[eurrge] MODERN PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND THEIR METHODS 35 
reported to be a pronounced success. In the New York Circulating 
Library the system has been extended to nearly all its numerous 
branches throughout the city, and free access to the shelves is per- 
mitted even to children over nine years of age. 
At Buffalo a large room is devoted to the purposes of open access. 
Here some 11,000 books are classified in cases around the walls. A 
number of reading tables fill the centre of the room, and the reader 
may forage around, picking out what he wants from the shelves. In 
the Buffalo Library, as in most of the American libraries that have 
adopted the Open Access System, the books are not put back on the 
shelves by readers, but are left on a central table, to be replaced by the 
attendants. This obviates one of the chief objections to the system 
raised by English librarians, that the books would become hopelessly 
mixed through the carelessness of readers in not returning them to 
their proper places on the shelves. 
In the Reynolds Library at Rochester, a similar arrangement is 
in existence. On the ground floor there is a reference or study library 
with some 3,000 books most in demand, which are directly accessible 
to the public. Here, as in other American libraries, a reference 
librarian is always on hand, to advise and assist readers, but in no way 
to interfere with their free access to the shelves. 
Many other cases might be cited of American libraries which have 
adopted this admirable system, as, for instance, the Cleveland Library, 
where it is claimed to have increased the circulation of the books 
60 per cent in a very short time. From present indications the 
system is bound to grow in favour, on both sides of the Atlantic. 
In his admirable article on “College Library Administration,” 
forming part of the voluminous report on “ Public Libraries in the 
United States,” Professor Ottis H. Robinson made a strong plea for 
the Open Access System as applied to college libraries, and his argu- 
ment is equally applicable to the case of a public library. The plea 
that in a public library such a privilege would be taken advantage of 
by frivolous or careless readers, to the great detriment of the books, 
is not borne out by the experience of those libraries that have tried 
the experiment. It has been found — as any thoughtful man might 
have predicted —that the classes of people who take advantage of 
the privilege are the serious-minded readers, the students, the genuine 
seekers after knowledge. As for the idle or frivolous reader, he still 
prefers that the library attendants should relieve him from the task 
of choosing a book. And even if this were not so, is it not better 
and wiser to take chances of a few books being lost or damaged, rather 
than deny to serious readers the immense advantage of personal con- 
tact with the books as they lie classified on the shelves? The time 
