ination, and with special regard to suitability for the work by reason of temperament, education, address and experience. III Naturally, the activity of the public library movement in recent years, with consequent multiplication of institutions, has attracted the attention of thoughful men and enlisted the cordial aid of public-spirited individuals. Philanthropists have found therein an avenue for their benefactions yielding undoubted results. Many wealthy men, instead of rearing to their own honor shafts of stone or images in bronze, have taken the wiser and happier method of securing an enduring monument in the form of a public library. There are now living a number of wealthy men who have provided in their wills for suitable bequests whereby buildings of this character may be erected in the places which they make their home, and similarly others have provided endowments for their home libraries to come out of their estates. Thus does one good deed suggest another. IV The work of the Free Library Commission may be briefly summarized as follows: Supervision. Works for the establishment of public libraries in localities able to support them. Visits libraries for the purpose of giving advice and instruction. Collects and publishes statistics of libraries for the guidance and information of trustees. Prints a bi-monthly bulletin, news notes and suggestions to keep librarians and trustees informed in regard to library progress throughout the state. Gives advice and assistance in planning library buildings and collects material on this subject for the use of library boards. Instruction. Aids in organizing new libraries. 70 Assists in reorganizing old libraries according to modern methods. which insure the best results and greatest efficiency of the library. Conducts a school for library training for the purpose of improving the service in small libraries. Holds institutes for librarians to instruct those who cannot attend summer school. Traveling Libraries. Maintains a system of traveling libraries which furnishes books to rural communities and villages too small to support local libraries, and to larger villages and towns as an inducement to establish free public libraries. Aids in organization and administration of county traveling library systems. Clearing House. Operates a clearing house for magazines to build up reference collections of bound periodicals in the public libraries of the state. Document Department. Maintains a document department for the use of state officers, members of the legislature and others interested in the growth and development of affairs in the state, and catalogues and exchanges state documents for the benefit of public libraries. Book Lists. Distributes a suggestive list of books for small libraries to insure purchase of the books in the best editions. Issues frequent buying lists of current books to aid committees in securing the best investment of book funds. Compiles buying lists on special subjects or for special libraries upon request. V It must not be supposed, because the great library growth has been manifested in the last decade, that there were wanting prior to that period interested men and women hopeful and active to give impulse for like conditions. Away back in 1840, when Wisconsin was a frontier territory ambitious to advance to statehood, the council and assembly enacted a law to encourage subscription libraries. A public library supported by taxation was not then dreamed of, for there was then none in the entire United States, nor for ten years thereafter. It is interesting to note that in these terri torial days, the little hamlet of log houses known as Madison enjoyed the advantages of a library open to all who cared to use it. It was the private library of the governor, James Duane Doty, which he threw open to the public. Col. Geo. W. Bird, in his account of it, says that it contained about five hundred volumes of a general historical, educational and literary character and a number of the best maps known at that time. It was housed in the governor's private office, which was a small one-story frame building of one room situated among the trees in the little backwoods town. The books were arranged in low shelving around the sides of the room, and the scanty furniture, consisting of a small desk, a deal-board table, three or four chairs, a pine bench, and a register in which to enter the taking and returning of books, completed the equipment. Over the shelving on the westerly side of the room, was this direction, painted in black on a white field: "Take, Read and Return." There were only two regulations as to the use of the library and they were displayed conspicuously in red ink about the room, and they were as follows: 1. Any white resident between the lakes, the Catfish and the westerly hills, his wife and children, may have the privileges of this library so long as they do not soil or injure the books, and properly return them. 2. Any such resident, his wife or children, may take from the library one book at a time and retain it not to exceed two weeks, and then return it, and on failure to return promptly, he or she shall be considered, and published, as an outcast in the community. "I do not remember of there ever having been occasion for inflicting this penalty. I do remember my father sending me one day when the time-limit of a 72 book was about to expire, with a note to a family, What is known far and wide as the Maxon bookmark originated in Wisconsin, and was the conception of the Rev. Mr. Maxon, then resident in Dunn County. It has been reprinted on little slips in hundreds of forms, has circulated in every state and territory in the country, and doubtless a full million copies of it have been slipped between the leaves of children's books. It may fittingly be reproduced here: "Once on a time" A Library Book was overheard talking to a little boy who had just borrowed it. The words seemed worth recording and here they are: "Please don't handle me with dirty hands. I should feel ashamed to be seen when the next little boy borrowed me. Or leave me out in the rain. Books can catch cold as well as children. Or make marks on me with your pen or pencil. It would spoil my looks. Or lean on me with your elbows when you are reading me. hurts. It Or open me and lay me face down on the table. You would not like to be treated so. Or put in between my leaves a pencil or anything thicker than a single sheet of thin paper. It would strain my back. Whenever you are through reading me, if you are afraid of losing your place, don't turn down the corner of one of my leaves, but have a neat little Book Mark to put in where you stopped, and then close me and lay me down on my side so that I can have a good comfortable rest." ADMINISTRATION OF LIBRARY FUNDS1 UST a few words on a matter of business addressed to business men-for that, I conceive, is what mayors and aldermen primarily are, whether engaged in trade or in professions. I am aware that it is more popular to term them politicians in the worst meaning of that abused word, and to ascribe improper motives to their official actions, but personal relations with many of them through a long series of years convinces me that a very large majority of them are men of probity and good intentions, seeking to perform a public duty to the extent of their abilities. They are sure of clamorous condemnation for any errors of commission or omission, and very uncertain of commendation for conscientious attention to official duties. Lest these remarks may be construed as undue flattery prompted by the presence here of so many municipal officers, it may be added that the average alderman is inclined to be at times a bit self-opinionated in his views of public business, or impatient with that phase of it which he does not directly control. At least this is so until his term is nearing its end. Unfortunately, the broader and wider outlook which experience always brings to men usually develops too late, except in cases of re-election, for service during his own period of administration, and cannot be transmitted to his suc'The Municipality, Dec., 1905. |