AN ALLEY FULL OF WRECKAGE, A FEW RODS BELOW A SCHOOL, WHICH MIGHT EASILY BE ALTERED TO BE IN HARMONY WITH THE QUIET BEAUTY OF THE COUNTRY-LIKE LANE ABOVE life. Much as the physical improvement of a city will directly do for the comfort of citizens, it will do more in its reactions -in its effect in inspiring a love of the city, in begetting higher standards of government. Civic pride is born in making the city one to be proud of; civic virtue is won in the very act of planning for it; the sense and spirit of community can hardly be said to exist until it begins to express itself; it is only when we plan somehow objectively to realize an ideal THE SAME CANAL AT TWO NEIGHBORING PLACES ITS UNSIGHTLY BANKS IN SCHENECTADY AND THE BANKS AS THEY MAY BE MADE TO APPEAR BY PLANNED EFFORT H A YEAR HOW THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DISTRIBUTES TO MORE THAN THREE MILLION PEOPLE THE SERVICE IT PERFORMS FOR THE BLIND, FOR FOREIGNERS WHO FOR THE CHILDREN WHO ARE JUST LEARNING TO LOVE BOOKS BY SARAH COMSTOCK ALF a dozen firemen loafed in an engine house of New York City. They hadn't smelled smoke for ten hours, and they were as restless as the horses below them, fretting for the signal. Suddenly the door was flung open, and a man with a parcel entered. For a moment there was a lazy, vacant stare at the visitor; then the men leaped to their feet. "It's the book man!" they shouted, and they fell upon the parcel as occupants of the bear pit fall upon loaves at the feeding hour. When the visitor departed, having deposited one collection of twentyfive books and taken away another, he left six men with noses that had chafed for a sniff of smoke now buried contentedly in six volumes, Anna Katherine Green, Dickens, Seumas MacManus, Joseph Conrad, and Montague Glass being represented. That was merely one station of the 894 visited by New York's Traveling.Library in 1912. These books were merely 25 of the 84,580 volumes which last year ferretted out hundreds and hundreds of citizens who did not know how, or would A GLITTERING MASS OF WHITE MARBLE THAT REARS A MAJESTIC FRONT OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE NEARLY TWO BLOCKS LONG UPON FIFTH AVENUE AT FORTY-SECOND STREET IN WHICH THE PUBLIC MAY CONSULT ANY BOOK IN THE LIBRARY, DELIVERED TO THEM BY DUMBWAITERS FROM THE STORE ROOMS AND ANNOUNCED TO THEM AS READY FOR USE BY THE FLASHING OF INDEX NUMBERS UPON THE BOARD OF AN ELECTRIC ANNUNCIATOR AT THE LIBRARIANS' DESK erature; but that is enough, for the modern library system. It will not be neglected. The traveling library is only one department of a vast organization of public library departments, but it illustrates the difference between the old and the new. Time was when books were recluses. They sat in austere exclusiveness upon their shelves, and the librarian of that day was a dragon who guarded their privacy. Gradually the dragon attitude relaxed into a more apathetic mood of, "Here are the books: you, the public, may take own language and catch them that way. There is a gang of young rowdies who look upon the library as a row of windows through which empty beer bottles are to be fired; the librarian announces an exciting sea story to be told next Friday night, and in tramps the gang to find itself spellbound by an expert story-teller. Thus, libraries are making themselves in every sense educational centres. Their managers aim not only to furnish books to those who desire them, but to convert. Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh A LIBRARY WORKER AT A CHILDREN'S "STORY HOUR' ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING AND SUCCESSFUL METHODS OF EXTENDING THE INFLUENCE OF THE LIBRARY BY LEADING CHILDREN TO LOVE BOOKS and Buffalo are among the cities which have thus distinguished themselves. New York's work is especially interesting for its cosmopolitanism and its bigness. The New York Public Library reported early in 1913 that practically eight million books circulated for home use during 1912. In every case this was a worth-while book. Clean fiction, old and new, biography, science, philosophy, travel, history - all A BRANCH OF THE LIBRARY IN THE EAST SIDE OF NEW YORK ONE OF THE FORTY-ONE STATIONS FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF BOOKS BY WHICH THE LIBRARY IS BROUGHT WITHIN THE REACH OF THREE MILLION PEOPLE CARRYING THE CONSOLATION OF BOOKS TO ALL CLASSES A BLIND MAN IN THE PUBLIC HOSPITAL ON BLACKWELL'S ISLAND READING ALOUD TO FELLOW PATIENTS FROM A BOOK PRINTED IN RAISED TYPE AND BROUGHT TO HIM BY THE LIBRARY Now watch the way the various tentacles of this great system work. Stirring continually, they feel their way in every direction over the three boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Richmond. The body from which these tentacles reach forth is the wonderful new, building at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, down whose corridors megaphone-taught tourists ever stroll. They observe marble and bronze magnificence; but tucked away in certain corners of this building, in spots It means that those people who read at all read a good deal. Now the first stretch of the tentacles is in the direction of forty-one branches. A large number of reading people have never been inside one of these buildings which are scattered over the city, in the heart of its foreign quarters, sandwiched between swarming tenements, as well as among more prosperous apartment buildings. Many people buy all the books they But take the case of Mr. John New read. |