College and Research Libraries


.• 

By MARGARET G. COOK and LILI HElMERS 

Extended College Library 
Service to ·Teachers 

The generous utilization of nonbook teach­
ing materials at the New 1 ersey State 
Teachers College~ at Montclair~ justifies 
the description here given jointly by Miss 
Cook~ the college librarian~ and Miss H eim­
ers~ director of the teaching aids service in 
the library. 

T HE COLLEGE LIBRARIAN derives much pleasure from hearing his library re­
ferred to as "the heart of the college." 
In particular, the librarian of a teachers' 
college or school of education points with 
pride to a per capita circu~ation of books 
four or five times that of the liberal arts 
college, as reported by Bransc·omb in Teach­
ing With Books. But as teaching methods 
change it has become more and more neces­
sary that the college library which has a 
part in the preparation of teachers provide 
not only the traditional library materials, 
i.e.~ books, pamphlets,' magazines, and pic­
tures, but every sort of teaching aid, with 
the equipment necessary for its use. 

In the course of this paper the expression 
"teaching aid" will be used frequently. 
The collection at the New Jersey State 
Teachers College, at Montclair, amassed 
and administered by one of the authors of 
this article, includes charts, exhibits, slides 
and film slides, educational games, graphs, 
pictures, posters, maps, models, radio 
scripts, motion picture stills and scenarios, 
records and recordings, and various illus­
trated pamphlets and other publications. 

Units of work, lesson plans, the newest edi­
tions of textbooks, and files of state and 
local courses of study may well b~ con­
sidered a part of such a collection. The 

. many weekly and monthly periodical serv­
ices available for classroom use ( World 
News of the Week~ Current Events~ Le 
Petit 1ournal~ Science News-Letter~ are 
familiar examples) deserve a place. The 
student teacher will also use globes, sand 
tables, relief maps made of all sorts of 
easily secured materials, dolls and puppets, 
and many other things which she and her 
pupils will be stimulated to make by the 
materials available to her. Films, omitted 
here, are discussed later in this article. 

The collection of teaching· aids built up 
at Montclair during the past six years has 
been made available to students and former 
students of the college, and selected lists for 
teachers in many subject fields have been 
published. Believing that the principles 
and procedures developed there may be of 
interest and value to librarians in simi­
lar institutions, the following summary has 
been prepared, with suggestions for the 
establishment of similar departments m 
other teachers' college libraries. 

Newer Teaching Methods 

In recent months a great deal has been 
said and written about "learning the G.I. 
way." Both educational periodicals and 
daily papers have been full of articles de­
scribing the Army and Navy methods of 

JUNE~ 1945 199 



training, with sand tables, demonstrations, 
film slides, motion pictures, etc. It is de­
plorable that training for war was needed 
to remind teachers that the most effective 
methods have always included the use of 
multisensory aids. The fundamental idea 
of "learning by doing" has been foremost 
in the m'anual training and vocational school 
and .in the kindergarten and primary grades. 
Unfortunately, as the subject matter to be 
taught becomes more diversifie<l and more 
complex, the teacher is apt to lose sight of 
the child's natural ways of learning and 
tries to get along, too often, with textbook 
and recitation, and even with the lecture, 
in the high school grades. . 

There are many :reasons for unimagina­
tive methods of teaching. . Probably the 
most nearly universal is that the teachers 
find difficulty in laying their hands on 
inspirational materials which lead to creative 
activity for both teacher and pupil and 
away from imitation and verbal reproduc­
tion. Perhaps the teacher has fallen a prey 
to the common misconception of the term 
"visual aids," believes that motion pictures 
are the only materials to which the term 
may be applie'd, and is unable to use them 
for lack of equipment. After the war 
probably few schools will be with'out at 
least one sound projector, but even if no 
more are av:ailable teachers need not be 
handicapped in their use of multisensory 
aids. 

The art teacher has never attempted to 
get along without paper and crayons. Per­

, haps the music teacher may have had to do 
without a piano, a radio, and even a phono­
graph and records, but she has always 
had a pitch pipe, her own voice, and the 
voices of her pupils for demonstration. 
Most of us learned geometry without ever 

• going out to compute the height of the 
school building by measuring its shadow. 
Also, we read laboriously in Latin about 
a day m a Roman house, looked apatheti­

cally at a blurred picture in the textbook, and 
w~re denied the joy of making a model of 
clay, salt, and flour, or plasticine, and 
peopling it with a f~mily of dolls m toga 
and tunic. 

