effort and to save waste. If the library is to become an efficient instrument and factor in school instruction, there must be skillful direction, economic management, definite purpose, and special training of teachers. In cities and towns where public libraries are well developed and conveniently located or distributed, a librarian should become perfectly familiar with the course of study in the schools, and may prepare a graded subject catalog corresponding to the class-room work. He may co-operate intelligently with the superintendent of schools and the teachers, and together they may successfully establish the necessary relation with the school system. In short, the librarian may become the supervisor of the school libraries and the director of the work of the teachers in this branch of instruction. If the subject came within the scope of this paper, I should urge the establishment of similar relations between the public school and the art museum, the natural history museum, and the botanical and zoölogical gardens.

Where a city is unable to maintain school libraries, but is provided with a public library, books in sets should be loaned to the schools for class use. Under such a plan the library can manage the whole system of distribution, etc., and leave to the teacher the pleasant duty of dealing with the books wholly from the standpoint of the individual child.

Under whatever plan this library work is carried on, it is absolutely essential that the teacher be well equipped to manage her library as efficiently as she is obliged to utilize her text-books, her appliances and equipment for other subjects. She should know the bibliography appropriate to the grade of her pupils and to the subjects of instruction; should know where every book may be found; should know the interest value and the educational value of each work. She should also understand the details of library economy and technique to the extent of a perfect mastery of the class-room machinery. In all these matters I think teachers are lacking, because they have not been trained, and because they have not been under expert direction.

It seems that there is an opportunity and a duty that the librarians have with respect to the teachers who are undertaking library work in the schools, viz.:

1. To recognize the place, scope, purpose, and function of the school libraries. 2. To establish a co-operative relation between the libraries and the schools.

3. To become familiar with the courses of study and the syllabuses of the schools, grade by grade, in those subjects with which the books in the library are related.

4. To prepare graded departmental lists of available books in the library for the use of teachers and pupils.

5. To organize traveling sets to be used as class libraries.

6. To organize conferences with teachers on the bibliography of the subjects of the course of study, and on library administration and economy.

7. To visit the schools to examine the libraries and the method of library work. 8. To encourage the establishment of a practical intelligent system of class libraries. Librarians ought not to lose sight of the fact that the development of the library method in the schools and the extension of school libraries is a means

of extending the possibilities of the public library and enlarging the field of their own activities.

The duties of school officers and municipal officials are equally plain, viz.:

1. To recognize the school and class libraries as legitimate and necessary material of school equipment.

2. To limit the scope of the school libraries to their proper function, and the appropriation for books to an economical portion of school expenditure.

3. To emphasize the value of a school library as a means of training.

4. To establish a natural and co-operative relation between the school and the public library.

5. To supervise the library work in the schools in a measure commensurate with its importance and in equal proportion to the supervision of other branches of school work.

6. To provide for the training of teachers in library organization, technique, and bibliography to a degree equivalent to their training in other features of their school work.

DISCUSSION

MISS ANGE V. MILNER, librarian, Illinois State Normal University, Normal Ill.-Do we realize the great progress in using libraries that teachers have made in the last ten or fifteen years? We have just heard what the teachers in the large city schools are doing; not what they ought to do, but what they are really accomplishing. Nor are the city teachers alone in this. Equally good work is done along the same lines in the small towns and in the country schools. It is work that requires both interest and skill, and it is all the more admirable because it contrasts so strongly with the ways in which teachers used the libraries such a short time ago. Then, if a teacher co-operated with a library at all, she did so by drawing out the three or four most convenient reference books on a subject, not giving the slightest warning that further information would be asked for by her pupils, and carefully keeping the book until after the demand was entirely over. In the meantime the pupils would flock to the library during the busiest hours, for something on some subject that they evidently found it difficult to express. The dismayed librarians would have to guess what was wanted and hunt up references in a hurry, while the children were discouraged from coming again by the waiting that nobody likes. As for school libraries, in a state where the law required them to be supplied, the county superintendents reported that many teachers did not know how to use them, and did not even take proper care of the books.

It was near the time of the Columbian Exposition that educators began to realize and meet the difficulty. In the early nineties many normal schools which had always had libraries added librarians. The laboratory method of library work increased in the normal and high schools thru the recent appointments of college graduates upon their faculties. Interest in school libraries increased, and books and reading for the children were discussed at teachers' associations and institutes. In 1896 this Library Department of the National Educational Association was organized.

Normal-school librarians had an opportunity to meet teachers in the making, and found that they needed to learn how to use books for their own as well as for their pupils' advantage. Each normal school developed its own method of teaching them how to do both. Since the method of the Illinois State Normal University differs from many of the others, I will describe it briefly. Two lessons for each class of entering students serve as the foundation. The next step is accomplished by means of the reference work accompanying the regular school studies, and is made practicable by the co-operation of the faculty. Pupil-teachers are given individual instruction in the library work required for their teach

ing. The summer school has a large attendance of experienced teachers. These appreciate weekly lectures, illustrated by exhibits, on the various phases of the formation, care, and use of school libraries. They have also benefited by a pamphlet that we published last fall on the same subject. As in the other normal schools, our efforts are rewarded by good results.

