The history of the home library movement in its beginnings is recorded in a paper read before the Congress of Charities held in Chicago,June 15,1893,by Mr.Charles W.Birtwell,general secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society,who claims for it a "natural and simple origin,"a method of multiplying the personal work which he was doing among the poorer children of Boston.Another paper on the same subject was read by Mr.
Birtwell at the Lake Placid Conference of the A.L.A.in 1894.
Appreciation of this work is expressed in the 1915report of the Children's Aid Society:"The most important service we render as a society is to show that the constructive forces within the average family,if properly directed,are tremendous in their power and effect.The home libraries do a work for children in their homes that is quite distinct from all the other services we render as a society."Charles Wesley Birtwell was born in Lawrence,Mass.,November 23,1860,and graduated at Harvard in 1885.He was general secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society from 1885to 1911.He has been prominent in social and charitable work,and in 1887originated the "home library"system of the Children's Aid Society,the first general plan of this kind on record.
The first Home Library was established by the Boston Children's Aid Society in January,1887.Now it has seventy libraries here and there throughout Boston,and regards them as an important department of its work.The origin of the plan that has found so much favor in our eyes was simple.I had been connected with the Children's Aid Society but a short time when many avenues of work opened up before me,and it was quite perplexing to see how to make my relations to the various children I became acquainted with real and vital.Among other things the children ought to have the benefit of good reading and to become lovers of good books.Indeed,a great many things needed to be done for and by the children.Out of this opportunity and need the Home Library was evolved.
A little bookcase was designed.It was made of white wood,stained cherry,with a glass door and Yale lock.It contained a shelf for fifteen books,and above that another for juvenile periodicals.The whole thing,carefully designed and neatly made,was simple and yet pleasing to the eye.
I asked my little friend Rosa at the North End,Barbara over in South Boston,and Giovanni at the South End,if they would like little libraries in their homes,of which they should be the librarians,and from which their playmates or workmates might draw books,the supply to be replenished from time to time.They welcomed the idea heartily,and with me set about choosing the boys and girls of their respective neighborhoods who were to form the library groups.Then a time was appointed for the first meeting of each library.The children who had been enrolled as members met with me in the little librarian's home,and while one child held the lamp,another the screwdriver,another the screws,and the rest did a heap of looking on,we sought a secure spot on the wall of the living-room of the librarian's family and there fastened the library.
I remember that to start the first library off with vigor,and secure the benefit from the beginning of a little esprit de corps,I went with the children the evening before the establishment of the library to see the Cyclorama of the battle of Gettysburg.We rode in a driving snowstorm in the street-cars from the North end,and had a gala evening.We got a bit acquainted,and on the next evening,the time appointed for the laying of the cornerstone of the whole Home Library structure,the first library,you may be sure the children without exception were on hand.I believe we had to wait a little while for Jennie,who lived across the hallway from Rosa,to "finish her dishes";then up went the library.Very quickly the second library was established in South Boston,the third at the South End,and before long some neighborhoods were dotted with libraries.
The idea at the beginning was that the groups should be made up of fifteen children,but later we adopted ten as a better number.
So the family in which a library was placed would have the books always within reach,and a handful of children from the same tenement-house or near neighborhood would have access to the books at the time set for their exchange,and when a group had extracted the juice from one set of books we would send them another.It was understood at the start that the children outside of the librarian's family should exchange their books only once a week.I dropped in on the children when I could,but soon saw that the effectiveness of the work would be increased by regular weekly meetings of each group.As it would be impossible for me to visit them all myself,volunteers were sought to take charge each of a single library.Quickly the visitors began to come to me with all manner of puzzles--how to get the children to keep their hands clean,how to induce them to read thoroughly,what to do for a child who was ill,or a lad who was playing truant.Out of these interviews with individual visitors grew naturally the thought of a monthly conference of the visitors;and from an early period in the history of the libraries we have met once a month,except during the summer,and spent an hour and a quarter in discussing a great variety of questions,some general and some particular,that arise in connection with the libraries.
