a twelfth of its cost.

With proper organization and a liberal co-operation between municipal
and private effort the opportunities for service are almost limitless.
The risk is the greater of attempts at service either legally
inappropriate or practically inexpedient, and the risk is not lessened
by a popular appreciation which is more enthusiastic than it is apt to
be discriminating. There is, therefore, the greater need of
discrimination on the part of the library itself and of an authority
which will protect its exercise. This authority can be conferred only by
intelligent public opinion on the part of those who are capable of
appreciating constitutional limitations.

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY: ITS USES TO THE MUNICIPALITY

Written for the National Municipal League and printed in
_The Library Journal_ for June, 1903, eight years after the
author, Dr. John S. Billings, had begun his service as
director of the New York Public Library; largely a defence
of libraries against certain objections. The statement of
the part played by "sentiment" in popular institutions, and
its justification, are striking and true.

John Shaw Billings was born in Switzerland County, Ind., in
1839, graduated from Miami University in 1857, studied
medicine and after serving as a surgeon in the Civil War,
was assigned to the Surgeon General's Office in Washington,
of whose library he compiled the 16-volume Index Catalogue.
After service in Johns Hopkins and Pennsylvania Universities
he was chosen in 1895 director of the newly established New
York Public Library, where he served until his death in
1913, planning and supervising the construction of its
central building.

The great majority of cities of 25,000 inhabitants and upward in the
United States have public libraries of some sort, and the same is true
of many of the smaller cities. Many of these libraries have been founded
on gifts of individuals, some have developed from subscription
libraries, but the majority are now supported mainly or entirely by
funds appropriated by the city government. A considerable number are
still in the formative stage, this being true of those for which
buildings are being erected from funds provided by Mr. Carnegie and for
several hundred others for which he will probably provide buildings in
the near future.

There may be excessive and unjustifiable taxation for the support of a
pu