The most recent plan for the wide diffusion of popular books is the travelling library. This originated in New York in 1893, when the Legislature empowered the Regents of the State University (a body of trustees having charge of all library interests in that State) to send out selections of books to any community without a library, on request of 25 resident taxpayers. The results were most beneficial, the sole expense being five dollars for each library.
Travelling libraries, (mostly of fifty volumes each) have been set on foot in Massachusetts, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and other States, and, as the system appears capable of indefinite expansion, great results are anticipated in the direction of the public intelligence. It is pointed out that while the State, by its free school system, trains all the people to read, it should not leave the quality of their reading to chance or to utter neglect, when a few cents per capita annually would help them to an education of inestimable value in after life.
Some objections, on the other hand, have been urged to the system, as introducing features of paternalism into State government, and taking out of the hands of individual generosity and local effort and enterprise what belongs properly to such agencies. The vexed question of the proper function and limitations of State control in the domain of education cannot here be entered upon.
In the volume last published of statistics of American libraries, that of 1897, great progress was shown in the five years since 1891. The record of libraries reported in 1896 embraced 4,026 collections, being all which contained over 1,000 volumes each. The increase in volumes in the five years was a little over seven millions, the aggregate of the 4,026 libraries being 33,051,872 volumes. This increase was over 27 per cent. in only five years.
If the good work so splendidly begun, in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and some of the Western States, in establishing libraries through public taxation and private munificence, can only be extended in the Southern and Middle States, the century now about to dawn will witness an advance quite as remarkable as we have seen in the latter years of the century about to close.
Footnotes:
[1] MS. Records of the Virginia Company, in the Library of Congress.
