The public library

Library Extension is closely analogous to the more familiar phrase University Extension. It stands for various activities that go outside, often far outside, the province marked out by the Public Libraries Acts, yet are natural if not inevitable corollaries of the educational and social doctrines that formulated those Acts. They carry the services and influence of the library into other spheres—the school, the home, the voluntary association—and expand its functions from the mechanical disposal of books as stock-in-trade to their treatment as atoms packed with vital force, electrons charged with incalculable energies capable of working great consequences in that susceptible region, human life. A library may confine itself to a passive attitude, and so long as it responds more or less freely to external pressure it may be acceptable and useful to a small proportion of the persons who pay for its upkeep. But it was long ago borne in upon the far-sighted librarian and committee-man that a more active, nay, a positively militant policy was required if the public library was to exercise all its powers for good in the social economy. More books have mouldered away or come to a like inglorious and ineffectual end than were ever worn out by hard use. You can offer your public the finest collection of books—it has been done again and again by profligate philanthropists—and never get them read, or the people’s life and taste improved. It is easy to buy books; it is much more difficult, and far more important, to create readers.[15]

The librarian’s duty, he has found by harsh experience, is twofold: to contrive a library service, and to see that the best use is made of it. Instruction in the art of reading and in the choice of books, it may be objected, is for the teacher, not the librarian. Theoretically, it may be so; but the rejoinder is, our teachers have never succeeded in the task, they have not even addressed themselves to it, and they are not likely to succeed unless they work hand in hand with the librarian: they must, indeed, rely on the librarian, the book-expert, more and more under modern conditions, for guidance in their own reading and in carrying out their own functions according to the newest lights. It is largely owing to the lack of any regular correlation between schools and libraries that the results of the Education Acts have been so unsatisfactory. The mistakes of 1850 might have been rectified in 1870 by bringing the new system of schooling into the closest contact with the public libraries. But, though it was enacted that every child should be taught to read, that children should be taught how to read, and where and what to read, seems to have scarcely entered the minds of those responsible for elementary education. In introducing the Education Estimates for 1917-8, Mr. Fisher said in the House of Commons (April 19th, 1917):—

“I have been impressed by the fact that boys who have been stirred up at the age of sixteen or seventeen to attend the technological classes attached to our new universities in the north of England have so lost the habit of intellectual activity as to cloy and impede the efficient working of the college.... The country does not get full value out of its elementary schools, because so much of the training and instruction is subsequently lost.”

Why had these boys lost the habit of intellectual activity? Because, first, though they had received the usual primary schooling, they had never had instilled into them intellectual habits, interests, or likings; and, second, because, even where libraries and other intellectual institutions existed, they had never been brought inside their doors, or learned that these things were their own and would satisfy their multifarious needs the more they used them. Library Extension aims at the repair of these oversights. The activities which it connotes should be an important part of the library service when this is reorganized on a national basis. In reality, Library Extension is a return to the broader idea of the people’s institutes. The lectures, reading circles, meetings for study and discussion, the co-operative alliances with energetic bodies such as the Workers’ Educational Association, the local field club, scientific society, or the like, the closer relations with schools and all intellectual agencies, are revivals and developments of the social efforts at adult education which gave life to those institutions in the early nineteenth century.

As would be expected, the towns which have taken the lead in such extension efforts as courses of public lectures have been places where the traditional bond between the library and kindred foundations like the museum and art gallery have never been severed. Such a combination is a much more appropriate engine of extension activity than is the library that is merely a library. It usually contains a lecture hall, if not smaller rooms for study and discussion. In addition to the books, which must be available and must be read if lectures are to have any lasting results, the collections in the museum are there for use in connexion with scientific and historical lectures, and the gallery provides the most appropriate illustrations for those on artistic subjects. In some towns, library, museum, and art gallery are housed under one roof, governed by the same committee, and even superintended by the same curator. Sometimes the technical school is one of the group. Too close a coalition may have detrimental results. Administration by one chief officer is hardly justifiable unless the whole establishment is only on a moderate scale. There is always the risk that one department will flourish at the expense of the others. One of the most disastrous instances within my experience was when the committee of a many-sided institute chose a librarian for his qualifications as a college lecturer. In this case, it was the library that went to the wall. In others, it has been the museum, the picture gallery, or the school, when there has been one attached; or the whole has suffered from the lack of close attention or of the special knowledge and experience required equally by each department. But this is no argument against the policy of putting them all under one committee as branches of one corporate undertaking.

Lectures in the Library.

