card was given an opportunity to sign a registration slip. The
following year the eighth grade, having become the ninth, has the
second lesson. With these lessons the attitude of the children
towards the library has visibly improved, and we are confident
that their idea of its use has been enlarged.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL WORK
The inquiry was made of the reporting libraries whether any
bibliographical work was being done by the high school. The
question was not well put, and was sometimes misunderstood.
Almost no such work was reported. At Evanston, III., one high
school teacher has taught her class to prepare bibliographies,
the librarian assisting. At Brookline we have ambitions, not yet
realized, of getting each high school class to prepare one
bibliography a year (we begin modestly) on some subject along
their lines of study. Last May the principals of two grammar
schools offered to try their ninth grades on a simple
bibliography. The school reference librarian selected some 60
topics of English history--Bretwalda, Sir Isaac Newton, East
India Company, the Great Commoner, etc. Each bibliography was to
include every reference by author, title and page to be found in
the books of the school reference collection of the public
library. The pupils displayed no little zest and enjoyment in the
undertaking, and some creditable lists were made. Observation of
the work confirmed my belief in its great practical value. Pupils
became more keen and more thorough than in the usual getting of
material from one or two references on a subject. Such training
will smooth the way and save the time of those students who are
to make use of a college library, and is even more to be desired
for those others whose formal education ends with the high or
grammar schools.
The practice of sending collections of books from the public
library to the schools is becoming general. When these
collections are along the lines of subjects studied, it would
seem as if the reference use of the library by pupils might be
somewhat diminished thereby. No doubt it is a convenience to both
teacher and pupils to have books at hand to which to refer. The
possession of an independent school library also tends to keep
the reference work in the school. But in neither case ought the
reference use of the public library or its branches to be wholly
or materially overlooked, since it is on that that pupils must
depend in after years, and therefore to that they must now be
directed. We recognize that the people of modest means need the
library. As for the very-well-to-do, the library needs them.
Other things being equal, the pupil who has learned to know and
to know how to use his public library ought later so to
appreciate its needs and so to recognize the benefits it bestows
that he will be concerned to have it generously supported and
wisely administered.
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