CHAPTER XXXIII
THE LIBRARY AND THE SCHOOL
506.
506. If libraries are an integral part of the educational system, it is clear that their relations with schools and with the teachers must be close. This is perhaps more cordially recognized in America than here, but there are few librarians who do not endeavour to establish a connexion between their libraries and the official teaching system of their towns. In the simplest instance special privileges are offered to teachers enabling them to borrow from five to twelve or more books at a time for class work. In some towns meetings of teachers and library staffs are held in order that mutual work may be discussed and arranged. In a few places there are special libraries for teachers; and in some American libraries not only are there these special libraries, but the teachers are provided with keys which give them access when other parts of the libraries are closed. One of the privileges of the public library is to encourage teachers to make the fullest use of books.
507.
507. It is gradually becoming recognized that a school without a library lacks an important part of its equipment. In colleges and high schools this has been recognized practically for some years past, but in few but the largest schools have separate rooms been assigned for library purposes, in the care of an assistant trained in the work. A teacher whose principal business is teaching has usually been thought to be a person sufficiently qualified for the work, with the result that rarely have the libraries been exploited to anything like the full measure of their possibilities. They are places where books are read or from which books are lent, not places where readers are created, information disseminated, or the practical use of books taught. In fact, one of the absurd gaps in our higher school curriculum is the want of teaching in the book, in the elements of bibliography; and until this is filled our school system must be pronounced to be incomplete. American methods deserve study, with a view to their adaptability to British conditions; and such works as Gilbert O. Ward’s The High School Library, in the A. L. A. Manual of Library Economy (as showing the field and its possibilities), and Florence M. Hopkins’s Reference Guides that Should be Known, and How to Use Them (as showing a practical method in one part of library teaching), will repay such study.
508.
508. In council and similar elementary schools the municipal library has one of its best fields of work. Under the present restricted financial conditions of libraries, however, it is necessary to say that the provision of reading matter in the schools should be a charge against educational funds and not against those of the library, which are already altogether insufficient for ordinary work. It is at the same time probable that this work, in so far as book-selection and purchase, cataloguing and classification, binding, and other details of organization and administration are concerned, can be done better and more economically by the librarian than by the teacher, and should accordingly be directed by the library committee. The theory of the work is that while the librarian is the best person to organize the school library, the teacher is the best person to bring books and children together. Some education authorities make special grants for this work, varying from a few to several hundreds of pounds yearly; but before we describe the methods most generally approved, we may make mention of the various unaided efforts that librarians have made to meet the needs of schools. One is to invite the teacher to obtain, upon his own signature, a ticket for every child whom he considers to be of reading age; to permit him to borrow the number of books represented by such tickets; and to retain them so long as he thinks necessary for their due circulation. Three months is an average loan period. A second is to waive the ticket-taking preliminary and to lend the teacher a number of books for a few weeks or months for lending as he thinks good amongst the scholars. There have been many variations of these two methods, but they are obviously one in principle; and, useful as they no doubt are, they are also obviously limited, as few British libraries have a large enough stock of books of the right kind to lend in this way to all the schools in the town which might require the privilege. School libraries to be lastingly effective require a separate stock with many duplicates, and these no ordinary public library can, in present circumstances, provide.
509.
509. Co-operation between library and education committees seems to be the best method of achieving satisfactory school libraries. By this method the education committee provides the funds, the libraries the administration, and the teachers the actual service amongst the children. Wherever there is a children’s department at the public library it ought to be the centre from which all the libraries in the town should be organized, supplied and co-ordinated. Again, to secure any success, the closest co-operation is necessary between teachers and librarians. This is generally forthcoming, but frequently is not, for reasons made clear to the editor of this Manual by a prominent teacher, who writes: “I do not like the circulating of libraries from school to school—it is most unsatisfactory. I know the need of the children in my school more exactly than anyone else, and I do not want books dumped on me that my children will not read.” Moreover, it was affirmed that the books chosen by librarians were unsuitable as being “too adult.” It is clear, however, that the only real difficulty raised here is that to the exchange of the collections between the schools. All the other difficulties can be, and are, overcome by the co-operation which is postulated for the work.