Chapter 14

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.

ADMINISTRATION AND METHODS; REFERENCE WORK; DISCIPLINE

The section devoted to administration and methods records the "expansion of the library ideal" in multiplying the sources from which books may be borrowed; pictures the opportunities of the small library; emphasizes the importance of personal work, since the "child must be known as well as the book"; explains the library league as a means of encouraging the care of books and as an advertising medium; gives a thorough discussion of the use of the picture bulletin, and suggests systematic work with mothers as an important and resultful method.

Four articles on reference work and instruction in library use bring out the importance of careful cataloguing, of thorough knowledge of resources, and of practical plans to enable the children to help themselves.

Three articles on discipline present this sometimes difficult problem from varying viewpoints. It is said to resolve itself "into the exercise of great tact, firmness, and, again, gentleness." Again, "many of the problems of discipline in a children's room would cease to be problems if the material conditions of the room itself were ideal." The Wisconsin report is of special value because it represents the experiences of small as well as of large libraries. It lays stress on some of the points brought out by Miss Dousman, who says: "In our zeal to control the child, some have lost sight of the fact that it is quite as important to teach the child to control himself; that if he is to become a good citizen, he cannot learn too early to respect the rights of others."

THE CHILDREN'S ROOM AND THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARIAN

Some of the principles of library work with children, and the qualifications of a children's librarian were discussed by Miss Eastman in the following paper read at the fourth annual meeting of the Ohio Library Association held in Dayton in 1898. Linda Anne Eastman was born in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1867; was educated in the Cleveland Public Schools, and taught in the public schools of West Cleveland and Cleveland from 1885 to 1892, when she became an assistant in the Cleveland Public Library. In 1895-1896 she was assistant librarian and cataloguer in the Dayton, Ohio, Public Library, and in 1896 became vice-librarian of the Cleveland Public Library, where she has since remained. Since 1904 she has been an instructor in the Library School of Western Reserve University. She was a charter member of the Ohio Library Association, and its president in 1903-1904, Miss Eastman has made frequent contributions to library periodicals.

In the planning of a new library building, or the remodeling of an old one, there is no department to which I should give more thought in the working out of the details than in the children's department, in order to best adapt the arrangement to its use.

Its location in the building is the first matter for consideration. It should be easy of access from the main entrance, or, better still, have an entrance of its own directly from the outside, in order that the noise of the children may not become a disturbing element in the corridors and in other parts of the library. It would seem desirable, also, for many reasons, to have the children's department not too far removed from the main circulating department.

The children's department in a large library should contain at least two large rooms, one for the reading and reference room, the other for the circulating books. The rooms should be light, bright and cheery, as daintily artistic and as immaculately clean as it is possible to make and keep them. Wall cases seem best for the shelving of the books, low enough for the children to reach the shelves easily. These low cases also allow wall space above for pictures, and plenty of this is desirable. A children's room cannot have too many pictures,[1] nor any which are too fine for it; choose for it pictures which are fine, and pictures which "tell a story." Provide, also, plenty of space for bulletins, for the picture bulletins have become an important factor in the direction of the children's reading. One enthusiastic children's librarian wrote me recently that her new "burlap walls, admitting any number of thumb-tacks" were the delight of her heart. There should be reading tables and rubber- tipped chairs, low ones for the little children; and wherever there is space for them, the long, low seats, in which children delight to snuggle down so comfortably.

[1] If this paper were now open to revision, the writer would omit "cannot have too many pictures." The reaction against bare, bleak walls may not make it necessary to warn against over-decoration, but its undesirability should he recognized.--L. A. E.

As to the arrangement of the books, I should divide them into three distinct classes for children of different ages:

(1) The picture books for the very little ones, arranged alphabetically.

(2) The books for children from seven to ten or twelve years of age. While these books should be classified for the cataloging, I should place them on the shelves in one simple alphabetical list by authors, mixing the fiction, history, travel, poetry, etc., just as they might happen to come in this arrangement. I believe this would lead the children to a more varied choice in their reading, and that they would thus read and enjoy biography, history, natural science, etc., before they learned to distinguish them from stories, whereas by the classified arrangement they would choose their reading much more often from the one class only.

