An Introduction to Library Science

Book excerpt: The library has been created by actual necessities in modern civilization. It is now a necessary unit in the social fabric. Culture must transcend the individual for it is essentially a social cumulation of experience whereby the men of each generation possess potentially at least, all that their predecessors have ever learned. Books are one social mechanism for preserving the racial memory and the library one social apparatus for transferring this to the consciousness of living individuals. Any understanding of society must include an explanation of this social element and of its function in communal life. Thus librarianship takes its place among the phenomena to be discussed in any system of social science.