Mary Salome Cutler was born in Dalton, Mass., in 1855, was educated at Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and received the degree of B.L.S. from the University of the State of New York in 1891. In 1897 she was married to the Rev. Edwin Milton Fairchild. From 1884 to 1889 she was cataloguer in the Columbia College Library and Instructor in the Columbia College Library School. She became Vice-Director of the New York State Library School in 1889 and remained there until 1905. Since that time she has been a lecturer on selection of books and American libraries. Mrs. Fairchild was chairman of the committee in charge of the library exhibit of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and was identified with the publication of the A. L. A. Catalog. It is probable that some of the readers of the Journal are unfamiliar with the idea of the home library. In a few words, this is its motive and its plan: To help the children of the poor in developing and ennobling their lives by giving them books and a friend. The home library idea was evolved, not by a librarian, but by Mr. Charles W. Birtwell, secretary of the Children's Aid Society in Boston, a very old non-sectarian society. It grew up in a most natural way. He fell into the habit of lending books to poor children of his acquaintance and of talking with them about the books after they had been read. This took time, and the result was organization. The children were formed into little groups, books were bought systematically, and his friends were interested to form regular visitors. And so a home library involves a group of 10 poor children, a library of 20 carefully selected books placed in the home of one of the children and circulating among them all, a visitor, who should be a person of rare wisdom and sympathy, who meets the children once a week, talks over the books with them, and during the hour gives them all possible help in any way she chooses. Each group contains both boys and girls from eight to fifteen years of age. There are several groups of children and several little libraries. Once in three or four months the libraries pass from one group to another. The personal element supplied by the visitor is quite as valuable as the influence of the books. It is hard to tell just what the visitor does. It is perhaps simplest to say that she is a friend to the children and that she studies how to help them. That means a great deal. The plan is elastic and each visitor chooses her own methods. Doubtless many librarians listened to Mr. Charles Birtwell's paper on home libraries at the Lake Placid conference, September, 1894, and are thoroughly familiar with the central thought and its application in the parent libraries in Boston. To such I would like to call attention to some modifications of the plan in the Albany libraries, to a few new points which we have worked out and old ones which we have emphasized.