Library service for children
Attempts have been made from time to time, in the name of progress or
professional innovation, to remove distinctions between services to
children and services to other age groups, by integration of the book
stock in public libraries, by merging of a community's public library
and its school library, by pooling of staff in the children's library
and the general library. However the designation of services
specifically for children has remained established practice since the
first children's libraries were opened in Wellington and Dunedin in
1910. The rationale for dedicated stock, services and staffing is
positive; the objective is not the restriction of children's reading but
the enlargement of their reading by exposure to the richness of
children's literature.
This child-centred
view of library service, allied with a thorough knowledge of children's
literature, lay behind the revitalisation of children's librarianship in
the late 1930 and the 1940s. Much of the energy and inspiration for this
came from the experience that was gained overseas by New Zealand
librarians, again with critical Carnegie Foundation support. One of
these agents, Dorothy Neal White (1961), provides a brief history of
children's service to 1946. Trevor Mowbray (1993) extends the account
and describes the state of services at that date.
Another critical event
within this process was the creation of the School Library Service in
1942. It took books to schools and smaller public libraries, and it
provided expertise and guidance in the development of library services
for children. The story of the service in its first 46 years is told by
Lois Luke (1988).
Both the major
surveys, Munn-Barr, and Osborn, made reference in passing to the quality
of services to children, but the area first received individual
attention in a survey conducted in 1974 by the American expert Sara
Fenwick, at the invitation of the NZLA and the New Zealand Council for
Educational Research. The report, Fenwick (1975) provides a useful
description of existing services, and lays down lines for development of
services; it should be read in conjunction with a statistical appendix,
published in 1977. Libraries in schools had been given close scrutiny
the same year, within the context of the Educational Development
Conference: EDC (1974). The pressure generated by the Fenwick Report led
to the establishment of a Government working party on school libraries,
and another landmark document, the Foley Report (1978). The setting and
the significance of the Foley Report are described by P.L. McDonald
(1981).
It was ten years
before research and review on a comparable scale was undertaken. The
National Library examined its own services to young people, and the use
made of various other library services by young people: Chalmers and
Slyfield (1993).