This second paper on Values in library work with children, was
presented at the Kaaterskill Conference of the A. L. A. in 1913
by Caroline Burnite. In it are discussed "departmental
organization as it benefits the reading child, and the principles
and policies which have developed through departmental unity."
For inclusion in this volume it has been somewhat condensed by
the author.
Caroline Burnite was born in Caroline County, Maryland, in 1875;
was graduated from the Easton, Maryland, High School in 1892 and
from Pratt Institute Library School in 1894. From 1895 to 1901
she was librarian of the Tome Institute in Port Deposit,
Maryland. She was an assistant in the Carnegie Library of
Pittsburgh from 1902 to 1904, when she became Director of
Children's Work in the Cleveland Public Library, the position she
now holds. Miss Burnite is also an instructor in the Western
Reserve Library School.
To elucidate principles of value, I shall use, by way of
illustration, the experience and structure of a children's
department where the problem of children's reading and the means
of bringing books to them has been intensively studied for some
nine years.... Probably about six out of ten of the children of
that city read library books in their homes during the year, and
each child reads about twenty books on the average. In all,
fifty- four thousand children read a million books, which reach
them through forty-three librarians assigned for special work
with these children, through three hundred teachers and about one
hundred volunteers.
Now, we know that six out of ten children is not an ideal
proportion of the total number. We know also, inversely, that the
volume of work entailed in serving fifty-four thousand children
may endanger the quality of book service given to each child.
Both of these conditions show that the experience of each reading
child should make its own peculiar contribution to the general
problem of children's reading and that the experience of large
numbers of reading children should be brought to bear upon the
problem of the individual. To accomplish this, work with the
children was given departmental organization. My concern in this
paper is with departmental organization as it benefits the
reading child, and with the principles and policies which have
been developed through departmental unity.
We think ordinarily that one who loves books has three general
hallmarks: his reading is fairly continuous, there is a
permanency of book interest, and this interest is maintained on a
plane of merit. But in the child's contact with the library there
are many evidences of modifications of normal book interests.
Instead of continuity of reading, the children's rooms are
overcrowded in winter and have far less use in summer; instead of
permanency of book interest extending over the difficult
intermediate period, large numbers of those children who leave
school before they reach high school have little or no library
contact during their first working years, and without doubt the
interesting experiences with working children, which librarians
are prone to emphasize, give us an impression that a larger
number are readers than careful investigation would show. And as
for the quality of reading of many children who are at work we
cannot maintain that it is always on a high plane.
Such results are largely due to environmental influences.
Deprived for the greater part of the year at least, of
opportunity for normal youthful activities, the child's entire
physical and mental schedule is thrown out of balance and he
turns to reading, a recreation at his service at any time, only
when there is little opportunity to follow other interests. Since
the strain upon the ear and the eye, and back and brain is so
great in the shop, the tendency in the first working years is too
often toward recreations in which the book has no place. The
power of the nickel library over the younger boy and girl can be
broken by the presence of the public library, but the quality of
the reading of the intermediate is often due to the popularity of
the mediocre modern novel, with its present-day social interests.
For these and other reasons, the whole judgment of the results of
library work with children can not rest upon such general tests
of normal book interests as we have stated. Rather such
variations from the normal are themselves conditions which
influence the structure of the work and especially the principles
of book presentation. Children with pressing social needs must
have books with social values to meet those needs; chiefest of
these are right social contacts, true social perspective,
traditions of family and race, loveliness of nature,
companionship of living things, right group association and group
interests.
Starting with the principle that books should construct a larger
social ideal for the greater number of children instead of
confirming their present one, it was first necessary to find out
from actual work with children, what their reactions to books
with various interests are. Such knowledge was supplemented by
the recorded testimony of men and women of their indebtedness to
children's books, especially such as "Tom Brown" and "Little
Women," and especially of their youthful appreciation of the
relationships and interdependence of the characters.
After we were able to evaluate books and to have some definite
idea of which were good and which poor, the question arose:
Should we have books with manifestly weak values in the library
as a concession to some children who might not read the better
books, or by having them do we harm most those very children to
whom we have conceded them? The gradual solution of this problem
seems to me to be one of the greatest services which a library
can render its children. A safe answer seems to be: No books weak
in social ideals should be furnished, provided we do not lose
reading children by their elimination. If such books are the best
a child will read, and we take them away, causing him to lose
interest in reading, he is apt to come under even less favorable
influences.
