Library Work with Children

by Alice Isabel Hazeltine

The function of the story hour as a recognized feature of library work with children has been variously discussed. The five papers given below represent these different points of view, and the experience of several libraries is included in the report of the Committee on Story- telling given at the Congress of the Playground Association of America in 1910.

Another group method, which has been adopted as a means of introducing children to books and of securing continuity of interest, is that of the reading club. The three articles given show the influence of the direct, personal effort of Miss Hewins, and the carefully organized work of somewhat different types in two large library systems.

The early history of home library work with children as conducted by the Boston Children's Aid Society and a consideration of the place of this method in extension work of libraries in general are included.

Library work in summer playgrounds is one development of cooperation with other institutions. The first article included may be supplemented by a statement made by Miss Frances J. Olcott in an article on "The public library, a social force in Pittsburgh," printed in the Survey magazine, March 5, 1910. She states that "Perhaps the most important phase of the library's work with children which is being developed at present is that of playground libraries. … Now that the Playground Association is establishing recreation centers for winter as well as summer, arrangements have been made with the library to supply books, the Association providing the necessary reading rooms in its new buildings." Practical difficulties in administration are discussed in the second article.

The last group of articles brings together several unrelated phases of work. Two special kinds of children's libraries are mentioned, one a type—the Sunday School library—and one a library organized for specific work in connection with the Children's Museum in Brooklyn. Work with colored children in a colored branch library is described. The last paper gives a vivid picture of work with children in a foreign district of a large city.

THE STORY HOUR

The paper by Edna Lyman Scott, printed in the Wisconsin Bulletin for January, 1905, was said to be introductory to a talk which she was to give at Beloit at the Wisconsin State meeting, February 22, 1905. The author looks upon the inauguration of the story hour as but the grasping of an opportunity in working with children in the library, as a means of cultivating the love of literature and of introducing the child to books.

Edna Lyman, now Mrs. Scott, was born in Illinois, educated in the schools of Oak Park, Ill., and at Bradford Academy, Haverhill, Massachusetts. At the time this paper was written she was the children's librarian in the Oak Park Public Library, then known as Scoville Institute. Her work in story telling became known outside the immediate field of its activity, and in 1907 Miss Lyman severed her connection with this library to give time to special preparation, and later to become a lecturer on literature for children and story-telling, and a professional story-teller. She spent portions of three years as Advisory Children's Librarian for the Iowa Library Commission, and during that period published her book "Story-telling: what to tell and how to tell it." She holds the position of non-resident faculty lecturer on Work for Children in the Library School of the University of Illinois, and the Carnegie Library School of Atlanta, Georgia, and lectures regularly in other library schools, before teachers' institutes and normal schools, women's clubs and study classes throughout the country.

When we touch the question of guiding the reading of children in our libraries we have opened the consideration of a subject which is one of the great arguments for the existence of public libraries.

All about we see and feel the utter indifference of parents to what their children are reading, or whether they are reading at all, and the results of this indifference appear on every hand, in the character of the books which content the child, or in his determination to bury himself in a book to the exclusion of every other interest.