with the Popes or the nations? Are chronicles in verse poetry or history? Do books about the structure of edible plants deal with food or botany? Where should books on duels be placed? These are among the questions that fever the library world.
Germane to this is the libraries' passion for correct names. Mark Twain's books, in the majority of American libraries, have had the name of the author painted out and Clemens written in white ink below; Anthony Hope's novels are to be found only under Hawkins; and some libraries go to the length of rewriting, on the inside and out of Anatole France's works, the Thibault which was his family name. Only Joseph Conrad has escaped; Korzeniowski is too much of a mouthful for even a librarian. Married women writers have their names altered almost invariably. When Dorothy Canfield married a man named Fisher, Canfield was erased from the library catalogues and book backs. Ida Bailey Allen, who has been three times married, has seen her books pass through a triple change.
This tireless energy over trivialities argues that small minds are at work, and sure enough, there is a certain lack of intelligence among librarians. The reason is not far to seek; intelligence follows the cornucopia, and library work is probably the worst paid of all intellectual vocations. The library journals today are filled with such ads as these:
Wanted—Trained librarian for library of 4,700
volumes in city of 25,000. Salary, $1200 to $1500.
Experience and pleasing personality will be given
preference.
Wanted—Librarian with ability and pleasing personality competent to take charge of circulating department. Salary, $1200.
Wanted—At once, in Middle Western university, assistant for order work and some desk work. Salary, $1700.
The average starting salary of a library
assistant is about $75 a month. After
twenty years of experience the dignity of
a branch librarianship and $2000 a year
may be reached. From beginners on this
long pathway, a university diploma with
additional library-school work is required—in
Minnesota, by law.
Yet there is never a shortage of workers. Twenty-three full-fledged library-schools with all-the-year-round courses and forty-eight Summer-schools which cover the same ground in a slightly longer time are shooting out new ones at the rate of a thousand a year, and the libraries constantly recruit others from the ranks of ordinary graduates without special training.
Since girls first discovered that it could furnish them with pin-money while they waited for someone to love them, library work has been a prime favorite with the female of the species. It involves little labor, and that of a highly genteel character; it demands no great mental ability and it places the husband-hunter who enters it on public exhibition, where she can look over and be looked over by all the nubile males of the district under the most refined auspices.
Melvil Dewey established the first library-school at Columbia in 1883. Columbia was not then co-educational, but he took in many girls, and soon faced a faculty trial for breaking the university rules. By 1914 there were fifteen such schools in full blast, and five of them had found the applicants so numerous that they required college graduation or a stiff examination for entrance. Now nearly all of the twenty-three full-time schools have put up the bars; a college diploma or the completion of the major part of a college course has become the usual requirement for entrance.
The subjects taught in these schools vary little, but the degrees conferred show the bewilderment of the pedagogues. Carnegie and Pratt Institute give mere certificates of librarianship; Buffalo and Michigan classify library work as an art and hand out a B.A.; golden California rates it as worth an M.A.; at Illinois and New York State it becomes a science and a B.L.S. is granted; Columbia gives a plain B.S. for one year's work, but crowns a second year with an M.S.; Washington awards a B.S. in L.S.