Responsibilities of the College Library 

The library of a college preparing teach­
ers has a greaf responsibility. It should 
provide not only the stimulus of' books and 
of the information embodied in the printed 
word but also the actual materials with 
which the prospective teacher will ~ork. 
Many teachers' college libraries have exhibit 
collections of textbooks, largely through the _ 
generosity and vision of the publishers. But 
these collections have now become almost 
static because of restrictions on paper. The 
collection of teaching aids is under no such 
restrictions. The sources from which ope 
may secure pictures, graphs and charts, 
pamphlets, models, blueprint~, film slides, 
maps, etc., are practic~lly unlimited. And 
the resources of the human imagination, 
when stimulated to creative effort by all 
these riches, are unlimited also. 

It is, then, the belief of the authors of 
this paper that .the iibrary in a college pre­
paring teachers should include a department 
which might · be termed a laboratory ·for 
teaching methods. This department .shouid 
contain samples of all the types of teaching 
aids which have been enumerated, and many 
more. It should contain ·materials for . 
every subject field in which the students of 
the college are preparing to teach and, if 
possible, for every phase of those fields. 
It should have, for dem.onstration purposes, 
slides of all sorts, records, and recordings. 
It should have full charge of ali the equip­
ment for the use of these materials. A 
member of the library staff should be re­
sponsible not only for scheduling the use 
of this equipment and keeping it in good 
condition but he should be able to instruct 
the college students in its use. 

COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 200 



The centralization of these materials and 
this equipment in the college library has 
many advantages. It gives the librarian 
the opportunity to extend his services into 
every phase of the curricul urn and keeps 
the library constantly within the attention 
of every instructor and every student. It 
makes every member of the library staff 
more acutely aware of the actual needs of 
teachers and prospective teachers, less in­
clined to the academic isolationism into 
which many librarians are apt to fall, more 
flexible in his use of the technical processes 
of librarianship, and more imaginative in 
his response to calls for assistance and in 
his approach to those who try to teach with­
out the library's resources. 

The interrelationships among the depart­
ments of the college are already evident 
in the correlation of instruction in art, 
music, literature, geography, and history, 
on the one hand, and in mathematics, 
science, and geography, on the other. The 
materials collected at Montclair as teaching 
aids indicate that equally close relation­
ships exist between subjects previously con­
sidered alien to one another. We are learn­
ing that a student may want material on 
rhythm without having any thought of a 
song, a poem, or a dance. He wants a 
bridge, a landscape, or a geometrical pat­
tern. Again, the importance of harmonics 
to the violinist is obvious, but the student 
of physics, mathematics, or physiology may 
be interested in them, too. The concentra­
tion of these materials in the college library, 
therefore, is just as necessary as the centrali­
zation in the library of books which pertain 
to two or many fields, and the cataloging 
of them just as rewarding as making of 
subject entries for useful books. 

The assembling in one place of the equip­
ment necessary for the fullest use of many 
of the teaching aids is similarly important. 
First, it makes expensive duplication almost 
unnecessary. By scheduling its use through 

JUNEJ 1945 

one agency, every piece can be utilized to 
the fullest extent, instead of .being allowed 
to lie idle for weeks in one teacher's closet. 

· A few rooms may be furnished with a 
screen and dark shades and m;:tde acousti­
cally acceptable for all classes, and thus 
there can be avoided the great expense of 
darkeni.ng and equipping the classroom of 
every teacher who intends to make occa­
sional use of films, slides, or opaque pro­
jection. 

Experience shows, 9f course, that dupli­
cation of some machines is necessary. The 
music department needs a phonograph and 
records in each music classroom. But the 
"listening room" for the use of students 
should be attached to and administered by 
the library, which will provide the recor.ds. 

Centralization of Control 

Second, the centralization of control 
places the responsibility for the condition 
of equipment upon the one person who ad­
mtmsters it. If this person is also re­
sponsible for training students and faculty 
members . to use the machines and schedules 
these trained operators whenever the ma­
chines are in use, the possibility of damage 
and costly repairs is minimized. 

Third, the fact that excessive duplication 
of equipment is avoided means that it is 
possible to have a sample of every type of 
audio-visual equipment without unreason­
able expenditure. A student graduating 
from a teacher-training institution should 
be familiar with the operation of the fol­
lowing: sound motion picture projector, 
opaque projector with 3 by 4 inch slide 
attachment, overhead slide projector, pro­
jector for 2 by 2 inch slides and film 
slides, microfilm reader, phonograph, radio, 
and ·playback for using radio transcriptions 
and speech recordings played at thirty-three 
and one-third revolutions per minute. 

