THE SEARCH FOR THE IDEAL Available to Purchase

The search for the ideal is a continuing element in human history. Without ideals, few advances would be made. However, unwillingness to accept anything but the ideal constitutes in its extreme form a neurosis, perhaps totally incapacitating the person who suffers from it. Librarianship has been, and is, afflicted with a version of this disease. The central feature is the inability to reduce standards, however arbitrary the standards and whatever the current circumstances. The library system is designed around these standards, which are inviolable, the fixed elements in an otherwise adaptable system. How this operates can best be shown by examples.