe.'