Page:Traveling Libraries by Frank Avery Hutchins.djvu/3



BY F. A. HUTCHINS,

Secretary Wisconsin Free Library Commission, Madison, Wis.

some years careful students of the library movement in the United States have felt confident that every resident of a city would soon have good library privileges without fee. The rivalry of cities, the growing belief in the necessity of free libraries in our general system of education, and the feeling that public libraries are the most enduring monuments are uniting to secure for such libraries great private and public gifts. Until seven years ago, however, there was no systematic and continued effort to give free access to collections of good books to farmers and the residents of small villages. The almost universal lack of library privileges in rural communities has not arisen so much from failure to appreciate books as from certain practical difficulties in the methods of supplying them. The writer has visited scores of small communities, in a state which may fairly be regarded as typical, and has found very few in which public libraries have not at some time been started. Less than two per cent., possibly not one per cent., of those established before 1893 have been permanently successful. While nearly all of them did some good during the first year or two of their existence, the waste of money, effort, and enthusiasm involved in their failures is appalling.

The reasons for their failures are uniform and easily understood. They resulted from the following causes:—

Uninteresting books. The books of the first purchase were usually books of good reputation which the average 