第46章 LIBRARY MEMBERSHIP AS A CIVIC FORCE(1)

One of the sessions of the Children's librarians section of the A.L.A.meeting at Minnetonka in 1908was given up to the discussion of the place of children's library work in the community.The library point of view was presented by Miss Moore.

Annie Carroll Moore was born in Limerick,Maine,and was graduated from Limerick Academy in 1889and Bradford Academy in 1891.After completing her work in the Pratt Institute Library School in 1896she became children's librarian in the Pratt Free Library where she remained until 1906.She then organized the children's department in the New York Public Library,of which she is still supervisor.Miss Moore has lectured on library work with children and has contributed many articles on the subject to library periodicals.

Fifteen years ago the Minneapolis public library opened a children's room from which books were circulated.Previous to 1893a reading room for children was opened in the Brookline (Mass.)public library but the Minneapolis public library was the first to recognize the importance of work with children by setting aside a room for their use with open shelf privileges and with a special assistant in charge of it.

Since 1893children's rooms and children's departments have sprung up like mushrooms,all over the country,and first in Pittsburg,then in Brooklyn,Cleveland,Philadelphia,New York City and Queens Borough,children's rooms in branch libraries have been organized into departments from which a third,at least,of the entire circulation of the libraries is carried on by assistants,either trained or in training to become children's librarians.

It has been the inevitable accompaniment of such rapid growth that the work should suffer growing pains in the form of criticism and even caricature at the hands of casual observers and clever writers.Those of us who have been identified with the movement since its inception have somehow managed to preserve our faith in a survival of the fittest by remembering that there was a time when everything was new,and have felt that if we could keep a firm grip on the active principles which inspire all successful work with children,whether it is the work of a small independent library or that of a large system of libraries,our labor was not likely to be lost.The children,the books and ourselves are the three elements to be combined and the success of the combination does not depend upon time,nor place,nor circumstance.It depends upon whether we have a clear vision of our surroundings and are able to adapt ourselves to them,a growing appreciation of the value of books to the persons who read them,and the power of holding the interest and inspiring the respect and confidence of children.

If we can do all these things for a period of years we have little need to worry about the future success of the work.The boys and girls will look after that.In many instances they have already begun to look after it and the best assurance for the future maintenance of free libraries in America rests with those who,having tried them and liked them during the most impressionable years of their lives,believe in the value of them for others as well as for themselves to the extent of being ready and willing to support them.

In passing from a long and intimate experience in the active work of a children's room in an independent library to the guidance of work in the children's rooms of a system of branch libraries,a great deal of thought has been given to deepening the sense of responsibility for library membership by regarding every form of daily work as a contributory means to this end.

The term "library membership"is a survival of the old subscription library but it defines a much closer relationship than the terms "borrower"or "user"and broadens rather than restricts the activities of a free library by making it seem more desirable to "belong to the library"than to "take out books."It is the purpose of this paper to present in outline for discussion such aspects of the work as may help to substantiate the claim of its ambitious and perhaps ambigious title:Library Membership as a Civic Force.

1.Our first and chief concern is with the selection of books and right here we are confronted by so many problems that we might profitably spend the entire week discussing them.

In general,the selection of books for a children's room which is seeking to make and to sustain a place in the life of a community should offer sufficient variety to meet the needs and desires of boys and girls from the picture book age to that experience of life which is not always measured by years nor by school grade but is tipified by a Jewish girl under 14years old,who,on being asked how she liked the book she had just read,"Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,"said to the librarian,"It's not the kind of book you would enjoy yourself,is it?",and on being answered in the affirmative,tactfully stated her own point of view:"Well,you see it is just this way,children have their little troubles and grown people have their great troubles.I guess it's the great troubles that interest me."We have been quick to recognize the claim of the foreign boy or girl who is learning our language and studying our history but we are only just beginning to recognize the claims of those,who,having acquired the language,are seeking in books that which they are experiencing in their own natures.Human nature may be the same the world over,but there is a vast difference in its manifestations between the ages of ten and sixteen in a New England village or town and in a foreign neighborhood of one of our large cities.