At Liverpool, where library, museum, and art gallery are in the same suite of buildings, and under one general committee, sections of which are detailed to supervise the several departments, there is an example of intimate correlation on the largest scale. Here, in the Picton Theatre under the central library and in the lecture halls attached to the branches, free courses of lectures have been carried on ever since 1865, averaging now some two hundred yearly, with an aggregate annual attendance of nearly 200,000. At Bootle, Salford, Warrington, Wigan, Cardiff, Wallasey, Bristol, Derby, Norwich, Maidstone, Leek, and other places, mostly in the midlands, and at Islington, Croydon, Woolwich, Walthamstow, Camberwell, Kingston, Chelsea, Hampstead, Fulham, Hornsey, Bromley, and other public libraries in the London area, winter series of public lectures were in full swing in the years before the war, and in many cases have not been discontinued or have since been revived. A good proportion of these libraries are of the old composite type, complete with museum and art gallery; others are tending to become such. At Nottingham, where the public library is in partnership, as it were, with the University College next door, among various extension efforts the half-hour talks on books and reading have for several decades been a popular mode of stimulating taste and self-education, both in adults and in children, and have been widely imitated. The Manchester Public Library was the pioneer in this provision of lectures bearing directly on the uses of libraries and the best methods of reading and private study.

A large proportion of the library buildings put up during the last two or three decades are possessed of lecture halls. “It is also most desirable,” say the Adult Education Committee, “that all public libraries should possess a room large enough to be used for classes, lectures, and discussions.” And yet, only in a few spots, such as Liverpool, enjoying the privileges of special Acts of Parliament, is it legal to pay a lecturer’s fee, or indeed to spend a penny on this invaluable and, one would think, indispensable work. Among the principal reasons put forward by the Committee of 1849 for the establishment of people’s libraries was the growing demand for public lectures. Unfortunately, the point was overlooked or dropped out for motives of policy when the Act was drafted, and repeated appeals to have such expenditure legalized have fallen on deaf ears. Thus the work is carried on under the most discouraging and repressive conditions. If a public library is so reckless as to embark on illustrated lectures, it must get hold of a lantern, in forma pauperis from some benevolent donor, or borrow it from a neighbourly institution that is not hampered by legislative taboos. Even to print a programme or post up a placard means surcharge by the Government auditor. In some places, accordingly, the cost is defrayed out of gifts by public-spirited citizens or by sending round the hat for subscriptions. One excellent device, which has obvious advantages over and above the financial expedience, is to enrol the regular attendants at the lectures into a literary society with a small subscription. Another and a very objectionable method is to make advertisements on the programmes pay the printer’s bill. A public institution ought not to be driven to such shifts. And, even in the happiest circumstances, very rarely are funds forthcoming for the engagement of professional lecturers: library committees have had, almost without exception, to fall back upon the volunteer.

Nevertheless, efficient volunteers have been forthcoming: it is indeed surprising how many lecturers of a high order can be enlisted by a librarian who keeps his eyes open for ability and scholarship and no caprice for hiding the light under a bushel. It was the present writer’s duty to organize regular weekly lectures at the central and the two chief district libraries of a large London borough for several successive winters. By the exercise of some vigilance and diplomacy, first-class lecturers on a variety of subjects were secured, without a penny of expense to the borough. The quality of the lectures was witnessed by the attendance, which averaged well over two hundred—hundreds turned away on nights when there were bumper houses not being counted. There is another side to this question of voluntary lecturers, which may perhaps be urged by the Lecture Agency and the University Extension boards, that it is robbing the paid lecturer of his occupation. In the present condition of things the point hardly arises. There is no money for the professional lecturer, so that the amateur cannot be charged with blacklegging; but it will assuredly arise when lecture and other tutorial schemes are properly recognized and financed. When that time arrives, however, there will be such a demand for lecturers that the whole question will be seen to have different bearings. There will be courses of lectures running, or demanding to be run, at every library, including most of the branch establishments; there will be tutorial classes, reading circles, and other groups requiring teachers or at least competent leaders, going on concurrently. The library proper, that is the working collection of books, will have become, or be tending to become, the heart, the functional centre, of a complex organism; it will fall into its place as the analogue of the library in a big college. Thus there will be a wide and importunate demand for lecturers, and demand will create supply only if every possible source is utilized. There will not be a glut of trained lecturers, or even a sufficient supply. Rather, when all the lecturers empanelled by official and commercial agencies are in full employ, there will be keen competition for their spare moments. When public libraries were first mooted, it was prophesied that the bookseller would be deprived of a large part of his market, and every new public library is supposed to be a blow to the trade. The results are in direct contradiction. A better supply has created a keener demand. Access to books has stimulated a desire to possess books. The day of popular libraries was speedily followed by the day of the cheap edition. There are many more bookshops than ever there were before; and since there are more booksellers it may be safely concluded that, in spite of complaints of bad trade, the sale of books has largely increased. Even the commercial circulating library continues to flourish. Similarly, it may be anticipated, the public organization of lectures and teaching for adults, even though every source of supply is tapped, including the amateur and the volunteer, will lead to a greater demand for the trained professional, who will find his occupation not gone but all the more thriving and profitable.

