It is the assistant who has caught the message of books, who has heard the gods calling him to celestial heights, who realizes what Robert Louis Stevenson expressed when he said that he felt like thanking God that he had a chance to earn his bread upon such joyful terms--it is such an assistant who makes the library a place where people want to read. And that is the true library whose books are read. No one has a richer opportunity to be a public servant in all the fine significance of that word, than the assistant to the public in the public library. He may unlock the treasures of the past, for those treasures are committed unto him not for keeping but for sharing freely. This public servant may extend the knowledge of the discoveries and innovations of the present, and thus become an interpreter of the scholar's message. This public servant may match the answering book with the inquiring mind, the responsive page with the hungry soul. This public servant may lead out the spirit of youth, lift the burdens of middle life, may speak solace to old age through the thoughts and songs of poet and prophet, dramatist and seer. This public servant must be a great personality, either an achieved personality, or a personality in the making; this public servant must be a lover of people, a lover of life, and therefore a lover of books. The CHAIRMAN: The next paper on the program is by Miss EDITH TOBITT, librarian of the Omaha public library. Miss Tobitt herself, I regret to say, is detained, but she has sent her paper and it will be read by Mr. Frank K. Walter, of the New York state library school. TYPE OF ASSISTANTS: ABILITY TO DISCERN QUALITY AND ESSENTIALS OF BOOKS AND POWER TO GIVE INFORMATION RATHER THAN ADVICE When gathering the material for my part of this discussion of "Type of assistants," my inclination turned constantly to another wording of the title, that is, "the value of the book to the public dependent upon the intelligent discrimination of the assistant," so while I shall try to adhere more closely to the original subject than this would indicate, I hope that you will pardon me if I now and then talk on the second title. "Efficiency in business" has received so much discussion of late that it is a brave person who dares assume the privilege of continuing the subject, but having seen the statement that "the more books of the right kind are read, the more efficient a nation becomes," a librarian naturally believes that the discussion has no end but may be continued indefinitely, for this means not only a supply of the right kind of books but also an efficient distribution of these books.