The sun., 1919-03-30

CONDUCTED BY
FRANK PARKER STOCKBRIDGE.
AFTER-WAR WORK.

adopted by librarians generally has arisen from the
effort Of the American Library Association S LII
brary War Service to put into the hands Of soldiers
and sailors about to be discharged from the services
books calculated to help them decide what sort of
jobs they want to look for when they become
civilians again and something about the qualifca-
tons for different kinds of jobs their possibilities
and their limitations.
From a modest beginning in supplying few
elementary technical books at the request of ihdi-
vidual camp librarians this phase of Library War
Service has grown into the biggest and most i'm
portant work the A. L. A. has undertaken, not only
In the disqualification camps this side of the water
where there still somewhat more than million
men awaiting discharge-but among the million and
quarter or thereabout of American soldiers who
still overseas 1t ism t anything that has been
forced on the men the contrary, it forced
the association by demand so insistent that it
simply had to be met an eagerness on the part of
these youngsters to brush up their former occu-
pations or to lay the groundwork for new kinds Of
work that it impossible to resist. Not that any,
body wanted to resist it. On the contrary it was
hailed as a welcome guide post to point the true
path along which library service should proceed,
for the immediate future at least
A Million Books Needed. -. ~.
incidentally the supplying of this stlenahd has
put strain on the resources Of the Library War
Service. There has been some irresponsible talk
recently about huge surplus of books in the camp
libraries that could be turned over to public
libraries about to be founded in various towns Aside
from the fact that books are not indesructibc and
that million more volumes have been literally
read to pieces" by the soldiers, have it from the
secretary of the American Library Association that
some way must be found at once to send still
another million books overseas in addition to the
two million already sent, while the service at the
home camps must be maintained Indefinitely.
Most Of these books-the ones the men are calling
for-are books about jobs. Librarians do not of
course expect to make men proficient in any trade
or occupation through books, though there are men,
in and out Of the army, who don't realize that the
glowing tales in the advertisements that tell ''How
L Increased My Income Thousand Per Cent" by
reading this, that the other book are true only
IN SO far as they relate to men already specially
qualified by nature or training for the particular
occupations in which they have succeeded. But the
books that help man to decide what he wants to
make of himself, wonderful list Of them adver-
tsed to the men through series of attractive leaf
lets, posters, placards and handsomely illustrated
volume called Your job Back Home, published by
the association ITSELF these books have proved their
fitness to the need of the moment in thousand I'M i
expected ways. -.... .,,s t, g. !J..j ~" -
1t is not difficult to see why this should be 50
when one reflects that these discharged soldiers,
now men, were only boys when they donned the
uniform; boys most of them, with their careers still
unshaped of chance or choice. The French soldier
never had any doubt what he was going to do when
the war ended his place in the scheme of things had
been fixed and determined for him before he was
born So, too the>Germans and the BelgianS and
in lesser proportion the British soldiers. But few
Americans find their life work under thirty unless
early economic pressure has forced them into one
or another of the blind alley vocations To such
as these war has given the release that peace would
never have brought to most and an opportunity and
desire for some sort of conscious reshaping and
direction of individual destiny. These are the men
Library War Service is helping most.
The Man We're After.
And the public Libraries of the country are taking
up the same new activity-new to most of them;
that is on any measurable scale. There has been
emphasis on the work Of the library with and for
children, its service to business men, who mostly
prefer TO buy their own books but now it is being