The immediate advantage of combining all the local libraries of London and Greater London into one system, all available to any one living or working in any quarter, and supplementing each other by a simple method of interchange, is manifest. The majority of the reference libraries should be shut up at once, and the space used for library purposes that have hitherto been neglected. Provided that every branch has a good collection of quick-reference books, there is no need for most of these--many of them are legacies of the still more parochial government of London before the present boroughs were formed. A proportion of the contents should be used to augment the stock of the Central Library for Students, which is now, in a small way, a central depot for the lending libraries of both London and the country. The remainder, after all useless and obsolete material had been sent to the destructor, would be brought together to form the initial stock of some six or eight really excellent reference libraries, so placed that every potential reader would be within the radius of a tram-ride. Six or eight large central libraries might be selected for the purpose, and would require little alteration beyond the removal of the lending department, for which room would have been found elsewhere. Whenever the present haphazard library service of London is superseded by a unified system, there will be a possibility of incorporating into it, or associating as auxiliaries, various public or semi-public libraries not belonging to the municipalities. London is not poor in its bibliothecal possessions, though badly served. In 1910, Mr. R. A. Rye calculated that in the public and administrative libraries and those belonging to various institutions, Greater London had a total of eight and a half million volumes, of which one and a half million are inaccessible to the general public.[29] This gave a supply of one volume per head, which may be compared with Berlin’s two volumes, Dresden’s three, and the four per head in Paris. Such comparisons, it should be observed, are not a matter of simple arithmetic. A larger community may find its account in a smaller relative stock, be that organized for use. A family of five with ten books would be badly off. A town of 50,000 with 100,000 volumes would be opulent. London, with a system of centralization and distribution comprehending all these varied resources, would probably be as well off as any city in the world. It is largely a question of realizing the intellectual capital that is now paying such poor dividends. Special libraries, such as that of the Patent Office, the National Science and the National Art Libraries at South Kensington, the Public Record Office, and others, like the various economic and sociological, historical, medical, legal, and other libraries attached to technical or scientific institutions, would continue to stand apart, but would stand in a definite relation to the general service.