Biography
The county library system of Denmark
THE COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM OF DENMARK.
Denmark is chiefly a rural community, with many small towns, but only one large
city - Copenhagen. In Copenhagen are to be found almost all the higher
scientific and educational institutions of the country, and all the research
libraries, large and minor, are also located there. One of the problems of
Danish educational efforts, therefore, has been to make the cultural privileges
of Copenhagen accessible, as far as possible, to the population outside the
capital. It is with those efforts in the way of libraries that these notes will
chiefly deal. Copenhagen has built up, since 1913, a public library system of
its own, much on American and English lines, with a number of branch libraries
and delivery stations. The growth in circulation of the Copenhagen Library has
been very rapid, and, beginning with no trained assistants at all, it has now a
large and well?trained staff. It is the only large public library in Denmark,
but it has not had very much direct connection with the library movement in the
rest of the country.
Outside Copenhagen there grew up, during the nineteenth and the early years of
the twentieth century, a number of small and independent public libraries, in
towns and villages alike, each of them receiving a minimum of support from the
State, but all of them too poor and small to be of any great importance. Since
the early 'nineties the gospel of the modern English and American library idea
has been preached enthusiastically and untiringly by the pioneer of the Danish
library movement, Professor A. S. Steenberg, but for many years with no great
visible results. In 1909 the chief librarian of the Royal Library of Copenhagen,
H. O. Lange, who has always been, and still is, deeply and actively interested
in the public library movement, put forth a far-sighted and convincing plan for
the organisation of the libraries outside of Copenhagen. The main point of this
plan was the development of a number of the town and city libraries into county
libraries with funds sufficient to secure a trained full-time librarian.
It must be noticed that, up to 1914, there did not exist any trained librarians
whatsoever in public libraries outside of Copenhagen. But in 1914 the first two
county libraries according to Lange's plan came into existence, and at present
there are fourteen such county libraries (Central-Biblioteker) at work, and
several more are in course of formation. Probably some thirty county libraries
will suffice to get the whole country organised in a satisfactory way. It is
chiefly due to the librarians of the county libraries and of a few other town
libraries that modern library methods and library ideals have come to the
country as a whole.
The Danish county library is always the public library of the city or town in
which it is situated. The work with the city and the work with the countryside
are carried on without any definite division between the two kinds of work or
the funds available for each of them. The library is often owned by the city,
which always gives it a much larger appropriation than do the county authorities
or the townships. But the Danish State, having since 1914 adopted the
development of the county library system as its library policy, grants each
county library a considerable special appropriation (amounting to Kr.8,000),
intended expressly for work in the countryside. In the county library there is
no special county librarian, not even an issistant entrusted with the county
work, but the city librarian has to act as county librarian as well. For the
Danish county libraries are young and undeveloped institutions, with generally
only one or two assistants and one or two apprentices comprising the whole of
the staff.
The work with the city has been carried on largely on AngloAmerican methods. The
county libraries, and all other public libraries of any importance, have adopted
a Danish adaptation of Dewey's American Decimal Classification and of Cutter's
American Author Marks, worked out some years ago by the Danish State Library
Commission. The county libraries all have dictionary catalogues on normal-sized
catalogue cards, made according to Anglo-American rules, and accessible to the
public. They all have " open shelves " and modern book?card charging systems.
Most of them are open to the public all day from morning till night. They all
have reading rooms, and much stress has been laid in later years on reference
work and co?operation with the schools. Many teachers are now keenly interested
in instructing their pupils how to use books and libraries for practical
everyday purposes, a thing almost completely unknown in Denmark only ten years
ago. Several of the county libraries have a childrenīs department carrying on
its work in co?operation with the schools.
The result of all these modern library methods, and of a young enthusiastic
trained librarian in each town or city, has been an enormous increase in the use
of the public libraries, and a complete revolution in their general position,
and in the way they are looked on by the people. Only ten years ago a public
library in a Danish town or city was a dark and uncomfortable place with dirty
and ragged books, intended only for the poor and lowly in the community, a place
which well?to?do or refined people did not dream of visiting. Now it has become
a social centre of the city, an inviting and comfortable place, with flowers and
smiling faces, a place where really all classes of the population meet and are
served each according to his needs. The circulation of the county libraries is
now about the same as in English and American cities of corresponding size.
