assistant in a library should
possess is a thorough love of his work. He should cherish a noble
enthusiasm for the success and usefulness of the institution with which
he has chosen to be associated. Nor should this spirit be by any means
limited to the literary and scientific aid which he is enabled to extend
to others, nor to the acquisition of the knowledge requisite to meet the
endless inquiries that are made of him. He should take as much interest
in restoring a broken binding, or in seeing that a torn leaf is repaired,
as in informing a great scholar what the library contains upon any
subject.

No one who is listless or indifferent in the discharge of daily duties is
fit for a place in a public library. There should be an _esprit de
corps_, a zeal for his profession, which will lead him to make almost any
sacrifice of outside interests to become proficient in it. Thus only will
he render himself indispensable in his place, and do the greatest amount
of service to the greatest number of readers. I have seen employees in
libraries so utterly careless of what belongs to their vocation, as to
let books, totally unfit for use, ragged or broken, or with plates
loosened, ready to drop out and disappear, go back to the shelves
unrepaired, to pursue the downward road toward destruction. And I have
been in many libraries in which the books upon the shelves exhibited such
utter want of care, such disarrangement, such tumbling about and
upside-down chaos, and such want of cleanliness, as fairly to make one's
heart ache. In some cases this may have been due in great part to unwise
free admission of the public to the shelves, and consequent inevitable
disorder; in others, it may be partially excused by the librarian's
absolute want of the needful help or time, to keep the library in order;
but in others, it was too apparent that the librarian in charge took no
interest in the condition of the books. Too many librarians (at least of
the past, however it may now be) have been of the class described by Dr.
Poole, the Chicago librarian. He said that library trustees too often
appeared to think that anybody almost would do for a librarian; men who
have failed in everything else, broken-down clergymen, or unsuccessful
teachers, and the like.

Passing now to other needful qualifications of librarians and library
assistants, let me say that one of the foremost is accuracy. Perhaps I
have before this remarked that exact accuracy is one