Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 179, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1920 — LARGE USE OF PUBLIC LIBRARY URGED [ARTICLE]

LARGE USE OF PUBLIC LIBRARY URGED

The great possibilities of library service as an instrument for 'building up a public-spirited citizenship out of the many unharmonized elements in the nation’s population hqve been expressed by Raymond B. Fosdick, who declined his appointment as American secretary for the League of Nations because of the non-participation of the United States. Mr. Fosdick during the war was chairman of the War Department Commission on Training Camp Activities. He now is supporting the “Books for Everybody” movement of the American Library Association as chairman of the New York City Executive Committee. “Books which are good-citizen makers are short cuts to universal good citizenship,” said Mr. Fosdick. “This doesn’t mean that the immigrant should be given an encyclopedia or learned treatise on economics or political economy." Nor does he want the preachy life of a hero. He wants useful, informing but entertaining books, simply written —nothing too deep. We should touch home and personal interests; give a man some good points for the supper table argument; make him a better citizen _ and better voter without trying to ‘reform* or ‘improve’ him. “A recent estimate by the United States Bureau of Education gives the number of persons in the United States without adequate library service as 60,000,000. Besides this number are 15,000,000 or more foreign-born residents to whom opportunities for self-education never have been adequately presented. This is a great emergency, the real reason for the decline in citizenship. What is needed is effective library activity among these people.” — The promotion of good citizenship is one of the big objectives of the “Books for Everybody” movement, a '