Library Outreach
Spaulding believed in library outreach and frequently organized traveling libraries, often for military groups. During 1916 he worked with the YMCA to create collections to send to soldiers on the Mexican border and while these collections were small in number, Spaulding strove to ensure they were broad in topic and felt the items would all return well-used. He served as director for the Des Moines Public Library from 1917-1919 when he left to pursue other interests, among them the library & museum project in Peru. He then returned to serve as the Director of the Des Moines Library from 1927-1952. He created what became known as “the waterfront university” in the basement of the Des Moines Library for unemployed men and others that were struggling during the Depression. He was an early adopter of new technology regarding library outreach and he put library programs on the air via WHO radio in 1928. At the heart of Spaulding's convictions regarding human rights and concerns about the threat of censorship was a belief in the power of the written word and an understanding that all people needed to have free and equal access to information.
Read more about this topic: Forrest Spaulding
Famous quotes containing the word library:
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)