Page:Traveling Libraries by Frank Avery Hutchins.djvu/6

4 and when returned the books are merged in the general library. While this plan has some advantages, it practically prevents the publication of small, printed, annotated catalogs such as are furnished with the traveling libraries in other States. In New York as many as ten libraries are sometimes made up similar in all respects, and this makes the cost of selecting, classifying, annotating, and printing for each one a comparatively small expense.

The experiment in Ohio was so successful that the legislature has recently voted an annual appropriation of $4000 for traveling libraries.

In 1899 the legislature of Minnesota established a State Library Commission and gave it $5000 annually for two years to pay for books for traveling libraries and to provide for their purchase, arrangement, and circulation. "The formation of permanent libraries and the better organization of those now in existence will be the chief aim of the commission in all its plans."

In the same year a library commission was established in Maine, and the legislature appropriated $2500 for its use in buying traveling libraries. Fifteen hundred dollars of this amount is available now and the remainder will be given in 1900.

While the legislatures of many States have been besieged for appropriations for the new system of popular education, only those mentioned have given money directly for books. The failure to get aid in other States has not stayed the rapid progress of the movement. It has probably helped it. In 1896 Hon. J. H. Stout of Menomonie, Wis., concluded to found a system of traveling libraries in his home county. He secured the assistance of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission, which had recently been established, in the labor of organizing the libraries and putting them at work. He soon had thirty-seven small libraries stationed in different parts of a county whose total population, outside of his home city, was 16,000. His experiment was so