which flutter about in our libraries with piercing and critical notes. But this sort of bookish enterprise is sane and worthy too, if it does not go to the irrational extreme which has just been suggested. When, however, it is pursued, it may well be left to those laymen whose wealth, aptitude, and leisure incline them to it, and it should not be done at the slightest sacrifice, even in a library which only assumes to touch the people at the third or fourth remove.

The first-mentioned tendency to reduce library-work to service by machinery finds its counterpart in our present industrial condition, which manifests itself in the substitution of a few large industries for many small ones, calling for a limited number of mechanical engineers to invent and superintend, and not for many skilled workmen with a comprehensive knowledge of the scope and continuity of their work. There are no longer apprentices being equipped by various service for any emergency, and there are few workmen with a sense of mastership or ownership over their machines and themselves. So, too, in our libraries (for they are not one whit less important than the greatest material industries) the machinery of administration is now bewildering enough to the ordinary person, however familiar and responsive it may be to the unseen officers; and the elimination of the hearty personal interest, however much divided, of sympathetic librarians, leaves nothing to nurse the ardor of willing readers, or to angle for the susceptibilities of unwilling ones. Readers should be led to assert a mastership over books, and to feel the harmony of books with books, and of books with men. Something should be done whereby a division of part of the functions of intricate catalogues and microscopic classifications may be made, and those divisions controlled and supplemented by constant oral information, based upon extensive knowledge, and inspired by abundant personal sympathy.

A sick or vicious animal will be helped farther toward health by a little food, fed from a sympathetic hand, than by all the fat oats in the manger. Half the frequenters of a library want the good word and the helpful tone that should go with every book, but which so often must come from outside of it.

The duty of a library is not merely to put a book into the hands of the reader in the shortest possible time, -something that any book-store will do for a consideration; but its highest function should be to excite in him that intelligent love and reverence for books, and responsiveness to them, which have been experienced and celebrated by the best of minds of all times, to kindle in him some of the joy that a confirmed book-lover realizes in the friendship of books. When such a one scans a shelf of books he feels a subtle and pleasurable mental activity excited within him, and the volumes have faces and voices for him as soon as he reads their titles. When his eye catches an old friend in dingy cloth, how his forefinger leaps up, draws the book from its place, and fondles each familiar page! when he spies an inimical pamphlet, his lip twitches with the hint of a sneer; how he laughs aloud when he recalls the jolly companionship of the next fellow in motley! and best of all is his greeting to the new-comer in two volumes, large 8°, full gilt, whose advent has long been announced, and which is destined to “mark an epoch," if the critics are to be believed. He catches his breath in a half-suppressed exclamation, and, impelled forward by irresistible curiosity, he takes down both volumes at once, with a gentle scraping as they rub their neighbors' sides. When he opens them the leaves stand stiffly up or bend but little, as if unduly conscious of the weight and beauty of their impressions; but, oblivious of this vanity, he thrusts his beak into the shadowy and honeyed depths between the uncut leaves, whence he withdraws with a meditative look, only to seek again for nourishment farther on. Such an intelligent and active love of books as this it should be the aim of every library to quicken and foster in the community which it is meant to serve, and the immediate practical purpose of this paper is an attempt to show how this desideratum may, in some degree, be achieved by a university library. It must have been already inferred from the foregoing that the chief requisite is an oral supplement to catalogues, classifications, and all mechanical economies. Those who have in mind the confession of the president of Harvard in speaking of

card catalogues, or any one who has rescued a keen young student or a sagacious old professor from the labyrinthian complexus of an improved dictionary catalogue with its signs, tokens, and elusive references, must have recognized that thereabouts somewhere there is a great loss in the efficiency of the library,that between library economy on one side, and pure bibliography on the other, there has been left a gap to be filled in by an energy whose manifestation must differ from that shown in those two kinds of library activity.

At the end of a four years' course in college, the student usually takes away with him acquirements well worth his labor. But his attitude during those years of acquisition has been one of passive receptivity. With youthful appetite and eupepsia he has eaten all things put into his mouth, and pronounced them good. He has been led to look upon his professors and text-books as final authorities in their own departments. He has not learned how to distinguish and question, in a deferential way, even those things about which the judgment of youth is apt to be quite as correct as the experience of age. He remembers the trigonometry of his freshman year as something concerned with the measurement of triangles; that it used sines and cotangents; that he passed an honorable examination in it; that his teacher was Prof. A., and the text-book was by B. He thinks that, twenty years hence, he could, if necessary, brush up his knowledge sufficiently to solve an easy problem. But, unfortunately, the professor has neglected to impress upon him that other men besides B. have written trigonometries, and that, within twenty years, there will be many written which will be far more lucid and practical, and much less expensive than B.'s. The professor has not thought to show him the mutability of trigonometry by giving him a peep at the backs of the dozens in the library; so that at the end of four years he carries away of his term's work in this branch of mathematics, aside from its disciplinary value, only two things of practical worth, the name of one particular text-book, and a vague idea of its use; when he should have learned also that mathematicians will not quit cooking when he has been

served, and that twenty years hence their food will be more nutritious and easier of digestion. What is here applied to trigonometry, for purposes of illustration, is more true of literary and historical subjects. The practical duty of a college library, in addition to the general one of creating such a love of books as has been already described, is to teach the student how he may, if necessary, at any time in his post-collegiate years, seek out and use the books that have displaced or carried along the knowledge of his college-days. It should reveal to him the fact that no text-book or professor's word is final. And he should feel that the college has done all it can for him when it has led him into the library, taught him to love, reverence, and use its contents, and made him acquainted with those books which are letters accrediting a man to all good books published, or to be published, making him known, and served by the best minds and hearts all his life through.

