L. Stanley Jast

L.Stanley Jast’s Libraries and living: essays and addresses of a public librarian was published by Grafton & Co. in 1932. Jast was an eminent librarian, once Chief Librarian of Manchester and President of the Library Association. His book is divided into sections on Libraries, Books and reading, and Other matters, one from the last category explaining ‘Why I am not a vegetarian’. I was interested in ‘The perfect librarian’, an address Jast gave at a meeting of librarians and assistants at Birmingham. I had never considered the profession as equivalent to that of a priest or a physician and neither did Jast. However, he seemed to conclude that the librarian might have a role to play in the intellectual ministry of man, contributing to the ‘building up of the perfect man’ (page 93). Everything was male in those days. Following Jast’s clarification that there is no such thing as a perfect librarian, he draws attention to key qualities for the role. The first is that the librarian, like the priest and physician, does not just work for a living. 'Happy are those who, in doing the necessary daily tasks which supports them, can find therein ample scope for that unselfish service to the community which every man who has risen beyond the limitations of the personal self and of the family, desires in the measure of his time and capacity and strength to perform’ (page 92). The key quality, though, to job satisfaction and happiness can be summarised as not putting oneself at odds with ideas of others and try and understand them. In Jast’s words, what is necessary is the ‘capacity…to “get on” with people of various natures and temperaments, to understand their point of view, however strange or alien to our own’ (page 90). It becomes even more important when applied to the structure of the institution or organization in which one works.. The librarian needs to understand the committee rather than the other way round. A specific example is given: ‘but after all it wasn’t the primary business of his committee to understand him; it was his business to understand them’ (page 91).… (mehr)