[10] On the other hand, the complexity and the efficiency organization required in the technical library and information department of a modern business undertaking, may be realized from an article on “The Library at the Ardeer Factory of Nobel’s Explosives Co., Ltd.” (_Library Association Record_, June, 1921). [11] American opinion is all in favour of the use of the library as an information department. “The aim of the business library is rather to function as a central information, statistical, or research bureau, or, like other departments, to aid directly or indirectly in profits, in increasing quantity, quality, or efficiency of production, in building up an intelligent work force, or in the general improvement and extension of the business. Only in so far as it does this is the business library justifiable.” J. H. Friedel, _Training for Librarianship_, p. 115. [12] “Within the last three years the number of business libraries has more than doubled.” J. H. Friedel: _Training for Librarianship_ (1921), p. 113. See also the chapters on Special Libraries, Agricultural Libraries, Financial Libraries, Law Libraries, Technical Libraries, etc. [13] Library Association Record, Aug., 1920, p. 258. [14] A. E. Bostwick: _The American Public Library_, p. 31. III LIBRARY EXTENSION. Library Extension is closely analogous to the more familiar phrase University Extension. It stands for various activities that go outside, often far outside, the province marked out by the Public Libraries Acts, yet are natural if not inevitable corollaries of the educational and social doctrines that formulated those Acts. They carry the services and influence of the library into other spheres--the school, the home, the voluntary association--and expand its functions from the mechanical disposal of books as stock-in-trade to their treatment as atoms packed with vital force, electrons charged with incalculable energies capable of working great consequences in that susceptible region, human life. A library may confine itself to a passive attitude, and so long as it responds more or less freely to external pressure it may be acceptable and useful to a small proportion of the persons who pay for its upkeep. But it was long ago borne in upon the far-sighted librarian and committee-man that a more active, nay, a positively militant policy was required if the public library was to exercise all its powers for good in the social economy. More books have mouldered away or come to a like inglorious and ineffectual end than were ever worn out by hard use. You can offer your public the finest collection of books--it has been done again and again by profligate philanthropists--and never get them read, or the people’s life and taste improved. It is easy to buy books; it is much more difficult, and far more important, to create readers.[15]