And similarly with libraries. Mr. Wirt believes that the school may do the work of the public library much more efficiently and much more economically than the library can itself do it. He has shown in Gary that in a school branch of the public library, library maintenance and circulation cost per book circulation is only about five per cent of the cost in the main library, while the life of the book circulated in sets under the control of the teachers is ten times that of the usual circulation book in the library. In both the Emerson and Froebel Schools there is a branch of the public library, under a library assistant. Children use the library as a part of their regular work under the supervision of the assistant and teachers. All sorts of stereoscopic pictures, photographs, collections of pictures, atlases, etc., can thus be provided, which would be impossible for the classroom. The library becomes the storehouse of the knowledge of the school, and the children learn to recognize it as such. Again, the library is already an important feature of many of the newer high schools throughout the country. In the Wirt school, however, all the elementary classes use it also. The Wirt school contemplates bringing all the cultural resources of the community to bear on the school. It makes the school the proper and natural depository for whatever the community has to offer in artistic interest or intellectual resource. Like most of the features of the Wirt plan, this consolidation of gallery, museum, and library in the school is as economically efficient as it is educationally valuable. A word must be said about the auditorium. Few schools have assembly rooms like that in the Froebel School in Gary, with its stage large enough for a full-sized basketball game or athletic contest. The unique rôle of the auditorium in the Wirt school will be described in the next chapter. It assists materially in educating the whole child by giving him opportunities for public expression before the school community.