LIBRARY DEPARTMENT SECRETARY'S MINUTES FIRST SESSION.-THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1902 The first meeting of the Library Department of the National Educational Association was held in the reading room of the University Library, Minneapolis, Minn., at 2: 30 p. M., and was called to order by Miss M. E. Ahern, secretary, neither the president nor the vice-president being present. The meeting opened with a selection, "The Watersprite," Schumann, by the Minneapolis Ladies' Quartette. Dr. Wm. W. Folwell, librarian of the University of Minnesota, extended a word of greeting. A letter from the president, J. H. Canfield, regretting the necessity of his absence and pointing out what seemed to him to be the work before the department, was read by the secretary. At this point the vice-president, Mr. Reuben Post Halleck, of Louisville, Ky., having arrived, took the chair. The first paper was presented by W. A. Millis, superintendent of schools, Crawfordsville, Ind., on "The Library as an Educator." The second paper, on "Libraries and Schools, a Double-Faced Question," was presented by Miss Emma Fordyce, teacher of physics and chemistry in the high school, Cedar Rapids, Ia. This was followed by an address by A. H. Hopkins, assistant librarian of the John Crerar Library, Chicago, Ill., who brought greetings from the American Library Association. At the close of Mr. Hopkins' address Vice-President Halleck introduced Dr. J. K. Hosmer, president of the American Library Association, who addressed the department. The papers of the afternoon were discussed by Reuben Post Halleck, principal of Boys High School, Louisville, Ky., J. I. Wyer, Jr., librarian University of Nebraska, A. H. Hopkins, assistant librarian John Crerar Library, Chicago, Ill., O. H. Bakeless, principal Carlisle Indian School of Pennsylvania, and Miss Emma Fordyce, teacher of science in high school, Cedar Rapids, Ia. Miss Ahern presented a proposition from Chairman J. C. Dana of the American Library Association Committee on Co-operation with the National Educational Association to prepare a manual of instruction in the use of libraries for normal schools to be issued by the National Educational Association for the betterment of the library service in the secondary schools. A motion was offered by J. I. Wyer, Jr., of the Nebraska State University, that the Library Department heartily indorse the idea and request the Board of Directors of the National Educational Association to take favorable action in the matter. The motion was seconded, and, after some discussion commending the idea, was unanimously carried. The Committee on Nominations was appointed by the vice-president as follows: The meeting then adjourned. SECOND SESSION.-FRIDAY, JULY II The meeting was called to order at 2:30 P. M. in the university library. The vicepresident being absent, the secretary again took the chair. Proceedings were somewhat delayed by the absence of the speakers for the afternoon. The first paper was presented by J. M. Greenwood, superintendent of schools, Kansas City, Mo., on "What May the School Properly Demand of the Library?" The paper was discussed by R. H. Emberson, of Missouri, Miss M. H. Prentice, of Ohio, and A. H. Hopkins, of Illinois. The second paper was presented by Miss Agnes Robertson, county superintendent of schools, Cherokee, Ia., on "School Libraries in the Rural Districts." This paper was discussed by J. A. Lapham, of Iowa, J. M. Greenwood, of Missouri, and Miss M. E. Ahern, of Illinois. The Committee on Nominations reported the following, who were unanimously elected as officers for the ensuing year: For President-James H. Canfield, of New York. For Vice-President - Reuben Post Halleck, of Kentucky. The secretary, after urging the teachers to greater interest in the library section, declared the meeting adjourned. MARY EILEEN AHERN, Secretary. PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS THE LIBRARY AS AN EDUCATOR W. A. MILLIS, SUPERINTENDENT OF CITY SCHOOLS, CRAWFORDSVILLE, IND. An evident revolution of function has occurred in recent years in the management of libraries. Traditionally, the office of the library, upon whatever foundation, was the conservation of knowledge, as distinguished from its dissemination. The primary object was the collection of books. If they were rare or quaint, the better. These were grudgingly loaned out to readers who perchance had discovered the hiding place of the treasure. The emphasis was placed on the number of volumes, their wealth, their immediate history. Their use was of secondary moment. More frequently than not their use was discouraged by screens and bars. Certainly no effort was made to encourage extensive use. Yet, even under these conditions, the library has been the means of vast service in the development of culture. The history of intelligence reveals a great debt of the world to the libraries of ancient as well as modern times. But in the main the library has been passive in this process. It has rested passively and been drawn upon by the infrequent scholar. It did not project itself into the life of the people. It was not fired with the purpose of active service. It was not conscious of the possibility of sur rounding the great scholar with a multitude of well-informed and intelligent people. It was a store of learning, an end rather than a means. Those of you who are engaged in library organization appreciate that we have not yet entirely gotten away from the traditional notion of the library in the towns and smaller cities. The ghost frequently materializes in the form of a board, which insists that the important thing is to get books and books. And too frequently it assumes the form of a librarian who sees the circumference of her mission in marking up book lists, cataloging new purchases, charging the high-school girl and the dilletante with the latest novels - so new that the binder's paste is yet green — in crediting patrons with books returned, and fussing at children who apply because they leave finger prints on pages divine. But this traditional notion is passing away. A new function is being recognized. The librarian sees new possibilities. She appreciates that books are valuable in proportion to their use. The library has become active, democratic. The dissemination of knowledge is made the primary function. Books are selected and shelved and cataloged in view of their The library is becoming propulsive in the community, and formative. It not only endeavors to satisfy the wants of the reading public, but has begun to form and reform those wants, to cultivate taste, and stimulate culture. This, I take it, is the spirit of modern library management, and it certainly is peculiarly the function of the public. library. use. That it The public library may and should be an educative agency. is not always so is patent to the casual observer, and to be deplored. failure to improve opportunity is especially prevalent in towns and small cities. We have become so accustomed to the various ladies' and club libraries which are maintained wholly for purposes of amusement