There is one particular in which the architect has been specially out of touch with the administrator. The open-shelf is now all but universal, but many architects seem not to have heard of it. Many buildings, actually intended for administration on the free access system, seem yet to have been planned as closed-shelf libraries and opened to the public as an afterthought. A library without a special stack-room for book-storage is an unthinkable thing to most architects. And yet in many small libraries book-storage is not necessary, and in most branch libraries, where only books in general use are to be placed, it will never be necessary. To get the maximum advantage from open shelves, with a minimum of risk, the books should be placed on the walls as far as possible and such book-cases as stand on the floor should be as low as an ordinary table, so as to be easily overseen. A stack-room, it seems to me, is distinctly a closed-shelf arrangement. I believe this is coming to be recognized and that in the future library the books will be on or near the walls. But how about the open-shelf system itself? At present there are few libraries that do not have it in some form, and some of these are libraries that continued strongly to disapprove of it even after it had become well and widely established. The indications are nearly all that it has come to stay. I say nearly all; for there is still a feeling among many people that it is not good administration to abandon so large a percentage of our books to thieves. In libraries in small communities where the loss is small, this question does not arise; but in New York, for instance, where we lost 5000 books last year, it is serious. We librarians may say and believe that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, but trustees and municipal authorities are hard to convince. In New York we have taken what many will consider a backward step, by partially closing, as an experiment, the shelves of two of our branches. So that although we may safely say that free access has come to stay, I do not look to see it applied very generally to large collections. One thing seems to me clear. Library administration is becoming increasingly business-like, and it is not business-like to accept a large annual loss without an attempt to minimize it. We must at least investigate regularly and rigidly the sources and character of this loss. As for the other features that we have become accustomed to regard as distinguishing the new library era from the old--special work with children, co-operation with schools, travelling libraries, etc.--it is evident that these, too, have come to stay. Their spheres are widening and their aims are diversifying, however, so that he who should venture to predict their precise status in the future would be rash.