The modern museum and the art gallery in a large town have daily lectures, or perhaps half-a-dozen lectures a day, provided to teach the public how to understand and appreciate the value of their contents. This is one of the main objects of lectures in public libraries, the contents of which are far more various and extensive. But there are other reasons for selecting the library building as the most suitable place for all kinds of lectures for which appropriate illustrations in the form of works of art, museum exhibits, and other material objects are not available. Any lecture that aims at permanent results should provide every member of the audience who wants to pursue the subject with a reading list; better still, the actual books, arranged by the librarian and the lecturer in a graduated course of reading, should be on exhibition, and every facility should be given to the interested person to take home books and commence his studies there and then.

Such are the considerations kept always in view by the modern librarian who runs his courses of lectures, not as a side-show, or as a method of advertizing the library and bringing in new readers, but as an integral part of the library machine. In the Croydon Public Libraries, to take one of several good examples, about a hundred lectures are given annually, some to ordinary mixed audiences, some to bodies of school children or to the young people in the junior library. The halls are nearly always crowded with eager listeners. Most of the lectures are accompanied by lantern illustrations, and the methods of bringing them directly to bear on the stores of books in the library are as thorough as in any place I know. The lecturers, who give their services free, are furnished with lists of the books the library contains on their particular subjects, and are requested to point out any serious gaps. The titles of the books are shown on the screen, and the lecturer makes his personal comments on each. After the lecture, the actual books are exhibited, and any one in the audience, who verifies his or her identity from the local directory or otherwise, is allowed to borrow from these on the spot. Another useful method is to distribute descriptive lists of the relevant books, arranged if possible on a continuous plan of reading, such lists being drawn up in collaboration with the lecturer. It was at Croydon, I believe, that the library reading was introduced as a form of lecture. The librarian or some other person well acquainted with a subject and also with the literature of the subject to be found in the library, reads pieces of description, notable prose, or fine verse, on such a topic as “The Englishman in the Alps;” or “Byron, the poet and the man.” It is a sort of spoken anthology, in short, stimulating interest in the works illustrated.

University Extension Courses, Tutorial Classes, Reading Circles.

Many years’ experience of library lectures from the internal point of view, that is from the point of view of the librarian and organizer, and also from that of an occasional lecturer in most of the public libraries in and near London, as well as careful study of the effects upon all kinds of hearers, has, however, convinced me that the opinion of most educators and other critics is right: the only lectures which are likely to have sound and lasting results are those that have been carefully arranged to form part of a course. Sporadic lectures are all very well in their way, but very much inferior in promoting serious study and developing real knowledge. Reading an occasional magazine article is not to be compared with reading a book. At the same time, even if continuous courses can be provided, it would be a mistake to drop the other sort altogether. The results, if usually ephemeral, are not to be despised; such lectures are as a rule more popular than the thorough-going University Extension course, and may be a stepping-stone to that. And the organizer of such miscellaneous series may, if he gives thought to the matter, arrange the lectures by different specialists into groups on allied topics or aspects of the same subject. He may do still better. The person, whether professional or volunteer, who is qualified to deliver a first-class lecture would usually prefer to deliver several, dealing with the same subject more thoroughly and methodically—it is usually easier, and always far more satisfactory. In nine cases out of ten, the results would be enormously more valuable. To dispatch a serious theme in an hour’s discourse is an effort that usually means a rapid and perhaps brilliant but superficial handling, and does not always mean that surplusage is avoided. It is too much like putting the day’s rations into a single meal.

One invaluable concomitant of the best and most remunerative form of lectures is usually absent at those of the ordinary type, and that is free discussion. This is not always invited, and, when it is, discussion often resolves itself into complimentary speechifying or else passages of arms in which the same orators week after week display their gifts. To have any real success, lectures must arouse debate. If there are no questions, no give and take between the mind of the lecturer and of his hearers, the entertainment is likely to remain barren. A University Extension lecturer will always invite questions and the discussion of points that need elucidating; but he will not always break down the shyness of those who would fain have more light, even though a course going on from week to week tends to make his listeners better prepared, and enables them to save up their difficulties for an opportune moment. Here it is that the tutorial class, which is run on the lines of a seminar, shows its superiority. The tutorial class is a small and intimate circle, so small and friendly that the most diffident are hardly likely to feel that asking a question is like making a speech; its head is a leader and moderator rather than a lecturer, and its methods are devised to call out individual thought and initiative, and ensure that the subject shall be viewed from every side and all difficulties of comprehension cleared away. The members of the class do as much work as the teacher: the better he is the more he gets them to do. Reading circles are usually conducted on a very similar plan, the preparatory work of course being done by the members at home. When instead of formal lectures papers are read or discussions opened by members of a literary society, fairly satisfactory results are usually obtained; but whatever scheme be adopted, it is far better to split up into small groups than to be ambitious of large attendances.

