Part 9

In America, the question of circulating versus stationary libraries has been well thrashed out, though not to a unanimous verdict. At Buffalo, the respective spheres of the library and the education authority have been carefully defined. School libraries are limited strictly to the works of reference required in school work, the public library acting as book-selector. For all further requirements the school and the school children rely on the public library. In New York City, the public library deputes this branch of its work to a special department, under a supervisor of work with schools. The city is divided for the purpose into districts, in each of which there is a branch library and a group of schools. A school assistant, usually a woman, is appointed by the library to look after the work in each district, to make herself personally acquainted with every teacher, to give advice, and keep the machinery running smoothly. Formal regulations are kept down to a minimum. Teachers are allowed to borrow books in large quantities, and to keep them six months at a time if they need them; they are expected and assisted to make themselves reliable counsellors and guides to their pupils in the choice and use of books. Assistants in the libraries are told off to address groups of teachers and assemblies of school children on the objects and the resources of the libraries; children are brought to the library in classes to have its working and its benefits explained; and, finally, they are encouraged to do their home lessons in the children’s library, and are provided with a reference collection adapted to the purpose.

In this country, the relationship between the school and the public library remains undetermined. Many of our primary schools are destitute of a library worthy of the name, and if a census were taken it would probably be found that the secondary schools are even worse off. Many school libraries have attained a musty and precarious existence through some passing gust of philanthropy, and maintain it in a more or less accidental fashion. This is not the fault of the public libraries, many of which have done more than their share in providing schools with books, and most of which are ready with the expert services needed to put school collections on a proper footing. The failure is due more to lack of a clear realization of the function of school libraries than to mere neglect or oversight. The work already described as done in the junior department at Croydon, where as at Coventry and divers other places, separate collections of books on education and teaching are provided, from which the teacher may borrow and which the public may use for reference, may be taken as representing the kind of endeavour put forth by the more active library authorities. Loan collections for schools are organized by some authorities, stationary school libraries by others. But in a vast number of places, though many if not all of the facilities enumerated above are held out by the library, the saving propensities of education committees or the indifference of teachers have left things as they were. The need for a comprehensive treatment of the problem is still more apparent now than when the Library Association in 1904 urged that the nation’s libraries were, or ought to be, an integral part of the national machinery of education. It is a vital part of the educational problem and of the whole problem of public libraries; and, whether there are to be two sets of machinery, working side by side or in reciprocation, or one set controlling both schools and libraries, the library service for the schools and the school children must be put on a proper basis, or the future of adult education and of public libraries also will be in jeopardy. Here, surely, Ruskin’s saying has a particularly forcible application--“It is open, I repeat, to serious question, which I leave to the reader’s pondering, whether among national manufactures, that of souls of good quality may not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one.” (_Unto this Last_).

FOOTNOTES:

[15] The modern public library believes that it should find a reader for every book on its shelves, and provide a book for every reader in its community, and that it should in all cases bring book and reader together. (Bostwick, p. 1.)

[16] The Adult Education Committee attribute the most obvious defects of adult education to-day, to the discontinuity of much of the work done, the tendency to rely unduly on lectures and to neglect classwork, and the inadequate supply of books to the students attending lectures or classes. “It is, in our judgment, essential that whilst regularity of attendance and seriousness and continuity of study should be insisted upon, there must be freedom of teaching and freedom of expression.” (Final Report, par. 146.) The Committee are strongly in favour of continuous courses of lectures, and of that grouping in classes of moderate size that makes for “the frank interchange of thought and experience which is essential to adult education,” and without which “the work carried on will lose its vitality or change its character.”

[17] METROPOLITAN BOROUGH OF POPLAR.

Lectures to Boys and Girls attending at the Libraries from Elementary Schools.

SYNOPSIS.

How knowledge is handed down by books. During school-life advice and help can be obtained from the teachers: after leaving school guidance in reading and study can be obtained at the Libraries. Public Libraries, their ownership and the right to use them. The contents of the News and Magazine Rooms. Lack of home accommodation, and how the Reference Rooms can be used for quiet reading and study. Books in Lending Department on all subjects, elementary, intermediate, and advanced. Assistance given by staff. How to use the Libraries in conjunction with Continuation Schools and Evening Classes: also when learning a trade, business, or domestic arts and occupations. Children are urged to retain the knowledge gained at school and to supplement it. Wisdom of acquiring General Knowledge, and how to acquire it: with special reference to time-tables, directories, atlases, and dictionaries. The lighter side of Libraries:--Use of holiday guides; books of travel, manners and customs; music; home interests, such as gardening, poultry-keeping, pets and hobbies. The care of books. (Syllabus of one of the lectures described above).

IV

RURAL LIBRARIES.

Before the Act of 1919, more than two-fifths of the population of these islands, which means practically those living outside the towns and urban districts, were entirely without a library service. A few attempts had been made, with various degrees of success, to found small libraries or contrive methods of circulating collections of books in the villages. Such were the library of the Lancashire and Cheshire Union, inaugurated in 1847, the scheme of the Yorkshire Village Libraries Association, in 1856, and the Coats Libraries supplying many parts of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Besides these, there was an odd village library here and there, such as the excellent miniature institutes given to the inhabitants of East Claydon, Middle Claydon, and Steeple Claydon, in Buckinghamshire, by the late Sir Edmund Verney, or the library founded in a Hampshire village by the unaided efforts of the villagers themselves, which is described by Miss Sayle in her little memoir _Village Libraries_. Many other rural libraries have flourished for a time, and then decayed, leaving no history. Professor Adams found that of the total population of the United Kingdom in 1911 not more than 57 per cent. resided within library areas. He contrasted the library provision in different parts of the country in the following table:--

--------+-------------------+--------------------+--------------------- | Total | Population in | Percentage | Population, 1911. | Library Districts. | of Total Population. --------+-------------------+--------------------+--------------------- England | 34,194,205 | 21,103,317 | 62 Wales | 2,025,202 | 938,303 | 46 Scotland| 4,760,904 | 2,403,283 | 50 Ireland | 4,390,219 | 1,245,766 | 28 --------+-------------------+--------------------+--------------------- | 45,370,530 | 25,690,669 | 57 --------+-------------------+--------------------+---------------------

“These figures,” he remarks, “would in themselves suggest what is an outstanding feature of the present situation, the fact that libraries are chiefly in the larger town areas, while the smaller towns and country districts remain to a great extent unprovided for.”

The reason for “this partial and unequal development” was the absence in the early Public Library Acts of any clause providing for concerted action among bodies competent theoretically to become library authorities, but unable practically, because to furnish an adequate income out of a parish rate would have required an Aladdin’s lamp.[18] If the county authorities had been permitted long ago to establish systems of public libraries for the villages, and the product of a penny rate throughout the county had been spent on the upkeep, there might by now have been a rural library service not inferior in quality to that in the towns. But before 1919 the potential library authority in country districts was the parish council; and, even if parish councils had been persuaded to combine, the unit of organization would have been too poor to support anything but a miserable apology for a library. In his report of 1915, Professor Adams observed that there was a growing consensus of opinion that the county authorities should be empowered to adopt the Acts and impose rates, and that the rural library systems so established should be closely linked up with the educational system. By this plan the financial difficulties would be overcome, and, since “common thought and common action” are hard to attain in a dispersed population, it was only reasonable that a more widely representative body should be authorized to take the initiative. “It is part everywhere of the rural problem that there needs to be an organizing centre for the concentrating and directing of rural thought and action.”[19] Professor Adams outlined “a public State system” of rural libraries, “supported by the rates, and, like the educational system, universal.” It would be closely associated with, if not under the control of, the county educational authority. “It would radiate from one or more centres, according as the county is large or small.” “There would be ample room for voluntary organization and effort within this framework, and a good village and rural library system must depend largely on voluntary co-operative work. But the framework of the system must be strongly knit, and must secure especially at the centre a library institution, well equipped, and with expert management and supervision. A new corps of librarians, in the form of county library superintendents, will be required if the movement is to be progressively developed.” I have quoted an important passage in the actual words of Professor Adams, since it must be always borne in mind that he proposed something far more substantial than the mere circulation of boxes of books among villages or small country towns such as asked for the privilege. One of the primary requisites of each local library, even in the initial scheme which, he suggested, should be experimented with in a few select areas, was “a permanent collection of certain important reference books and standard works.” That, indeed, must be the minimum foundation for the most unambitious kind of library service, as distinguished from a mere book service. This latter may be furnished by a circulating system, centering in a repository at some distance; but the permanent collection must be there, in the village, or the book service will be bereft of most of its educational value.

The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, at whose request Professor Adams had carried out his investigation, adopted for the sake of experiment his suggestion that the Trust should take over the Coats Libraries in the Highlands and Islands, which had been initiated by Sir Peter Coats of Paisley and at that date numbered 186 on the mainland, 59 in Shetland and Orkney, 33 in Lewis and Harris, and 37 in the other Hebrides. A repository was established at Dunfermline, from which these local centres were supplied with periodical batches of books. This was the beginning of the Carnegie rural library scheme, which during the next few years offered the public and the Government an object-lesson in the methods of supplying the neglected two-fifths of the population in the four kingdoms with a library service.

The first county scheme to be set on foot was in Staffordshire. In 1915 the Trust offered £5,000 to this county council to be expended in five years on a central repository, a stock of books, travelling boxes and other equipment, and the costs of administration and carriage, asking in return for “reasonable assurances that, at the conclusion of the period and after the expenditure of the grant named, the scheme would be maintained and supported on funds other than theirs.” From 54 centres at once established in Staffordshire schools the scheme gradually spread in four years to 206. The county councils of Gloucestershire, Cardiganshire, Somerset, and Wilts undertook similar schemes under like financial conditions, and the Trust made grants to the public libraries of Perth and Grantham to organize a service in the neighbouring country parishes. These rural systems were given a statutory basis in Scotland, under sec. 5 of the Scottish Education Act of 1918; but it was not till the Public Libraries Act of December, 1919 that the position in England and Wales was legalized. That Act gave an immense stimulus to the rural library movement. Library schemes have now been prepared for nearly half the rural area of Great Britain, and a large number are in actual working order.[20] The Trustees in 1920 set aside a sum of £192,000 for grants to county authorities during the six years 1920-5, such grants to be employed on the initial expenses of the stock of books, boxes, shelving, and similar accessories for the central repository. From that date they ceased to pay for the erection of buildings or for running expenses. The premises used are mostly temporary buildings, such as Government huts, or else rooms in schools. These central repositories look bare and insignificant to the uninitiated, since they are furnished with little but a few tables or benches for packing books on and enough shelving to hold a fraction of the working stock of books, most of which are out in the villages and when they come home are off on another journey almost at once. A few stout boxes, with simple fittings countersunk to avoid damage in transit, lie about, full or empty. These are sent out, each carrying fifty or a hundred volumes, by rail, carrier, or motor-van, to the village schools or perchance the village club, to be handed to the readers by volunteer librarians, who are in most cases the schoolmasters.

In a typical county, where the population is mainly rural and the repository is quartered in a borough of moderate size without a library of its own--where indeed the local inhabitants, hungering for books which their own borough council will not consent to provide, have to be kept at arm’s length by warning notices--some three hundred villages are each at present receiving about two hundred and fifty books a year. It is not much; it is not much more than an experiment; but anyhow it is a beginning; and, remember, until the rural scheme arrived the labouring man never saw a new book, from year end to year end, unless his child won a Sunday School prize. The circulating stock consists of books for children and the class of books commonly defined as for the general reader--that is to say, works for entertainment primarily and in the second place for knowledge or information. Further, there is in this particular centre a strong collection of educational works for the use of teachers, and a numerous and sound selection of sociological literature for the special benefit of the Workers’ Educational Association, who have many tutorial classes in the district, most of them studying economics, social philosophy, or the science of politics. The teachers are allowed to borrow several books at a time, to further their work; and in addition, the requirements of modern methods in teaching reading are met by the allowance of perhaps fifteen or two dozen copies of certain select books, to enable every child in a class to have a copy--the reading-circle system applied in the school. If any studious person should ask for a book not in the printed catalogue, a book obviously in advance of the general demand and costing rather more than the average price bargained for, the librarian sends for it to the Central Library for Students, in Tavistock Square, London. Even the newest and least-developed rural library aims at an ideal that the great commercial circulating libraries have given up as unattainable, to enable any reader to have access to any book, of unquestioned value, that he applies for--and few failures to achieve this end, by one means or another, have to be reported.

The librarian superintending another county system, a lady who has built it up from the foundation stone, has, after three years been able to announce an average circulation of two thousand books a week. This, in spite of difficulties of transport, and the absence of facilities for reaching the adult readers directly. The work here is done entirely through the schools, and of the eighteen thousand and odd borrowers recently on the register not much more than eight thousand are above school age. Nevertheless, she reports, even if the parents have “to snatch the books from the children or to wait patiently until they are all in bed” ... “the people will read if they get the chance.”

“In one Cotswold village there are seventy readers, forty of whom are adults; among them are several farmers, a painter, a butcher, a sadler, domestic servants, railwaymen, builders, labourers, many mothers, and the postmistress. Forty books were sent there in January, and by June these books had 389 readers, an average of 9.5 readers per book. One teacher reports that his male readers include a carter, a cowman, a rivetter, farm-labourers, the policeman, a workhouse attendant, the night watchman, the schoolmaster, and the vicar. Another writes: “Our readers are chiefly as follows--cloth-workers, carpenters, clerks, plasterers, house-decorators, tailors, gardeners, printers, engine-drivers, ironworkers, chauffeurs, railwaymen.” When one looks at lists like these one realizes that to pack a box to meet all tastes is no easy matter. In Stroud there is an old lady of seventy-nine who borrows books regularly from the school, and at Coln St. Aldwyn, in the Cotswolds, a disabled soldier read, in three months, nineteen out of a possible twenty-six books. One of our former borrowers who came in by train every day left her book in charge of a porter in the evenings. It was some time before she discovered why he was so surly at times, and then she found she had changed her book before he had finished it!”[21]

Here are samples of the letters received from imaginative school-children, who had been told about that inexhaustible treasure-house, the Central Library:--“Please send me a book on carpentering and oblige.” “Dear Sir, Could you kindly send me on one of your nature study painting books as you spoke of in our schoolmaster’s letter from you and oblige, Yours sincerely.” “Dear, Sir, I should be pleased if you would kindly forward me a book on the study of knitting a Jumper.” And here is an extract from a teacher’s account of her library centre:--

“We all feel greatly indebted to the Carnegie Trustees, it is impossible to over-estimate the boon that the Library is in these country districts. If the Trustees could see for themselves the excitement and pleasure when the books arrive, and the rush to see them and choose, I am sure they would realize afresh how well-spent their funds are. Our only difficulty is that there are never enough books for all who want them, but that, without doubt, is a difficulty common to all Carnegie rural librarians.”

The Carnegie Trustees calculated their grants on the understanding that purchases by the rural libraries should be restricted to the cheaper books in general demand (averaging 3s. 6d. new or second-hand), and that when other or more expensive books were required they should be obtained on loan from the Central Library for Students. To this library, which forms a central store of technical, scientific, and other high-class works, for supplying both the rural systems and those urban libraries that pay a small subscription, the Trustees are now making a subsidy of £1,000 a year. It may eventually develop into an invaluable auxiliary to all the public libraries in the kingdom, and money spent on increasing its stock is a thoroughly economic expenditure, since it saves an incredible amount of overlapping among the different units of the nation’s library service.

Different counties have employed different modes of distribution. Rail and carrier are the usual medium where the centres are not far from the railways, and some counties have secured half rates for conveyance of books by passenger train. Experiments have however been made with hired motor transport, with a saving on costs and a much more important saving in time and trouble, since more than a score of boxes can be delivered and the time-expired boxes collected in a single day’s trip. The Perthshire authority have acquired a motor-van of their own to be used for conveying books and also for the librarian’s tours of inspection. This will no doubt be the plan adopted elsewhere when the systems reach a further stage of development. More miscellaneous and more picturesque methods have had to be followed in the North of Scotland service, which feeds the Islands, including St. Kilda, with much-needed books. After many abortive attempts to reach St. Kilda, it was found that a trawler was going there from Fleetwood, and in this roundabout way the first box of books from Dunfermline arrived there last year. In the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Hebrides, crofters, fishermen, and cobblers, we are told, look eagerly for books on natural history, science, and philosophy, from the Central Library for Students. How many people passing the drab house in Tavistock Square have the remotest idea that from this centre, unmarked by anything more grandiose than a small brass plate, mental and spiritual light is being steadily radiated to the inhabitants of utmost Thule. In the island of Foula, where the grown-up people cannot leave their crofts in the scanty summer, the school-children are enlisted as carriers. A schoolmaster describes how in the winter he carried the books himself until he fell in with the sheep-dogs sent out to bring them to the distant croft. On this island a population of 175 borrows 1,300 books a year. Guiberwick, with a population of 200, calls for 700 every six months. Minute records are kept at Dunfermline of the kind of reading that appeals to various kinds of readers. “For the fiction,” says the librarian, Miss Thomson, “taken on a whole, they read very good novels. The general works are of a varied nature, but I have noticed that books dealing with the literature, fauna, flora, and topography of each island are much in favour. We also supply books in Gaelic, which are widely read both by adults and juveniles.” Anyone who has wandered in the lonelier parts of the Highlands will know what are the difficulties of a service to the remote glens and the foresters’ stations in the deer-forests, and what a priceless gift a handful of books always is.