Seventy-seven reply to the first question that their children's
books are kept by themselves, 22 that stories or other books are
separate from the rest of the library, and 53 that there is no
juvenile division.
Three answer simply "Yes" to the second question, 24 have adopted
the Dewey system, in two or three cases with the Cutter author
marks, 4 the Cutter, and 1 the Linderfelt system; 10 arrange by
authors, 18 by subjects, 4 by authors and subjects, 42 report
methods of their own or classification like the rest of the
library, and 46 do not classify children's books at all.
In answer to the third question, 6 libraries report both a
separate card catalog and finding list, 43 a finding list for
sale or distribution, 15 a card catalog for children, and 88 no
separate list. Of the printed finding lists 4 are Sargent's, 1
Larned's, 2 Hardy's, and 2 Miss James's.
The fourth question relates to covering books for children.
Eighty-five libraries do not cover them, 30 cover some, either
those with light bindings or others that have become soiled and
worn, 35 cover all, and 2 do not report.
In reply to the fifth question, 45 libraries require that
children's hands shall be clean before they can take books from
the library, or at least when they use books or periodicals in
the building, and 50 have no such rules. Others try various
methods of moral suasion, including in one instance a janitor who
directs the unwashed to a lavatory, and in another a fine of a
few cents for a second offense.
The sixth question, whether there is an age limit or not, brings
various replies. Thirty-six libraries have none, five base it on
ability to read or write, one fixes it at 6, one at 7, and one
at 8. Ten libraries allow a child a card in his own name at 10,
two at 11, forty-seven at 12, six at 13, thirty-three at 14, four
at 15, and six at 16. They qualify their statements in many cases
by adding that children may use the cards of older persons, or
may have them if they bring a written guarantee from their
parents or are in certain classes in the public schools.
Question 7 deals with the number of books a week allowed to
children. Ninety-five libraries allow them to change a book every
day; one (subscription) gives them a dozen a day if they wish.
Fifteen limit them to two, and 3 to three a week, and 16 to only
one. Several librarians in libraries where children are allowed a
book a day express their disapproval of the custom, and one has
entered into an engagement with her young readers to take 1 book
in every 4 from some other class than fiction. Others do not
answer definitely. A few libraries issuing two cards, or two-book
cards, allow children the use of two books a week, if one is not
a novel or story.
Question 8 is a less important one, whether children's cards are
of a different color from others. There is no difference between
the cards of adults and children in 124 libraries, except in case
of school cards in 2. In 4 the color of cards for home use
varies, and 4 report other distinctions, like punches or
different charging slips. Eight do not charge on cards and 12 do
not answer.
With regard to question 9, "What authors are most read by
children who take books from your library?" the lists vary so
much in length that it is impossible to give a fair idea of them
in in few sentences. Some libraries mention only two or three
authors, others ten times as many. Miss Alcott's name is in more
lists than any other. Where only two or three authors are given,
they are usually of the Alger, Castlemon, Finley, Optic grade.
These four do not appear in the reports from 35 libraries, where
Alden, Ballantyne, Mrs. Burnett, Susan Coolidge, Ellis, Henty,
Kellogg, Lucy Lillie, Munroe, Otis, Stoddard, and various fairy
tales fill their places. Seven are allowing Alger, Castlemon,
Finley, and Optic to wear out without being replaced, and soon
find that books of a higher type are just as interesting to young
readers.
Question 10 asks what methods are used in directing children's
reading, and if a special assistant is at their service, or if
they are encouraged to consult the librarian and all the
assistants. Many librarians overconscientiously say, "No
methods," but at the same time acknowledge the personal
supervision and friendly interest that were meant in the query.
Only nine do not report something of this kind. Six have, or are
about to have, a special assistant, or have already opened a
bureau of information. Five say that they pay special attention
to selecting the best books, 4 of the larger libraries have open
shelves, and 2 are careful in the choice and supervision of
assistants.
In answer to question 11, 5 report special reading rooms, present
or prospective, for children; 3 more wish that they had them,
while others believe that the use of a room in common with older
readers teaches them to be courteous and considerate to others.
Most reading rooms are open to children, who sometimes have a
table of their own, but in a few cases those under are excluded.
My own opinion on the subjects treated in the questions are:
1. It is easier for a librarian or assistant to find a book for a
child if whatever is adapted to his intelligence on a certain
subject is kept by itself, and not with other books which may be
dry, out of date, or written for a trained student of mature
mind.
