The use of the Library is Free to anyone who comes to Read or to
Study in its rooms.
If you wish to take Books home you must sign an application blank
and give the name and address of some one who knows you.
The information on the folder should be given in the language or
languages of the neighborhood in which the library is situated.
This folder was designed for a branch library in an Italian
neighborhood but a similar folder might be utilized in any
community provided the information is given in simple, direct
form and the pictures show the Library with people using it.
4. Joining the library is not all. However carefully and
impressively the connection is made we are all conscious of those
files of cards "left by borrower," which indicate that a
connection must be sustained if library membership is to prove
its claim as a civic force. There are those who regard a
restriction of circulation to one or two story books a week as a
desirable means to this end, believing that interest in reading
is heightened by such limitation. That many boys and girls read
too much we all know, but I am inclined to think that whatever
restriction is made should be made for the individual rather than
laid down as a library rule. Other libraries advocate a remission
of fines, at the same time imposing a deprivation in time of such
length that it would seem to defeat the chief end of the
children's room which is to encourage the reading habit. Children
who leave their cards for six months at a time are not likely to
be very actively interested in their library. There seem to be
three viewpoints regarding fines for children.
1. Children should be required to pay their fines as a lesson in
civic righteousness. Persons holding this view would allow the
working out of fines under some circumstances but regard the fine
as a debt.
2. Any system of fines is a wrong one, therefore all fines should
be remitted and some other punishment for negligence substituted.
Persons holding this view would deprive children of the use of
the library for a stated period.
3. A fine is regarded as slightly punitive and probably the most
effective means of teaching children to respect the rights of
others in their time use of books. Persons holding this view
would reduce the fine to one cent, wherever a fine is exacted and
would exercise a great deal of latitude in dealing with
individual cases, remitting or cutting down fines whenever it
seems wise to do so and imposing brief and variable time
deprivations of the use of the library rather than a long fixed
period.
Whatever viewpoint is taken it will be necessary to remind
children constantly that by keeping their books overtime other
boys and girls are being deprived of the reading of them.
One of the most effective means of sustaining and promoting such
a sense of library membership as I have indicated is the
extension of reading-room work by placing on open, or on closed
shelves, if necessary, a collection of the best children's books
in the best editions obtainable, to be used as reading-room
books. Children may be so trained in the careful handling of
these books as to become very much more careful of their
treatment of the book they take home and the experiment is not a
matter of large expense to the library. The reading-room books
should never be allowed to become unsightly in appearance if they
are to do their full work in the room as an added attraction to
the children and as suggestive to parents, teachers and other
visitors who may wish to purchase books as gifts.
The value of a well conducted Story hour or Reading club as a
means of sustaining the library connection and of influencing the
spontaneous choice of books by boys and girls has not been fully
recognized because it has been only partially understood. There
are various methods of conducting Story hours and Reading clubs.
There are many differences of opinion as to whether the groups
should be large or small, differentiated by age or by sex,
whether the groups should be made up entirely of children or
whether an occasional adult may be admitted without changing the
relation between the story teller and the children. Those who
desire suggestion of material and specific information as to
method and practice will find much that is valuable and practical
in the publication of the Carnegie library of Pittsburg and in
the Handbook of the Cleveland public library. Those who are
seeking to place a Story hour in work already established will do
well to remember that it is a distinctly social institution and
as such is bound to be colored by the personality of its
originator whether she tells the stories herself or finds others
to carry out her ideas. Make your Story hour the simple and
natural expression of the best you have to give and do not
attempt more than you can perform. I believe the Story hour is
the simplest and most effective means of enlisting the interest
of parents and of stirring that active recollection of their own
childhood which leads to sharing its experiences with their
children. Folk tales told in the language his father and mother
speak should give to the child of foreign parentage a feeling of
pride in the beautiful things of the country his parents have
left in place of the sense of shame with which he too often
regards it. The possibilities in this field are unlimited if
wisely directed.
The value of exhibits depends upon the subject chosen and the
exercise of imagination, good taste and practical knowledge of
children's tastes in selecting and arranging the objects or
pictures. The subject must be one which makes an immediate appeal
to the passing visitor. There should not be too much of it and it
should not be allowed to remain too long in the room. A single
striking object is often more effective than a collection of
objects. Some interpretation of an exhibit in the form of
explanation or story is needed if the children are to become very
much interested in reading about a subject.
To those who believe that Story hours, Clubs, Exhibits, and
Picture bulletins are not "legitimate library work," I would say,
suspend your judgment until you have watched or studied the
visible effects of such work in a place where it is properly
related to the other activities of the library and to the needs
of the community in which it is situated. If by the presence of
an Arctic exhibit in an Italian and Irish-American non-reading
neighborhood an interest is stimulated which results in the
circulation and the reading of several hundred books on the
subject during the time of the exhibition and for months
afterward, the exhibit certainly seems legitimate.
5. Since it is true that social conditions, racial
characteristics and individuality in temperament enter very
actively into the problems of the care of children in libraries
and since it is also true that the books children read and the
care which is given to them in libraries are frequently
reflected in their conduct in relation to the School, the Church,
the Social settlement, the Playground, the Juvenile court and to
civic clubs as well as to the Home, a more enlightened
conception of the work of all these institutions is essential if
the Children's library is to play its full part in the absorption
of children of different nations into a larger national life.
This need is being recognized and partially met by lecture
courses and by the practice work of students in library training
schools but listening to lectures, reading, and regulated student
practice does not take the place of that spontaneous eagerness to
see for one's self, the social activities of a neighborhood or
town which makes a library in its town a place of living
interest. Librarians, en masse, in relation to other
institutions, stand in a similar position to that of the
representative of those institutions. On both sides a firsthand
knowledge of the aims and objects and methods of work of all the
forces at work in a given community and a perception of their
interrelationship is essential if we wish to do away with the
present tendency to duplicate work which is already being
carried on by more effective agencies. How far a library should
go in relating its work to that of other institutions it is
impossible to prescribe. The aim should be to make its own work
so clear to the community in which it is placed that it will
command the respect and the support of every citizen.