Under the head of furniture I will give only one or two hints of things worth remembering.One is that whatever you decide upon for a chair,in point of size,shape,or style,make sure,before you pay your bill,that it cannot be easily overturned.If you have a chair that will tip over every time a child's cloak swings against it,your wrinkles will multiply faster than your years warrant.And reason firmly with your electrician if he has any plan in mind of putting lamps on your tables of such a sort that they positively invite the boy of a scientific (or Satanic)turn of mind to astonish the other children by the way the lights brighten and go out,all because he has discovered that a gentle pressure to his foot on the movable plug under the table can be managed so as to seem purely innocent and accidental while he sits absorbed in the contents of his book.I would also ask why it is that librarians think we need so MUCH furniture,when our rooms are as small as they sometimes are?We seem to think it inevitable that the floor space should be filled up with tables,but,as Mr.Anderson remarked in his paper at Magnolia,if we saw a family at home gathered around the table,leaning their elbows upon it and facing the light,we should think it a very unnatural and unhygienic position to adopt.Why should we,in the library,encourage children to do just what physiologists tell us they should not do?Why provide tables at all for any but those actually needing them as desks for writing up their reference work?For the many who come merely to read,why is not a chair and a book,with light on the page of the book,and not glaring into the child's eyes,enough for his comfort?This is worth thinking about,I am sure,and worked out in some satisfactory,artistic little back-to-back benches perhaps,would change the stereotyped appearance of the children's room,and give the extra floor space which is always sadly needed.It is an axiom in library architecture that perfect supervision should be made easily possible.In a children's room this should be taken very literally.There should be no floor cases,no alcoves in the room,no arrangements by which a knot of small mischief makers can conceal themselves from the librarian for she will find such an error in planning,a thorn in the flesh as long as the room stands.
So much time devoted to the planning of the children's room,may give the impression that the room is of more importance than the librarian.It is a platitude,however,to say that the ideal children's librarian,with every material condition against her,will do a thousand times more than the ideal room with the wrong person in it.The qualifications necessary to make the right sort of a disciplinarian are,many of them,too intangible for words,but a few things strike me as not always distinctly recognized by librarians.
In the first place,no librarian should compel that member of his staff who dislikes children to do the work of the children's department.While on general principles to let an attendant choose the work she likes to do would be disastrous,since the person best fitted for dusting might choose to be reference librarian,in this one particular at any rate,the wishes of the staff should be consulted.For while all may be conscientious,faithful workers wherever placed,mere conscientiousness will not make a person who frankly says children bore and annoy her,a success in the children's room.Love for children should be the first requisite,and the librarian who puts a person in charge of that work against her will,will hurt the department in a way that will be surely felt sooner or later.While love for children,sympathy with,and understanding of them are all of the first importance in the composition of a children's librarian,some experience in handling them in large numbers (as in public school teaching,mission schools,boys'clubs,etc.)is extremely desirable.To deal with a mob of very mixed youngsters is a different matter from telling stories to a few well-brought up little ones in your own comfortable nurseries.The best qualification for the work of children's librarian is successful experience as a teacher,in these happy days when it is coming to be the rule that law and liberty may walk side by side in the school-room,and where firmness on the teacher's part in no wise interferes with friendliness on the child's.
