Contrary to a rather hazy though somewhat general impression, there are only a few choice spirits to whom it is given to love books instinctively and to know them intimately without instruction. The multitude, whatever their rank or fortune, handle them more or less all the time without knowing much about them or caring much about them. It is true that a knowledge of books comes more readily to some than to others, but training will do much for even unpromising people who, without training, would be practically helpless. The need of this training was shown very clearly a decade or two ago when the method of teaching changed rather generally from text-book mastery to the so-called laboratory method. There were few more pathetic sights than many of the older teachers, almost totally untrained in the comparative use of books which the new method involved, and yet forced to give up their reliance on the catechetical method and memorized text-book which could be kept open by the teacher while the pupil recited. If the library and the school have so much common doctrine and if both recognize in their precept and their practice the importance of books, it seems obvious that some instruction along this line should be given in the high school and, indeed, much earlier. Again, if pupils are to be taught to use books, it seems equally obvious that the intelligent use of books must first be learned by the teacher. That is, there should be a "library course" in the normal school. If library and school agree so far as to recognize the need of such a course there still remain several general methods of attempting to get the desired results. (1) By experiment. This is the customary way; the empirical method or, under certain conditions, the inductive method. "We learn to do by doing" was a pedagogical maxim to conjure with some years ago and it has not yet lost its siren's charm. Teachers are still assuming that pupils will learn to use books well by using them without direction, even though an excess of the experimental method has confessedly failed in other directions. We do not often learn to do things in the best way without some direction nor does mere handling of an object teach us much about it. Infinitely more biology can be learned from two or three angle worms studied in a laboratory than from quarts of them used for fish bait. The _laissez-faire_ method and the experimental method without a competent teacher to make it really inductive are both uncertain in result and costly of time and effort.