Early Career 1895-1906
In 1896 Moore graduated from Pratt, and accepted an offer to organize a children’s room at that same institute, partly due to a paper which Lutie Stearns had presented at the 1894 meeting of the American Library Association (ALA), “Report on the Reading of the Young”. Up to this point children had usually been considered a nuisance in library settings, and often were excluded from libraries until they were at least 14 years of age. As part of her research into the proposed children’s room, Moore visited kindergartens (also a new concept at the time), toured various ethnic neighborhoods in the area, and even questioned children whom she encountered on the street. Moore then set out to create a welcoming space for children with child-sized furniture, open stacks, cozy reading nooks, story times, puppet shows, summer programming, quality juvenile literature and perhaps most importantly librarians committed to working with children. When Moore opened the children’s room it drew a line of children circling the block awaiting entry.
Moore remained at the Pratt library for ten years. In 1906 she moved to the New York Public Library, having accepted the position of Superintendent of the Department of Work with Children, which Director Dr. John Shaw Billings had offered to her. This rather unwieldy title placed her in charge of children’s programming at all NYPL branches as well as overseeing the Central Children’s Room, which opened in 1911.
Moore also developed a training program for children’s services staff: the “Qualification Test for the Children’s Librarian Grade”. This six-month program included practical training, readings and discussion. She organized hundreds of story times, compiled a list of 2500 Standard Titles in Children’s Literature, and she lobbied for and received permission to loan books to children. The children were required to sign a ledger promising to treat books respectfully, and to return them; "When I write my name in this book I promise to take good care of the books I use in the Library and at home, and to obey the rules of the Library." She also initiated a policy of inclusion, celebrating the ethnic diversity of her patrons through story times, poetry readings and books that celebrated the various backgrounds of recent immigrants to the city.
Read more about this topic: Annie Carroll Moore
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