of occasions arising in the daily work of the
library, where promptness, tact, and wide knowledge of books will make a
success, and the want of any of these qualities a failure. Still less can
he judge the competency or incompetency of one who is to be employed in
the difficult and exact work of cataloguing books. Besides, there is
always the hazard that trustees, or some of them, may have personal
favorites or relatives to prefer, and will use their influence to secure
the appointment or promotion of utterly uninstructed persons, in place of
such candidates as are known to the librarian to be best qualified. In no
case should any person be employed without full examination as to fitness
for library work, conducted either by the librarian, or by a committee
of which the librarian is a member or chief examiner. A probationary
trial should also follow before final appointment.

The power of patronage, if unchecked by this safeguard, will result in
filling any library with incompetents, to the serious detriment of the
service on which its usefulness depends. The librarian cannot keep a
training school for inexperts: he has no time for this, and he
indispensably needs and should have assistants who are competent to their
duties, from their first entrance upon them. As he is held responsible
for all results, in the conduct of the library, both by the trustees and
by the public, he should have the power, or at least the approximate
power, to select the means by which those results are to be attained.

In the Boston Public Library, all appointments are made by the trustees
upon nomination by the librarian, after an examination somewhat similar
to that of the civil service, but by a board of library experts. In the
British Museum Library, the selection and promotion of members of the
staff are passed upon by the trustees, having the recommendation of the
principal librarian before them. In the Library of Congress, appointments
are made directly by the librarian after a probationary trial, with
previous examination as to education, former experience or employments,
attainments, and fitness for library service.

In smaller libraries, both in this country and abroad, a great diversity
of usage prevails. Instances are rare in which the librarian has the
uncontrolled power of appointment, promotion and removal. The requirement
of examinations to test the fitness of candidates is extending, and since
the establishment of five or si