A WORD TO BELIEVERS
Address at the closing section of the Church School of Religious
Instruction.

INDEX




A LIBRARIAN'S OPEN SHELF

ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS




DO READERS READ?


Those who are interested in the proper use of our libraries are asking
continually, "What do readers read?" and the tables of class-percentages
in the annual reports of those institutions show that librarians are at
least making an attempt to satisfy these queries. But a question that is
still more fundamental and quite as vital is: Do readers read at all? This
is not a paradox, but a common-sense question, as the following suggestive
little incident will show. The librarian-in-charge of a crowded branch
circulating-library in New York City had occasion to talk, not long ago,
to one of her "star" borrowers, a youth who had taken out his two good
books a week regularly for nearly a year and whom she had looked upon as a
model--so much so that she had never thought it necessary to advise with