contributions to art, science, and industry, are proper enough in
their time and place; but it cannot be too often impressed upon
the library world, and upon those who contribute to the support of
libraries, and upon trustees and directors generally, that the thing
that is of great consequence in the work of the free public library is
not its product in the shape of books which are the results of careful
research, or of books which are contributions to science, art, and
industry; it is the work that the library does from day to day in
stimulating the inquiring spirit, in adding to the interest in things,
and in broadening the minds of the common people who form 90 per cent
at least of the public library patrons. That is to say, the public
library is chiefly concerned not in the products of education, as
shown in the finished book, but in the process of education as shown
in the developing and training of the library users, of the general
public.

It is from this common-folks-education point of view that the
advocate of the open-shelf system looks upon the question of library
administration. A free public library is not a people's post-graduate
school, it is the people's common school.

The more I see and learn of free public libraries the more I am
convinced that a public library can reach a high degree of efficiency
in its work only when its books are accessible to all its patrons. The
free public library should not be managed for the use of the special
student, save in special cases, any more than is the free public
school. That it should be solely or chiefly or primarily the student's
library, in any proper sense of the word, is as contrary to the spirit
of the whole free public library movement as would be the making
of the public schools an institution for the creation of Greek