The report was accepted. On the motion of Mr. Bliss it was voted that the chairman of the committee be authorized to draw upon the treasurer of the League for any amount not to exceed $100.00 to defray the expenses of preparing some experimental outlines carrying out the plans suggested in the report. It was moved by Mr. Dudgeon that the chairman be instructed to enter into negotiations with some publisher to secure coöperation in printing study outlines approved by the committee, to be sold to study clubs and library commissions at reasonable cost. Carried. On the motion of Mr. Bliss, it was voted to continue the study outline committee, with Miss Brown as chairman, and to authorize the committee to select subjects, revise and pass upon all outlines before printed.
Adjourned.
SECOND SESSION
(Saturday, June 29, 8:30 p. m.)
As there were several important committee reports still to be received it was voted to hold a meeting on Monday afternoon at 4:30 to complete the transaction of business. Mr. Milam then turned the meeting over to Miss Miriam E. Carey, of Minnesota, and the evening was devoted to the consideration of libraries in institutions.
Miss E. KATHLEEN JONES, librarian of the McLean Hospital, Waverley, Mass., read a paper on
LIBRARY WORK AMONG THE INSANE
I have been asked to talk about two things to-night,—our library at McLean Hospital in Waverley, Massachusetts, and my idea for organization among the state hospitals of the different states. By dint of considerable money, much thought and labor and an unlimited amount of interest and coöperation with the librarian on the part of superintendent and trustees, we have been able to build up at the McLean Hospital something which approaches pretty near our ideal of what a library in a hospital for the insane should be. But in regard to the second subject I feel a little diffident, since there are several among you who have actually organized the institution libraries of your different states and combined them under one head, while I have only dreamed about it. Still, the dream and the vision must always be forerunners of accomplishment, and you also must have dreamed before you were able to build.
At McLean Hospital we have two libraries,—one for the use of the patients, which was started in 1835 with 160 volumes and now numbers over 7,000, and a medical library organized in 1887 and containing over 5,000 volumes. The two are kept entirely distinct with separate accession-book, catalog, classification and finances. The medical library comprises a fairly good department in general medicine and a very fine one in chemistry; but of course, its principal features are books and periodicals in psychology and psychiatry. We take 85 medical and chemical journals, most of them German, and the care of these periodicals alone is no slight task for the librarian. I will just say incidentally that, unable to find any classification for medical books which seemed at all adequate to our needs we have evolved one for ourselves, using the decimal idea in numbering. It is a thoroughly satisfactory scheme for us and we hope some time to print it for the benefit of the medical libraries in other hospitals for the insane.
Although our general library for the patients has been in existence for seventy-five years and more, for the first six decades it was conducted in a rather desultory manner, as indeed, most libraries were at that time. It was not till 1895 that any attempt at classification and cataloging was made, and not until 1904 was a trained librarian installed and the whole department put on a business basis. The expenditure of the annual appropriation was at that time put into the librarian's hands with directions to build up the library at her own discretion, subject, of course, to the approval of the superintendent and trustees. That the business basis is the only successful one, these figures show:—in 1904, after seventy years, the library numbered only 4,000 volumes, with few new books but a large assortment of old sermons and evangelical biography, and its circulation was about 5,000. During the eight years of the new regime, more than 3,000 volumes have been added and the circulation has increased to over 8,500.