Page:Traveling Libraries by Frank Avery Hutchins.djvu/4

2  reader did not care for. The historical works generally included the volumes of Gibbon, Macaulay, Hume, and Bancroft, and others as formidable. Infrequent supplies of new books. In most cases all the money raised from fees, subscriptions, or entertainments was used in the first purchase of books, and when each patron had read the few volumes that interested him he went no more to the library.

Wherever suitable volumes were bought and new books were frequently supplied, the libraries flourished as vigorously in the country as in the city. It was evident then that if some plan could be devised to give country people books selected by educated buyers, and to give them fresh books at frequent intervals, the problem of giving farmers successful libraries would be solved, but no practical solution was suggested until 1892. In that year Mr. Melvil Dewey, librarian of the State Library in New York, secured from the legislature of that State an appropriation to inaugurate a new system of library extension, which was so simple, practical, and economical that it was immediately successful, and has since been followed in two thirds of the States of the Union. With the money appropriated Mr. Dewey bought a number of small libraries of one hundred volumes each. Stations for them were made in villages, in schools, and in connection with university extension centres and study clubs. A library was sent to a station to remain six months, and at the end of that period it was returned to Albany, to be sent out to another station. These itinerant collections of books soon became known as "traveling libraries."

To secure the preservation and safe return of the books Mr. Dewey demanded certain pledges. In communities having no public library or accredited school he required a guaranty signed by twenty-five tax-payers. Each library was sent out in a chest. With it went a library case, a charging outfit and a number of small, printed, annotated