from figures and to deal chiefly in general statements about what the
library aims to do and what it has done.




CHAPTER III

What does a public library do for a community?


And what good does a public library do? What is it for?

1) It supplies the public with recreative reading. To the masses of
the people--hard-worked and living humdrum lives--the novel comes
as an open door to an ideal life, in the enjoyment of which one may
forget, for a time, the hardships or the tedium of the real. One of
the best functions of the public library is to raise this recreative
reading of the community to higher and higher levels; to replace trash
with literature of a better order.

2) A proper and worthy aim of the public library is the supplying of
books on every profession, art, or handicraft, that workers in every
department who care to study may perfect themselves in their work.

3) The public library helps in social and political education--in the
training of citizens. It is, of course, well supplied with books and
periodicals which give the thought of the best writers on the economic
and social questions now under earnest discussion.