The _DNB_ notes that Dury's life was "an incessant round of journeyings, colloquies, correspondence, and publications." The account might also have added that, sadly, it was a life of many failures and frustrations, since his visionary scheme for the wholeness of life was so out of touch with the jealousies and rivalries of those he encountered. But if the larger vision that underlay _The Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ is now merely a historical curiosity, the specific reforms that Dury advocated, as seemingly impractical in his own time as his other schemes, proved to be of lasting importance. Shorn of the millenarian vision that gave them their point in Dury's own day, his ideas have become the accepted standards of modern librarianship. Dury himself would not have been heartened by his secular acceptance: "... For except Sciences bee reformed in order to this Scope [of the Christian and millenarian vision], the increas of knowledg will increas nothing but strife, pride and confusion, from whence our sorrows will bee multiplied and propagated unto posteritie...." (p. 31). _Thomas F. Wright William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION [Footnote 1: For Dury's biography, see J. Minton Batten, _John Dury, Advocate of Christian Reunion_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).] [Footnote 2: On the relation of Dury, Hartlib, and Comenius, see G.H. Turnbull, _Hartlib, Dury and Comenius_ (Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool, 1947).] [Footnote 3: Hugh Trevor-Roper, "Three Foreigners: The Philosophers of the Puritan Revolution," in his _Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change, and Other Essays_, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1972), 240.] [Footnote 4: On the philosophical and theological theories of Dury, Hartlib, and Comenius, see Richard H. Popkin, "The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Scepticism, Science, and Biblical Prophecy," _Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres_ (Spring 1983), and Charles Webster, _The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626-1660_ (London: Duckworth, 1975).] [Footnote 5: Quoted in Turnbull, 257.] [Footnote 6: _Athenae Oxonienses_, vol. 2 (London, 1692), col. 400.] [Footnote 7: The omitted works are _An Idea of Mathematicks_ by John Pell (pp. 33-46) and _The description of one of the chiefest Libraries which is in Germanie_, attributed either to Julius Scheurl or J. Schwartzkopf (pp. [47]-65, in Latin). This seems to be the first printing of _The description_, which was published separately at Wolfenbuttel in 1653. John Pell's essay was written around 1630-34 and was prepared for publication in 1634 by Hartlib, but was only actually published as an addition to _The Reformed Librarie-Keeper_. It was of some importance in making mathematics better known at the time.] [Footnote 8: "John Durie's _Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ and Its Author's Career as a Librarian," _The Library_, 1st ser. 4 (1892), 82.]