It has been of great importance in the evolution of the county libraries, that
methods adopted in the different libraries have been the same. This has made
possible co-operation in cataloguing, book lists and the production of forms. It
has made easier exchanges of books and inter-library loans, and it has
facilitated the transfer of librarians and assistants from one library to
another. It has not been difficult to accomplish this uniformity in library
methods in all the public libraries, for they were all comparatively small, and
they all had to be reorganised completely. Several libraries belonging to
societies or in private hands have adopted the same methods. But the large and
old scientific libraries have not done so. The traditions of those old
institutions, of course, make it extremely difficult to introduce new methods;
in some ways the methods are not suitable for them at all, and their cataloguing,
classification and lending systems are still the older ones, quite different
from those of the public libraries.
The work of the county library in the countryside is carried on in two ways :
partly as direct library service to the individual inhabitant of the county, and
partly through the village libraries.
The direct library service is much used and is very valuable. The Danish towns
and cities possessing county libraries are generally very easily accessible to
the population of the surrounding county. The peasants come in with their hogs
for slaughtering, or to sell grain and vegetables, and the women come in to make
their purchases in the stores. Many of them then visit the library. The county
libraries are issuing non?fiction books free to everybody in the county, and
these may be sent free of postage to the receiver. Many book parcels are sent
out with the motor 'buses, or with different private messengers. For the issue
of fiction to borrowers outside the city, the county libraries generally charge
a minor fee (1 or 2 Kr. a year), and the receiver has to pay the postage. The
direct library service puts the more interested people of the countryside in
personal connection with a comparatively large and well?equipped library. It
shows them what a public library is, and in how many ways it can serve them, and
serve them well. And it is much appreciated. To a librarian it is most
gratifying to see a young agricultural labourer from a farm some eight miles
away coming in on his bicycle on Saturday nights to get his four books on
agriculture and mechanics changed.
But it is evident that the direct library service can only reach comparatively
few of a population in the surrounding county of some 50,000 to 100,000. The
more elementary library work with the great mass of the population has to be
done by local libraries -i.e., in Denmark by the independent village libraries.
The village libraries were there before the county libraries came into existence,
and the county libraries have had to co-operate with them. The county libraries
have not put up branches or delivery stations of their own in the country.
The village libraries are almost always directed by the teacher of the village,
and are generally located in the school-house. They are mostly small collections
of some 500 to 1,000 volumes. In earlier years they contained little but
fiction, and often fiction of a rather worthless type - and the books were
frequently ugly in binding and in bad condition. It has been the problem of the
county libraries to better those conditions by their example and by every kind
of help and advice. And they have succeeded to some extent. The county library
is now often consulted by the teachers on the selection of new books. The county
libraries issue a yearly list of best books, and they have meetings for book
selection with the village librarians. The books of the village libraries are
often bound under direction of the county library. A great number of the village
libraries have adopted the same methods as the county libraries in
classification, cataloguing and charging.
There has gone on, in later years, an energetic agitation for the provision of
more adequate funds for the rural libraries from the population itself and from
the authorities of the townships, which in many places has met with great
success. In several villages, and especially in the townships round the railway
junctions, reading rooms with good collections of text-books have been arranged.
Of course, it is of the greatest importance that all these rural library
activities can be helped and stimulated by the trained library staff of the
county libraries.
Besides the technical help, the county libraries send out, for a very moderate
payment, travelling libraries to the village libraries wishing it, and to other
places where they are needed. And all the books of the county libraries, except
the most current fiction, can be demanded by the village library for its
borrowers.
This last provision, which could make the village library a real delivery
station of the county library with all the county library books at its disposal,
is not used nearly as much as it ought to be. It will be one of the problems of
the county libraries in the future to make the village teacher use thus
privilege, and to make the village borrowers see that they have a right to
demand all sorts of books on all sorts of subjects through the village library.
