Informal Education Through Books

NUMBERS of the public need education not only in the use of a library, but in the very facilities provided by the library service. Numbers of teachers up and down the country, with the co‐operation of the librarians, have done much to bring the library to the knowledge of school children, but there are still too many people who imagine that the facilities which the library provides end with their school‐days. There are still vast numbers of young and old who imagine that the library service after school‐days is not free, or else “not for the likes of us.” They do not understand the system of fines, the question of the renewal of books, and they certainly know nothing about the help they could receive from the librarian in selecting their books. Up to the present the method of helping people to read has been largely the method of borrowing books from the library, or else placing books in the buildings where people congregate. Librarians have been pestered by clubs and societies of all kinds, for loan boxes of books, and many a librarian foresees that if this system continues the library itself will be denuded of all books except those which few people in their senses would ever want to read. Moreover, pressure is being placed upon librarians to develop their work in separate compartments. They are being urged to develop a children's library, and very beautiful and imaginatively conducted children's libraries have been arranged in many areas. The success of these has encouraged many well‐meaning people to demand that libraries shall provide equally good facilities for youth libraries. However, though one does not doubt their ability to do this, and to do it no less imaginatively, one might well pause to consider where such departmentalism may lead us. Who is to say whether in a few years' time people may not demand old age pensioners' libraries, or housewives' libraries, or libraries for people over forty?