Reading room--Periodicals

A free reading room is generally opened in connection with the
library, and often proves its most attractive feature. It should be
comfortably furnished and scrupulously clean. As the room is for the
use of all clean and orderly people, quiet should be maintained to
give all a chance to read and study without interruption. There should
be no signs commanding things, and the fewest possible--and they
unobtrusive--requesting things. Signs giving information helpful to
readers are always permissible; but see that they harmonize with the
furnishings of the room and are clean. Gray, or some modest tint, is
preferable to white cardboard for all signs. The general atmosphere
of the place should be such as one would wish to have in his own
home--orderly, inviting, cheerful.

The village library ought to preserve for reference a file of local
papers; and it seems proper for it to provide for public use a few
dailies or weeklies from the nearest cities. Further than this in this
direction it would not seem expedient to go, because better work can
be done, with the money newspapers would cost, in other directions.
In fact, where the room is limited, as well as funds, it will often be
better to provide no newspapers at all. Few are unable to get
papers to read elsewhere. The library can well devote itself to
the encouraging the reading of other things. Most people read the
newspapers enough, library or no library. Many, save for the library,
would not read the standard American and English periodicals.

[Illustration: Magazine binder. (Reduced; various sizes.)]

The young people are the library's most hopeful material. To them
the librarian hopes to give, through books and journals, an added
pleasure; and in them he hopes to awaken a taste for reading
something--in time something good. To attract the children it will be
wise to have on file a few juvenile journals and picture papers and
illustrated magazines. As to the standard and popular monthlies
and quarterlies there seems to be no question; they should be taken
freely. The magazines furnish us with the best fiction, the best
poetry, the best essays, the best discussions of all subjects, old
and new, and the latest science. It is a question if many a village
library would not do more, vastly more, to stimulate the mental life
of its community, and to broaden its views and sympathies, and to
encourage study, if it diverted a far larger part o