Another problem which arose was that the cumulative experience of
librarians working with children showed that many books, weak in
social viewpoint, lead only to others of their kind, and that
such books are the ones read largely by those children which are
most occasional and spasmodic in their reading. Here was a
determining point in the establishment of standards of reading,
for it brought us face to face with the question: Shall we
consider this situation our fault since we supply such books to
children who need something better vastly more than do children
in happier circumstances, or shall we merely justify our
selection by maintaining that those children will under no
circumstances read a higher grade of books? However, observation
showed that other books were read also by children with social
limitations; books which, although apparently no better, lead to
a better type of reading, and this prompted the policy of the
removal of books which had little apparent influence in
developing a good reading taste. This was done, however, with the
definite intention that an increasingly better standard of
reading must mean that no children cease using the library, an
end only made possible by a knowledge of the value of the
individual book to the individual child.
Now let us see what changes have been evolved in the book
collections in the department under consideration:
At first the proportion of books of the doubtful class to those
which were standard was considered, and it was seen that this
preponderance of the doubtful class should be decreased in order
that a child's chances for eventually reading the best might be
improved. It is obvious that the reading for the younger children
should be the more carefully safeguarded, and this was the first
point of attack. As a result, two types of books were eliminated:
1. All series for young children, such as Dotty Dimples and
Little Colonels.
2. Books for young children dealing with animal life which have
neither humane nor scientific value, such as Pierson and
Wesselhoeft.
Also stories of child life for young children were restricted to
those which were more natural and possible, and on the other
hand, stories read by older girls in which adults were made the
beneficiaries of a surprisingly wise child hero, such as the
Plympton books, were eliminated.
The successful elimination of these books, together with the
study of the children's reading as a whole, suggested later, that
other books could be eliminated or restricted without loss of
readers. In the course of time, the following results were
accomplished:
1. The restriction of the stories of the successful poor boy to
those within the range of possibility, as are the Otis books,
largely.
2. The elimination of stories in which the child character is not
within a normal sphere; for instance, the child novel, such as
Mrs. Jamison's stories.
3. Lessening the number of titles by authors who are undeservedly
popular, such as restricting the use of Tomlinson to one series
only.
4. The restriction of any old and recognized series to its
original number of titles, such as the Pepper series. The
disapproval of all new books obviously the first in a series.
5. The elimination of travel, trivial in treatment and in series
form, such as the Little Cousins.
6. The elimination of the modern fairy tale, except as it has
vitality and individual charm, as have those of George McDonald.
7. The elimination of interpreted folk lore, such as many of the
modern kindergarten versions.
8. The elimination of word books for little children, and the
basing of their reading upon their inherent love for folk lore
and verse.
Without analyzing the weakness of all these types, I wish to say
a word about the series. This must be judged not only by content,
but by the fact that in the use of such a form of literature the
tendency of the child toward independence of book judgment and
book selection is lessened and the way paved for a weak form of
adult literature.
The later policies developed regarding book selection have been
these:
1. Recognizing "blind alleys" in children's fiction, such as the
boarding school story and the covert love story, and buying no
new titles of those types.
2. Lessening the number of titles of miscellaneous collections of
folk-lore in which there are objectionable individual tales, for
instance, buying only the Blue, Green and Yellow fairy books.
3. The elimination, or use in small numbers, of a type of history
and biography which is not scholarly, or even serious in
treatment, such as the Pratt histories.
4. The elimination of such periodical literature for young
children, as the Children's Magazine and Little Folks, since
their reading can be varied more wholesomely without it.
Reports of reading sequences from each children's room have
furnished the basis for further study of children's reading.
These are discussed and compared by the workers, a working
outline of reading sequences made and reported back to each room,
to be used, amplified and reported on again.
While those books which are no longer used may have been at one
time necessary to hold a child from reading something poorer, we
did not lose children through raising the standard, and the
duplication of doubtful books in the children's room is less
heavy now than it was a few years ago. This is shown by the fact
that there are more than twice as many children who are reading,
and almost three times as many books being read as there were
nine years ago, while the number of children of the city has
increased but 72 per cent. Furthermore, the proportion of
children of environmental limitations has by no means diminished,
and the foreign population is much the same--more than 74 per
cent.
