What then is the difference between the library of today and the library of a few centuries--a single century--ago?--Is it merely in the development of this organization, the introduction of this apparatus and mechanism?--Is it to such matters that our efforts are directed?--Is it they which require incessant gatherings such as this for explanation, exploitation and discussion, and the innumerable reams of written contribution in our professional journals? They are indeed accountable for a large percentage of it: but back of them, beneath them, is a change which is fundamental, a change in attitude which is essential as no mere form or method can be. It consists in the birth and development--not indeed of a new characteristic in either book or reader, or the discovery of new potencies in the one or new sensibilities in the other--but of a new sense of responsibility on the part of the library in the utilization of the one for the benefit of the other. It is an incident of democracy. Now, so far as democracy means the participation of the community as a whole in the conduct of its affairs the _form_ of it has existed with us in the United States for generations; and the substance of it has existed throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. But democracy ought to mean something more: it ought to mean the participation of every individual in its opportunities. And a constitution of society which still left the resources for power and intellectual direction in the hands of the few was in effect an aristocracy, and no complete democracy. Among these resources a chief is education. And the practical monopoly of education--and of books as an element in it--meant a monopoly of influence also,--a monopoly which survived after limitations of caste were removed and the opportunities for wealth became widely diffused. Against it the free public school, the easily available college, the cheaply procurable newspaper and magazine, and the free public library fought and are fighting their fight in the interest of the prerogative of the individual, in the endeavor to equip him as an independent and co-equal unit, so that the actual constitution of society shall accord with its political form, and indeed assure the efficiency and the permanence of the form. So, having provided for the mass the interest has of late centred upon the individual. Meantime, with the evolution from homogeneity to heterogeneity the individual himself has become more and more diversified in trait, aptitude and need; so that the treatment of him by the agencies acting for the community as a whole has also had to become varied. Not merely that, but pursuing its responsibilities, to become affirmative, where before, so far as it existed, it was merely responsive.