We may divide the history of work with children into three epochs. During the first, our libraries were realizing with increasing clearness the necessity of doing something for children that they were not doing for adults. During the second this conviction had taken the practical form of segregation, physical and mental, and its details were worked out with definiteness. In the third, in which we still are, the whole administrative work of the library for children is being systematized and co-ordinated. These three stages may be roughly styled the era of work with children, the era of the children's room and the era of the children's department. The first began, in any particular library, when that library began to do anything whatever for children that it was not doing for adults; the second, when it opened its first children's room; the third, when it co-ordinated all its children's work under one administrative head. In most libraries the first period was relatively short; the second relatively long. Some libraries began their work by establishing children's rooms, reducing the first period to zero. Some large libraries are still in the second period, never having co-ordinated their children's work. Here are the approximate dates for a few libraries:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleveland | 1894 | 1898 | 1903 |
| New York | 1895 | 1898 | 1902 |
| Pittsburgh | 1898 | 1898 | 1898 |
| St. Louis | 1893 | 1897 | 1909 |
| Milwaukee | 1896 | 1898 | .... |
| Chicago | 1904 | 1904 | .... |
| Brooklyn | 1899 | 1899 | 1901 |
| Boston | 1895 | 1895 | .... |
I lay no stress on the accuracy of these dates, particularly in the first column, where in some cases they are matters of opinion. Pittsburgh appears as a unique example of a library that stepped full-fledged into all three stages at once, starting off, as soon as it began to do children's work at all, not only with a children's room, but with a definitely organized department to conduct the work.
With the idea of presenting comprehensively some idea of the volume and importance of children's work in the United States at the present time, a questionnaire was sent out to libraries (78 in all) whose total home use was 100,000 volumes or more. Of these 51 responded. These have been divided into five groups, five "very large" libraries, circulating more than 2,000,000; eight "large" ones, between one and two million; seven "medium," between half a million and a million; thirteen "small," between quarter and half a million, and eighteen "very small," from 100,000 to 250,000. The results for each of these groups have been stated separately—averaged where possible.
First, regarding the total volume of work. The answers to the questions show that in 51 of the 78 largest public libraries in the country, graded by circulation—libraries containing altogether nearly 9,000,000 books and circulating a total of over 30 millions—there are now 1,147,000 volumes intended especially for children. Children drew out during the last year 11,200,000 volumes for home use. Volumes for children added during the year numbered 280,000. These libraries have 231 rooms devoted entirely to children and 180 used by them in part, with a combined seating capacity of 15,900. Classroom libraries are furnished for the children in the schools, by 31 libraries reporting, to the number of 5,000.
Children in 46 libraries reporting hold altogether 413,000 library cards. There are 42 supervisors of children's work, with numerous clerical assistants and staffs of 473 persons, of whom at least 177 are qualified children's librarians, 108 are graduates of library schools, and 54 have had partial courses.
The general conclusion deducible from the statistics gathered seems to be that in some ways library work with children has become standardized while in others it has not. Standards, whether permanent or not, we can not tell, have been reached or approximated in the number of books devoted to children's use and, in general, in the proportion of the library's resources, time and energy that is given to this branch of the work. But when we come to the specific number of assistants assigned to it, their supervision, their pay and the grade of experience and training required of them, then we all part company. Not only is there no general agreement here, but some of the discrepancies are so large that we can ascribe them only to the fact that we are still in the experimental stage.
For instance, to take first the fairly uniform or standardized conditions, the fraction of the stock of books allotted to children is about one-fifth in the larger libraries and decreases slightly in the smaller; in the very small it is about one-eighth. The proportion of juvenile books added yearly is much larger; it varies from nearly one-half in the very large libraries down to one-fourth in the very small. This would seem to be a result of the increasing stress laid on children's work. If this proportion is maintained in the annual purchases, that in the total stock may approximate to it in time, although we can not be sure of this without knowing the ratio of the life of a children's book to that of an adult book. The children's books are doubtless shorter-lived, and this would tend to keep the proportion down in the permanent stock. The circulation is still more nearly uniform, being about one-third to children in all the classes of libraries. The proportion of money spent for children is also uniform, being about one-fourth in libraries of all sizes. The same is true of the number of children's rooms, which throughout all classes of libraries, both large and small, are in the proportion of one to every 60,000 to 70,000 of circulation, and of their seating capacity, which is 60 to 70 per room.
Looking on the other side of the shield we find the greatest variation in the proportion of children's cards in use, which runs from less than one-half up to nearly all. From one to five supervisors are employed in each library but some of the very large libraries use only one and some of the small ones as many as three. The same is true of clerical assistants, of which some of the very small libraries report as many as three, while some of the very large get along with as few as two.
Salaries are fairly uniform, although apparently smaller than the work would warrant. Whereas the children's circulation is about one-third the total, the salaries in the juvenile department are from one-seventh to one-eighth the total throughout. In the "small" libraries they are only one-eleventh of the total.