ion and, through this, of their
Americanization.

All these problems can be met through the institution of the public
library--a great agency for socializing knowledge in a modern democracy.
Though America is one of the countries most advanced in the development
of public libraries, still the development has not kept pace with the
requirements. This is especially true in regard to the rural
communities. Particularly in rural immigrant communities, the public
library is still lacking. Out of about forty rural immigrant colonies
visited by the writer during the past year, about thirty had no library
facilities at their disposal, while the remaining ten were able to pride
themselves on some sort of a library, either school or parish.

Both these kinds of libraries appear to be very unsatisfactory. As a
rule the school libraries are small and contain mainly children's books,
so that the adults have not much interest in using them. The parish
libraries contain mainly ecclesiastical literature and books on the old
country's history and general affairs. The majority of these last-named
books are in a foreign tongue.

An old Polish settler stated that the children sometimes bring books
home from the school, but that there is nothing in them for the older
people, while the church library is not much, either, for who cares to
read of one Sigismund or of one Friedrich der Grosse? The settler
concluded by saying that he and his fellow immigrants would like to read
American books about America. His colony needed an American public library.

The dean of the extension division of the University of Wisconsin reports
that there are 72 per cent of rural communities which are without public
libraries. This is in a state where the library facilities are
comparatively highly developed. It has been the writers impression, while
visiting the Wisconsin backwoods immigrant communities, that though the
various traveling and package libraries and library "stations" are
successfully operating in other parts of the state, they have not yet
reached these wilderness communities to any extent. As a rule the rural
immigrants do not even know of the existence of such libraries.

PACKAGE LIBRARIES IN WISCONSIN

Yet the demand for literature among the rural population is great and
growing rapidly. Take, for instance, the package library of the
extension division of the above-mentioned university. It has more than
10,000 packages. Each package cont