this, one hour each week is taken from the regular studies, moving on a sliding scale through the daily program. Two quarters, or 20 weeks, of this time in library readings is given to library methods. In one quarter the time is devoted to acquainting the students with the library itself, the finding of books by means of the card-catalog, the use of reference books, etc. In the senior year, another quarter is given to the study of library methods in the stricter sense of the term. Still another quarter of the library readings is given to acquainting the students with juvenile literature by actual examination and discussion of books suitable for children of different ages.

J. H. CANFIELD, of Columbia University, New York city.-We need to have among the teachers a broad appreciation of public libraries as an integral part of every public education. This thought should be driven home in the normal school. The teacher should be a person of weight in the community, and he should carry his full load of responsibility in building up an appreciation and an intelligent use of the free public library in his vicinity.

No one can appreciate the full value of a library without knowing something of its machinery. The rank and file of school men do not yet appreciate the part a library plays either in the school or in the community. The normal school must start the movement.

THE DUTY OF THE NORMAL SCHOOL IN RELATION TO DISTRICT SCHOOL LIBRARIES

JASPER N. WILKINSON, PRESIDENT OF STATE NORMAL SCHOOL,
EMPORIA, KAN.

Library work in normal schools is the only means these schools have for discharging any duty they owe to district-school libraries. Taking this view, we establish close connection between the two subjects for this afternoon's discussion. This paper will seek to establish the position that the training of librarians by normal schools is necessary to make school-district libraries effective.

Is it necessary to show that district libraries are not now effective? It may be dangerous to question in some quarters the efficiency of anything that is called a library. The very name itself is something to conjure with. We are impressed by the card pasted inside the cover of a book, "Library of John Smith," and we assume that John Smith must be a man of wisdom, even tho there be none of that article in the books he has chosen for his library. A proposition to found any kind of public library cannot be opposed without bringing odium upon its opponent, however good grounds he may have for doubting the possibility of getting good results under any management that can be established. A library is a charity which must not be questioned; it may be like charity in that it covers a multitude of sins." The best article I have found on district-school libraries reports an instance in which a benevolent hired hand on one of the farms of the district was keeping up the library by giving it his paper-backed novels as fast as he was thru with them. The library department of a well-known bookstore has been known to do such a thing as send Boccaccio's tales with indecent illustrations. A library may

give poison instead of food; it may lead to habits of mental dissipation; it may be so managed that the money it costs is worse than wasted.

We may safely concede, or concede as a measure of safety, that the libraries managed by the members of this Library Department are no such means of evil, but we shall agree that the possibilities of wasting money which exist in all libraries are in greatest danger of being realized in district-school libraries. Their only safety on this point, so far, is in the fact that they do not have much to waste. The library for which Kansas laws have long made provision looks well in reports, but there is little to show for it in the schools. The law tries to protect us against the spending of money for fiction when it says: "The district board, in the purchase of books, shall be confined to works of history, biography, science, and travels." Protection against the wily book agent would have been more to the point. The district school library needs a teacher who can guide correctly the book-buying. In many districts there has been the experience that no one knew the need of books for which to spend the money when raised, and it came to pass that the money was spent for some such thing as a stereopticon which could be shown by the agent to come under provisions of the law. How can even a teacher guide in the purchase of books unless trained? Here is a duty for the normal school. Ohio has been known to boast that she long ago put in operation a very effective district library law. The district in which I was a pupil had a library of which I learned by the merest chance. The books were at my father's house long enough for me to read Irving's Columbus and Franklin's Autobiography. Then the books went into the custody of another home in the farther side of the district, and I never heard of them again. I never saw any of these books at the schoolhouse. The teacher was not prepared to do anything to make the library effective. He did not know what books would interest and benefit pupils. He did not learn the truth that Edward Everett Hale declares when he says: "Whichever avenue we take must be one of the pleasant avenues, or else the young people will go a-skating or a-fishing or a-swimming, and not a-reading, and no blame to them." Parents cannot and will not take the guidance of the reading of their children. The teacher should do it. How could he be prepared unless that was part of his training? Here is a duty for the normal school.

The district school library cannot be effective unless the teacher is able to take charge of it and attend to the distribution and collection of books. A certain amount of formality is necessary to secure appreciation for the library. The cataloging of the contents of even a few books is necessary to their effectiveness. The custodian of the books must know how to catalog as well as how to use the catalog. The school must be trained into orderly habits in the use of books. If this is not done, the library goes to destruction. Who can be expected to do this except the teacher? Even the teacher cannot do it without special training. Here is another duty of the normal school.

If the state normal school accepts the duty of preparing district school

teachers to manage the district library, ways must be found for the discharge of this duty. For most of these teachers such preparation will, if received from the state normal school, be second-hand information at best. No state is likely soon to require that all its teachers be trained in state normal schools. But limited as is the influence of the state normal school, no other educational institution exerts a power so widespread among the schools. Not as a teacher in any other school could the writer of this paper have seen students assemble under his instruction from every one of the more than a hundred counties in a state of nearly a hundred thousand square miles. The making of library knowledge and enthusiasm general among normal-school students is a most effective means of making district-school libraries successful.

To discharge this duty of the normal school, every student in the institution must receive library instruction while in the course. The number who graduate are a small percentage of those who take the work of the first year. All who enter the normal school should receive instruction in the use of the library early. They need this for their own guidance as students. In giving this instruction to them early we make sure of their being ready to introduce sane library ideas into the teaching which many do between entrance and graduation, as well as in the work done by those who never graduate. In the Kansas State Normal School every student of the normal department is eligible to a course of eight lectures for which regular attendance and the taking of notes are required. In order that all who make progress thru the course shall get this work, the entire membership of the classes in one of the secondterm subjects take this work as a part of the subject. The following is a list of the subjects presented in one course of these lectures:

SATURDAYS, 9 A. M.-FEBRUARY 1 to APRIL 1, 1904

1. Classification and arrangement of books in reading-room. 2. Catalog.

4. Encyclopædias, including biography, geography, and statistics.

5. History.

6. General information; quotations, customs.

7. Government documents, check list, catalogs, etc.; Congressional Globe and Record. 8. How to look up a subject in the library.

