Page:Traveling Libraries by Frank Avery Hutchins.djvu/10

8 by public tax. Early in that year the state commission secured from generous citizens the money to buy twenty traveling libraries for villages. These were made up largely of comparatively recent books. The commission then proposed to the village boards in as many villages to send them traveling libraries of fifty volumes each every six months if they would establish local public libraries under the state law, make suitable annual appropriations, and conduct them in a satisfactory manner. The commission also offered to aid in the organization of the local libraries. Since the offer was made twenty village libraries have been founded because of it. In nearly every case the commission has practically selected the books and decided the rules under which the library shall be conducted. All are succeeding and many of them are doing such good work as to surprise their most sanguine friends. In one case the establishment of the library brought private gifts of $7700, and in another case, in a village of less than 500 inhabitants, the appropriation and gifts for the first year amounted to $1050.

While associations have not been as successful as organizations supported by the State in securing the establishment of permanent libraries, they have been very successful in other important fields where those who give and those who receive can meet. It is clear that our city and village libraries should be free to neighboring farmers, but the farmers do not generally appreciate the value of the libraries, and are unwilling to bear a fair share of the burden of supporting them. There is no better way of educating them than to supply them from traveling libraries furnished by private associations working from a central library. Associations, like women's clubs and organizations of normal school students, have done so much good with traveling libraries, when they have managed them wisely, that it seems best to state the conditions necessary to succeed, frankly, and in some detail.