4. _Choice by librarian experts._--This seems to be the most satisfactory solution of the problem. It is true that many if not most of the existing small (5000-10,000) libraries have not or can not afford a trained librarian. But it is also true that more and more are employing trained people as organizers and an increasing number are retaining their organizer as librarian. It is their study and their business to know what books are best suited to the needs of the community. Even should we go beyond that into the larger public library, the reference library or the college library I still hold that the librarian is the best judge of books for the library. His taste is sure to be more catholic, wholly unbiassed and he makes a more even and better rounded selection on the whole. In the small public library he is able to carefully study the constituency and then knowing what books are standard in other places he makes the necessary allowances for the case in hand. The time has, I trust, wholly gone by when the local editor, local clergyman, and local schoolmaster have the pleasure of picking out their favorite books, or of ordering "standard sets" or the "classics" in history and literature at the public expense. Most of these books are on the shelves to-day faded but not worn, the leaves not even cut and usually only the first volume slightly used. Of course books in useful art and sciences were largely overlooked. Nowadays library committees are turning more and more to the librarian, knowing that he has made a study of book selection and that they will get better results to leave it with him. This is as it should be and the librarian should not lower himself by going outside for assistance on any line. I count it as slipshod and a confession of ignorance for any librarian to tag around after outside "experts." Let him study up his subject and master it himself. There are only a few in which he cannot easily surpass outsiders, and profiting by his knowledge of the many, which enables him to do that part quickly and easily, let him pay more attention to the hard and less familiar subjects. The librarian who delights in religion, philosophy or folklore says of lists on biology, botany, steam-engineering or sanitation--"I leave all that to Professor So and So--of course he knows all about it." Why should he, more than the librarian? What is the librarian for, if not to know things? Is it not time to turn from the material things and concern ourselves more with a higher standard of scholarship and more outside work in our profession? And for the small libraries of 5000 v. or under there are the library commissions who are supposed to, and do, advise them. There is difference with the commissions, some are in closer touch with the local situation than others, some are more conscientious than others about costly books, and some are given to this "expert" business which I have named, but on the whole they are doing good work and bid fair to do better.