PROCEEDINGS 289
The guest speaker of the day was Mr.
Wilbur D. Peat,
director of the John Herron Art
Institute, of Indianapolis, who
spoke on the subject, "The Museum
and Library in Modern Edu-
cation," parts of which follow:
The place that the museums and public
libraries occupy in contempo-
rary life is so well known to curators
and librarians that any further
comment is unnecessary, and instead of
reviewing their achievements for
you here I would prefer to point out
certain dangers that might result
from uniting their functions under one
roof or from correlating their activ-
ities where the benefits are not mutual.
Museums and public libraries hold their
important place in modern
education by virtue of possessing the
most effective seeds of education--
books and objects--and by virtue of
their approach to the public. Their
appeal is universal and they offer a
kind of service that cannot be obtained
elsewhere. They believe in education,
yet they do not maintain regular
class rooms, teaching staffs nor lesson
plans, as do our schools and col-
leges. They delight in disseminating
information, yet they see the necessity
of supplying certain forms of
entertainment. And they constantly feel the
urge of devising new schemes for
reaching a larger and wider audience.
In these respects they are mutual and
except for the character of their
collections their problems are similar
enough, in this light, to make some
people wonder if the two institutions
would not do more effective work
if their resources were pooled. This
feeling is strengthened by the fact
that the workers in one field show a
strong desire to assist those in the
other, as seen in the many instances
where public libraries have served as
foster parents to small museums and
where museums have generously lent
their collections and staff members to
the public libraries. But would the
union of administrative and functional
activities produce a more effective
educational institution? The answer, I believe, lies in an analysis
of the
basic function of the two.
In their philosophy toward their
material, the curator and librarian
are so opposed that it is reasonable to
assume that a combination of their
functions would not be successful. A
successful librarian must have abso-
lute faith in books. He must believe
that books are the ultimate, unques-
tionable sources of knowledge and the
greatest factors in acquiring informa-
tion or enjoyment. If he is a good
librarian he must never question the
power of the printed page in leading
humanity to boundless worldly goods
and aesthetic pleasures. He must agree
with Andrew Carnegie, that libraries
"reach the aspiring and open to
those the chief treasures of the world."
The museum worker, on the other hand,
has an instinctive doubt in the
printed page. His natural tendency is to
question the written account of
an event and to return to the source
material--the objects themselves. The
history of mankind, for him, is in
things, not in books, and the "chief treas-
ures of the world" are the objects
that have been brought into the museums
for preservation and study. This difference in the structure of the two
minds will always keep the museum and library apart,
particularly if they
desire to be effective educational
agencies, and it is reasonable to assume
that no single person can combine two
opposite mental states such as these,
unless he is a very rare individual.