Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/140

136 books. Most libraries in the future will undoubtedly be planned to permit direct access to open shelves for a great part of their collections. There is, however, a point where this privilege ceases to be of use to the public and to the library, and this fact is now very generally recognized.

Open shelves are but one manifestation of the missionary spirit. Special rooms for children in charge of specially trained assistants are another result of this desire to bring books and people together. The creation of 'children's rooms' has been on the whole a great blessing to libraries. It has drawn away the younger children from the reading rooms and delivery counters, and has perhaps ingrained the reading habit in very many little ones. Certainly the children's room with its cheerful and prettily decorated walls, its low tables and chairs and its tactful, kind, experienced director has proved a boon to countless children into whose homes none of these delectable things enter. This particular form of library work is, however, as yet too young to enable us to judge of its ultimate results.

Another form which the missionary spirit has taken is a closer relation and a more effective cooperation between libraries and schools. The desire for an organization to give opportunity for the public exploitation of this sort of work produced in 1896 the Library Section of the National Educational Association. Not the schools alone, but women's clubs and social settlements, and, in general, all organizations whose members use books in their work, have been brought into friendly relations with the progressive libraries. In short we may safely affirm that public libraries are studying the needs of their communities as never before, and that the somewhat vague notion of aiding the 'public' is fast being replaced by concrete and tangible assistance to organizations and individuals.

The libraries in the large cities have been showing a most decided desire to assist their clients in securing books. To this end the branch library and the delivery station have experienced an almost marvelous development in the past decade. There is hardly a public circulating library of prominence in the country which does not maintain from half a dozen to half a hundred reading-rooms with small collections of reference books, as well as numerous stations for delivery of books from the central library. The largest number of these branch libraries will ultimately be found in New York, where Mr. Carnegie's gifts provide for eighty of these smaller centers in the greater city. Branch libraries have not infrequently been established at the request of large manufacturers or other employers of labor near their places of business, and in some cases the running expenses have been paid by them.

Among librarians also the spirit of mutual helpfulness which has been so characteristic a feature of the library movement in this country