Reprint from THE EDUCATIONAL BI-MONTHLY, October 1912 
 
 The Library Situation in Chicago High Schools 
 
 The first of three papers read before the English Section of the 
 
 Chicago High and Normal School Association, May n, 1912. 
 
 7U BOUT three years ago, Mrs. Dracass, of the Englewood 
 JJ U High School, began an investigation into library condi¬ 
 tions in the high schools of Chicago and other cities, both east 
 and west. The amount of material which she collected was 
 so great that she found herself unable to handle it alone, so a 
 committee of the library section of the association went to her 
 assistance last fall. The results of the questionnaire which she 
 prepared and sent out in November and December, 1911, have 
 been tabulated, and certain facts seem to be of sufficient im¬ 
 portance to the teachers in general to warrant their presenta¬ 
 tion in condensed form to this English section. 
 
 For the sake of convenience the presentation will be given 
 under three heads : the conditions in Chicago schools, the con¬ 
 ditions in schools outside of Chicago, and the possibilities that 
 seem within our immediate reach. As to the last, we do not 
 aim to present an ideal scheme, but one which will, in our be¬ 
 lief, work a material improvement over present conditions, and 
 which at the same time, there is some hope of realizing at once 
 or in the very near future. 
 
 But in order to make clear what can be done, and to en¬ 
 deavor to enlist your aid in its accomplishment, it is first neces¬ 
 sary to review broadly what each of you knows in part; name¬ 
 ly, the present situation here. The library facilities and prac¬ 
 tice in the different city schools vary widely. According to 
 the replies to the questionnaire, three schools are wholly with¬ 
 out libraries. In the sixteen other schools that replied, the 
 number of books varies from 825 to 7,400. Five schools run 
 circulating departments. The reference-room facilities, 
 where there are any, vary from a seating capacity of sixteen 
 to one of 144. In ten schools the library is in charge of a 
 teacher; in one, of a clerk; and in two, has been closed for 
 lack of an attendant. These ten teachers have, in addition to 
 the library work, regular class work; four of them having 
 four classes, and six of them five. 
 
 But such statistics as these are meaningless to the general 
 
 
teacher, so we will pass on to some queries as to the practical 
 use of the library as it is conducted to-day. Is your school 
 library justifying its existence? Is it doing what it could and 
 should, considering that from $600 to $4,000 is invested there 
 in books alone? Can you send a pupil to look up a reference 
 and feel reasonably sure that he will get it? Is there any one 
 in your school who knows exactly what is in the library ? I do 
 not except even the teacher in charge, for I know from experi¬ 
 ence that a teacher doing regular work has no time to become 
 familiar with the books in subjects outside of his own line. 
 
 Nobody but the one in charge of a library has any idea of how 
 many pupils are turned away unsatisfied; and for every one 
 turned away, two fail to come. Could not the library be of 
 enough importance in your own subject to warrant having 
 somebody there who could direct the pupils in the use of the 
 books? It is useless to say that the teacher himself should do 
 this, for the teacher is usually in a class when the pupil wants 
 the book. Have you not bought books yourself rather than 
 insist that those which are the property of the school be put in 
 some central place and by means of proper cards and attend 
 ants be made available to all who wish to use them? Do 
 your pupils know how to use the dictionary and encyclopedia, 
 to say nothing of the more specialized books of reference? 
 
 If not, should they not be definitely taught? Are there maga¬ 
 zines in your library that meet the demands of the vocational 
 trend of the times, in commerce, trades, modern inventions? 
 
 Does the library supply the demand for home reading books, 
 and does it do its duty in the general elevation of the pupils’ 
 taste in literature? 
 
 Some contend that the public library and its branches 
 are already doing all that is necessary for the high school. 
 
 The facts, however, hardly bear out the contention. The pub¬ 
 lic library caters, primarily, to the desultory reader, young 
 children, mechanics, foreigners, and adult research work--rs, 
 and only incidentally to pupils of high-school age. Moreover, 
 from the schools that are most conveniently situated with re¬ 
 gard to branches, comes the complaint that not enough copies 
 of any one book can be obtained at any one time to meet the I 
 
 needs of the classes. This is particularly true of books as¬ 
 signed for home reading. There is, furthermore, practically 
 
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c.^ vx 
 
 no hope of any improvement in the near future. Mr. Logie? 
 has said that nothing can be thought of in connection with 
 branches in the schools for at least ten years; moreover, there 
 is serious question whether such branches, which must be open 
 to the general public as well as to the pupils, would not be 
 more of a menace than a benefit. 
 
