is for all of life. School work is compulsory, at least in the lower grades, and is a duty under a master. Library work is optional, and is pleasure under a friend. It calls for joyous exercise of the intellectual powers, which always gives most rapid and satisfactory development.

Because of these differences and the freedom from the disciplinary work of the school, libraries with longer hours and shorter vacations are less likely to be worn out than teachers. Each has his proper field of work, and librarians have no more right to expect teachers to carry their own burdens and also take on new ones, than that teachers should ask librarians to perform some of the school functions. Better results are uniformly secured where the library is not under the same board as the schools. Naturally, almost inevitably, school trustees and boards of education feel that the greatest concern of life is the school, and they will consider themselves as singularly broad-minded if they recognize the library as an unobjectionable, or perhaps a very useful, bob to the school kite. The best results can come only when the board of trustees gives its whole thought and energy to library interests, and believes them as second in importance to none. Library and school should work in the greatest harmony, but under independent boards.

The great function of the teacher, to which he should bend every energy, is to give pupils under his care a taste for reading. With this, much of the rest will follow. I should vastly prefer my own child to leave school with a strong taste for good books and a record of comparative failure in his studies, than to have him take all the honors in his examinations and begin life with no genuine liking for reading. Huxley has wisely said that to teach our boys and girls to read without provision for what that reading shall be is as senseless as it would be to teach them the expert use of the knife, fork, and spoon with no provision as to their physical food.

The old library was a reservoir concerned chiefly with gathering material. In our generation the reservoir has been changed into a fountain. The library has been an aggressive force concerned chiefly with giving out. In this work we have forgotten that reading is not necessarily good. It is a mighty engine exerting the most powerful influence for good or for evil on the human mind. Many a mother is at perfect peace thinking that her boy is on the highroad to heaven if only she finds him with his nose in a book, and yet we all know that the reading of bad books is the surest and quickest road to the pit.

Our recent library work has had to do too much with quantity, too little with quality. We have made the reservoir into a fountain, but we must give more attention to filtration. The most hopeful efforts are in the direction of careful, unprejudiced, brief notes, following book titles in catalogs, so as to help both reader and librarian to know what purpose each book can best serve. The great problem before thoughtful students

of librarianship today is not so much how to increase the number of volumes circulated, but how to improve the quality, excluding the worst, decreasing the use of the poor, encouraging the good, and aiming constantly to lead every reader to the best.

THE LIBRARY AND THE SCHOOL AS CO-ORDINATE FORCES IN EDUCATION

KY.

LIVINGSTONE MCCARTNEY, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, HOPKINSVILLE, We have to consider a twofold question: How can the library be made most serviceable to the child in the daily performance of his work in the school; and, how can the school life of the child be so ordered as to give him the greatest possible command of the contents of good books in his subsequent career? This double question lays open before us the whole subject of the co-operation of school and library in the training of the child.

The library is to serve as an assistant to the school in educating the child. To serve this purpose properly it must contain many hundreds of books that have been chosen because of their direct connection with the subjects upon which the child is working. One who selects these books must have a knowledge, not only of books, but of children, and of the aims and methods of school education. It is to be doubted whether even the best librarians are capable of making the selection wisely. Their view is too largely one of the books, supplemented by a more of less definite knowledge of child nature, and with but little, if any, study of present-day educational methods as pursued in the best schools. What they know of the school life of today is derived from books and from conversation, instead of being the result of personal experience.

Nor can the teachers do much better than the librarians. The trained and experienced teacher no doubt understands child-life and child-likes better than the librarian does; but she is inferior to the librarian in a knowledge of what literature offers to the child, and her estimate of the real value of books often gives preference to that which is not of great worth. Besides, her view of education itself is liable to be distorted by the too great prominence she gives to her own special subject or department. The principals and superintendents of schools also have their limitations which disqualify them to act alone in selecting the books for a school library. It is only by the united efforts of librarian, teacher, and superintendent that a wise choice can be made.

But granting that the books have been properly selected and that the library shelves are burdened with all that can be made helpful in the school work, how can these books be best used? They must be accessible

to the children. One distinguished educator of my acquaintance advocates breaking up the library into small collections and giving to each schoolroom its appropriate share. This recommendation is open to the very serious objection that it deprives the child of the great advantage of spending many hours in a large library. More will be said on this point in the discussion of the second part of our subject. Many schools secure all of the substantial benefits to be derived from the small collection of books in each room by permitting each teacher to draw a large number of books and keep them in her schoolroom for several weeks. In our own schools we follow this plan, with the limiting provision that any teacher who has had a book for two weeks or more must return it if it is called for by another teacher. If the library owns several copies of the books most in demand, the needs of all teachers will be well met, and but few books will be called in before they are returned voluntarily.

The teacher who has on her shelves from ten to fifty such books carefully selected with reference to her class work for the succeeding few weeks will find constant occasion to use them in class and will be able to induce many of her pupils to carry them home to read. This will lead by the easiest transition to the regular use of the main library by her pupils. In addition to the books that are intended to be read thruout, there must be provided a large number and a great variety of works of reference to which the children may come for aid on special points or topics. Many of these works of reference should be permanently placed in the schoolrooms, but others can be given to the teachers for use in the same manner as the books from the circulating department. It is important for the library to own at least two copies of each of these books, so that one may always be found in the reference room of the general library.

