Fifteen years ago there existed within the fifty-six thousand square
miles of Wisconsin a mere handful of starveling public libraries, and
only in three or four of the larger cities were these institutions
properly housed. Most of them existed from force of habit rather than
from action. But one library in the state employed trained service.
There were no traveling libraries. The school district libraries had
scarcely made a beginning, so that even that source failed to supply
wholesome books for the use of the people. Here and there a volunteer
fire department gathered a bundle of books, or a literary society would
secure a similar collection from the attics of its members. Naturally,
such efforts resulted in dismal failures. Ninety per cent of the
population was absolutely without public library facilities.
But fifteen years ago, and now! Scattered all over the state, in
cities and villages and hamlets, are to be found modern, up-to-date
public libraries in charge of alert, trained, interested librarians,
eager and active in extending the radius of their influence or helpful
in every way to promote the interests of the community and of every
individual in it. There are now 152 public libraries in Wisconsin.
Sixty-one of them occupy buildings erected especially for them, and
28 others have quarters in city halls or other public buildings. Many
of them have a children's department, with trained library workers in
charge of the specialized activities there conducted. In the larger
buildings, lecture halls are an adjunct, where it is possible to
provide university extension and similar lectures, and where women's
study clubs, young men's debating societies and similar groups of
persons find hospitable meeting places for carrying on their work. Work
with schools is carried on to an extent, and to a profitable degree,
little imagined as possible in the early days of the library extension
movement. Free access to shelves is now permitted in every library of
the state except one.
There are now some forty librarians in Wisconsin who come from library
training schools, and of the other librarians and assistants employed,
approximately 100 have attended the summer school conducted by the
Wisconsin Free Library Commission. The growing importance of the
relation between library and school is evidenced by the fact that
library instruction is now part of the course in every one of the seven
normal schools, and a professional school for training librarians, with
a staff of picked instructors, is maintained at Madison by the state.
The candidates for admission are selected by competitive examination,
and with special regard to suitability for the work by reason of
temperament, education, address and experience.