2. It is easier to help a child work up a subject if the books
which he can use are divided into classes, not all alphabeted
under authors.
3. A separate card catalog for children often relieves a crowd at
the other cases. A printed dictionary catalog without notes does
not help a child.
A public library can make no better investment than in printing a
classified list for children, with short notes on stories
illustrating history or life in different countries, and
references to interesting books written for older readers. Such a
list should be sold for 5 cents, much less than cost.
4. The money spent in paying for the paper and time used in
covering books is just as well employed in binding, and the
attractive covers are pleasant to look at.
5. The books can be kept reasonably clean if children are made to
understand that they must not be taken away, returned, or if
possible, read with unwashed hands. City children soon begin to
understand this if they are spoken to pleasantly and sent away
without a book till they come back in a fit state to handle it.
6. As soon as a child can read and write he should be allowed to
use books. A proper guarantee from parent or teacher should, of
course, be required.
7. A child in school cannot read more than one story book a week
without neglecting his work. If he needs another book in
connection with his studies he should take it on a school
teacher's, or nonfiction card.
8. It is best, if a child has only one book a week, for his card
to be of a different color from others, that it may be more
easily distinguished at the charging desk.
9. It has been proved by actual experiment that children will
read books which are good in a literary sense if they are
interesting. New libraries have the advantage over old ones, that
they are not obliged to struggle against a demand for the boys'
series that were supplied in large quantities fifteen or twenty
years ago.
10. As soon as children learn that in a library there are books
and people to help them on any subject, from the care of a sick
rabbit to a costume for the Landing of the Pilgrims, they begin
to ask advice about their reading. It is a good thing if some of
the library assistants are elder sisters in large families who
have tumbled about among books, and if some of the questions
asked of applicants for library positions relate to what they
would give boys or girls to read. If an assistant in a large
library shows a special fitness for work with children, it is
best to give it into her charge. If all the assistants like it,
let them have their share of it.
11. The question of a children's reading room depends on the size
of the room for older readers, and how much it is used by them in
the afternoons. Conditions vary so much in libraries that it is
impossible for one to make a rule for another in this case.
HOW LIBRARY WORK WITH CHILDREN HAS GROWN IN HARTFORD AND
CONNECTICUT
The Library Journal for February, 1914, says: "One of the
pleasantest features of 'Library week' at Lake George in 1913 was
the welcome given to Miss Hewins, that typical New England woman,
whose sympathy with children and child life has made this
relation of her public library work a type and model for all who
have to do with children.... Miss Hewins's paper was really a
delightful bit of literary autobiography, and she has now happily
acceded to a request from the Journal to fill out the outlines
into a more complete record."
Not long ago I went into the public library of a university town
in England and established confidence by saying, "I see that
Chivers does your binding," whereupon the librarian invited me
inside the railing. A boy ten or twelve years old was standing in
a Napoleonic attitude, with his feet very far apart, before the
fiction shelves, where the books were alphabetized under authors,
but with apparently nothing to show him whether a story was a
problem-novel or a tale for children. My thoughts went back many
years to the days when I first became the librarian of a
subscription library in Hartford, where novels and children's
stories were roughly arranged under the first letter of the
title, and not by authors. There was a printed catalog, but
without anything to indicate in what series or where in order of
the series a story-book belonged, and it was impossible when a
child had read one to find out what the next was except from the
last page of the book itself or the advertisements in the back
and they had often been torn out for convenient reference.
My technical equipment was some volunteer work in a town library,
a little experience in buying for a Sunday-school library, and
about a year in the Boston Athenaeum. The preparation that I had
had for meeting children and young people in the library was,
besides some years of teaching, a working knowledge of the books
that had been read and re-read in a large family for twenty-five
years, from Miss Edgeworth and Jacob Abbott, an old copy of
"Aesop's fables," Andersen, Grimm, Hawthorne, "The Arabian
nights," Mayne Reid's earlier innocent even if unscientific
stories, down through "Tom Brown," "Alice in Wonderland," Our
Young Folks, the Riverside Magazine, "Little women," to Scott,
Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte and Mrs.