The village teachers generally do their library work without getting any salary
for it. The quality of the work therefore depends entirely on the personal
interest of the teacher. It is often excellently done, and sometimes rather
indifferently. In several communities there is no public library at all because
there has never been a teacher with the unselfish interest in the matter
necessary to start and run it. With a fixed and proper salary for rural library
work it will be much easier to get a public library in every township, and it
will be easier to have the rural librarians use the privilege of library loans
from the county library.
There is another sort of inter?library loan much used in Denmark, and that is
loans from the great scientific State libraries to the county libraries and
other town libraries. There is nothing extraordinary in the provision that books
from one library can be lent to another for scientific use. That is the case in
most countries. But it is doubtful whether in any country that provision has had
so great and important results as in Denmark. The county libraries use this
right whenever they are asked for a definite book which they do not possess
themselves, or for books on a subject which they do not cover in a satisfactory
way. And that is very often, not only because they are as yet rather new and not
very well provided with books, but also because they know what it is to have
people asking for all sorts of books and subjects. The types of books demanded
by the county libraries from the great State libraries are very different -
sometimes scientific, but more often on practical everyday questions, or older
Danish historical or periodical literature referred to in some newer book or
article.
The State library of Aarhus has been of great importance in this kind of work.
It is the only large State library outside Copenhagen, and it is quite a new one,
having been founded in 1902. But it contains a good collection of new and old
Danish literature, and in foreign literature it has specialised in the subjects
and the types of books most in demand by the public libraries. The State Library
of Aarhus sends non?fiction free of postage to any place in Denmark outside
Copenhagen, and it is much used by many individual borrowers all over the
country. It is by far the most used library for inter?library loans, and there
is hardly a week in which every county library does not send several demands to
Aarhus for definite books or literature on different subjects.
But in many cases, besides Aarhus, the county libraries must rely on the State
libraries of Copenhagen : The Royal Library, the University Library, the Library
of the Agricultural College, the Library of the Art Academy, the Library of the
Technical College, and several others. In this way the library organisation in
Denmark has succeeded in making every book in every public library of the
country accessible to every citizen, live he in never so remote a corner of the
countryside. It will be the problem of the future to make everybody realise this
privilege, and use it whenever he needs it. But it may be said that even now it
is used in a degree promising very well for the future.
The rapid growth of the public libraries of Denmark during the last ten years
would not have been possible without the great and active support which they
have had from the Danish State. In 1920, the principles of State support to
Public Libraries were laid down in the Danish Library Law, being the first
Library Law on the Continent of Europe after that of Bohemia. The law was
revised on May ist, 1923, but with no changes of importance. When public
libraries fulfil some elementary requirements as to opening hours, books and
book?charging, and have a local support of not less than Kr.5o, they can be
supported by the State with an amount corresponding to one?half of the local
support. If the libraries fulfil some further requirements, such as reference
work, salary for the librarian, etc., the State support can be raised to the
same amount as that of the local support. It has been especially important that
the limit for the State appropriation to a single library has been put as high
as Kr.15,000, and that it has been made possible that Copenhagen and some other
cities can receive still more. That means that State support, being in most
countries of interest only to the small libraries but insignificant to the city
libraries, has in Denmark had an invaluable part in the advancement of the
libraries of cities and towns. The county libraries getting, besides the
Kr.15,000, the special appropriation of Kr.8,000 mentioned above, often have
more than half their total income from the State.
The relation of the State to the public libraries is supervised by a State
Library Board (Biblioteksraadet), and the State activities are administered by
the State Library Commission (Staten) Bibliotekstilsyn) at Copenhagen. The
Library Commission, besides supervising the libraries and distributing the State
grants, has been active in many ways. It is the natural central point for
combined activities in library progress. It has issued text?books and manuals in
library methods and done important bibliographical work. Since 1917 it has held
a Danish library school every second year, from which have come most of the
librarians and assistants at public libraries outside of Copenhagen.