During the nineties of last century a good many libraries began to allot separate reading rooms to the children, at first, as a rule, to boys only, but later to boys and girls, sometimes in separation, sometimes together. At first experimental and subsidiary, this children’s reading room, usually combined with a children’s library, has come to be an essential part of the modern public library: those that are without it have no claim to be considered modern. Its relative importance varies according to the views of different committees and librarians, and also according to the local ability or willingness to meet the heavy cost of running such a department on proper lines. When we remember that the children are our future reading public, and when, taking a broader view, we imagine what it would have meant had every man and woman been trained from childhood in the intelligent use of books, we see how impossible it is to overrate this side of public library work. We must treat the child in the library in the most liberal, sympathetic, and respectful way. We must give the child in our libraries and reading rooms, from the outset, all the privileges and dignity of a citizen, and the future of our libraries and reading rooms will be ensured. Birkenhead seems to have been the first town to become alive to the need of special provision for the youngest readers. Child readers enjoyed the advantage of a special section in the lending library there as long ago as 1865, and a few years later they were furnished with a separate catalogue of the children’s library. At Nottingham, a benevolent M.P., the late Samuel Morley, gave a sum in 1882 to found a separate building for children. These English libraries laid the first stone; but it was in American libraries that most of the building now took place. In the United States, the mere children’s corner rapidly developed into the separate library and reading room, and then gradually into a very peculiar and admirable thing, the children’s room--a distinct department, under the control of persons trained to work with children. It is a sort of autonomous children’s institute, combining something of the kindergarten with a well-planned school library ministering to both teaching and recreation. There are readable books to be read on the spot or taken home; works of reference to help in doing school work and make this more interesting; pictures, statuettes, and miscellaneous exhibits, which have more meaning given them by reading courses, talks, and illustrated lectures; and, finally, there is the story-telling--an art on which the American librarian pins much faith as a mode of awakening interest and evoking the right atmosphere before a child reads books on any given subject.