The Library World Volume 24 Issue 4

We become more convinced daily that some form of publicity for libraries is necessary which shall have a persistence equal to that of the apparently imperishable public notions on the subject. We ask our readers to study the report of the Inaugural Meeting of the L.A.A. as one evidence of the necessity. Here we had a prominent young literary man, editor of the choicest literary monthly we possess, a man of a fine culture withal, expressing views of public libraries which were obsolete in the nineties. As, for example, the average issue of fiction is ninety per cent.; and that fiction, of course, of the inferior variety. Then, advocating a limited open access for selected readers—we wonder who would make the selection!—because such access is highly desirable, but unlimited open‐access “would turn the library into a bear garden.” Finally, expressing the view (or at least implying it) that libraries grew by a method of fortuitous accretion, and librarians never exercised selection. It seems incredible, does it not? Of course, in a journal for library workers, a traversing of such statements is unnecessary; but the statements cry aloud that the public men of to‐day need a new education in library affairs.