Page 158 - Training for librarianship; library work as a career

TRAINING FOR LIBRARIANSHIP
who are shut off from the outside world and
sometimes from their fellows. Happiness is
not only an incentive to poise, but also a con-
dition predisposing to mental health. The
institutional library has therefore come to be
welcomed by physician, nurse and inmate.
Sometimes it is managed by a nurse, some-
times by a hbrarian, sometimes as effectively
by an inmate, although in the latter case
supervision is necessary.
In Iowa and Minnesota the organization
of all institutional libraries is in the hands
of a state library organizer under the State
Board of Control. In Nebraska the State
Library Commission supervises the institu-
tional work. In some cases a small yearly
contribution from each state institution en-
ables the purchase of many books which are
then sent about as travelhng libraries. Thus
in Minnesota each hospital pays $50, for
which it receives the best books in turn, and
at the end of the year becomes the possessor
of fifty volumes as a permanent addition to
its library.
The main requirements of ^n institutional
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