tically none of the really bad books of the Nick Carter or Jesse James variety, but there were a great many of the perhaps more pernicious books that might be classed as mediocre, the kind that give a false ideal of life, such as the Alger, Oliver Optic, Rover Boy series, L. T. Meade books, the Elsie Dinsmore books and their ilk. These were invariably loaned to each other, though often they were the gift of father, mother, or Sunday school teacher. In many instances they were bought by the children in the five and ten cent stores.

The mania for collecting things includes books, for boys boasted of having a library of Alger and Oliver Optic and Henty books, or all of the Motor Boy series. The cheapness of the books is no doubt responsible for the great number of them that are read. Louisa Alcott's books, particularly “Little women," were chosen by many girls and the latter was declared the best book ever read, because it was "so sensible to read," and "because the girls weren't all angels, either," or because "My mother's mother read it and she wanted me to read it, too."

Henty was represented in goodly number because "it tells of bloody battles, and I love them kind of stories." For the same reason, and because "it's so exciting and adventuresome," history was chosen. However, very few other books of non-fiction were included. Now and then a book of useful arts, of the Jack-of-all-trades variety was found. With the exception of the "Life of William McKinley," not a single book of biography appeared in the list. Books usually classed as standard literature had their devotees. Evangeline was chosen because "we were forced to read it, but afterwards I liked it very much." Of the "Lady of the Lake" one boy said: “I liked it because it took so much thought to find the meaning."

And this is the way "Romeo and Juliet" appealed to a seventh grade girl: "This book was about two families that had a quarrel, and one family had a party and one of the boys of this other family came and he fell in love with this girl. I think this book is very interesting. I saw this book at the library at the school, and I al

ways like a book that is very thin; and it had big print, so that is how I came to read it."

Myths were classed as fairy tales because they were "awful interesting, but not real." Invariably there was a note of apology in a book on fairy tales, expressed usually: "I liked it very much, although it was a fairy tale." However, nearly always they wrote of having read the book many times.

The rereading of books generally was very noticeable. One girl spoke of having read the twelve books in the Little Colonel series each three times, and "it was mostly about the same little girl."

It was interesting to notice the extent to which the phraseology of the kind of book the children habitually read affected even the wording of the short booknotes. The readers of Optic or Alger spoke of their heroes as "poor, but bright young lads, who climbed the ladder of success." The readers of the Meade books characterized their heroines as "noblehearted, but sadly misunderstood girls."

Time and place even to a seventh or eighth grade pupil are more hazy and confused than we adults realize. The scene of action of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm" was laid in London, England. “Oliver Twist" was said to have taken place "in the Middle Ages." "The time of knighthood" was a simple and convenient time period often used. "The spring of the year" seemed to suffice for one girl. Another girl in telling of "The madcap," by L. T. Meade, said: "It took place in the middle aged years."

In answer to the question how they came to read the book, the tabulation showed that the recommendation of other boys and girls far outnumbered recommendation of either teacher, parent, or librarian. This can doubtless be traced to the inherent distrust of their elders in the matter of book selection, for they are always so keen about advising books one ought to read. The motion pictures induced many to read "Ivanhoe," "The talisman," and "Rob Roy."

The author's name attracted some, the title others. One boy said he read "Robin Hood" "because it said 'Robin Hood, the

outlaw,' on the cover, and I always did like to read about outlaws." Illustrations, especially pictures, on the cover of the book lured some. Several girls said they chose their book because "it looked good, it had lots of talking in it and empty places," by which they meant wide margins.

It was surprising to see how many children read a book "because I was lonesome" and "never had nothing to do."

The argument often advanced that the reading of books does not really influence the lives of children was clearly disproven again and again. Here are some examples:

One girl, in speaking of "Elsie Dinsmore," said: "It is a book which I would like my schoolmates to read because of the cleanness, the goodness, thoughtfulness and kindness of the little girl." Another girl writes of the same book: "It showed how to lead a Christian life, and how we should love our parents."

