it have been if it had been on economic lines? Would it have been any different? I wonder. Of the encouragement and assistance I have received from librarians during the many years I have taxed their patience and ingenuity with reference questions I am not going to speak tonight, for the very simple reason that the evening has not minutes enough in which to tell the tale.

The British Museum has, I am told, a register in which any reader may write down the books on his or her topic, wanted but not available. Within a short time of the entry information will be given as to whether the book will shortly be on the shelves. Small libraries with definite purchasing dates and limited funds can not act so promptly but the essential point is there. Encourage your readers to make demands. There is always the State behind you. And the demand being made, do not select on theory only — the best books, the standard, you must have but make a practical use of your readers. Buy on the lines on which they are interested as well as those on which they should be. Some individual user of the library may know far more on a given topic than we and, if so, we and the community should have the benefit of his experience.

But in this there is a danger against which we need ever to be on our guard, the danger of listening to those individuals, found in every community, who, from a shaky foundation of a smattering of many subjects, feel fully competent to inform us and their neighbors on any topic whatever. At a dinner I once heard a woman keep up a sparkling conversation, in his own field, with a professor of history. Later someone remarked to him: "What a brilliant woman!" to be met with the emphatic if weary answer: "She is the most brilliantly misinformed person I ever met!" And the moral of that is: Let us select on the lines on which our readers most want information, make an expert use of our library commission and the specialists in our community, but in using the information contributed by a certain type of mind let us try to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves, knowing that the most dangerous adviser of all is she who knows not and knows not that she knows not.

Just here the guidance of the public to the best reviews is of inestimable value. Your opinion or mine may be disregarded. Then is the time to show the reader or fellow committee member an expert's opinion as expressed in a

review. A new book comes out on that subject of pressing interest nation's foreign policy.

the popular control of a Lord Cromer, who was

for fifteen years Great Britain's representative in Egypt and whom the Athenaeum characterizes as Caution personified gives his dennite opinion on it in the London Spectator. Balance that with an expressed opinion of a member of the Union for Democratic Control. When Professor John Dewey of Columbia reviews a book on education we have the benefit of the knowledge of the foremost exponent of a definite educational theory. You may remember that it has been suggested that "the twentyfirst century will study three great stages in educational theory, Plato, Rousseau and Dewey." Professor Hazen, author of "Europe Since 1815," may well be listened to when he writes in the American Historical Review on a new French history. For the highly individualistic viewpoint without fear or favor, there is the New York Nation. The Boston Transcript and the Springfield Republican stand true to tradition and firmly hold that the nobility of being born an American obliges one to believe in independence as a principal, whether the independence be our own or that of a lesser and weaker state. As for the New York Times Book Review - Do you know the Servian question, "What is it to be a gentleman?" with its answer: "To be the first to thank and the last to complain." It has sometimes seemed to me that the gentlemanliness of the New York Times Book Review is so complete that all in the affirmative having given the usual sign the chairman steadily forgets to call upon those who may wish to express a negative vote. So I suggest that you never, or rarely, attempt to use the New York Times Book Review as an encouragement to discard.

As a contrast to the review which upholds the policy of a paper or the review which is the opinion of an expert, whether as an appraiser of electricity or of fiction, we may place those compilations which publishing houses call "canned reviews." These are the definite expression of someone employed by the publishing house to say what can honestly be said in favor of a book. It is not in human nature that a publisher will employ someone at a good salary to emphasize the book's defects. These encomiums are often found on the book jacket and a book jacket, like this season's silk sweater, is gay enough to attract attention and designed equally to emphasize charms and to conceal

minor defects. Book jackets may be trusted to add warmth to our enthusiasm but not always to give contents of books with statistical accuracy. You know it is an aphorism that a woman can not be at the same time socially attractive and statistically correct. May I apply the aphorism to the book jacket also?

It is when we come to suit the needs of special readers in small communities that peculiar difficulty in selection confronts us. Always taking standard books for granted, our problem is as to the best additions to be made to that foundation. An agricultural community has, of course, a special right to books on agriculture. Here you have the state boards, the experiment stations, as well as the library commissions to give advice and you can do no better than follow that advice. I recently asked the head of a state commission what his commission was doing for the Portuguese in the neighborhood in in which I was spending my vacation and he answered sadly: "Offering the librarian a collection of Portuguese books which the board of that library has declined to accept." When you see the efforts of the Portuguese to cultivate unfamiliar plants under unfamiliar climatic conditions and know their need for civic training you realize what an opportunity for service was passed by.

Once I heard an Italian woman say: "We Italians in New York do not like the way you Americans spend your Sundays, but, of course we shall change all that." To those who knew the now old New York of twenty years ago and contrast it with the new New York of today, it will be apparent that it was not a vain boast. We may gain much from the immigrant

we have gained much; but when we consider the books we are to select for the different minds in our community, may we not properly speak of what we must offer to the Portuguese, the Scandinavians, the Slavs among us, that they may gain the American point of view with the land so rapidly becoming their own and at least help them to cultivate American traditions and soil together.

A manufacturing community has a special right to business books, to aids to vocational training and to cheerfulness of living under what may be somewhat cheerless conditions. Especially may a selection be made of books on those businesses which employ large numbers of the taxpayers. A suburban community should be well supplied with books on gardening, on home economics and on those topics studied by

its women's clubs and debated in its high school. These statements are obvious, as obvious as an answer I once knew a distinguished scholar to give to a stranger who had written to him: "I have plenty of money and many feet of empty bookcases, but I have no interests in the world save my business and poultry. What shall I buy? The impulsive and obvious answer was: "Buy books on poultry." The sentence was, however, mitigated before sending by the inclusion of a best books list on recreational and cultural lines.

