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Tomorrow's Rural Libraries
THE majority of us were born and brought up in the country. Farm life of today, however, scarcely resembles that which we once knew any more than the modern streamlined train resembles Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb engine of a century ago, which, as you remember, was beaten in a race with a gray horse. Developments of the past half dozen years have changed rural points of view so greatly that the successful farmer of twenty years ago who suddenly awakened in the midst of today would not know what it is all about. Legislation such as the Triple A program, the Soil Conservation Act, and the Bankhead-Jorles Act have brought about centralized controls and group thinking and acting to an extent not dreamed of a few years ago. The national planning movement and the programs of departments and agencies of the federal government have added emphasis to these tendencies. Radios and movies, automobiles, hard-surfaced roads, consolidated schools, and discoveries and inventions which are introducing new crops and new uses of old crops, are contributing to the ferment and upheaval. As a result of these influences, two dominant characteristics are apparent in farm life today. First, there is clearly observable a definite and growing sense of the unity of rural America, a recognition that the farm life of the nation is one fabric and that the differences between sections and regions are surface differences only. The problems of mortgages and markets, of tenancy, of soil erosion, and of proper land use are problems not of one area alone but of all, and they may be solved only by concerted planning from the point of view of the nation as a whole. Another outstanding characteristic of present-day rural life is the vast adult education movement--it has been described as the greatest in the world-- which is being conducted by about 9,000 county farm and home demonstration agents, by Smith-Hughes teachers, and by representatives of university extension departments and other institutions. This movement is contributing greatly to the technical knowledge and efficiency of those who live on the farms and in the villages of the nation. More than that, it is extending and expanding the interests and the horizons of farm families. Rural discussion groups under the leadership of agricultural extension workers in almost every state in the Union now discuss, not merely farm operations, but imports and exports, war and peace, capital and labor, population trends and other topics relating to citizenship. They discuss also family budgets, health and education, books, music, art, and religion. Where once their attention was centered upon making a living, they are now concerned also with the intangibles which contribute to the satisfactions of life. In the midst of these tumultuous changes, our concern for rural libraries has been rather with their organization and financing than with the duties they should perform. We have been thinking quantitatively, in terms of the forty million country dwellers who have no libraries. We have talked of county and regional libraries, of state and federal aid in financing library service. TRANSPLANTED INTO RURAL SETTINGMeanwhile, the rural library remains much as it was yesterday--an urban institution transplanted into a rural setting. Certain adaptations have been made, it is true, to rural conditions but these are superficial and casual rather than fundamental and reasoned. This new unity and the broad adult education activities which are affecting rural life so profoundly appear to call for consideration of tomorrow's rural libraries in terms of function rather than of organization. Here is an almost limitless new frontier, if librarians can analyze correctly the needs of the times and can devise libraries to meet these needs. What should they be like--these libraries of tomorrow? Of course, none of us is omniscient enough to say. Perhaps, however, some suggestions of possible future trends may be found in a brief description of several small units of rural library service in the Tennessee valley, which have grown up within the past three or four years, under these new conditions of rural life. The program of the Tennessee Valley Authority is the planning and development of a river system and its drainage area to realize the maximum usefulness of all its natural resources in promoting the economic and social well being of its people. This involves building dams for flood prevention and navigation, and utilizing their by-product, electricity, to lighten the burdens of human labor; encouraging types of land use which will enrich the soil and at the same time, by preventing soil erosion, retard the filling of reservoirs and channels with silt; promoting an understanding of the problems of the area and stimulating such changes in ways of living and working as will result in the most effective use of these natural resources. It is an experiment in the planning of a region, conducted with the purpose of deriving information and experience which may be useful to the nation as a whole. Three dams have been completed and four more are under construction. The authority employs from twelve to fifteen thousand people, some of whom live in construction camp villages, while others live at their homes in the country and travel to and from their work each day. As a contribution to employee efficiency and morale, the authority maintains for employees a training program which includes library service. In each construction center there is a camp library which has three main functions--to serve as a special library for the local training branch, to serve as a community library for employees and their families, and to function as a center for library service in the surrounding area, to such an extent as the requirements of the TVA program warrant. The camp library is located in the community building side by side with classrooms for children of employees who live on the reservation, commissary, auditorium-gymnasium, lounge, post office, and barber shop. Ordinarily it subscribes for about one hundred magazines and newspapers and has a book collection of four or five thousand titles. Each library is an integral part of a vigorous adult education program. There are adult education activities in seven areas of the valley. In a recent typical month, 133 organized classes were conducted with an attendance of 6,535 persons. The subjects studied embraced the whole range of job training and general adult education. The educational preparation of participants varied from elementary school to college