The Challenge of the New School Library

Abstract

It is good that librarians are most critical of their better work. Complacency is insidious. But it is always necessary to approach closely to efficiency to become really aware of deficiency. Probably in no other activity has the average public library reached so acceptable a standard as in the provision of books for children, yet in the eyes of the honest librarian, that standard is, on the whole, no more than one of comparative mediocrity. Even so, we tend too much to underestimate the good influence of our children's libraries over the last half century, for no other agency has accomplished anything like so much in encouraging reading habits in the formative years. In spite of modern developments in education, which so often appear to forget the individual in the building of an impressive administrative structure, no other agency, even today, has quite the same potentiality. The alert librarian, however, has noticed that the changing pattern of elementary education is beginning to call for some modification of traditional library policy, and he is not a little disturbed by some of the implications.

Citation

HOWARTH, R. (1955), "The Challenge of the New School Library", Library Review, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 90-94. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012235