The question of where and by whom and how books were kept and made ready for users is not one that has been very much discussed although the questions who were the librarians and where were the books kept has been more or less implied in the discussions of temple versus secular collections. Mr. Tedder’s dictum that “these records would naturally be preserved in sacred places, and accordingly the earliest libraries of the world were probably temples and the earliest librarians priests” is modified and perhaps at the same time confirmed by the history of pre-phonetic libraries. It is true that in primitive tribes the medicine man is generally a keeper of records, but it is true also that among the Mexican Indians certainly, and pretty clearly among North American Indian tribes and in many African tribes, the shaman or medicine man is not the only keeper of records. It is true also that in the early Egyptian practice the priests were the keepers of the books whether it was in the temple, archives or the palace archives, but even here it seems to be the fact that there were military records, department records, and local administrative records in the different nomes kept by scribes who were not priests. The keeping of records must in fact have begun before there was any special place, even the simplest hut or medicine wigwam or cave, set apart for distinctively religious purposes, although the setting apart of such places is apparently as old as the caves of the Stone Age. With these qualifications, the history of votive offerings tends to confirm the statement that the earliest public or tribal libraries were religious and the corresponding librarians the priests. In very early times, and in much later times among primitive peoples, even the art of writing itself was often kept as a secret mystery in the custody of priests. The name “hieroglyphics” points in this same direction, and the temple collections of sacred books, the so-called books of Thoth and books of Hermes, point in the same direction. In general, however, this monopoly of letters seems rather to have been a deliberate assumption by the priests, as it is sometimes assumed by savage royalty, rather than the original situation. It applies, of course, rather to newly devised kinds of symbols, such as the vast number of systems of secret writing which have been evolved in all ages, than to the ordinary current record methods. That some of the earliest libraries were secret libraries, however, is an interesting fact, and one which may throw light on the mysterious collections of shrines and portable collections of objects in the liturgical processions in Egypt. The methods used by these priest librarians for keeping and using the books form in themselves an interesting and little studied subject of very considerable extent.