A seventh grade boy says, discussing "The young outlaw," by Alger: "This book is about a boy who was very bad and became good and held a good position. I like this book because it tells you how you can get along in life."

This is the ideal of college life one boy received from reading Barbour's "The halfback": "This is a story of football, where a boy goes to college. It makes me feel that I would like to go to college, too, and join the football squad."

A girl in reporting on one of the Pansy books expresses the wish that every girl might read the book, for "It is very interesting and it might even convert a soul."

There is no doubt that books do have power to affect the soul of a child. It is most important, then, that we to whom is given so large a share in the building of character of the boys and girls entrusted to us shall know well these silent companions within the covers of books.

Only when we know children's books can we guide the pupils' choice understandingly, sympathetically and lovingly. But knowing books is only half of the problem and will avail us little unless there goes with it a sympathetic understanding of the needs of a child's growing mind.

Froebel's call, “Come, let us live with our children," is more than a mere invitation to share pleasant companionship. It is an opportunity to avail oneself of the mental stimulus to be derived from a fresh viewpoint as it is revealed to us in a child's awakening consciousness to the joy and beauty, the unworded pathos and mystery of the little world in which he finds himself. It is a rare privilege to really know books, it is a greater privilege to know children, their wants and aspirations, but greater than these is the privilege of being a mediator between the book and the child, of being instrumental in opening new visions of beauty to an inquiring mind. Of a teacher, as of a mother, it often can be said: "And they shall rise up and call her blessed," for it is through them that the way has been made clear to see and know "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report."

ADELINE B. ZACHERT.

THE QUESTION OF BOOK STORAGE Ar the meeting of the American Library Institute on Dec. 1 Harry Lyman Koopman, librarian of Brown University Library, read a paper on "The question of book storage," which was based on an article he contributed to the September number of The Printing Art. In it he makes a plea for the use of thinner paper and the elimination of unnecessary margins, and the adoption of a more uniform size and style of format in general, that the present waste of space in libraries, both public and private, may be lessened. The complete article is reprinted below:

It is a curious illustration of the impermanence of most products of the press that the question of their form with reference to economy of storage has hardly been raised. Most of them are true ephemera, creatures of a day, we might even say of the moment consumed in reading them. Yet, if printing is an art preservative as well as communicative, then its permanent records call for storage, and storage, even

on the scale of a private library, involves one of the costliest of all the elements of the modern man's life-space. It is obvious, therefore, that he who can make two books stand where one stood before is, if he has not sacrificed quality, a public benefactor, and deserves all the praise accorded by Dean Swift to the grower of the additional blade of grass, while, on the contrary, he who makes one book occupy the room of two has wrought an injury to the world, unless he can justify his theft of space by a corresponding gain in quality. Commercially, purely from the point of view of money-making, there is a reason for each tendency toward compactness and toward bulk. The smaller the book the more cheaply it can be sold, and the wider the sale; the larger the book the more can be asked for it with an appearance of justice, and the more profit there is on each sale.

As business has always been business, we find the two tendencies at the very beginning of the printed book. The black letter, which displaced the Roman type in the North-European countries, did so, not because it was more beautiful or more legible, for it was neither, but because it was more condensed, and by its use more reading matter could be got on a page. Aldus in Venice faced the same problem of getting away from the extended character of the noble Roman, and solved it by copying Petrarch's slender handwriting, thus producing the type known from the country of its birth as Italic. But, along with the handy and compact twelvemos and sixteenmos, appeared the stately folios and portly quartos, not designed for wide circulation, and therefore printed with larger type on heavier paper, works that form the proudest masterpieces of printing and amply justify the space they have taken up in our libraries for more than four hundred years. Later a notable achievement in compactness was made by the Elzevirs in condensing and reducing the Roman type and making tiny books, of pocket and even vestpocket size, books that were favorites in their time and remain favorites with the

collector who is a booklover and not a mere speculator.