Gaskell. These books were in the Hartford Young Men's Institute,
but they were little read in comparison with the works of the
"immortal four," who were then writing series at the rate of two
or more volumes a year--Optic, Alger, Castlemon and Martha
Finley--and still refuse to be forgotten. The older girls
demanded Ouida, a new name to me, but I read some of her novels
before I had been in the library many weeks, and remember writing
a letter to a daily paper giving an outline of the plot of one of
them as a hint to fathers and mothers of what their schoolgirl
daughters were reading. I think that there was something about
boys, too, in the letter, and a plea for "Ivanhoe" and other
books of knightly adventure.
The Young Men's Institute Library in Hartford was a survival from
the days of subscription libraries and lecture courses. The city
had then a population of about fifty thousand, of whom some five
or six hundred were subscribers to the library, paying three
dollars for the use of one book at a time or five dollars for
two, including admission to the periodical room. Hartford had a
large number of Irish inhabitants, some Germans, a few of whom
were intelligent and prosperous Jews, a few French Canadians,
possibly still fewer Scandinavians. It was several years before
the first persecution of the Russian and Polish Jews sent them to
this country. In the year when I came, 1875, there were
forty-six boys and girls in the high school graduating class,
all, from their names and what I know of some of them, apparently
of English descent, except one whose name is Scotch.
The class which was graduated last June had about 650 members on
entering, and 250 at the end of its course. Among the names are
Italian, Hebrew, Swedish, Irish, German, Danish, Spanish,
Bohemian, Armenian--the largest percentage from families not of
English descent being Hebrew.
It is fair to say that at least half of the boys and girls of the
earlier graduating class, or their families, had library
subscriptions, but little use of the library was recommended even
by the high school teachers, and none by the teachers of the
graded schools. How could there be? Five dollars is a large sum
in most families, and children at that time had to read what they
could get at home or from the Sunday-school libraries, which were
no better nor worse than others of the period.
The first effort that I remember making for a better choice of
books was showing the library president some volumes by Thomes, a
writer for the older boys, whose stories were full of profanity
and brutal vulgarity. There was no question about discarding them
and some of Mayne Reid's books like "The scalp hunters" and "Lost
Lenore," which are much of the same type, very different from his
earlier stories, and in a short time we did not renew books by
some other authors, but let them die out, replacing them if
possible by stories a little better, giving preference to those
complete in themselves.
Within a short time, in 1878, we began to publish a quarterly
bulletin. In the first number "Library notes" begins: "Much time
and thought have been given to suggesting in this bulletin good
books for boys and girls. As a rule, they read too much. Our
accounts show that one boy has taken 102 story-books in six
months, and one girl 112 novels in the same time. One book a week
is certainly enough, with school studies. Within the last month
one boy has asked us for Jack Harkaway's stories, another for
bound volumes of the Police News, and a third for 'The murderer
and the fortune teller,' 'The two sisters and the avenger' and
'The model town and the detective.' These are not in the library
and will not be. The demand for girls for the New York Weekly
novels is not small. We shall gladly cooperate with fathers and
mothers in the choice of children's books."
Of what we now call nature-books there were very few written or
well illustrated for children, though the library had John
Burroughs, Harris's "Insects injurious to vegetation" and
Samuels's "Birds of New England and the adjacent states." There
was little interest in out-of-door study, and I have never
forgotten the contempt on the face of one boy when instead of
Mayne Reid's "Boy hunters," which was out, he was offered "The
butter- fly hunters," or the scorn with which he repeated the
title. All that is changed, thanks to the influence of schools
and teachers, and children are no longer ignorant of common birds
and insects. St. Nicholas helped in opening their eyes, when a
librarian, Harlan H. Ballard, of Pittsfield, organized the
Agassiz Association with a monthly report in the magazine. We had
a chapter, Hartford B., that met for years out of doors on
Saturday mornings through the spring, early summer and autumn,
and even through one winter when some specimens of the redheaded
woodpecker were on the edge of the city. Usually our winter
meetings were in the library, and we often had readings from
Burroughs, Thoreau, Frank Buckland and others of the earlier
nature-lovers. The children came from families of more than usual
intelligence, and some of them who now have well-grown children
of their own often refer with pleasure to our walks and talks.
I had taught for three years in a school where the children and I
were taken out of doors every week in spring and autumn by an
ornithologist and an entomologist. At this time we were beginning
to buy more books on out-of-door subjects, and I had learned
enough in my teaching to be able to evaluate them in a bulletin.
The years went on, with once in a while an encouraging report
about a boy who had made experiments from works on chemistry or
beguiled a fortnight's illness with Wordsworth's "Greece," or
Guhl and Koner's "Life of the Greeks and Romans," or had gone on
from Alger and Optic to Cooper, Lossing, Help's "Life of
Columbus" and Barber's "History of New England." Both boys and
girls were beginning to apologize for taking poor stories.
In one of our bulletins, January, 1881, is an acknowledgment of
Christmas material received from the advance sheets of Poole's
Index, then in preparation in the Watkinson Library, on the other
side of the building. Imagine life in a library without it, you
who have the Readers' Guide and all the debates and Granger's
Index to Poetry and the Portrait Index! Nevertheless, we were not
entirely without printed aids, for we had the Brooklyn catalog,
the Providence bulletins, and the lists of children's books
prepared by the Buffalo and Quincy libraries.
In 1882, at the request of Frederick Leypoldt, editor of the
Publishers' Weekly, I compiled a list of "Books for the young,"
some of which are of permanent value. In a second edition, in
1884, I reprinted from our bulletin a list of English and
American history for children, between twelve and fifteen, based
on my own experience with boys and girls. I can laugh at it now,
after years of meeting child-readers, seventy-five per cent of
whom have no books at home, and can also find food for mirth in
my belief that a list of books recommended for vacation reading
in another bulletin would attract most boys and girls under
sixteen.
One school, under a wise and far-seeing principal, who is now an
authority on United States history and the author of several
school books on the subject, had in 1884 an arrangement with us
for a supply of historical stories for reading, and we printed a
list of these and of other books on American history which would
be interesting if read by or to the older pupils in the grammar
grades.
Sets of fifty copies each of books for supplementary reading in
school were bought by the library in 1894, and apportioned by the
school principals at their monthly meetings. Several new sets
were bought every year till 1905, when the collection numbered
about three thousand, and was outgrowing the space that we could
spare for it. The schools then provided a place for the school
duplicates, and relieved the library of the care of them. Since
1899 the graded schools have received on request libraries of
fifty books to a room, from the third grade to the ninth, to be
kept until the summer vacation, when they are returned for
repairs and renewal. The number circulated during the school
year has grown from 6,384 in 1899-1900 to 17,270 in 1912-13. The
children's applications are sent to the main library, and no
child may have a card there and in a school branch at the same
time.
There were rumors for several years that the library would be
made free, and when it was at last announced in 1888 that
$250,000 had been given by the late J. Pierpont Morgan, his
father and two families related to them, on condition that
$150,000 more should be raised by private subscription to remodel
the Wadsworth Athenaeum, which then housed three libraries and a
picture- gallery, and to provide for its maintenance, the rumor
bade fair to come true. That the money came in, is largely due to
the personal efforts of Charles Hopkins Clark, editor-in-chief of
the Hartford Courant, for many years treasurer of the Athenaeum,
the Watkinson Library and the Hartford Public Library, and the
sum required was promised in 1890. Later the library offered the
free use of its books, and also the income of about $50,000 to
the city, on condition of keeping its form of government by a
self-perpetuating corporation.
The first step towards the enlarged use of the library was to
separate the children's books and classify them. We had had a
fixed location up to that time, and I had not yet broken loose
from it, but I numbered them according to the best light I had,
though in a very short time I saw that with the increased number
of duplicates we had to buy, only a movable location was of the
least practical use. It was several years before the Dewey
classification was finally adopted for the children, although we
classified our grown-up books by it before we opened to the
public.
When the library became free, in 1892, the annual circulation of
children's books rose at once to 50,000, 25 per cent of the
whole, and as large as the largest total in the subscription
days. We immediately had to buy a large supply of new books,
carefully chosen, and printed a too fully annotated list, which
we found useful for some years and discarded when we were able to
open the shelves. We had only a corner for children's books,
almost none for children under ten, and no admission to the
shelves. We struggled on as well as we could for the next few
years.
A dialogue between a reader and the librarian in 1897 shows what
we were trying to do at this time. It is really true, and
illustrates the lack of knowledge in one of the most intelligent
women in the city of the many points of contact between the
library and the boys and girls of the city.
Reader: "There ought to be somebody in the library to tell
people, especially children, what to read."
Librarian: "Have you ever seen the children's printed list, with
notes on books connected with school work, and others written for
older readers but interesting to children, hints on how and what
to read, and a letter R against the best books?"