Often it is not well to lay great plans and invoke state aid at thevery outset. Make a beginning, even though it be small, is a goodgeneral rule. This beginning, however petty it seems, will give acenter for further effort, and will furnish practical illustrationsfor the arguments one may wish to use in trying to interest people inthe movement.
Each community has different needs, and begins its library underdifferent conditions. Consider then, whether you need most a librarydevoted chiefly to the work of helping the schools, or one to be usedmainly for reference, or one that shall run largely to periodicals andbe not much more than a reading room, or one particularly attractiveto girls and women, or one that shall not be much more than a cheerfulresting-place, attractive enough to draw man and boy from streetcorner and saloon. Decide this question early, that all effort may beconcentrated to one end, and that your young institution may suit thecommunity in which it is to grow, and from which it is to gain itsstrength.
Having decided to have a library, keep the movement well beforethe public. The necessity of the library, its great value to thecommunity, should be urged by the local press, from the platform, andin personal talk. Include in your canvass all citizens, irrespectiveof creed, business, or politics; whether educated or illiterate.Enlist the support of teachers, and through them interest children andparents. Literary, art, social, and scientific societies, Chautauquacircles, local clubs of all kinds should be champions of the movement.
In getting notices of the library's work in the newspapers, or insecuring mention of it from the lecture platform, or in clubs, andliterary, artistic, and musical societies, it is better to refrainfrom figures and to deal chiefly in general statements about what thelibrary aims to do and what it has done.