Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/43

 have been offered and have accepted the librarian's nomination to them on condition of going through the University. They receive a salary of £60. The library will thus enlist as assistants University-men with a thorough library training at a lower price than it would have been able to offer to University-men who had no such training.

"One other point in the system is worth mentioning. Every boy is at liberty once a week to make in writing a suggestion on any matter relating to the library. If it is good and has not already been adopted in intention by the librarian, he gets a half-holiday for it. To the younger boys this is a powerful incentive to exercise their ingenuity, and the number of really useful suggestions which have been received has been very considerable."

It appears from another paragraph of the same Report that when a book has been catalogued, "the catalogue-slip has to be compared with the volume by another person," and again, when the catalogue-slip has been transcribed by a multiple process for insertion in the catalogues, "the transcribed slip has to be compared with the original slip to see that no mistake has been made in transcription." If this revision of slip and transcript is done by the senior staff, the system of boy labour seems to offer undeniable advantages.

The earliest and best known of all institutions for producing crops of trained librarians is the, which owes its inception, as do many other novelties in the library world, to Mr. Melvil Dewey. In the United States, if anywhere, the need for such a school would make itself felt, since the yearly vacancies occurring