7. A typewriter for the free use of visitors. The local office of a typewriter company may place one in the library as an advertisement.
8. Reports of transactions on the New York stock exchange or of transactions in local securities. Local brokers' offices will consider it a good advertisement to place these on file.
9. Trolley guides. Fifty cents spent on these each year will fortify the library against all attacks in that line.
10. Thomas's Register of American Manufacturers, price $15.00. With this in hand you can say that, "The Public Library can give you names of pill-box manufacturers in all parts of the U. S., the name of the man who makes office furniture in Marietta, Ohio, or the place where Rubberset products are manufactured."
11. Kelly's Directory of Merchants, Manufacturers and Shippers of the World. Price 30s. This enables you to say, "The Public Library can give you the name of German manufacturers of mirrors, the dealers in lacquered ware in Tokio, the name of a bank in Warsaw, a forwarding agent in Sydney or the express facilities of Coburg."
With a simple and inexpensive equipment, somewhat like that included in these eleven items, backed by wide advertising in the local press, a public library can attract the business men of a town to use the institution they support, an institution which should be turned to by everyone in the municipality as the very first source of information.
Miss EDITH KAMMERLING, head of the Civics Room of the Chicago public library, presented most ably the work which could be done by any library in the civics line, under the title
A CIVICS ROOM IN A MEDIUM-SIZED TOWN
Perhaps the best method of indicating the scope and material of a civics room in a medium-sized library is to describe what are the essentials of a civics room in a large city, permitting the adaptation of such features of the latter to the former as the locality and conditions may suggest.
A year ago last month a room was opened in the Chicago public library which is known as the civics room. The legend on the door announces "Sociology, Municipal Affairs, Business, Economics, Political Science, and Education." At first people were very curious to see what the civics room was like, and many there were of the idle curious who came to see what we had, but as the subjects dealt with were not what are generally considered as sources of amusement and entertainment, this patronage gradually ceased until now we have only the earnest, studious class.