The other side of this book mark contains a list of the juvenile
periodicals in the library. No. 2 gives the beginning of a little
serial, in which a thread of story will weave in hints on reading
and on the care and use of books.
At our main library the children have come in such numbers after
school and on Saturdays, that it has been impossible to push the
work much this past winter, for fear the adults should suffer. It
was finally decided that we must achieve the impossible, and by
shifting about and putting up glass partitions, have a separate
children's room instead of the open juvenile alcove. This room,
while not half so large as it should be to meet the needs of the
work, is indeed a great improvement in giving the children a
place which they feel to be really their own; the change has
involved the re-registration of the children having cards here,
but it is affording much needed relief at the general receiving
desks, and will greatly facilitate the service to adults, at the
same time making it possible to do much more for the little
people.
The library is endeavoring to co-operate more and more closely
with the schools. More books have been issued to the teachers
this winter than ever before. A new course of study having been
published, all of the books referred to in it were looked up, and
if not in the library or its branches, were purchased as largely
as seemed desirable or possible. A list of "References for
third-grade teachers," compiled by Miss May H. Prentice, training
teacher in the Cleveland Normal School, has recently been
published by the library. It was given to all of the third-grade
teachers of the city, and sold to others. This is, we believe,
the most comprehensive list ever prepared for a single grade of
the common schools. We are hoping that it will prove so helpful
to third-grade teachers that all of the other grades will demand
similar ones for themselves, and that somehow the way will be
found to meet the demand. The list of books noted by Miss
Prentice for the children's own reading has been reprinted,
without the annotations, in a little folder and 5,000 copies of
it have just been distributed among the children of this grade.
Recently our school children were treated to the largest
exhibition ever made in the United States to photographic
reproductions of the masterpieces in art; to the work of the
library in circulating pictures to teachers and children for
school-room decoration and for illustration, is due no small
share of this new interest in art.
While the children come to the library daily to look up subjects
in connection with their school work, very little attention can
be given to training them to use reference books as tools.
Somewhere, either in the school or the library, this systematic
teaching should be given. It is one of the things which is not
being done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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