Now, for the general subject, Miss Stanley says, "I think we are agreed that for the children our aim reaches to a familiarity with reference tools, to knowing how to hunt down a subject, to being able to use to best advantage the material found. In a word, we are concerned not so much to supply information as to educate in the use of the library."
The aim is well stated, and we are agreed in it, I believe, but are we agreed as to, and have we given sufficient thought to, the methods by which this desirable aim is to be accomplished? Where, in that ideal ultimate of co-operation between schools and libraries toward which we are striving, will the necessary instruction be given, in the schools or in the library? Or, if in both, where will the division of labor be placed? I, myself, am inclined to think that the formal, systematic instruction
in the use of books should be given in the schools, with sympathetic, systematic help on the part of the library. Is it not possible that we, as librarians, seeing the need, are over-anxious to do the whole work, or at least feel sometimes that we can do the whole work more easily and better than we can get the overworked teachers to do it—though a large part of the work really belongs to them.
More than in any other work with the children, this reference work requires that we go back of the children and begin with the teachers—no, not with the teachers, but with the teachers in embryo—the students in the normal schools.
Miss Alice Tyler, who followed, said that it was of the greatest importance to teach children the use of the catalog, which should be made to suit the mental capacity of children, using terms with which they are familiar.
In Cleveland the children's catalog was made upon these lines, using simple subject headings based on headings used by Miss Prentice in her "Third grade list" and the Pratt Institute lists.
Teaching children in the children's room how to use the catalog is the only way to make the future men and women more independent readers in the public library.
Mr. Hensel closed the discussion with a short account of the reference work done in the Columbus public schools.
A paper by Miss Clara W. Hunt was read on