Mr. Hutchins: No, we send libraries to these communities. We are sending to all classes, but if Miss Stearns, in the northern part of the state, finds a neglected community, and can work with them, and can find some members of the women's clubs to go out and help, we send to them first.
Mr. Galbreath: I think that perhaps our methods do not vary so much after all. The women's clubs are supplementing our work in that way. In Ohio we have succeeded in interesting a number of the members of the legislature, and frequently they come in and look over our maps illustrating the travelling library work, and say, "There is in our county a community that is very backward. They have no libraries there, and they are not very intelligent. I wish you to write to So-and-so in that community." We do a great deal of work in the line of reaching what Mr. Hutchins calls the neglected communities.
A member: I would like to ask Mr. Hutchins if he has forgotten that we have something besides the readers in our Wisconsin schools? Under the present school law every district in the state has the beginnings of a library, and adds to that library each year. And we have in each of our school institutes held during the summer a 45-minute period which is spent in training teachers how to get children to read books, how to interest them in the books, and how to show them to get from the book the information it contains. And I would also like to ask if the library placed in the school house is not as accessible to the district as a library that may be placed at some central point? Very often people would have to drive 25 or 30 miles to reach that central point, whereas in the library in the school house the children can take the books to their homes. During the long vacation the library need not be left in the school house, but in some other place.
Mr. Hutchins: A library in a school is a school library, no matter where it may be, and the children do not go to the school house after they leave the school.
Mr. Dewey: The library is an optional affair; the children are compelled to go to school. On the other side, there are a number of advantages in favor of the school building.
Has anybody succeeded in getting from the railroads or express companies special concessions for the transportation of library books?
Mrs. Dockery: In Idaho, while the travelling libraries were in the hands of the women's clubs. When they came in the hands of the state, the railroads felt that they should have some compensation, and they gave us half rates. The stage lines give us less than half rates.
E. H. Anderson: In Pennsylvania the Adams and the United States Express Companies, which are the two leading companies, have made this concession: We can send out books at full rate going, and half rate returning. These rates apply only on condition that the books returned are paid for at the library, so there is no confusion at any other station.
Mr. Montgomery: How about books that are transferred to another point?
Mr. Anderson: We do not transfer them; they must all come back.