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And this brings us to the most discussed topic recreational and cultural reading. In England, as you doubtless know, some libraries with their librarians in the field with the expeditionary force, somewhere in France, or in Egypt, or Mesopotamia," have, by way of war economy, excluded the buying of any new fiction. Yet the figures show that of the 10,665 new books or editions published in 1915, 1700 are classed as fiction. This is about 17 per cent. The Book Review Digest, the tool nearest to my hand, entered this year for its first six months over 200 titles of novels, or 17 per cent of the total entries.

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The question of reserve shelf or restricted fiction in a small library often makes me think of the anecdote of the district nurse who was trying to get into good physical condition the baby of a London costermonger's wife. In desperation she asked: "Are you giving the baby the milk just as I directed or are you giving her anything else?" To be answered: 'Well, Miss, milk isn't as tasty as what she's been used to, so when she cries for it I just give her orange juice and a little bloater." (Bloater being the equivalent for long-kept kippered herring.) Do we not all feel that if the public health of a small community is to be kept sweet and fresh and wholesome that the overspiced kippered herrings of fiction should be bought personally by those who wish to consume them and not be put within reach of the immature who may cry for them simply because they are immature or because they have been wrongly fed?

"One hundred best books," the provoking little essay and list with which Mr John Cowper Powys stirred our lagging enthusiasms in the dog days of the summer, has something suggestive to say on this whole subject of recreational and cultural reading. Whether Mr Powys means all that he says or not, at any rate he succeeds in provoking discussion. He tells us that his

night schools, and even if it were, the village librarian usually has her hours full without undertaking such work. We have, however, undertaken to find private teachers for any who come to us asking help and have been able to place some of our boys and girls under the influence of inspiring and helpful teachers.

The question of the adult becomes usually a question of a foreign-speaking and foreignreading population. The first question that comes to the mind of the librarian is, "What nationalities have we in our village?" and the second, "How many of each nationality?" Help may be obtained from the office of the factory employing foreign help, as it frequently has records showing the different nationalities and the number of each employed. The state census of 1915 gives the number of citizens and aliens in each incorporated village in the State. The sheets of the census on file in the Secretary of State's office give the nationality. It is not impossible to obtain access to these sheets and any librarian visiting Albany could spend several hours profitably with the census sheets of her own village. The census is far from complete and gives only the foreign born and not the children of foreign parentage, but an approximate conclusion can be drawn from its statistics.

The question of foreign periodicals is one that must depend upon the financial resources of the library and upon the size and ventilation of the reading room. No matter how altruistic our sentiments, we can not deny that the foreigner does too often bring with him unpleasant odors. The librarian may cultivate her own nose until she no longer distinguishes the Russian from the violet, but her American patrons are apt to be more critical. If the reading room is small and poorly ventilated, it is probably not a good idea to introduce foreign newspapers and risk driving away readers of the American periodicals. A reading room in the foreign quarters or in some one of the factories might be supplied with foreign papers, pictorial magazines and pamphlets of interest to all, but the American language papers must be considered first in the plan of the reading room. In Endicott the larger part of our foreign men are employed in the tanneries and are provided there by the factory with a reading room with foreign newspapers.

Two kinds of books are needed easy books for the foreigner learning English and books in foreign languages. The writer of this article

Under

has a considerable list of the former compiled a year or two ago. Such lists she will be glad to send anyone upon request. A similar list can also be obtained from Mr Carr. Lists of books in foreign languages have also been made by the A. L. A., by the New York State Library and by the Massachusetts Library Commission. The most difficult problem arises in dealing with the people who call themselves Slavs. this name we have many nationalities speaking very different languages. As a rule they are too ignorant to be able to classify themselves as anything but Russians, Slavs or Hungarians and by Hungarians they do not mean Magyar. A Pole occasionally knows that he is a Pole, but a Slovak does not know the American name for his nationality. The priests, if there are any of the Russian or Greek church, can frequently give help in settling these questions. One simple method which we have tried has been to get from the United States Bureau of Naturalization their Leaflet no. 3, which is issued in seventeen different languages. We place before our people, when they ask for Slavic books, a number of these leaflets and ask them which one they can read. In this way we have learned what language many of our people speak who do not know the name themselves. I do not need to give any further advice or instruction about the buying of foreign books. Mr Carr's books give better advice than I could.

The librarian who undertakes work with foreigners must make up her mind that it will be difficult to keep her library the secluded resort of a few good children and the members of the woman's club. She will be introducing a somewhat disorderly and frequently dirty lot of patrons; she will, however, be introducing a most courteous and most respectful set of patrons. In Endicott it is our foreign men who read our best magazines. It is our foreign children who are most keenly alive to the history and literature of other countries. It was a foreign boy who said in a composition in school, that the library had books that improved the minds of the young and perfected the minds of the old. It was an Italian boy who stood outside the library one dark night to wait until the librarian locked the door and then stood beside her with smiling face to say, "I have it in my heart to thank you," because the librarian had done him some small favor. It was an Italian woman who invited the librarian to see her Christmas tree and who was the first person to ask her if she were not lonely so far from her mother. It was