But, granted the suitable book and the suitable time for reading, what do we know of the effect our books are having? We count our circulation just the same whether a book is kept two days—about long enough for the family to look at the pictures— or a week. Whether it has been really read we do not know. Sometimes I think those pencilled notes on the margin, recording the child's disgust or satisfaction, should have more meaning for us than they do. At least, they prove that the book has taken hold of the reader's imagination and sympathies. Don't let us be too severe with a criticism written in the honest feeling of the moment (if it be in pencil); we are really gathering psychological and sociological data for which the child-study clubs would thank us, perhaps.
I see only one way in which we can be enabled to estimate fairly the value of what we are doing, and that is by so gaining the good-will and confidence of the children as to get them to answer our questions as to their reading or to tell us of their own accord what they get from it. From this information we may make our inferences as to the value of our books in themselves, and may be enabled to regulate their use. A child whose exclusive diet is fairy-tales is evidently over-cultivating the imagination; a girl who has outgrown children's books and dipped into the premature love-stories that are written for her class needs our most careful guidance; a boy whose whole thought is of adventure, or who cannot read anything but jokes, is also in a critical condition.
In short, the judicious regulation of the children's reading should be made practicable for the librarian, if the children's library is to be the important agency in education which it may be made.
In regard to the desirability of amusements in the library, I own that I am somewhat sceptical. The library has its own division of labor in the work of education, and that division is the training of the people to the use and appreciation of books and literature. An argument in favor of games is that they draw in children who might not otherwise come, but I should fear they would be drawn in finally in such crowds as to be unmanageable. Books properly administered should have the same drawing power, and their influence, once felt, is toward quietness and thought, rather than toward activity and skill with the complications of dispute and cheating that may arise from the use of games. Children are natural propagandists. Let one child find that at the children's library he may select his own books from a good-sized collection, may find help in his composition-work, the news of what is going on in the world in the shape of an attractive illustrated bulletin-board, different every week—and tomorrow 10 children will know of it, and each of these will tell other 10, and so on. The library will have all the children it can attend to eventually, and they will have come gradually so that the assistants shall have been able to get a proper grasp of the situation, while the earlier children will have been somewhat trained to help, like the elder brothers and sisters in a family.
Certain freedoms may be granted in the children's library as an education for the adult constituency of the future; for instance, the guarantee may be done away with, thus putting the child on his honor to pay his own fines and damages—the only penalties for not doing so being those which society naturally inflicts on offenders—the debarring from privileges and from association. If there is nothing injurious or doubtful on the shelves, freedom in choice of books may be allowed to the smallest child, only he must know that help and guidance are at hand if he wishes them, and if a tendency to over-read in any one direction or in all is noticed, the librarian should feel at liberty to make suggestions. And as to freedom of action, the maxim should be that one man's liberty ends where another man's begins. No child should be allowed to disturb the room or to interfere with the quiet of those who are studying, for many children, more than one would think, really come to study. But the stiffness and enforced routine of the school-room should by all means be avoided. There should be no set rules as to silence, but consideration for others should be inculcated, and in time the room will come to have a subduing, quiet atmosphere that will insensibly affect those who enter. Whispering, or talking in a low tone, where several little heads are bent together over picture-books, is certainly admissible, and the older heads are very soon quiet of their own accord, each over its own book or magazine.
After the selection of the books themselves there is nothing so important as thoughtful administration, a practical question, since the employment of assistants comes in under this head. Educators have for some time seen the mistake of putting the cheapest teachers over the primary schools—kindergartners have seen it—and it remains for the library to profit by their experience without going through a similar one. If there is on the library staff an assistant well read and well educated, broad- minded, tactful, with common sense and judgment, attractive to children in manner and person, possessed, in short, of all desirable qualities, she should be taken from wherever she is, put into the children's library, and paid enough to keep her there. There is no more important work in the building, no more delicate, critical work than that with children, no work that pays so well in immediate as well as in far-off results. Who that has met the fault- finding, the rudeness and coldness too frequent in a grown-up constituency, would not expand in the sunshine of the gratitude, the confidence, the good-will, the natural helpfulness of children! And it rests partly with the assistant to cultivate these qualities in them, and so modify the adult constituency of the future.
I say THOUGHTFUL administration because the children's library is no sooner opened than it begins to present problems. Some of these are simply administrative and economic, others take hold of social and ethical foundations. There will be scarcely a day on which the librarian and the children's librarian will not have to put their heads, and sometimes their hearts, together over puzzling cases—cases of fraud, of mischief-making, of ignorant evil-doing, of inherited tendencies, physical, mental, and moral— and sometimes it will seem as if the whole human creation were incurably ailing, and the doctrine of total depravity will take on alarming probability. But at this point some sound, smiling, active boy or girl comes in with a cheerful greeting, and pessimism retires into the background. And all this reminds me of one more quality which the children's librarian must have—a sense of humor. It is literally saving in some circumstances.
Our own experience has led to the following suggestions, made by the children's librarian in our library to those who come in at given hours from the other departments to take her place or to assist her. It will be seen that most of them are the product of observation and thought arising from the daily evidence of the room itself:
"Always tell a child how to fill out his application-blank, even when you are busy. Tell him just where to write his name in the register and stay near him till it is completed. Whenever it is possible, go to the shelves with a child who has just received his card of membership. Show him where different kinds of books are to be found. Ask him what kind of book he likes. Show him one or two answering to his description and then leave him to make his own selection.
"Explain the routine carefully and fully to children just beginning to use the library.
"Let no child sign the register, look at a book, receive or present an application, with soiled hands. Soiled and crumpled applications are considered defective and cannot be accepted.
"Do not expect or demand perfect quiet. Frequent tapping upon the desk excites the children and betrays nervousness on the part of the person in charge. Let the discipline of the room seem to be incidental; let the child feel that it is first and foremost a library where books are to be had for the asking, and that you are there to make it easier to get them.
"Never call children's numbers, but use their names if necessary, though a glance of recognition pleases them better. Do not force acquaintance. Children like it even less than grown people. Be sympathetic and responsive, but beware of mannerism or effusiveness. Remember, too, that questioning is a fine art, and one should take care not to offend.
"Speed is not the first requisite at a children's desk. Children have more patience with necessary formalities than grown people.
"Let some of the children help in the work of the room, but do not urge them to do so.
"Avoid stereotyped forms of expression when reproving a child or conversing with him. Let him feel you are speaking to him personally; he will not feel this if he hears the same words used for 50 other boys."
