Page 85 - Training for Librarianship Library Work As a Career

TRAINING FOR LIBRARIANSHIP

meetings: "Most professions are so en-
grossed by their own work that they have
no time to serve the needs of others, but it is
the business of the librarian to serve. He is
paid for knowing how." In his book entitled
"The Modern City and Its Problems,"
"
Frederic C. Howe says : The free public
library is distinctly an American institution.
No country in the world has opened up
branches and democratized the use of books
and reading rooms for circulation and re-
search as have we. Commissions come from
Europe to study our libraries just as commis-
sions from this country go to England and
Germany to study departments in which
these countries are most advanced. The free
public library is one of America's contribu-
tions to municipal administration." More
and more there is a growing realization that
the living library, like the living church, is
not built in marble, that, as Milton has said,
*'
Books are not dead things," but " contain a
potency of life in them to be as active as that
soul whose progeny they are."
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