38 



FIFTY YEARS OF MUSEUM WORK 



or more visitors the library, it is largely because the public has not been 

 accustomed to so doing. 



The museum supplements the library by showing to the reader the 

 objects of which he has read and by suggesting other lines of work. It 

 supplements the school by displaying in concrete form the facts that the 

 scholar has been taught; it supplements the college by providing the 

 student with material for both present and future research. 



But the museum does very much more than merely supplement 

 education, for by the very fact just pointed out — that it depends upon 

 its exhibition series for its influence on the public— it is able to reach a 

 large constituency that has little or no book learning and never seeks the 

 library. 



Now, though this is pure theory, I would make an exception to the 

 rule that a museum and a library can not be successfully combined, in 

 the case of our smaller towns where funds could not possibly be secured 

 for the support of a library and a museum and where, I believe, in spite 

 of the proverbial difficulty of housing two families under one roof, the 

 library and the museum could exist together to their mutual advantage 

 and prosperity. 



We have a hint of this in the small loan collections that the American 

 Museum has been placing in some of the New York libraries, and while 

 these have been, so to speak, largely in the nature of advertisements, 

 the intent being to draw attention to the Museum, yet the interest they 

 have attracted shows how the scheme is capable of expansion. 



I do not forget that in our neighboring city of Newark the Museum 

 is the offspring of the Library, but while we will agree with Mrs. Mala- 

 prop that "comparisons are odorous," yet I think we will equally agree 

 that few librarians have the museum sense of Mr. Dana. Moreover, we 

 all feel sure that sooner or later the Museum will outgrow its present 

 quarters and become a sister institution. I will leave it to some one else 

 to explain how outside the pages of a problem novel, it is possible for a 

 child to become its mother's sister. 



Now, going back to the problem of the small town, it is easy to see 

 how the association of library and museum would simplify such im- 

 portant questions as the housing and care of collections, including heat- 

 ing, cleaning and other essential matters. I believe that in manv cases 

 the museum would thrive better in the care of a librarian than at the 

 hands of the High School principal or professor in a small college. At 

 all events, the experiment is well worth trying, and it may be said that 

 the most forlorn-looking and neglected museums are those to be found in 