For evening work, when there is no circulation of books: "read to them sometimes; talk to them at others; and sometimes leave them quite alone. They are more appreciative when they find you are leaving work to give them pleasure than they would be if they found you were making their pleasure your work."
These are a few of the instructions or suggestions consequent upon daily observation and experience. Doubtless every children's librarian could supplement them with many more, but they are enough to show what I mean by "thoughtful administration."
Occasionally the librarian who serves children will have to take account of stock, sum up the changes for better or for worse in the use and treatment of the room, in the manners and habits of the children and in their reading. She will have to retire a little from her work, take a bird's-eye view of it, and decide if on the whole progress is making toward her ideal. Without identifying itself with any of the movements such as the kindergarten, child-study, and social settlement, without losing control of itself and resigning itself to any outside guidance, the children's library should still absorb what is to its purpose in the work of all these agencies. "This one thing I do," the librarian may have to keep reminding herself, to keep from being drawn off into other issues, but by standing a little apart she may see what is to her advantage without being sucked in by the draft as some enthusiastic movement sweeps by. Must she have no enthusiasm? Yes, indeed; but is not that a better enthusiasm which enables one to work on steadily for years with undiminished courage than the kind that exhausts itself in the great vivacity of its first feeling and effort?
It will not be long after the opening of the children's library before an insight will be gained into domestic interiors and private lives that will make the librarian wish she could follow many a child to his home, in order to secure for him and his something better than the few hours' respite from practical life which they may get from the reading of books. When the boy who steals and the girl who is vicious before they are in their teens, have to be sent away lest other children suffer, it is borne in upon the librarian that a staff of home-missionaries connected with the library to follow up and minister in such cases would not be a bad thing—and she has to remind herself again and again that it is not incumbent on any one person to attempt everything, and that Providence has other instrumentalities at work besides herself. The humors of the situation, on the other hand, are many. The boys who, being sent home to wash their hands, return in an incredibly short time with purified palms and suppressed giggles, and on persistent inquiry confess, "We just licked 'em," present to one who is "particular" only a serio-comic aspect; and the little squirrel who wriggles to the top of the librarian's chair until he can reach her ear, and then whispers into it, "There couldn't be no library here 'thout you, could there?" is not altogether laughable; but incidents of pure comedy are occasionally to be set over against the serious side.
Last spring, with a view to gaining information directly in the answers to our questions and indirectly in the light the answers should throw on the character of the children, we chose 150 boys and girls who were regularly using the library and sent to them a series of questions to be answered in writing. They were apparently greatly pleased to be consulted in this way, and it seemed to us that very few of the replies were insincere in tone, or intended merely to win approbation. From the 100 replies worth any consideration I have drawn these specimen answers:
One of the first questions we asked was, "How long have you been using the library?" Of 100 who answered, 25 had used the library more than six months, 33 more than a year, 22 more than two years, 11 more than three years, nine more than four years, and one six years, since books were first given out to children. Many children first hear of the library when they are 13 and over, and after 14 they have the use of the main library, so that in their case the time of use is necessarily shorter. However, if a child has not done with the children's library by the time he is 14, we allow him to continue using it until he wishes to be transferred.
Of 100 children, 68 reported that other members of their families used the library, while 32 reported themselves the only borrowers. This is interesting in connection with their answers to the question, "Does any one at home or at school tell you good books to read?" 71 reported yes and 29 no, about the same proportion. In many families the parents are of a mental calibre or at a stage in education to enjoy books written for children, and we have found that children often drew books with their parents' tastes in view. One little girl whose own tastes led her to select a charming little book on natural history was sent back with it by an aunt who said it was not suitable and requested one of the semi-demi-novels that are provided for quite young girls, as being much more appropriate. The difficulty in keeping "hands off" in a case where grown people are thus influencing children injuriously can be fully appreciated only by one who knows and cares for the children.
Fifty-seven children reported that they were read to at home or that they read to their younger brothers and sisters, while 43 stated that their reading was a pleasure all to themselves. The large number who shared their reading was a pleasant surprise to us, evincing a companionship at home that we had hardly anticipated.
Twenty-eight children stated that they preferred to have help in selecting their books, 63 that they preferred to make their own choice, while nine said it depended. 49 said that they came to the library to get help in writing their compositions or in other school-work, while 51 said they did not, one proudly asserting, "I am capable of writing all my compositions myself," and another, seeming to think help a sort of disgrace, "I do not come to the library for help about anything at all."
Seventy out of the 100 children answering used no library but ours—the others made use of their Sunday-school libraries also.
An inquiry as to the books read since New Year's, the questions being sent out in May, brought out the fact that an average of six books in the four and a half months had been read—not a bad average, considering that it was during term-time in the schools, when studies take up much of the child's otherwise spare time. Boys proved to prefer history and books of adventure, travel and biography, to any other class of reading; girls, books about boys and girls, fairy stories and poetry. The tastes of the boys on the whole were more wholesome, and the girls need most help here. It is not at all unlikely that it is chiefly the wars and combats in history which make it interesting to the boys, as they seem to go through a sanguinary phase in their development that nothing else will satisfy; but many of them will get their history in no other way, and since wars have been prominent in the past it is of no use to disguise the fact. Fairness to both sides would seem to be the essential in the writing of these children's histories and historical tales, since the ability to stop and deliberate and to make allowances is rare even in grown people and needs cultivation.
The question as to the best book the child had ever read brought in a bewildering variety of answers, proving beyond a doubt that there had been no copying or using of other children's opinions. While no list can be given, the reasons they offered in response to a request for them were often interesting. Girls wrote of "Little women": "It is so real, the characters are so real and sweet." "I feel as if I could act the whole book." "This story has helped me a very great deal in leading a better and a happier life." "It shows us how to persevere," etc. Boys like "The Swiss family Robinson" "because it describes accurately the points of a shipwreck and graphically describes how a man with common sense can make the best of everything." Another, "because it shows how some people made the most of what they had." Another, "It shows how progressive the people were." One liked "Uncle Tom's cabin" "because it describes life among the colored people and shows how they were treated before the war"; another, "because it is a true story and some parts of it are pitiful and other parts are pleasant." A boy of 12 says of "Grimm's fairy tales," "They are interesting to read, and I learn there is no one to give you wings and sandals to fly—you have to make your own." Another likes "John Halifax" "because it tells how a boy who had pluck obtained what he wanted and made his mark in the world." "Pluck," I imagine, in a boy's mind stands for the old virtue of the poets, "magnanimity," that included all the rest. Harper's story-books are still read and appreciated "because they tell me about different kinds of people's ways, about animals, and a little about history." Another child "learned games out of them, and how to tell the truth and the use of the truth."
