One of the striking contrasts between the college library of today and that of the middle of the last century is shown by a comparison of the hours of opening. The Chinese character for "library" means "a place for hiding books," and if some members of the present day faculties think there is still justification for this pictograph, what would they say of the apology for a library which their predecessors had to contend with? In 1850 the libraries at Amherst and Trinity, for example, were open once a week from 1 to 3 p. m., at Princeton one hour twice a week, at the University of Missouri one hour every two weeks. At the University of Alabama there was a rule that "the books shall ordinarily be received at the door, without admitting the applicant into the library room." Harvard with its 28 hours of opening per week was as usual in the vanguard of progress, but contrast even those liberal hours with present day schedules of 89 hours and even more per week and you see that there has been considerable progress along this line. "A quarter of a century ago the library in most of our institutions," said the late President Harper in an address delivered in 1894, "even the oldest, was scarcely large enough, if one were to estimate values, to deserve the name of library. So far as it had location, it was the place to which the professor was accustomed to make his way occasionally, the student almost never. It was open for consultation during perhaps one hour a day for three days a week. The better class of students, it was understood, had no time for reading. It was only the 'ne'er do well,' the man with little interest in the class-room text-book, who could find time for general reading. Such reading was a distraction, and a proposition that one might profit by consulting other books which bore upon the subject or subjects treated in the text-book would have been scouted. All such work was thought to be distracting. The addition of one hundred volumes in a single year was something noteworthy. The place, seldom frequented, was some out-of-the-way room which could serve no other use. The librarian--there was none. Why should there have been? Any officer of the institution could perform the needed service without greatly increasing the burden of his official duties."