REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAN 



11 



Park. The circulation of books at the latter place was a little over 

 forty-six hundred volumes annually, where now it is more than a quarter 

 of a million volumes. Besides the other active branches at Indian Or- 

 chard and Memorial Square, deposits of books are now available at 429 

 points throughout the city, some in factories, stores, institutions, rest 

 rooms, fire engine houses, and similar places, but the great majority in 

 school rooms. The total number of books in the library was, speaking in 

 round numbers, 109,000 volumes. During the twenty years, 104,000 

 volumes have been worn out or withdrawn, and still the collection has 

 grown to almost 300,000 volumes. The circulation of books, which in 1902 

 amounted to 255,000 volumes, has increased to more than a milhon and 

 a quarter volumes. But these statistics of growth do not tell the whole 

 story of the larger place which a library now fills in a community. For 

 example, in the old building the children's department, if department 

 it could he called, consisted of a small table and a bookcase in the corner 

 of the delivery room. Now, not only the main library but each branch 

 has special rooms devoted to the children, and a special staff of trained 

 assistants to counsel and instruct them. Where formerly 4,000 books 

 were taken by teachers for their classes, now more than 41,000 are bor- 

 rowed. The library owned numerous valuable monographs and publica- 

 tions on the fine arts, which, however, were seldom consulted. Now the 

 art department fills the large east room on the main floor of the library, 

 with a staff of four attendants to meet innumerable demands of widely 

 varying character. The picture collection, which now includes a quarter 

 of a million prints, had just been started and 2,800 pictures were lent, 

 while the past year the number of pictures lent was over 137,000. The 

 variety of uses made of this collection is impossible to describe. It may be 

 noted, however, that a large calendar illustrating the history of writing, 

 lately issued by a New York concern, was prepared with material bor- 

 rowed from this department. The extensive collection of music, which is 

 one of the most used classes in the library, is also a new feature. The 

 local history collection has likewise been organized and catalogued. In 

 the older day, the hbrary consisted chiefly of polite literature, works of 

 fiction, history, biography, travel, poetry and the like. The utilitarian 

 side received little attention. Thus, the provision of technical books, 

 which are used so extensively by ambitious young workmen, is almost 

 entirely a modern development; and so too, the books on all phases of 

 business, commerce, industry, and manufactures, which form so im- 

 portant a contribution in the library's more practical service to the com- 

 munity, did not exist formerly. The provision of books in nearly a score 

 of foreign languages, and the important work of Americanization, is still 

 another innovation; much of the general educational activity and es- 

 pecially the work of a social nature carried on by the branches, which are 

 the parts of the library closest to the people, is likewise new. When the 

 extension of the functions of the library is thus viewed through the per- 

 spective of twenty years, it seems small wonder that its use in propor- 

 tion to the population has trebled ; and the continuous expansion points 

 to still wider horizons in the future. 



The late Judge Knowlton used to say of an alert public library, that 

 no other institution in a city touches the lives of so many of its people. 



