Now let us get down to something concrete. Just what information are we prepared to give to business and industrial houses? Here are some actual questions asked lately and answered in our reference departments--many of them by telephone: The uses of lye in baking powder. History and development of the plow. Substitute for such commercial products as dyes, sealskin, fertilizers, etc. Receipts for preparing in the wholesale manner mustard and salad-dressing, and for bottling olives. Methods of installing a refrigerating plant. Addresses of the manufacturers of toys in the United States. How far from the curb may vehicles be parked in St. Louis. Names of manufacturers of bottled buttermilk. Dates of traffic legislation in England. Names of the officers of the Wabash R.R. How to calculate the depreciation in shop fittings in taking inventory. Change in prices in Wall Street for the last year. History of speculation in the 16th century. Examination of the State Board of Pharmacy relating to the laws of the State of Missouri on the sale of narcotics. Pictures for advertising posters, such as “a Pullman porter,” “Hops,” used in a Bevo ad. “Two dogs playing” for the title-page of a piece of music entitled “Puppy love.” Designs for book-covers, posters, letter-heads, by the million. I think I hear someone say--“Do you call that library work? One man at a telephone and a pile of circulars at the other end?” Yes. I do; didn’t I tell you that libraries had changed? When Archbishop Glennon first visited our new building, he walked into the magnificent central hall and, looking around him said: “Where are the books?” The books were all in their places, but they were not in the delivery hall. The books in a library are quite as important as ever. There could be no library without them. They are the library. But we are laying more and more emphasis on the man behind the book. In nine cases out of ten he is a woman, and increasingly often he is at the end of a telephone wire. We find that information slips over a telephone wire quite easily. It saves the business man an annoying trip and sometimes it saves our assistant from hearing all about the business man’s last attack of sciatica. Not always; for sufferers have been known to seek sympathy even by telephone. The more they do it, the more trunk lines we have to pay for, so the telephone company doesn’t mind. But it is true that in meeting the business man’s needs the library is assimilating itself more and more to a huge information bureau. This is the case especially at our Municipal Reference Branch in the City Hall, where we have few books, properly so called, many reports, pamphlets and clippings, properly indexed, and a great deal of manuscript material, gathered by correspondence in answer to queries and waiting for more queries on the same subject.