The outline I have given will give you some idea of how we are developing the story hour and reading clubs in the New York Public Library. This work is made possible by the splendid cooperation on the part of the branch librarians and their assistants, without whom it would be impossible to carry on a work of such proportions. HOME LIBRARIES The history of the home library movement in its beginnings is recorded in a paper read before the Congress of Charities held in Chicago, June 15, 1893, by Mr. Charles W. Birtwell, general secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society, who claims for it a "natural and simple origin," a method of multiplying the personal work which he was doing among the poorer children of Boston. Another paper on the same subject was read by Mr. Birtwell at the Lake Placid Conference of the A. L. A. in 1894. Appreciation of this work is expressed in the 1915 report of the Children's Aid Society: "The most important service we render as a society is to show that the constructive forces within the average family, if properly directed, are tremendous in their power and effect. The home libraries do a work for children in their homes that is quite distinct from all the other services we render as a society." Charles Wesley Birtwell was born in Lawrence, Mass., November 23, 1860, and graduated at Harvard in 1885. He was general secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society from 1885 to 1911. He has been prominent in social and charitable work, and in 1887 originated the "home library" system of the Children's Aid Society, the first general plan of this kind on record. The first Home Library was established by the Boston Children's Aid Society in January, 1887. Now it has seventy libraries here and there throughout Boston, and regards them as an important department of its work. The origin of the plan that has found so much favor in our eyes was simple. I had been connected with the Children's Aid Society but a short time when many avenues of work opened up before me, and it was quite perplexing to see how to make my relations to the various children I became acquainted with real and vital. Among other things the children ought to have the benefit of good reading and to become lovers of good books. Indeed, a great many things needed to be done for and by the children. Out of this opportunity and need the Home Library was evolved. A little bookcase was designed. It was made of white wood, stained cherry, with a glass door and Yale lock. It contained a shelf for fifteen books, and above that another for juvenile periodicals. The whole thing, carefully designed and neatly made, was simple and yet pleasing to the eye.