Know your Library;

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VOL. X I NEW YORK. JUNE, 1928 No. 6
"Know Your Library"
T H E popular notion of a library prob-ably
is that it is a collection of books.
By the unemployed it may be regarded as a
place offering opportunity to get in out of
the cold and providing comfortable quar­ters
in which to sleep. The story has been
told concerning a woman of the newly-rich
class, that she selected books for her
library according to the bindings, in order
that they would harmonize with the colors
of the library draperies.
Libraries are of two kinds: general and
special. A general library is designed to
serve the interests of a heterogeneous com­munity,
but catering largely to the tastes
of those who prefer fiction. Of late years
there has been a marked tendency in the
development of special libraries, each de­voted
to the uses of some particular line
of industry or activity. General libraries
usually are supported by the public, with­out
any attempt to measure their value.
Special libraries are organized on a dif­ferent
basis. Their value is measured
by what they produce in the way of
information. If they prove to be nothing
more than a gesture, they are likely to be
discontinued.
A library is something more than a
storehouse for books and documents. It
is particularly an instrument of service.
The information which it contains is of
no value unless used. Intelligently used,
there is no piece of modern machinery
which contributes more to successful ac­complishment.
Various persons connected
with bankers, brokers, investment houses,
manufacturing concerns, and public utili­ties
will testify to the truth of this state­ment.
Many of these organizations have
reason to attribute a measure of their
success to the efficient use of efficient
special libraries, more particularly the
statistical data which they produce.
Accountants are no exception to the rule
that knowledge is power. The more knowl­edge
one has the greater are one's assur­ances
of success. But the human mind is
limited in the amount of knowledge which
it can retain, and the most successful men
are not those who depend upon memory,
but those who know where to find informa­tion
when they want it.
An accountant is assumed to be versed in
business organization, economics, finance,
business law, and accounting, and to be
able to apply his knowledge in the practice
of his profession, regardless of the line of
business involved. He is not expected, how­ever,
to have the technological background
of all lines of business and business activi­ties.
To expect that much of him would be
asking too much. But it is a fact that
the more technological knowledge he has,
the more successful he is in the application
of his own technique to various lines of
business. Technological background gives
him poise and assurance, and makes it
easier for him to deal on an engagement
with the persons with whom he comes in