(3) The books for boys and girls from ten or twelve years of age to fifteen or sixteen. These should be arranged on the shelves regularly according to class number, in order that the children may become acquainted with the classification and arrangement, learn to select their books intelligently, and be prepared to graduate from here into the adult library.

Where it is possible to duplicate the simple and more common reference books in the juvenile department, these should form a fourth class. Then there should be all of the good juvenile periodicals, with some of the best illustrated papers, such as Harper's weekly, for the reading room.

With many libraries a children's department on such a scale is an impossibility; but if you cannot give two rooms to the children give them one, and if you cannot do that, at least give them a corner and a table which they can feel belongs to them; and if you cannot give them a special assistant, set apart an hour or two each day when the children shall receive the first consideration--establish this as a custom, and both adults and children will be better served.

Whatever one's specialty in library work may be, however far removed from the work with the children, it is well to understand something of the principles which underlie this foundation work with the children.

It is only recently that these principles have begun to shape themselves with any definiteness; the children's department, as a fully equipped miniature library, and the children's librarian, as a specialist bringing natural fitness and special preparation to her work, are essentially the product of today; but they have come to stay, and they open to the child-lover, and the educator who works better outside than inside of the schoolroom limits, a field enticing indeed, and promising rich results. It is to the pioneers in this field, the earnest young women who are now doing careful experimental work and giving serious study to the problems that arise--it is to them that the children's departments of the future will be most indebted for perfected methods.

The library must supplement the influence of the schools, of the home, and of the church; with some children it must even take the place of these other influences, and on its own account it must be a source of pleasure and an intellectual stimulus. If it is to accomplish all or any great part of this, not only for one, but for thousands of children, what serious thought and labor must go to its accomplishment! The children's librarian stands very close to the mother and the teacher in the power she can wield over the lives of the little ones. No one who lacks either the ability or desire to put herself into sympathetic touch with child-life should ever be assigned to work in the juvenile department, and the assistant who avowedly dislikes children, or who "has no patience with them," will work disastrous results if allowed to serve these little ones with an unwilling spirit --she should be relegated to some department of the library to which the sunshine of childhood can never penetrate, and kept there.

I would name the following requisites for the successful accomplishment of the juvenile work:

(1) Love for children.

This being given, the way is open for intimate knowledge and understanding of them, which are likewise essential.

(2) Knowledge of children's books.

This is imperative if one is to give the right book to a child at the right time. Familiarity with the titles and with the outsides of the books is not enough, nor is it sufficient to know that a certain book is recommended in all of the best lists of children's books. A child will often refuse to take what has been recommended to him as a good book, when, if he be told some graphic incident in it, or have some interesting bit pointed out or read to him, he will bear it off as prize; with it, too, he will carry away an added respect for, and sense of comradeship with, the assistant, who "knows a good thing when she sees it," and he will come to her for advice and consultation about his books the next time and the next, and so long thereafter as she can hold his confidence.

Carefully prepared lists are most valuable in directing your attention to the best books, but after your notice has been called to them read them, form your own judgment on them, and if you recommend them, at least know why. What? some one asks, attempt to read all of the best children's books? Yes, read them, and do more than that with some; the children's classics, the books which no child can grow up without reading and not be the poorer, with these one should be so familiar as to be able to quote from them or turn instantly to the most fascinating passages--they should form a constant part of her stock in trade. Other books one could not spend so much time on, nor is it necessary--the critical ability to go through a book quickly and catch the salient points in style, treatment and subject matter, is as essential for the children's librarian as for anyone who has to do with many books, and it therefore behooves her to cultivate what I once heard called the sixth sense, the book sense.

(3) Knowledge of library methods.

