A Book for All Readers: An Aid to the Collection, Use, and Preservation of Books and the Formation of Public and Private LibrariesSpofford, Ainsworth Rand
Science
A Book for All Readers: An Aid to the Collection, Use, and Preservation of Books and the Formation of Public and Private Libraries
Spofford, Ainsworth Rand
Books; Library science
Not alone in the fields of science, history, and biography, but in the
attractive fields of literature, also, can the libraries aid and
supplement the teachings of the school. A fine poem, or a simple,
humorous, or pathetic story, told with artless grace or notable literary
skill, when read aloud by a teacher in school, awakens a desire in many
to have the same book at home to read, re-read, and perhaps commit to
memory the finer passages. What more inspiring or pleasing reading than
some of Longfellow's poems, or the Vicar of Wakefield, or Milton's
L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, or Saintine's Picciola, or selections from
the poems of Holmes, Whittier, Kipling, or Lowell? For all these and
similar wants, the library has an unfailing supply.
As a practical illustration of the extensive, use of books by schools in
some advanced communities, I may note that Librarian Green, of the
Worcester (Mass.) Public Library, said in 1891 that his average daily
account of the books loaned to schools in two busy winter months showed
over 1,600 volumes thus in daily use. This too, was in addition to all
that were drawn out by pupils on their own independent cards as
borrowers. Such a record speaks volumes.
In the same city, where the Massachusetts State Normal School is located,
sixty-four per cent. of the scholars visited the library to look up
subjects connected with their studies.
A forcible argument for librarians taking an interest in reading for
schools is that both parents and teachers often neglect to see that the
young get only proper books to read. The children are themselves quite
ignorant what to choose, and if left to themselves, are likely to choose
unwisely, and to read story papers or quite unimproving books. Their
parents, busied as they are, commonly give no thought to the matter, and
are quite destitute of that knowledge of the various classes of books
which it is the province of the librarian to know and to discriminate.
Teachers themselves do not possess this special knowledge, except in rare
instances, and have to become far more conversant with libraries than is
usual, in order to acquire it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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