244 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



familiar theory that the state, would it insure its own continu- 

 ance, must see that all its citizens have access to the stores, in 

 books, of knowledge and wisdom. It must be open to its public ; 

 it must invite its public ; it must attract its public ; it must please 

 its public all to the end that it may educate its public. 



The old-time library was simply a storehouse of treasures. 

 There were few to read books ; there were few books to be read, 

 and those few were procured at great cost of labor and time. 

 They could be replaced when lost or stolen only with great diffi- 

 culty, if at all, and they were guarded with exceeding care. With 

 the cheapening of book-producing processes the reasons for this 

 extreme safe- guarding of books disappeared. Its spirit, however, 

 is still active. Several causes have combined to keep it alive. 

 Even to this day there are a few books, relatively very few, which 

 are of great value and can be replaced only with extreme difficulty 

 or at great expense. There are also books first editions, fine 

 bindings, last surviving copies, and early specimens of printing 

 which are rightly much prized by the artist, the antiquarian, the 

 curio hunter, or the historian of handicraft. These are all most 

 properly regarded as treasures, and are kept under lock and key. 

 But the fact that there are a few books which should be carefully 

 preserved from loss or injury is not sufficient cause for keeping 

 up in these days a barrier between the public and its library. Set 

 aside these greatly valued books and the few works highly prized 

 for certain special reasons which the average library contains, 

 and there is left the great body of modern books, not expensive, 

 easily replaced, and of far more importance to ninety-nine in a 

 hundred of any public library's constituents than all the book 

 curios the world contains. In any save the very richest and 

 largest libraries in this country the books which can not be dupli- 

 cated at a reasonable cost have no proper place. It is with the 

 modern, inexpensive works that the public library chiefly con- 

 cerns itself. Its art publications and its rarities of every kind 

 can easily be disposed of in safety vaults or private rooms. Its 

 more valuable works of reference can be guarded from any prob- 

 able mutilation by a little special service. Its main collection, 

 sixty to eighty per cent of the average library, is what the public 

 wishes to use. These form any library's real tools in its avowed 

 purpose of aiding in the education of the community in which it 

 is placed. 



The readers of books, moreover, are no longer few but many, 

 and have greatly changed their manner of looking at books and 

 the guardianship of them in the past hundred years. The tax- 

 paying citizen to-day has his own daily or weekly paper, if nothing 

 more, and knows well that a printed page is no longer a sacred or 

 an expensive thing. He walks up to the shelves of the bookstore 



