So far, little has been attempted, except in one or two counties blessed with an open-minded and energetic librarian, to secure the personal contact and the insight into local needs and local avenues of approach that are the indispensable preliminaries to success. For the extension work that has proved so lucrative in urban libraries there is doubly and trebly a need in the country, if libraries are to play any vital part in the rural economy. During the last few years, fortunately, many agencies have come into being or have acquired a new lease of life through which missionary enterprises can be carried on, granted the necessary intelligence and driving-power at the centre. Rural conditions have changed profoundly since the war. There is a keen desire to make life in the country interesting, to open the stagnant backwater into the general stream. Here there is a village club or a women’s institute, there a branch of the W.E.A.; the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A. have both identified themselves with these and other local activities and initiated fresh projects themselves, including small libraries, reading circles, and educational programmes; one place has a field club, another a musical society; almost everywhere there are boy scouts, girl guides, and other elements of social life, to all of which the library movement should come as an aid and a stimulus. Some of these may form a natural home for the village library; others will provide materials for reading circles and similar enterprises on the part of librarians having some insight into the rustic mind and a determination to break down initial barriers. But to make such efforts effective, the policy of the rural library authority must be pushing, adaptive, and not a parsimonious one, and the staff of librarians must be something more than machines for distributing books.