There is an excellent collection of works on bookmaking, ancient and modern, and a fair number of examples of printing of various periods and of beautifully bound books. About 150 mounts show binding material, book illustrations, type faces and other material illustrating printing and binding processes.
Mention must be made of the "Alumni collection" which the New York State Library Association is collecting for the school. Its aim is "to cover all books, pamphlets, clippings, etc., written by students of the school and biographical or professional material relating to them," together with portraits of the students and library buildings erected under their supervision.
The "class work collection" numbers about 2,300 volumes and is intended primarily for class use, particularly in cataloging, classification and subject headings, in selection of books, and in printing and binding.
All of this material is listed in a separate dictionary catalog prepared expressly for the school's use. More than 10,000 cards are already included in this catalog which is growing rapidly as more material becomes available for use.
The collections of the New York State library will be available as soon as the new building is ready. Including such documents and other volumes as can be temporarily shelved for use, upwards of 200,000 volumes will probably be available. These include an excellent set of United States documents, a very fair collection of state documents, many important foreign documents, and a good working collection of statutes, law reports, legal periodicals and legal treatises.
Mention must also be made of the 700 annuals and serials (including reports, bulletins, etc.), on various phases of library work which are currently received and filed and of about 500 bound English and American periodical sets (including most of those listed in the various periodical indexes) besides the numerous foreign periodicals, transactions, etc., currently received.
Miss AGNES VAN VALKENBURGH, instructor in cataloging at the library school of the New York public library, read a paper on
TRAINING OR TEACHING
It may be well at the start to explain the terms used, to be sure that we are looking at the matter in the same light. Teaching, in this instance, I understand to mean that assistants shall have had library school instruction, while training is the instruction which is given in the library or department itself to fit the applicant for the special work she is to do. When I say assistants, I also mean librarians of the smaller libraries, such positions as the library school student has been called upon to fill.
There are two points of view in looking at the question, that of the assistant and that of the employer. On the first there can be little discussion, as the same principles are here involved which underly all education. It is certainly better for any person to have a view of the whole field rather than of one small part of it. I was talking to the head cataloger of a large department the other day, and she said that one of her main troubles was in getting the assistant who has been given a certain part of the work to do, to see that any other parts are necessary or important. If the curriculum of our library schools does not give our students this broader view, we are not living up to our opportunities.