Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1922-12-13
GIVES TALK
ON LIBRARY
Prof. Carl t. Jacobson Read a Paper
Before Symra Society Full of
Excellent Thought.
GIVES POINTERS ON
~aLUE OF LIBRARY
Tells Of the Great Benefits of a
Public Library to
Community.

Community.
/ The following Is an extract from
a paper read by Prof. Karl T..
Jacobson, Librarian of Luther Coll
lege, before the Symra Society an6
the Lutheran brotherhood of this
city.
Prof. jacobson sketched the his
tory of the popular library movement
at some length and then continued
as follows:
Now a Few Words Regarding the
Local Library Facilities.
The largest collection is, of course,
the college library. This contains
about 1000 volumes of books ana
pamphlets on various subjects, with
emphasis laid especially on history,
literature, and social and political
sciences. Ii also contains standard
works of music, the fine arts, and
the natural sciences. Probably the
classes of its books that will be of
most interest to the general public
are the general reference works such
as the encyclopedias and Biographies
dictionaries, and the periodicals. or
encyclopedias the library has quite
a complete collection and il has up
wards of hundred files of general
periodicals many of them complete
from their first issue.
With the completion of its beauti-
full new building the library now also
has ample quarters, and any one
interested, also those not connected
with the institution is at liberty TO
make use of its resources for refer
ence. Loans for home use TO out
siders must necessarily be somewhat
restricted.
The condition of the public lib
rary is not so fayrds O, N,n;.,,
1t contains a lr9cpIittle n,ar = ~
fYI Hltgimes about tW S,5 thi. : q,
than one thodsand volumes TO cover
all their subjects including Juvenile
literature.
Possibly some may think that it Is
the fault of the library board or
the librarian that the library is not
in any better condition. | think
not. On the contrary | believe they
have done remarkably we'll consider
Ing the resources they have had - @s'
their disposal. In this connection
some Of the facts CLEANED from the
statistics Of the Iowa Library COM
mission may be of interest. OF the
approximately lao public libraries I'm
Iowa, reporting, the per capita sup
port given these Libraries ranged
from II cents i'm the case of the
village Of Hawkeye to S1.52 in
Grundy Center Among these De-
corah stands the third from the bot
tom with a per capita support OF
81 cents. A committee of the Amer
lean Library Association made a
survey about two years ago concern
ing the amount needed to support
good and efficiently administered
public library and this committee
came TO the conclusion that one dol
ought to be provided for the purpose.
This was for maintenance including
purchases of new books and admin
istration, but not for buildings. The
buildings must be provided for out
side of that estimate.
Now Iowa is considerable below
this minimum on the average in her
support of her public Libraries, ana
of the 140 cities or. towns of the
state reported as having any library
at all DEBORAH as stated above is
the third from the bottom. Further
more, of the cities her size or larger
Oelwein alone contributes less, and
that by only 6 cents per capita, than
DEBORAH to the support OF her I'D
rary. Is il to be wondered at that
DEBORAH does not have a hrst class
public library under those circum-
stances?
But, possibly some may think
there is no need Of a public library
since we have a good college lib
rary here. To be sure it is of great
value to the community as we'll az
the school 10 have a good college
library in its midst. The college
library and the public library
proper cooperation can be
made TO supplement one another
to considerable extent and thereby
probably be able to serve both the
and the school consti-
tuency to better advantage, but the
college library can not and should
not be expected t09 take the place
of the public library. Here it may
be of interest to see how other COM
munities that have good col
lege Libraries in their midst treat
their public Libraries. At Ames Il
the library of the Iowa state
college of Agriculture and Mechanic
Arts, library of more than 100000
volumes on aVwide range OF subjects.
Ames supports its public library to
the extent of one dollar per capita.
Iowa City with the large university
library in the center of the COM
munity contributes SO cents per cap
ita to its public library. And Grim
nell with a population little larger
than DEBORAH and likewise with a
college library larger in about the
CONTINUED on page seven)