The asking of this question and its thoughtful consideration will puncture many a bubble. We will take, if you please, the question of vacations. Any one who has tried to make out a vacation schedule in a large library knows that, next to making out a recitation schedule in a large school or college, it is the most vexatious task of the kind that is given to man to do. Everyone must have a vacation, and everyone wants to have it at some time when the efficiency of the library will be impaired by it. Everyone wants to go away at once, and there are times when no one wants to be absent. Any possible arrangement means dissatisfaction, heartburnings, a feeling that favoritism or prejudice has been at work. Into the mind of most librarians has, I am sure, crept the suggestion: What is the use of all this? Why not close the library for a month? Is not that done by the schools: and are not we, too, an educational institution? The fact that librarians do not yield, in this case, to the suggestion of a change that would benefit them and all their assistants, is, of course, due to the obviousness of the other fact that it would be bad for the public. This test of the public advantage may be applied to the whole question of system in the library--of how much system is good, and what kind and how it shall be determined and applied. When a man comes in contact with a library rule that incommodes him personally, he is apt to deride it impatiently as “red tape.” When he finds absence of a rule where he would have benefited by it, he concludes that the library is in “chaos” or “confusion.” Now, there should evidently be neither one nor the other of these, although we cannot allow the personal convenience of a single user to be the test--our system should not exist for itself alone, nor should we try to get along without system altogether. There should be just so much and of just such a kind as will result in the maximum degree of service rendered to the public.