The children's librarian should have the sort of nerves that are
not set on edge by children. This does not mean that she may not
be a nervous person in other ways, indeed she must be, for the
nerveless, jelly-fish character can never be a success in dealing
with children. But I have seen people of highly nervous
organization who were really unconscious of the ceaseless tramp,
tramp, of the children's feet, the hum and clatter and moving
about inevitable in a children's library. Visitors come into the
room and say to such a person, "How can you stand this for many
minutes at a time?" and the librarian looks round in surprise at
the idea of there being anything hard to bear when she hears only
the little buzz that means to her hundreds of little ones at the
most susceptible age, eagerly, happily absorbing the ennobling
ideals, the poetic fancies, the craving for knowledge that are
going to make them better men and women than they would have been
without this glimpse into the realms beyond their daily
surroundings.
To attempt to enumerate, one by one, the qualities that combine
to make a wise and successful disciplinarian would be fruitless.
We can talk endlessly about what OUGHT to be. The most practical
thing to do to obtain such a person, is not to take a raw subject
and pour advice upon her in hopes she will develop some day, but
to hunt till you find the right one and then offer her salary
enough to get her for your library. And this suggests a subject
worthy of future discussion, that head librarians should reckon
this to be a profession within our profession, just as the
kindergartner is a specialist within the teaching body, demanding
a higher type of training than is the rule, and PAYING THE PRICE
TO GET IT.
Just a word about what degree of order and quiet to expect, and
to work for, in a children's room. Are we to try to maintain that
awful hush that sends cold chills down the spine of the visitor
on his first entering a modern reading room, and tempts him to
back out in fright lest the ticking of his watch may draw all
eyes upon him?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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