Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/46

 eight students are turned out, equipped for important posts in libraries.

In the present year (1897) a new regulation takes effect, whereby the completion of junior work does not necessarily admit to the senior class. Class work, examinations, and personal qualifications are weighed, and only those who seem likely to render important services to the library profession are admitted.

Similar institutions, though not affording such elaborate instruction, are in existence at the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and the University of Illinois. At the latter institution the course taken is four years, of which the first two must be devoted to the ordinary curriculum of the university. The degree of B.L.S. (Bachelor in Library Science) is conferred on those who complete the entire course.

Library economy also forms one of the subjects covered by the new University Extension movement, and summer schools have been started, e,g. the Wisconsin Summer School (now in its third session, under the auspices of the Wisconsin University). In France of late years the admission to librarians' places in the great national libraries (Bibliotheque Nationale, Mazarine, Arsenal, Ste. Genevieve) and in the university libraries, has been organised on a solid basis. These posts were until about twenty years ago often awarded as homes of rest to broken- down novel-writers or critics, whose inertness