A Library Primer (1899)/Chapter XLVI

As libraries have become more thoroughly organized, as they have become more aggressive in their methods, and as they have come to be looked upon by librarians and others as possible active factors in educational work, the proper management of them has naturally been found to require experience and technical knowledge as well as tact, a love of books, and janitorial zeal. It is seen that the best librarians are trained as well as born; hence the library school. The library school—a list of those now in operation will be found at the end of this chapter—does not confine itself to education in the technical details of library management. It aims first to arouse in its pupils the "modern library spirit," the wish, that is, to make the library an institution which shall help its owners, the public, to become happier and wiser, and adds to this work what it can of knowledge of books, their use, their housing, and their helpful arrangement. Perhaps the ideal preparation for a librarian today would be, after a thorough general education, two or three years in a good library school preceded and followed by a year in a growing library of moderate size.

A few libraries have tried with much success the apprentice system of library training, taking in a class, or series of classes, for a few months or a year, and at the end of the period of apprenticeship selecting from the class additions to its regular corps.

New York state library school, Albany; Pratt institute library school, Brooklyn; Wisconsin summer school of library science, Madison; Drexel institute library school, Philadelphia, Pa.; University of Illinois state library school, Champaign; Amherst summer school library class, Amherst, Mass.; Los Angeles public library training class; Cleveland summer school of library science.