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Page 54
Note.--In order to remove public library management from the
influences of party politics, the library and its property should
be wholly left to the control of trustees selected from citizens of
recognized fitness for such a duty. Ex-officio membership in a library
board should generally be avoided, especially in case of a small
board; fitness for the position alone should be considered. Experience
seems to show that in cities the proper board of trustees can best
be secured through appointment by the mayor and confirmation by the
council. It is a good way to provide for five trustees, one to be
appointed each year for a term of five years. This number is large
enough to be representative, and small enough to avoid the great
difficulty in securing a quorum if the number is large. The length
of term in connection with gradual change of membership encourages
careful planning, and it secures the much needed continuity of
management and political independence. And yet there is sufficient
change of officers so that the board will not be too far removed from
the public will.
3 _Miscellaneous_.--State the purpose of a public library broadly,
perhaps in the form of a definition. Make possible the maintenance of
loan, reference, reading room, museum, lecture, and allied educational
features, and of branches. Prescribe mode for changing form of
organization of an existing library to conform to new law. Impose
penalties for theft, mutilation, over-detention, and disturbance.
Provide for distributing all publications of the state free to public
libraries.
Note.--It is probably most convenient to have the library year
correspond with the calendar year. It is well to have the trustees
appointed and the report of the library made at a different time
of the year from either the local or general elections. The library
is thus more likely to be free from the influences of party politics.
To have a library treasurer is probably the better plan, but library
money may be kept in the hands of the municipal treasurer as a
separate fund, and be paid out by order of the board of trustees
only.
Libraries for schoolrooms, to be composed of reference books,
books for supplementary reading, class duplicates, and professional
books for teachers, should be provided for in the public
school law. School funds should be used and school authorities
should manage these libraries. The business of lending books
for home use is better and more economically managed by a public
library, having an organization that is independent of the
school authorities.
4 _A state central authority_.--Establish a state library commission;
appointments on this commission to be made by the governor and
confirmed by the senate, one each year for a term of five years. Make
the commission the head of the public library system of the state
with supervisory powers. Let the commission manage the state library
entirely, and center all its work at that institution. Let it be
the duty of the commission, whenever it is asked, to give advice and
instruction in organization and administration to the libraries in
the state; to receive reports from these libraries and to publish an
annual report; to manage the distribution of state aid, and to manage
a system of traveling libraries.
Note.--Within a few years each of several states has provided for a
state library commission, to be in some sense the head of the public
library system of the state, as the state board of education is
the head of the public school system of the state. By having small
traveling libraries of 50 or 100v. each, to lend for a few months to
localities that have no libraries, and by having a little state aid to
distribute wisely, the state library commission is able to encourage
communities to do more for themselves in a library way than they
otherwise would. There may be cases where the work of the commission
might better be centered at the state university library. The state
library commission has proved to be a useful agency wherever tried,
and the plan seems likely to spread throughout the country. In Wyoming
the income from 30,000 acres of state land forms a library fund. It
would seem probable that other states will adopt this plan. By far the
most complete and successful state system that has yet been organized
is that of New York, where all centers in the state library at Albany
as headquarters.
Reading matter on library legislation
The report of the United States commissioner of education for 1895-96
contains a compilation of the library laws of all the states. Every
year new laws and amendments are enacted in several of the states,
and the advance is very marked. The laws of New York, Massachusetts,
Wisconsin, and Illinois are among the best.
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