Page 77 - Training for Librarianship Library Work As a Career

TRAINING FOR LIBRARIANSHIP

wagon of the St. Louis Public Library, for
example, is a familiar and welcome figure in
the city playground.
But the library reaches into other fields.
In the rural, outlying districts where com-
munities are small, isolated and widely scat-
tered, no better mental stimulus than the
grocery store, the railway station or the post
ofHce exists. Aspirations are in consequence
inclined to be dwarfed, the outlook of the
individual narrow and the lives of many aim-
less. The need of good reading matter is
therefore even greater than in the cities. Yet
for one reason or another in a great many
of the rural communities, provision for even
small collections of good books has not been
made. Here, however, the travelling library
has come in as a Godsend. A competent
critic has said that " Nothing more encourag-
ing in modern reforms have been witnessed
than the marked change already wrought by
this single and comparatively inexpensive
agency in scores of wretched villages which
hitherto have been dead spots in our Ameri-
can civilization." Started in New York in
67