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                   INTRODUCTION. 
                PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND EDUCATION. 
  For forty years the importance of public libraries as auxiliaries to 
public education has been recognized and dwelt upon by American edu- 
cators wherever common schools have flourished. Beginning as ad- 
juncts of the district schools in New York and Massachusetts, free 
public libraries in some form have been established in nearly twenty 
States of the Union. It was known that within the last quarter of a 
century the number of public libraries had greatly multiplied, and that 
they had assumed a position of commanding importance as an educa- 
tional force, but there were no data for determining the~extent of their
influence. 
                   THE LIBRARIAN AN EDUCATOR. 
  The influence of the librarian as an educator is rarely estimated by 
outside observers, and probably seldom fully realized even by himself. 
Performing his duties independently of direct control as to their details,
usually selecting the books that are to be purchased by the liblrary and
read by its patrons, often advising individual readers as to a proper 
course of reading and placing in their hands the books they are to read,
and pursuing his own methods of administration generally without ref- 
erence to those in use elsewhere, the librarian has silently, almost un-
consciously, gained ascendency over the habits of thought and literary 
tastes of a multitude of readers, who find in the public library their only
means of intellectual improvement. That educators should be able to 
know the direction and gauge the extent and results of this potential 
influence, and that librarians should not only understand their primary 
duties as purveyors of literary supplies to the people, but also realize
their high privileges and responsibilities as teachers, are matters of 
great import to the interests of public education. 
                NECES5ITY FOR A SPECIAL REPORT. 
  Recognizing these conditions, the United States Commissioner of EA- 
ucation began in 1870 to gather and publish the statistics of publiec 
libraries in this country, a work which has been steadily continued each
year since that time. As the statistics became more complete and the 
number of libraries making reports increased, the awakened interest of 
all engaged in educational work expressed itself in more frequent calls