and it would impose an insupportable financial burden on the ratepayers if every one of the twenty-eight boroughs were to attempt to supply, through the public libraries, the books required by advanced students in science, technology, history, literature, art, and other domains of study which can be pursued in London.” ... But why should London provide twenty-eight sets of all these works? There is no probability that one student in, say, Bermondsey, and one in, say, Finsbury, will require the same volume of the Philosophical Transactions at the same time, and, therefore, it is not necessary that both Bermondsey and Finsbury, and every other library in London, should possess a set. But there is a probability that more than one student in the same borough might require the same volume at the same time; for instance, a teacher at the Battersea Polytechnic might recommend the half-dozen or so students in his advanced class in chemistry to read some classical memoir; and Battersea Public Library, to meet this demand efficiently, would require two or three sets of the Philosophical Transactions, which would be an obviously absurd arrangement. The absence of any system of co-operation between the metropolitan libraries renders it impossible for them at present to co-operate in any way in meeting this difficulty.[40] Mr. McKillop went on to show that it might be possible for the local libraries, trusting to the central collection for an adequate supply of what may be called students’ works, relatively seldom used, to work with a standard collection of popular works which would be the same in all boroughs. “When this point is reached, it might be possible to have a common catalogue for all the libraries.... The way is, in consequence, easy for a local authority which decides to establish a collection. It can procure for a very small sum the catalogue of all its collection ready made on the best lines, and all it has to do is to purchase the books, etc.”[41] Without endorsing this idea of stereotyped libraries, an idea which is obviously contrary to the vital principle that a local library, if it is truly alive, will by the predominant character of its contents show itself to be the expression of local individuality, we must admit that it opens up suggestive possibilities.