The development of a teaching aids lab­
oratory involves procedures on five levels: 

201 



planning, acqms1t10n, indexing or catalog­
mg, physical preparation of materials, and 
use. Experience during the past six years 
has shown the methods which will be 
described to be, in the language of the 
mathema.tician, both necessary and suffi­
cient. Procedures which experience proved 
valueless have been discarded and others 
which seemed indispensable have been in­
troduced. Many standard library practices 
have been violated. 

Planning 

It may be assumed t~at the librarian who 
has decided to add a teaching aids depart­
ment will find a way to house it. There 
may be, in a crowded library, sufficient 
empty shelves so that, by shifting books, a 
section of stacks can be devoted to these 
materials. There may be a small class­
room or office next to the library or across 
the hall. One attic or basement room, if 
properly arranged, will do for the nuclear 
collecti<:m, and another for the equipment. 
As its usefulness is demonstrated, the ad­
ministrative officers of the college may be 
persuaded of the need for an accessible 
room, special cases, vertical and card files, 
display cases, and bulletin boards. If a 
college is so fortunate as to have a library 
building, the problem is reduced to that 
of procuring equipment and deciding where 
to locate it. 

No doubt the college already owns many 
materials which should be collected in a 
central place. The arguments given above 
soon convince the administration that the 
centralization of equipment is both economi­
cal and efficient. The members of the 
departments of instruction respond to other 
arguments. The budget of the science de­
partment must cover chemicals, electrical 
equipment, living and preserved specimens, 
as well as test tubes and laboratory tables. 
If those concerned can be assured of the 
availability of projectors and screens, they 

•will be glad to dispense with expenditure 
of their own funds for them. Also, a 
department which has had the exclusive use 
of certain equipment may be persuaded to 
give it up when its members find that it 
will be used by trained operators so that 
they need no longer be responsible for its 
operation and repair. Finally, instructors 
soon learn that the librarians have access 
to many more sources of films, slides, records, 
etc., than they have, and discover with de­
light the pleasures of using this material 
when it is borrowed, rented, or, in extreme 
cases, purchased through the library as a 
clearinghouse, when a room is prepared and 
an operator assigned, and when they are 
notified of materials secured for the use of 
others which will have value for them 
as well. 

Though the conviction cannot be empha­
sized too strongly that films and film slides 
are not by any means the only important 
media for audio-visual instruction, the es­
tablishment in the college library of a 
central bureau for their acquisition and 
distribution is without doubt · the most 
effective method of persuading the whole 
college that the library is the best source 
of all teaching materials. 

Equipment and Furniture 

-It was · suggested earlier that a "portion 
of the stacks might be cleared to house 
the initial collection of teaching aids. This 
is fairly satisfactory, in the beginning, for 
units which may be filed in envelopes or 
small boxes and for sets of pamphlets in 
pamphlet cases. However, as the collection 
grows and larger and more bulky or awk­
ward materials are added, it is necessary 
to have closets or cabinets built especially 
to house them. These would include 
cabinets of odd sizes and shapes, many of 
which are not available from library or 
school supply houses and which would there­
fore have to be made to order. 

COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 202 



How~ver, it should be pointed out that 
glass display cases, both wall and table 
models, should be added to the equipment 
as early as possible. The display of ma­
terials is not only a constant reminder to 
students and faculty that the service is 
availalJle, but it should be a frequent task 
of students to prepare exhibits under the 
direction of the teaching aids specialist or 
of other members of the instructional staff. 

Staff 

The third step in planning a teaching 
aids laboratory involves personnel. From 
what has already been written here, it is 
evident that the staff member in charge of 
this service must have had a liberal edu­
cation in the broadest sense. Some knowl­
edge of library techniques is useful, but it 
is not so important as teaching experience 
or as an experience in a teachers' college 
library long enough to make one aware of 
the problems which teachers face. Briefly, 
the administrator of this department must 
combine the qualities of teacher, referepce 
librarian, cataloger, and collector, with 
persuasiveness, tact, accuracy, interest in 
detail, and imagination. A member of the 
reference staff with teaching experience 
would probably be the best choice. It is 
of the utmost importance that every member 
of the staff be convinced that the materials 
to be handled are at least as important as 
books and should be treated with the same 
regard. 

The physical preparation of the materials 
and the typing and filing of . catalog and 
other cards may be handled by members of 
the cataloging or acquisitions department 
or, better, by student assistants or appren­
tices who, while rendering service to the 
library, are at the same time preparing 
themselves to take charge of teaching aids 
collections in their own schools. 

