Lillian H. Smith

Lillian Helena Smith (17 March 1887 — 5 January 1983) was the first British Empire children's librarian. Over the course of her career, Smith established library spaces and services for children within the Toronto Public Library, Toronto schools, and at the Hospital for Sick Children. She also helped to create a library classification system that was used for children’s collections at Toronto libraries until the late 1990s. The Lillian H. Smith Toronto Public Library branch, opened in 1995, is named after her.

Lillian H. Smith
Born	Lillian Helena Smith (1887-03-17)March 17, 1887 London, Ontario
Died	January 5, 1983(1983-01-05) (aged 95) Toronto, Ontario
Citizenship	Canadian
Occupation	Librarian
Employer	Toronto Public Library

Early life and education

On 17 March 1887, Smith was born in London, Ontario.^[1] Her mother was an organist and a pianist, and her father was a Methodist minister. From a young age, she took great interest in books and reading.^[2]

She attended Victoria University for her post-secondary education, before completing additional training at the Training School for Children's Librarians at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.^[3]

Career

Smith's library career began in 1911, at the New York Public Library, where she trained under librarian Anne Carroll Moore and was responsible for the children’s room at the Washington Heights Branch.^[4][5]

Work at Toronto Public Library

In 1912, Smith was invited by George H. Locke, then Chief Librarian of the Toronto Public Library, to head the library's Children’s Services department.^[6] In the early days of her work, Smith expanded and refined the children's book collection at the Central Library. She visited schools to read to classes and promote the library. She also promoted the importance of children's literacy through community meetings and book displays. She organized and supervised training and continued professional development for other children's librarians throughout the library system. By 1952, under Smith's leadership, children's library services had expanded to include 16 branches with designated children's rooms, and libraries for children within 30 elementary schools and at the Hospital for Sick Children.^[7]

Boys and Girls House

Beginning in 1912, the “Story Hours” held in children’s rooms at various branches became very popular with patrons, and by 1921, overcrowding in these rooms was a significant issue. As a result, in 1922, the library purchased the property at 40 St. George St, adjacent to the Reference Library, remodeling the home there as a separate children's library, called “Boys and Girls House”.^[8]

The first Boys and Girls House, 40 St. George St.

The new facility contained “Lending Libraries, Reading Rooms, Story Hour Rooms, Club Rooms, Special Collection of Books for Boys and Girls and a High School Reference Library”.^[9] In 1928, an addition to the building was constructed for a Theatre and a designated Story Hour Room. The 1946 annual report for the Toronto library board reported that in that year at Boys and Girls House, 955 Story Hours were held, 60 plays had been put on, and 59 talks had been given to “adult groups” about children’s books.^[10]

The new Boys and Girls House building, opened in 1964

By 1962, the house was “falling to pieces” and was considered unsafe for further use, so plans were made to replace the library building. On April 22, a “farewell party” was held to mark the end of the building’s use. In August of that year, the house was demolished, and construction on the new building began in September. The new facility opened on May 7th, 1964.^[11]

Smith's classification system

In the summer of 1930, the arrangement of books in the Toronto children's library collections was changed from the Dewey Decimal system to a system derived in-house based on the interests and needs of the children using it. ^[8]

The Toronto Public Library had adapted the Dewey Decimal system in 1909, but due to its numerical-based organization, it was a system better suited for adult books than children’s books. Smith and her colleagues had observed that children had difficulty using the Dewey system.^[12]

The new system, which became known as the "Lillian H. Smith Classification" was based on the alphabet, rather than on numbers, and divided books into “intellectual level”: X - Z was for pre-school level, A - V was for junior and senior school levels, and W was for senior school level. Because of the simplicity of this new system, the card catalogue for navigating the shelves was replaced with a simple shelf list.^[13]

The system consisted of the following categories:^[14]

Letter	Topic
X	Picture Books
Z	Little's Children's Books ("Easy books in primer style for children who are learning to read"[15]
A	Fairy Tales
B	Legends
C	Myths
D	Epic Heroes ("Heroes about whom complete cycles of stories have accumulated and been given literary form: e.g. Perseus, Siegfried, Cuchulain, Rustem, and Arthur.")[16]
E	Exploration
F	Famous People
G	History
H	Geography and Description
K	Natural History
L	Science
N	Practical Science ("Includes all the applied sciences and the industries.")[17]
O	Things to Do ("handicrafts and hobbies") [18]
P	Art
Q	Music
R	Plays
S	Poetry
T	The Bible
W	"Standard Fiction ("Works of standard authors such as Dickens, Scott, Thackeray")[19]

This system was retained by children’s services at the Toronto Public Library until the 1990s, at which point the library reverted to the Dewey Decimal system, although the use of X and Z for children’s picture books was maintained.^[20][21]

Later years

Toronto Public Library's Lillian H. Smith Branch

Smith retired in 1952, as the circulation of books in Toronto's children's libraries reached over two million.^[8]

At the end of her career in 1952, Smith had opened up numerous children's spaces in Toronto libraries and schools and one at The Hospital for Sick Children.^[1] Apart from her librarian career, Smith was a teacher and a writer. Smith created guidelines on the inclusion of children's literature in Toronto libraries.^[22] In 1953, she published The Unreluctant Years: A Critical Approach to Children's Literature, which was commissioned by the American Library Association.^[2]

On 5 January 1983, Smith died in Toronto, Ontario.^[23]

Awards and honors

In 1962, Smith received the Clarence Day award.^[2]

In 1995, Boys and Girls House moved to a new location at 239 College St. at Huron St., and was renamed the Lillian H. Smith branch in her honour.^[24][25] It is no longer exclusively a children's library, but a general Toronto library branch.