The librarian of the day before yesterday is the librarian of a part of the community. Not only does she make no effort to encourage the use of her library, but she distinctly discourages certain persons, and certain classes of persons, from entering it. This grade of librarian includes as many kinds as there are persons or classes of the community that may be discouraged. Some, for instance, exclude all the poorly-dressed, or all of inferior social status; others welcome just these and exclude the well-dressed and well-to-do. The philanthropic donor of a city branch library building once waxed very wroth when she saw a carriage standing in front of the building. Her library, she said, was for the poor, not for “carriage people.” These ways of looking at things are sometimes an inheritance from former conditions. A subscription library turned into a free public library hesitates to welcome, all at once, the lower strata that have so long been banished from its doors. On the other hand, a public library that has developed from a charitable foundation regards these as its proper users and looks askance at the well-to-do, as in the case of the good lady with her “carriage people.” When I speak of the exclusion of a class of persons, I do not mean that they are formally kept out or even consciously discouraged; this is why it is so easy to be a librarian of the day before yesterday. That day was a comfortable day; an easy day to be self-satisfied in; it had its libraries for the rich and its libraries for the poor. Some class was always named, even if some were always left out. It may be that the exclusion operates through features that are in themselves excellent. I have seen, in a small community, a library building so fine, with such an atmosphere of quiet good-taste and so lady-like a librarian, that the great public no more dared to enter therein than if a fierce lion had stood in the doorway. I have known libraries, too, in which the books were too good. Certain classes in the community where not intellectually up to them. I have also known libraries that were never used by the foreigners in their communities, or by the colored people. These latter, strange to say, were largely in the North. The South recognizes the Negro and pays him much attention--in its way. It settles his status and sees that it is observed. He has the last four seats on the trolley car and he has his separate library accommodations. In the North he is on an equality with the white man--in everything but reality. He is welcomed to the library in theory and he does not use it in practice. I fear that in this respect too many of us belong to the day before yesterday. I trust that I have made it clear that the librarian of day-before-yesterday is not a bad librarian. He or she is just a librarian of day before yesterday--that is all.