uency.
Here, then, is a bold attempt at adapting a library to its constituency.
Shall it be seconded?

Many will hold it unwise to discuss such a subject publicly. Remembering
many ill-judged efforts at economy by ignorant, uneducated, or
parsimonious men in town meetings and on library boards, they will
pronounce it hurtful to libraries to point out to such men that some
library experts consider it well to keep down expenses for cataloging
and housing books by weeding out libraries. Perhaps they are right.
Whether they are so or not, however, their objection is too late. The
matter now under consideration is undergoing public discussion, and it
is important that men having special knowledge of library matters should
contribute now the results of their experience. Unreasonable men in town
meetings and in boards of trustees must be answered, and reasonable men
and women need to understand thoroughly the subject in order that their
answers may be discriminating and wise.

Once, when the Librarian of Congress asked that an addition be made to
the library rooms, a member is said to have urged that instead of
enlarging the Capitol, the library should be weeded out. Such a plan
would be regarded generally as exceedingly foolish.

There must be in many parts of this broad land large and growing
libraries which will aim to gather very large general and special
collections not limited to books of intrinsic merit. Such libraries will
have to get many books of little value in themselves to enable students
to study subjects historically. It would indeed be very silly to weed
out the Congressional Library. Somewhere there should be accessible (and
where better than in that library?) every book, pamphlet, and map
published in the United States. The Congressional Library should be a
great national library like the Bibliotheque Nationale and the British
Museum.

The Quincy plan would not work well even in a place the size of
Worcester, Mass., with a population of only 90,000 or 95,000, and but 44
miles from Boston, for it is a center of important educational
institutions and of inquirers, and therefore needs large reference
libraries. Cambridge, though very much nearer Boston than Quincy,
becomes, because of Harvard University, a center where there must be a
large library. It is too great an inconvenience for Harvard professors
and students to rely, except for book rarities, on libraries even so
near as those in Boston.

On the