Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/66

 and educational authorities of America are in close touch with each other, and work hand in hand, but in Britain the same authorities are scarcely on speaking terms, save, as already said, in a few iolatedisolated [sic] instances. It will be enough if, in illustration of this, it is stated that although we have many good, bad and indifferent collegiate, public school, board school, church school, academic, and Sunday school libraries, they simply exist as concessions to a kind of convention, and not as useful and working units of a great national system of education and literary recreation. It is true that this ideal has not yet been attained in America—indeed, there is a good deal of expenditure of fruitless energy and waste of library resources there—but they have secured the interest of the Central Education Department, and they are gradually assembling, coordinating and applying their library resources in an economical and profitable manner.

It is not the purpose of this book to describe methods of organization or work which will be equally suitable for school libraries like those at Harrow, Eton or Charterhouse, and the small collections in elementary schools, but to give a few general hints which may be useful in strengthening and improving the smaller school libraries of the country. The ordinary elementary and Sunday school libraries are not selected on very broad or useful lines, nor are they worked on the best and simplest methods. The scholastic mind seems to have a reverence for the goody-goody in literature, which is either a tradition, or the outcome of a