Of course, the elimination of some books was accomplished because
there were better books on the subject, but the general result
was largely brought about because in the establishment of these
higher standards we did not exceed the ideals and standards of
those who were working with the children. The standards which
they brought to the work, and which they deduced themselves from
their experience, were crystalized through Round Table
discussion, where each worker measured her results by those of
the others and thereby recognized the need of constant, but
careful experimentation.
Experience has proved that a children's department can not reach
standards of reading which in the judgment of librarians working
with the children are beyond the possibility of attainment, for
with them rests entirely the delicate task of the adjustment of
the book to the child. A staff of children's librarians of good
academic education, the best library training, a true vision of
the social principles; a broad knowledge of children's literature
is the greatest asset for any library doing children's work.
But it is true, inversely, that in raising the standards of the
children the standards of the workers were raised. By this I mean
that with definite methods of book presentation in use, the
worker saw farther into the mental and material life of the child
and understood his social instincts better. This has been
evidenced in the larger duplication of the better books. Among
the methods are those which recognize group interest and group
association as a social need of childhood. Through unifying and
intensifying the thoughts and sympathies of the children by
giving them great and universal thought in the story hour, the
mediocre is often bridged and both the child and the worker
reaches a higher plane of experience. Also by giving children a
group interest, not only children recognize that books may be
cornerstones for social intercourse and that there is connection
between social conduct as expressed in books and their own social
obligations, but what is also important, the worker learns that
when children are at the age of group activity and expression
they can often be more permanently influenced as a group than as
individuals. This prompted the organization of clubs for older
children.
Through the recognition of the principle that there are methods
of book appeal for use with individual children and other methods
for groups of children, it was shown that the organization of
the work as a whole must be such that the chief methods of
presentation of literature could be fully developed. It was seen
that, far less with a group of children than with the individual
child, could we afford to give a false experience or an
unfruitful interest, and that material for group presentation,
methods of group presentation and the social elements which are
evinced in groups of children should receive an amount of
attention and study which would lead to the surest and soundest
results. This could be fully accomplished only by recognizing
such methods as distinct functions of the department. In other
words, that there should not only be divisions of work with
children according to problems of book distribution, such as by
schools and home libraries, but there must be of necessity,
divisions by problems of reading. Whereas, in a smaller
department all divisions would center in the head, the volume of
work in a large library renders necessary the appointment of an
instructor in story-telling and a supervisor of reading clubs,
which results in a higher specialization and a greater impetus
for these phases of work than one person can accomplish. Here we
have a concrete instance of the benefit that a large volume of
work may confer upon the individual child.
With the attainment of better reading results and higher
standards for the workers, it is obvious that the reading
experiences of the children and the standards of the workers must
be conserved, and that the organization should protect the
children, as far as possible, from the disadvantage of change of
workers. Considerable study has been given to this, and yearly
written reports on the reading of children in each children's
room are made, in which variations from accepted standards of
the children's reading in that library, with individual
instances, are usually discussed. However, the children's
librarian is entirely free to report the subject from whatever
angle it has impressed her most. Also a written report is made of
the story hour, the program, general and special results, and
intensity of group interest in certain types of stories. This
report is supplementary to a weekly report in prescribed form, of
the stories told, sources used and results. All programs used
with clubs are reported and semi-annual report made of the club
work as a whole. By discussion and reports back to individual
centers, these become bases for a wider vision of work and a
wiser direction of energy with less experimentation.
The connection between work with children and the problem of the
reading of intermediates, referred to in the beginning, should
not be dismissed in a paragraph. However, it is only possible to
give a short statement of it. Recognizing that the reading of
adult books should begin in the children's room, a serious study
of adult books possible for children's reading was made by the
children's librarians, the reports discussed and the books added
to the department as the result. A second report of adult titles
which children and intermediates might and do read was called for
recently and from that a tentative list had been furnished to
both adult and children's workers for further study. The
increasing number of workers in the children's department who
have had general training, and in the adult work who have had
special training for work with children make such reports of much
value. In order to follow the standards of children's work, there
is one principle which is obvious, namely, a book disapproved as
below grade for juveniles should not be accepted for general
intermediate work. This is especially true of books of adventure
which a boy of any age between 12 and 18 would read.
In conclusion, the chief means of determining values in library
work with children are these: An intensive study of the reading
of children in relation to its social and informational worth to
them; the right basis of education and training for such study,
on the part of the workers; the direction of such study in a way
that brings about a higher and more practical standard on the
part of the worker; the conservation of her experience. These are
the great services which the library may render children and they
can be most fully accomplished, I believe, through departmental
organization.