R. R. BOWKER: There is, or should be, I take it, a large purpose common to all who have to deal with books, as intermediaries between the author and the reader, whether from the altruistic side, as the librarian, or from the commercial side, as the publisher and bookseller. We are familiar with one expression of that purpose, to get "the best reading for the largest number at the least cost"; and I, for one, am firmly of the opinion that that function is properly shared by the two classes of whom I have spoken, that they are not in competition but in co-operation; I mean the librarian and the bookseller. It is a narrow view, it would seem, which puts the two in opposition, or even in the position of competitors. And just as it seems that the bookseller is wrong in feeling that the librarian is interfering with his business, so I think it is wrong for the librarian to feel that the bookseller should in any way be limited or hampered or belittled in his kind of work of getting books to the people. It seems to me a truism, indeed, that there is one thing better than a book loaned, and that is a book owned. The ideal library community is, after all, one in which the people are so well supplied with books in their own homes that the function of the library is not so much a great circulation, however fine that may look in the statistics, but rather that of guide and helper to readers in the selection, and, if you please, in the "evaluation" of books. The board of health in a city or in a state is, perhaps, a fair illustration of the final function of the librarian; a health board, in its ideal, is a body to promote sanitation, to warn people against errors, to get rid of the mistake that tuberculosis is a hereditary disease from which people have to suffer, instead of one which is communicated and which can be avoided; rather than a body to furnish free medical attendance like a dispensary. So I start with the proposition, that it is desirable for librarians, for public librarians, as such, to encourage most of all the formation and owning of private libraries throughout their bailiwicks.