A Collaborative Place: The Roots of Collaboration in Indiana Public and School Libraries

Abstract

Let us suppose that the momentous problem is solved of persuading children to use the library for a more serious purpose than to find a book ‘as good as… ’ and that we are trying to convince children that the library… can furnish information on whatever they wish to know about – whether it is some boy who comes on the busiest morning of the week, to find out how to make a puppet show in time to give an afternoon exhibition, or some high-school girl who rushes over in the 20 minutes’ recess to write an exhaustive treatise on women’s colleges. –Miss A.L. Sargent,1895. The “momentous problem” of providing interesting, challenging and fun resources for children and young adults rings as true 108 years later as it did for Miss Sargent. As true is the continual challenge for the librarian serving last minute student crises. In thinking about youth services, I was led to wonder about the two library institutions that serve young people: the school library and the public library. In my MLS courses I have read a great deal on the benefits of strong collaborative efforts between these two entities. Missing from these readings was a sense of a historical relationship between the school and public library. This article examines the early, inter-twinned relationship between school and public libraries in Indiana. The collaboration between the two entities once helped lead Indiana to top education status in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to lay out the historical development of public and school libraries in the state in the hopes of creating a better appreciation for the long and diverse history of the collaboration between the libraries. By knowing where we come from perhaps we can better understand where we are going.