The great schools for librarians are also new. The German librarian is mostly a scholar; but the American believes that he has improved on the European library systems, not so much by his ample financial resources as by having broken with the academic custom, and having secured librarians with a special library training. And since there are such officials in many thousand libraries, and the great institutions create a constant demand for such persons, the library schools, which offer generally a three years' course, having been found very successful. Admittedly, all this technical apparatus is expensive; the Boston library expends every year a quarter of a million dollars for administrative expenses. But the American taxpayer supports this more gladly than any other burden, knowing that the public library is the best weapon against alcoholism and crime, against corruption and discontent, and that the democratic country can flourish only when the instinct of self-perfection as it exists in every American is thoroughly satisfied. BOOKS AND THE PUBLIC LIBRARY This paper and the two that follow it relate specifically to reading as fostered by the public library and yet not sufficiently to the provision of books to the public as a definite library service to warrant postponing them to the section relating to that branch of community service. They have a somewhat academic or "literary flavor," and yet are permeated not with the idea of "books for scholars" but with that of "books for people"--the idea of reading as a universal function--duty, pleasure and inspiration in one--which is distinctly that of a socialized library. The first paper is an address made by Lowell at the opening of the new public library building at Chelsea, Mass., Dec. 22, 1885. James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 22, 1819, and graduated at Harvard in 1838, succeeding Longfellow as professor of Literature there in 1855. He edited _The North American Review_ in 1863-72, served as U.S. minister to Spain in 1877-80 and to Great Britain in 1880-85. He died in Cambridge, Aug. 12, 1891.