EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS 359 



Volumes 



California State Library, Sacramento 320,000 



San Francisco Public Library 212,807 * 



San Francisco Mechanic's and Mercantile 



Library 77,140 



Los Angeles Public Library 256,581 



Oakland Public Library 225,906 



University of California Library 414,000 



Stanford University Library 262,850 



tion was that a state library should be directly at the 

 service of the people and not merely an adjunct of 

 administration and legislation at the capital. In 

 1903 Gillis organized "traveling libraries/' collec- 

 tions of books sent from Sacramento to local guar- 

 dians for circulation in communities which applied 

 for them. By 1911 five hundred and ten communi- 

 ties were being served 'with collections of fifty volumes 

 at a time. It was decided that the State was too 

 large a unit for distribution in this way from the 

 capital, and Gillis secured the enactment of a law 

 providing for the establishment of county libraries 

 which should serve as centers from which distribu- 

 tion could be made, the State Library becoming 

 then a source from which distribution to county libra- 

 ries could be made of materials not in their collec- 

 tions. Gillis did not live to see the full fruition of 

 this work in which his successor as State Librarian, 

 Milton J. Ferguson, was associated with him. Fer- 

 guson furnishes the following sketch of the law and 

 its operation : 



1 These two libraries were compelled to start anew in 1906, 

 the former having lost 106,344 and the latter 300,000 volumes 

 in the fire which destroyed the city at that date. 



