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Show p0($0 Whal vShaB If hefafa LIBRARIAN? How your boy may learn a valuable occupation and acquire the equivalent of a college education edu-cation at the same time. The 6tart of the youngster who wants to become a librarian, and the final monetary and Intellectual In-tellectual reward. The various steps upwards generally described. de-scribed. BY C. W. JENNINGS. Tj J7 OUR boy a librarian? V-J?l Well, suppose it does re-VkMw re-VkMw Quire a lot of literary knowledge which, before ca;y;te one can get very far up the ladder, means the equivalent of a college education, with a lot of extra learning besides be-sides there will be room in this profession for your boy. Just the same, If only he possesses the grit and application that the average boy that gets on in the world does. It is one of the few lines of progress that gives every opportunity to enable the young man to improve himself, -and when tie does get to the top he has the satisfaction of being in an occupation occu-pation that is not exceeded in all that makes a thoughtful life worth living by any in the world. Of course, education and adaptability adaptabil-ity mean everything, if the aspirant is going to get on. If he should possess the whole learning of the world, and can't apply it instantly, it is worthless to him and he will not succeed as librarian. li-brarian. For instance, a graduate of Oxford and holder of several college degrees failed to display the adaptability adapta-bility of a boy of eighteen, when given job in a big city library, just because be-cause he kept his knowledge of literature liter-ature pigeonholed where he could not find it readily; and so he had to go. But, taking up the profession from the beginning, your boy, after having finished the grammar school, should appiy to tne iiDranan or tne city ne wishes to settle in. The larger the city, the better; for largest cities have the largest libraries, which means more extensive training, and, therefore, there-fore, greater ability. Librarians in smaller cities are generally chosen from those trained in the larger. New York city, for example, frequently j sends out men and wuuien to take charge of libraries elsewhere, even to such important institutions as those having half a million volumes. If your boy wishes to start in New York city, and can convince the librarian libra-rian that he is bright and ambitious, and there is an opening, which Is by no means improbable, he will be put to work at a salary of $18 a month. He will be employed from eight to five o'clock, with an hour off for luncheon, and will be kept largely at the desk, to learn the methods of getting get-ting books for readers and returning them to the shelves, how application slips are made out and handled, the keeping of records, and the general conduct of the business. After proving himself for three months, his pay is increased to $22.50 a month, which will be the rate for the next year. By this time your boy will begin to get hold of himself, as it were, and know some of the things he must acquire ac-quire if he expects to get on. It looks simple enough for a boy to take the visitor's slip asking for, say Hegel's ' "Philosophy of History;" but there are thousands of works on philosophy and history scattered through the library, over yards and yards of shelves, under different headings and groupings, and it is the duty of the boy to go at once to the exact shelf and position on the shelf for that particular work. The sooner he acquired the knowledge of the library and method of indexing and placing books, the sooner will he make himself valuable in that department depart-ment His pay grows to $25 a month the second year, and then he will be learning learn-ing to return books to their proper places, which is more difficult than to find them, for a misplaced book is lost, even if it should be on an adjoining ad-joining shelf. Where, for instance, would he put Tyndall's "Science of Sound," under "Science," or "Ac-coustics," "Ac-coustics," or Sound," or "Tyndall," or "Physics," or what, and after having found the proper heading, In what particular par-ticular place on the shelf? As he goes on he becomes somewhat some-what of a skilled analyst in finding books that have been misplaced through carelessness or ignorance. The book is in the library, he knows, and it has been misplaced. Now, where would the bungler be apt to have put it There is an opportunity here, as you can see, for your boy to display a lot of cleverness and by so doing attract favorable attention to himself from those over him. After a year at $25 a month, admitting admit-ting ability, your boy becomes what is known as half-attendant at $10 a month, when he Is employed largely at the desk, as well as assisting in the cataloguing department. Suppose the patron asks where he can find something about the Magna Charta, or Sheridan's ride from Winchester, or the salary of the librarian of congress, con-gress, or the number of murders committed com-mitted in Chicago last year, or President Presi-dent Roosevelt's speech in San Fran-cinso, Fran-cinso, it is the attendant's business to know just what book or newspaper or magazine contains it and get It for him at once. He must not send the inquirer to an encyclopedia; for the reader has already looked there. Of course, library workers are not expected ex-pected to be ominiscient; but the nearer near-er they approximate to this the more promising is their outlook. It would be incorrect to say that there are regular steps of advancement advance-ment year by year; but generally speaking, after a year as half-attendant your boy may become full attendant, at-tendant, at $50 a month, providing a vacancy has occurred; then, in another anoth-er year, third assistant, at $60; then second assistant at $60 to $80; then first assistant at $100. Before he goes on up to first assistant assist-ant however, he must have acquired what might be known as a full library li-brary education, which means that he must be able to answer substantially the following specimen questions, taken from an entrance examination to one of the leading library schools: Mentional nationality and century and characterize briefly an Important work by ten of the following: Tasso, Marlowe, Ibsen, Maurice Hewlett, Le-Sage, Le-Sage, Balzac, Sir Francis Bacon, Montaigne, Mon-taigne, Sir Thomas Malory, Lessing, Walter Pater, Taine, Swinburne, Lan-dor, Lan-dor, James Bryce. State briefly what you know of the literary work of the following: Saint-Beuve, Saint-Beuve, Turgenicff, Dante Gabriel Ro-settl, Ro-settl, Heine, Thomas DeQuincy. Write an account of the poets and poetry of England at the end of the eightenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Name five important writers of ancient an-cient Greece, and specify in what department de-partment each is famous. Of ancient Rome. Describe (only about five lines each) the character of the following: "The Faerie Queene," "The Rubaiyat" "Idylls of the King." Name five of the greatest American essayists; characterize briefly the literary lit-erary work of each, and mention the title of their greatest works. Name two famous allegories; three famous histories of the United States; nve great world epics; two famous satires; five children's classics. Write a criticism of one of the following; fol-lowing; Thomas Carlyle, Victor Hugo, Robert Browning. Then followed other questions on the Donkhobors, radium, Henry Clay, the Hauseatic league, PestalozzI, etc., and reading in German and French. One. thing that enables your boy to do this Is that he is encouraged by his superiors to read good literature dur-li-S every moment he can spare from his work; and he should also attend night school, and absorb everything possible that he can concerning standard stand-ard and other literature. He must also have a good reading knowledge of French and German, and he will find it to his advantage if he acquires other languages. He must know how to analyze and index new , books, whether In his own or in another language. In the New York public library, for example, from 15,000 to 20,000 cards a month are added to the Index, and it may be necessary to have as many as 20 cards on one volume vol-ume to cover the contents adequately. He must know the shelves where new books should be placed. Your boy also must know the important im-portant characteristics of new volumes vol-umes that are issued, and be able to forecast the probable popular demand for them. Considering that there are 150,000 new volumes published in the world every year, and that the 10,000 libraries of the United States have 100,000,000 volumes In them, the magnitude mag-nitude of this task may appear appalling; ap-palling; but the nearer your boy approximates ap-proximates to it the better librarian he will be. It is up to him to make good as In everything else, and he has ahead of him the important position posi-tion of librarian In a large city at a salary of from $3,000 to $5,000 a year, or even that of librarian of congress, who draws $6,000. Far more important import-ant than the salary, however, Is the honor and comfort and mental development devel-opment and general satisfaction to be obtained in his' calling, which is probably prob-ably not excelled in any branch of l . e l- me v urn. (Copyright 1910, by the Associated Literary Lit-erary Press.) |