Attractive libraries and reading rooms make less attractive the seductions of other places. George Eliot said long ago, “Important as it is to direct the industries of men, it is not so important as to wisely direct their leisure.” It is indeed true, as a critic of our national life has said, that “The use of a nation's leisure is the test of its civilization.” To win people to a love of good literature, to bring back the old days of reading and meditation, are two of the great problems that confront the present-day librarian. In the words of one earnest library worker, “The modern library movement is a movement to increase by every possible means the accessibility of books, to stimulate their reading and to create a demand for the best. Its motive is helpfulness; its scope, instruction and recreation; its purpose, the enlightenment of all; its aspiration, still greater usefulness.”
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WHERE NEIGHBORS MEET
Extracts from a special report on the social work of the St. Louis Public Library made in 1917 by Margery Quigley, then librarian of its Divoll Branch.
Margery Closey Quigley was born in Los Angeles, Cal., Sept. 16, 1886, and graduated from Vassar College. She entered the service of the St. Louis Public Library in February, 1909, studied at the New York State Library School in 1914-15, and in August, 1918, became librarian of the Free Library in Endicott, N.Y.
The experience of the St. Louis Public Library goes to prove that no matter what the neighborhood may be, and however well-supplied it already is with meeting places, there is always room for the library auditorium and club rooms without subtracting in any way from the business of the other agencies. In fact, they seem to increase each other's use.
Of our six branch buildings, one is located in the heart of the older ghetto, one in Carondelet, two in purely residential neighborhoods, one at the Soulard civic center, where nine or ten European languages are represented, and the sixth in the older German section of the north side, near the river.