NEXT STEPS1

F ALL human interests that pertain to intellectual improvement-social evolution, scientific achievement, educational progress, governmental advance, or humanitarian en

deavor, none has seemed too unimportant for consideration by library workers. Librarians have sought to identify their work with them all, to achieve contact with every individual, with groups of individuals and with communities as a whole. If intelligent method has sometimes seemed lacking, the enthusiasm and the self-denial of the missionary have been given in unstinted measure. To the home and to the mart, to the school and to the playground, to the workshop and to the laboratory, they have brought -whether asked or unsought-the best at their command.

Not out of abundance has the library attempted so much in such diverse places. Its meager resources have been spread over such vast fields that in spots the substance has seemed tenuous and transparent. Most insufficient, and perhaps least successful thus far, but suggesting the most important function of library activity and presaging its most significant development, is that branch of service associated with grammar and secondary schools. Here lies the most fertile field for

'Read before the New York Library Association at Haines Falls, Sept. 28, 1915.

strong, vigorous, fruitful energizing of such forces as the library possesses.

Curiously enough, a perception of values which inhere in the associated and co-ordinated efforts of school and library has not, as yet, dawned upon school men to any appreciable degree. Here and there, indeed, a vibrant voice has demanded the joining of effort for practical ends, but the teaching folk as a whole remain impervious to possibilities even when sensible of the need. Nearly four centuries ago, Martin Luther noted the possibilities of the library as an educational adjunct and necessity, and urged the founding of public libraries for the preservation and encouragement of learning.2

"No cost nor pains," he urged in the concluding pages of his letter to the mayors of Germany, "should be spared to procure good libraries in suitable buildings, especially in the large cities which are able to afford it."

From his day to ours there appears in printed works on education-whether general or dealing with specialized phases-no recurrent note amplifying this suggestion, except a few casual fugitive references in less than a dozen recent publications, and two treatises that recognize the importance of the subject with some fulness of treatment. Perhaps this sweeping characterization of stolid school-room self-sufficiency should be modified by crediting to Horace Mann a vision that scarcely survived his passing. A historian of educational influences informs us that in Mr. Mann's work for teachers two aspects are apparent-one dealing with preparation, the other with method. Through his labors normal schools became a component part of our school system, and institutes were started for the spe'Painter. History of Education.

cial training of teachers. Furthermore, he made apparent the value of libraries as school adjuncts, and brought about their establishment. And similarly in backwoods Wisconsin, three-quarters of a century ago, Lyman Draper sought to interest the teaching forces there. His report printed in the 50's-now rare and difficult to procure-is a grouping of opinions, prophetic but yet unrealized, expressed by eminent men of the day as foreshadowing a relationship of school and library.

A careful examination of fifty average books on education issued since 1870 yields but scant encouragement to those who seek association of school and library. Six of the fifty writers give at least passing consideration to the subject. Two cyclopedias of education recognize the importance of the subject.3

Forty-two books issued between the years mentioned, and about equally divided between the decades. represented are wholly barren of such mention. On the other hand, two are notable for vital grasp and broad treatment-G. Stanley Hall's chapters in the second volume of his "Educational Problems," and Hugo Musterberg's chapter in "The Americans."

Significant of present-day conditions is the testimony of a teacher, who, addressing a library gathering, said:"

"In days gone by we carried on the school without libraries we could do this as well as not because education meant learning by rote; text-book learning alone.

'One devotes thereto a column and a half of 1736 columns in the volume, and the other devotes 37 columns to the subject of the 1480 columns contained in one of the five volumes of the work.

'Library Journal.

"This is, to my mind, the most important thing I have to say to you-we do not yet know you and our need for you.

"In our school lives as children, in our normal training and later in our actual teaching we have not had you, and we do not yet realize your resources. To get this matter before you definitely, pardon my using my own case as illustration.

"From beginning to end of my common school education from the first grade through eighth-I never saw a school or a public library. We had none, though I lived in a good-sized city in the Middle West. I learned what the text-book told me; no supplementary reading (or rarely), no pictures, no objects. My training in reading and literature consisted in learning to keep my toes on a crack and my voice from falling on a question mark!

"In high school I had very little but the regular text. Again memory work was the test. I remember well a boy who was my ideal. He learned his geography word for word and so recited it. If he sneezed or a door slammed and his flow of words (I use words advisedly) was interrupted, he had to begin again. He was the show pupil in our class.

"In college our instructors in science performed all the experiments for us while we looked on. When we went to the library we spoke to the librarian through a wire netting, and in our company manners asked for a book.

"In the normal school which I attended there was a so-called children's library, but the books were all text-books, and we were not taught how to help the children to use them. We had literature, but it was all about Hamlet's being or not being mad; none of it

was taught in a way to make it a tool for the elementary teacher.

"After all this I began teaching, with no knowledge of the resources of a library as an aid to either teacher or child, and I felt no need for such aid. What is true of me is true of thousands of other teach

ers.

"You must make us feel our need for you. You must, if you please, intrude yourselves upon our notice. Generations of teachers who have worshipped at the shrine of the text-book can in no other way be reached.

"The ideals of education today are broader, our needs are greater, and you have the material to help us to realize our needs."

In the relatively few instances where co-operation between school and library administration has led to installation of modern library equipment in elementary schools, the difficulties have been experienced which are usual when afterthought supplies what forethought neglects to include. Quarters are ordinarily unsuitable and insufficient. Adequate provision should be made when school buildings are planned, for library quarters that are ample as to size and strategic as to location, instead of depending for space upon a room or enlarged closet not otherwise utilized, for library placement. Perhaps it is too optimistic to hope for a change soon in the inconceivably stupid architecture and design of school buildings, despite a few recent striking examples to the contrary.

As now financed, no public library system can undertake to administer a branch library in every grade school building within its jurisdiction. For school service on such a liberal scale there would be required in the city of New York at least $4,300,000 for equipment and at least $537,000 annually for cur