Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1915-05-07
& TOWARDS
The Store of Quality

story hours were again resumed. the
story telling now being done almost
entirely by girls in the English class
es of the high school, who received
high school credit for their work.
The committee in charge was some
what different from that in thespring.
Mrs. Howe still remaining as chair
man, while the other members were
Mrs. C. D. Greenleaf, Miss Jessie
Wolcott and Miss Emma Cummings.
In November a monthly library club
for pupils in the intermediate grades
was started, pupils from the fourth,
fifth and sixth grades being invited
for the first meeting. A second meet
ing for pupils from the same grades
was held in December.
In all. during 1914 story hours, in
Guiding the meetings of the library
club, were held on eighteen Satur-
days, while stories were also told to
one child who came to the library on
the Saturday. following Christmas
when no story hour had been advertis-
ed. The total attendance at these
story hours and meetings of the Ii
brary club was 594, or an average Of
las children each day.
GENEROUS ASSISTANCE
Your librarian must take occasion
in this report~to acknowledge his
| obligation to Miss Mary S. Hunt, the
former librarian, and to express some
what his appreciation of the great SER
fvice Miss Hunt rendered to the IL
brary and to the community during
the many years that she was public
librarian. Few small libraries in prac-
teal, : systematic arrangement of
books and Of working material excel
the sWauseen library and to Miss
Hunt credit for. this arrangement is
due. Without extended library train
ing or experience in. a larger library
she made it her task to learn thor
oughly the methods and details of
modern library work and what is
more she applied the new methods to
her library work in Wauseon,
admirably modifying the details to
the needs of a small library. More
over, for more than a month during
the spring of 1914 she devoted herself
absolutely free of charge to the Ii
brary, to the completing of the pub
lie card catalogue for books that had
been accustomed up to the time that
her resignation took effect. This was
work that she had been unable to
complete before and, indeed, work
practically impossible for any Ii
brarian to do who has no regular as
sistant. The entire cost to the library
of this necessary cataloging was ap-
proximately $16.50, of which $13.46
was expended for printed Library of
Congress catalogue cards.
4 Thanks are due to the publishers of
the three local weekly newspapers
for their generous cooperation in re-
peated calls to aid the library in it's
publicity work. Each of these news
papers during the year offered the
; use of it's news space free of charge
to the library and printed many col
umns telling of the work of the Ii
brary, of the new books received,
and, especially, of the, story hours.
One interesting result of this publici-
ty was that inquiries concerning the
story hours were received from as
far away as Chesterfield township.
i, THE FUTURE
), Your librarian cannot close this re-
!, port without reference to the inspira-
, ton he received as to the future of
, the library in a small community
, while he was in attendance during the
, summer at the Lake Chautauqua sum-
mer library school and during the fall
at the annual meeting of the Ohio Lii
brary Association at Dayton. At both
! of these places eminent library work
ers told of the future of libraries as
community centers. and of township
and county library extension as
among the greatest movements in IL
brary history. Even now the trustees
of the Carnegie foundation for es-
tablishing libraries have so much
faith in the possibilities of the small
community libraries that they are ser
%iously considering appropriating SIS,
900, 900 towards establishing county
libraries in every county in the Unit,
ed States. California and Wyoming
have county library laws quite a:
~far-reaching in their effects as the
new Ohio laws governing the super
vision of schools. And in q Mary
land county there is. a rural bool
delivery very, similar to the rural de
livery of mail. Library assistant!
regularly accompany large vans tina
carry books from the central library
to every part of the county. Here il
Ohio, in our neighboring county O
IVAN Vert, is the pioneer county Ii
brary of the United States,- an,
even today one of the most efficien
of its kind. 1t was for this library
about seventeen years ago, that Obi,
passed the first known county librar,
law. Ohio has also several very eff
ficient township libraries. That tn
Wauseon library sometime is to hav
a very important part in similar ex
tension work here in Fulton count,
seems almost a certainty if we inter
pret rightly the signs Of the time
Surely it is an ideal to which we ma,
gladly look forward and for the reali
zation of which we may even now be
gin to prepare, To this end your Ii