School library

“ In the days before public libraries were common in this country, library associations were formed to secure good literature. Such associations are still useful in small communities that find it impossible to sustain a public library, and they serve as a medium for securing from the State a travelling library, which has the special advantage of frequent substitution of books. Or the school library may be the nucleus of a literary collection for the whole community—advantageously so if the school building is kept open as a community centre. ”

“ It only remains now to say that, as we have before intimated the public library should be viewed as an adjunct of the public school system, and to suggest that in one or two ways the school may work together with the library in directing the reading of the young. There is the matter of themes for the writing of compositions; by selecting subjects on which information can be had at the library, the teacher can send the pupil to the library as a student, and readily put him in communication with, and excite his interest in, classes of books to which he has been a stranger and indifferent. ”

“ In some of the associated school districts the central library sends to the associated schools traveling libraries purchased by the district or borrowed from the library commission. In others, the country pupils act as a circulating medium for the central school library. In one town the school and town jointly maintain a good library with a competent librarian in the schoolhouse and it successfully serves the town, the pupils for their reference work and the country 'round about through the country boys and girls who come in every day to school. ”

“ All these matters lead up to the ultimate object of the librarian, which is to establish a natural pathway from the schools to the public library. Vouchers of admission should be placed at the disposal of the schools, and the recommendation of the head teacher may procure readers’ tickets for all children leaving school. Fortunately most teachers see the importance of the matter, and a properly systematized connexion is therefore made for the child between the school library and the much larger and more permanently useful stores of the municipal library. ”

“ Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967) , observed that "‘students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding.'" [21] The school library is the principal locus [p869] of such freedom. As one District Court has well put it, in the school library,
a student can literally explore the unknown, and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum. . . . Th [e] student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom. ”

“ Let us suppose that the momentous problem is solved of persuading children to use the library for more serious purpose than to find a book "as good as 'Mark the match boy,' " and that we are trying to convince children that the library is infallible, and can furnish information on whatever they wish to know about—whether it is some boy who comes on the busiest morning of the week, to find out how to make a puppet show in time to give an afternoon exhibition, or some high-school girl who rushes over in the 20 minutes' recess to write an exhaustive treatise on women's colleges. ”

“ In the United States great progress has been made in the co-ordination of school and municipal library work, but even in that land of unlimited resources, the school library is not such an intimate and useful factor in the life of the average scholar as it might be made. But there is a vast difference in the methods and aims of the two countries in all that concerns school libraries. ”

“ But the special characteristics of the school library make that environment especially appropriate for the recognition of the First Amendment rights of students.
A school library, no less than any other public library, is "a place dedicated to quiet, to knowledge, and to beauty." ”

“ This librarian must be able to win the confidence and friendship of pupils and teachers and to enter sympathetically into the life of the school. This library may be under the control of the Board of Education or a joint undertaking of Board of Education and public library as in Cleveland, Newark, Passaic, Madison, Wis., and Portland, Oregon.
My first reason for this new high school library is found in the aims and ideals of the modern high school. It is no longer content to serve merely as a preparatory school for college. ”

“ If schoolroom libraries do come from the public library, they can with very little difficulty be changed several times during the school year. With a little care on the part of the librarian and teachers, the collection of any given room can be by experience and observation better and better adapted to the children in that room as time goes on.
There are many ways of using the schoolroom library. The books forming it should stand on open shelves accessible to the pupils whenever the teacher gives permission. They may be lent to the children to take home. ”

“ During the long vacation the library need not be left in the school house, but in some other place.
Mr. Hutchins: A library in a school is a school library, no matter where it may be, and the children do not go to the school house after they leave the school.
Mr. Dewey: The library is an optional affair; the children are compelled to go to school. On the other side, there are a number of advantages in favor of the school building.
Has anybody succeeded in getting from the railroads or express companies special concessions for the transportation of library books? ”

“ In these days when high schools are extending their work in so many directions and when books must be provided for supplementary work in English, in history, in the preparation of debates, and in other subjects, a well-equipped library is a necessity in the modern high school. A motley array of old text-books, out-of-date encyclopædias and miscellaneous volumes from the attics of well-meaning friends of the institution will not make a good high school library. ”

“ Schoolhouses should be constructed with all equipments for branch libraries, just as they are now equipped with gymnasiums and baths. The library should not be an accident in the public school; it should be an integral part of it. The schoolhouse is the natural place for the library. To it the children come daily—little messengers who would secure books from printed slips for their parents, too tired or too distant from the library to serve themselves. The library should be the school rest and reading room. It would relieve the tedium of regular school work. It would lend variety to education ”

“ The school library differs from the average public library in that it is usually a reference library first and a lending library only so far as the use of its books outside the building does not conflict with the usefulness of its service to the teachers and pupils in the school building. ”

