Reel and Slide (Jan-Sep 1919)

REEL and SLIDE 11 Routing vs. Direct to Slide User Plan State Visual Instruction Chief Outlines Method Adopted by New York Bureau Total of 300,000 Lantern Slides Sent to Borrowers by This Office in One Year By Alfred W. Abrams (Chief, Visual Instruction Division, New York State Department of Education) We sent out last year approximately 300,000 lantern slides. There is a steady increase from year to year. Loans are made to institutions and organizations only, such as schools, libraries, granges and study clubs, but through these organizations anyone within the state may obtain these slides. Loans are made solely for free instruction. We sell no slides or other photographic reproductions, and this fact and the long record of our department in this work, over thirty years, gives us access to very many collections of special interest, such as museums, art galleries and private houses, as well as to industrial establishments from which we would be barred if we were doing a commercial business. Our collection covers not only geography, as is usual, but we are undertaking especially to develop work in art, literature and science. I am very certain from a careful survey of various institutions doing this work that we have a much more careful basis for selecting photographic material than is common. Our whole aim is to eliminate the insignificant, to select material because it is truthful, because we know it is authentic. Pictures vary a great deal in the degree of their expressiveness and we eliminate very many that do not express much. We lay a good deal of stress upon quality, because our collection is to serve many organizations and to be useful for a long time. The relative permanence of the interest in a picture enters into its selection. Fixed Set Plan Not Used Our division is, I believe, unique in that it depends for its slides and photographic prints upon original negatives. These negatives are really the basis of our collection. When we know they are suitable for our purpose, they are accessioned and classified like books in a library. Test slides and colored samples are made that give the best possible results we can get get and these tests and samples are used for making all duplicates. When the material is put up in this form, it is easy to duplicate slides or photographs to whatever extent may be necessary or desirable. Besides lantern slides, we furnish photographs for any of the subjects we have announced. These are sent out on mounts of uniform size and are used more for individual study, bulletin boards and similar purposes. Our division is perhaps unique in that it makes very little use of slides in the form of fixed sets. All this material being classified like books in a library, each borrower makes his own selection for his special purposes. We do not encourage the giving of formal lectures, though, of course, it is possible for the slides to be used in this way. I have a feeling that the lecture use of slides is well understood and does not need to be worked up. We are putting our efforts first of all with the schools in an endeavor to develop visual instruction as a vital method of teaching. The basis of the method, I conceive, is genuine observation. This means analysis of pictures used to tak* the place of real things. Along with this goes discussion involving expression on the part of pupils. So much of our school education is gotten through words and there are so few opportunities within schoolrooms to make observations that our educational results are often disappointing. This fact has come to be quite generally recognized, but our problem is to make clear that the mere seeing of pictures is not enough, any more than merely traveling through a foreign country. We are endeavoring to work for ultimate results of a high order. We have gone a long ways already toward providing a vast amount of good pictures. Our collection is "boiled down." As we announce one study after another, each represents a well balanced collection illustrating in an orderly way the more important aspects of the subject. As we carefully avoid stocking up with material of mere passing interest, we have very few pictures in our collection that do not continue to be serviceable year after year. With our negatives and plan of organization we easily multiply copies to whatever extent may be necessary to supply the growing demands, this usually being from twenty to forty duplicates, but often running up to a hundred. There are two main plans in vogue in the United States followed by bureaus of visual instruction for the circulation of slides. One of these is known as the routing plan and the other as the direct to borrower plan. We follow the latter. Under the routing plan slides, of course, must be put up in sets. A certain number of borrowing institutions constitute the route group and the slides pass from one institution to another, according to a fixed order. All members of the group receive all the sets and must use them, if at all, at the time determined by the routing order. Under the direct to borrower plan the borrower receives at the particular time desired the specific material asked for and is able to select from a catalog slides specially suited to his needs rather than being obliged to count upon the selection made by the bureau. Two Methods Now Popular This work was started in New York State thirty-two years ago. It is maintained by an annual appropriation of the legislature. I might refer here to our List 22, on Clay and Clay Products. In this study we have brought together pictures calculated to bring out the following facts : the wide distribution of clay, the use of this substance by every nation from the earliest times, its use for a wide range of articles from the most simple and practical to the most beautiful ornaments and wares. Our collection covers ordinary brickmaking, the manufacture of other practical clay products, china clay, in the pit, process of making pottery, pottery making in other lands, examples of Roman, Celtic, Saxon and Indian pottery and some highly artistic forms. Likewise in our study of coal mining we present through reproductions of fossils characteristic features of the carboniferous age, analyze coal veins as a basis for understanding certain mining operations, represent different methods of getting into the mine, operations of miners, types of miners' lamps, means of ventilating mines and removing water from them. Surface structures and operations are illustrated by another group of pictures covering engine room, head frame, haulage, etc. The social problem of housing miners and the storage and transportation of coal are other topics illustrated. In each of these cases slides sufficient in number and range to cover rather fully all ordinary problems associated with coal mining are offered. Question of Lectures Discussed In a different field of study we have done much in perspective drawing. The pictures are varied in type. They illustrate all the principles of perspective to be noted in viewing all sorts of objects, as chairs, tables, circular objects, actual landscapes, street scenes, paintings, etc. The selection of material was made with a view to training those who use the slides to observe and appreciate perspective in all the things seen about them in daily life. Such a study must be of permanent usefulness, as the principles of perspective do not change and the subject is one in which the interest must continue. Just now we are working on a collection of about 700 bird negatives. None of these are made from museum specimens or book illustrations, but are work of specialists in bird photography. We have been several years getting the material together and beyond all question it is the most complete, interesting and significant collection of bird pictures anywhere to be found. The question is frequently asked as to whether or not we send out "lectures" with our slides, referring to printed or typewritten descriptive material. As a rule we do not. We give some notes calculated to suggest certain points of interest in the pictures or calculated to aid a teacher in determining how to use the material with a class. We also issue with each study a selected bibliography, holding that an important advantage in the visual instruction is the work done by teachers and pupils in the library in connection with an examination of the pictures. This division is not much concerned with providing light entertainment or startling pictorial effects, but it aims to provide for the institutions and organizations that want slides primarily for genuine educational use. It is quite as much concerned with the development of the right method of visual instruction and with training pupils and others how to observe as with enlarging its collection and extending its volume of loans.