e and institutions. And
they are used by individuals and by classes not as a substitute for the
text, but as helping to render vivid the lesson of the text.

With these go lectures in exposition. Every building of importance
recently designed for the uses of a public library includes an art
gallery and a lecture hall. What an immense augmentation of function
this implies! It implies that the library is no longer merely an
aggregate of books, each passive within rigid limits; but that it is an
active agent having under its control material which is kept plastic and
which it moulds into incredibly varied shapes to suit incredibly varied
needs.

The experience of the Boston Public Library shows that in the case of
books each increase of facilities creates an increased demand. The
trustees of 1852 boasted that they were providing for as many as fifty
readers at a time; the trustees of 1887 thought themselves venturesome
in providing for 500 readers at a time; and within a month after the new
building was opened it was forced to accommodate over 700 at a time.
Every week over 30,000 persons enter the Central Library building, and
every year 1,200,000 volumes are drawn for home use by the 65,000
card-holders. Yet these figures represent still but a portion of the
persons reached and the work to be done. Nor can facilities for
distribution keep pace with the need. For a city of a half million
people spread over an area of forty square miles adequate library
facilities cannot ever be provided. A municipality which even
approximates the adequate in providing buildings, equipment,
administration and general literature at the public expense must still
look to private gift for the specialized material necessary to a great
reference collection. That the Boston Public Library is next to the
British Museum in Shakespeariana is, to be sure, the result of a special
expenditure by the city. But the larger part of its special collections
which have given it distinction as a great scholars' library, has come
from private gift; the Ticknor collection of Spanish literature, the
Bowditch collection of mathematics, the Chamberlain collection of
autographs, the Brown collection of music and many others. And a city
which erects for its public library a building which is monumental is
putting forward the most attractive invitation to private gift. The
gifts which have come to Boston as the direct result of the new building
have already reached