Your familiarity with the course of study should give you the clue at once,for the fourth grade topics in conduct and government include lessons on the city government,with its principal departments and officers,so you will look up,if you have not already done so,an outline of municipal government describing the position and duties of the mayor,which will be within the comprehension of the child.It should not happen that a dozen children ask for Little white lily,and be turned away without it,before it is discovered to be a poem by George MacDonald which the third grade children are given to read.
This course of study the children's librarian should--not eat and sleep with exactly,but verily live and work with;it is one of her most valuable tools,and she should keep it not only within reach,at her finger's end,but as much as possible at her tongue's end,keeping pace with the assignment of work in the different grades and studies from month to month,and from week to week.She should know beforehand when a certain subject will be taken up by a certain grade,and have all available material looked up and ready,and new books bought if they will be needed and can be had--not wait until several hundred children come upon her for some subject on which a frantic search discloses the fact that the library contains not a thing suitable for their use,and then ask that books be bought,which,of course,come in after the demand is over,and stand idle upon the shelves for a whole year,taking the place of just so many more new books on subjects which will be needed later.
The course of study,too,will furnish more useful hints for bulletins,exhibitions,reading-lists,and other forms of advertising,than can come from any other source;and not only in supplementing the school work,but also in directing the children in their general reading,is an intimate knowledge of the course of study an invaluable aid,as it gives you the unit of measurement for any child which enables you to correlate his reading along certain lines to that which has gone before,and to that which is to follow.
(5)A knowledge of the principles of psychology and of education.
I have placed last the requisite which I feel sure some theorists,at least,would place first,because I believe that,as a rule,it will come last in point of time,and will be worked up to through the preceding stages of the development of the children's librarian;but her work will not be grounded upon a firm foundation until she has consciously mastered these principles,and clearly outlined her own work,this new work of the book,in perfect harmony with them.
There are many features of the children's work which I should like to dwell upon in detail,but I can do no more than mention a few of them.One of these is the Library league,with its threefold object of training the children in the proper care of books,of serving as an advertising medium for the library among the children themselves,and of furnishing a means of directing the reading of hundreds of children who cannot be reached individually.The possibilities of the league are beyond anything we have been able to realize.
Another thing is the necessity of guarding against letting children read too much,or too entirely along one line.There is a habit of reading along lines which deaden,instead of stimulating,thought,and the habit,if carried to excess,becomes a mental dissipation which is utterly reprehensible;but the pathway to this habit is entered upon so innocently and unconsciously by the story-loving child that he (perhaps more often she)must be guided very tenderly and wisely past its dangers;the library which ignores this necessity may have much harm laid at its doors.
The importance of providing,either in the school or the library,for systematic instruction in the use of books was emphasized in the report of the library section of the National Educational Association at Washington this summer;it is a necessity which must be met somewhere and somehow.
Of one more thing I should speak because of its provision for the children--the expansion of the library ideal;not so many years ago branch libraries and traveling libraries were unknown;now we feel that one library is not enough for a large city;it must have branch libraries and delivery stations to take the books to the people,while traveling libraries carry them into the scattered districts in the country.For the future,we have visions of a system of libraries so complete that in no town or country district of the state will a little child be deprived of the pleasure of good books;and wherever it is possible to put a live,warm-hearted,sympathetic and child-loving woman as the medium between the library and the child,it will be done.
Library work in its entirety offers much play for the missionary spirit,but nowhere else in its whole range is there such a labor of love as is hers who tries to bring the children early to their heritage in the beautiful world of books.
