rough
misrepresentation and the harmful character of the subject matter. The
reason for all illegitimate forms of advertising is of course not a desire
to misrepresent or to do harm per se, but to make money, the profit to the
distributor being proportioned to the amount of distribution done and not
at all dependent on its economic value. Distribution by public officers is
of course not open to this objection, nor are the distributors subject to
temptation, since their compensation does not depend on the amount of
distribution. If they are capable and interested, furthermore, they are
particularly desirous to increase the economic value of the work that they
are doing. Since this is so and since the danger of uneconomic or harmful
forms of advertising is thus reduced to a minimum, there would seem to be
special reason why the economic forms should be employed very freely. But
the fact is that they have been used sparingly, and by some librarians
shunned altogether.

Let us see what library advertising of the economic types may mean. In the
first place it means telling those who want books where they may get them.
This simple task is rarely performed completely or satisfactorily. It is
astonishing how many inhabitants of a large town do not even know where
the public library is. Everyone realizes this who has ever tried to find a
public library in a strange place. I once asked repeatedly of passers-by
in a crowded city street a block distant from a library (in this case not
architecturally conspicuous) before finding one who knew its whereabouts;
in another city I inquired in vain of a conductor who passed the building
every few hours in his car. In the latter case the library was a beautiful
structure calculated to move the curiosity of a less stolid citizen. In
New York inquiry would probably cause you to reach the nearest branch
library, anything more remote than that being beyond the local
intelligence. Sometimes I think we had better drop all our far-reaching
plans for civic betterment and devote our time for a few years to causing
citizens, lettered and unlettered alike to memorize some such simple
formula as this: "There is a Public Library. It is on Blank street. We may
borrow books there, free."

You will notice that I have inserted in this formula one item of
information that pertains to use, not location. For of those who know of
the existence and location of the Public Library there are many whose
ideas of i