This leads us to the inquiry, how students and library may be brought closer together, and what is now being done in our universities to offer a hope in the enterprise. At Harvard the chief cataloguer delivers one lecture a year on the use of catalogue. At Cornell and the University of Michigan the librarians give annually a valuable course of lectures on bibliography, including the history of manuscripts and printed books, binding, and other bibliographical detail, with some attention also to catalogues and other aids in the use of the library. Such instruction very properly has a place in a scheme of general education; but dealing so exclusively with bibliography, it must be dismissed from consideration here, as not securing the close contact with books, and skill in their use, which fill the objective of this plea. Something has been accomplished by reserving books for various classes, and giving their members free access to them; but, inasmuch as students will not consult these references unless especially required to do so, and give the professor the results as proof of consultation, this plan also fails of our purpose.

There are, however, now being introduced into American universities, two methods of instruction, which promise, in time, to offer a

practicable solution of the difficulty. The first of these is the modern seminary method, which has been evolved out of the old ecclesiastical training in defence of original theses. Its present application has been mainly confined to the study of history and political economy, where it fills a place similar to that given up to laboratory and experimental work in natural science. The seminary may or may not be attendant upon recitations or a course of lectures, and is open only to a limited number of advanced students, to each of whom, at the beginning of the work, is assigned a subject, which may or may not be related to those assigned to other members. The student's work on that subject is carried perhaps through a year, reports of progress being made to the professor at the periodical meetings of the seminary. Errors of logic or rhetoric are revealed by a bit of Socratic banter. Errors of fact may be rebuked by the professor's reference to an authority which has escaped the student's search, and which he is asked to consult then and there, for the room in which the seminary is conducted, is, or should be, in the library building.

At the beginning the student is given a list of authorities which, once searched out, only lead him into his subject still farther by a thousand allusions and foot-notes until he is soon beyond the professor's support, though not beyond his oversight and counsel. May be, before his task is finished, he finds that he has explored a corner of " original sources," the historian's paradise. The monograph of one or two hundred pages, offered as the result of his labor, may not always be worthy of publication as an important contribution to knowledge, but it does nevertheless witness that the student has learned the chief practical use of the university library; that he has become skilled in private research; and, more essential than either, that he has felt at least a preliminary glow of that friendship for books which made it natural for Charles Lamb to give a kiss to an old folio, as Leigh Hunt once saw him do to Chapman's Homer.

This is what the student has acquired from the librarian's point of view, and it is not within the range of this paper to say from the

professor's stand-point what special historical knowledge has been gained by this method of instruction.

The other method of instruction which brings its students into close relations with the library is the topical method, which has, thus far, like the seminary, been somewhat limited in its application. Students are assigned topics directly connected with the subjects being treated by the professor in lectures or recitations, and are required to make a report to the class, at a given time, upon the results of their library-work on the topic. They are directed to a few authorities by the professor, and, in consulting additional ones, they are governed by their zeal and the time at their disposal. Here are some of the topics treated in five or ten minute talks by members of a class in American history: Goodrich's "Life of Columbus; " Alden's "Life of Columbus;" The Portraits of Columbus; The Burial-place of Columbus. A part of the colonial period was covered in this way by students to whom were assigned some of the colonial governors, who served as subjects for so many brief lectures to the class.

What the advantages of this method are from the teacher's stand-point can best be told in the words of Professor Moses Coit Tyler, who has for some time successfully adapted it to his work:

"I have found it impossible by the two former [recitations and lectures] to keep my students from settling into a merely passive attitude; it is only by the latter [topical method] that I can get them into an attitude that is inquisitive, eager, critical, originating. My notion is that lecturing must be reciprocal. As I lecture to them, so must they lecture to We are all students and all lecturers. The law of life with us is coöperation in the search after the truth of history."

me.

From the librarian's point of view any one who has seen the dexterity and earnestness with which students reach into the books of the university library in search of material for these reports, and compares it with the indifference to the library displayed by students who have been bred down to mere passivity by lectures and recitations, will understand how the topical method affords one other help towards the

achievement of that close relation to be established between man and book.

Unfortunately the seminary method can be applied with satisfactory results only to a limited number of advanced students who are well-grounded in the general subjects with which they will find the object of their special investigation connecting itself as their work progresses. They must also devote much more time to this work than can be given to it by the regular student who must also answer the demands of other studies. The topical method, however, can be applied successfully with a much larger number of students; and, although it does not carry them so far into knowledge of their particular subjects as the seminary method would do, yet it gives them quite as much facility in the use of the library, and shows them more fully the variety of its re

sources.

