needed to champion open access twenty-five years ago against the active antagonism of 90 per cent. of the profession. There were not wanting men, however, who were drawn to the champion, amongst them Mr L. Stanley Jast, then librarian of Peterborough, Mr T. Johnston, librarian of Croydon, and Mr Brown’s own assistants, Mr Charles Riddle in particular, who opened the first library outside London on this system at Bournemouth in 1895. In 1896 Croydon adopted it, Hornsey followed in 1898, and although progress was slow at first, to-day it has so far won the battle that the opening of a new library on any other system is a matter for surprise, and many of the more conservative libraries, even in the largest cities, have adopted it at least in some part of their system; moreover, the question itself has become impersonal, and no librarian to-day would criticize another for any views he might hold in connexion with it. It was, as Sir J. Y. W. MacAlister declared in 1894, “the dawn of a new epoch; a hundred years hence the authorities of the greater municipal London, which will then be carrying on the work now only attempted by the present congeries of village communities, will pass a resolution ordering a tablet to be fixed to the wall of a quaint three-cornered building in Clerkenwell, to commemorate the fact that here, in 1894, the revolution had begun which in a few years had changed the entire system of public libraries throughout the land.” Although safe-guarded open access was the principal practical contribution of Brown to library practice, he introduced other things of great importance. His _Quarterly Guide_ was the first annotated library bulletin published in England. He invented an indicator, more compact and perhaps as effective as most others, as a challenge to another similar inventor. He improved the sheaf catalogue, and indeed many of the commonest appliances now in use were of his contriving. A description of these, and others, he gave in his _Handbook of Library Appliances_, 1892, published by the Library Association. As open access abolished the need for alphabetical indicator-keys, he was at liberty to consider the question of catalogues radically; and he advocated the classified catalogue and class-lists as fulfilling the needs of students and readers better than other forms. In this advocacy he secured the vigorous co-operation of Mr Jast; and in this matter also a great controversy ran for some years, dignified amongst librarians as “the battle of the catalogues.” The issue is still in doubt as to the entire desirability of the classified catalogue for all purposes and places, but to-day the classified catalogue is certainly as common as any other form.