Ohio History Journal

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PROCEEDINGS 289

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.