stics of American
Libraries has for years past been admirably performed by the United
States Bureau of Education. Begun in 1875, that institution has issued
four tabular statements of all libraries responding to its circulars of
inquiry, and having (as last reported in 1897) one thousand volumes or
upwards. Besides these invaluable reports, costing much careful labor and
great expense, the Bureau of Education published, in 1876, an extensive
work wholly devoted to the subject of libraries, bearing the title
"Special Report on Public Libraries in the United States." This
publication (now wholly out of print) consisted of 1222 pages, replete
with information upon the history, management, and condition of American
Libraries, under the editorship of S. R. Warren and S. N. Clark, of the
Bureau of Education. It embraced many original contributions upon topics
connected with library science, by experienced librarians, _viz._:
Messrs. W. F. Poole, Justin Winsor, C. A. Cutter, J. S. Billings, Theo.
Gill, Melvil Dewey, O. H. Robinson, W. I. Fletcher, F. B. Perkins, H. A.
Homes, A. R. Spofford, and others.

I have prepared a table of the numerical contents of the thirty-four
largest libraries in this country in 1897, being all those having 100,000
volumes each or upwards:

Library of Congress, Washington, 840,000
Boston Public Library, Boston, 730,000
Harvard University Library, Cambridge, 510,000
New York Public Library, New York City, 450,000
University of Chicago Library, 335,000
New York State Library, Albany, 320,710
Yale University Library, New Haven, 285,000
New York Mercantile Library, New York, 270,000
Columbia University Library, New York, 260,000
Chicago Public Library, 235,385
Cincinnati Public Library, 223,043
Cornell University Library, Ithaca, N. Y., 220,000
Sutro Library, San Francisco, 206,300
Newberry Library, Chicago, 203,108
Philadelphia Library Company, 200,000
Philadelphia Mercantile Library, 190,000
Boston Athenaeum Library, 190,000
Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore,