Week held recently in Toledo, Ohio. These may have as their object increased financial support of the library, the object being to affect legislation or municipal appropriation. More generally, however, the aim is simply to bring about increased use of the library's facilities by making the public more familiar with what it offers.

KEEPING TRACK OF READERS

The net increase of active readers in a library, despite all these extension activities, is lessened everywhere by the fact that new registrations are offset by the disuse of the library by former readers. In connection with extension work some way of ascertaining what ⚫ becomes of these backsliders, must ultimately be adopted by libraries. The prevention of a loss is evidently as effective as the addition of a new reader. So far, this work has been neglected. "Follow-up" experiments have been tried, both by using the mails and by personal visitation, but the results, so far, are not encouraging. Libraries have no uniform method of defining "active" or "live" users; nor can they ascertain, in general, the number included in the class, further than to know the number of holders of unexpired cards. The expiration limit is not always the same, and the "live" holder may have used his card only once within that limit. On the other hand, a really frequent user may have neglected, for the moment, to renew his expired card. Possibly a first step toward solving this problem may be the division of card-holders into groups, based on frequency of use or other ascertainable characteristics.

BOOK SELECTION

The extension of library use is evidently closely connected with the provision of books that will attract new readers and hold the old ones. The library tries to regard, in selection, both the needs and the demands of its community. The two factors may not closely correspond, and there is danger in neglecting either. Purchase based on need alone, before that need is fully realized, may repel instead of attract readers; while too ready compliance with an unworthy demand may be fatal to the library's educative influence. Adjustment must continually be made, and the librarian must also be sure that what comes to him as a demand is really the wish of the community and not merely the voice of a few who have learned to press their desires with vigor.

The general participation of a community in book-selection is rare and usually the result of stimulation. Too large an amount of current library book-buying is done in the dark. Librarians welcome suggestions from readers, and are pleased when they are made, even if immediate compliance is impossible for financial or other reasons.

BUILDINGS

The prevalence of extension work has vitally affected the form and functions of the large city library building. Fifty years ago there was little more to the internal economy of a large library than storage space for books and room in which to read them. These needs were often satisfied together by placing the books on wallshelves, or in alcoves around the reading room. The modern building needs also assembly and club-rooms for meetings, exhibition rooms, a special collection, with its reception room, for teachers, a clearing-house for branch and station deliveries and offices for the heads of the various new departments necessitated by the change in policy. The staff is greatly increased, and its personnel must be carefully scrutinized regarding both education and personal qualities. Often the library includes a school or class for training librarians; and all sorts of arrangements for the personal comfort of the staff have become common-locker rooms, lunch rooms, rooms for rest and for recreation, and so on. Part of the building, often the most attractive part, is set aside for the children, and the work connected with home-use-open shelves, registration, reserves, overdues and all the related machinery-takes up a vast deal of room which must be provided in the precise spot where it is needed. It so comes about that the new is related to the old building somewhat as the modern department store is related to a quiet old shop dealing in goods of only one kind. Branch libraries also must be provided with space for these same activities, excepting only those that depend on the function of the main library building as a headquarters.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bostwick, Arthur E. American Public Library.

"Place of the Public Library in the Administration of a City," National Municipal Review, v. 3, 672-681, Oct., 1914.

"Public Library a Social Force in Pittsburgh," Survey, v. 23, 849-861, March, 1910.

LIBRARY WORK IN THE OPEN COUNTRY

BY SARAH ASKEW,

Organizer, New Jersey Public Library Commission, Trenton.

It became apparent years ago to students of the country life problem that some means must be devised to make books available in rural districts. It was evident that the country boy and girl, man and woman, to compete with the city boy and girl, man and woman, must have to an extent the same social and educational advantages. Books seemed to be the greatest need. Without them the country churches were not thriving, there could be no study clubs, debating societies, reading circles or women's clubs, and civic and social clubs stagnated. Grangers and farmer's institutes needed books in their work, and membership and attendance declined. While men and women in the cities were helped to become leaders in every line of business and all professions, through use of the resources of city libraries, the people of the country had to struggle along with the few books they could buy. As the reading habit was dying out and country people began to believe there was nothing in books for them, fewer and fewer books were bought, homes were without them, and there was nothing to relieve the monotony of the winter evenings, or to aid parents in giving their children ideals and in building up character. Schools were poor and when teachers were taxed with not teaching the use of books and developing a taste for good literature, they answered that they could not teach the use of that which they did not have nor could they build up a love for reading when the only books within reach were text-books and those not of the best.

TRAVELING LIBRARIES

This problem seemed preeminently one to be solved by state governments through legislation and appropriation, so several states took it up. The first means devised was a state system of traveling libraries.

In 1893 New York state passed a law creating a system of traveling libraries and made appropriation for the support of the

same under the administration of the State Library. Soon other states organized similar systems under the administration of either their state libraries or library commissions which had previously been created to further the establishment of free libraries and to aid those already established. These traveling library systems were at first all operated upon what is now termed the "fixed group plan." The books bought were divided into small groups of fifty and placed in little bookcases. These groups were sent out from the State House to communities throughout the state, some local person taking charge of the distribution of the books and agreeing to be responsible for their safe return. When a community was through with one group it was returned and another sent. A fee of five dollars a year was charged, the state paid transportation and libraries could be exchanged as often as desired. These groups were "fixed"; that is, after a group was made up, the books in it were never changed, but when it was returned from one community it was sent to another just as it was.

These collections were made up with the idea of having something in each for every age and every taste, and great care was taken to maintain a supposedly ideal proportion of books on history, religion, useful arts, etc. Many articles were written about "books for all of the people," and many thought the problem of rural reading was solved. Soon it began to be apparent that in a collection of fifty books something for everybody could not be included, and if there was something for every one there was not much for anyone.

"The books don't suit," the farmers began to complain. "Country people have not the reading habit and won't read good books," grumbled the managers of the traveling libraries. In some of the states those in charge of the libraries began to wonder whether "farmers is farmers," and, if "farmers is farmers," whether charcoal burners, fishermen, lumbermen, miners, Swedes, Poles, Hungarians, Quakers, immigrants, and native sons have the same · "group" tastes in reading. Several states abandoned the fixed group plan and began to select books for each group to meet the needs of the individual community to which it was to be sent. This was called the open shelf plan. Even those states which retained the fixed group system-because it seemed in a large measure to meet the needs of their more homogeneous population

added an open shelf" collection from which books could be drawn to fit unusual conditions. Yearly subscription fees were made lower. In some states no fee was charged but the communities paid transportation. It seemed that the libraries as then constituted should be satisfactory to every one but it soon became apparent that the census report as to the character of the population of any given community was not a reliable guide as to what the people were going to like to read because, with a curiously human twist, an individual lumberman as often longed for a book on geology, or a duck farmer for a book on the relation of science to religion as does the janitor in a twenty-story city apartment house crave a book on poultry raising. As one old farmer said:

Seems like folks down to the State House think because I'm a farmer I want to spend my nights reading about fertilizers. Bless your heart, I don't. I want to git out and above fertilizers. I want to read something, say about them stars I see every night. I would admire to know 'em all by name and when one of them comes peekin' around the corn crib to say, "Why there comes old man Jupiter," familiar and knowing like.

TRAVELING LIBRARIANS

It became evident that if the traveling libraries were to be successful the state must employ someone to visit the communities desiring libraries, and find out what they liked and what they needed; and so there came into the field the traveling librarian. Now, this librarian works under many names, but under every name she and her work are about the same. "She" is used advisedly, because, like the inhabitants of Massachusetts, the traveling librarian is mostly of the feminine gender. Someone has said that women have a larger faith and a more boundless enthusiasm. Perhaps that is the reason why women are chosen as traveling librarians, for these two qualities are absolutely indispensable in the library work of the open country.

It is the work of this librarian to go out in the rural districts and small towns, live among the people and get to know them, bring to their consciousness the value of books and tell them how they may be had, find the right person to take charge of the library locally and the best place to locate it, keep alive the interest in books, see that the best use is made of those sent, find out whether the best books for that community have been sent and if they are not being used to discover the reason and apply a remedy. Her