A child of eight puts in a pathetic plea worth considering for the Prudy books, "because I understand them better than any books I have read." An incipient author says that she uses the library because "I make a good deal of stories and find pretty ideas."
Perhaps the most enlightening replies came in answer to the question, "Can you suggest anything which would make the library more interesting that it is now?" One delightfully reassuring boy says, "I like the children's library to stay just the same, and a boy who never went there would like it. I'll bring more boys." "Pictures of art" are requested, and "a set of curiosities from all parts of the world." As we regard the children of all nationalities and types crowding about the desk on our busy days we sometimes think we already have this latter item. "A prize for the best story every month." "More histories." "Pictures of noted men on the walls." "More fairy-tales." "More magazines." "Books showing how to draw." "A pencil fastened to each table." "Stories in Scottish history." "More books of adventure." "More funny books." "A chart of real and genuine foreign stamps." "Lectures for children between 10 and 14, with experiments accompanying them." "A one-hour lecture once a week by noted men on different subjects." "A book giving the value of celebrated paintings." "More books. The shelves look bare," as indeed they do after a rush-day. "Rules to keep the children in order," from a nine-year-old who has doubtless suffered. "Not to be disturbed by other boys for unknown crimes," says one mysterious victim of something or other. "Historical fiction." "Catholic books." "Tanks with fishes, in the windows." "An aquarium; children would enjoy seeing pollywogs change to frogs every time they came to the library." This is the comment of a little girl, I am glad to say. "School-books." "More amusement for little children." This was before we bought our linen picture-books. And the "Elsie books," and Oliver Optic, and Castlemon are vainly desired by two or three. The general sentiment is pretty well voiced by one child who says, "The library is just perfect in about every respect."
We feel that with this enumeration of desiderata, the children's library has its work cut out for it for some time to come, and that these evidences of the children's likings and needs have removed a certain vagueness from our ambitions. With lectures and experiments, reading clubs, and possibly original stories, in contemplation, there is no danger of rust from inaction, especially as to obtain any one of these there are serious obstacles to overcome. But always and everywhere the library should put forward its proper claim of the value and use of the book—though in the word book I by no means include all that goes under the name. If there are lectures with experiments or lantern-slides, they should be attended by information as to the best literature on the subject and the children encouraged to investigate what has been printed, as well as to take in through the ear. There is no "digging" in lecture-going, and it is "digging" that leaves a permanent impression on the mind. The lecture should stimulate to personal research. From reading aloud together at the library in the evening, reading clubs may come to be formed, each with a specialty, decided by the tastes of the members. The writing of stories, particularly if the library selected the subject, might be made the occasion of the use of histories, biographies, travels, etc. Quiet games in the evening for the older children, of a nature to require the use of reference-books, would be strictly within the library's province. Personal talks with the children about their reading, if judiciously conducted, are always in order. With a generation of children influenced in this way to use books as tools and a mental resource as well as for recreation, and to find recreation only in the best-written books, the library constituency of the future would be worthy of the best library that could be imagined.
The bulletin-board is attracting attention generally as a means of interesting children in topics of current interest, and such a periodical as Harper's Weekly is invaluable when it comes to securing illustrations for this purpose. Sandwiched in among the pictures, we have occasionally smuggled in a printed paragraph of useful information or a set of verses, and our latest move, to induce more general reading of the periodicals, has been to analyze their contents on the bulletin, under the head of "Animals," "Sports," "Engines," "Short stories," "Long stories," etc. Boys who "know what they like" are beginning to turn to this analysis to see if there is anything new on their favorite topic and to explain the workings of the board to other boys, and the desired end is gradually being brought about. As the references are taken down to make way for new ones, they are filed away by subject, making the beginnings of a permanent reference list.
Birds, the new magazine with its colored plates, is a boon for the children's room, The Great Round World is good for the assistant-in-charge and the teachers who come to the room, as well as for the children.
In order to add to the number of books without overstepping our rules as to quality, we are beginning, though not yet very systematically, to look over the works of certain authors of grown-up books with a view to finding material that can be understood sufficiently by children to interest them. A number of Stevenson's books can be given to boys and girls, and we hope to find many others. Most children, I think, read books without knowing who has written them, and if we can induce them to learn to know authors and can interest them in a writer like Stevenson, we can feel fairly secure that they will not drop him when they are transferred from the children's room to the main library.
Perhaps it is best always to have a working hypothesis to begin with, in children's libraries as elsewhere; but we can assure those who have not tried it that facts are stubborn things, and the hypothesis has frequently to be made over in accordance with newly-observed facts, and theories may or may not be proven correct. The whole subject is as yet in the empirical stage, and the way must be felt from day to day. If the children's librarian lives in a continual rush, what "leisure to grow wise" on her chosen subject does she have? and if she is hurried constantly from one child to another, what chance have the children for learning by contact with the individual? which, as Mr. Horace E. Scudder truly says, is the method most sure of results. This contact may be had most naturally, it seems to us, through the ordinary channels of waiting on the children, provided it is quiet, deliberate waiting upon them. We go out of our way to think out new philanthropies and are too likely to forget that, as we go about our every-day business, natural opportunities are constantly presenting for strengthening our knowledge of and our hold upon the people who come to us—who are sent to us, I might almost say.
The registry and the charging-desks offer chances for acquaintance to begin naturally and unconsciously and for much incidental imparting of seed-thoughts. And it is in these every-day chances, if appreciated and made the most of, that the work of the children's library is going to tell. The necessity of especial training in psychology, pedagogy, child study, and kindergarten ideas, has been treated of recently in a paper before the A. L. A. There is no doubt that the "called" worker in this field will be better for scientific training, but let him or her first be sure of the call. It is quite as serious as one to the ministry, if not more so, and no amount of intellectual training will make up for the lack of patience and fairness and of a genuine interest in children and realization of their importance in the general scheme.
To sum up, the requisites for the ideal children's library, as we begin to see it, are suitable books, plenty of room, plenty of assistance, and thoughtful administration. Better a number of children's libraries scattered over a town or city than a large central one, since only in this way can the children be divided up so as to make individual attention to them easy. But if it devolves upon one library to do the work for the entire town, and branches are out of the question, something of the same result may be obtained by providing at certain hours an extra number of assistants. I can imagine a large room with several desks, at each of which should preside an assistant having charge of only certain classes of books, so that in time she might come to be an authority on historical or biographical or scientific or literary books for children, and the children might learn to go to her as their specialist on the class of books they cared most for. Perhaps this may sound Utopian. I believe there are libraries present and to come for which it is entirely practicable.
