hem and deposit them permanently in some library. So much
the more important is it that the custodians of all our public libraries
should form as complete collections as possible of all pamphlets, at
least, that appear in their own city or neighborhood. How to do this is a
problem not unattended with difficulty. Pamphlets are rarely furnished
for sale in the same manner as books, and when they are, book-sellers
treat them with such indignity that they are commonly thrust aside as
waste paper, almost as soon as they have appeared from the press. If all
the writers of pamphlets would take pains to present them to the public
libraries of the country, and especially to those in their own
neighborhood, they would at once enrich these collections, and provide
for the perpetuity of their own thought. A vigilant librarian should
invite and collect from private libraries all the pamphlets which their
owners will part with. It would also be a wise practice to engage the
printing-offices where these fugitive leaves of literature are put in
type, to lay aside one copy of each for the library making the
collection.

Our local libraries should each and all make it a settled object to
preserve not only full sets of the reports of all societies,
corporations, charity organizations, churches, railroads, etc., in their
own neighborhood, but all catalogues of educational institutions, all
sermons or memorial addresses, and in short, every fugitive publication
which helps to a knowledge of the people or the region in which the
library is situated.

The binding of pamphlets is a mooted point in all libraries. While the
British Museum and the Library of Congress treat the pamphlets as a book,
binding all separately, this is deemed in some quarters too vexatious and
troublesome, as well as needlessly expensive. It must be considered,
however, that the crowding together of a heterogenous mass of a dozen or
twenty pamphlets, by different authors, and on various subjects, into a
single cover, is just as objectionable as binding books on unrelated
subjects together. Much time is consumed in finding the pamphlet wanted,
among the dozen or more that precede or follow it, and, if valuable or
much sought-for pamphlets are thus bound, many readers may be kept
waiting for some of them, while one reader engrosses the volume
containing all. Besides, if separately bound, a single pamphlet can be
far more easily replaced in case of loss than can a whole v