The PRESIDENT: As my eye roves over this audience I see it is thickly sprinkled with punctuation marks. It has been suggested that some of our papers ought to be discussed from the floor. We shall be glad to hear from any librarians who are in this audience, either in the form of experiences or comment.
Mr. OLIN S. DAVIS: While I approve fully all that the last speaker has said, I feel very strongly that the college or high school library should not be too complete and that the student should be encouraged to use the public library. Work should be given to the students in high schools and girls' schools that would require their coming to the public library, because if the children in the grades and high schools do not learn to use the public library in those years they will not be apt to use the library in later years when they have left school.
Miss HALL: I would like to say that the first thing we do with pupils is to take a census of the entering class to find out how many do not have cards in the public library; interview them to see why they have not; even to write letters to the parents and urge them to allow their children to have cards; and to see before the end of the first term that every student in the entering class has a card in the public library, has a note of introduction from the school librarian to the branch librarian of the public library, and to see that the branch librarian of our big cities and the high school librarian work together four years with that student. We have the very closest co-operation.
Miss AHERN: Most of you reading library literature lately have seen considerable criticism of the fact that when students go out from college they do not know how to use the library. That is sometimes the student's fault, but most often it is the fault of the college curriculum. That is a topic we need not discuss here. But I believe librarians will do a great service to those who are going into college activities if they emphasize and elaborate that idea of putting into the requirements for college entrance, a knowledge of how to use library machinery.
There are a good many things that are necessary for students to know before they are able to take up the work in colleges, particularly in literature and language. I am not saying that these should be any less. But here is something that I wonder no one has ever thought of before. It means a good deal more to a student to know how to use the various reference books in the college library on, say, the works of John Milton, than to have read some of the things which are included in the entrance examination. I think the idea of requiring a knowledge of how to use the library for college entrance is the best thing I have heard at a library meeting for a long time, and I hope the librarians who are present will impress that idea on their superintendents of schools, on their high school principals, and on the college authorities, as far as they can. It is a good thing. If we should not get anything else out of this 1913 meeting but to impress on the school people that a knowledge of how to use the library is a necessary requirement for a college course, we shall have gained a great point.
Mr. RANCK: I should like to ask Miss Hall about her experience with reference to the use of the library on the teaching of English and literature in the high school.
Miss HALL: I have been very much interested in this. Our school has been so large it has been very difficult to do all we would like to do. We have not been able to do what has been done in the Detroit or Grand Rapids high school in the way of instruction. But I have been interested in seeing what it has done for the English and the history departments. In the first place, our teachers are coming with their classes for instruction and the teachers are learning a great many things which they are putting in practice. For the last year we have done more with the Reader's Guide in history than ever before. Teachers are assigned to help me in my work. After they heard the talk on the Reader's Guide they said, "We can do this: we will go through the Reader's Guide and we will bring out everything that is really interesting on the history of France, Germany, China, Russia and the Balkan War; we will look over those articles and make a card of the best things." They are using the Reader's Guide in English more than ever before; they are using reference books more. After the talk on the Statesmen's Yearbook and on the almanacs and some of the yearbooks, such as the New International Yearbook, they are using them almost as textbooks. The Statesmen's Yearbook is in use nearly all the time, as is the New International Yearbook, since that talk. They are using the Reader's Guide for new material—essays that they want on special subjects, and are using it for debate work, informal debates on all sorts of interesting current problems for English work, training the students to do oral debating without any notes, and talks on the topics of the day. They are using encyclopedias more wisely than they used to. Teachers used to send scholars to encyclopedias for everything. And when we talked about the real use of encyclopedias and bibliographies, how the encyclopedia simply gave you a certain amount of definite information and often led to more important things, they began using those bibliographies.
Miss HOBART: I do not know that any librarian has been trying to work out the problem which I have of reaching the public school pupils and teachers. Some of the best things that I have found in that way are these: I made myself familiar, as early in the term as possible, with the teachers and the conditions of their home life. I found that some had very poor places to room, as they are apt to have in small communities, and to those I offered the use of the library rooms for evening use and for time out of school when they wished to correct papers. Our library is warm and light in the winter and cool and light in the summer. And the teachers were extremely glad to have a place where they could come and be quiet and comfortable and do their own work. I think that last year the teachers in our small village practically lived in the library. Even those who had homes there used to make it their abiding place most of their waking hours. For the high school pupils, at the time of their graduating essays, we laid books aside in different places in the library. Many of those children had no proper places at home where they could write. They came to the library and did their work; almost all the work on their graduating essays was done evenings. For six weeks we gave the use of our catalog rooms to two girls who had their books sent there. There were several out-of-town children; to those we gave a room in the basement. They came from school as quickly as possible at noon, ate their luncheon in a very short time and spent the rest of the intermission in the library doing reference work. The expressions of appreciation we have received and the consciousness of the help given to those children in the use of the library has been a great source of satisfaction.
Adjourned.