that it is difficult to permit the public library to assume greater dignity. It is difficult for the public to learn that the library is not an institution for public entertainment, an agency for assisting unoccupied people to while away time, a substitute for the old-time quilting bee, with its buzz of neighborhood gossip, and taking about the same place in the lives of one class of people that the clubhouse takes in the life of the other class. If the public library is to take its proper place in the community, the people must be taught to regard it as an integral part of the educational system. The library must be organized with this spirit and purpose. must be organized and regarded as an indispensable part of the educational machinery, a special agency with a function which no other agency can perform. The librarian should regard herself and be regarded. primarily as an educator; not a class-room teacher, not a vender of alphabets and beginnings of culture, but an educator in the larger sense of insight into the educational needs, means, and ends. She should combine wide scholarship, knowledge of books, and the possession of culture with an apprehension of the cultural conditions of the community, its intellectual impulses, the lines of development needed, and the ability to arouse and direct these impulses toward greater sanity and truer culture. She should be trained not only in the art of library administration and the matters that pertain to her routine of duty; she should be conversant with educational problems and situations. She should apprehend these problems from the larger standpoint of social progress. Dr. Small says that the teacher should regard herself as more than a hearer of lessons; that she must regard herself as a community. builder. So must the librarian. She must rate herself as more than a shopkeeper. She, too, must be a community builder. And more, the librarian must insist that she is the larger factor in the library. Boards of control and books are quite valuable as tools with which to do the work in hand, but the real efficiency of the library is measured by the wealth of the librarian in her own right. Hawley Smith says in his own fashion: "When the stage carpenter becomes the star performer the drama is sure to suffer." The librarian must be the star performer if she would reach the measure of her opportunity. We have learned in the schools that the teacher is in herself more than houses and books and equipment. Librarians are subject to the same law. The work of the school is threefold: 1. To awaken aspiration, both general and specific. 2. To give the alphabet of learning and activity—that is, to give the child such introduction to the several lines of learning, art, and enterprise as will reveal to him and nourish his special aptitudes, and at the same time put him into position to live sympathetically with those who follow other activities than his own. 3. To train the powers of thought and expression. Or, looking at the function of the school from the standpoint of the library, it is responsible for awakening in the child ambition to be well developed, to be a somebody; to awaken the impulse to know what the world has thought and done; for teaching him to read, and, to some extent, for developing taste for proper literature. When the school has accomplished these requirements it has reached its limitations. When the child has been equipped with the rudiments of science, history, language, and mathematics, has been awakened to the possibilities of culture and is ambitious to possess it, when he has learned how to read and think, the school has done the most that it can do. Its primary business is to equip him with the tools of learning and culture and the impulse for larger attainments. Beyond this point library, press, pulpit, platform, and practical life must take the boy. The school is but one of many educational agencies, and cannot, if it would, undertake to do the work of other agencies. The school can teach the children to read and stimulate the impulse to read, and to some extent the right books, but the library must see that they continue to read, that they read well, and that they do read the right books. In one respect the library is supplementary to the school. To a large extent the public library should stand in the same relation to the public school that the college library sustains to the several departments of the college. The best teachers are coming to see that the text-book in the hands of the pupil is at the most merely a working guide or manual, rather than a compendium of information on the subject in hand. They feel the need of access to fuller sources of information than the meager contents of text-books and schoolroom helps. With the growth of this feeling on the part of the school, the library has a large opportunity for effectively reinforcing and enriching the instruction of the school by placing within the reach of teachers and pupils additional information on the subject under study. Particularly is there an opportunity for this enrichment in the courses in history, science, geography, and literature. It is quite possible thru co-operation of teacher and librarian to make this supplementary service of the library as effective in the elementary school as the college library contributes to the completing and rounding out of the work of the higher departments of instruction. In another respect the library and school are complementary. Each conditions and helps the other. This complementary relation is quite evident in the contribution which each makes to the other in a practical way. But there is a higher and deeper phase of co-ordination. Aside from the home, library and school are the chief educational agencies. Together they cover fairly well the whole of the educational field, yet each has its own particular sphere. In some particulars these may overlap, but in the main they are distinct. The school awakens wholesome personality and social impulses, both general and specific, trains the individual in the elements of the social arts, trains him to think and to study, equips him with the elements of learning. The school endeavors to train the individual for a larger and more permanent growth to come from activities beyond its doors. It supplies him with the implements with which he may attain to culture. The promotion of this larger growth beyond the school is the special field and the larger opportunity of the library. Putting it from the viewpoint of social science, the library is the agency specially organized and maintained by the community to promote its culture. And by culture is meant more than reading and more than information. It is that compounding of learning, taste, judgment, wisdom, and peculiar mental tone that come of being in sympathetic acquaintance with what has been thought, felt, and done in the world, and of companionship, even remote, with the men and women who have thought, felt, and accomplished. This is the field, I take it, of the library and the librarian. She is the agent, the library her instrument, her kit |