An investigation of rural libraries in North Carolina and of library work with children in Boston and New England towns led Miss Caroline Matthews, a member of the Examining Committee of the Public Library of Boston to believe that "exaggerated leaning toward one phase of library work must throw out of the true the work as a whole." The following paper explaining her conclusions was read before the Massachusetts Library Club in October, 1907.
Caroline Matthews was born in Boston in 1855. She has contributed articles to the Educational Review and to the Atlantic Monthly. Miss Matthews is at present living in Switzerland.
I have been asked to speak on this subject, not because I have professional or technical knowledge of the subject to be discussed, but rather because I have not. This does not mean that I have no knowledge whatever of this or other phases of library work. It simply means that the little knowledge I do possess is non-professional, and that my impressions, points of view, conclusions, are wholly those of an outsider.
Up to three years ago I had had no connection with public libraries beyond being an occasional borrower of books. Then suddenly, through making a comparative study of the financing of public school systems here and in France, I found myself in touch with the public schools of an American city, and through them with the school deposits of the Public Library of the same city. Even so, I did not come in touch with the library side of the work. It was always the school or teachers' side, or the pupils' side, never any other.
The second year I became a member of the Examining Committee of the Public Library of the city of Boston. My position on this committee for my first year of service was a minor one. There was never anything very important to do, certainly not enough to keep up one's interest to the point of being a live interest. Moreover, I spent the winter away from town. But I had the great good fortune to pass it in the mountains of North Carolina. There I lived for weeks at a time in the homes and cabins of the mountain whites. I knew the men their wives, their children. I visited the logging camps, the mines, the missions, the mills, the schools. The life was rough, but it was worth while. It gave me an intimate knowledge of the social surroundings of the people, and I found the one vital problem, the problem touching the citizen the nearest, to be that of the rural school, and affiliated with the rural school, though affiliated in a crude way, was the library.
Thus, for the second time in my life, I came into contact with the library by means of the school. This coincidence led me to think, and I reasoned out that library workers North and South must be working along similar lines toward unity in practice. Both were doing educative work. And both, apparently, had the same goal—the reaching of the parent or adult through the child or through child growth.
How far such work was legitimate work, how far such work had intellectual or educational value, how far such work lacked or had balance, I now wished to determine. To do this it was necessary to assume some line of active investigation; also to study results from the standpoint of the library, as well as from that of the school and the citizen.
There was no need to search for a subject. I had it at hand. Living as I did with the people I found myself in the very center of the rural library movement—a movement so splendid in conception; so successful in results, if statistics are credited; so direct as to method, the entire appropriation being expended on but two things, books and bookcases; so naively simple as to administration, there being neither librarians, libraries, or pay-rolls—that a study of it could not fail to prove helpful.
What were the actual conditions? First, the name "rural libraries" I found a misnomer. It in no sense represents facts. The words imply community interests, interests alike of adult and child, whilst the reality is that these libraries are simply school deposits, composed wholly of "juvenile books," graded up to but not beyond the seventh grade. When one realizes that these books reach a total of 200,000 volumes, that they are sent to people living in scattered communities strung shoe-string fashion high along mountain ridges—back and apart from civilization— to a people of rugged character, demanding strength in books as in life, capable of appreciating strength, one sees what a stupendous opportunity for community uplift has been wasted, and one stands aghast at the folly, economic and intellectual, of the limitations imposed. Why should children alone be considered? And if they alone are to be considered why should they be fed nothing but "juvenile" literature? It is both over-emphasis and false emphasis of the most harmful kind.
Second, far and away the most interesting phase of this library work in North Carolina is that the whole movement lies outside of the hands of professionally trained librarians. To understand why this is so it is necessary to turn to the Department of Education. Education in North Carolina is a state affair and centralized, the state being for all practical purposes autocratic in every educational matter. Decentralization has set in to the extent of admitting local taxation; otherwise education in North Carolina to-day is as highly centralized as it is in France. There is no difference whatever between the power of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction at Raleigh, and that of the Minister of Public Instruction in France. Such being the case it is but natural that the rural library movement should be absorbed by the state, incorporated into the Department of Education, and administered by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Neither would it be wise to change this. It would be wise, however, to appoint as one of the county superintendents of public instruction a trained librarian, having as his charge the entire supervision and administration of library interests.
Third, all responsibility for the care of these libraries rests with teachers. The teachers should never have such responsibility. It is entirely beyond and outside of their proper work. I feel sure that this problem of how to care for school deposits of library books, a problem which is an issue North as it is South, is not so difficult of solution as library workers would have us believe. Disabuse yourselves of the notion that it is the teachers' work, and a way out of the difficulty will be found.
Fourth, not only is there a growing dissatisfaction with the library act as administered, but there is actually active opposition to it—on the part of some teachers, and on the part of certain public-spirited citizens. So much so is this a fact that a counter movement is already in progress. This consists in the establishment of rural libraries by private gift, by the citizens at large, and by certain societies. Tryon has such a library, a delightful building with two rooms and an ample supply of standard books; Lenoir has one; Boone has one. Yet these are small towns, two of them not exceeding 300 inhabitants each. An interesting feature of one of these libraries is that it serves largely as a social center for community life. Afternoon tea is served in it; musicals held; club papers read; even the Woman's Exchange meets and exhibits once a week. I had no means of discovering how general this movement was, nor yet of determining the ratio of emphasis laid on the social side of the work. But I want you to note one point—the movement starts with the adult and with standard works, and only by means of the adult, or through the parent, is the child reached. It is the exact antithesis of the state movement.
Fifth, the libraries are neglected. In no school did I find a well-appointed one, and where there were bookcases they were tucked aside in corner or entry, thick with dust, unused.
The state statistics as to the growth of this movement ignore absolutely the facts I have mentioned. Therefore, I claim that in no true sense are these statistics representative. The movement, however, has interest. It is alive. It is sweeping through the state. It spends thousands of dollars a year. It concerns itself wholly with children. These are its characteristics. There can be no two opinions as to its lack of balance, for the adult is not even considered. There can be no two opinions as to its intellectual and educational values. Buying only "juvenile literature" they are of the smallest. There can be no two opinions as to its morality: the people are taxed, yet only a fraction of the people, only those who have children below the seventh and above the first grades, receive a return.
How far North Carolina was seeking guidance of the North, how far the North was also over-emphasizing, if it was, the children's side in library work, I next wished to determine.
This brought me back to Boston, and to my second and final year of service on the Examining Committee. The chairmanship of the sub-committee on branches gave me opportunity for studying library work as it touched the child and the school in cities. This I supplemented by a less intensive study of library conditions in towns, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, seeking to make my knowledge comprehensive.
