A CIVICS ROOM IN A MEDIUM-SIZED TOWN

Perhaps the best method of indicating the scope and material of a civics room in a medium-sized library is to describe what are the essentials of a civics room in a large city, permitting the adaptation of such features of the latter to the former as the locality and conditions may suggest.

A year ago last month a room was opened in the Chicago public library which is known as the civics room. The legend on the door announces "Sociology, Municipal Affairs, Business, Economics, Political Science, and Education." At first people were very curious to see what the civics room was like, and many there were of the idle curious who came to see what we had, but as the subjects dealt with were not what are generally considered as sources of amusement and entertainment, this patronage gradually ceased until now we have only the earnest, studious class.

The work required in assembling and taking care of the material is such as to demand the most concentrated efforts and the most specialized training upon the part of the librarian. She must be familiar with the great issues of the day and must be able to look ahead and assemble material where she sees that a topic is engaging the attention of public-spirited men.

The material which is stored in the civics room, therefore, is less in the form of books than in the way of pamphlets, magazine articles, and newspaper clippings—that which is usually regarded as ephemera. The latest material is not to be found in books, for by the time a subject has been before the public, has been talked about, assimilated, and finally published in book form it is practically an old subject.

One of the first considerations for the librarian is where to obtain this material. Our civics room has a card index of institutions and societies that are interested in the subjects that we cover in our work, and since we are on the mailing list of most of the associations we are pretty well supplied with their publications. The National Municipal Review, published quarterly by the National Municipal League, has a section devoted to new pamphlet material and is a great help in learning of new publications. Other journals of particular value are: The Survey, with its Information Desk, The Municipal Engineer, The American City, and The American Political Science Review.

For magazine articles, of course we have the Readers' Guide, but most of our magazine material is in the form of separates. The branches of our library return innumerable magazines to the main library and these are immediately dismembered and the articles of value and interest to us are taken out and treated as if they were pamphlets. Our newspaper clippings are obtained from 150 foreign and domestic newspapers which our reading room receives daily. Representative material is obtained in this way from all sections of the country. The pamphlets, magazine separates, and newspaper clippings, together with a small, well-selected collection of books and a goodly supply of current magazines upon economic and sociological subjects constitute the material of the room.

If you were to visit our civics room you would see one entire side of the room lined with pamphlet boxes. Each box represents a subject. Collected in one box are pamphlets, magazine separates, and newspaper clippings. The patron is not compelled to read antiquated books in studying his subject, nor is he compelled to go through the Readers' Guide and wait for his magazines to be brought to him. Here, all gathered together, is the latest material to be had. Each pamphlet is classified; each magazine separate is made into permanent form by being stapled in a manila folder with source, title, date, and class number on the cover; each newspaper clipping is classified with source and date and placed in a large manila envelope. We use the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau's expansion of the 300's of the Dewey Classification for classifying our material. Selections from the contents of a typical box will show what kind of material is to be had. The subject is The recall:

Address of Pres. Taft at the banquet of the Swedish-American Republican League. 62d Cong. 2d. sess. Sen. doc. 542. Mar. 9, 1912.

Address on the recall of judges and the recall of judicial decisions at the session of the annual meeting of the Ill. State Bar Assoc. Apr. 26, 1912.

Election and recall of federal judges; speech of Hon. Robt. L. Owen. 62d Cong. 1st Sess. Sen. doc. 99. July 31, 1911.

Federal recall and referendum. Springfield Republican. Dec. 5, 1912.

How the "recall of decisions" would protect the weak from injustice. Chicago Tribune. Apr. 7, 1912.

If recall ever comes, judges will cause it. Dallas News. June 8, 1912.

Importance of an independent judiciary. Ind. Apr. 4, 1912.

Judicial decisions and public feeling; address by Elihu Root. 62d Cong. 2d sess. Sen. doc. 271. Jan. 19, 1912.

A judicial oligarchy. Century mag. Oct., 1911.

The judicial recall. Century mag. May, 1912.

The judicial recall a fallacy of constitutional government; speech by Rome G. Brown. 62d Cong. 2d sess. Sen. doc. 892. Aug. 3, 1912.

Judicial recall is turned down. Baltimore American. July 4, 1912.

Judicial tyranny and the remedy; speech by Isaac R. Sherwood. May 2, 1912.

Life terms and the judicial recall. Chicago American. July 16, 1912.

Nullifying the law by judicial interpretation. Atlantic. Apr., 1911.

Oakland defeated recall nearly 2 to 1. San Francisco Chronicle. Apr. 6, 1912.

Recall for all but judges urged. New York Sun. Jan. 6, 1913.

Recall in Oregon. Washington Post. Sept. 2, 1912.

Recall in Seattle. McClure's. Oct., 1911.

