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
spiritualistic mediums in the best sense--the bearers of authentic
messages from all the good and great of past or present time; only with
us, no turning on of the light, no publicity however glaring, will break
the spell or do otherwise than aid, for whether we succeed or fail,