I do not
believe it should always wait for people to come to it; it should go to
the people. Every family in every city or town where there is a library
should be offered a library card, or as many cards as it has adult
members. Sometimes there is so much red tape prerequisite to obtaining a
library card that a bashful man does not dare to make the attempt. Let
us not shut the people off from the books that they have paid for by a
barbed wire fence of red tape. Let every man or woman, yes, or child,
too, that is old enough, be personally canvassed and offered a library
card. Then sell him a catalog at cost price, or better still, at less
than cost, and tell him how to use it. Ah, but our trustees will say,
this will cost something. Yes, it will cost something, but it will be a
tremendously profitable investment, and pay immense dividends later on
in a more intelligent citizenship and wiser and happier men.

From all this I wish it might be inferred that no librarian can be too
great for his position. It is not easy for him to have too much
knowledge, too much tact, too much consecration to his work, too exalted
an estimate of his possibilities. He should not have a mind with a
flange on it, so that it forever runs on the small rail along the dusty
roadbeds of routine. Let him originate, let him innovate, let him blaze
his path with the pioneers--let him think.

THE USE OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

Part of an address by President Angell of the University of
Michigan--educator, diplomat and statesman--at the
dedication of the Ryerson Library Building in Grand Rapids,
Mich., Oct. 8, 1904. To advise a reader, Pres. Angell
thinks, one must know something of his personal aptitudes.
General advice about "good reading" is seldom of great
service. A modern note by a great man.

James Burrill Angell was born in Scituate, R.I., Jan. 7,
1829, graduated at Brown University, and after studying
abroad, became eminent as an educator, holding first a
professorship in his alma mater and then serving
successively as president of the Universities of Vermont and
Michigan. He was U.S. minister to China in 1880-81 and
served on important international commissions. His works on
international law and on education are standard. He died on
April 1, 1916.

Now that your benefactor has so nobly done his part, it remains for the
city to see that the library is maintained and ma