One of the sessions of the Children's librarians section of the
A. L. A. meeting at Minnetonka in 1908 was given up to the
discussion of the place of children's library work in the
community. The library point of view was presented by Miss Moore.
Annie Carroll Moore was born in Limerick, Maine, and was
graduated from Limerick Academy in 1889 and Bradford Academy in
1891. After completing her work in the Pratt Institute Library
School in 1896 she became children's librarian in the Pratt Free
Library where she remained until 1906. She then organized the
children's department in the New York Public Library, of which
she is still supervisor. Miss Moore has lectured on library work
with children and has contributed many articles on the subject to
library periodicals.
Fifteen years ago the Minneapolis public library opened a
children's room from which books were circulated. Previous to
1893 a reading room for children was opened in the Brookline
(Mass.) public library but the Minneapolis public library was the
first to recognize the importance of work with children by
setting aside a room for their use with open shelf privileges and
with a special assistant in charge of it.
Since 1893 children's rooms and children's departments have
sprung up like mushrooms, all over the country, and first in
Pittsburg, then in Brooklyn, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York
City and Queens Borough, children's rooms in branch libraries
have been organized into departments from which a third, at
least, of the entire circulation of the libraries is carried on
by assistants, either trained or in training to become children's
librarians.
It has been the inevitable accompaniment of such rapid growth
that the work should suffer growing pains in the form of
criticism and even caricature at the hands of casual observers
and clever writers. Those of us who have been identified with the
movement since its inception have somehow managed to preserve our
faith in a survival of the fittest by remembering that there was
a time when everything was new, and have felt that if we could
keep a firm grip on the active principles which inspire all
successful work with children, whether it is the work of a small
independent library or that of a large system of libraries, our
labor was not likely to be lost. The children, the books and
ourselves are the three elements to be combined and the success
of the combination does not depend upon time, nor place, nor
circumstance. It depends upon whether we have a clear vision of
our surroundings and are able to adapt ourselves to them, a
growing appreciation of the value of books to the persons who
read them, and the power of holding the interest and inspiring
the respect and confidence of children.
If we can do all these things for a period of years we have
little need to worry about the future success of the work. The
boys and girls will look after that. In many instances they have
already begun to look after it and the best assurance for the
future maintenance of free libraries in America rests with those
who, having tried them and liked them during the most
impressionable years of their lives, believe in the value of them
for others as well as for themselves to the extent of being ready
and willing to support them.
In passing from a long and intimate experience in the active work
of a children's room in an independent library to the guidance of
work in the children's rooms of a system of branch libraries, a
great deal of thought has been given to deepening the sense of
responsibility for library membership by regarding every form of
daily work as a contributory means to this end.
The term "library membership" is a survival of the old
subscription library but it defines a much closer relationship
than the terms "borrower" or "user" and broadens rather than
restricts the activities of a free library by making it seem more
desirable to "belong to the library" than to "take out books."
It is the purpose of this paper to present in outline for
discussion such aspects of the work as may help to substantiate
the claim of its ambitious and perhaps ambigious title: Library
Membership as a Civic Force.
1. Our first and chief concern is with the selection of books and
right here we are confronted by so many problems that we might
profitably spend the entire week discussing them.
In general, the selection of books for a children's room which is
seeking to make and to sustain a place in the life of a community
should offer sufficient variety to meet the needs and desires of
boys and girls from the picture book age to that experience of
life which is not always measured by years nor by school grade
but is tipified by a Jewish girl under 14 years old, who, on
being asked how she liked the book she had just read, "Rebecca of
Sunnybrook Farm," said to the librarian, "It's not the kind of
book you would enjoy yourself, is it?", and on being answered in
the affirmative, tactfully stated her own point of view: "Well,
you see it is just this way, children have their little troubles
and grown people have their great troubles. I guess it's the
great troubles that interest me." We have been quick to recognize
the claim of the foreign boy or girl who is learning our language
and studying our history but we are only just beginning to
recognize the claims of those, who, having acquired the language,
are seeking in books that which they are experiencing in their
own natures. Human nature may be the same the world over, but
there is a vast difference in its manifestations between the ages
of ten and sixteen in a New England village or town and in a
foreign neighborhood of one of our large cities.
The selection of adult books in all classes, especially in
biography, travel, history and literature is too limited in the
children's rooms of many libraries and should be enlarged to the
point of making the shelves of classed books look more like those
of a library and less like those of a school room. Titles in
adult fiction should include as much of Jane Austen as girls will
read and an introduction to Barrie in "Peter Pan" and the "Little
Minister." "Jane Eyre" will supply the demand for melodrama in
its best form, while "Villette," and possibly "Shirley," may
carry some girls far enough with Charlotte Bronte to incline them
to read her life by Mrs. Gaskell. William Black's "Princess of
Thule" and "Judith Shakespeare" will find occasional readers.
"Lorna Doone" will be more popular, although there are girls who
find it very tedious. There should be a full set of Dickens in an
edition attractive to boys and girls. A complete set of the
Waverly novels in a new large print edition, well paragraphed and
well illustrated, with the introductions left out and with
sufficient variation in the bindings to present an inviting
appearance on the shelves would lead, I believe, to a very much
more general reading of Scott.
Conan Doyle's "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," "The Refugees,"
"The White company," "Micah Clarke" and "At the Sign of the four"
will need no urging, nor will Dumas' "Count of Monte Cristo,"
"The Three guardsmen" and "The Black tulip." "Les Miserables" and
"The Mill on the Floss" will fully satisfy the demand for "great
troubles," treated in a masterly fashion. We should include
Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," "The Newcomes" and "The Virginians";
Bulwer's "Last Days of Pompeii," "Harold," "Rienzi" and "The Last
of the barons"; Charles Kingsley's "Westward Ho," "Hereward the
Wake" and "Hypatia"; Charles Reade's "Cloister and the hearth,"
"Peg Woffington," "Foul play" and "Put yourself in his place";
Besant's "All sorts and conditions of men" and "The Children of
Gibeon"; Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" and "The Woman in white"
as many of Robert Louis Stevenson's stories as will be read
"Cranford" and "The Vicar of Wakefield" with the Hugh Thomson
illustrations; Miss Mulock's "John Halifax," "A Noble life," "A
Brave lady" and "A Life for a life"; Lever's "Charles O'Malley"
and "Harry Lorrequer", Lew Wallace's "Ben Hur" and "The Fair
god"; Stockton's "Rudder Grange," "The Casting away of Mrs. Lecks
and Mrs. Aleshine" and "The Adventures of Captain Horn"; Mrs.
Stowe's "Uncle Tom's cabin" and "Oldtown folks"; Howells' "Lady
of the Aroostook," "A Chance acquaintance," "The Quality of
mercy" and "The Rise of Silas Lapham"; Gilbert Parker's "Seats of
the mighty" and "When Valmond came to Pontiac"; Paul Leicester
Ford's "The Honorable Peter Stirling"; Richard Harding Davis'
"Van gibber," "Gallagher," "Soldiers of fortune" and "The Bar
sinister"; Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's mines" and "Allen
Quartermain"; Weir Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne", Marion Crawford's
"Marietta", "Marzio's crucifix", and "Arethusa"; Kipling's "The
Day's work", "Kim" and "Many inventions" and, if they have been
removed as juvenile titles, I think we should restore "Tom
Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" under the head of adult fiction.
Other titles will be freely and frequently used in a children's
room, which is taking into active account the interests of its
users and is seeking to establish a genuine taste for good
reading which will not be abandoned later on as artificial or
forced. In general, the principle of selection should be to
provide the best standard novels in order that the boys and girls
who go out from the children's room may know what good novels are
and so much of modern fiction as shall serve to give the
collection the appearance of being interesting and up to date
without lowering the standard of that taste for good reading
which is the chief purpose in shelving such a collection in a
children's room. The presence of the books is good for the
children's librarian as well as for the children and it goes
without saying that she must be familiar with them if she is to
use them intelligently.
The point to stop in the purchase of books designed for
supplementary reading is with the smallest number that will meet
the active demands which are not met by REAL books. We may well
stop with the third book in most cases of purchase of books in
sets. Does anybody know whether informational readers on the
shelves of a children's room leads to genuine interest in the
subject so presented? To quote one boy's opinion of nature
readers, "The nature you get in books is the most disinteresting
subject there is." The cheapness of these publications has led to
a larger duplication of them in libraries than seems desirable
for the best interests of the work. We need in place of them such
books, with certain modifications in treatment, as were indicated
by Dr. Stanley Hall in his recent and very suggestive address on
Reading as a factor in the education of children (Library
Journal, April, 1908). Most of all do we need a series of books
which will put foreign children and their parents in touch and in
sympathy with the countries from which they came by spirited
illustrations in color of street scenes, festivals and scenes
from home life accompanied by simple direct statements and with
translations of such stories and poems as may aid in making and
keeping the impressions of their country vivid and lasting. There
has been a rising wave of production of primers and first reading
books during the past five years. Some libraries have
experienced a primer craze and it becomes exceedingly difficult
to decide which ones to buy and bow freely to duplicate them.
Primers and "easy books" have a use for children who are learning
to read but too free a use of them may be one of the influences
responsible for that lack of power of sustained attention and
limitation in vocabulary which is frequently shown by boys and
girls from twelve to fourteen years old.
The edition in which a book for children appears is a matter of
very much greater importance than is realized by those who view
the work from a distance. It is not purely an aesthetic
consideration. It has a very practical bearing on whether the
book will be read or not and libraries which have the least money
to spend should be most careful to spend it for books in editions
which are attractive to children.
2. The only thoroughly successful means of securing respect and
good care of library books is for libraries to maintain higher
standards of excellence in respect to intelligent repairing and
binding, to discard promptly a book which is to any extent
mutilated or which is so soiled as to make it seem unwarrantable
to ask a boy to wash his hands before touching it. The books on
the circulating shelves should be the most attractive part of a
children's room. That it is possible to make and to keep them so
is not a theory but a demonstrable fact. Three years ago a branch
library was opened in one of the poor districts of a large city.
The usual problems in the discipline of individuals and of gangs
were present. Many of the new books were soiled, others were
mutilated and several were missing at inventory taking. The
librarian believed the moral lesson conveyed to children by
training them to take care of library books to be one of the
first requirements of good citizenship. She determined that no
boy or girl should be able to say: "I took it that way", in
returning a soiled or mutilated book. In order to carry out her
ideas to a successful issue it has been necessary for her to
inspire her entire staff with a sense of the value of such
training and to impress upon them that careful handling of books
by library assistants is the first requisite to securing like
care on the part of the children. Every book is examined at the
time it is returned and before it is placed on the shelves it is
given such repair as it may need. By careful washing, skillful
varnishing and by the use of a preparation for removing grease
spots many books are given an extended turn of service without
lowering the standards established. Paper covers are provided as
wrappers on rainy days and on sticky days. Such care of books
requires time and sustained interest but I believe that it pays
in the immediate as well as in the future results, when grown
into men and women, the boys and girls who were taught this first
lesson in citizenship will look back upon it with feelings of
respect and satisfaction.
The cost to the library is less in expenditure for books and for
service. The library mentioned affords direct evidence that loss
of books by theft is very largely controlled by such simple means
provided the means are consciously and consistently related to
the larger end of regarding the property rights of others. It is
interesting to note that three-fourths of its membership has been
sustained during the three years.
3. In dealing with large numbers of children of foreign parentage
it is evident that we need to define their relationship to the
library more clearly than we have done as yet. Quite frequently
they do not distinguish between the building and the books and
refer to the latter as "taking libraries". Now "taking a library"
home is a very different matter from playing a part in the life
of a civic institution and the parents as well as the boys and
girls are quick to feel a difference which they are not always
able to express in words. Quite early in my experience this was
brought home to me by a visit from the mother of a Jewish boy who
had been coming to the children's room for about a year. She came
on a busy Saturday afternoon and after looking about the room
seated herself near the desk while the boy selected his books. As
Leopold always tested the interest of several books before
committing himself to a choice the visit lasted the entire
afternoon. When they were ready to go she explained why she had
come. She had been curious to discover for herself, she said,
what it was Leopold got from the Library that made him so much
easier to get on with at home. He had grown more thoughtful of
his younger brothers and sisters, more careful of his books and
other belongings and more considerate of his mother. "I wouldn't
have him know the difference I see," she continued, "but he told
me you were always asking him to bring me here and I made up my
mind to come and see for myself and I have.
"These children are learning how to BEHAVE in PUBLIC as well as
how to choose good books and I think it comes from the feeling
they have of belonging to the Library, and being treated in the
way they like, whether they are as young as my Simon, who is six
years old, or as old as Leopold, who will be fourteen next month.
If they were all boys of Leopold's age it would be the same as it
is at school; but having the younger ones here makes it more as
it is at home."
Should it not be the plan and purpose of a children's room to
make every boy and girl feel at home there from the moment of
signing an application blank? Forms of application blanks and the
manner of registration differ in nearly every library. Whatever
form is used, personal explanation is always essential and it
does not seem worth while to advocate a simplified form for the
use of children. I believe there are very decided advantages in a
system of registration which requires the children to write their
own names in a book. The impression made upon their memories is
distinctly different and more binding than that made by writing
the name on a slip of paper and has frequently been of great
service in cases of discipline as the signature is headed by a
reminder of obligations:
"When I write my name in this book I promise to take good care of
all the books I read in the Library and of those I take home and
to obey the rules of the Library." Such a method of registration
is not impractical, even in a large library provided the work is
carefully planned to admit of it.
Recent inquiries and investigation show very convincingly that a
large proportion of parents, both foreign born and American, and
a considerable number of educators, social workers and persons
connected with libraries in England and in this country, have
exceedingly hazy ideas respecting the work public libraries are
doing for children. The issue of an admirable illustrated hand
book on "The Work of the Cleveland public library with children"
and the means used to reach them, should make clear to the latter
whatever has seemed vague or indefinite in the work.
But there are many parents in large cities and in manufacturing
towns, who cannot be induced to visit libraries and see for
themselves as Leopold's mother did, and they are frequently
averse to having their children go to a place they know nothing
about, believing that they are being drawn away from their school
tasks by the mere reading of story books. How is it possible to
stimulate their curiosity and interest to the point of making a
Library seem desirable and even necessary in the education of
their children to become citizens and wage earners? Printed
explanations and rules issued by libraries are either not read or
not understood by the majority of persons to whom they are
addressed. There is something very deadening to the person of
average intelligence about most printed explanations of library
work. Pictures which bring the work before people from the human
side might be more successful and I wish to submit an outline for
a pictorial folder designed to accompany an application blank to
the home of an Italian child.