In these days when high schools are extending their work in so many directions and when books must be provided for supplementary work in English, in history, in the preparation of debates, and in other subjects, a well-equipped library is a necessity in the modern high school. A motley array of old text-books, out-of-date encyclopædias and miscellaneous volumes from the attics of well-meaning friends of the institution will not make a good high school library. Upon how many school libraries in this country can former pupils look back as did Burne-Jones upon the little school library at Birmingham, as “that blessed institution where we spent many blissful hours.” The failure of many school libraries is due to a lack of proper care and fostering attention after they have been established. The library is there out of deference to a growing public sentiment in favor of such an annex, but the library is too frequently left to run itself, or the responsibility for its care is given to some teacher already overburdened with class-room work. The responsibility ought never to be placed on the teachers, or at least not on one who is doing full work as a teacher. The average teacher, if given charge of a school library, will confine her efforts to seeing that the rules are obeyed, that books are brought in on time, and that silence and order are preserved. She will not have time or energy to devote to the building up of the library, to instruct the pupils in its use, to look after reference work with the students, nor to help the teachers in finding needed material. “Disabuse yourselves of the notion that it is teachers’ work, and a way out of the difficulty will be found,” says a recent writer in the Library Journal.[3] The school library differs from the average public library in that it is usually a reference library first and a lending library only so far as the use of its books outside the building does not conflict with the usefulness of its service to the teachers and pupils in the school building. =Duties of the Librarian.=—The first duty of the librarian is to make the books, photographs, and other possessions of the library available by a simple and acceptable system of classification and cataloguing. After this has been accomplished it will be necessary to make these possessions known to the teachers and pupils. This can only be done by one who is familiar with the material and trained in its use. If the reference work is done by an untrained worker it is a case of the blind leading the blind. A teacher with no training in library methods will not go to another teacher, known to be similarly deficient, for information in regard to books, and the pupils will get comparatively little real library help from one who is primarily a class-room teacher, untrained to meet all classes of readers and answer a great variety of questions.