Recall of judges. Ind. Aug. 17, 1911.

Recall of judges. Editorial Rev. Nov., 1911.

Recall of judges; address by James Manahan. July 19, 1911.

Recall of judges; arguments in opposition by Mr. Rome G. Brown. July 19, 1911.

Recall of judges a rash experiment. Century. August, 1911.

Recall of judges and judicial decisions; speech by Hon. Augustus Gardner. Apr. 4, 1912.

Recall of public servants; speech by Hon. Jonathan Bourne. Aug. 5, 1911.

Restricting the judiciary. Chicago Daily News. June 16, 1913.

Right of the people to rule; address of Theodore Roosevelt. Mar. 20, 1912.

Seeks substitute for judicial recall. Indianapolis Star. Aug. 30, 1912.

Study on the recall of presidents. Chicago Tribune. Sept. 23, 1912.

Where the recall is justified. International. Dec., 1912.

Wisconsin Assembly Bill; the interpellation or recall of commissions and other state officers. Jan. 29, 1913.

Wilson explains recall. Springfield Republican. Sept. 26, 1912.

We keep the public informed of what is taking place in the Illinois legislature by having a complete file of the house and senate bills and joint resolutions. These are carefully indexed so that if a patron asks for the bills relating to non-partisan elections, by turning to our index and looking under Municipalities—Non-partisan elections, the bills are easily found. Likewise the ordinances that are passed by the city council are treated in the same way.

We have found from our experience covering a year's work that the subjects that have been most used are as follows:

Some of the questions selected at random, show the demands made upon the room. A committee of the City Council is appointed to investigate the question of public service corporation commissions, and the library receives a call for material upon the question "Whether it is better to have public utilities regulated by state public service commissions, or to have them regulated by the City Council." When the investigation of the telephone rates is to be made the history of the telephone investigations carried on by previous councils is looked up. Upon investigating the advisability of electrifying the railway terminals, statistics are demanded showing the amount of damage that is done by the smoke of the railroads in the city limits. Only the live, up-to-date material can be of any value to these city officials, and a knowledge of what other cities have done relative to these questions is necessary.

Newspaper men who are doing such excellent work in keeping the people informed about what improvements are being made to better the conditions in the city, demand a great deal of a civics room. For example: A newspaper man writing a series of articles upon how to improve Chicago, wishing to write an article on housing, sends in a call for information regarding Schmidlapp houses, and it is our business to get him the material. Again he wishes to show how to reduce the cost of living, and sends in a request for information concerning the conveyance of produce from the farmer to the consumer by means of the interurban cars. Or again he wishes to inspire the public with the desire to beautify the city with window boxes and flowers and he wishes to know what European cities are doing along this line.

Civic associations and women's clubs are constantly making demands upon our resources. Such questions as:

What material have you from the budget exhibits of other cities?

Statistics showing the death rate in garden cities as compared with the death rate in cities where the population is congested.

The provision of giving the wages of prisoners to the support of the family.

Public comfort stations.

City planning and garden cities.

The question of working women's wages in its relation to the social evil was studied, during the recent investigation of the Illinois Vice Commission, by students and women's clubs.

Students find our room a boon. They are able to get material there which they are not able to find anywhere else. This spring students at the University of Chicago were working upon a debate on Panama Canal tolls, and they were so eager to use our material that they would stay all day, leaving in relays to eat while a few were left behind to guard the material.

A civics room in a medium-sized town may be made one of the most important assets of the library if it can be arranged that the person in charge does not have to divide her attention with the main work of the other departments of the library. If the staff is limited it would be better to have the civics room situated in a centralized locality, such as the state library, with easy communication with the smaller libraries. These could have an index of what the state library has, and when the need would arise the librarian could communicate her wants to the state librarian and the material could be sent as a package library upon short notice.

And so we find that we can be of assistance to the members of the City Council, women's clubs, civic organizations, newspaper men and students. The future of the work is very bright; new lines of work open up; new opportunities for service present themselves. It is in this work that one can be alive; he can feel that he is a part of the great movement toward the betterment of his city and its people.

Dr. William H. Allen, director of the Bureau of Municipal Research, of New York, made the closing talk of the evening, taking as his subject, "What a city should expect and receive from a library." He made a plea that librarians as individuals should stand for something in the community, should take their place as persons in the affairs of the day as well as see to it that their institutions performed the work to be expected of a library. He also laid emphasis on the fact that the general public did not know of the work being done by libraries and the possibilities of further service and urged that discussions of such work should be given place in the general magazines and newspapers as well as library magazines. He strongly advocated individual thinking, the doing of that which the individual librarian felt to be the best for a given community whether it be in line with general library thought or not, claiming that individuality of action and thought made for a stronger and better administration even if such individuality led to criticism upon occasion.