o-called
"community-centre" service. These facts have guided the
grouping and sequence of the papers and addresses that make
up the present volume. The authors, it will be noticed,
include more statesmen, publicists, and professional men,
and fewer librarians, than was the case with the two
previous volumes, thus reflecting the greater generality and
wider interest of the subject.

GENERAL COMMUNITY RELATIONS

In the following group have been included papers and
addresses largely by publicists or educators interested in
libraries from the general civic standpoint, and affected by
the general trend toward what has been termed here
"socialization." They have been loosely arranged in three
groups--general ideas on the field, function and
possibilities of the library, papers on books and their
uses, as affected or promoted by the library, and general
addresses, chiefly at the opening of library buildings.
Within these groups they are given in general in their
chronological order, although with some exceptions whose
purpose will be self evident. Through them all runs the
thread of consciousness that service to the community must
be the primary object of the library, although the breadth
and extent of that service, as it was destined later to grow
and develop is not generally realized and in some cases
doubtless would have been deprecated by the writers or
speakers, could they have foreseen it. But in all these
pronouncements we may clearly see the dawning light of a new
library day.

THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN
AMERICA AND ITS TRUE FUNCTION IN THE COMMUNITY

This comprehensive sketch, by Professor Tyler of Cornell
University, forms part of an address delivered at the
dedication of the Sage Library, at West Bay City, Michigan,
Jan. 16, 1884.

Moses Coit Tyler was born in Griswold, Conn., Aug. 2, 1835
and graduated at Yale in 1857. He was professor of English
at Michigan University in 1867-81 and from the latter year
to his death, Dec. 28, 1900, held the chair of American
History at Cornell.

In this address, Prof. Tyler has added to his equipment as a
philosophical historian his personal knowledge and
experience of the service that a properly administered
collection of books may render to a community.

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