When the teaching aids department has 
been provided with a home, a minimum of 
equipment, and the services of a staff, the 

final step in planning for its development 
is reached. It is at this paint that a de­
tailed study of the curriculum is necessary. 
In order to be able to choose teaching ma­
terials one must be fully acquainted with 
every course in the college curriculum and 
with the courses ,of study for the grades 
and subjects which the students of the 
college are preparing to teach. The mem­
bers of the reference staff will be most 
helpful at this stage. They can contribute 
a great deal from their experience with 
the students who come to them for help 
in preparing lesson plans, units of work, 
reports, etc. 

Possibilities for service · 

However, the requests of students are 
necessarily much narrower than the possi­
bilities for service. These may be explored 
in a number of ways. This research should 
begin with examination of the catalog de­
scriptions of the courses given at the college 
and include a study of the outlines used 
by the instructors, if these are available. 
An alert library staff will be fairly well 
aware of the contents of most of the courses 
before this· enquiry is made. 

While courses of study used in various 
parts of the country may vary in details, the 
actual body of knowledge to be covered lies 
within certain limits and examination of one 
or two courses in each field will yield a fairly 
comprehensive picture of the information 
to be acquired by pupils of any grade. By 
adding to this information that derived from 
examination of two or three widely used 
textbooks for each grade and subject, the 
teaching aids librarian is able to judge with 
considerable accuracy whether or not any 
given piece of information or graphic pres­
entation will fit into the curriculum of the 
college or fit the grades and subjects in 
which its graduates will teach. 

When the subject matter to be covered 
is clearly in mind, it is simple to decide 

JUNE_, 1945 203 



which materials to acqmre and to find 
where to get them. A number of agencies 
are distributing such information. The 
A.L.A. Booklist~ the Library Journal~ and 
the Wilson Company publish lists of "free 
and inexpensive materials." With the ex­
ception of the Wilson Company's Educa­
tional Film Catalog~ however, these , are 
not directed specifically toward education. 
The Teaching Aids Service of the library 
of the New Jersey State Teachers College, 
at Montclair, has, since 1938, published lists 
of teaching aids in sixteen subject fields. 
These represent extensive research in most 
of the subjects covered by the secondary 
curricul urn and in many sections of the 
elementary curriculum as well. A price 
list of these publications will be sent to 
enquirers _upon request. In addition, the 
service is glad to give information from its 
files on subjects not covered by the printed 
lists and to supplement the lists with up­
to-date information received since their 
publication. The work done by the Edu­
cational Film Catalog~ however, is not 
duplicated. 

Acquisition 

In beginning to collect teaching materials, 
it is wise to choose some items for each 
department of instruction. The advantages 
of such impartiality outweigh the disadvan­
tages. While an embryonic collection of 
fifty items offers little for any one course, 
it does give to everyone a foretaste of .riches 
to come and a sense of impartiality in serv­
ice which the library, of course, fosters at 
all cost. 

The publications of the Montclair Teach­
ing Aids Service list many items which 
cost as little as five, ten, and twenty-five 
cents. It is recommended that libraries 
begin with these: their low cost is no index 
of their value, and a large collection may, 
be acquired in a short time, with little 
effort and. small expense. A form postal 

card may be made up and mimeographed 
in lots of two hundred or more. A printed 
or typed form with the name of the college 
as heading carries much more weight with 
manufacturers and publishers than a hand­
written card, and many things for which a 
low charge is usually made may be sent 
free if the card brings out clearly the p_ur­
poses for which the material will be used. 
A warning should be given here against 
permitting students to write for materials. 
They are careless and their wording is in­
effective, in most cases. In any event, each 
card should be dated and should bear the 
signature of a library official. 

There need be no hesitation about using, 
in the classroom, ma.terials supplied by 
manufacturers. Very few contain advertis­
ing other than the name and address of 
the firm. Frequently these materials are 
written by educational departments and are 
intended to give consumers (including 
school children) accurate information upon 
the sources_, manufacturing processes, and 
uses of their products. Naturally the manu­
facturer is the best source of such informa­
tion and the persons who prepare the 
rna terial are recognized as experts. 

It will be noted that films have not been 
mentioned as a part of these collections. 
The authors believe that no attempt should 
be made to purchase an adequate collec'tion 
of sound films for this department. Those 
desired for classroom use in the college 
may be borrowed or rented, and it need 
not be a function of this service to provide 
them for use in other schools. There are 
several arguments in favor of such a policy: 
( 1 ) many films become obsolete in a year 
or two under present conditions; (2) the 
cost of original purchase, plus replacement 
footage, is further increased by the necessity 
for staff to examine, repair, and handle the 
stock; and ( 3) provision must be made for 
safe storage in a cool dry room. It has 
been found quite feasible to borrow and rent 

. 204 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



films from various parts of the country, and 
infinitely cheaper. 