So long as books were arranged on the shelves of public and private libraries more by sizes than by subjects, their proportions did not so much affect compactness of storage, if only the paper was not too thick or ample or the type too large. There were almost as many shelf-heights as shelves, and the books filled their shelf spaces, at least up and down, though usually not from front to back. But, for thirty or forty years, American libraries, and most modern libraries everywhere, have been arranged by subjects, and according to rather fine divisions. Under these divisions the books are arranged alphabetically or chronologically, and the value of such a system depends largely upon having as many as possible of the books actually so arranged in one visible series. Obviously the very largest books must be arranged in a series of their own, but the smallest books need not be so arranged; there is nothing to prevent their being mixed in with the mediumsized books, and in library practice they are now regularly so mixed. Thus all differences of height in books are ignored except the regular and over-sized. The gain to the student is enormous; he finds before him in one row-with dummies here and there referring him to special shelves-all the books in the library on the subject he is investigating. Since libraries are arranged for the benefit of their users and not merely for storage purposes, there is no likelihood of a return to the old system. But this means, under any system of bookdesign that has ever yet prevailed, a deplorable waste of space. Our libraries are actually filled more with wind than with print-even without reference to their intellectual contents.

Now, the cost of shelving a book is a matter of calculation. In the library in which these lines are written the cost of shelving its books, if the cost of the stack alone is considered, is about thirty cents a volume; if the cost of the whole building is considered, the cost of shelving each book rises to a dollar. But, taking the nar

rower cost of thirty cents a volume, which would represent the cost for new volumes if the stack were to be extended, it is easy to see that, if this is regarded as the normal, it makes a great difference to a library whether its books in the future are to average half as bulky or twice as bulky. In the one case the cost of shelving will sink to fifteen cents a volume, and any given stack will last twice as long before it has to be extended; in the other case the cost per volume will rise to sixty cents, and the stack will have to be extended at the end of half the expected time. Moreover, with books twice the normal thickness, twice the normal distance must be covered in getting them. That either of these conditions is possible, and that one is likely if certain present tendencies continue, can easily be shown.

The modern reader will not consent to go back to the fine type used by the Elzevirs or even to that in vogue in the middle nineteenth century. He insists upon a type readable with reference to the use intended, whether continuous reading or consultation; but he is willing that the other elements of book-design shall favor compactness. He is glad to have in his private library an India-paper Dickens, at eight hundred leaves to the inch in thickness, and in public libraries encyclopedias and dictionaries printed on paper of only twice that thickness, or four hundred leaves to the inch; in the one case shelving four books where one was shelved before, in the other case two. He sees no reason on the side of the buyer why novels should not be printed on paper as thin as that of the American Encyclopedia or the Century Dictionary. He would, moreover, have no objection to a book form that should better utilize the space on the shelves than is done by the current twelvemos-for instance, a form like the favorite two-column octavos of forty years ago, the form in which many veterans read Miss Mulock's novels.

If not sufficiently ancient for this, the modern reader may still recall with pleasure another book form which combined compactness with legibility and lightness more successfully than any other book of

modern times, and in which many of us made our first acquaintance with standard English novels. Here, for instance, is a copy of "Henry Esmond," published in this form July 4, 1879. It contains forty-four quarto leaves, eleven inches high and eight inches wide; its thickness is about a sixth of an inch. A yard of these books, therefore, would just fill a regulation shelf, taking up all its available space, in height and depth as well as length, and there would be more than two hundred of them. "Henry Esmond" in the original Smith Elder edition occupied nearly two running inches on the shelf; the set of twenty-one volumes, placed as closely as they should be on a library shelf, occupy thirty-eight inches, or an inch and six-sevenths to a volume. In 1881 the Harpers issued Hardy's "Laodicean" in the Franklin Square Library. The book contains thirty-six leaves, being therefore a fifth thinner than the "Esmond" in this edition. In the new collective edition of Hardy's works issued by the same publishers this novel occupies five hundred twelvemo pages, and is bound in two volumes, which take up rather more than three inches of shelf room. It is only fair to add that the publishers offer also a thin-paper edition. Is it any wonder that a printer, on being asked by a young writer how large a book a certain manuscript would make, replied: "Any size you like."

