A more particular account of the Manchester Commercial Library, the latest to be opened, will indicate the distinctive features and functions of these new departments. Its quarters are a large room in the Royal Exchange, in the heart of the business region of the city: here it was inaugurated by the Lord Mayor on October 23rd, 1919. A handbook stating its aims and explaining its uses was issued, in which it is pointed out that the commercial library is there to provide “any and every kind of commercial information that may be obtained from printed matter, and such additional information as it may be possible to procure from public or private sources; and for the collection, arrangement, and cataloguing of such printed matter, so as to render it quickly and conveniently available for inquirers and readers. It is not a technical library; those who want books on processes of manufacture must consult the collection in the reference library in Piccadilly. Its object is to cater for the man who markets commodities, and buys and sells them; not for the man who makes them.” In the fittings, furniture, and apparatus many new devices have been introduced, such as the contrivance for mounting and storing maps on vertical cylinders, and for displaying them flat on large tables--a method that has certain advantages, especially when a number of different maps have to be consulted in turn. But the most striking and in many respects the most useful piece of library mechanism is the vertical file. This is a vast accumulation of cuttings from newspapers and other sources, systematically arranged, in which any item of information that may be of service to the business man is preserved and made available for instant reference by a subject index. About 100,000 clippings had been laid in, arranged, and indexed by March, 1921; and this home-made encyclopædia, this vast inquire-within, enabled the staff to answer off-hand a large percentage of the miscellaneous queries coming in from hour to hour.[10] The periodicals taken number over two hundred, and include a good many foreign publications. The latest maps are added to the collection as they appear, and the atlases include several that can hardly be found elsewhere, at least in places accessible to the public. Thus the contents of the library are multiform, books, pamphlets, leaflets, charts, tables, as well as press cuttings; all are minutely classified, and graphic methods of subject-cataloguing make it easy to trace the most out-of-the-way information. Here is the summary of the contents given by the official handbook:-- THE CONTENTS OF THE LIBRARY. These may be roughly summarized as follows: