the first. After this, let each volume of
the lot be brushed over at the sides and back with a soft (never stiff)
brush, or else with a piece of cotton or woolen cloth, and so restored
clean to the shelves. While this thorough method of cleansing will take
time and pains, it will pay in the long run. It will not eliminate all
the dust (which in a large collection is a physical impossibility) but it
will reduce it to a minimum. Faithfully carried out, as a periodical
supplement to a daily dusting of the books as they stand on the shelves,
it will immensely relieve the librarian or book-owner, who can then, (and
then only) feel that he has done his whole duty by his books.

Another dangerous enemy of the library book is damp, already briefly
referred to. Books kept in any basement room, or near any wall, absorb
moisture with avidity; both paper and bindings becoming mildewed, and
often covered with blue mould. If long left in this perilous condition,
sure destruction follows; the glue or paste which fastens the cover
softens, the leather loses its tenacity, and the leaves slowly rot, until
the worthless volumes smell to heaven. Books thus injured may be
partially recovered, before the advanced stage of decomposition, by
removal to a dry atmosphere, and by taking the volumes apart, drying the
sheets, and rebinding--a very expensive, but necessary remedy, provided
the books are deemed worth preserving.

But a true remedy is the preventive one. No library should ever be kept,
even in part, in a basement story, nor should any books ever be located
near the wall of a building. All walls absorb, retain, and give out
moisture, and are dangerous and oft-times fatal neighbors to books. Let
the shelves be located at right angles to every wall--with the end
nearest to it at least twelve to eighteen inches removed, and the danger
will be obviated.

A third enemy of the book is heat. Most libraries are unfortunately
over-heated,--sometimes from defective means of controlling the
temperature, and sometimes from carelessness or want of thought in the
attendant. A high temperature is very destructive to books. It warps
their covers, so that volumes unprotected by their fellows, or by a book
support, tend to curl up, and stay warped until they become a nuisance.
It also injures the paper of the volumes by over-heating, and weakening
the tenacity of the leaves held together by the glue on the back, besides
drying to an extreme the leath