The first impression I received was that of the many interpretations put upon library work. These were almost as numerous as were the librarians and custodians. Viewing the work as a whole such divergence in practice seemed an error. There is power in unity; results worth while follow. There is loss in the frittering away of time caused by casual experiment; moreover, it bears heavily on the child. To this you may be inclined to answer that social and moral conditions vary so in each city and town that the individual condition must be faced individually. Granted, but not to the extent you might wish. To illustrate: there is wisdom in allowing a certain station of the Boston system complete liberty of action. But the situation at this station is unique. It could not be duplicated even in Boston. The work is in the hands of a skilled leader, and it forms part of a large private work, financed by a philanthropist noted for leadership in wise experimentation. The library shows breadth in accepting the situation. But it is not wisdom to allow the introduction of the story hour, or, as is the case in a neighboring town, the throwing wide open of the children's room to tots so tiny that picture blocks have to be furnished them to play with—before the educational authorities have pronounced such work necessary and just.
I next noticed and with some alarm the feminization of the library corps. And I confess that I see no remedy. The schools are facing the same difficulty, but eventually it will be solved for them in the raising of certain salaries to a man's standard. This is not likely to happen in library work. Consequently we have this feminization to reckon with, and to me it is an active factor in the diversity of library practice to which I have referred, for women far more than men are prone to indulge individual fads.
A third impression was the lack of fitness of some library workers for their posts. This is particularly unfortunate when it occurs in a children's room. Unless the person in charge possess the requisite qualifications, better far close the room. The fault lies perhaps with the colleges offering library courses. It may well be that the training in these should be more specialized than it is. Take the case of a student intending to pursue a given line of work—say children's departments. Something definite should be offered her, something corresponding in worth to the graduate courses in practice and observation offered students of education in departments of education at universities. This is a practical suggestion; it only requires on the part of colleges and libraries similar agreements to those already existing between universities and schools. A second phase of this question is that of libraries whose employees are not drawn from library schools or colleges, but who reach the several posts by a system of promotion based on efficiency and faithful service. Is there any reason why employees of such a system, specializing in children's work should not serve an apprenticeship in the children's department at central and be required to return to it again and again for further instruction? As far as I know the heads of these children's departments have no duties of this kind. But would not the value of a library corps be increased tenfold if they had? They seize eagerly the opportunity to go out and instruct the teacher, to go out and instruct the parent. They have classes for the schools in the use of the library. But they neglect utterly the training of the library employee who is to serve as assistant first, as chief later, in the children's room at branch or station. Yet the knowledge acquired by only one day of observation under skillful guidance in the children's department at central would prove invaluable to these women. Broaden the training given employees, and centralize experimentation.
I found no TRUE affiliation with the schools. There was none in North Carolina; there is none here. In countless ways the library and the school are overlapping. Why there should not be a clearer vision as to what is library work and what is school work is incomprehensible to an outsider.
I grew to have a horror of children's rooms—as distinct from children's departments. Intellectually, physically, morally, I believe them harmful. Neither can I see their necessity.
As regards classification of books, I received the impression that the broad division into "adult" and "juvenile" is too dogmatic, too arbitrary. Whatever other forms or divisions are necessary, this particular one should be abolished. It lowers the intellectual standing of the library with the community.
The splendid character of library work in tenement districts stood out strongly. It is vigorous, alive, with an ever-broadening opportunity.
More vivid, however, than any other impression, stronger still, was that of the time and thought and care bestowed on the Child. Everywhere, in city, town and suburban library, the effort to reach the Child is apparent. Special attendants are in readiness to meet him the instant he comes into reading room and station after school hours. Thoughtful women are assigned to overlook and guide his reference work. Entertainment is offered him in the form of blocks to play with, scrap-books to look at, story hours to attend. Books specially selected with regard to his supposedly individual needs are placed on the shelves. Picture bulletins are made for his use in the schools. Where he is not segregated he is allowed to monopolize tables and chairs. I find no corresponding effort made to reach the adult, to reach the young mechanic, to draw to the library the parent. I at times wonder whether librarians and custodians are even aware that exaggerated leaning toward one phase of library work must throw out of the true the work as a whole.
Nothing has astonished me more than this new development in library practice—the placing of the child in importance before the adult. The old belief that the library is primarily for adults and only incidentally for children still holds good at the central buildings of large city public library systems. In these we find the children's department only one of many departments—the child always subordinate, the adult dominant—the result of a well balanced, admirable whole, each unit in its proper place, all forces pulling together. I fail to see why the same relative balance should not be maintained throughout the entire system, from branch to station, not always in kind and measure, but approximately.
A second thought to which I cannot adjust myself—is that of the parent as a factor in school and library work. The parent believes in the public school, and he pays heavily in taxes for the education of his children by means of it. The parent believes in the establishment of public libraries and he pays heavily in taxes for their equipment. Both sums raised are sufficiently generous to enable school and library to furnish trained, capable, efficient teachers and librarians. Such being the case does not the parent show intelligence in turning over to the public care the direction of his children's education and reading? Is he not justified in so doing? Why then should he be held ignorant or selfish? Eliminate the parent as a factor in library practice. Give the children quality in books. Strike off 50 per cent., if you only will, of the titles to be found on the shelves of children's rooms. Substitute "adult" books, and you will not need to appeal to the parent to guide the child's choice.
That there is similarity of practice in library work, in North Carolina and here, you can hardly deny. Point by point, in so far as the work relates to the child, the problems are mutual. Their solution lies in the getting together of school and library authorities, and the setting aside of the modern thought that library work is primarily educative and primarily for the child. Let the schools educate the children; and, if you can, let the adult once more dominate in library practice. You will then have a well-balanced whole, free from over-emphasis on the child's side.
A conception of the meaning and the possibilities of children's work interpreted by means of present day social and industrial conditions is given by Henry E. Legler, librarian of the Chicago Public Library, in a paper on "Library work with children," read at the Pasadena Conference of the A L. A. in 1911. Henry Eduard Legler was born in Palermo, Italy, June 22, 1861. He was educated in Switzerland and the United States. In 1889 he was a member of the Wisconsin Assembly; from 1890 to 1894 secretary of the Milwaukee School Board; from 1904 to 1909 secretary of the Wisconsin Library Commission, and since 1909 has been librarian of the Chicago Public Library. In 1912-1913 Mr. Legler was President of the A. L. A.
