There are dirty books on too many library shelves. Such libraries are deficient in the kind of system that preserves property efficiently. As for the mechanical plant of the library, the building that houses it, with its fittings and furniture, a proper system, of course, requires that these be kept constantly in good condition. Now, we Americans are impatient of detail: we like to do things in a large way and then let them take care of themselves. While the Frenchman or the Englishman watches his roads or pavements day by day and never allows them to get out of repair, we build expensive roadways and leave them alone until they are in disgraceful condition--whereupon we tear them up and rebuild them. While the foreigner builds his cities, stone by stone and street by street, so that they are picturesque and beautiful, we let ours spring up as they will, slum jostling palace, and factory elbowing church, until finally we form grandiose projects of reconstruction, cutting avenues here and making parts there--projects which may be carried out and may remain on paper. So I have seen tasteful and expensive library buildings allowed to grow grimy and dilapidated day by day through lack of a systematic plan for renovation and repair. Some day the authorities will wake up and there will be reconstruction and redecoration in plenty--to be followed by another era of slow decay. The third entity that an efficient system must enable the librarian to conserve is evanescent and almost indefinable. It is difficult to bring system to bear upon it at all, and yet its preservation is of the very highest importance of all, because without it the librarian cannot do the work in his community that every good librarian is trying to do. Reputation is a fickle thing, indeed. Gained sometimes in a happy moment, it may persist for long years, successfully defying all assaults; achieved elsewhere by decades of strenuous application and scrupulous observance, it may vanish in a day as the result of some petty act of forgetfulness or of the stupidity of a passing moment. None the less is it the duty of the head of every great institution to strive continually to attain and maintain it; to increase it if possible and to guard it jealously. There he is in the hands of his subordinates and such system as he may bring to bear may and should be directed toward creating and keeping alive within them a proper _esprit de corps_. The library that succeeds in creating a public impression that it and all connected with it are honestly trying to be of public service, to win public esteem, and to gain a place in the public heart, has two-thirds of its work done already. Its burden is rolled down hill instead of up.