Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public LibrariesBostwick, Arthur E. (Arthur Elmore)
Science
Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries
Bostwick, Arthur E. (Arthur Elmore)
Library science; Public libraries
I would not have you think, although I believe this to be at bottom a
matter of principles, that it is not possible to apply these principles
very directly and concretely in the daily practice of an educational
institution. I desire to call your attention for a moment to the
testimony of one who has had great experience and practice in the
administration of a collection of books in such an institution and in
their use for the purposes already outlined--Mr. Frederick C. Hicks,
assistant librarian of Columbia University, New York City, from whose
recent review article on this subject I propose to quote a few
paragraphs. Mr. Hicks is writing primarily of college instruction, but,
as he notes in the first paragraph that I shall quote, what he says
applies with equal cogency to the secondary school. He writes:
The general tendency in all instruction today, including even that
in preparatory and high schools, is from what may be called the
few-book method to the many-book method--a recognition of the power
of the printed page for which librarians have always stood sponsor.
The lecture, note-taking, text-book and quiz method of instruction
is fast passing away in undergraduate as well as in graduate study.
Textbooks are still in use in undergraduate and Master of Arts
courses, but they have been relegated to a subordinate position.
Emphasis is laid on work done and the assimilation of ideas
gathered from many sources rather than upon memorizing the treatise
of one author. Necessarily, references are chiefly to easily
accessible works of secondary authority, and reading instead of
research is the objective.
From the library point of view, the growth of the laboratory or
case method of instruction appears to be an independent phenomenon.
It should be noticed, however, that coincident with it is the
general tendency to adopt a policy of teaching each subject with
emphasis on its relations to other subjects.
Most universities now give courses for which no textbook is
available. For instance, Professor Frederick J. Turner, of Harvard
University, announces in a syllabus of 116 pages that there is no
textbook suitable for use in his course on the History of the West
in the United States. He thereupon gives citations to about 2,100
separate readings contained in 1,300 volumes, and says that his
course requires not less than 120 pages of reading per week in
these books. Professor James Harvey Robinson’s course in Columbia
University on the History of the Intellectual Class in Western
Europe has no textbook; and the reading for a class of 156 students
is indicated in a pamphlet of 53 pages, containing references to
301 books. Illustrations could be taken from almost any subject in
the university curriculum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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