Not long since a man of genius took a lump of formless clay, and beneath the cunning of his hand there grew a great symbol of life. He called it Earthbound. An old man is bowed beneath the sorrow of the world. Under the weight of burdens that seemingly they cannot escape, a younger man and his faithful mate stagger with bent forms. Between them is a little child. Instead of a body supple and straight and instinct with freedom and vigor, the child's body yields to the weight of heredity and environment, whose crushing influence press the shoulders down.
In this striking group the artist pictures for us the world-old story of conditions which meet the young lives of one generation, and are transmitted to the next. It is a picture that was true a thousand years ago; it is a picture that is faithful of conditions today. Perhaps its modern guise might be more aptly and perhaps no less strikingly shown, as it recently appeared in the form of a cartoon illustrating Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse:
The Cry of the Children
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And THAT cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing towards the west— But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow, Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in long ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost; But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland?
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do. Pluck your handfuls of the meadow cowslips pretty, Laugh aloud to feel your fingers let them through!
Only in recent years has there grown into fulness a conception of what the duty of society is towards the child. For near two thousand years it was a world of grown-ups for grown-ups. Children there have been—many millions of them—but they were merely incidental to the scheme of things. Society regarded them not as an asset, except perhaps for purposes of selfish exploitation. If literature reflects contemporary life with fidelity, we may well marvel that for so many hundreds of years the boys and girls of their generation were so little regarded that they are rarely mentioned in song or story. When they are, we are afforded glimpses of a curious attitude of aloofness or of harshness. Nowhere do we meet the artlessness of childhood. In a footnote here, in a marginal gloss there, such references as appear point to torture and cruelty, to distress and tears. In the early legends of the Christians, in the pagan ballads of the olden time, what there is of child life but illustrates the brutal selfishness of the elders.
Certainly, no people understood as well as did the Jews that the child is the prophecy of the future, and that a nation is kept alive not by memory but by hope. Childhood to them was "the sign of fulfillment of glorious promises; the burden of psalm and prophecy was of a golden age to come, not of one that was in the dim past." So in the greatest of all books we come frequently upon phrases displaying this attitude:
"There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets ofJerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age.And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girlsplaying in the streets thereof."
"They shall remember me in far countries; and they shall live with their children."
And most significant of all: "Suffer the little children to come unto me."
In the centuries intervening, up to a hundred years ago, the men of pen and the men of brush give us a few touches now and then suggestive of childhood. However, they are observers rather than interpreters of childhood and its meaning. In the works of the great master painters, the dominant note is that of maternity, or the motive is devotional purely. Milton's great ode on the Nativity bears no message other than this. In the graphic tale that Chaucer tells about Hugh of Lincoln, race hatred is the underlying sentiment, and the innocence of the unfortunate widow's son appears merely to heighten the evil of his captors and not as typical of boyhood.
Of the goodly company known collectively as the Elizabethan writers, silence as to the element of childhood is profound. In all the comedies and the tragedies of the greatest dramatist of all, children play but minor parts. In none of them save in King John, where historic necessity precludes the absence of the princes in the Tower, they might be wholly omitted without impairment of the structure. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Anne Page's son is briefly introduced, and is there made the vehicle for conversation which in this age might be regarded as gross suggestiveness.
True, that is a rarely tender passage in the Winter's Tale wherein Hermione speaks with her beloved boy, and the pathos of Arthur's plea as he asks Hubert to spare his eyes is of course a masterpiece of literature; these, however, the sum total of the great dramatist's significant references to childhood.
In the great works on canvas, save where the Christ-child is depicted, may be noted that same absence of the spirit of childhood. Wealthy and royal patrons, indeed, encouraged great artists to add favorite sons and daughters to the array of portraits in their family galleries. In time, the artists gave to the progeny of the nobility and the aristocracy generally, such creations as to them seemed appropriate to their years. These poses are but the caricature of childhood. Morland, Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds and other artists of their day represented the children of their wealthy patrons in attitudes which savor somewhat of burlesque, though it may have been intended quite seriously to hedge them about with spontaneity.
It has been said that "a child's life finds its chief expression in play, and that in play its social instincts are developed." If this be true, we find in some contemporary canvases of this English school a curious reproduction of the favorite pastimes of children. One is called "bird-nesting," the title descriptive of the favorite diversion thus depicted. Another bears the legend "Snow-balling," and with no apparent disapproval save on the part of the little victims, shows a group of larger children ruthlessly snow-balling some smaller ones who have sought shelter in the portico of a church. Some distance down the street the form of an aged woman suggests another victim of youthful playfulness.
A century and a half ago there was born, frail at first but with constant growth, a perception that the great moving forces of life contain elements hitherto disregarded. Rousseau sounded his thesis, Pestalozzi began to teach, and but a little later on, Froebel expounded his tenets. We need not be concerned as to the controversial disputation of rival schools of pedagogues whose claims for one ignore the merits of the other. A new thought came into being, and both Pestalozzi and Froebel contributed to its diffusion—whether in the form of Pestalozzi's ideal, "I must do good to the child," or Froebel's, "I must do good through the child," or perhaps a measurable merging of the two.
Responsive to the note of life and thought around them, the great authors of prose and verse began to inject the new expression of feeling into what they wrote. Perhaps best reflected, as indeed it proved most potent in molding public opinion, this thought entered into the novels of Charles Dickens. These, in the development of child life as a social force, not only recorded history; they made history, and the virile pencils of Leech and Phiz and Cruikshank aided what became a movement.
For the first time in literature, with sympathetic insight, there was laid bare the misery of childhood among the lowly and unfortunate, and the pathos of unhappy childhood was pictured with all its tragic consequences to society as a whole. In the story of Poor Joe, the street-crossing sweeper, who was always told to move on, we read the stories of thousands of the boys of to-day. His brief tenantry of Tom-all-Alones shows us the prototype of many thousands of living places in the slums of our own time. Conditions which environ growing boys and girls —not only thousands of men, but many millions—in the congested cities of the Anglo-Saxon world, are well suggested by the names which have been given in derision, or brutally descriptive as the case may be, to such centers of human hiving as the Houses of Blazes and Chicken-foot Alley, in Providence; Hell's Kitchen in New York; the Bad Lands in Milwaukee; Tin Can Alley, Bubbly Creek and Whiskey Row back of the stockyards in Chicago. In these regions and in others like them darkness and filth hold forth together where the macaroni are drying; broken pipes discharge sewage in the basement living quarters where the bananas are ripening; darkness and filth dwell together in the tenement cellars where the garment-worker sews the buttons on for the sweat-shop taskmaster; goats live amiably with human kids in the cob-webbed basements where little hands are twisting stems for flowers; in the unlovely stable lofts where dwell a dozen persons in a place never intended for one; in windowless attics of tall tenements where frail lives grow frailer day by day.
