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.

The freshmen are given this course for two reasons: (1) to enable them to use the library to better purpose thruout their college course, and (2) that they may have some library training to be used in their homes and schools if they have to drop out of school before graduation, as many of them do.

The course for the seniors is arranged to give such instruction as is needed in the formation and care of a school library. It includes the following: selection of books-books suitable for the different grades, best editions for school libraries most useful government publications, book-buying, classification, book numbers, accessioning, cataloging, shelf - listing, charging-systems, picture bulletins, care of books, mending books, making of picture bulletins, state school-library law, state library list. One period a week in class for the second term is given for this course.

The librarian does the teaching.

We have a model school library in the classroom, consisting of the books in the State Library list, which is used by the students in all the practice-work given in the course.

These courses are not all we hope to make them after longer trial of them. If a school library is large enough to justify and require a professional librarian for all of his time and can afford such an officer, the regular library school can and will supply him. Most, if not all such schools, give training for work with children and children's books in addition to the regular library training. I do not believe that normal schools can profitably or successfully undertake the training of professional librarians, and I am glad to know that this opinion is shared by others who have given the subject earnest thought. So experienced a librarian as Mr. G. M. Walton, of the Michigan State Normal College, writes me in a recent letter:

Any library of 1,000 volumes or more should be looked after by someone who has had more experience in library methods than it is judicious to offer in the normal school. This is my opinion after fifteen years of experimenting and observing the work of other normals.

The report of the committee on instruction in library administration, made to the library department of the National Educational Association at its last meeting, seems to uphold this view. The recommendation of that committee as to library work in normal schools may well be taken as a guide by all normal schools undertaking such work.

The committee suggests that the instruction offered ought to cover the following subjects:

School libraries: place and value both as general collections and for special instruction; types; how to organize.

The public library and the public school: the field of each and general relations; loans; bulletins; classroom libraries; museums.

How to use a library: books as tools; care of books; book-making; reference books. The school-library room: location; light; heat and ventilation; equipment. Selection and ordering of books; authority of librarian; sources of material; aid in selection; sales catalogs; methods of ordering and accounting.

Children's reading: finding lists-for teachers; for children.

Incoming books: invoices; accessioning; marks of ownership.

Cataloging and classification: systems of each; forms; preparation of cards.
Library routine: loan and charging system; call-numbers; shelf list.

Binding: material, pamphlets, general care, repairs.

Library associations: national, state, local; library schools.

State laws relating to school libraries.

In conclusion, then, I would say that what is imperatively needed and must be done is not for normal schools to train professional librarians for publicschool libraries, for these libraries cannot afford such luxuries even if they needed them, but to train teachers in library methods and in the use of books so that they may manage effectively the public-school libraries in connection with their teaching, and in doing this may do much better teaching and render a much greater service to education and the state than they could possibly do otherwise.

INSTRUCTION OF ALL PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS IN THE
CONTENTS AND USE OF LIBRARIES

ELIZABETH T. SULLIVAN, CRITIC TEACHER, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL,
LOS ANGELES, CAL.

The question for our consideration is-is there need for instruction of prospective teachers in the contents and use of libraries, whereby student energy may be directed? The testimony of librarians and county superintendents is valuable to us here. The experience of these two classes of public officials leaves us in no doubt as to the general need for instruction in the contents and use of libraries. That the same complaint can be made by librarians in normal schools receiving students from high schools and universities would indicate that mere exposure to libraries for from twelve to sixteen years is not sufficient to teach the use of libraries. The inability of even these classes of students to use a library economically is indication enough of the need of direct and systematic instruction in library method.

Indeed, there are two sides to this question of students' general inability to properly use a library, and in justice to the student, both sides should be considered in this connection. There seems to be a tendency among library management to provide for the distribution of books of reference to the patrons of the library, thus saving time on the patrons' part and subsequent labor on their own. One can well see the argument for this arrangement, but does it not preclude entirely the friendly contact of students with shelves of books whose covers alone suggest much that lures the incipient student-mind to fertile fields of knowledge? This ready library service, it seems to me, has its drawbacks.

Then, too, the tendency, in secondary schools and universities for instructors and professors to furnish students with classified reference lists of subjects, while excellent in itself, as any student will testify, is a direct drawback in giving ability in looking up work. These books are asked for at the

librarian's desk and if all are out the student has a legitimate excuse for appearing in the recitation and answering "not prepared," if he happens to be called That general browsing about in libraries which in itself teaches the run of libraries is unwittingly being discouraged.

on.

These evils, for such I feel they are, are brought about by overearnestness of instructors for the progress of their own subjects. They may not be evils from the standpoint of the student, technically considered, i. e., one registered in a class to meet the demands of the instructor of the class. As a student he is getting along comfortably on the instructor's crutches and when he receives his diploma he will then throw aside his crutches and exercise his own legs in business or other branch of activity where a limited use of books is required, if any at all.

For those then who are guided thru the educational system until they have acquired something that passes for education, this systematic service rendered in the choice of books and in the supplying of them by the librarian is not especially harmful. But how does it affect the student who terminates his school days early in life? He has no instructor's guide to serviceable books, nor has he a syllabus of his subject to aid him in asking for books from the librarian. Modesty, pride, or a weak student spirit may keep him from making the advance to the desk, while free access to the shelves with some definite idea of how to use their contents to serve his ends might make a real student of him.

Make your way into any library any day but more particularly any evening. Take up your stand where you can see into the reading-room of the men and boys. What an interesting motley of humanity is represented! The ones that most touch the heart are the care-worn and toil-worn, yes, dirty and ofttimes ragged middle-aged men and boys. Watch the eagerness with which they read. You wonder what they are reading. Ask the librarian what they get from the shelves, or what they ask her to direct them to when they ask at all. The current fiction? The light magazine? No. She will tell you that they have come to spend an evening with the best minds in science and history and ofttimes to read Plato and Aristotle in the original. Pity changes to admiration for the mind that is "the standard of the man." And these are the men and boys who have no time to waste. What time they are taking now they are taking from their rest. These are the people who need instruction in their limited school days in how to conserve their energy; in how to find a book on a subject and how to tell at a glance whether that book contains what they are after.

Again, familiarity with the arrangement of a library, together with the habit of frequenting one, may become the salvation of many a young man and woman stranded in a strange city without friends. It gives them a safe and wholesome place to spend an evening away from much evil that abounds in all large cities.

But to one class of students more than to any other is the need of instruc