These subjects for lectures doubtless include both more and less than the teacher of the district school needs to know for the satisfactory managing of a district library. The things omitted can be filled out in the exercise of good common-sense in actual practice, just as the bookkeeper who has a general knowledge of his subject can adapt himself to the conditions of any particular business. Training in excess of what is required is necessary to keep up enthusiasm and a proper standard for the minimum. On this ground, we find the necessity for an optional course in the work of a library school, if we are to commend to all the minimum requirement such as the lectures outlined here. All educators understand that the maintenance of higher schools is necessary to

keep up the standards of elementary schools. The doing of advanced work by a few serves to incite all to some measure of achievement in the elementary phases of a subject. My earliest recollection of any particular interest in the study of arithmetic dates from the time when I saw the highest class in school reciting algebra. Most people must see some higher attainment by another to convince them that their similar achievements are worth the effort. The state normal school cannot do its duty toward the district-school libraries without giving, to those who desire it, advanced work in library management. In the school that the writer knows most about, the senior class may elect a course of fifty recitations on library management. For those graduates and librarians who wish to make special preparation for library work we have a course taking all the time for nine weeks. We believe that the enthusiasm of the specialist who gives these courses, and of the students who take them, is of much value for the building up of an interest in district school libraries, and therefore this advanced work should be mentioned in connection with the subject we are discussing. Let me run still greater risk of being suspected of special pleading for the library school adjunct to a normal school, when I urge that the preparation of teachers for the care of high-school libraries is necessary to make the administration of district-school libraries a matter of sufficient general concern. When the high school sends its graduate to teach a district school, the high-school library will be the standard of that districtschool library. I will go even farther than the high-school library and say that, if the city libraries which I have seen under the control of city council committees were under the control of school boards, there would be more efficiency demanded of librarians, and the standard would be raised all the way down the line. Too many city councilmen rise no higher in their standard of qualification for the librarian than did a certain old man who could be named. He reported that he had been looking around for a job that he could do, and he was sure he could take down and put back all the books except those on the top shelves, and he would hire a boy to climb up to them if he could be favored with the position of head librarian. School boards are more accustomed to demand some standard of preparation than are city councils. The influence that reaches from the normal school thruout the public schools should be potent to raise the level of all library work. Let me say here that the normal students are not to be the only librarians; we shall expect from the library schools which admit none but college graduates the most abundant inspiration and guidance for library-training departments in normal schools, just as the work done by the normal schools shall furnish inspiration and guidance for the teacher of the common school.

I close with the recording of my conviction that the normal school should include in its function the giving of all training that the teacher finds should supplement his general education, and by this standard the normal school owes to all the libraries with which teachers have anything to do such preparation of those teachers as will enable them to commend the library and to

make it give good returns for the money invested. Only when the library training given by normal schools has reached down to the district schools will the duty of the normal school to the district-school libraries have been fully discharged.

DISCUSSION

MISS MABEL M. REYNOLDS, librarian of the State Normal School at Cheney, Wash.— In the extension of the library movement normal schools have a most important place. The promoters of the traveling-library movement have found their greatest difficulty in securing local librarians. Normal schools have the opportunity to train the districtschool librarian. They may help even those teachers who have but a few months to spend at school, to become interested in the library movement. The people who teach, and who do not come to the normal at all, may be reached thru the county superintendents, the teachers' institutes, and thru articles in the state teachers' journals, and reprints of these articles, or other circulars, sent to the teachers and county superintendents.

One county superintendent in Washington told me that he thought the districtschool teachers needed most to know how to select the best books for use as supplementary and reference material in the different branches of the course of study, and how to select interesting and profitable books for the home reading of each child. Both of these things may be taught at the normal school, if the teachers of methods, the training-school supervisors, and the librarians will work together, and use the children's books.

The training-school library ought to be of much service to the normal students. The students in our normal schools read children's books a great deal, as many of them had no opportunity to do so when they were children themselves. This reading is encouraged, and, as the training-school children come to the main library rooms to draw their books, many of the books most in demand are placed on the tables for examination, so that it is easy for the most indifferent students to get something as they pass by. Further acquaintance with the best literature for the school may be gained thru the many excellent lists at the command of the librarian, and by model exhibits of good collections of ten, twenty, and fifty books for district-school libraries.

The district-school teachers should learn of the library movement in their own state, of the library legislation, of the lists compiled by the state superintendents, if there are such, and of the way in which local conditions are being met by the most progressive districtschool leaders. This means that the normal-school librarian must put herself in touch with the district schools of the state. She must see that all students who have the opportunity to use the normal library, for many of whom it is the first good collection of books they have ever used, get some definite book knowledge to use in their schools, and some library enthusiasm to make them eager to obtain books for their pupils when they go out to teach.

Normal students need to be provided with an opportunity to catch the library spirit. Visits to children's rooms in the public libraries; hearing talks given by the library assistants who work with the public schools; assisting at the loan-desk when the children of the training school draw books; reading of the "accomplished good" in the library world, as given in the articles in the general magazines-all these things may open a new world of possibilities to young people who are to teach the country schools.

The women's clubs and the farmers' institutes are interested in the traveling libraries. Two collections of books in a community are better than one, and should not the districtschool teacher work with all library forces? Her library course ought to make her feel that, no matter into how isolated a community she may go, there are library workers interested in her and in the spread of the library movement in that place.