in the writing and reading of them. Much writing of books is done wholly
in libraries and by their aid, and much reading is done therein. These
functions I pass by with this brief notice.

A library distributes books. So does a bookseller. The functions of these
two distributors, however, should differ somewhat as do those of the two
producers of books--the author and the publisher. The author creates the
soul of the book and the publisher gives it a body. The former produces
the immaterial, possibly the eternal, part and the latter merely the
material part. Likewise, in our distribution we librarians should lay
stress upon what is in the book, upon the production of the author rather
than on that of the publisher, though we may not neglect the latter. We
are, however, eminently distributors of ideas rather than of mere
merchandise, and in so far as we lay stress on the material side of the
book--important as this is--and neglect what is in it, we are but traders
in books and not librarians.

Among many of the great distributors of ideas--the magazine, the
newspaper, the school--it is becoming increasingly difficult to find any
that do not feel what I may call an anti-civic tendency. They have come to
be supported largely by other agencies than the public, and they are
naturally controlled by those agencies. As for the public, it has become
accustomed to paying less than cost for what it gets along these lines,
and is thus becoming intellectually pauperized. It is no more possible to
distribute ideas at a profit, as a commercial venture, nowadays, than it
would have been to run a circus, with an admission fee, in Imperial Rome.
Thus a literary magazine is possible only because it is owned by some
publisher who uses it as an advertising medium. He can afford to sell it
to the public for less than cost; the public would leave a publication
sold at a fair profit severely alone, hence such a venture is impossible.