The school library differs from the average public library in that it is usually a reference library first and a lending library only so far as the use of its books outside the building does not conflict with the usefulness of its service to the teachers and pupils in the school building.
Duties of the Librarian.—The first duty of the librarian is to make the books, photographs, and other possessions of the library available by a simple and acceptable system of classification and cataloguing. After this has been accomplished it will be necessary to make these possessions known to the teachers and pupils. This can only be done by one who is familiar with the material and trained in its use. If the reference work is done by an untrained worker it is a case of the blind leading the blind. A teacher with no training in library methods will not go to another teacher, known to be similarly deficient, for information in regard to books, and the pupils will get comparatively little real library help from one who is primarily a class-room teacher, untrained to meet all classes of readers and answer a great variety of questions.
The interested librarian will be on the lookout for any new books that may be of use to teachers and pupils; she will try to keep a balance in the matter of books for the various departments of study, to inform herself on current events and, in short, make herself as useful in all lines of high school work as is possible with the time and means at her disposal.
Assistance for the Librarian.—As the work of the library grows it will be necessary for the librarian to have assistance of some kind. The arrangement for this will depend largely upon the circumstances in the given school. In many schools student assistants are employed. In some cases boys are hired at a small sum per hour to give their services as pages. In others good students are allowed to volunteer for library work, giving one hour a day to it. They enjoy the work and find their enlarged knowledge of the library very useful. In some schools the librarian is assisted by a member of the teaching staff, who thus becomes familiar with the library and acquires some knowledge of reference work and can assist the pupils in various ways.
Purposes of a Library.—The purposes of a school library should be not only to provide laboratory material for the pupils’ work in literature and history, to enable the teacher to instruct them in the use of books as sources of information, and to assist the teacher in other ways, but also to instil in the pupils an interest in books as books, to cultivate a taste for reading. Too many high school graduates have no conception of a book, other than fiction, as anything but a task or a text.
The high school library should not try to compete with the public library if there is one in the same town. Literature for recreation pure and simple is better supplied by the public library, where it is available for those who are both below and above the high school age. But, on the other hand, if there is nothing to interest the students by its innate appeal, if everything in the school library suggests lessons, many of the students will view it with suspicion, and avoid it, unless sent there by the teachers.
Teaching the Use of the Library.—Most pupils when they enter the high school are ignorant of the use of the simplest and most common reference books. They do not know the difference between a table of contents and an index, and are so helpless in a library that their teachers hesitate to give them work outside their text-books. Even those who are best informed can be helped to the use of books which will be of the greatest assistance to them in the preparation of their daily lessons, essays, and debates.
Early in the school year the librarian ought to meet the new students and explain to them in the reading-room the grouping of the books and the fundamental principles underlying the making of a dictionary card catalogue. The location of various classes of reference books should be pointed out, the differences between a dictionary and an encyclopædia explained, and the various types of both commented upon. The pupils should be shown how to use “Poole’s Index” and the “Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature” and have the helpfulness of these aids clearly brought home to them by concrete illustrations in connection with some practical theme work or preparation for a debate. If this initial visit to the library is made the subject of a required paper in the English course the benefits are doubled. The pupils can be assigned problems of various kinds involving the intelligent use of tables of contents and indexes, and familiarizing themselves with a variety of reference books.[[4]] They can be asked to fill out a call slip from the reference in the card catalogue, take the volume to the delivery desk, have it charged out, return it, see it discharged and put back in its regular place on the shelves.
Library Instruction.—The library instruction, in order to be of real benefit to the pupils, should be made a part of the school curriculum and be given credit the same as other work. In most schools where it is given it is counted as a part of the English work. In the high schools of Michigan the time given to the library work varies from one to three exercises for each of the grades. The instruction is given in the form of lectures or informal talks, after which the pupils are required to work out a set of problems on reference books. This work is done in the library under the supervision of the librarian. The completed exercises are in some schools handed in to the librarian and in others to the English teacher, but the credit is usually given the pupil by his English teacher. The talks are arranged to suit the work and needs of the different classes. Those for the ninth grade pupils ordinarily include instruction in the use of dictionaries, encyclopædias and atlases, and the use of the table of contents and indexes in reference books. The instruction for the tenth grade takes up the use of the card catalogue, magazine indexes, year-books, and special indexes. The upper classes may be given practice work in comparing the value of different reference books, in learning to get references from various sources not on the reference shelves, and in the use of some of the government publications.
Library Courses.—One of the best library courses of this kind is that conducted by the librarian of the Detroit Central High School, where the work is graded to correspond with the regular grading of the English courses in that school. The librarian has a graded series of library questions which are among the best illustrations of this kind of work for high school courses available in print. We give specimens from the various series as follows: