Library Work with Children

by Alice Isabel Hazeltine

It must be impressed upon them that if they do not understand the general instruction you are always ready and glad to explain further. If they feel that you are really interested, even the smallest ones will work with enthusiasm to prepare their own call slips instead of asking each time for just any good book.

The intermediate grades, the fifth and sixth, and sometimes the fourth, are quite able to understand the general catalog. I should not advise much explanation at the school, at least in these grades, of the card catalog, if the library has a printed list. The use of a classed catalog, with its index, is easily comprehended, and there are many whole classes of books which these children will enjoy knowing about; boys, I should say, perhaps, for it is the pages containing electricity, photography, boat-building, and hunting, which are worn and crumpled. It is the classed catalog which they will use most, but they should understand the difference between it and the author list.

In all schools it is a good plan to give quizzes, even on a first visit, to draw the children out. Those who are already patrons of the library are delighted to show their knowledge. Afterwards it would be well before the day of the visit, with the teacher's consent, to send a short set of questions which would be answered and returned for correction, thus giving you an idea of what points need dwelling upon. These questions would vary from the simplest points in filling out library numbers, giving authors to titles and vice versa, to questions on arrangement, use of dictionary catalog and of various reference books.

In upper grades and high school add a simple explanation of the card catalog as being the most complete record, trusting to their interest in coming to the library to use it practically. If there is no printed catalog this explanation will have to be given to fifth and sixth years also.

They should be advised to use both kinds, and particularly the dictionary catalog for biography, as the short analytical references are most often what they want.

Children, boys again particularly, take to the card catalog with a confidence often lacking in their elders. I have seen them even make out their fiction lists from the cards in preference to the printed catalog, though for what reason I cannot explain, unless it is their innate desire to explore the unknown.

It is a good plan to have sample cards plainly written in large form on a sheet of paper, in addition to using a section of the catalog itself if it seems advisable to take it. In lower rooms a blackboard talk holds the attention better.

The use of the guide card, which misleads so many grown people, the heading in red, and the see and see also cards in the dictionary catalog, and the arrangement of biography in a classed list are a few points, which may need dwelling upon, and which I mention as having been found in our experience to be pitfalls for the unwary.

In the upper grade rooms, and particularly in the high school, comes the use of the encyclopedias and reference books.

I have found it hard to hold the attention of sixth-year pupils in this part, but they ought to be familiar with a good encyclopedia and biographical dictionary, and the gazeteer.