Library Work with Children

by Alice Isabel Hazeltine

The library is endeavoring to co-operate more and more closely with the schools. More books have been issued to the teachers this winter than ever before. A new course of study having been published, all of the books referred to in it were looked up, and if not in the library or its branches, were purchased as largely as seemed desirable or possible. A list of "References for third-grade teachers," compiled by Miss May H. Prentice, training teacher in the Cleveland Normal School, has recently been published by the library. It was given to all of the third-grade teachers of the city, and sold to others. This is, we believe, the most comprehensive list ever prepared for a single grade of the common schools. We are hoping that it will prove so helpful to third-grade teachers that all of the other grades will demand similar ones for themselves, and that somehow the way will be found to meet the demand. The list of books noted by Miss Prentice for the children's own reading has been reprinted, without the annotations, in a little folder and 5,000 copies of it have just been distributed among the children of this grade.

Recently our school children were treated to the largest exhibition ever made in the United States to photographic reproductions of the masterpieces in art; to the work of the library in circulating pictures to teachers and children for school-room decoration and for illustration, is due no small share of this new interest in art.

While the children come to the library daily to look up subjects in connection with their school work, very little attention can be given to training them to use reference books as tools. Somewhere, either in the school or the library, this systematic teaching should be given. It is one of the things which is not being done.

And another thing is not being done—we are not reaching all of the children; in spite of our branches, our stations, our books in the schools, our Library League, there are many children who sadly need the influence of good books, who are not getting them—whole districts shut off from the use of the library by distance and inability to pay carfare. And we cannot give them branches or send books—for lack of funds.

It is a growing conviction in my own mind that the library, aside from its general mission, and aside from its co-operation with the schools in the work of education, has a special duty to perform for the city child. No one can observe city life closely without seeing something of the evil which comes to the children who are shut up within its walls; the larger the city the greater is the evil, the more effectually are the little ones deprived of the pure air, the sweet freedom of the fields and woods, to be given but too often in their stead the freedom of the streets and the city slums. The evil is greater during the long vacations, when the five-hour check of the school room is entirely removed, and many a teacher will testify to the demoralization which takes place among the children who are then let loose upon the streets. For these the library must to some extent take the place of Mother Nature, for under present condition it is through books alone that some of them can ever come to know her; books must furnish them with wholesome thoughts, with ideals of beauty and of truth, with a sense of the largeness of life that comes from communion with great souls as from communion with nature. If this be true, the school vacation ceases to be the resting time of the children's librarian; she must sow her winter wheat and tend it as in the past, but she must also gather in her crops and lay her ground fallow during the long summer days when school does not keep; she must find ways of attracting these children to spend a healthy portion of their time among the books, always guarding against too much as against too little reading. For this work the individual contact is needed, and there must be more children's librarians, more branch libraries. This necessity and the problem of meeting it require grave consideration by the librarian of to-day.

PICTURE BULLETINS IN THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARY

The practical usefulness as well as the artistic merit of picture bulletins is discussed in this report prepared for the Club of Children's Librarians for presentation at the Waukesha Conference of the A. L. A. in 1901. It is based upon answers received in response to a circular letter sent to various libraries.

Mrs. Mary E. S. Root was born and educated in Rhode Island, studied art before her marriage, became interested in children's literature through her own children, and organized the children's work in the Providence Public Library, where she still has charge of this work. She has held many offices in educational and civic organizations, and has lectured on children's literature. For two summers she conducted a course in children's work in the Simmons College Library School.

Mrs. Adelaide Bowles Maltby was born in New York City, and was graduated from a private school in Elmira, New York, in 1893, with an equivalent of one year's college work. After completing the regular course in Pratt Institute Library School in 1900, she spent six months in the Pratt Library, at the same time taking lectures in the second-year children's course. For four and one-half years she was head of the Children's Department in the Buffalo Public Library. She then became a member of the New York Public Library staff, first as special children's worker in Chatham Square Branch, then as branch librarian there, and later as librarian of the Tompkins Square Branch.

There has been a rather marked difference in activity between the eastern and western libraries on this subject of picture work, we of the east seeming more conservative, somewhat prone on the whole, because there is not time for elaborate work, to doubt its practical usefulness. The questions upon which this report is based were sent out in a circular letter to different libraries. These questions with their answers may be considered in order: