This second paper on Values in library work with children,was presented at the Kaaterskill Conference of the A.L.A.in 1913by Caroline Burnite.In it are discussed "departmental organization as it benefits the reading child,and the principles and policies which have developed through departmental unity."For inclusion in this volume it has been somewhat condensed by the author.
Caroline Burnite was born in Caroline County,Maryland,in 1875;was graduated from the Easton,Maryland,High School in 1892and from Pratt Institute Library School in 1894.From 1895to 1901she was librarian of the Tome Institute in Port Deposit,Maryland.She was an assistant in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh from 1902to 1904,when she became Director of Children's Work in the Cleveland Public Library,the position she now holds.Miss Burnite is also an instructor in the Western Reserve Library School.
To elucidate principles of value,I shall use,by way of illustration,the experience and structure of a children's department where the problem of children's reading and the means of bringing books to them has been intensively studied for some nine years....Probably about six out of ten of the children of that city read library books in their homes during the year,and each child reads about twenty books on the average.In all,fifty-four thousand children read a million books,which reach them through forty-three librarians assigned for special work with these children,through three hundred teachers and about one hundred volunteers.
Now,we know that six out of ten children is not an ideal proportion of the total number.We know also,inversely,that the volume of work entailed in serving fifty-four thousand children may endanger the quality of book service given to each child.
Both of these conditions show that the experience of each reading child should make its own peculiar contribution to the general problem of children's reading and that the experience of large numbers of reading children should be brought to bear upon the problem of the individual.To accomplish this,work with the children was given departmental organization.My concern in this paper is with departmental organization as it benefits the reading child,and with the principles and policies which have been developed through departmental unity.
We think ordinarily that one who loves books has three general hallmarks:his reading is fairly continuous,there is a permanency of book interest,and this interest is maintained on a plane of merit.But in the child's contact with the library there are many evidences of modifications of normal book interests.
Instead of continuity of reading,the children's rooms are overcrowded in winter and have far less use in summer;instead of permanency of book interest extending over the difficult intermediate period,large numbers of those children who leave school before they reach high school have little or no library contact during their first working years,and without doubt the interesting experiences with working children,which librarians are prone to emphasize,give us an impression that a larger number are readers than careful investigation would show.And as for the quality of reading of many children who are at work we cannot maintain that it is always on a high plane.
Such results are largely due to environmental influences.
Deprived for the greater part of the year at least,of opportunity for normal youthful activities,the child's entire physical and mental schedule is thrown out of balance and he turns to reading,a recreation at his service at any time,only when there is little opportunity to follow other interests.Since the strain upon the ear and the eye,and back and brain is so great in the shop,the tendency in the first working years is too often toward recreations in which the book has no place.The power of the nickel library over the younger boy and girl can be broken by the presence of the public library,but the quality of the reading of the intermediate is often due to the popularity of the mediocre modern novel,with its present-day social interests.
For these and other reasons,the whole judgment of the results of library work with children can not rest upon such general tests of normal book interests as we have stated.Rather such variations from the normal are themselves conditions which influence the structure of the work and especially the principles of book presentation.Children with pressing social needs must have books with social values to meet those needs;chiefest of these are right social contacts,true social perspective,traditions of family and race,loveliness of nature,companionship of living things,right group association and group interests.
Starting with the principle that books should construct a larger social ideal for the greater number of children instead of confirming their present one,it was first necessary to find out from actual work with children,what their reactions to books with various interests are.Such knowledge was supplemented by the recorded testimony of men and women of their indebtedness to children's books,especially such as "Tom Brown"and "Little Women,"and especially of their youthful appreciation of the relationships and interdependence of the characters.
After we were able to evaluate books and to have some definite idea of which were good and which poor,the question arose:
