ing his long term of office. It will be called the McLean library, after the founder.

The report of the public library of Savannah, Georgia, records a circulation for 1911 of 84,179 v. of which 21,819v. were through the children's department. Number of volumes on the shelves, 41,861. The report makes a strong plea for a separate department for children. The classified list of card holders shows 70 different occupations.

At a late meeting of the Executive committee of the Georgia library association, Miss Katherine Hinton Wootten was elected secretary-treasurer of the association, to fill the place left vacant by the resignation of Miss Julia Rankin on her marriage to Mr Frank Foster.

Greenville (Tex.). The state federated women's clubs of Texas will furnish for country schools of the county 14 traveling libraries.

West

A book exhibit of material covering a period dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries, extending down to modern. examples of book binding was held in the Denver (Col.) public library during January. There were 30v. of quaint bibles, the pauper bible, which was printed in Venice in 1508, and bound by Broga, another of the bibles containing commentaries by Erasmus, and published in 1522, a copy of Galileo's famous astronomical work, which was condemned by the Inquisition, and ordered to be burned. in the 17th century was also shown. A number of beautiful bindings both ancient and modern were exhibited.

St. Joseph (Mo.) in co-operation with the Y. W. C. A. will soon establish a number of traveling libraries to be used in wholesale houses and factories, especially those where women are employed.

St. Louis public library made a separate feature of the children's opening. Saturday, January 13, was set aside as a special day for the children to visit the new Central library building. Invitations. were sent to all the schools in the city, and arrangements made to show the children over the building in groups, between

the hours of ten and twelve o'clock in the morning, and two to five o'clock in the afternoon. Each group was in charge of a children's librarian, assisted by a student from the training class, and each tour of inspection began or ended in a story-hour room, where stories were told. It was impossible to count the attendance, but 943 children were entertained in the story hours, and 828 books were issued from Central children's room. Most of the children were regular patrons of some division of the library. Perhaps the severe cold weather kept away those less interested. It will be noted that removal to the new building has greatly increased the work of the library. On one Saturday the issue in the Children's room equalled two-thirds the ordinary circulation for a whole week in the old building.

On February 3, Schuyler (Neb.) had an informal opening of her Carnegie library. The building is a one story brick and stone structure with a high basement. The main floor contains reading rooms and the librarian's office. The woodwork is a dull oak finish. The basement contains a lecture room, tains a lecture room, a rest room, etc., and is finished in hard pine.

Pacific coast

Long Beach, California, public library staff numbers librarian, assistant librarian and seven assistants; the salaries paid range from $50 to $120 monthly. Beginning with the first of February, 1912, the salaries were increased 10 per cent, making a net increase of $600 on the salary budget of the coming year.

The work at the Ballard branch of the Seattle public library has grown to such an extent that it has been necessary to transform the auditorium on the second floor into a children's reading room. The children's work at the Ballard branch is in charge of Miss Mary McKnight from the Pittsburgh training school for children's librarians. The circulation at the Ballard branch in 1911 was 66,717. This branch occupies a $15,000 Carnegie building erected some years ago and is entirely too small for the work now done at the branch. Miss Elizabeth N. Robinson,

who has been librarian of this branch since May, 1910, left January 1, 1912, to become librarian of the new Carnegie library in Medford, Oregon. She has been succeeded at the Ballard branch by Miss Stella R. Hoyt, who graduated from Pratt institute library school in 1909 and since then has been cataloger in the Ferguson library, Stamford, Conn.

Canada

The Toronto public library has received a notable gift in the shape of a valuable collection of pictures, illustrating the history of Canada. The donor is J. Ross Robertson, who for many years has been an enthusiastic promoter of the proper teaching of Canadian history in the public schools.

This collection, which the donor expects to increase by additional gifts, is unique, complete and historically correct, and will be of the greatest advantage to the students of history in Toronto. "The prints," says the librarian, George H. Locke, in an appreciative foreword to the catalogue of the 558 pictures, "tell a story, by the side of which the printed word is cold and dead, and to see the faces of the men who accomplished great things for our country, and to see the pictures of the houses in which they lived and worked, and of the villages and towns as they were in those times, gives us a thrill of ancestor worship' which a discovery in Debrett could never produce." The acceptance of the gift on behalf of the library was made the occasion also of the unveiling of a bronze memorial tablet commemorating the gift of $350,000 from Mr Carnegie and also the unveiling of the portrait of John Graves Simcoe by his successor in arms and office, Sir John M. Gibson, K. C. M. G., lieutenant-governor of the province of Ontario, and of John Hallam, founder of the library. A brilliant and representative gathering assembled to take part in the function. Speeches, witty and informing, from the mayor, J. Ross Robertson, Sir John Gibson, N. B. Gash of the library board, and others, marked the occasion as a memorable one.

