During the last two decades, public libraries have been reverting to that old and sensible mode of working which, on its reintroduction, was styled “Open Access.” Practice varied in former times between letting the reader loose among the books and shutting these behind doors or shutters. When the new era began in 1850, the new race of librarians beheld themselves confronted with an unprecedented and hazardous problem. Here was the multitude of famished readers, who had never experienced the civilizing influence of libraries, who might be dishonest, and who certainly had to be served expeditiously and in large numbers; and there was the stock of books, which must be kept in working order and unpilfered. Hence the closed library--the books on one side of a counter and the reading proletariat on the other. Then, in an ill-omened moment, indicators were invented, and the proletariat could not even see the books at a distance, but must try to find out, first, what it wanted from a catalogue, perhaps an abbreviated form of hand-list conveying little meaning to the unbookish and then, through a numerical system compared to which Bradshaw or a census competition is an intellectual delight, whether there was a chance of getting what it wanted. The library movement would have spread with far greater rapidity, and its results on the national mentality would have been far deeper and more extended, but for the long reign of the closed system. Very large libraries must keep the main bulk of their accumulations in a place apart; otherwise they could not contain them at all. When the stock begins to approach six figures, a librarian begins to think of having a stack, or some analogous form of magazine, accessible to none but officials and attendants. But in libraries of moderate dimensions there is no reason why the public should be locked out, and the most convincing reason why it should be invited and persuaded to come in. One must be something of a book-expert to know always precisely what book one wants; and then one may fail to obtain it through the mechanism of a catalogue and an indicator. The ordinary person will assimilate more mental food from browsing among the shelves than he would in thrice the time from reading what the chance of the indicator brought him under this discredited system. It may be that more books will disappear; but a certain percentage of losses may be faced with equanimity; it is one of the running expenses of true efficiency, and the results are well worth the cost.