Manual of Library Economy / Third and Memorial Edition

by James Duff Brown; W. C. Berwick Sayers

493. The training of the children’s librarian is special and necessary. In England it has not been developed in any degree commensurate with the need, and our ideals in this matter must be drawn from our American cousins. They require a sound preliminary education in the candidate, a knowledge of the broader lines of general library administration, and, added to these, a study of the child mind, practical social service work, the study of the bibliography of juvenile literature, and practice—usually gained by actual work in children’s rooms—in story-telling, subject-hunting, bulletin-making, and similar matters. Cataloguing, classification, the preparing of attractive lists, etc., for children are all somewhat modified from the forms in use in the grown people’s departments, and all are treated specially. All these studies premise that the librarian has the requisite “personality,” and this is a matter of natural inheritance rather than of training. In Europe this special training can only be gained in the children’s room, and, as a matter of fact, is not always gained. Too often librarians have perforce been obliged to hand the conduct of the department to any member of the staff who might be available at the time. This state of affairs must receive attention if the children’s department is to accomplish its purpose. Probably the ordinary training of the Froebel system superadded to general library training is the best preparation that can be given to the British children’s librarian at present.

494. Activities of the Department.

494. Activities of the Department.—To bring the child into contact with the proper book is the aim of the department. Free choice amongst books will suffice in a number of instances; but such passive methods will not always secure good results. The assistant in charge must win the confidence of the children and guide them in the most unobtrusive manner possible to the books likely to be of interest and use. Various active methods are in use to gain this end. The most popular of these is the Story Hour.

495.

495. It has been premised that children from six to fourteen years of age will frequent the department, and there is a vast range of ability and taste in children in the various years between these ages. Little children require simple large-print books with plenty of illustrations, and may be drawn to them if story-telling forms part of the librarian’s activities. Story hours, indeed, are most attractive to children of all ages. They are given informally, the children usually being grouped round the librarian in a half-circle while she tells them a fairy story, or stories drawn from the greater writers, from history, poetry, or what not. The connexion between the story hour and the after reading of the books which contain the stories is clear. Such story-telling requires special and intelligent study, good elocution, fluency and the sense of the dramatic. The objection frequently offered to the work is that it is harmful to children for them to hear a story by a great writer delivered in inferior language and brokenly by an indifferent librarian. This, however, is purely a matter of experience and training, and there are admirable manuals of story-telling method by Miss Marie Shedlock, Miss L. M. Olcott, and others which may help in this matter. Otherwise the value of the work is undoubted. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh sets the standard which has general approval. There it is found that groups of thirty children are convenient in size, although it is often necessary to have larger groups. “To the younger children miscellaneous stories are told, selected chiefly from the folk-tales of various countries, legends, myths, fables, modern realistic stories and Bible stories. Two stories are usually told to each group, and whenever possible variety is given by the selection of stories of different types. Poems and nursery rhymes are occasionally included in these programmes. Special days are celebrated if stories can be found which express the spirit of the holiday and are sufficiently dramatic in form. The same stories are sometimes repeated during the year because of the deeper impression made through repetition, and the value to children of an intimate acquaintance with a few of the best things in literature appropriate for them. If something new is given each time, the impressions are confused and dissipated, and material which is either beyond a child’s appreciation or unsuitable for story-telling must finally be used. When an additional story is told, and the children are allowed a choice, the story requested is almost without exception a very old and well-known one. To the older children some of the great cycle stories are presented by telling one story each week. High adventure and romance, as depicted in these hero tales, have a special appeal to the boy and girl from ten to fifteen, and at this age interest is easily sustained.”[17]

[17] Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Stories to Tell to Children. See [List] at end of this division.

496.

496. More formal lectures prove entirely successful with children, the difficulty as a rule being to find accommodation for the numbers who desire to attend them. They differ from lectures given to adults principally in the fact that they are simpler, but not always even in this particular. Lecturing to children demands a freedom of manner and from mannerisms, decision and fluency; and it will be found that the audience is one of the most critical a lecturer can encounter. All the conditions of definite, clear and accurate subject-matter, refined humour, etc., which are required in books are also required in the lecture. Such subjects as the history of inventions and historical episodes appeal strongly to boys, but perhaps not so greatly to girls, who find nature, literary and similar lectures more to their taste—although dogmatic statement on this point is entirely unwise. The judicious use of lantern slides, pictures and exhibits enhances these lectures, but many subjects are better treated without them. Pictures of characters in works of imagination, for example, often destroy the child’s own, and therefore more valuable, conception of the characters. Good discipline is essential to successful lectures, and this depends upon the lecturer; uneasiness in the audience usually means that it is bored, and the lecturer is wise to consider it thus.

497.

497. Reading clubs and circles often form part of the activities of the department. In these the members, who are admitted to them formally, undertake to read through some special book under the guidance of a leader who, of course, may be a member of the library staff, although an older child may be induced to become leader. Usually the children read the prescribed portion of the book privately, and at the circle they go over it, talk about it, ask questions, and look at pictures, maps and other books that may throw more light on their reading or increase its interest.