Library Work with Children [36]
should have the same drawing power, and their influence, once felt, is toward quietness and thought, rather than toward activity and skill with the complications of dispute and cheating that may arise from the use of games. Children are natural propagandists. Let one child find that at the children's library he may select his own books from a good-sized collection, may find help in his composition-work, the news of what is going on in the world in the shape of an attractive illustrated bulletin-board, different every week--and tomorrow 10 children will know of it, and each of these will tell other 10, and so on. The library will have all the children it can attend to eventually, and they will have come gradually so that the assistants shall have been able to get a proper grasp of the situation, while the earlier children will have been somewhat trained to help, like the elder brothers and sisters in a family.
Certain freedoms may be granted in the children's library as an education for the adult constituency of the future; for instance, the guarantee may be done away with, thus putting the child on his honor to pay his own fines and damages--the only penalties for not doing so being those which society naturally inflicts on offenders--the debarring from privileges and from association. If there is nothing injurious or doubtful on the shelves, freedom in choice of books may be allowed to the smallest child, only he must know that help and guidance are at hand if he wishes them, and if a tendency to over-read in any one direction or in all is noticed, the librarian should feel at liberty to make suggestions. And as to freedom of action, the maxim should be that one man's liberty ends where another man's begins. No child should be allowed to disturb the room or to interfere with the quiet of those who are studying, for many children, more than one would think, really come to study. But the stiffness and enforced routine of the school-room should by all means be avoided. There should be no set rules as to silence, but consideration for others should be inculcated, and in time the room will come to have a subduing, quiet atmosphere that will insensibly affect those who enter. Whispering, or talking in a low tone, where several little heads are bent together over picture-books, is certainly admissible, and the older heads are very soon quiet of their own accord, each over its own book or magazine.
After the selection of the books themselves there is nothing so important as thoughtful administration, a practical question, since the employment of assistants comes in under this head. Educators have for some time seen the mistake of putting the cheapest teachers over the primary schools--kindergartners have seen it--and it remains for the library to profit by their experience without going through a similar one. If there is on the library staff an assistant well read and well educated, broad- minded, tactful, with common sense and judgment, attractive to children in manner and person, possessed, in short, of all desirable qualities, she should be taken from wherever she is, put into the children's library, and paid enough to keep her there. There is no more important work in the building, no more delicate, critical work than that with children, no work that pays so well in immediate as well as in far-off results. Who that has met the fault- finding, the rudeness and coldness too frequent in a grown-up constituency, would not expand in the sunshine of the gratitude, the confidence, the good-will, the natural helpfulness of children! And it rests partly with the assistant to cultivate these qualities in them, and so modify the adult constituency of the future.
I say THOUGHTFUL administration because the children's library is no sooner opened than it begins to present problems. Some of these are simply administrative and economic, others take hold of social and ethical foundations. There will be scarcely a day on which the librarian and the children's librarian will not have to put their heads, and sometimes their hearts, together
Certain freedoms may be granted in the children's library as an education for the adult constituency of the future; for instance, the guarantee may be done away with, thus putting the child on his honor to pay his own fines and damages--the only penalties for not doing so being those which society naturally inflicts on offenders--the debarring from privileges and from association. If there is nothing injurious or doubtful on the shelves, freedom in choice of books may be allowed to the smallest child, only he must know that help and guidance are at hand if he wishes them, and if a tendency to over-read in any one direction or in all is noticed, the librarian should feel at liberty to make suggestions. And as to freedom of action, the maxim should be that one man's liberty ends where another man's begins. No child should be allowed to disturb the room or to interfere with the quiet of those who are studying, for many children, more than one would think, really come to study. But the stiffness and enforced routine of the school-room should by all means be avoided. There should be no set rules as to silence, but consideration for others should be inculcated, and in time the room will come to have a subduing, quiet atmosphere that will insensibly affect those who enter. Whispering, or talking in a low tone, where several little heads are bent together over picture-books, is certainly admissible, and the older heads are very soon quiet of their own accord, each over its own book or magazine.
After the selection of the books themselves there is nothing so important as thoughtful administration, a practical question, since the employment of assistants comes in under this head. Educators have for some time seen the mistake of putting the cheapest teachers over the primary schools--kindergartners have seen it--and it remains for the library to profit by their experience without going through a similar one. If there is on the library staff an assistant well read and well educated, broad- minded, tactful, with common sense and judgment, attractive to children in manner and person, possessed, in short, of all desirable qualities, she should be taken from wherever she is, put into the children's library, and paid enough to keep her there. There is no more important work in the building, no more delicate, critical work than that with children, no work that pays so well in immediate as well as in far-off results. Who that has met the fault- finding, the rudeness and coldness too frequent in a grown-up constituency, would not expand in the sunshine of the gratitude, the confidence, the good-will, the natural helpfulness of children! And it rests partly with the assistant to cultivate these qualities in them, and so modify the adult constituency of the future.
I say THOUGHTFUL administration because the children's library is no sooner opened than it begins to present problems. Some of these are simply administrative and economic, others take hold of social and ethical foundations. There will be scarcely a day on which the librarian and the children's librarian will not have to put their heads, and sometimes their hearts, together