Berea College Extension Library

 

Bares College Extension Library conducts a wide range of activities.
To its pleasant reading room come many teachers from rural schools and
many country folk both adult and children. Here they may happily browse
and choose at will from the well chosen selection of books, or if in
need of advice it is given in such a friendly way by the librarian as to
warm their hearts. Life-brightening is not alone book-loaning in tuis
library.

Regular trips are made each month to schools in Rockcastle and Jack—
son counties. A few schools not accessible by the boochar have books
left for them at convenient places on the route.

Community libraries are placed in neighborhoods within a radius of
15 miles of Berea. Stores, homes, churches gladly assist in the dis-
tribution of these books to the community folk, old and young. Other
community libraries are placed in more distant centers by enterprising
students returning home for summer vacation.

Traveling libraries, numbering seventy-five and containing over
2800 volumes, go out to remote mountain schools. Often these libraries
furnish the only reading material in a neighborhood with the possible
exception of the county paper or an occasional cheap magazine. Seat
work packages and rollections of pictures, posters, clippings, and
stereoscopes and views are also circulated to the schools.

ihrough these various channels of distribution Berea College
Extension Library circulated in 1938-59, 11,684 books.

"One of the teachers set aside one corner of her dark, dingy
school room as 'the library'. Hero, on a home-made table, painted by
the children, were arranged our books and papers. Over it was hung
a picture, and as long as any flowers were to be had, a bouquet added its
touch of brightness. As a reward for lessons learned on time, a child
was permitted to go to the library to read: Who can say how much this
enthusiastic young woman may be doing for her boys and girls in a neigh-
borhood where moonshine is made up every creek, and where there have
been brawls and even a killing almost within a stone's throw of the
schoolhouse.“

"It has been very gratifying to see the improvement in reading from
year to year-~both in the number of readers and in the quality of books
read. When the work was begun three years ago, many of the children in
the upper grades were either reading the simplest stories, suited to
second or third grade, or were not caring to read at all. Of course there
are a few who do not now nor ever will, I suppose, enjoy reading; but
the majority of them are reading books well up to their grade and report-
ing on them."

"we have had eleven Home Reading Circles in use this winter. Three
of these have been placed in new communities ... The books in these lib-
raries are not only for children but for adults as well, and are chosen
with as broad a view as can be done from our limited number of books.

I do appreciate more and more the part those people play, who not only
care for these libraries, but also encourage the use of them. Some of
these are busy mothers with large families of little children; others are