STUDIES ON MUSEUMS AND KINDRED INSTITUTIONS. 473 



be many local conditions which bear upon the matter. In our small 

 German university cities, for example, where learned men use the 

 books for exhaustive study, and the same liooks are rarely wanted by 

 difl'erent persons at the same time, and where besides there is hardly 

 any outside public that uses the library, a reference library is certainly 

 not to be preferred to the lending- library system now in use. But in 

 cities where a great, general public has need for books, it appears to 

 me that the lending principle adopted l>y us is less called for, but cer- 

 tainly in this case such means ought to be adopted as obtained in the 

 American reference libraries. The libraries uuist be opened to ever}^ 

 one from morning until evening without onerous conditions, and 

 sufficient opportunity nmst be afforded for undisturbed reading. The 

 catalogue nmst be, as there, made practical and accessible, the books 

 must he placed according to an easily intelligible system, access must 

 be had to the bookshelves: above all there must be employees who are 

 exclusively at the service of the public and make it their principal 

 business to attend to readers — arrangements, in short, which, with some 

 exceptions, we are not at all acquainted with in (jermany and do not 

 even anticipate. 



The Newberry and the John Crerar libraries are a noble pair, twin 

 children of civic patriotism. In spite of their being a mile and a 

 quarter distant from each other they may be considered as a unit, since 

 their field of work is more or less limited with regard to each other. 

 Chicago has in them, a 1)eautiful, excellentl}^ arranged, most freely 

 accessible, scientific, public reference library, in two separate build- 

 ings, already comprising 325,000 numbers,'* and the total collection of 

 the two libraries will, Avithin twenty-five years, at the present rate of 

 increase of 27,000 numbers a year, amount to 1,000,000. The Berlin 

 library has a round million, the Paris librar}^ 3,000,000, and the London 

 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 numbers. Chicago, however, loves to make 

 unexpected leaps in its development, and who knows how quickly 

 fortune maj^ confound such a calculation. The noble contest between 

 the Newberry Library and the John Crerar Library will certainly 

 produce the most elaborate results. 



15. CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY. 



The idea of a public library, conceived by BcMijamin Franklin in 

 1732, has received a most magnificent development in the United 

 States, while in Germany the slight beginnings that have been made 

 are hardly worth mentioning. "America has taken tlu^ h^ad in develop- 

 ing the usefulness of public libraries,'' said Thomas Greenwood in 1894, 

 on page 524 of the fourth edition of his monograph entitled Public 



«The Public Library of Chicago, which is quite near the John Crerar Library, has 

 322,000 numbers; the three Hbraries together, therefore, have nearly 0.^0.000. 



