If a book in a departmental library is needed by a student in another department, he must either go to the department and put the custodian to the inconvenience of looking it up for him, or he must wait at the central library while a messenger goes for the book. His need of the book must be very pressing before he will do either. If the different fields of knowledge were sharply defined, the departmental system might be a practicable one, but such is not the case. The psychologist needs books bearing on philosophy, sociology, zoology and physics, the sociologist gathers his data from almost the whole field of human knowledge, the economist must use books on history and the historian books on economics. The system hampers him exceedingly in the selection and use of his material, or it compels the university to purchase a large body of duplicate material, and restricts, by so much, the growth of the real resources of the library. The system, it seems to me, induces narrowness of vision and a sort of specialization which is anything but scientific. Trending in the same direction is the separation of the books, in any given field, into two categories. The undergraduate may need some such selection, but any student who has gone beyond the elements of his subject should have at his command the entire resources of the library. The needs of the elementary student can be met by direct reference to certain books, or by setting aside the volumes required as special reference books and allowing free access to them. A large amount of our most valuable material is found in the publications of scientific and literary societies and in periodicals. In many cases these must be kept at the central library. They will be much more frequently read if the readers are using the central library and availing themselves of the information given in the catalog. From the administrative point of view, there is nothing impossible in the organization of the departmental system, provided that finances of the library admit of the increased expenditure. As Mr. Bishop has pointed out in a recent number of the _Library Journal_, the element of cost seems to have been utterly left out of consideration in the recent discussions at the University of Chicago. It is possible that, with the immense resources of that institution, they may be able to ignore that factor, but most of us are compelled to reduce administrative expenditures to the lowest point consistent with good work.