It has been pointed out that the modern library movement is of recent growth. We look with amazement at all that has been accomplished in the last quarter-century. There seems little to connect the library of the present with the library of the past. But one link remains--the book. Sometimes it seems as if that was the one thing we were leaving out of our thought--the book, not as a material object, paper, printing, binding, to all of which we pay much attention, but the book as literature. Is the library, too, becoming materialized? As the authorized custodians of the wisdom of the past, we stand in an important and dignified relation to the present. How can we share our treasures with a public that too often fails to appreciate its need for them? First of all--above all mere schemes and devices however good--must come a real love and enthusiasm for books, and a knowledge of them among library workers. It is impossible to awaken an interest in other people in a subject in which you are not interested yourself. There has been more or less good-natured raillery among librarians over that time-honored recommendation for one who wishes to enter library work, that he is "fond of reading." In the long list of qualifications which, we are told, the library assistant should possess--a list so comprehensive that one is reminded of the old jest about expecting all the virtues for four dollars a week--love of books seems to be ranked very low. It may be questioned if this is not a mistaken policy. After all, books are the basis of all library work and the attitude of the workers toward the books, cannot be unimportant. One of the most scathing indictments ever brought against library assistants was made when Gerald Stanley Lee accused them of being "book chambermaids." We like to judge our profession--if I may be allowed that disputed term--by its leaders; but the public judges us by the people who answer their questions in our delivery rooms and at our information desks and in our reference departments. And it is no use trying to evade the issue, as some libraries do, by requesting people not to ask questions at the delivery desk. Two-thirds of our public never get any farther and, even when referred to some other department, show an inexplicable unwillingness to go there. A few years ago the following communication appeared in a well-known paper: "Will you kindly inform me through the columns of the Saturday Review of Books where I can find the story of 'Gil Blas'? I inquired at one of the public libraries and the attendant said she had never heard of it." Incidents like this, and we must in all honesty admit that they are liable to occur in any library, may be one reason for the too prevalent impression that the library is merely a place where one can get a new novel. If we wish to promote the reading of the best books in our communities, we must have literary taste and a familiarity with books in the members of our library staffs.