.

The assistance given by the reference room is invaluable. There no one
goes away unsatisfied; but the reference room reaches only those in
pursuit of a definite subject. Beyond its range is the drifting, aimless
reader, the searcher after something he knows not what. The dull, the
diffident, the beginners in the use of libraries, those who read purely
for amusement and those who want the new books--new spelled with a
capital n and book with a small b--old persons, those whose eyesight is
defective and whose glasses strike the card catalog at the wrong angle,
foreigners who use English with difficulty and diffidence--all these
gather together in the delivery room at once, and efficient as the
assistant may be--and sometimes they effect miracles--it is impossible
for them to give the different individuals the help each one needs. In
the libraries where the human element is most withdrawn the case of
these people is hard.

To bring the personal relation again into the library and to develop it
with the growth of the needs of the public, with this end in view, a
number of libraries have introduced the information desk. By common
consent, perhaps in the eternal fitness of things, this position so far
seems to have been relegated to woman.

"She is a reading lady, and far gone in the pleasures of friendship."
So wrote Sir Roger De Coverley of the object of his affections, and no
one could more felicitously describe two of the qualifications for the
one presiding at the information desk. A reading lady she must be; and
it is no less important that she be far gone in friendship for the
public. To study their needs; to be receptive as wax to their impress,
and responsive with heart and soul as well as with mind. This all around
sympathetic power is the fundamental requisite of true service in this
position. She may be a person of many words or of few; a good listener
she must be. Success depends less upon temperament or gifts than upon an
attitude of inward receptivity and outgoing friendliness--the attitude
that radiates a home-like atmosphere and insensibly sets the stranger at
ease. Emerson quaintly described certain faces as "decorated with
invitation." This style of decoration will be permanently in fashion in
this position if the invitation from the heart is a magnet strong enough
to draw within its circle those who are in need of help. It is most
necessary, also, that a certain poise be preserved. To be ready but not