My business at this moment is that of a forecaster. We know just where and what the library situation is at present, and some of us think we know where it is headed. If it should keep on in the same direction and at the same rate, we ought to be able to describe it as it will be, say, in 1950. Of course, it may get headed in some other direction. It may slow down or speed up; it may melt away or strike a rock and be irrecoverably wrecked. If I see any chances of any of these things, it is my business to mention them. If my forecast should turn out a failure no one can prove it until 1950 arrives, and then I shall not care. To begin with the necessary preliminaries of our forecast--what and where are we now? I have said that I know; probably you think that you do; but as a matter of fact our knowledge is neither comprehensive nor accurate. We need a general library survey. We have, as a sort of statistical framework, the figures now printed annually in tabular form in the A.L.A. Proceedings, but probably no one would maintain that these do, or possibly could, give an adequate idea of the character or extent of the work that our libraries are doing. Those of us who think we know something of it have gained our knowledge by experience and observation and neither is extensive enough in most cases to take the place of a well-considered and properly-managed survey of existing conditions and methods. In default of a survey, we must, as I have said, fall back upon observation and experience. I can certainly claim no monopoly of these, and what I say in this regard is, of course, largely personal. But it seems to me that the distinguishing marks of library work, as at present conducted, include the following. As you will see, they are all connected and overlap more or less. They are all growth-products. They are: 1 Size and expense. 2 Socialization. 3 Professionalization. 4 Popularization. 5 Nationalization. First, library work in our country to-day is large and costly. Extensively it covers a great territory and reaches a huge population. Intensively it embraces a large variety of activities--many that one would hesitate, on general principles, to class as “library work.” Secondly, a large amount of this increase of activity has been of a kind that we are now apt to call “social.” It deals with bodies or classes of people, and it tends to treat these people as the direct objects of the library’s attention, instead of dealing primarily with books, as formerly, and only indirectly with their readers. In fact, the persons with whom the library now deals may not be readers at all, except potentially, as when they are users of club or assembly rooms.