Many public libraries have wisely supplemented their own lecture schemes by co-operating with University Extension. Even where the library has not been able to offer a lecture room on the premises, such co-operation may be very valuable, and a reciprocal advantage to all concerned. The library can provide books for the students, issuing reading lists which have been drawn up in consultation with the lecturers; useful exhibitions, also, can be organized, from the library’s own stores or from other sources. The tutorial classes organized by the Workers’ Educational Association have been aided effectively by such co-operation, which always reacts beneficially, in more ways than meet the eye, on the libraries themselves. When there is intimate association between libraries and technical colleges, polytechnics, and the like, half at least of the real work will be done in the library or through the books supplied by the library. Nor is it only the urban libraries that are able to assert their true place in adult education thus; several of the new rural repositories are working hand in hand with the Workers’ Educational Association and its tutorial classes, which have not failed on their part to utilize machinery so apt to its purposes. Besides the ordinary stock of miscellaneous books for the general reader, the wise rural librarian lays in a good selection of the works required by reading circles and tutorial classes, if necessary duplicating until there are enough copies for all demands. But for this special call upon his resources, he would rely upon the Central Library for Students to meet the requirements in works of this class.

But public libraries as yet do not appear to have instituted tutorial classes themselves, or indeed to have taken on their own shoulders the financial responsibility of University Extension courses. Though they have their own lecture halls and smaller rooms suitable for the various purposes here enumerated, even the best and most active library authorities have not done much more than hold such series of miscellaneous and disconnected lectures as are, admittedly, not the best.[16] That so much should have been accomplished, even whilst the public libraries were toiling under the yoke of the penny rate limit, is to their enduring credit; but it is little to what ought to be done, under less hampering conditions, and to what the progressive among them will assuredly do ere long. But the Act of 1919 merely restored the right of every community to spend as much as it liked on certain library purposes; it did not restore its natural right to spend money on what objects it liked, as for example, library lectures or library classes; still less did it infuse an eagerness to do so where no such desire had previously existed. The removal of an unreasonable and effete restriction can hardly be delayed much longer; but even when there is no legal ban upon expenditure the cost of a paid university teacher will often be prohibitive. Why then should not the alternative be taken of appointing a volunteer? This is continually being done by reading circles all over the country, organized in connection with or in imitation of the National Home-Reading Union, and the results are highly encouraging.

The fact is, our resources in private ability and willingness to serve in such functions as these have never yet been fully explored: they will have to be explored. Men of high academic attainments are expensive items in a tutorial scheme providing for the intellectual avocations of perhaps not more than a dozen zealous students; and, as was hinted before, there will not be enough of them to go round—there would not be enough now if a serious attempt were made to ascertain actual wants and provide for them adequately. Vast numbers of continuous courses, of multifarious kinds, are required everywhere in these days of intellectual keenness. Let us try then to run some of them at least on the lines of mutual help that have served so well in the past. There has never been in this country any dearth of one kind of personal ability, that of clear and racy exposition, in the sphere, for instance, of local politics and lay preaching. It does not exist, though appearances may be deceptive, in the sphere of intellectual activity. It should not be more difficult to find leaders for reading circles and study groups, or lecturers competent to deliver a short course, than it is to find chairmen for parish councils, political meetings, or local committees. Nor, if we proceed with common sense and lay no stress on artificial difficulties, will there be any dearth of discussion. The part of the leader will rather be to direct the spontaneous flow, and prevent the study circle from degenerating into a mere talking-shop. But even loquacity can be controlled and kept to the point if there is a definite subject, and a course of reading clearly marked out. A well-informed, tactful, and judicious leader will work wonders if he observes the golden rule not to overwork himself. The librarian himself and chosen members of any large staff should be able to run at least a reading circle, if not to deliver public lectures. The success of all such undertakings will depend of course on his personal competence and insight; if he can take his own share in the work with credit, he will be in the more intimate touch with the mental attitude and potentialities of his public.

Dramatic and Other Circles.

Lectures and classes by no means exhaust the modes in which the public library may carry on useful extension work; in truth, the ways are almost unlimited, except that some forms of study, teaching, or entertainment may cause inconvenience, unless the building is very large and special accommodation arranged. Thus a small library is not a suitable place for musical performances, although many public libraries cater on a lavish scale for students of music. It is not an uncommon thing, however, for dramatic readings and even full-length plays to be introduced into the scheme of lectures, or for the library to be the headquarters of a dramatic society. There is no better method of imparting a real understanding and appreciation of our best literature than to induce people to study a classical play dramatically. To begin with, simple readings should be attempted, each member of the class or study group taking a distinct part. As soon as the readers have a grip of the action and plot, they should proceed to act, still keeping the book before them. A few properties may be introduced, such as a table and a chair or two and a flagon, in the revelling scene in Twelfth Night, or a screen, in The School for Scandal—there is no need for scenery or costumes. At some libraries, properties—and even gestures—are entirely suppressed, and the reading is a reading pure and simple.