While there is still much to be done for the improvement of school libraries and schoollibrary work by both teachers and librarians, yet it is evident that the efforts of both have been thus far successful. Teachers have made a notable advancement in their use of school libraries and their co-operation with librarians, in the period between the Columbian Exposition and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

N. C. SCHAEFFER, state superintendent of public instruction, Harrisburg, Pa.—I have not so much to say for the value of books to the people of the towns and cities, but I have much to say why it is a very important thing that a knowledge of books and a liking for books should be cultivated in the minds of those who live in isolated districts or in an environment presenting few of the things that make for the comfort and elevation of mankind; those who live in the widely scattered farming districts, seldom seeing the face of a neighbor, and particularly the women among this class; those who live in the factory town in one ceaseless grind of mechanical labor; those who spend a large share of their lives in the mines shut out from the light of heaven, or in the quarries where the very existence depends on constant manual labor. These are those to whom the book would come in the spirit of a broader and better life, bringing the best thoughts of the best minds of all ages, counteracting the monotony of what must otherwise be a lonely life.

The library has a double value in giving information as to what we do not know and confirmation as to what we think we know.

PRINCIPAL FRANK COOK, St. Louis, Mo.-I have been very much interested and deeply gratified at the expression of ideals in library work as set forth in this meeting. I will also say that I have been agreeably surprised to find so sympathetic a spirit displayed on the part of the library people. This is entirely different from my experience. One is so often compelled to go without what he does want, or else be satisfied with what he does not want, because of the interminable red tape that is involved in so much of the library machinery.

F. M. CRUNDEN, librarian of the Public Library, St. Louis, Mo., after referring to his early associations with Principal Cook in his high-school days, expressed his regret that anything in library work should make it possible for Mr. Cook to feel and express himself as he did at this time. The St. Louis Public Library gives due heed to the principle that the public library belongs to the people, and that the way by which the people may come to their own should be made as easy as is consistent with economic administration.

After long years of experience and observation, he felt safe in saying that the public library is, by all means, one of the most potent factors in a community for raising the mental and moral tone of the people. When a man is brought in contact with the best in books, he is brought in contact with the best in life. It wakens a love of ethics and its principles. The latent tastes and possibility for good, oftener than otherwise in a majority of people, owe their awakening to the impression made upon the reader by a single book.

DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL EDUCATION

SECRETARY'S MINUTES

FIRST SESSION.-WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1904

The sessions of the department were held in the Assembly Hall of the Mines and Metallurgy Building of the Universal Exposition. The department was called to order by President J. W. Jones, superintendent of the Ohio State Institution for the Deaf, Columbus, O.

The following program was carried out:

I. President's address, by J. W. Jones, superintendent of the Ohio Institution for the Deaf, Columbus, Ohio.

II. "What Teachers May Learn from the Model Schools of the Deaf and Blind and Their Exhibits," by S. M. Green, superintendent of the Missouri School for the Blind, St. Louis, Mo.

III. "Sight and Hearing in Relation to Education," by Oscar Chrisman, professor of paidology, Ohio University, Athens, O.

Informal discussion followed by Dr. D. P. MacMillan, director of the Child Study Department of Chicago Public Schools, and R. C. Spencer, president of the Wisconsin Phonological Institute, Milwaukee, Wis.

The president appointed as Committee on Nominations:

Mary R. Campbell, Chicago, Ill.

Percival Hall, Washington, D. C.

S. M. Green, St. Louis, Mo.

SECOND SESSION.-FRIDAY, JULY 30

The department met at 2:30 P. M., and was called to order by President Jones. The following was the program of the session:

I. Report of the Committee on Statistics of Defective Sight and Hearing of Public-School Children, by Percival Hall, professor of applied mathematics and pedagogy, Gallaudet College, Washington, D. C. II. "The Chicago Hospital School for Nervous and Delicate Children-Its Educational and Scientific Methods," by Miss Mary R. Campbell, secretary of board of trustees and educational advisor for the Chicago School of Special Education, Chicago, Ill.

III. "The Teacher and the Defective Child," by Dr. M. A. Goldstein, editor of The Laryngoscope, St. Louis, Mo.

Officers for the ensuing year were elected as follows:

For President-Miss Margaret Bancroft, head of Haddonfield Training School, New Jersey.

For Vice-President J. H. Freeman, superintendent of the Illinois School for the Blind, Jacksonville, Ill. For Secretary-Miss Anna E. Schaffer, state supervisor of schools for the deaf Wisconsin.

The department then adjourned.

ELIZABETH VAN ADESTINE, Secretary.