There is no reason why both of these methods may not be applied with success, not only in historical study, but also to instruction in natural science, technology, letters, or any knowledge preserved and nourished by a literature, and having a place in the university library.

In schemes of instruction these methods should take their place along with lectures and recitations, which will be none the less necessary for being so supplemented; and the limit of the efficiency of the university library will be marked, so far as the students are affected, only at that point where the topics assigned must be so far subdivided, in order to serve all, as to require no special inquiry on the part of the student. Probably that point would never be reached.

Both of these methods, extended in application and fairly used, would effect the installation of every professor as active librarian of his department in the university library, as far as its use by students is concerned. The missing aid, distinct personal assistance, would be found in the professor. This plan would strongly emphasize and undoubtedly realize Carlyle's statement that "the true university is a collection of books," and, in bringing students and library together in intimacy, it would fulfil that use of universities which he said, on another occasion, "is, that after you have done

with all your classes, the next thing is a collection of books, a great library of good books, which you proceed to study and read. What the universities can mainly do for you, — what I have found the universities did for me, is, that they taught me to read in various languages in various sciences, so that I could go into the books which treated of these things, and gradually penetrate into any department I wanted to make myself master of, as I found it suit me."

And now a suggestion as to what can be done to attain similar conditions in the public library. You are all familiar with what has been done towards making the public library and the public schools complement each other in a scheme of popular education. What is the best way in which those outside the public school, but within the ken of the public library, can find the holy inner kingdom of books, and be set upon the high road to an intellectual life? Catalogues, classifications, and. economic devices can contribute; but they must be manned by wise heads and sympathetic hearts, which should search out, satisfy, and excite further, not only those readers who may request help, but also the far larger number who may be found wasting time and patience in a blind and indiscriminate pursuit of information. Let the public library be considered by its librarians as a hospital for crippled minds, quite as much as an aid to those persons who already understand and appreciate it. There need not be fewer catalogue-cards with their sparse and grudging notes, but near the catalogues, and among the readers, there ought to be active and helpful librarians, whose sole duty should be to furnish oral notes and advice in extenso.

Two of the main uses of the policeman are, to direct the stranger, and help the feeble. The great retail stores have their floor-walkers, who point you to the elevator or lace-counter with insistent unction. Railroad corporations have discovered that index sign-boards and intricate time-tables are riddles to many persons even of more than ordinary intelligence, and have therefore supplemented those devices in large depots with an oral information man who succeeds in adjusting the passenger-service of the road to the particular wants of individuals,

and not merely to the presumptive wants of that abstraction, the "patron." But where, in our American public libraries, is there a like officer, whose chief duties are to set right a perverted reader; to direct the lost reader through the crowd of 100,000 books to the friend he is seeking; to tell all the connections to be made, and all the delays to be endured on the "Royal Road to Learning?"

Let us rest a bit from the invention of mechanical substitutes for personal contact with books and librarians, before we end up in attempting experiments for the determination of the mechanical equivalent of thought.

Let us leave pure bibliography for a while

entirely to emeritus professors and scholarly millionaires. Let librarians now look around more for an opportunity to do personal hospital and reformatory service.

Poole's Index, the catalogues of Cutter and Noyes, the organization and administration of the great Boston Public Library, and the volumes of the Library journal, are the best results of modern library-work. There are two more tasks here with us, which, successfully extended and accomplished, will take rank with those achievements; and these are cooperative bibliographical work and the introduction of prominent and distinct personal assistance to readers in libraries.

OUR

UR first year of work with the public schools of Newton, although partial, has been so successful in its results in awakening the intelligence and interest of the pupils that it seems worthy of record and imitation.

The first step taken was the establishment of a friendly acquaintance between the librarian and the teachers; and, to that end, a personal visit was made by the librarian to nearly every school in the city, the methods of the proposed work explained, and the offer of every assistance on the part of the librarian given.

Ten cards were allowed each teacher on which to draw books for the use of the schools, the selection to be confined strictly to such as would aid in the mental and moral growth of the pupils. The selecting of books for the lower grades of the grammar and for the primary schools was practically left almost entirely in the hands of the librarian, the teachers giving a list of the studies being pursued as a basis for the selections. A careful record was kept of the shelf-number of each book loaned, and the school and grade to which it was sent, which was of great assist

ance.

The teachers of the High School and upper grammar grades generally indicated the special books, desired, or the particular points they wished to elucidate.

Of the most useful and popular books in history, biography, travel, and natural science, more or less duplicates were purchased, and about $450 were spent in that way.

All these books were to be used in the schools, or were allowed to be taken home by the pupils, at the discretion of the teacher, he or she, of course, being responsible for their careful use and safe return. The books were issued for two weeks' time, but at the end of that period could be renewed upon a seasonable request being made to that effect. The number of times of such renewal was unlimited, but it was thought advisable to have a report of the books every two weeks.

Owing to a press of other work the librarian was unable to visit all the schools until late in the spring, so that the work did not have a full trial. One school commenced in September, four in October, one each in November, December, and January, one each in April and May, and two in June. But with this partial delivery