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Minerva Sanders was one of the first librarians to offer library services to
children. She was a pioneer of open stacks and free access for children at
a time when other libraries were just not serving children. Minerva Amanda Lewis
was born February 11, 1837, in Marblehead, Massachusetts. She married
Samuel Sanders as a young women but he died in 1863. Then in 1876, she began working
in the Pawtucket Rhode Island subscription library. Three months later,
the board decided to change the library in to a free public library and it offered her the job
of town librarian which she accepted. Under her guidance, the Pawtucket
Free Library became the first library to offer "continuous" services
to children. She instituted a number of innovations to attract children to
the library: she provided reader's guidance, she prepared booklists, she sawed
of legs of tables and chairs (so a child could sit in them comfortably), and she arranged
materials within reach of even the smallest child. She also began
collaborating with the schools because she believed that the library should be
an essential part of a child's education. She strongly deplored the
"die-young-and-go-to-heaven" kind of children's literature.
Instead she sought books that were well-written but would also spark a child's
imagination. She was affectionately referred to as "Mawtucket of
Pawtucket" by the adults and "Auntie Sanders" by the children of
Rhode Island. She died on March 20, 1912, two years after her retirement.
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