Classification 

The scheme of classification for a collec­
tion of teaching aids should be similar to 
that commonly used in a vertical file or 
information file, i.e.J an alphabetical ar­
rangement by subjects. However, to be 
practical, the scheme should correspond as 
closely as possible to the departments of 
instruction. For that reason an arrange­
ment by subject which has some of the 
flexibility and expansibility of a numerical 
system seems advisable. Much material 
falls into such large groups as "Science," 
"History," "Mathematics," with such sub­
divisions as ''Science-Chemistry," "Science 
-Physics," "History-France," and 
"Mathematics-Algebra." Specific head­
ings, such as "Electricity," may be used 
because the materials under them are ap­
plicable to many fields. 

C.ataloging and Physical 
Preparation of Units · 

Details of these routines have no place 
in a paper of this nature. It may be stated, 
however, that certain variations of standard 
library methods have been found necessa·ry. 
Specifically, there are two types of entries 
which have been found indispensable. The 
first is in a correspondence file, in which 
letters and postals requesting materials are 
recorded, together with the replies. Each 
item is dated. These entries, made in 
longhand at the time of sending or receiving 
mail, are filed alphabetically under the 
names of the firms or institutions addressed. 
They make it unnecessary to keep a file of 
letters and carbons and render it possible to 
see at a glance the extent of dealing with 
each correspondent. 

The second entry is In the information 
cards. These are subject entries filed in 
the subject catalog . of te~ching aids. In-

JUNEJ 1945 

stead of describing units actually in the 
teaching aids collection, however, they give 
information on available films and on 
·expensive materials (such as globes, wall­
maps, screens, and other projection equip­
ment), as well as references to individual 
pamphlets, illustrated books, sets of pictures, 
etc., which are elsewhere in the library's 
collection. Many of these entries result 
from careful analysis of picture and film 
catalogs and again, as in the case of the 
correspondence cards, obviate the necessity 
of keeping on file a bulky collection of cata­
logs which are themselves poorly classified 
and inadequately indexed. 

Use of- Materials 

The most important function of the 
teaching aids laboratory is to stimulate 
teachers and pupils to create. For example, 
the teacher of fifth and sixth grade social 
studies in a New Jersey school borrowed 
materials for a Pan American Day exhibit. 
The pupils, stimulated by these materials, 
made geography and nature study slides 
relating to their study of Latin America . 

.They built a scale model of the Panama 
Canal. Then they dressed dolls in the cos­
tumes of Latin American countries, using 
books showing how to make and dress dolls 
and studying pictures in the National . 
Geographic Magazine for authenticity. 
The aid of the sewing teacher was enlisted, 
and the activities of four departments (so­
cial studies, science, mathematics, and sew- ­
ing) were correlated. The work could 
have been expanded still further by making 
puppets instead of dolls; and, with the help 
of English, music, and physical education 
teachers, a play might have been written and 
'produced, with sorigs and dances in costume 
by members · of the class as well as by 
puppets . . 

This is merely one example of the use to 
which the teaching aids laboratory can be 

(Continued on page 236) 

205 



provide no general criteria for the housing 
of "an ideal growing collection." It seems 
hardly possible that useful estimates could 
be devised. 

For many years the National Association 
of State Libraries has discussed the feasi­
bility of central clearinghouses in states or 
regions to receive and distribute printed 
matter for appropriate participating mem­
bers. Such a clearinghouse for local im- . 
prints has the approval of t~irteen of the 
libraries in the present group (including 
two colleges) , and it is worth considering 
whether state libraries and academic in­
stitutions could not join forces in one com­
mon age'ncy in each designated area. Some 

of the librarians here consulted (two of 
them at colleges) are lukewarm about a 
clearinghouse; two, both at colleges, are 
against it; and three of those at universi­
ties express no opinion. 

A wide variation of figures and estimates, 
both exact and indefinite, was returned in 
answer to an itemized enquiry into the 
strength of local imprints collections. 
Rather than to generalize and summarize 
here as in the foregoing paragraphs, a pres­
entation of the answers in tabular form may 
be more effective. In a dozen instances . no 
statistics were given or available. With 
one exception, all of these were cases at 
state institutions. 

Extended College Library Service to Teachers 
(Continued from page 205) 

put for the enrichment of teaching. In­ can be extended, not only beyond the cam­

stances could be multiplied indefinitely but pus, but beyond the intangible bounds of 

one is sufficient to show how' the service~ of the actual curriculum of the institu­
the library in a teacher-training instifution tion. 

COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES