- (1) The making of library use continuous from the earliest possible age, thru school life and afterwards;
- (2) Cooperation with the teacher in guiding and limiting the child’s reading during the school period;
- (3) Aid within the library in the preparation of school work;
- (4) The supplementing of classroom libraries by the loan of books in quantity;
- (5) The cultivation of personal relations between library assistants and teachers in their immediate neighborhood;
- (6) The furnishing of accurate and up-to-date information to schools regarding the library’s resources and its willingness to place them at the school’s disposal;
- (7) The increase of the library’s circulation collection along lines suggested and desired by teachers;
- (8) The granting of special privileges to teachers and special students who use the library for purposes of study.
Toward the realization of these aims three departments are now cooperating, each of them in charge of an expert in his or her special line of work.
- (1) The children’s rooms in the various libraries, now under the direction of an expert supervisor.
- (2) The traveling library office.
- (3) The division of school work, with an assistant in each branch, under skilled headquarters superintendence.
When our plans, which are already in good working order, are completely carried out, we shall be able to guarantee to every child guidance in his reading up to and thru his school course, with direction in a line of influence that will make him a user of books thruout his life and create in him a feeling of attachment to the public library as the home and dispenser of books and as a permanent intellectual refuge from care, trouble, and material things in general, as well as a mine of information on all subjects that may benefit or interest him.
Some of the obstacles to the immediate realization of our plans in full may be briefly stated as follows:
- (1) Lack of sufficient funds. With more money we could buy more books, pay higher salaries, and employ more persons. The assistants in charge of children’s rooms should be women of the highest culture and ability, and it is difficult to secure proper persons at our present salaries. Assistants in charge of school work must be persons of tact and quickness of perception, and they should have no other work to do; whereas at present we are obliged to give this work to library assistants in addition to their ordinary routine duties, to avoid increasing our staff by about forty assistants, which our appropriation does not permit.
- (2) Misunderstanding on the part of the public, and also to some extent on the part of teachers, of our aims, ability, and attitude. This I am glad to say is continually lessening. We can scarcely expect that each of our five hundred assistants should be thoroly imbued with the spirit of helpfulness toward the schools or even that they should perfectly understand what we desire and aim to do. Nor can we expect that our wish to aid should be appreciated by every one of fifty thousand teachers or a million parents. This will come in time.
- (3) A low standard of honesty on the part of certain users of the library. It is somewhat disheartening to those who are laboring to do a public service to find that some of those whom they are striving to benefit, look upon them merely as easy game. To prevent this and at the same time to withstand those who urge that such misuse of the library should be met by the withdrawal of present privileges and facilities uses up energy that might otherwise be directed toward the improvement of our service. Now, like the intoxicated man, we sometimes refuse invitations to advance because it is “all we can do to stay where we are.” Here is an opportunity for all the selective influences that we may bring to bear, and unfortunately the library can have but little part in these.
Have I wandered too far from my theme? The good that a public library may do, the influence that it may exert, and the position that it may assume in a community, depend very largely on the ability and tact with which it is administered and the resources at its disposal. Its public services may be various, but probably there is no place in which it may be of more value than side by side with the public school; and I venture to think that this is the case largely because education to be complete must select as well as train, must compel the fit to step forward and the unfit to retire, and must do this, not only at the outset of a course of training but continuously thruout its duration. We speak of a student being “put thru the mill,” and we must not forget that a mill not only grinds and stamps into shape but also sifts and selects. A finished product of a given grade is always such not only by virtue of formation and adaptation but also by virtue of selection. In human training one of the most potent of these selective agencies is the individual will, and to train that will and make it effective in the right direction there is nothing better than constant association with the records of past aims and past achievements. This must be my excuse for saying so much of libraries in general, and of one library in particular, in an address on what I have ventured to give the name of Selective Education.