The librarian’s duty, he has found by harsh experience, is twofold: to contrive a library service, and to see that the best use is made of it. Instruction in the art of reading and in the choice of books, it may be objected, is for the teacher, not the librarian. Theoretically, it may be so; but the rejoinder is, our teachers have never succeeded in the task, they have not even addressed themselves to it, and they are not likely to succeed unless they work hand in hand with the librarian: they must, indeed, rely on the librarian, the book-expert, more and more under modern conditions, for guidance in their own reading and in carrying out their own functions according to the newest lights. It is largely owing to the lack of any regular correlation between schools and libraries that the results of the Education Acts have been so unsatisfactory. The mistakes of 1850 might have been rectified in 1870 by bringing the new system of schooling into the closest contact with the public libraries. But, though it was enacted that every child should be taught to read, that children should be taught how to read, and where and what to read, seems to have scarcely entered the minds of those responsible for elementary education. In introducing the Education Estimates for 1917-8, Mr. Fisher said in the House of Commons (April 19th, 1917):-- “I have been impressed by the fact that boys who have been stirred up at the age of sixteen or seventeen to attend the technological classes attached to our new universities in the north of England have so lost the habit of intellectual activity as to cloy and impede the efficient working of the college.... The country does not get full value out of its elementary schools, because so much of the training and instruction is subsequently lost.” Why had these boys lost the habit of intellectual activity? Because, first, though they had received the usual primary schooling, they had never had instilled into them intellectual habits, interests, or likings; and, second, because, even where libraries and other intellectual institutions existed, they had never been brought inside their doors, or learned that these things were their own and would satisfy their multifarious needs the more they used them. Library Extension aims at the repair of these oversights. The activities which it connotes should be an important part of the library service when this is reorganized on a national basis. In reality, Library Extension is a return to the broader idea of the people’s institutes. The lectures, reading circles, meetings for study and discussion, the co-operative alliances with energetic bodies such as the Workers’ Educational Association, the local field club, scientific society, or the like, the closer relations with schools and all intellectual agencies, are revivals and developments of the social efforts at adult education which gave life to those institutions in the early nineteenth century.