assistance possible in forwarding such an enterprise
in any town in the state.

CO-OPERATION BETWEEN LIBRARY AND COMMUNITY

A paper that originally appeared in _The Springfield
Republican_, Dec. 1, 1899, and was reprinted in Home
Education Bulletin No. 31 of the University of the State of
New York. The author, Miss M. Anna Tarbell of Brimfield,
Mass.

The use of the word cooperation in connection with the public library
implies that the library is not simply a collection of books, that it is
not a passive institution, a repository of treasure, but an active
institution reaching out to bestow benefits. The library spirit means
not only cooperating with all uplifting forces in the community, but
creating and stimulating such forces. The library spirit seeks to carry
brightness into gray and toilworn lives, to give broad vision in place
of the narrow and distorted view, to awaken generous sympathies and
noble thoughts in place of sordid desires and petty interests. Imbued
with this spirit, the librarian will be a lover of humankind,
sympathetic, earnest, self-sacrificing, a true missionary, enthusiastic
withal and eager to seize upon ways and means by which the library may
more and more be made to enrich human life. But however abundant in
resources the library, and however zealous and efficient the librarian,
there is a limit to the work that can be accomplished on the library
side for the promotion of intellectual life and general culture. There
needs to be a larger and more intelligent demand on the community side
for the supply which the library offers. To stimulate this demand there
is needed the cooperation of those people and those institutions in the
community that possess special opportunities for increasing the use and
influence of the library, or in any way making human life wiser, better
and happier. This cooperation may be both direct and indirect, since all
culture influences are by nature cooperative with that of the library. I
shall dwell specially on the need of stimulating cooperation on the side
of the community, for the reason that the library has already taken the
initiative, and because library privileges are so abundant in
Massachusetts, so freely offered and eagerly extended, without a
proportionate response to these privileges on the part of the public.

While dwelling most upon the importance of its educational influences, I
would not underrate the province of the l