Mention of these two plays brings to mind several incidents when this rudimentary kind of acting brought out as fine and penetrating an interpretation of the dramatist as any performance by professional actors, with the usual lavish apparatus, that I have ever witnessed in a West End theatre. Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Maria and the Clown, were people I knew very well, attired in their ordinary dress. The stage was a bare platform, and there was nothing on it but a table and a few chairs. The performers had the book in their hands; but, evidently, they were word-perfect in their parts. The scene went with a verve and a naturalness that could hardly be bettered; and—best of all—it was Shakespeare, interpreted by intelligent and well-educated persons, who were the last people in the world to cut or rewrite or recreate a part as they thought Shakespeare ought to have written it. Another Sir Andrew Aguecheek is still more memorable. This gentleman would probably have been a failure or a very indifferent success in any other character: he was Sir Andrew Aguecheek in the flesh—the wonder was how we had never noticed it all the years we had known him. A still more delightful proof of the latent genius that may be revealed by such modest performances was a certain Lady Teazle. She was a plain and not a very youthful person; the stage was as unfurnished and void of decoration as her get-up was plain and ordinary. Yet, by dint of dramatic instinct that any much-beparagraphed actress might envy, she easily conveyed the sense of youth and charm and beauty—she was the finest Lady Teazle I have seen, on or off the regular stage.

The London County Council and other educational bodies have thoroughly recognized the untold possibilities of the dramatic study of drama. It is undoubtedly the right method. Charles Lamb, in a famous essay, propounded the doctrine that in the theatre we see the actors but we may entirely fail to see the play. The plays of Shakespeare, he paradoxically argued, “are less calculated for performance on a stage than those of almost any other dramatist whatever.” The actor gets between us and the dramatist; and if that was so in the days of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, how much more is it so in these days of sophisticated stage-display and mannered acting. But put the student of Shakespeare on the stage, however rudimentary the stage may be, and let him find his way into the mind of the great playwright by himself, so far as he may: that is how to study Shakespeare, and that is the mode of approach sought in such dramatic readings or more elaborate interpretations as are recommended here. Even the modest group of readers will probably go on from strength to strength. One group which I first set on this track were content at first with a series of readings, which were given in public, after many rehearsals, at the various district libraries of a London borough. Then they embarked on the complete presentation of The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, with scenery and costumes; and even ventured on a tragedy, all without discredit. Ultimately, a troupe of experienced players, they gave a series of Shakespearian plays at the Town Hall and other places, not only clearing all expenses, but realizing a handsome sum for an important charity. One of their number later on wrote a comedy, which they produced with some success. Here, surely, is a piece of library extension work having high cultural value; it is indicative of what may easily be done by apt suggestion and cultivation of the group spirit; and there are innumerable directions in which similar results may be achieved.

Relations With Work Outside.

The principle to be kept in view is that the civic library is a most natural home for all the intellectual activities of a social kind going on in each community. Even if it is not convenient for all such bodies to have their headquarters there, the library should entertain the most friendly and active relations with every one. In the United States, the public library in most cities performs a large part of its most remunerative work through the medium of public and private organizations outside. It may be likened to a nerve-centre, with a network of efferent and afferent fibres and a series of ganglia throughout the social organism. Thus the New York Public Library has a long and miscellaneous list of clubs, leagues, musical societies, classes of all sorts, business and other associations that hold their meetings in its various branches. Many American libraries are ready to plant a delivery station, dispatch a travelling library, or a collection of special works, anywhere that it is asked for, or even to provide an industrial firm with books, so long as accommodation and an acting librarian are supplied. They will prepare select lists of books on any given subject, get up an exhibition to celebrate any event or help on any deserving movement: there is no end to the ways in which they are prepared to put their services at the disposal of the common weal. British libraries have laboured too much in isolation. The future depends upon, more than anything else, its coming into the closest touch with every intellectual and social agency in the body politic. It should be a matter of course for the local scientific and literary societies, the field club, the local branch of the Workers’ Educational Association and the National Home-Reading Union—to name only two out of many—to make their home in the library building. The antiquarian society should deposit its collections and books and maps here, the natural history society its specimens and apparatus, thus laying the foundations of a local museum to be housed in the situation most favourable for study, both by themselves and by other inhabitants. Local historical and regional surveys are rapidly developing, whether as pieces of research aiming at the extension of knowledge or as a practical form of education: the library, with its local records, maps, and other historical material, should always be the base.

