A variety of professional work of which engineering and chemistry are noteworthy examples are also carried on by large business organizations, and we find professional men of the highest rank as prime movers in large commercial enterprises. (In this connection it might not be amiss to state that out of an experience as university librarian and business librarian the speaker is inclined to think that the professional business man keeps more adequately informed and up to date on his specialties than does the average university professor.)
An additional fact which bears directly on the general subject under discussion is, that the age in which we live is not only a business age, but that it is an age marked by the magnitude of its business organizations; an age of "big business," as some one has called it; and because of the economic conditions of our advancing civilization, business will undoubtedly continue to be "big business" even though subjected to federal and state regulation. Now correlating these two facts, namely, that modern business is conducted by means of large organizations and that its success is based upon the intelligent application of scientific knowledge to practical needs, we have cleared the way for an appreciation of the function of printed information as embodied in the work of libraries in business organizations.
The business organization builds up its own library, first, on account of the convenience of having close at hand the information constantly needed by its workers, and subject to no borrowing restrictions, which would be inevitable even if the facilities of outside libraries were available; and second, on account of the necessity for careful selection of material particularly adapted to its individual needs. Business organizations have for many years collected information in a desultory manner, but it has been only in the last few years that some of them have awakened to the fact that more was needed than mere collection of printed information, and for the same reason that they were availing themselves of all modern devices for the quick and adequate handling of their various products and were systematizing their methods to obtain more efficient results, so they must lay hold of modern library methods under experienced supervision if they were to keep up with the steadily growing and important mass of printed information. Therefore we find business organizations securing the services of professional library workers, trained to use books in the broadest and most practical manner. Some hesitation was at first expressed in various quarters as to whether so-called professional library methods used in public and university libraries were suited to business library needs, and as to whether library workers educated for general library work would adequately meet the business library situation. In fact it was intimated that the business librarian was a worker of a different brand than the ordinary librarian and therefore he had both knowledge and needs which set him apart from his library fellows, in a special class by himself. Out of four years' experience as a business librarian the speaker takes pleasure in stating that practical experience has proved the fallacy of both of these conceptions. It is true that business librarians are called upon to exercise certain functions which the librarians of public and university libraries are not, but which any efficient head of a public or university library would be quite capable of exercising if the occasion demanded it. In fact the recent rise of library interest in business men and their needs can be directly traced to the heads of some of our public libraries and the work they have inaugurated in making their libraries as helpful as possible to all classes of citizens.