But this is only one side of our question. Not only must the library be so used as to assist in the education of the child, but the school in its turn must recognize its duty to equip the child for the future enjoyment of the library. Two worlds offer their riches to every youth who steps. out from the threshold of the school-a world of affairs and a world of books. Happy he who is well prepared to participate in both! There is a kind of education that addresses itself to preparing the youth for the world of affairs. So clamorous for quick success is the everyday business world that its spirit has not only invaded scholastic halls, but has in some quarters set about ejecting the time-honored occupants. We cannot digress here to discuss the right extent to which this spirit should prevail in education. It is the purpose of this paper only to note its insistent claim to increasing recognition, and to protest against any form of education that undervalues the riches of the world of books.

But there is a kind of education more reprehensible even than this; for, while it is based upon the use of books, it does not prepare for the

enjoyment of the riches of the library. It sets down its deluded votary between the two worlds that we have mentioned. He is not fitted to make his way in the world of affairs; neither has he entered into the deeps of literature, history, and philosophy. He has been taught to worship form; for his training began with words, continued in words, and ended in empty words. Of such a character is too much of the formal training of the schools.

In contrast with these one-sided forms of education, how much more to be desired is that complete training which not only familiarizes the youth with the world of affairs and enables him to command success in any chosen line of effort, but also prepares him for a full enjoyment of the wider, deeper life of letters! How can school life be so ordered as to

contribute to this result?

Even a

Personal contact with a large, central library is essential. good library in each school building does not fully serve this purpose. The growing student must be able to drink in the love of books and to become fully imbued with the library spirit by hours and days spent delving in a large collection of books. The place has, perhaps, more to do with this development than we are aware. No amount of discussion about books, their contents and their authors, can take the place of actual familiarity with the books themselves. The student's school life, then, must be so planned as to call for frequent visits to the library not mere calls at the circulation window, but periods of systematic research in the books on the shelves. Even quite young children, those not more than twelve years of age, can have their work so planned as to call for this library research. The subjects of geography, history, and literature alone afford ample opportunity for such work; but we as teachers must bear in mind that we are just now discussing the preparation of the child for the future use and enjoyment of libraries, and we must not base our library research work upon the school studies as they now stand. We must inquire along what lines of library research the pupils should become interested, and then we must make provision for those lines of effort in our school life. This may disarrange some of our nicely adjusted outlines. It may make waste paper of some fine-spun courses of study which have not been revised to meet new educational ideals and conditions, and it may cause a world of annoyance to those teachers who have the routine of their annual work so habituated that they need no thought for new work or new methods, but find that a look at the calendar will bring up the appropriate lessons, words, gestures, and facial expression for the day. But if this change is based upon a careful study of the true needs of the children, it will fully justify its iconoclastic tendencies.

The student should gain complete mastery of a limited number of representative books. The contents of these books should become his

mental possession absolutely. And he should know, not only what they say, but how they say it. All of their illustrative examples and allusions should be familiar to him; and he must especially be trained to see what these examples and allusions are used to illustrate and enforce. Our knowledge of books is too often weak at this point. We are familiar with the anecdotes, the scenes, the parables, without troubling ourselves greatly with the context. The very point of view of the book, in so far as it is good, must become the student's point of view. Such an absorption of

a book into one's life is safe only in the case of comparatively few books; but it is the duty of the school to select these and to secure their complete assimilation in the lives of the children.

Besides this intense study and complete mastery of a few books, the school must plan to give the child a wide knowledge of the character and contents of the books that he has not read. This cannot be done by catalogs and tables of contents. The child must handle and examine the books themselves, gleaning a little here and a little there by his own. personal efforts. Lists prepared by librarians, lectures delivered by teachers, and short-cut manuals by short-cut authors will give him only the belief that he knows what in reality he does not know. The young farmer must learn of soils and crops by holding the plow and by gathering the grain; he who would succeed in business must feel the touch of checks and drafts between his fingers; and he who would have a working knowledge of books must handle books. It is the duty of the school, not only to give him this opportunity, but so to arrange his work that he cannot evade it. In this connection it should be said that children should be taught the intelligent use of the index of every book in which they work, and that they should know all of the great reference works and their plan of arrangement, so as to be able to use these works economically.

The child must also be given a knowledge of the writers of books both past and present, and this can be done in a large library much more quickly, easily, and thoroly than in any other place. Here he is surrounded by the works themselves that came from the authors' hands; and on the walls are portraits; in the hallways and rooms are statues, busts, and tablets; and even the exterior of the building is so ornamented as to do honor to the great names of literature. Those who come and go, as he loiters, all seem to have a wholesome respect for the place and for all who have contributed to its enrichment. Shall he alone go from its portal uninfluenced by all of its appeals? Shall his school hold him to such a grind of routine, or be so grossly commercial, that he has neither time nor inclination left for this beautiful and hallowed society of books?