I for one, should be sorry to think that this type has passed finally. There is need for it; there should be a place. I trust that it will be restored to us; and I deplore the influence upon the younger generation in our profession of referring to it with condescension if not with contempt. "Our profession." I use the term because it is current. We have assumed it, and no one has challenged it. There are grounds on which it might, I suppose, be challenged. "The word implies," according to the Century Dictionary, "professed attainments in special knowledge, as distinguished from mere skill; a practical dealing with affairs, as distinguished from mere study or investigation; and an application of such knowledge to uses for others as a vocation, as distinguished from its pursuit for one's own purposes." The latter two requirements are certainly met: we are engaged in practical affairs, and to the use of others. But the "professed attainments in special knowledge, as distinguished from mere skill," while certainly represented in individuals among us, are not with us conditions of librarianship as a vocation or as an office, nor have we in America, as they have in Germany, the conventional preparation, the preliminary examination as to qualifications, and the license which by law or usage are requirements in the professions strictly so-called. A profession should imply uniform standards in such qualifications: but the qualifications of persons accepted among us for library posts of importance,--even among persons who have made notable successes in such posts, vary extraordinarily in both kind and degree. A profession should imply a certain homogeneity in ideals, methods and relations; while among us there is still a notable diversity. The modern library with its large establishment and organization, and the responsibility of large funds, has, like the modern university, created a demand in its administrators for the traits necessary in business rather than characteristic of the professions or expected of them. (This demand, and the vogue of woman in our work--a vogue which finds its completest recognition at this meeting--are indeed the most notable of recent phenomena affecting our personnel.) As yet the conventional training has not attracted a sufficiency of men and women with such traits to meet the need; nor has it, on the other hand, attracted a sufficient number of men and women grounded in special branches of the sciences and the arts to fill the positions in our research libraries which administer, and should interpret, the literature of these. The actual personnel of our association includes therefore the utmost diversity in trait, education and experience. A considerable such diversity exists among teachers, and does not disentitle them to the claim of constituting a profession; and we are sometimes called educators. But we cannot claim to be, for we lack the didactic authority, purpose and method.