It was said that the Harpers did not find the Franklin Square Library profitable at fifteen cents a volume for uncopyrighted books. With modern methods of production these books would probably be very profitable at that price. But during the last thirty years the public has been educated to demand bound books, even at twenty-five cents or less; and the Franklin Square Library was issued in paper. Books of this format could be issued in tough cover papers, to occupy not more than a quarter of an inch on the shelf; or since libraries like to have the back of a book wide enough to receive lettering and a label, these quartos might be put into stiff covers and still run three to the inch, or over a hundred to the yard. As a book to hold in the hand, one of these volumes in a durable

paper cover, and stitched through the middle of its single signature, thus opening freely to the inner limit of the page, leaves little to be asked. When its compactness for storage is considered we can but marvel that so promising a book-design should have been discarded instead of being perfected. No doubt the public has been to blame; it has wanted its books to make a show; and this the thin quarto did not do. But this format may be not discarded, but only in abeyance. One of our popular magazines has recently adopted a size both higher and wider, twelve inches by eight and a half, as against the much more convenient size of the Franklin Square Library. If other magazines follow suit, it would be well if they would adopt a height not too large for ordinary shelving, say, ten and three-fourths inches.

Above all, let our magazines and books be printed on paper of reasonable thinness. Let them not emulate certain of the British reviews which come to us on a paper that seems a cross between blotting paper and cardboard. Here is the volume of the Westminster Review for the last half of 1911, occupying three inches, not reckoning the covers, with its 358 leaves. Its volume for the first half of 1898 has one more leaf and occupies an inch and a half, even so being on paper as thick as anyone could wish. But the new paper is so much lighter!-yes, by the inch, but not by the page; for the two volumes just contrasted weigh respectively fifty-six and fifty-eight ounces, with the advantage on the side of the thinner volume. If this fashion should prevail widely, it would become necessary for librarians to demand not merely, as they have done, binding adapted for wear but also paper adapted for storage. But let us hope that the "blown book," to use Franklin's apt phrase, blown in type, in leading, in paragraphing, in margins, and now last in paper, may prove so contrary to the spirit of the twentieth century that, if ever produced, it will remain in its publisher's warehouse a windy monument to his own mistaken judgment and treachery to his professional ideals.

VOCATIONAL WORK THROUGH

THE LIBRARY

IN view of the discussion of vocational guidance at the recent meeting of the Massachusetts Library Club, the work of one of Boston's special libraries in this direction may be of interest.

The public reference library conducted by the Women's Educational and Industrial Union is devoted to women's work, and a considerable part of the material relates to vocational education and guidance and institutions offering special training for nonteaching professions. Current reports and catalogs of schools and colleges throughout the country giving vocational courses are kept in the library, and may be consulted by anyone. A person interested in social service, for instance, will find there the circulars of the different schools for social service in the United States, and also books and periodical articles describing the opportunities for women in this field.

So many requests for information of this sort have been received that suggestive reading lists (ten to twenty titles) have been prepared on a number of occupations for women, as agriculture, chemistry, interior decorating and institutional management. These are sent to deans of women's colleges, vocational counsellors and librarians who are interested in the subject.

Most of the references relate to college and business women; some of them, however, are intended for the high school and grammar school graduate, and part of the vocational material in the library is of interest to the younger girl.

The Union's vocational guidance work is conducted chiefly through the appointment. bureau. The library supplements the work of the bureau by collecting material for its use and preparing references on Vocational subjects. Some direct vocational advising is, however, performed by the library. Many requests are received either in person or by letter for information about the requirements for some special line of work, the preparation needed and schools that offer such training. "What are the