There is need for greater co-operation between teachers and librarians. There are tendencies in teaching that are strangling rather than imparting the love of fine literature. It is no longer sufficient to give to the reader the music of lyric, the stir of epic—poetry must serve as an exercise in grammar. It is not sufficient that from virile prose the reader may obtain the glow of the writer's fancy or thought—it must do duty as a bit of sentence construction, or a companion piece to a lesson in geography or, perhaps, of history. We are told that poetry is dead. Who killed it? and how long would it take to do the like for prose?
Whatever of criticism as to plan and method may be rightfully made against public library work with children, the earnestness that underlies it all will, in the end, serve to eliminate the real causes for such criticism. Its meaning will unfold as time goes on—the first children's room opened in a public library dates back not much more than a dozen years. In the almonry of Westminster, three and one-half centuries ago, William Caxton chose carefully for his printing press, with deep reverence in his heart for the white souls upon which his characters would be printed as surely as upon the white paper before him. And with that same thought and care will be sifted, in the work that is being carried on now, the printed page that helps to mould and build the character of the newer generations.
TRAVELLING LIBRARIES[12]
FOLLOWING in the wake of the great public library movement, which in less than two decades has dotted the cities of the United States with buildings that house millions of books for the people, came systems of traveling libraries. The institutions which Jenkin Lloyd Jones satirically terms Carnegeries, provide city dwellers with an amplitude of reading material, but there was until a few years ago no provision for similarly meeting the greater needs of the isolated persons living remote from centers of population—in thousands of little hamlets, in mining and lumber camps, in uncounted farmhouses.
Just fifteen years ago, Mr. Melvil Dewey, then state librarian of New York, ever foremost in progressive library work and originator of most of the far-reaching methods for making public libraries useful and efficient, solved the problem which had bothered many thinkers on the subject: How to give country people access to collections of books selected by experienced and educated buyers, and how to renew these collections so as to keep a fresh and plentiful supply on hand at all times. Mr. Dewey's solution of the problem was absurdly simple. Anybody could have thought it out without effort—but nobody else did. It was this: From a centrally administered library, groups of books carefully selected so as to comprise fifty or sixty volumes each, were packed into suitable boxes or cases, and sent to small villages, country schoolhouses, and centrally located farmhouses, to be distributed to the neighborhoods on the same plan as books are given out from branch stations in cities. At the end of six months, the books would be gathered by the custodian, shipped back to the central distributing agency, and a fresh lot would take their place. By this simple and economical method the people of these little neighborhoods would secure an opportunity to read the best and most interesting books without financial burden.
"In the work of popular education," said Melvil Dewey pertinently, "it is, after all, not the few great libraries, but the thousand small that may do most for the people."
In fifteen years, the first little chest of books that went upon its travels has multiplied to more than 5,000. Probably a third of a million books are now constantly "on the go" in this fashion. Figures are available for only twenty-two of the states, and according to these the circulation for the states enumerated was 600,443 books last year. It must be remembered that for a few years after the plan was transplanted from New York to other states, private contributions were the only reliance for maintaining the systems of traveling libraries. It is only within the last half dozen years that the demonstration of their usefulness prompted state legislatures to make appropriations for this purpose, to enable state library commissions to extend this great work on a liberal scale. The ease with which the traveling libraries may be adapted to meet various needs may be shown in a rapid summary compiled by Mr. F. A. Hutchins, who has been one of the leading promoters of them in this state.