Page:Rational Library Work with children and the preparation for it - Frances Jenkins Olcott.djvu/7

 discuss the problems of book selection or the determinate methods used to draw attention to books, such as story hours, reading circles, and picture bulletins. It is our endeavor in the children's rooms to use only those methods which are dignified, direct, and informal, and which lead to better reading. The main object of our story hour and reading circles is to draw attention to books and to books only.

Whereas we try to preserve the informal atmosphere of our children's rooms, keeping out the school-room atmosphere, we are at the same time doing work with the schools. Our branch librarians and the children's librarians visit the schools of their districts, keep in touch with the teachers, lend them books, and encourage them to send the children to the library to look up subjects for school compositions. In order not to interfere with the atmosphere of pleasure reading, which we like to preserve in our children's rooms, we set aside a corner or a room for school use.

Besides the school work done directly from our children’s rooms, we have, as already stated, a division of work with schools. This division is in charge of a regular supervisor and assistant, who spend their time visiting the schools, where they talk with the teachers, read aloud and tell stories in the class-rooms, and make arrangements to send collections of books to the schools to be used for home circulation and in the class-room. We have at present 15,000 school duplicates and cannot supply the demand.

The aims of this division are: that no child shall leave the city schools without having had the opportunity to read good books; that no child shall pass the last grade in the ward schools without having had instruction in the use of catalogs, indexes, etc., and that teachers in the class rooms shall be aided in every way possible with material to illustrate their lessons.

We cannot emphasize too much the enthusiasm with which principals and teachers have met the offers of the library to supply them with books and story-tellers. A number of schools set aside regular class periods for story-telling and reading aloud, and we are gaining noticeable results from this work. Besides direct work with the schools, this division carries on a number of deposit stations, and cooperates with the branch children's rooms in the establishment of summer playground libraries.

Although we are reaching thousands of children through our children's rooms and through the city schools, there still remain large numbers of children who do not use our children's rooms and who do not go to school. These children work at home, in toby shops, in factories, or they sell papers. There are also "gangs" of restless boys who hang about street corners and whose lawless mischief leads them into crime. For the purpose of reaching these children and young people, we have organized a division of work with home libraries and reading clubs, which penetrates into alleys, "runs," and out-of-the-way corners of the city, and which cooperates with institutions for social betterment, such as the Society for the Improvement of the Poor, social settlements, Juvenile Court, Newsboys' Home, and other similar institutions. This division has two distinct fields of work; one is in the homes of the children, the other is in the boys' club rooms. The home library work is peculiarly fitted to the needs of Pittsburgh. It reaches directly the homes of the working classes, foreigners, and sometimes criminals. It helps to Americanize that part of our foreign population whose filth and ignorance is our worst menace.

A home library consists of a small case of books placed in a child's home. At a stated time each week ten or twelve children of the neighborhood meet about the case and a visitor from the library gives out the books, and, in various ways, makes the "library hour" pass pleasantly with profit to the children. The method of spending the "library hour" depends on the sex and age of the children. The visitor's main idea is to introduce the children to books, but she cannot hold them by books alone. She reads aloud or tells stories, plays games with