 Of the definite attempts to meet the high-school needs in 
 the high-school libraries themselves, I shall outline only two:— 
 that at the Tuley, chosen because I know most about it; and 
 that at the Englewood, chosen because it is along the line of 
 what the library committee hopes may become general. 
 
 At the Tuley there is a reference room seating about 
 sixty, and a stack room adjoining, containing some 3,000 vol¬ 
 umes, of which half are fiction. Both reference and circulat¬ 
 ing departments are in operation. The work is in charge of 
 the teacher of the third and fourth year English, who has five 
 classes in addition to the library work. The librarian is as¬ 
 sisted by six pupil volunteers, who practically take charge of 
 the circulating department. They are given some training, 
 and, under the supervision of the librarian, accession, catalog, 
 and care for the books. In the circulating department an at¬ 
 tempt is made to supply sufficient duplicate titles of the popular 
 books that are recommended for book reports, to meet the de¬ 
 mands reasonably. An attempt is made also to have illustra¬ 
 tive material for use in the study of the history of literature. 
 Pupils must apply for books before nine o’clock in the morn¬ 
 ing, and the orders are filled by the pupil assistants as they 
 have time during the day. The average circulation this year 
 has been about thirty volumes daily. 
 
 The reference department is run on the honor system, 
 with open shelves. The teachers in the different subjects take 
 from the regular shelves the books needed at any one time, and 
 place them in special cases—one for English history, one for 
 American history, etc., and the pupils are directed to those 
 cases. General reference books, declamation and debating 
 books, etc., are also in special cases, open to the pupils at all 
 times. It is understood that books in these cases are not to be 
 taken from the room during the day, and may not be drawn 
 on a pupil’s card for longer than one night. A teacher is as¬ 
 signed to the reference room for each hour of the day to keep 
 
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order; and any pupil who is above 75 in all his studies for any 
 month has the privilege of going there during his study hours 
 the next month. 
 
 This plan works fairly well for the circulating department, 
 except that the time for drawing books is too short. Since the 
 pupil assistants take full work, it is impossible to ask them to 
 give much of their study time to library work, and, therefore, 
 the rule has to be enforced that all applications for books be 
 made before school in the morning. With somebody in the 
 library each period who expected to devote his time to that 
 work, the circulation could be doubled at least. 
 
 In the reference department, however, the Tuley plan is 
 wofully lacking. The librarian is present only ten hours a 
 week. The pupil assistants do not know the contents of the 
 books, and the teacher in charge of the reference room is 
 there for police duty, and in general is not familiar with the 
 books outside those of his own department. Even when the 
 librarian is present, it is no unusual thing for him to be found 
 lacking in knowledge of the contents of the books outside those 
 of his own department and those of general reference. He 
 needs more time in the library, more time to analyze the books 
 minutely for the card catalog. Were this done, the pupil as¬ 
 sistants or the teacher in charge could tell what books, for ex¬ 
 ample, contain copies of Magna Charta. 
 
 The Englewood plan is a step in advance of this. In 
 that school a course in Library Economics has been estab¬ 
 lished, which at present is being taken by forty-four pupils. 
 The training and value of that course are foreign to the pres¬ 
 ent discussion, so they will not be given here; but those who 
 are interested may find an account of them in the April (1912) 
 number of The English Journal, under the title “An Experi¬ 
 ment in Library Training in the High School”. The course, 
 as outlined, calls for one hour per week of service work, so 
 that for each period of each day there is in the library a 
 trained pupil who expects to devote his time to waiting on 
 those who come to the exchange desk. 
 
 The plant consists of a reference room seating sixteen, 
 a stack room with a capacity for 10,000 volumes, and a work 
 room, or laboratory, for the library course. There are in the 
 reference room about 150 volumes of general reference, and in 
 
the stack room 7,400 volumes, of which 1,500 are fiction. In the 
 work room, and not available for lack of cataloging, are over 
 1,000 more volumes of bound and unbound magazines, govern¬ 
 ment documents, etc. Both circulating and reference depart¬ 
 ments are conducted. The circulating department is open 
 from 8:30 to 2:30, and the average daily circulation is 80. 
 As at the Tuley, a definite attempt is made to supply reason¬ 
 ably the demands for home reading; as many as thirty copies 
 of some books being on the shelves. 
 