The Croydon Public Library is the centre from which the Photographic Survey and Record of Surrey operates. Surrey took the lead in this important branch of topographical history, and the photographic records of buildings, scenery, and miscellaneous objects of interest now collected in the library comprise some 8,000 prints and lantern-slides, all elaborately classified and indexed for instant reference. Housed along with these is the Regional Survey of Croydon, consisting of maps prepared from actual surveys of the district within fifteen miles’ radius, showing the geology, vegetation, surface utilization, industries, etc. This also is accompanied by photographs. Further, an artist has been commissioned to paint faithful records of architectural or natural features that are likely to perish or be disfigured by modern changes—a thing that will be of priceless value to future generations. This logical extension of the work of preserving local records, minute-books, newspapers, and various fugitive material is being carried on elsewhere, notably at Coventry, Brighton, Northampton, and Nottingham. It deserves the attention of the many local societies that have not yet thrown in their lot with the local library.

Library Exhibitions.

Libraries may themselves get up exhibitions or grant hospitality to those organized by kindred bodies. The more the library takes a hand in the preparation, the more can the series of exhibits be related to the appropriate books, and the more effective will such efforts be as aids to popular enlightenment. There is a wide choice of suitable subjects—book-production and its various branches, engraving and other arts, local history and geography, the sciences. The library will be able to supply many of the exhibits from its own stores; usually it is not difficult to borrow useful material from commercial or private sources; and loan exhibits from the State museums are available as nucleus, supplement, or even as forming the whole display. Such exhibitions are placed under the care of keen and intelligent members of the staff, and lectures or demonstrations are given illustrated by the actual objects; the results are enormously ahead of those achieved by the ordinary static exhibition. Lines of reading are pointed out, and books brought into juxtaposition with their subject realities, in a way that even the trained conductor in a museum or picture gallery can hardly compass. Actual experience in organizing and running a number of such exhibitions has left me with no doubt of their popularity or their educational value. When an exhibition illustrating such a subject as the production of a book goes on for three months in the libraries of a London borough, and the average attendance during that period exceeds a thousand a day, we may feel that we are beyond the experimental stage.

Even our rural libraries, when they are located in the village hall or have a suitable building of their own, need not hesitate to attempt an exhibition. In many ways, they have exceptional opportunities. To begin with, there is nothing to compete with them; the novelty would be absolute. And then there is suitable material of some sort or other in abundance, botanical, geological, horticultural or agricultural, or such as illustrates local history, local industries, or any subject having strong associational interest. Differences of scope being allowed for, the rural librarian would probably find he had much less to do with his own hands than if he were getting up a show in the town. Such places as rejoice in the possession of museums and art galleries as well as libraries are specially favoured; but it does not inevitably follow that these departments of public culture do combine forces so effectually as do the places where the work is on a more frugal scale but comes at any rate from one and the same fount of activity.

Relations With the Schools.

The chapter before this concluded with some account of library work with children. The correlative of the children’s library and reading room is the school library or the periodical loan of books to the schools—sometimes it is the alternative. Under the Act of 1919 the library authority in places newly adopting the Acts will be the local education committee, and elsewhere the control of existing libraries may be handed over voluntarily to that body. Long before this Act, certain education committees had acted jointly with library committees in establishing school libraries and other modes of bringing school children into contact with good books. The aims and interests of library and school in large measure coincide. Recent legislation virtually admits this sound principle. Into the question whether it is wise to vest the control of libraries in the education authority, a question canvassed both for and against in the United States as well as in this country, there is no need to enter at the moment. Everybody agrees that children must be taught, or at least encouraged, at a fairly early age, to read books for themselves and to have some idea of the uses of a library. Most teachers and librarians would also agree that every school should have a library of its own, and that at some stage or other each child should be introduced to the public library. Perhaps this is as far as we need go in the direction of agreement: uniformity is surely not advisable, and local circumstances, relative situation in particular, may have to determine the nature of the interaction of library and school, and the more important point, how soon should the school child shift the centre of his reading interests from the school library to the public one, the one that is there to be his intellectual mainstay throughout life? From the point of view of a public librarian, it might be undesirable that a school library should be so efficient and amply sufficing that elder children were deterred from finding their way into the wider realm of the public library. The school library should be but a tributary flowing into that main stream.

There are three modes of dealing with the problem of books for the school child, and these may be variously combined. (1) There may be a permanent collection, stationed in the school, consisting of graded sets of reference works required to illustrate any of the subjects taught or studied in the school; and further, a collection, large or small, of such books, mainly of a recreational kind, as it may be thought fit to provide for home reading. Such a collection may be built up by the school itself or by the staff of the public library, who would act, as a rule, in close consultation with the teachers. One great advantage of having all the books permanently located at the school is that the children look upon it then as really the school library, and the teachers are able to familiarize themselves with the contents, and thus can influence the children’s reading to the maximum. If there are funds enough, a fairly large and representative collection can be provided—one that the most voracious boy or girl is not likely to exhaust till he or she is old enough to join the public library. The best books become household possessions; children talk about them to their chums, and not to have read them is a lapse that must be wiped out. If, on the other hand Westward Ho! or Little Women is merely a loan and has gone back to the central library, how can the young reader get even with the luckier ones?

