iety,
hoping that among them there may be toothsome bait, surely there could be
no better way than this. The only trouble is that it appeals only to those
who are already sufficiently interested in stored ideas to enter the
library.

We must remember, however, that by our method of sending out books for
home use we are making a great open-shelf of the whole city. While the
number of volumes in any one place may be small, the books are constantly
changing so that the non-reader has a good chance of seeing in his
friend's house something that may attract him. That this may affect the
use of the library it is essential that he who sees a library book on the
table or in the hands of a fellow passenger on a car must be able to
recognize its source at once, so that, if attracted, he may be led thither
by the suggestion. Nothing is better for this purpose than the library
seal, placed on the book where all may see it; and that all may recognize
it, it should also be used wherever possible, in connection with the
library--on letter heads, posters, lists, pockets and cards, so that the
public association between its display and the work of the library shall
become strong.

This making the whole outstanding supply of circulating books an agency in
our publicity scheme for ideas is evidently more effective as the books
better fit and satisfy their users; for in that case we have an unpaid
agent with each book. The adaptation of book to user helps our
advertisement of ideas, and that in turn aids us in adapting book to user.
When a dynamo starts, the newly arisen current makes the field stronger
and that in turn increases the current. Only here we must have just a
little residual magnetism in the field magnet to start the whole process.
In the library's work the residual magnetism is represented by the latent
interest in ideas that is present in every community. And I can do no
better, in closing, than to emphasize the fact that everything that
advertises ideas, even if totally unconnected with their recorded form in
books, helps the library and pushes forward its work.

Itself a product of the great extension of intellectual activity to
classes in which it was formerly bounded by narrow limits, the library is
bound to widen those limits wherever they can be stretched, and every
movement of them reacts to help it. Surely advertisement on its part is an
evangel--a bearing of good intellectual tidings into the darkness. We are
spi