Report of the President 



If the amount of service rendered to the community be a criterion, 

 the past twelve months have been the most successful in the history of 

 the City Library Association. Our citizens are every year gaining a 

 truer appreciation of the priceless treasures in the George Walter Vincent 

 Smith collections in the Art Museum, and are more and more making 

 practical and systematic use of them. Not only is the attendance of 

 visitors growing, but even more gratifying is the increasing study of the 

 collections by individuals and by classes of adults and children. The 

 docent service has been extended; weekly talks have been conducted 

 for children in connection with the history classes in the schools; and 

 lectures on the laces, enamels, period furniture, lacquers, textiles, jades, 

 and other objects in the museum, have been given by Miss Wade. Mr. 

 Smith, as for so many years past, has made numerous valuable addi- 

 tions, including choice paintings, rare guns, and a piece of jade beauti- 

 fully carved and undercut. 



Mrs. Johnson, the Curator of the Museum of Natural History, has 

 been in communication with all the public school teachers so that the 

 work for the children has been more direct and effective than ever 

 before. Among the courses of scientific lectures was one of such a char- 

 acter that teachers and others who attended and fulfilled the require- 

 ments of study could secure academic credit. Though this plan is to 

 be followed in museums elsewhere, it is believed to have been first 

 adopted in Springfield. A work of great possibilities has been inaugu- 

 rated in connection with the continuation school, by which salesgirls 

 and other pupils are taught fundamental facts regarding the sources 

 and processes of manufacture of such objects as silk, vegetable fibres, 

 semi-precious stones, beads, glass, amber, and many other articles and 

 materials which they handle. 



The circulation of library books has been greater by more than 100,000 

 volumes than in any previous year. Bare statistics have little meaning, 

 and few individuals who go to the library to draw a book realize the 

 magnitude and detail of the work carried on there. It is of interest to 

 note, for example, that during the past year more than four thousand 

 children were given class instruction in the use of the library; that forty 

 thousand books were deposited in the schools; that nearly twenty thou- 

 and people were notified when the books they wanted became available ; 

 that the new books purchased, including replacements of volumes worn 

 out in circulation, would, if averaging an inch in thickness, make a pile 

 five times as high as the municipal tower; that the volumes mended, 

 labeled, prepared for the bindery, etc., in the repair department of the 

 main library alone would similarly make a pile five times as high as 



