the librarian may attend, but an experienced agent is more likely to avoid mistakes. Unfortunately few public libraries can afford to compete with booksellers and private collectors in the saleroom, and practically this source of accessions is not of much use to the majority of British public libraries. =212. Subscription Books.=--Sources of book supply in many libraries are the works coming regularly as annuals, or from societies to whose publications the library subscribes. Patents’ specifications, parliamentary reports and other periodical publications also furnish a constant, if somewhat irregular, stream of additions. There should be some simple means of checking these annual and irregular publications, and a series of cards, somewhat similar to those suggested for magazines in Section 475, will be found very convenient. It is hardly necessary to add that these check-cards should be examined regularly for overdues and omissions. Societies which issue only occasional monographs are the most difficult to trace and check. With annual publications of a definite kind, such as _Whitaker’s Almanack_, there is no trouble whatever. =213. Ordering.=--The routine of book ordering should be reduced to the simplest possible system. There are plenty of elaborate methods designed to find out and penalize defaulting assistants, booksellers, etc., but they are not recommended. The very simplest plan is to place the proposition slips, when dealt with by the committee, in a special tray, or, better, drawer of a card cabinet, in a compartment marked “Books passed by committee,” and then to enter them in an ordinary order-sheet, of which a carbon copy should be taken, or which may be copied later. These order sheets (8 inches × 10 inches) may be ruled thus: