In London, principally through the circumstance that the twenty-eight boroughs now existing were preceded by eighty-two parishes, two-thirds of which had set up libraries for themselves before the present library districts and borough authorities came into being in 1902, there are far too many reference libraries in proportion to lending libraries. Most of these are of indifferent or inferior quality, and, if they were suppressed and their collections centralized in a series of large district reference libraries, few would miss them, and the general gain would be enormous. All the same, more numerous ready-reference libraries are wanted. Every branch library should have a collection of dictionaries, atlases, and general encyclopædias, in short all the books that a business firm, a school, or the like usually provides for daily use. But, since reference libraries are so expensive, it is a vain and wasteful policy to duplicate them at random; and the result is merely a scattered series of middling libraries, far inferior to those open to all the world in Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, with a crippling of resources in other directions. This is not said to belittle local effort. The point is that, though Islington, Westminster, or Chelsea may each build up a reference library not inferior to that found in the average provincial town of like population, Islington, Westminster, and Chelsea are, after all, parts of London, and the Londoner ought to be vastly better off than the average provincial--else why should he stay there? Though to one acquainted with the exacting needs of all grades and varieties of readers the deficiencies of our reference libraries are evident enough, it is none the less true that the richness of their contents and the value they yield to judicious users are realized by only a fraction of the public. Librarians have never been allowed to advertize their wares; a notice in the press such as a university or a State department would not consider beneath its dignity would have called down a reprimand and probably a surcharge from the Government auditor. In a strange town, the visitor may have some trouble to find out, first whether a public library exists, and then where. Advertisements in tramcars and finger-posts in the street are usually looked for in vain. Things being so, it is better to lay stress on what the reference library can and does do than on any delinquencies, since public opinion is sure to learn in time from the books that are there to be read, the immensity of the desiderata. In the cities previously mentioned as possible abodes for a worker among books, one may acquire a competent idea of this immensity. In other large towns and in several London boroughs, one may find reference libraries sufficing for the ordinary demands of all but the specialist and the researcher, and, in addition, one commonly finds special collections that attract readers from far away.