If James Whitcomb Riley were here today I should take him by the hand and say, “Beloved poet, you have known how to touch the great heart of the people quickly and deeply. That is what we must all do, if we are to succeed. We librarians must do it if our libraries are to be more than paper and glue and leather. Teach us the way.” Our libraries are closer, far closer, to the people today than they were fifty years ago. They can never get as close as an individual voice like Riley’s, for they are a combination, not even a harmonious chorus, but a jumble of sounds from all regions and all ages. Yet we must not forget that in every instrument of music there is a potential mass of discord. The skilled player selects his tones and produces them in proper sequence and rhythm; and lo! a sweet melody! So the librarian may play upon his mass of books, selecting and grouping and bringing into correspondence his own tones and the receptive minds of his community, until every man sees in the library not a jumble but a harmony, not a promoter of intellectual confusion but a clarifier of ideas. In some such fashion it is allowed him to get close to the minds and hearts of his community as Riley did to his readers. We are realizing today, we of the library world, that it is a poor instrument that yields but one tune, and a poor player who is able to produce only one. The librarians of the early days were of this kind; so were their libraries. The time they played was the tune of scholarship--a grand old melody enough, and yet with the right keyboard one may play not only fugues and chorals but the waltz and even the one-step. The scholar will find his refuge in this great building, but here also will be a multitude of functions undreamt of in the early library day--the selection of literature for children and their supervision while they use it, co-operation with the schools, the training of library workers, the publication of lists and other library aids, helpful cataloging and indexing, the provision of books and assistance for special classes, such as engineers, business men or teachers, a staff and facilities for all kinds of extension work, filling the space around the library as a magnet’s field of force surrounds its material body. A modern library is a city’s headquarters in its strife against ignorance and inefficiency; its working force is a general staff--books, ammunition for the fighter and food for the worker.