graduation. Instructors were drawn from the ranks both of labor and of the professions and included volunteer as well as full-time trained teachers. During the same period, approximately 5,500 borrowers withdrew from the various libraries 12,875 books. A TEST OF STAFF VERSATILITYThis integration of the library with an extensive adult education program calls for a very versatile--not to say unconventional--library staff. The functions, other than the customary library services, performed in a typical month by its members may include the planning and conduct of forums and community meetings; selection of motion pictures; promotion of hobby shows and other recreational exhibits; and conferences with faculty members, training staff instructors, workers committees, county farm and home demonstration agents, local librarians, school teachers, and other leaders in the area. The library staff helps, as a matter of course, in school and adult education programs, and in turn both school and training staff members, as well as volunteer workers, help in the library program. It is a normal occurrence during the day to find a librarian in classroom or workshop, and a teacher at the charging desk in the library. Out in the area away from the government reservation, almost anyone you meet may be a librarian, whether he be a postmaster, filling station operator, teacher, county farm agent, safety engineer, forester, saw filer, time checker, or a guard. With this variety of activities and of personnel, it is not surprising that the book collections vary from those usually found in libraries of similar size. Selection of books is made a cooperative enterprise wherein the specialized education, the experience, and the individual interests of training staff, school faculty, and public are actively sought. It has not been a premeditated policy, but a response to public demand, which has led to special emphasis on the natural sciences, the useful arts, and social and economic subjects. Pamphlets, bulletins, and magazines are bought and circulated freely. So-called "basic" books are borrowed from nearby libraries to meet infrequent calls for them. In fact, observation of the books which actually are used and those which are not tends to shake--not to say shatter--one's faith in the efficacy of "basic" book lists. There are few devices of book distribution, whether they may be regarded technically as good or bad, which these libraries do not use. Most employees live in homes scattered throughout the valley, not in the construction camps, and wherever they live or work, the library follows. Books go in boxes to crews at work in reservoir clearance areas and in bags to community meetings. They occupy shelves in filling stations, post offices, schools, stores, and homes. They are carried in trays in the cars of family relocation workers and of county farm and home demonstration agents. At one of the dams a little open-front booth, fitted with shelves, has been built on each bank of the river, adjacent to the time office, where it serves as a shelter for approximately two hundred books. Here it is possible for any one of a thousand or more workmen, at any time of day or night, to select and charge out his books without assistance or red tape. Observation of this experiment over a period of several weeks leads us to think that in these construction crews are many potential readers who will do a considerable amount of substantial reading when books are made as easily accessible as cigarettes or pulp magazines, and that these unsupervised, self-serve book deposits are a feasible, safe means of book distribution. The effort is made to reach employees through their own communities whenever possible rather than through an extension of service from the camp library. Sometimes there is a local public or school library in the home community, again a subscription library operated by a women's club. More often than not, it is inconveniently located, has limited open hours, and a meager stock of books. Nevertheless, almost always someone connected with its management knows that it might and should be a much more useful instrument of education than it is. It has proved surprisingly easy for these local leaders to persuade the village or county governing body to make an appropriation for its improvement, as a matter of cooperation with a national agency whose goal is to improve the economic and social conditions of the area. This increased local support makes possible longer hours of service and at least a few more books. It gives the library a new importance in the public mind as an institution obligated to serve the nation as well as the locality. When the book shelves begin to bear interesting current books which deal with the problems of farming, health, education, government, and the other social and economic features of rural life, a realization of the library's true potentialities begins to form. Such experiences and observations as these seem to suggest that if tomorrow's rural libraries are to meet tomorrow's needs, they should be staffed by able and versatile librarians who value the philosophy and the objectives of librarianship above its techniques and who can draw into cooperation with their programs many diverse agencies and individuals; that their book collections should be relatively small working libraries, strong in science, the arts, and economics, selected for their everyday usefulness, rather than for their abstract virtues or the values they may have at some distant date for some hypothetical seeker after knowledge, and that methods of book distribution should be marked by flexibility and ingenuity in getting books used rather than by technical proficiency in custodianship and record keeping. The foundations of the nation's security rest upon a wholesome, stable, and prosperous rural civilization. If tomorrow's rural libraries are to have an essential place in such a civilization, their objectives must have national unity and breadth, even while their local services respond sympathetically to variations in local conditions. The libraries of our agricultural colleges are strategically situated to comprehend the interests of community, state, and nation. They have intimate, daily contacts with both present-day and future leaders in country life. It is their business to know the ever shifting problems of rural America, and where to look for their solutions. Consequently, they can contribute vitally to the building up of that effective, nation-wide network of rural library service demanded by these new conditions of the nation's country life.
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