Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/17

 THE DIAL



THE DIAL, No. 24 Adams Street, Chicago.

No. 169.

  THE LITERATURE CONGRESSES.

has given, from time to time, accounts of the remarkable series of gatherings planned for the Exposition season by the World's Congress Auxiliary. These Congresses, which have been uninterruptedly in progress since the middle of May, are designed to cover all the important fields of intellectual activity, and each of them has been placed in charge of a competent local committee of arrangements, with full power to plan the sessions and extend invitations to those whom it is desirable should participate. Up to the present time, the Congresses have dealt with the work of representative women, with the public press, medicine, temperance, social reform, and with the problems of commerce and finance. The Congresses of the present month will include the three subjects of music, literature, and education, subjects relating to the higher aspects of culture, and thus making a particular appeal to the constituency addressed by We propose, in the present article, to outline the more important features of the Literature Congresses planned for the week beginning with the tenth of July.

Literature, as used in connection with these gatherings, is a term to be taken in a broad sense, as appears from the primary classification of the work to be done. Five sections have been established, dealing respectively with libraries, history, philology, folk-lore, and literature proper. The work of the five sections will be carried on at the same time, and throughout the greater part of the week; but the programmes have been arranged, as far as it has been found possible to do so, with the view of bringing into session, at a given time, the interests least likely to conflict with one another, so that those in attendance upon the respective sections may not be unduly disturbed by the promptings of a divided duty. Thus the members of any one section will be free to attend those meetings of the others most likely to be attractive to them. The real work of the Congresses will begin on Tuesday, the evening of the preceding Monday being given up to an informal reception to the visiting members and the interested resident public.

The Congress of Librarians, in charge of a committee having Mr. F. H. Hild, of the Chicago Public Library, as chairman, will be superimposed upon the regular annual conference of the American Library Association. The Congress proper will probably occupy four sessions, and for these sessions more than a score of papers have been secured. The conference of the Association is planned to occupy three further sessions, for which the programmes have been arranged by the officers of that body. The public has always taken much interest in the meetings of the Library Association, and the meeting of this summer, with its unusual features, will probably be the most important ever held, as well as the most fruitful in practical outcome. The profession of the librarian