In any work, interest and enthusiasm go a great way, but they can never wholly take the place of accurate technical knowledge of the best ways of doing things. The more general knowledge of library work and methods one can bring to the children's department, the better it will be both for the work and for the worker; and given these methods, one must have ability to fit them to the conditions and to the peculiar needs to be accomplished, or, where they will not fit, to modify them or originate new ones which are better for the work in hand.

(4) A thorough knowledge of the course of study of the public schools.

This is very necessary in order to intelligently supplement the work of the schools. A child comes wanting information on some subject upon which his ideas are exceedingly vague; for instance, he wants something about the mayor--what, he cannot tell you, but he was sent by his teacher to look up something about the mayor. You ask him what grade he is in, and he tells you the fourth. Your familiarity with the course of study should give you the clue at once, for the fourth grade topics in conduct and government include lessons on the city government, with its principal departments and officers, so you will look up, if you have not already done so, an outline of municipal government describing the position and duties of the mayor, which will be within the comprehension of the child. It should not happen that a dozen children ask for Little white lily, and be turned away without it, before it is discovered to be a poem by George MacDonald which the third grade children are given to read.

This course of study the children's librarian should--not eat and sleep with exactly, but verily live and work with; it is one of her most valuable tools, and she should keep it not only within reach, at her finger's end, but as much as possible at her tongue's end, keeping pace with the assignment of work in the different grades and studies from month to month, and from week to week. She should know beforehand when a certain subject will be taken up by a certain grade, and have all available material looked up and ready, and new books bought if they will be needed and can be had--not wait until several hundred children come upon her for some subject on which a frantic search discloses the fact that the library contains not a thing suitable for their use, and then ask that books be bought, which, of course, come in after the demand is over, and stand idle upon the shelves for a whole year, taking the place of just so many more new books on subjects which will be needed later.

The course of study, too, will furnish more useful hints for bulletins, exhibitions, reading-lists, and other forms of advertising, than can come from any other source; and not only in supplementing the school work, but also in directing the children in their general reading, is an intimate knowledge of the course of study an invaluable aid, as it gives you the unit of measurement for any child which enables you to correlate his reading along certain lines to that which has gone before, and to that which is to follow.

(5) A knowledge of the principles of psychology and of education.

I have placed last the requisite which I feel sure some theorists, at least, would place first, because I believe that, as a rule, it will come last in point of time, and will be worked up to through the preceding stages of the development of the children's librarian; but her work will not be grounded upon a firm foundation until she has consciously mastered these principles, and clearly outlined her own work, this new work of the book, in perfect harmony with them.

There are many features of the children's work which I should like to dwell upon in detail, but I can do no more than mention a few of them. One of these is the Library league, with its threefold object of training the children in the proper care of books, of serving as an advertising medium for the library among the children themselves, and of furnishing a means of directing the reading of hundreds of children who cannot be reached individually. The possibilities of the league are beyond anything we have been able to realize.

Another thing is the necessity of guarding against letting children read too much, or too entirely along one line. There is a habit of reading along lines which deaden, instead of stimulating, thought, and the habit, if carried to excess, becomes a mental dissipation which is utterly reprehensible; but the pathway to this habit is entered upon so innocently and unconsciously by the story-loving child that he (perhaps more often she) must be guided very tenderly and wisely past its dangers; the library which ignores this necessity may have much harm laid at its doors.

The importance of providing, either in the school or the library, for systematic instruction in the use of books was emphasized in the report of the library section of the National Educational Association at Washington this summer; it is a necessity which must be met somewhere and somehow.

Of one more thing I should speak because of its provision for the children--the expansion of the library ideal; not so many years ago branch libraries and traveling libraries were unknown; now we feel that one library is not enough for a large city; it must have branch libraries and delivery stations to take the books to the people, while traveling libraries carry them into the scattered districts in the country. For the future, we have visions of a system of libraries so complete that in no town or country district of the state will a little child be deprived of the pleasure of good books; and wherever it is possible to put a live, warm-hearted, sympathetic and child-loving woman as the medium between the library and the child, it will be done.

Library work in its entirety offers much play for the missionary spirit, but nowhere else in its whole range is there such a labor of love as is hers who tries to bring the children early to their heritage in the beautiful world of books.

