LIBRARY DEPARTMENT

SECRETARY'S MINUTES

FIRST SESSION.-TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 9, 1907

The department met in joint session with the Department of Normal Schools, in Alhambra Hall, Los Angeles, at 2:30 P. M., and was called to order by the president, J. N. Wilkinson, of Kansas.

D. B. Johnson, of South Carolina, then read a paper on "Preparation of Librarians for Public-School Libraries." A second paper was given by Miss Elizabeth T. Sullivan, of Los Angeles, on "Instruction of All Prospective Teachers in the Contents and Uses of Libraries with a View to Difection of Student Energy in All Grades of Schools."

Discussion on both papers was opened by J. R. Kirk, of Missouri, followed by Harriett Arden, of New York; P. W. Kauffman, of California; Mr. Thomas, of Nebraska; Mrs. Smart, of Ontario; Miss McFadden, of San Francisco; Mr. Robinson, of Oregon, and Mr. Lucas, of Seattle.

President Wilkinson appointed the following:

SECOND SESSION.-THURSDAY AFTERNOON, JULY II

The department met at the same place at 2:30 P. M., and was called to order by D. B. Johnson, of South Carolina.

The president, J. N. Wilkinson, gave an address on "The Librarian as a Teacher." A paper was presented by Miss Mira Jacobus, of California, on "How the Teacher May Help the Librarian."

W. A. Edwards, of California, read a paper on "How the Librarian May Help the Teacher."

There was no discussion on the papers.

Mr. Johnson gave a report of the A. L. A. meeting held at Asheville, N. C., in June. The Committee on Nominations for Library Department reported as follows: For President J. R. Kirk, president of State Normal School, Kirksville, Missouri. For Vice President-Mary Eileen Ahern, editor of Public Libraries, Chicago, Ill. For Secretary-Ida J. Dacus, librarian, Winthrop Normal and Industrial College, Rock Hill, S. C.

The report was accepted, and these persons elected as the officers of the department for the coming year.

The department adjourned.

ELVA E. RULON, Secretary.

PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS

PREPARATION OF LIBRARIANS FOR PUBLIC-SCHOOL
LIBRARIES

D. B. JOHNSON, PRESIDENT, WINTHROP NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE, ROCK HILL, S. C.

According to the report on instruction in library administration made to the library department at the last meeting of the National Educational Association, all the states of the United States except twelve have some provision for the establishment of school libraries. The report mentions South Carolina as one of the twelve. I am glad to state that the general assembly of South Carolina passed "An Act to Encourage the Establishment of Libraries in the Public Schools of the Rural Districts," February 18, 1904, and that we now have some 1,000 such libraries in the state, and are rapidly establishing others. No doubt others of the twelve states mentioned in the report as having no schoollibrary law have done likewise since the report was made, and that now all of the states, with few, if any, exceptions, make some provision for school. libraries.

An estimate was made several years ago that there were then in the United States 23,000 school libraries, containing 45,000,000 books, a number greater by 12,000,000 than in all the public libraries of Europe at that time. Since that estimate was made there has been greater activity than ever before in the establishment of school libraries, and today, no doubt, there are more books in the school libraries of this country than inhabitants of an age to read them. There has been a remarkable growth in the public-library movement during the past century, and most of it has been during the latter part of the century. We learn from a paper read by Miss Robertson before this department in 1902 that "prior to 1810 there were but ten public libraries in existence, and these were chiefly subscription and society libraries, collected and used by those who were able to pay for the privilege. To America belongs the honor of founding and perfecting the free-library system." Matthew Arnold said in one of his lecture tours in this country that he saw nothing in America that impressed him so much as the sight of a ragged and almost shoeless little boy sitting in the reading-room of one of our public libraries, studying his book or newspaper with all the sangfroid of a member of a West End London club.

But now, this great library movement is world-wide, and in the ages to come this will be looked upon, in the opinion of some of our most thoughtful men, as the library-building age.

A multitude of books, however, cannot effect much good without a multitude of intelligent readers. A pile of books is no more a real library than a pile of bricks is a house. It is more difficult to make intelligent readers than to build libraries and equip them.

And just here comes in the duty and obligation and opportunity of the educator and the opportunity of all the agencies and forces of education, and there can be no greater object for these agencies and forces than that of making of the people intelligent readers of good literature. The people will be molded by what they read for good or for evil. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. He cannot rise above his ideals. A man thinks as he reads. Reading forms his ideals-good or bad.

It is as difficult, however, to change a grown person's taste or habits in reading as to work over dried plaster of paris. The great field for work in this

The teacher comes into closer

line of endeavor is therefore with the young. relation with the children than anyone else, next to the father and mother, and

as the father and mother cannot or will not direct their children's reading, it becomes the duty and opportunity of the teacher to do it in the school. If the habit of reading is to be formed among the people, then the teachers must form it thru the school children. Hence the close relation of the school and the library-the people's university.

We cannot any longer speak of the sphere of the library as separate and distinct from that of the school. "Neither has a sphere, each is but a hemisphere, and they shall be one," as has been said of man and woman. The library is a necessary part, if not the most necessary part, of a school, even the humblest and most elementary. It gives life and breadth to the school and relates it to human affairs.

