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Page 57
Teachers should be asked to help in persuading children to make the
acquaintance of the library, and then to make good use of it. To get
this help from teachers is not easy. They are generally fully occupied
with keeping their pupils up to the required scholarship mark. They
have no time to look after outside matters.
Visits to teachers in their schoolrooms by librarian or assistant will
often be found helpful. Lists of books adapted to schoolroom use, both
for the teacher and for pupils, are good, but are very little used
when offered, unless followed up by personal work. Brief statements of
what the library can do and would like to do in the way of helping on
the educational work of the community will be read by the occasional
teacher. Teachers can sometimes be interested in a library through the
interest in it of the children themselves. The work of getting young
people to come to the library and enjoy its books should go hand in
hand with the work of persuading teachers to interest children in the
library. It is not enough to advertise the library's advantages in
the papers, or to send to teachers a printed statement that they are
invited and urged to use the institution; nor is it enough to visit
them and say that the books in the library are at their service.
These facts must be demonstrated by actual practice on every possible
opportunity. A teacher who goes to a library and finds its privileges
much hedged about with rules and regulations will perhaps use it
occasionally, certainly not often. Appropriate books should be put
directly into their hands, the educational work of this, that, and the
other teacher should be noted, and their attention called to the new
books which touch their particular fields.
Teachers' cards can be provided which will give to holders special
privileges. It is a question, however, if such a system is necessary
or worth while. Under the charging system already described any
teacher can be permitted to take away as many books as she wishes, and
a record of them can be easily and quickly made. To give "teachers'
cards," with accompanying privileges, is to limit to some extent the
rights of all others. And yet teachers may very often properly receive
special attention. In a measure they are part of the library's staff
of educational workers. But these special attentions or favors should
be offered without proclaiming the fact to the rest of the community.
Many cannot see why a teacher should receive favors not granted to
all.
Take special pains to show children the use of indexes, and indeed of
all sorts of reference books; they will soon be familiar with them and
handle them like lifelong students. Gain the interest of teachers in
this sort of work, and urge them to bring their classes and make a
study of your reference books.
CHAPTER XLIX
How the library can assist the school
Channing Folsom, superintendent of schools, Dover, N.H., in Public
Libraries, May, 1898
We have to consider the teacher, the school, the pupil, the home. The
teacher is likely to be conservative; to have fallen into ruts; to
be joined to his idols; to make the text-book a fetish; to teach a
particular book rather than the subject, so that the initiative in
works of co�peration must come from the library side.
If, then, the library is equally conservative, if the librarian and
the trustees look upon their books as too sacred or too precious to
be handled by boys and girls, the desired co�peration will never be
attained.
In beginning the desired work the librarian must have a well-defined
idea of what is to be done and how. There should be a well-defined
line of differentiation between material which the school should
furnish and that properly belonging to the library province.
Of course all text-books, all supplementary reading matter for
classroom use, all ordinary reference books, should be furnished by
the school authorities. But the more extensive and the more expensive
dictionaries, gazetteers, cyclopedias, and books for topical reference
cannot be so furnished. If they are to be used by public school
pupils, the library must supply them, and make access to them as easy
and as pleasant as possible.
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