Lisabetta, Marianna, Fiametta, Teresina, They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one— Little children who have never learned to play; Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache today, Tiny Fiametta nodding when the twilight slips in, gray.
High above the clattering street, ambulance and fire-gong beat; They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one. Lisabetta, Marianna, Fiametta, Teresina, They have never seen a rosebush nor a dewdrop in the sun. They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, Fiametta,
Of a Black Hand and a Face behind a grating; They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocating, Never of a wild rose thicket, nor the singing of a cricket; But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams, And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams
Lisabetta, Marianna, Fiametta, Teresina, They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one; Let them have a long, long playtime, Lord of Toil, when toil is done; Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses of the sun.
Reverting to Poor Tom, well may the words of Dickens in Bleak House serve as a text for to-day: "There is not an atom of Tom's shrine, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, nor an obscurity or degradation about him, nor an ignorance, nor a wickedness, nor a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution, through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and the highest of the high."
Whatever of permanence the ideal democracy which underlies our institutions may achieve, it will not be the survival of conditions such as these, but the fruition of their betterment. Recognition of the sinister elements involved determines the modern type of library work with children. That work rests upon a knowledge of the background which has been pictured, upon the use of methods that shall reach sanely and effectively the contributing causes, upon correlation of all the social forces that can be brought to bear unitedly.
Recognition of conditions and causation gives power to, and justifies the modern trend of, library work with children as the most important and far-reaching of all its great work. Of thirty million men and women, and their children, who have come from Over-seas in two generations, 83 per cent were dwellers along the rim of the Mediterranean. Largely from that source have our towns grown overnight into swarming cities. Their children of to-day will be the men and women who in a generation will make or unmake the Republic. Ignorance and greed, rather than necessity, breed the chief menace in our national life. Alone as a detached social force, the library cannot hope to combat these, but in correlation with other forces may serve as one of the most potent agencies. In the children's rooms and in kindred places, the missionaries of the book take the disregarded bits of life about them and weave them into a human element of power. The children's rooms in the library and what they imply in the life of the people, are of such recent origin and growth that the complete force of their present-day work will not be fully apparent for a quarter century. What they hope to do, the instruments they purpose to use, are given succinctly in the pronouncement of one of our most progressive libraries
To make good books available to all children of a community.
To train boys and girls to use with discrimination the adult library.
To reinforce and supplement the class work of the city schools (public, private, parochial and "Sunday" schools).
To cooperate with institutions for civic and social betterment, such as playgrounds, settlements, missions, boys' and girls' clubs; and with commercial institutions employing boys and girls, such as factories, postoffice special delivery division, telegraph and telephone agencies and department stores.
And first and last to build character and develop literary taste through the medium of books and the influence of the children's librarian.
Pursuing these purposes, endeavoring to meet these tests. library work with children will make for better citizenship. It will take account not only of the children of the poor, but of the children of the well-to-do, who may need that influence even more. In the cities, which now overshadow our national life, there are no longer homes; there are flats, where the boys and girls are tolerated—perhaps.
"Our problem is not the bad boy, but rather the modern city," says Prof. Allen Hoben. "The normal boy has come honestly by his love of adventure, his motor propensities and his gang instincts. It is when you take this healthy biological product and set him down in the midst of city restrictions that serious trouble ensues. For the city has been built for economic convenience, and with little thought for human welfare. Industrial aim is evidenced to every sense. You smell industrialism in the far- reaching odors of the stockyards. You hear it in the roar of the elevated hard by the windows of the poor. You see it in a water front that people cannot use, and you touch it in the fleck of soot that is usually on your nose. The proof of industrial aggression ceases to be humorous, however, when it shows itself in the small living quarters of many a city flat where boys are supposed to find the equivalent of the old-time house. Constituted as he is, the boy cannot but be a nuisance in the flat community. And because the flat dweller moves frequently, he will be without those real neighbors of long standing whose leniency formerly robbed the law of its victims. Furthermore, he has no particular quarters of his own where he may satisfy his sense of proprietorship and save up the numerous things he collects with a view to using them in construction. The flat dwellers will not permit the noise or litter incident to such building as a boy likes; and he has little if any part in the labor of conducting the house. He loses dignity as a helpful and necessary member of the family, he loses that loyalty which attaches to the old familiar places of boyhood experience and strengthens many a man to-day, making him more kind and consistent in his living by virtue of homestead memories."
So the boy is driven to the street as his domain. It is his playground. And here he encounters the policeman. Of 717 children arrested in one month in New York City, more than half were arrested for playing games. Parenthetically, the fact may be quoted that in this children's chief playground in a period of ten months 67 children were killed and 196 injured.
Unerringly, these facts point to a union of social forces—the children's library and the children's playground, a realization of that clear comprehension which the ancient Greeks had of the unity between the body and the mind. Quoting Plato: "If children are trained to submit to laws in their plays' the love of law enters their souls with the music accompanying their games, never leaves them, and helps them in their development."
Having in thought physical recreation as a stimulus to mental development, in combination bringing home the joyousness of life, an ideal union of forces is being effected in some of the larger cities. In some places, the movement has assumed but an initial stage—a bit of tent shelter for distribution of books to children gathered at the sand pile. In some instances co- operation has joined the work of park breathing centers and library organizations. This has reached completed form in the placement of branch libraries as part of the park equipment, either quarters within a general building, or a separate little building adjacent to or on the athletic field.
But whether in place of high or low degree; whether in rented store or memorial building of monumental type; whether in the rooms of a school building or a corner in a factory; whether by this method or by that, the children's librarian employs the printed page to serve as instrument to these ends:
The building of character, making for the best in citizenship.
The enlargement of narrow lives, bringing the joy and savour and beauty of life to the individual.
The opening of opportunity to all alike, which is the essence of democracy.
