Mr. Hutchins: Find somebody to take it in special charge. A travelling library in a community is bound to find some good woman who would rather have charge of it than anything else in the world.
Mr. Dewey: Then you would put it in a private house?
Mr. Hutchins: In a private house or a country post-office—wherever you can find a person who believes in its use and will give service for it.
Mr. Galbreath: I should like to ask Mr. Hutchins, provided the teacher is a man or woman who believes in the library, what objection is there to placing it in the school house?
Mr. Hutchins: The teacher may be a person who believes in it, but he or she makes the school of first importance.
Mr. Brigham: What difference does it make if the library is a side issue, so long as it gets in its work?
Mr. Hutchins: If it is a side issue it does not get in its work.
Miss Stearns: Let us go back to the original question, How to get the travelling library before the people. The best method, we find, is to take with you a county superintendent who is acquainted with all the people in his county, or ought to be. Take your travelling library with you also, just as a travelling man takes his samples. Do not start out with a lot of circulars; take the books themselves right with you, in the back of the wagon. When you have brought the people together open your box; take out your Scribner or your Youth's Companion; take out your books on the Philippines, on birds, on cookery; show your audience some good stories; and you will organize a library association ten times quicker than if you had started out by writing letters. Those are letters, very often, that are never answered, and you wait and wonder why the people do not want the books. Go to the people with the books. That is the way we find we can work best in Wisconsin.
Mr. Galbreath: Sometimes it is difficult to find the means to do the work that Miss Stearns has mentioned, and possibly our experience, briefly stated, in bringing the travelling library to the attention of the people of Ohio might not be out of place here. We began by advertising it through the daily and weekly papers. That brought us very few responses. We next tried to reach the people through the official organ of the teachers of the state. That brought us many responses from rural schools. Our next effort was to reach the farming communities through the state grange, which devoted one of its quarterly bulletins to the travelling libraries. This brought many responses. We reached the women's clubs through circulars issued to their membership, and this was very effective in turn. We found it best to reach the people of the state through the organs that were devoted to specific interests, especially along educational lines.
Mr. Dewey: Did you go personally to the grangers, write to them, or send printed matter?