(2) To save the expense of a number of permanent school libraries, an education authority may arrange with the public library to organize a series of travelling collections or merely boxes of books to circulate among the schools. This system may be combined with the other, the reference collection being regarded, most reasonably, as always indispensable and therefore permanent, and loans of books for recreation supplied at fixed intervals. There is one unquestionable boon attaching to this arrangement—the children enjoy the stimulus, as the date comes round, of choosing and rejoicing among a fresh lot of books. Many teachers too, no doubt, are not averse from a change.

(3) The third method implies suppression of the school library, at any rate so far as it is anything beyond the indispensable collection of volumes required for use in the school; it is to send the young reader to the public library. If this is not far away, and especially if it has a first-class junior department, where suitable reference books can be used as well as books for entertainment borrowed for reading at home, there is nothing to deplore; but to children in distant schools the loss will be serious. The value of this third solution of the problem, when it is a real solution and not an evasion, is that the child is introduced early to a large collection of books, and also comes into a different atmosphere from that of school. Its danger is that the child may come unchaperoned to a library where there is but a perfunctory service for the juniors, and will be turned adrift in a pathless wilderness.

This third method may be seen at work in the schools of Poplar. One of the poorest among the metropolitan boroughs, Poplar has been a leader in many library movements, such as the scheme of interchange between adjoining boroughs whereby all the books in a large group of libraries are made available for borrowing by dwellers in any part of the area. The libraries have long co-operated with the schools as actively as the teachers would permit. Nothing is more essential to the mental life and the economic efficiency of the future citizen than that the gap between schooling and maturity should be bridged over. Poplar has realized the fatal nature of that gap, and has long been doing its utmost to fill up the chasm. School children come to the public library to do their preparation and spend their leisure in the enjoyment of books. Classes are brought by teachers during quiet hours, and sit in the public rooms doing “silent reading.” For a long while measures have been taken so that no single boy or girl in the schools shall go out into the world without being introduced to the public library, and made acquainted with all that books and libraries can do to help them in life and the pleasures of life. Twice a week, the upper classes from schools in the borough, coming in regular rotation, attend at the nearest library to hear an address by the borough librarian, Mr. H. Rowlatt, or one of his chief assistants, on the libraries of their own borough and libraries in general, what they are and what they contain, and how freedom and ability to utilize the manifold services they afford is an invaluable part of the individual’s equipment for life.[17] The librarian and his coadjutors have always thrown themselves heart and soul into the work of co-operation with the schools; the children listen eagerly, and the results are seen in the statistics of reading.

The vital importance of this work has now been recognized by the London Education Committee. Similar schemes are being introduced in the boroughs of Islington, Greenwich, and Hackney, and it may be hoped that they will become general. This is by no means all that the Poplar libraries are doing for the school children. Attempts are made to help the older children in making up their minds on the occupation they would choose. Sets of books illustrating various trades are put before such children, from which they can gather an intelligent idea of what is the real nature and interest of some craft or trade which was previously a mere name. This has proved a real help in the critical moment of many a child’s life. All formalities, such as monetary guarantees against loss or damage, have been reduced to a minimum or abolished for the benefit of school children, who are admitted to full privileges on the bare recommendation of the teachers. Thousands avail themselves of the opportunity thus held out, and many thousands of books have been borrowed as a result without the loss of five shillings’ worth of books per annum. The help given to the children in general has likewise proved to be indirectly of inestimable value to the teachers. They admit that the introduction of the library habit among their young pupils has opened their own eyes to points they had never realized. One head master volunteered the statement that it had done away entirely with surreptitious reading of trash among the girls. Poplar cannot afford a regular system of school libraries; yet, in spite of poverty, it is signally doing yeoman’s service in moulding the minds of our future citizens: it is a shining example to boroughs of far superior resources.