Properly used, it broadens the outlook of pupils, gives them better judgment, makes them more self-reliant, better fitted to meet the complex problems of life. When pupils are confined to the text and are shut up to solving its problems by the accompanying rules, to accepting its teachings and the fiat of the teacher without question, they are made weak in their personal judgment. They must be made to know that the sum total of knowledge of the subject studied is not comprised within the covers of the textbook used in class, by being referred to the library for additional information and for parallel reading, in order to give them breadth of view and soundness and independence of judgment. The children must be given something else besides the "scrappy mental and moral bill-of-fare" offered by the textbook. The old idea that there must not be anything interesting or entertaining about lessons, accompanying that other old idea that Christianity means a long face and a sorrowful countenance, is being abandoned everywhere. We have learned that the way to educate a child is thru his interest-along the line of least resistance. The mother who, when told that Johnnie was in the garden, said, "Go and see what he is doing and tell him to stop it," does not represent the new and best attitude toward children and education.

I do not wish to be understood as underrating the importance of schoolroom drill or textbook work, but rather to be emphasizing the importance of that which seemingly is not generally recognized, judging from practice—the use of the library in schoolwork. There is no work of the teacher surpassing

in importance, I am almost tempted to say, comparable, to that of teaching children to use and love good books. If a pupil does not learn how to use books and does not get into the habit of reading and studying them, his education, so called, in the end does not amount to much. The object of the school is to educate, and there is no educative influence like that of a good book. We can hardly overestimate the good influence in a community or a school of a good book freely and generally circulated.

Dr. VanSickle, acting president of the library department of the National Educational Association in 1897, well said in his opening remarks:

Since half of the children leave school at the age of twelve, it is evident that education is largely an out-of-door affair. If education is not to stop with the school, the library is the chief instrumentality for its continuance, and for its proper use, the school can give the training. . . . . It is the one duty of the school to develop in the child the power to educate himself after he leaves school. This, it has done when it has cultivated in him the reading habit and developed literary taste. It makes not so much difference what our pupils learn as what they love. What they learn they will forget. What they love, they will pursue thru life.

The school has to do with the child and youth, but the library has to do with the child, the youth, and the man until the end of life.

President Eliot, that far-sighted, clear-headed educational thinker and leader, holds that "the uplifting of the democratic masses depends on the implanting at schools of a taste for good reading."

To form the tastes of children for good reading, we can hardly begin too early. Before they can read, they can be read to and told stories. This work must be begun early to be effective, because, as has been estimated, four-fifths of the school children pass out into active life before reaching the high school.

In order for this great and far-reaching work to be done, now admitted by leaders of thought everywhere to be vital to the welfare of the children and people and the state, every school, preferably every schoolroom, must have its well-selected library, and every teacher must know how to use that library to the very best advantage. Hence the necessity for some provision in normal schools, which are training the teachers of the country, for the teaching of library methods, not to make professional librarians, but teacher-librarians. The necessity for such work in normal schools seems to be very generally recognized now. If it is the duty of the state to teach its future citizens to read, it is equally or more its duty to teach them what to read, in view of the danger to the individual and the state of reading evil books.

When the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in 1861, it is said that a cannon ball fell in a field on one of the South Carolina coast islands near the fort where an old negro was working and sank hissing into the soft earth. The old darky, who had never seen a cannon ball before, fled from the place with eyes rolling in terror, crying out, "Hell hab laid a aig." He spoke far truer than he knew, and yet an evil book dropped into the life of an individual will hatch out more evil for that individual and, if into the lives of enough

individuals, more evil for the community and country at large than did that first shot for individuals and for the country, altho it hatched out all the evils and destruction and bitterness and suffering of the Civil War.

The sub-committee on the relation of libraries to normal schools, in its report to this department, holds:

If the people look to the normal schools for trained teachers, then they have a right to demand that these teachers come to them prepared to name the best books and to use them in the best way after they are purchased. The teacher worthy of the name should not be satisfied until, having chosen a book for a child with as much care as a physician would use in selecting his instruments, he sees that child as an interested and successful reader of the same.

Teachers must keep in close touch with the people, must be interested in what they are interested in, must prepare themselves to give training in all those things necessary to enable the people to live the best lives possible in their environment, must take interest in and part in all live questions if they are to get out of that class in which the old woman placed them, among neither the living nor the dead, when in reply to the question "How many children have you?" she answered, "Five-two living, two dead, and one teaching school.”

Many normal schools in all parts of the country are giving instruction in library methods to prepare teachers for this new work. In my own state of South Carolina, the institution I represent, the Winthrop Normal and Industrial College, is trying to do something in this direction. Under our new library law, a number of school libraries have been established in different parts of the state, and others are being established rapidly, and for this reason and for others already stated, we feel that in order to thoroly equip a teacher for the common schools, which it is our duty to do, we must give our students some training in library methods. Mr. Andrew Carnegie recently gave us $30,000 for a library, and in building it we made provision for classrooms and workrooms to be used in teaching library methods. The state gives us an annual appropriation of $2,000 to buy books, and we now have over 14,000 volumes, bought during the past twelve years since the establishment of the college. The books are selected by a committee of the faculty. We have two thoroly trained librarians, both graduates of library schools, in charge. The library is free to all, no fee whatever being charged.

We give two library courses at present-one to the freshman class and the other to the seniors. Both are compulsory.

The course for the students entering freshman class consists of reference work to familiarize them with some of the most important books of reference and to train them to a systematic and intelligent use of books and the library. In this course a study is made of dictionaries, annuals, indexes to general and periodical literature, books of quotations, etc. Instruction in the classification of the library and the use of the catalogue is also given. One period a week in class for the first term (half the session) is given for this course.