Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/12

 as so extensive and heterogeneous a subject is not capable of reduction to precise rules. Experience alone will suffice to bring about a general consensus, or something approaching to it, upon this and other points still controverted among librarians. It may be added that this desideratum will be achieved in proportion to the elevation of the status of the profession itself, and the development of that freedom of discussion and interchange of opinion which the Library Associations of Great Britain and America, and the periodicals connected with them, have of late years done so much to promote.

Although, nevertheless, but a small proportion of Mr. Manual can claim to rank as a code, the whole of it will be found to possess much value as a disseminator of information, and as a stimulus to reflection. It is fortunate that the execution of a work on library administration should have fallen into the hands of one familiar with the organisation of the largest, or almost the largest, library in the world, the one where questions of library management have probably been more actively canvassed than anywhere else, where discussions have been most fully recorded, and where the results of reform and innovation are visible upon the largest scale. Mr. constant reference to the British Museum imparts a kind of historical unity to his volume, and is a practical as well as a literary gain if two essential cautions are