The library cannot do without the newspaper any more than it can do without the review, the technical periodical, and the learned society’s journal. All of these are necessary supplements to the books, since they are records of new knowledge; and they require the same care in selection, the guiding principle of which must be a clear idea of what they are there for. The much-debated dictum that history is past politics and politics current history needs no debate as a reason why the leading newspapers and the weekly reviews should be accessible in public libraries. Almost every one takes in a paper suited to his opinions: the public newsroom should give the opportunity of studying other opinions, and also of checking information by comparison of different sources and versions that conflict. The newsroom is to the library as the open-air excursion to the botany class, the laboratory to the lecture-room. Here theory and doctrine are seen in action; applied politics, applied sociology, all the different phases of the science of life set forth in books illustrated, tested, verified, or confuted. Which study is of more importance than the other? Fortunately, that is a futile question: the relevant one is, how incalculably each gains by conjunction with the other. There is no need to provide the paper that every one buys. Nor are those that deal in police news, divorce cases, spice and sensation, the journals that a public institution is called upon to buy. The most authoritative journals, representing each of the recognized parties, weekly reviews of similar credentials, and the leading provincial organs, are all that need be supplied in this group. Even in a large and prosperous library, it is better to duplicate such than to make too wide a selection. Subsidized journals, sent gratis by political or social cliques or by advertising agents, might as well be rejected altogether; where they are accepted, the approved course is to pigeon-hole them until there is an applicant. The least approved is to employ this worthless stuff to cover serious gaps, and offer the public a stone when it asks for bread. A library committee should feel the same responsibility for a newspaper as for a book. By admitting either, they virtually give it a public guarantee.