On the whole, my own preference is for the stationary library, when the school can afford a good one; but one’s preferences may be modified, or even reversed, in altered circumstances. Whichever plan be adopted, supervision, or rather sympathetic guidance, is essential. Such guidance will, of course, be entirely of a positive, not a negative kind, and will consist of tactful suggestion, suggestion as unobtrusive as possible, by means of story-telling, illustrated talks, and personal help. There is not the slightest need for attempting to fit the book to the child. Let children read books for grown-ups if they have a mind to, let boys read girls’ books; the girls will read the boys’ books whether you want them or no. It is taken for granted that the whole library will be well-chosen, and everything in it worth reading. Alarmist nonsense, emanating from English justices or militant New England moralists, about boys led into crime by stories of brigands and pirates, are not likely to upset parents or librarians with all their faculties about them, including a normal sense of humour. If you listened to these people, Stevenson and Dumas would have to be put into a strait jacket, and Michael Scott, Aimard, and Mayne Reid burned by the hangman. It is the last expiring gasp of the prudery and lust for chastening the young which made the old-fashioned library for children a byword. Far more important than any anxiety about moral or immoral influence is an anxiety about good literature. Edification is thrown away if the well-meaning author is unpossessed of charm. The first requisite of a spell is that it shall work. Happily, the charm of fine literature can hardly be attained but by the fine personality. Good literature is healthy literature. Among the books a child will read with delight, it is doubtful indeed whether a single example can be found of a work of true literary worth that could lead a child astray. Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard and Lytton’s Paul Clifford perished from the catalogues of junior libraries, not because they were wicked books, but because they were bad literature.

The best books should be duplicated over and over again, especially in libraries that let their young readers roam along the book-shelves and choose what they like—as all libraries should; and duplicated as far as possible in various editions, especially illustrated editions. This is a far wiser policy than aiming at a very comprehensive selection, which means that quantities of second and third-rate stuff will be introduced. After all, if life is short childhood is much shorter, and if every child had the opportunity of reading all the books that are fit, there would not be much time left before the date arrived for migrating to wider spheres.

A bibliography of ideal works for children would not, however, be a voluminous affair. The children’s librarian should form something of the sort for use, and the books starred in its pages as superlative should never be out—there should always be copies enough to ensure this. The young reader will find it hard to resist the appeal, if he sees one attractive copy and next week another staring him in the face: it will assuage disappointment for the absence of something else, or charming pictures may tempt to a second reading of a classic already familiar. By such careful management the taste of a healthy child will remain unspoiled, and in later life sound judgment and appreciation of the best will show the results of this novitiate.

In America, the question of circulating versus stationary libraries has been well thrashed out, though not to a unanimous verdict. At Buffalo, the respective spheres of the library and the education authority have been carefully defined. School libraries are limited strictly to the works of reference required in school work, the public library acting as book-selector. For all further requirements the school and the school children rely on the public library. In New York City, the public library deputes this branch of its work to a special department, under a supervisor of work with schools. The city is divided for the purpose into districts, in each of which there is a branch library and a group of schools. A school assistant, usually a woman, is appointed by the library to look after the work in each district, to make herself personally acquainted with every teacher, to give advice, and keep the machinery running smoothly. Formal regulations are kept down to a minimum. Teachers are allowed to borrow books in large quantities, and to keep them six months at a time if they need them; they are expected and assisted to make themselves reliable counsellors and guides to their pupils in the choice and use of books. Assistants in the libraries are told off to address groups of teachers and assemblies of school children on the objects and the resources of the libraries; children are brought to the library in classes to have its working and its benefits explained; and, finally, they are encouraged to do their home lessons in the children’s library, and are provided with a reference collection adapted to the purpose.

In this country, the relationship between the school and the public library remains undetermined. Many of our primary schools are destitute of a library worthy of the name, and if a census were taken it would probably be found that the secondary schools are even worse off. Many school libraries have attained a musty and precarious existence through some passing gust of philanthropy, and maintain it in a more or less accidental fashion. This is not the fault of the public libraries, many of which have done more than their share in providing schools with books, and most of which are ready with the expert services needed to put school collections on a proper footing. The failure is due more to lack of a clear realization of the function of school libraries than to mere neglect or oversight. The work already described as done in the junior department at Croydon, where as at Coventry and divers other places, separate collections of books on education and teaching are provided, from which the teacher may borrow and which the public may use for reference, may be taken as representing the kind of endeavour put forth by the more active library authorities. Loan collections for schools are organized by some authorities, stationary school libraries by others. But in a vast number of places, though many if not all of the facilities enumerated above are held out by the library, the saving propensities of education committees or the indifference of teachers have left things as they were. The need for a comprehensive treatment of the problem is still more apparent now than when the Library Association in 1904 urged that the nation’s libraries were, or ought to be, an integral part of the national machinery of education. It is a vital part of the educational problem and of the whole problem of public libraries; and, whether there are to be two sets of machinery, working side by side or in reciprocation, or one set controlling both schools and libraries, the library service for the schools and the school children must be put on a proper basis, or the future of adult education and of public libraries also will be in jeopardy. Here, surely, Ruskin’s saying has a particularly forcible application—“It is open, I repeat, to serious question, which I leave to the reader’s pondering, whether among national manufactures, that of souls of good quality may not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one.” (Unto this Last).