“With eighty-five municipal libraries already established in London, it would be useless duplication for the Education Committee to undertake all the work of registering borrowers and issuing volumes to them and safeguarding their return. It is suggested that the contents of the Council’s collection should be lent on application to the public libraries and the libraries of educational institutions which could then lend them to their clients. This method would avoid the necessity for a very large staff. The central collection would have as borrowers merely the eighty-five libraries and branches already established, and those which may be added from time to time by the boroughs in the future, together with the fifty or so polytechnics, and such other of the institutions for higher education as may care to avail themselves of the facilities offered. In any case its borrowers could not exceed a couple of hundred, and though each of these might daily draw and return large numbers of books, the clerical labour required would be but a fraction of that necessary in a smaller library, where a large number of borrowers withdraw and return one or at most two volumes each.”[38] Mr. McKillop based his estimate of cost on the number of volumes contained in the Patent Office Library, viz., 105,000 volumes, which comprehend a very large proportion of modern scientific works. “If we take 35,000 as the number of volumes required for a modern working science library of reference (_i.e._, excluding the smaller text-books and class-books), and if we allow four times this number for the needs of departments other than science, we get a total of 165,000 volumes as the size of the collection. As a basis to calculate the capital cost of the collection probably 5s. is too little and 10s. too much per volume. Taking 7s. 6d. as a working figure the total cost would be about £62,000 (one penny rate in London produces £171,000). But it would be impossible to spend for this purpose wisely and economically such a sum as £62,000 within less than ten years, and the collection could be got together with reasonable rapidity by the expenditure of not more than £10,000 in any one year. The average expenditure would probably be nearer £5,000. In regard to administration the cost would be probably easily covered by £5,000 a year when in full working order, but would be four or five years in getting up to that figure.”[39]