And in, the doing, an incidental and a great contribution is made to society as a whole. For, as the story hour unfolds a new world to the listener whose life has been bounded by a litter- covered alley and three bare walls, or whose look into the outside world has been perhaps a roof of tar and gravel and a yawning chasm beyond, so the development of the imagination through the right sort of books shall make possible the fullest development of the individual boy and girl. In many a life there has been a supreme moment when some circumstance, some stimulus has changed that life for good or ill. For want of that stimulus, the dormant power of many a man has gone to waste. Half the derelicts of humanity who are but outcasts of the night had in them the making of good men—perhaps some of them of great men, in science or in art. There is no waste that is greater than lost opportunity; there is no loss so great as undiscovered resource. Speaking of imagination in work, Mr. Hamilton Wright Mabie points out that:
"So long as the uses of the imagination in creative work are so little comprehended by the great majority of men, it can hardly be expected that its practical uses will be understood. There is a general if somewhat vague recognition of the force and beauty of its achievements as illustrated in the work of Dante, Raphael, Rembrandt and Wagner; but very few people perceive the play of this supreme architectural and structural faculty in the great works of engineering, or in the sublime guesses at truth which science sometimes makes when she comes to the end of the solid road of fact along which she has traveled. The scientist the engineer, the constructive man in every department of work uses the imagination quite as much as the artist; for the imagination is not a decorator and embellisher, as so many appear to think; it is a creator and constructor. Wherever work is done on great lines or life is lived in field of constant fertility, the imagination is always the central and shaping power."
I would have liked in this over-lengthy, but yet fragmentary survey of the field from the viewpoint of the library, to say something of the mistakes which have perhaps been made, and which may still be made unguardedly by reason of over-zeal whereby the relationship of the work to other things may be ignored or misunderstood; of the danger that over-strong consciousness as to possession of high ideals may dictate too urgent use of books that may have literary style, but do not reach the heart of the boy—driving him to the comic supplement and to the dregs of print for his reading hours. These, and other comments must be left for another occasion.
I would also have liked to say something of the history of work with children in libraries, but Miss Josephine Rathbone has told the story fully and well. In that history, when it shall be written a quarter century hence, it will be fitting to give full meed of honor to Samuel Sweet Greene, Edwin H. Anderson, Mrs. H. L. Elmendorf, Miss Frances J. Olcott, Miss Linda A. Eastman and some of the other splendid women of the profession whose presence here precludes the mention of their names.
So, too, I would have liked to give the result, statistically, of an inquiry, which the helpful kindness of Miss Faith E. Smith, chairman of this section, has enabled me to make. It must suffice here to limit the statement to a brief summary that shows less what has been accomplished than what remains to be attempted:
There are in the United States to-day approximately 1,500 public libraries containing each more than 5,000 volumes. The number reporting children's work is 525, with a total of 676 rooms having an aggregate seating capacity of 21,821, and an available combined supply of 1,771,161 volumes on open shelves. The number of libraries in which story hours are held is 152, and 304 report work with schools. Of course, this work is pitifully meager as to many libraries. The number of children who come more or less under the direct influence of children's librarians is generously estimated as 1,035,195 (103 libraries, including all the large systems reporting). There are in the United States of children from 6 to 16 years of age, approximately thirty-three millions.
Behind the work of the children's librarians there is a fine spirit of optimism—not blind to difficulties, but courageous, ardent and hopeful.
Disregarding ridicule, which is but a cheap substitute for wit; regardful of criticism, which is often provocative or promotive of improvement, inspired with the dignity of their high calling, and with a fine vision that projects itself into the future, the librarians engaged in the work with children willingly give thereto the finest and the best of personality that they possess. Descriptive of their spirit, we may aptly paraphrase the words of a great humanitarian of our own generation:
"Some there are, the builders of humanity's temples, who are laboring to give a vast heritage to the children of all the world. They build patiently, for they have faith in their work.
"And this is their faith—that the power of the world springs from the common labor and strife and conquest of the countless age of human life and struggle; that not for a few was that labor and that struggle, but for all. And the common labor of the race for the common good and the common joy will bring that fulness of life which sordid greed and blighting ignorance would make impossible."
And you have the faith of the builders.
The function of library work with children as a factor in community life is further shown in the following articles. This function includes, in the minds of the writers, a recognition that the chief aim in education is character building; the necessity of the careful selection of books for all classes of children; the understanding of the personal relationship of the child to the library; the development of a sense of ownership on the part of the child; the possibility of being a factor in the assimilation of the foreign element of the population; and the realization that all are workers in a common cause, thus bringing encouragement and inspiration.
One of the sessions of the Children's librarians section of the A. L. A. meeting at Minnetonka in 1908 was given up to the discussion of the place of children's library work in the community. The library point of view was presented by Miss Moore.
Annie Carroll Moore was born in Limerick, Maine, and was graduated from Limerick Academy in 1889 and Bradford Academy in 1891. After completing her work in the Pratt Institute Library School in 1896 she became children's librarian in the Pratt Free Library where she remained until 1906. She then organized the children's department in the New York Public Library, of which she is still supervisor. Miss Moore has lectured on library work with children and has contributed many articles on the subject to library periodicals.
Fifteen years ago the Minneapolis public library opened a children's room from which books were circulated. Previous to 1893 a reading room for children was opened in the Brookline (Mass.) public library but the Minneapolis public library was the first to recognize the importance of work with children by setting aside a room for their use with open shelf privileges and with a special assistant in charge of it.
Since 1893 children's rooms and children's departments have sprung up like mushrooms, all over the country, and first in Pittsburg, then in Brooklyn, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York City and Queens Borough, children's rooms in branch libraries have been organized into departments from which a third, at least, of the entire circulation of the libraries is carried on by assistants, either trained or in training to become children's librarians.
It has been the inevitable accompaniment of such rapid growth that the work should suffer growing pains in the form of criticism and even caricature at the hands of casual observers and clever writers. Those of us who have been identified with the movement since its inception have somehow managed to preserve our faith in a survival of the fittest by remembering that there was a time when everything was new, and have felt that if we could keep a firm grip on the active principles which inspire all successful work with children, whether it is the work of a small independent library or that of a large system of libraries, our labor was not likely to be lost. The children, the books and ourselves are the three elements to be combined and the success of the combination does not depend upon time, nor place, nor circumstance. It depends upon whether we have a clear vision of our surroundings and are able to adapt ourselves to them, a growing appreciation of the value of books to the persons who read them, and the power of holding the interest and inspiring the respect and confidence of children.
If we can do all these things for a period of years we have little need to worry about the future success of the work. The boys and girls will look after that. In many instances they have already begun to look after it and the best assurance for the future maintenance of free libraries in America rests with those who, having tried them and liked them during the most impressionable years of their lives, believe in the value of them for others as well as for themselves to the extent of being ready and willing to support them.
In passing from a long and intimate experience in the active work of a children's room in an independent library to the guidance of work in the children's rooms of a system of branch libraries, a great deal of thought has been given to deepening the sense of responsibility for library membership by regarding every form of daily work as a contributory means to this end.
The term "library membership" is a survival of the old subscription library but it defines a much closer relationship than the terms "borrower" or "user" and broadens rather than restricts the activities of a free library by making it seem more desirable to "belong to the library" than to "take out books."