whether it would be right
or proper for a library in a British community to do many of the things
that libraries are doing in American communities. I may go further and say
that the rigidity of British social life would make it impossible for the
library to achieve these things. But it is also true that the fluidity of
American social life makes it equally impossible for the library to
withstand the pressure that is brought to bear on it here. To yield is in
its case right and proper and a failure of response would be wrong and
improper.

It is usually assumed by the British critic of American libraries that
their peculiarities are due to the temperament of the American librarian.
We make a similar assumption when we discuss British libraries. I do not
deny that the librarians on both sides have had something to do with it,
but the determining factor has been the social and temperamental
differences between the two peoples. Americans are fluid, experimental,
eclectic, and this finds expression in the character of their institutions
and in the way these are administered and used.

Take if you please the reaction of the library on the two sides of the
water to the inevitable result of opening it to home-circulation--the
necessity of knowing whether a given book is or is not on the shelves. The
American response was to open the shelves, the British, to create an
additional piece of machinery--the indicator. These two results might have
been predicted in advance by one familiar with the temper of the two
peoples. It has shown itself in scores of instances, in the front yards of
residences, for instance--walled off in England and open to the street in
the United States.

I shall be reminded, I suppose, that there are plenty of open shelves in
English libraries and that the open shelf is gaining in favor. True;
England is becoming "Americanized" in more respects than this one. But I
am speaking of the immediate reaction to the stimulus of popular demand,
and this was as I have stated it. In each case the reaction, temporarily
at least, satisfied the demand; showing that the difference was not of
administrative habit alone, but of community feeling.

This rapid review of modern American tendencies, however confusing the
impression that it may give, will at any rate convince us, I think, of one
thing--the absurdity of objecting to anything whatever on the ground that
it is un-American. We are the most receptive people in the