epts as
authoritative the system provided for it. The free public library,
however, has to satisfy a constituency practically unlimited, including
every age of both sexes, whose intellectual need ranges from that of the
most illiterate to that of the most highly accomplished, whose education
in books ranges from that of the person who has never entered a library
to that of the scholar whose life has been a perpetual training in the
use of the library; the assertive classes, the bashful classes. And if
toward this vast and heterogeneous constituency it seeks to assume the
position of an educator, it finds that its authority is one which the
constituents themselves are unanimously unwilling to concede. Each
constituent deems himself not a beneficiary accepting some service, but
a proprietor demanding it. Now, within each community there are persons
who would have every kind of printed matter published. If, therefore, a
public library exists simply to respond to the demands of its readers,
we must have, instead of an educational system devised by experts and
administered with reference to general principles, a system fluctuating
with each eccentric requirement of individuals, indefinite in number,
various in taste and culture, inexpert, except as each may be competent
to judge his own need, incapable of expression in the aggregate, and as
individuals without responsibility for the general results.

If, on the other hand, an authority is to be vested in the library, what
limits shall it set upon itself, upon what principles of discrimination
shall it proceed, in what directions may it expediently control? I but
state the problem. I shall not endeavor to answer it. But it is one of
the most important involved in the relation of the public library to the
community.

From such questions an ordinary educational institution stands aloof. It
is content to represent the judgment of the majority in matters of
morality and to inculate the lesson of tried truths as against untried
fancies in matters of opinion affecting the social order. It thus throws
its influence in favor of the established order of things. But its
right, nay, its duty, to do this is unquestioned. Nor is it regarded as
disparaging the opinion which it does not teach.

But a public library is not so exempt. In addition to the doctrine
which is accepted, it is held to have a duty to the opinion which is
struggling for recognition. As to minority opinion, it is not