“ As I was leaving the library by the side door a troop of children came flocking in in such numbers that one would have thought it to be a public school. “I thought your delivery-room for boys and girls was on the front of the building,” said I to my friend. “It is,” said he. “These children are not going to borrow books but to learn how to use them. Public libraries are maintained here not more for the adult public than as a branch of the public schools. We have a reading-room devoted solely to the use of scholars, and a librarian who gives all his time to the assistance of school-children. ”

“ Many a student has received his first inspiration and instruction in the library and has been thereby stimulated to enter a regular course of study. It is better to let the library stand on its own merits as an instructional agent. The difference between it and the school, fundamentally, is that the library’s educational energy is chiefly potential while that of the school is, or should be, dynamic. Yet though the library is only a potential force—energy in storage—the library plus the librarian may and should be dynamic too. ”

“ But why does the instruction of school children in the use of books and libraries concern the public library?
Because if children learn to use ordinary books intelligently it means a saving of the librarian's time by her not having to find the precise page of every reference for a child. It means a diminished amount of handling of books. It means less disturbance from children who do not know how to find what they want. Other results will doubtless suggest themselves.
It is not proposed to train the student to be a perfectly independent investigator. ”

“ THE SCHOOL LIBRARY One of the most important varieties of the Small Library which has remained practically undeveloped in the United Kingdom, is the School Library, which is sometimes looked upon as a plaything, sometimes as an unnecessary adjunct to educational work. ”

“ The close connection which exists between the library and the schools is doing much to elevate the character of the reading of the boys and girls. Many books are used for collateral reading, others to supplement the instruction of text-books in geography and history, others still in the employment of leisure hours in school. Boys and girls are led to read good books and come to the library for similar ones. Lists of good books are kept in the librarian's room, and are much used by teachers and pupils. ”

“ If the school must deal perforce with groups rather than with units, the methods of the library adapt themselves to the converse plan of individual treatment. If the school narrows the pathway by compulsion, the library gives the joy of freedom unrestricted. ”

“ That the creation in the child of intellectual interests, which is furthered by a love of books, is an urgent national need; [16] that while it is the business of the school to foster the desire to know, it is the business of the library to give adequate opportunity for the satisfaction of this desire; that library work with children ought to be the basis of all other library work; that reading-rooms should be provided in all public libraries, where children may read books in attractive surroundings, under the sympathetic and tactful guidance of trained children’s librarians ”

“ They forget that the city does not pay them for doing this school work or for doing the work of the playgrounds and parks in keeping children off the streets. Much can be done by the library in all these ways; but it happens that the work which belongs peculiarly to the library and which no other institution can at present do for it, is to give good books to all the children in the city—a task which of itself is enough for any library to hope to do. ”

“ University librarians are familiar with a similar argument against technical departmental libraries to the effect that they have a tendency to make the technical student feel that there is no need of his going to the University Library, that the departmental library answers all his needs. Experience, however, proves that to have these students use any library you must plant it right in their midst. So with the high school students: give them a good library in their own school building and then see that they use it properly, for this is a part of modern education. ”

“ The ideal thing, of course, would be for the school itself to own a small library as a laboratory in which students could be tested for administrative ability under supervision. But this, too, would take money. When one sees the splendid endowment of a School of Journalism, a School of Technology, etc., one cannot help hoping that some day a School of Librarianship may be endowed which may employ the best of teachers and plenty of them, have its own ample collections, adapted to its needs, and establish its own library as a laboratory in which it may try experiments. ”

“ It is gradually becoming recognized that a school without a library lacks an important part of its equipment. In colleges and high schools this has been recognized practically for some years past, but in few but the largest schools have separate rooms been assigned for library purposes, in the care of an assistant trained in the work. A teacher whose principal business is teaching has usually been thought to be a person sufficiently qualified for the work, with the result that rarely have the libraries been exploited to anything like the full measure of their possibilities. ”

“ To fulfill to them the mission of the library, to make books necessary and accessible, we must take account of the agency which touches the life of even the most remote group—the country school.
Relationships between libraries and schools have long afforded discussion and the librarian is rare who does not feel a sense of her share in the educational work of the town and her responsibility in making her library serve as an adjunct to the school, supplementing or supplanting its library resources. ”

“ It is considered an essential part of any system of public education, affording opportunity for self-education, and supplementing the average five years of school life. Educators now realize that the school offers but the beginning of education, and that the library is its necessary complement and supplement. This increase of library facilities has greatly influenced school work, in bringing home to teachers the fact that it is as important to teach what to read as to give children the ability to read. The library of to-day is not wholly for recreation, but it is the people's university. ”