Some of the principles of library work with children,and the qualifications of a children's librarian were discussed by Miss Eastman in the following paper read at the fourth annual meeting of the Ohio Library Association held in Dayton in 1898.Linda Anne Eastman was born in Oberlin,Ohio,in 1867;was educated in the Cleveland Public Schools,and taught in the public schools of West Cleveland and Cleveland from 1885to 1892,when she became an assistant in the Cleveland Public Library.In 1895-1896she was assistant librarian and cataloguer in the Dayton,Ohio,Public Library,and in 1896became vice-librarian of the Cleveland Public Library,where she has since remained.Since 1904she has been an instructor in the Library School of Western Reserve University.She was a charter member of the Ohio Library Association,and its president in 1903-1904,Miss Eastman has made frequent contributions to library periodicals.
In the planning of a new library building,or the remodeling of an old one,there is no department to which I should give more thought in the working out of the details than in the children's department,in order to best adapt the arrangement to its use.
Its location in the building is the first matter for consideration.It should be easy of access from the main entrance,or,better still,have an entrance of its own directly from the outside,in order that the noise of the children may not become a disturbing element in the corridors and in other parts of the library.It would seem desirable,also,for many reasons,to have the children's department not too far removed from the main circulating department.
The children's department in a large library should contain at least two large rooms,one for the reading and reference room,the other for the circulating books.The rooms should be light,bright and cheery,as daintily artistic and as immaculately clean as it is possible to make and keep them.Wall cases seem best for the shelving of the books,low enough for the children to reach the shelves easily.These low cases also allow wall space above for pictures,and plenty of this is desirable.A children's room cannot have too many pictures,[1]nor any which are too fine for it;choose for it pictures which are fine,and pictures which "tell a story."Provide,also,plenty of space for bulletins,for the picture bulletins have become an important factor in the direction of the children's reading.One enthusiastic children's librarian wrote me recently that her new "burlap walls,admitting any number of thumb-tacks"were the delight of her heart.There should be reading tables and rubber-tipped chairs,low ones for the little children;and wherever there is space for them,the long,low seats,in which children delight to snuggle down so comfortably.
[1]If this paper were now open to revision,the writer would omit "cannot have too many pictures."The reaction against bare,bleak walls may not make it necessary to warn against over-decoration,but its undesirability should he recognized.--L.
A.E.
As to the arrangement of the books,I should divide them into three distinct classes for children of different ages:
(1)The picture books for the very little ones,arranged alphabetically.
(2)The books for children from seven to ten or twelve years of age.While these books should be classified for the cataloging,Ishould place them on the shelves in one simple alphabetical list by authors,mixing the fiction,history,travel,poetry,etc.,just as they might happen to come in this arrangement.I believe this would lead the children to a more varied choice in their reading,and that they would thus read and enjoy biography,history,natural science,etc.,before they learned to distinguish them from stories,whereas by the classified arrangement they would choose their reading much more often from the one class only.
(3)The books for boys and girls from ten or twelve years of age to fifteen or sixteen.These should be arranged on the shelves regularly according to class number,in order that the children may become acquainted with the classification and arrangement,learn to select their books intelligently,and be prepared to graduate from here into the adult library.
Where it is possible to duplicate the simple and more common reference books in the juvenile department,these should form a fourth class.Then there should be all of the good juvenile periodicals,with some of the best illustrated papers,such as Harper's weekly,for the reading room.
With many libraries a children's department on such a scale is an impossibility;but if you cannot give two rooms to the children give them one,and if you cannot do that,at least give them a corner and a table which they can feel belongs to them;and if you cannot give them a special assistant,set apart an hour or two each day when the children shall receive the first consideration--establish this as a custom,and both adults and children will be better served.
Whatever one's specialty in library work may be,however far removed from the work with the children,it is well to understand something of the principles which underlie this foundation work with the children.
It is only recently that these principles have begun to shape themselves with any definiteness;the children's department,as a fully equipped miniature library,and the children's librarian,as a specialist bringing natural fitness and special preparation to her work,are essentially the product of today;but they have come to stay,and they open to the child-lover,and the educator who works better outside than inside of the schoolroom limits,a field enticing indeed,and promising rich results.It is to the pioneers in this field,the earnest young women who are now doing careful experimental work and giving serious study to the problems that arise--it is to them that the children's departments of the future will be most indebted for perfected methods.
