Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/215

 fetching out these articles for the student or the gobe-mouche, will be a perpetual tax. We learn that at Brussels, a very rich library unprovided with an "exposition," much inconvenience has been caused in this way. These exhibitions, being chiefly designed to lure on the intelligent visitor to further study, should be furnished with most elaborate explanations, printed or written on cards, on which the previous knowledge assumed is small. A certain portion of the exhibition is necessarily permanent, but the whole should not be if the resources of the library allow of change. At the British Museum, for instance, the cases devoted to early typography, sumptuous books, and bindings are permanent, since the best specimens in these departments are rarely added to the collections, but there are, and have been, other temporary collections, such as those illustrating (1) the development of the Alphabet, (2) the Spanish Armada, (3) the Tudor period in English history, (4) the Stuart period, (5) the life and works of Gibbon, (6) the history of book-illustration at Florence, at Venice, and in France, (7) the development of the title-page, (8) English Church history, (1897), (9) Americana (1897). As for the mechanical devices connected with the exhibition of books, it may be mentioned that in the cases at the British Museum the books are kept open at the page desired by pieces of tape passing