 Except for books of general reference, the closed-shelf 
 system is used; that is, the pupil cannot go to the cases and 
 help himself to a book on history, etc. This is necessitated by 
 the few copies of such books in comparison with the large de¬ 
 mand for them. Any pupil may go to the reference room by per¬ 
 mission, but is expected to stay only so long as necessary; that is, 
 this is a reference room only, whereas that at the Tuley is both 
 reading and reference room. The difference in the seating 
 capacity explains this. 
 
 The work is in charge of a teacher-librarian who has four 
 classes, besides the library work. A teacher is assigned to the 
 reference room each hour, who is expected to aid the pupil 
 assistant, when there is such a rush that two are needed, or 
 when the pupil is asked something which he cannot answer. 
 A point to be noted here is that whereas at the Tuley the 
 teacher is assigned to the reading room for police duty only, 
 at the Englewood he is there for library work. 
 
 That this is in advance of the Tuley plan is shown, for 
 one thing, by the difference in circulation. With the same 
 number of fiction books, the comparison is, Englewood 17/9 
 as many pupils as Tuley, circulation 2 2/3 as many, or 1 1/2 
 times as many books per pupil. And in this comparison it 
 must be remembered that in the Tuley circulation are counted 
 one-night books of reference, which is not done at Englewood. 
 This superiority of the Englewood circulation is undoubtedly 
 due in large part to the fact that pupils can get books at any 
 time. 
 
 Owing to lack of data, it is impossible to compare the 
 reference departments, but like the librarian at the Tuley, the 
 one at Englewood is far from satisfied. She has plenty of 
 help, but no time to supervise them. The pupils analyze the 
 
books and make tentative analytics, but lack of time prevents 
 the librarian from checking up their work promptly, and thus 
 the card catalog is never quite up to date. During the past 
 year, about 4,000 cards have been made for the catalog. When 
 it is borne in mind that the tentative cards made by the pupil 
 for any book must be compared with the book to see if they 
 are sufficient in number and proper in kind, and that perma¬ 
 nent cards must be proof read, it will be evident that this part 
 of the work alone is comparable in its demands on the teacher’s 
 time to the work in English composition. ^ 
 
 In short, the situations at these two schools sum up to 
 the same conclusion, viz.: the librarian needs time to become 
 familiar with the books, time to analyze them minutely, time * 
 
 to put the card catalog in such shape that the needs of. the 
 pupils in all subjects can be met by anyone who is in the library 
 and who can read English. 
 
 Now, perhaps a word as to just what this means will not 
 be amiss. It is generally believed that when a book has an 
 author card and a title card, it is cataloged. This is far from 
 the truth. The card catalog is to the library what the index 
 is to the book. Subject cards are the important things in 
 reference work. The Chicago Public Library, with its many 
 thousands of books, may make only two or three subject cards 
 for each book, for it has some ten to a hundred volumes on 
 each subject; but the small library, one of five thousand vol¬ 
 umes or fewer, must go much further. An expert cataloger 
 for a public library says that for a small library every subject 
 that occupies ten pages in a book should be recorded in the 
 card catalog. The librarians for the Los Angeles (Calif.) 
 high-school libraries say that many subjects that occupy only 
 one-half page, or sometimes even one sentence, should be cata¬ 
 loged. Do you realize what this means ? Do you realize 
 what peculiar books the high-school librarian deals with? A 
 large part of them are school texts, which contain in their in¬ 
 troductions very valuable material, which is not duplicated 
 anywhere in the library. How is it to be found? When you 
 tell your pupils to find the different meanings of the word 
 “romance”, do you know that in the introduction to the Lake 
 Classics edition of “The House of Seven Gables” is Hawthorne’s 
 definition? The librarian ought to know it if he is to give the 
 
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pupils the full benefit of the resources of the library; and 
 further, the librarian’s knowledge should be preserved in the 
 card catalog, so that his assistants or successor may have the 
 benefit of it. Do you realize what this means for the libra¬ 
 rian? Go into your own school library and note the number 
 of books in English alone that are school text editions. Think 
 what it means to read the introductions and notes of these and 
 make cards for the important material. Remember that the 
 material found in such places is generally not found elsewhere 
 in the school library, for the editors of school texts draw on 
 much larger collections. Then ask yourself if there is not in 
 the librarian’s work a great deal to be done which might help 
 you in your work, and whether this work is not of enough im¬ 
 portance to warrant its recognition as part of the regular 
 school duties of the librarian. 
 
 Geo. W. Tanner. 
 
 Tuley High School.