[purPEE] MODERN PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND THEIR METHODS 25 
scholars and students and all who may seek information from its 
increasing stores of books. It will then be in the truest sense a national 
Library. 
Of public libraries, in the stricter sense of the term, the great 
majority, as has already been stated, are in Ontario, and the chief 
of these is the Public Library at Toronto, with its five very active 
branches. This library system, under the able direction of Mr. James 
Bain, is doing, in a perfectly unostentatious way, a splendid work in 
Toronto. It reaches, through its branches, every quarter of the city, 
and its reference library is one of the best in Canada. In its methods 
it aims to make the library of the widest possible helpfulness to the 
community, and to keep its books, not on the shelves, but in the houses 
of the people. There are now some 111,725 volumes in the main 
library and branches, of which 37,297 are in the reference department 
of the main library. 
Next in importance to the Toronto Public Library is that at 
Hamilton, in which several admirable features of modern library man- 
agement have been adopted, with ample success. The books are classi- 
fied according to the Dewey System, and an indicator is in use for the 
assistance of readers. There are at present 28,000 books on the 
shelves. 
The most important of the other public libraries in Ontario are 
those at London, Brantford, Guelph, Kingston, Preston, St. Catharines, 
Lindsay, Berlin, St. Thomas, Waterloo, Sarnia and Stratford. 
In the Lower Provinces there are only two municipal free libraries, 
one at St. John, and the other at Halifax. Both are doing good work 
in their respective communities, and the Halifax Library, especially, 
has lately been re-organized and re-classified on a modern basis. A 
printed catalogue, arranged on the Dewey System, was published in 
1900. There are at present some 13,000 volumes in the library. The 
St. John Library contains about 11,000. 
The only public libraries in the west are those at Winnipeg, Vicioria, 
Vancouver and New Westminster. These libraries are still in their 
infancy, but will doubtless prove a boon to the people, and lead to the 
establishment of similar libraries in other western Canadian towns. 
Two features of the Ontario library system that are bound to bear 
an increasing influence upon the development and usefulness of public 
libraries in the province, are the existence of a carefully constructed 
Provincial Act governing the establishment and maintenance of public 
libraries; and the organization of the Ontario Library Association. 
The latter, although only a year or two old, is already making its 
influence markedly felt not only upon the libraries in the province, 