Dundas annual report shows a total number of books on hand, 7,193, with a circulation of 17,440v.; expenditures, $1.269, of which $114 is from the government and $976 from the town.

The twenty-third annual report of the Hamilton public library shows 46,231v. on the shelves, of which 3,808 were added during the year; circulation from the main library and branches of 288,966, being an increase of 49,469. Fiction issued from the main library was 61 per cent, while that of the branches was 91 per cent. Biography has been re-classified during the year.

Foreign

Last year the Public library of Hamar, Norway, a town of 1,868 inhabitants, lost only two books, and during the three years since the open-shelf system was adopted, the total loss has been five books.

A new feature of the work of the Public library of Heidelberg is the litterary evening which was planned by Librarian Zink with the object of calling the attention of the public to good current literature and to increase the number of book borrowers.

For a long time special afternoons were set aside for the children of em

ployes by the library of the dye works of Fr. Bayer & Co. in Leverkusen-Wiesdorf (Germany) and the experiment was so successful that often as many as 70 children were present at one time. The result was the installation of a special collection of children's books, which went into circulation last November.

Wanted library position- Graduate of a four years' library course with over five years' practical experience, desires position as librarian or cataloger. References upon application. Address A. B., Library Bureau, 37 S. Wabash avenue, Chicago.

Wanted The office supply of PUBLIC LIBRARIES for January, 1912, is about exhausted. We shall be glad to receive any of these numbers from those who are not keeping complete files.

Vol. 17

The Library as a Paying Investment* Carl B. Roden, assistant librarian, Chicago public library.

The historian who, in some future generation, shall take for his task the characterization of the age in which we live ought to have no difficulty in discovering its impelling motive and its most significant contribution to the material progress of the race. For the former he will need only to point to the tremendous conquests over time and space which are making us gasp in astonishment, if not in terror. The ocean greyhound, the eighteen-hour train, the wireless telegraph which leaps the last gap, and spoils the last chance for the "tired business man" to escape from the causes of his weariness, the motor car, the airship-speed, high, reckless, killing speed, he will find to be the chief contribution of this generation to the sum of human achievement.

And for the spirit of the age, its impelling motive, will he not again be obliged to name-speed? Speed, which conditions our every activity, our habits of thought, our business and our pleasures. Speed, which clamors for results, straining for the end without the irksome intervention of the means. Everywhere the passion for immediate results, everywhere the quest for quick returns, for the highest proceeds with the lowest expense, be it of money, time or effort everywhere the eternal question, the supreme question of our time: Does it pay?

And yet, side by side with this spirit

Summary of an address delivered at the meeting of the Wisconsin library association, Janesville, February 21, 1912.

No. 4

of gain our historian will find that there flourished in this age two movements seemingly as incongruous and as little akin to the materialism of the times as anything well could be. And he will be at a loss to account for the great zeal and enthusiasm shown in the furtherance of those movements--which are the twin movements for the abolishment of poverty and of ignorance-until he is forced to the conclusion that the age must have been convinced that these movementspaid!

And so the public library, which is one of the largest phases of the modern movement for the abolishment of ignorance and, on the whole, one of the most significant products of our time, comes forward with more and more confidence every time it is called to the bar to answer whether it is a paying investment, and is conscious of the feeling each time that its inquisitors are a little more predisposed to give it the benefit of the doubt and to put the burden of proof on the other side.

Along somewhat similar lines there have been occasional inquiries-challenges directed at higher education, to which the colleges have replied, sometimes by joining issue directly, and submitting such exhibits in evidence as the average incomes of college graduates, and sometimes, and much more effectively, by a sort of plea of confession and avoidance, showing the value of a college training to society at large, and the power and position in an intellectual and cultural sense, of the college graduate.

Now the library has the same right, or it has no right at all, to point to its contribution to the maintenance and advancement of the educational average of