WORK WITH CHILDREN IN THE SMALL LIBRARY

The blessings rather than the limitations of the small library are portrayed and the "possibility of personal, individual, first-hand contact with the children" is emphasized in this paper presented by Miss Clara W. Hunt at the Niagara Conference of the A. L. A. in 1903. A sketch of Miss Hunt appears on page 135.

As the young theological student is prone to look upon his first country parish as a place to test his powers and to serve as a stepping-stone to a large city church, so the librarian of the country town who, visiting a great city library and seeing books received in lavish quantities which she must buy as sparingly as she buys tickets for expensive journeys out of her slender income, a beautifully furnished, conveniently equipped apartment especially for the children, for the student, for the magazine reader, evidences everywhere of money to spend not only for the necessities but also for the luxuries of library life--so it is quite natural for such a visitor to heave a deep sigh as she returns to her library home and contrasts her opportunities, or limitations as she would call them, with those of the worker in a numerically larger field; and quite natural is it for her to long for a change which she feels would mean a broadening and enlarging of outlook and opportunity.

It is encouraging sometimes to look at our possessions through other people's spectacles, and perhaps I may help some worker in a small field to see in what she calls her limitations, not a hedging in but an opening, by drawing the contrast from another point of view--from that of one who is regretfully forced to give up almost all personal, individual work with the children and delegate to others that most delightful of tasks, because her library is so large and she has so much money to spend that her services are more needed in other directions. With a keen appreciation of the privilege it is to have charge of a small library, I am going to enumerate some of my reasons for having this feeling.

I should explain, in this connection, that my thoughts have centered about the small town library, the library whose citizen supporters do not yet aggregate a population large enough to admit to dignifying their place of residence with the name of a city, a place, therefore, where the librarian may really be able to know every citizen of prominence, every school principal and teacher, the officers of the women's clubs, many of the mothers of the children she hopes to reach, and a very large number of the children themselves.

What are the attractions in a spot like this, the compensations which make up even for the lack of a large amount of money to spend? Let me begin first with the less apparent advantages, the "blessings in disguise," I should call them.

The first is the necessity for economy in spending one's appropriation. I imagine your astonishment and disapproval of the judgment of a person who can count the need of economy as any cause for congratulation. But let us look for a moment at some of the things you are saved by being forced to be "saving." The greatest good to your public and to yourself is that you must think of the ESSENTIALS, the "worth while" things first, last and always. You cannot afford to buy carelessly. Every dollar you spend must bring the best return possible and to the greatest number of people. Every foolish purchase means disappointment to your borrowers and wear on your own nerves. So, instead of being able to order in an off-hand way many things which may be desirable but which are really not essential, one gets a most valuable training in judgment by this constant weighing of good, indifferent and indispensable. To apply this to the principle of the selection of children's books--and nothing in work with children, except the personality of the worker with them is so important as this, we cannot buy everything, we must buy the best, and we therefore have an argument that must have a show of reasonableness to those borrowers who advocate large purchases of books you tell them your income will not cover.

What are the essentials in children's books if your selection must be small? Our children can grow up without Henty. They must not grow up without the classics in myth and fable and legend, the books which have delighted grown people and adults for generations, and upon the child's early acquaintance with which depends his keen enjoyment of much of his later reading, because of the wealth of allusion which will be lost to him if he has not read aesop and King Arthur and the Wonder Book, Gulliver, Crusoe, Siegfried and many others of like company, in childhood. Then the librarian cannot afford to leave out collections of poetry. Her children must have poetry in no niggardly quantity, from Mother Goose and the Nonsense Book to our latest, most beautiful acquisitions, "Golden numbers" and the "Posy ring." And American history and biography must be looked after among the first things and constantly replenished. So must fairy tales, the best fairy tales--Andersen, Grimm, the Jungle books, MacDonald, Pyle, "The rose and the ring." Much more discrimination must be exercised in selecting the nature and science books than is usually the case.