Library Work with Children

by Alice Isabel Hazeltine

Chief among these is the use we are making of the child's instinct for play and mental diversion as a means of building up both the individual and the social life. Chicago has made the discovery of the civic value of recreation centers for the play of the people. Not since old Rome's circus maximus and the Olympic games of Greece has any city made such provision for the recreation of its people as is to be found in these great playfields, surrounding the beautifully designed and well equipped field houses, which at a cost of $12,000,000 of the tax payers' money have been built in the most crowded districts of Chicago. The recreation centers illustrate the civic opportunity and value of library work with children. For the Chicago public library was quick to see and seize the advantage thus offered to serve the city. The delivery stations and reading rooms established in these field houses are already recognized to be the most useful of its centers to the child life of the city. The organized volunteer cooperation of several groups of women has added the story hour as a regular feature of the library work at these playgrounds, and at two public school buildings where similar stations are to be established in cooperation with the Board of education. At the central library building the work in the Thomas Hughes Young people's reading room has also been successfully supplemented by the story hour appointments in a large hall, with the same efficient cooperation.

The quick and large response given by the people to these civic extensions of library service in every city and town where they have been offered, demonstrates what a large field of usefulness awaits public library enterprise and occupancy. But the experiment has gone far enough to prove the absolute necessity of having librarians especially trained for work with children; and to that end, the addition of the position of children's librarian to the classified civil service lists for which special examinations are set.

Equally with the schools and playgrounds, our library centers are essential to American democracy. All three are to be classed together as our most democratic and efficient agencies for training our people into their citizenship and assimilating them into the American body politic. Nowhere are we on a more common footing of an equality of opportunity than in the public schools, the public playground and the public library.

The public school stands upon that bit of mother earth which belongs equally to us all. The playground is open alike to all comers. And the public library is not only as free and open to all as to any of our whole people, but also confers citizenship in that time-long, world wide democracy of the Republic of Letters.

The civic service thus democratically to be rendered by library work with children is indispensably valuable. It may be made more and more invaluable to any community by intelligent insight into the needs of the people, and by the practical and prompt application of library resources which are limited only by our capacity, enterprise and energy to develop and apply them.

ESTABLISHING RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARY AND OTHER CIVIC AGENCIES

A broader idea of library work with children necessitates greater knowledge of other agencies which work with them and a spirit of willing cooperation on the part of the children's librarian. From her experience in the city of Washington Miss Herbert contributed the following article of The Library Journal. Clara Wells Herbert was born in Stockbridge, Mass.; was a student in Vassar from 1894 to 1896; received a special certificate from the Training School for Children's Librarians in 1904; was children's librarian in the Brooklyn Public Library from 1904 to 1907, and since that time has been the head of the Children's department in the Public Library of the District of Columbia.

The children's departments of many city libraries are carrying on a fine aggressive work and through branch children's rooms, close work with schools, including deposits of books in classrooms, deposits of books and story-telling in playgrounds, home libraries and home visiting, are coming close to the children and putting good books within their reach. Such work rests upon a large staff and a generous appropriation. On the other hand, the small town library has the advantage of informal relations with its people and is a part of the various activities of the town. Between these two types of libraries is a third. It is located in a city too large for the helpful informal relations of the town library. It cannot, on the other hand, carry on its own aggressive work, for it is hampered by the smallness of its staff and the meagerness of its appropriation.

To libraries of this sort the effecting of cordial relations with other civic institutions is of the utmost importance. Upon it depends largely the outside work of the library and a specialized knowledge of conditions very essential for intelligent work.

Nor is the library the only one to profit by cooperation.