on the subjects of instruction.  The general collection of books should be outside of the school, because the boy is destined to spend most of his life outside of the school.  His education by no means ends with his graduation.  The agents that operate to develop and change him will be at work so long as he lives, and it is desirable that the book should be one of these.  If he says good-by to the book when he leaves school, that part of his training is likely to be at an end.  If he uses, in connection with, and parallel to, his formal education a general collection of books outside of the school, he will continue to use it after he leaves school.  And even so far as the special classroom library is concerned, it must be evident that a large general collection of books that may be drawn upon freely is a useful supplement.  For the teacher’s professional use, the larger the collection at his disposal the better.  A sum of money spent by the city in improving and making adequate the pedagogical section of its public library, particularly in the department of circulation, will be expended to greater advantage than many times the amount devoted to a large number of small collections on the same subjects in schools.

These are the considerations that have governed the New York Public Library in its effort to be of assistance to the teachers and pupils in the public schools of the city.  Stated formally, these efforts manifest themselves in the following directions: 

(1) The making of library use continuous from the earliest possible age, thru school life and afterwards;

(2) Cooperation with the teacher in guiding and limiting the child’s reading during the school period;

(3) Aid within the library in the preparation of school work;

(4) The supplementing of classroom libraries by the loan of books in quantity;

(5) The cultivation of personal relations between library assistants and teachers in their immediate neighborhood;

(6) The furnishing of accurate and up-to-date information to schools regarding the library’s resources and its willingness to place them at the school’s disposal;

(7) The increase of the library’s circulation collection along lines suggested and desired by teachers;

(8) The granting of special privileges to teachers and special students who use the library for purposes of study.

Toward the realization of these aims three departments are now cooperating, each of them in charge of an expert in his or her special line of work.

(1) The children’s rooms in the various libraries, now under the direction of an expert supervisor.

(2) The traveling library office.

(3) The division of school work, with an assistant in each branch, under skilled headquarters superintendence.

When our plans, which are already in good working order, are completely carried out, we shall be able to guarantee to every child guidance in his reading up to and thru his school course, with direction in a line of influence that will make him a user of books thruout his life and create in him a feeling of attachment to the public library as the home and dispenser of books and as a permanent intellectual refuge from care, trouble, and material things in general, as well as a mine of information on all subjects that may benefit or interest him.