Information Bureaux and Special Libraries

Date:: 20 September - 23 September 1929

Reference:: WA/HMM/CM/Sal/37/6

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Information Bureaux and Special Libraries. Source: Wellcome Collection.

80/180 (page 74)

certain types of schools of libraries. It is a new movement, but your movement is a new one. There are firms in this country who do not realise the quest for the new knowledge. Certain of the second- ary schools are pushing along fairly quickly in trying to make libraries part of their integral school work. In my last report there is the statement: “‘ On the other hand, the effect of the library as an indispensable part of every secondary school, no less than the labora- tory, is beginning to be recognised.” That is a pretty strong state- ment for a Government department. We are doing a good deal to get the library into library shape—not a collection of books, but a library. One old librarian helps his old school to get a catalogue on a sound basis, and that is a very useful bit of work. There is a pretty big movement in the same way towards teachers’ libraries. There is a lot being done to let the teachers have new technical books, in the same way that new books are provided for the general reader.. Thete you are getting a better grip of the right attitude towards the technical side, and the county library is going to be extraordinarily useful to the teacher in the future. I have said nothing of the elementary schools. One has to think of what the schools will be like when the leaving-age is raised. You have got to look at it in that way. The problem is: How can the elementary school get a library, and how can the school use the library ? There are many people qualified to tell you about libraries in elementary schools, and I propose to leave the subject to them. What I am hoping to get discussed is the whole attitude of the public towards knowledge as a whole, and the direction of public opinion towards a proper system of organised knowledge. Then we have to go into the question of how to train our pupils that go from the schools and become consumers of the knowledge you provide for them. DISCUSSION. Mr. J. W. H. Brown pointed out that, though text-books were still on trial, they had vastly improved in recent years, and there was evidence of much serious thought and attention being devoted to their production. He described also the function and use of the N.U.T. Library, and stated that it was now used by a larger number of teachers than ever before. Mr. F. A. Hoare said that the elementary school was notoriously a bookless school, and that until authorities recognised the need for liberal expenditure on books it would remain so. School and class libraries in elementary schools depended largely on the individual initiative and personal generosity of the teachers them- selves. The report of the Consultative Committee revealed the gross inadequacy of the amounts commonly allowed for requisition purposes. ‘Teachers were lamentably handicapped in reforming teaching methods by the shortage of books. He agreed in regard to text-books that everything depended upon the way in which they wete used. They were bound up with the examination system which required children to absorb a certain amount of sterilised information in order that it could subsequently be extracted in the form of answers to subtly devised questions. Teachers desired to develop in their pupils the power of individual research and to stimulate the quest for knowledge and information upon definite topics which were of interest for themselves alone. It could not be done without an abundant supply of books. Mr. C. C. Face said that while his own associations to the stimulus “‘ text- book ” were as painful as those of other speakers, he observed that this was by no means the case with his children, who exhibited much interest and even enthusiasm in regard to their school books. This was doubtless due in part to the humanisation of the text-books, but, still more, he believed to the humanisation