[Illustration: READING ROOM OF THE GENERAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.] The proper balance between local control and the superintending departments--and sub-departments, if the nation’s libraries are reorganized as several great territorial systems--would not be difficult to contrive, so as to preserve and foster the rights of each community to self-expression. It is not proposed to work these out in detail here. Briefly, the functions of the central board would be:--(1) to install and operate the machinery for interchange and central supply, the latter ultimately superseding the former altogether; (2) to see that the local libraries and more especially the selection of books are maintained at a proper level; (3) to undertake such wholesale services as cataloguing and the compilation of aids to readers, work which is now done over and over again by individual library staffs at great expense, or else is neglected; (4) to organize and finance the training of librarians, and see that they are properly paid. Ultimately, librarianship might be organized as a sort of civil service; at any rate, librarians ought to be as carefully looked after by the State as are the teachers. Many other enterprises of vast public benefit could be, most appropriately, engineered by the central office; for example, the publication of large editions of non-copyright books in a form suitable for lending library use. Bookbinding is another item of local expenditure that calls urgently for mass treatment. It is not proposed, however, that the central library authority should set up a binding factory in opposition to the trade. This would be unnecessary, for it would be in such a commanding position, as by far the largest purchaser in the market, that it could dictate its own terms to publishers, printers, binders, and even to paper-makers. The fact is, the rebinding of books in public libraries might, for the most part, be done away with, if paper, covers, and binding were originally designed to stand the wear. As a leading authority on the subject, Mr. Douglas Cockerell recently said, “Publishers still design books to meet the fancy of the casual buyer, and very largely ignore the requirements of the libraries, which are for many books their largest customers.”[30] Light, fluffy paper is selected by publishers solely to bulk out books; the thicker the book the higher the price. “Now the public may like to pay for fluff and wind, but the librarian’s interests are directly opposed to this. Increased bulk means more shelf-room, and the use of this paper means that the books will fall to pieces after a very short time.” But our central authority would surely see to it that a book produced for library use should be printed on paper of good quality and cased in split boards, which “should last in ordinary library circulation until the librarian is forced to discard it on account of the dirt it has picked up.”