3. 160 hours of instruction will be given to apprentices, on three days of the week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the alternate days to be devoted by them to study and preparation. Full library time will be required of them, which will ensure three hours of preparation for each hour of class room work or lecture. This means the compiling of full reading lists by the normal students to accompany the instruction.
4. The subjects taught fall into three groups, cultural, technical and professional, with strong emphasis on the first and an effort to correlate the first two quite closely. Besides a review of the classics of literature, there will be a study of the important literature of different subjects—history, biography, sociology, science, and to this study will be related as far as possible both parallel courses of classification and reference books, the apprentices being thus required to handle a great many books and to get at their subject contents quickly. They will be required also to make a great many short reading lists on related topics. In the course in children's work, which Miss Clara Hunt will supervise, emphasis will also be laid on the book. Miss Hunt will examine and criticize the lectures prepared by the normal students. We wish to strengthen this phase of the work both because it is needed by the apprentices and because it will be of the utmost value to the normal students, especially to those who go into normal school work later.
The technical courses will take up the usual subjects. In classification the emphasis will be laid on the subject content of the classes to add to the general information of the apprentices and the course related, as I said before, to the study of the literature of the subjects.
In cataloging the emphasis will be laid on an intelligent understanding of the use of a catalog rather than on the details of cataloging. On the professional side the course will be stronger than is usual in apprentice courses.
Now of what value will this course be in providing teaching experience to the normal student?
1. As preparation for directing apprentice classes in public libraries I feel that it will be of direct utility.
2. For giving instruction to high school students in bibliography, reference works, classification and the use of the catalog it would seem to give adequate training.
3. For conducting courses in normal schools these mentioned subjects plus the course in children's books and perhaps the history of libraries would seem to be a good preparation.
4. The courses in classification, reference work, history of libraries, work with children, loan desk work, compare favorably in length of time given to them and in thoroughness with the average one year library school course and the preparation, to say nothing of the conduct, of such courses would be an excellent foundation for the teaching of the same subjects in a library school.
In addition to these main features of the course, the pedagogic training and the practice teaching, there will be lectures on normal and high school library work and permission has been obtained from the public school system for the normal students to have practical work in the library of the buildings, training school and in some of the high school libraries. Opportunity to study the organization and methods of presentation of other library schools has been promised.