CHANGE In this present optimistic day the value of a vacation is so uniformly recognized in all professional and business walks of life, that there exists scarcely a person of value to his work, who is not given from two weeks to three months time from his year for his personal use. The knowledge is by hard proof, that such a man or woman is of more value during the balance of the working year because of this vacation. This "time off" is to be spent exactly as suits the desire of the person concerned. While some vacations are doubtless those of literal and absolute rest-a cessation of any exertion of body or mind save those of necessity-by far the larger number of vacations, and those bringing the finest returns both to the work and the worker, are those spent in a change of activity. If the bookkeeper who is accustomed to an eight hour day before a ledger, spends two weeks paddling a canoe, tramping mountains, or fishing, physically his vacation time holds more work than his pencil-pushing, but the gain from such an absolute change is obvious. To receive such a benefit it is not necessary to stop a so-called "career." Already most libraries realize that a variety of activities within itself shared by assistants help both the quality of the work and the ability of the assistants. Could this idea not be carried farther with most happy results? The libraries of the United States range from small buildings boasting a part-time librarian to enormous city systems, with many branches and hundreds of assistants. The general conditions of library work differ less perhaps than those of any other profession, owing to the consistent desire for uniformity and the common output from which they draw their ammunition -books. Library assistants of every type come from various localities, and fortunately, attractiveness, capability and general desirability are not confined to any single district. In proof of this visit any state library meeting or A. L. A. It would be possible for people of like usefulness to exchange positions for a year to the benefit of all interested. There is no doubt that the work is nearly enough parallel in different localities to permit this. Salaries too are nearly enough the same for the same work; the variance in the latter usually according with the cost of living. One library worker who was consulted on this matter said, "Oh yes, it would be easy enough with the first class girl" But surely the contention may be made that there are, alas, far more second class girls, and so an exchange might just as well be arranged for them. After a year of absolutely different surroundings who shall dare say such a second class girl would not graduate to first position. Such a change might be arranged thru a board appointed for the purpose by the A. L. A., which could form a library clearing house for ambition and personal taste. The following points are suggested: I. Such a change should be entirely optional on the parts of those changing. 2. The original position would be held for the person making such a change. 3. Personal references required. 4. Co-operation between librarians in permitting the adjustment such changes would necessitate. 5. A social equality if possible and arrangements for social existence in the new environment. In return for the temporary jar that would shake our well balanced systems the gains would be quite definite. A new point of view always brings suggestions and inspiration. The greatest gains would undoubtedly be to the individuals; but here, again, thru their deepened personalities to the work at large. In learning a new locality and new methods of work the staleness of life, which is ever ready to encroach upon us at every turn, might be cheated. To serve under some of the brilliant and encouraging librarians who might make this "post graduate" plan a success, in itself would constitute a liberal education. Then in a social way the gain to individuals would be almost invaluable. Picture the possibilities of development for the girl who was born and has spent her life in a middle size city. Say that she has been in library work five or six years and does it fairly well. During that time she has grown and expanded but her own town can never really free itself from regarding her thru its knowledge of her family, her previous faults or virtues. Imagine then a clean sheet-the chance to be taken for what she now is-freed from the shadow of the family tree and away from the doubts of her "own country." Such possibilities are limited only by individual imaginations. Travel has always been acknowledged a most successful method of education. The living for such a length of time under new conditions and studying different peoplefinding out the truth of "Eastern culture," "Western friendliness," "Southern hospitality"-does not the mere suggestion hold a fascination for those many who are familar with a limited part of the country? At one time or another most people have wished to "be" someone else. While this is literally impossible a social exchange in connection with the business one would approach this ideal. Letters between the "exchangers" would state the conditions of work and pleasure. The girl who was to have someone take her place would make the living arrangements for the newcomer, leave word with her friends for her entertainment as if she were a guest. This would constitute only an introduction to the new life. Later she could establish her own position. Many could have a year in a distant place who could never, for personal or business reasons, consider a permanent change of location. The final homecoming might bring a contentment which would never come in any other way. Shelley says "Naught may endure but mutability." Enrichment following a successful application of such an idea would be inevitable-not only to the library profession but to that larger profession of living. E. LOUISE LAUDER THE old-time librarian was contemporary with the past. The present-day librarian must not forget to be contemporary also with the present. He must be informed not merely as to the book, but as to the reader. -HERBERT PUTNAM. THE NEW LIBRARY OF THE IN the new and splendid outfitting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the Cambridge shore of the Charles River Basin, the library takes its place as the central feature architecturally as well as educationally, being housed beneath the dome whose great hemisphere gives to its reading room a setting that is in accord with the inspiration that the books must furnish. The buildings of the New Technologyit is a single structure to be sure, but so vast that it is convenient to speak of its wings as buildings-are ranged about the three sides of a great central court and deploy thence about the three sides each of two minor courts, symmetrically disposed with reference to the axis of the group. There is developed by this treatment a nobility of character, an expression of magnitude and a feeling of spaciousness sadly lacking in the monumental piles that constitute most of the public buildings in this country. From the opposite shore of the basin the eye mounts the fifteen feet from water level to the Esplanade, the treatment of which will rest with the park commissioners, municipal or state. Under the circumstances of opportunity it is easy to believe that no other than a dignified port approach can here be possible to the great court and its extension which opens on the river. This rises in broad terraces of steps suggestive of the splendid stairways of ancient temples. Here the gradual uplift of the court leads the eye-and the feet, if one is really there-to the great colonnaded portico of the modern temple of learning, the library building. In similar fashion the eye above is caught by the masses of the constructions, which, rising step on step as they recede, converge their lines in the impressive Roman dome that surmounts the reading room. The educational portion of the New Technology consists of buildings three to four stories in height clustered about the library. The great dome rests on a vast structure whose classic pillared entrance is ever an invitation to come in. It looks down on the court from a height of nearly two hundred feet and is a dominant note in the composition. The future treatment of the courts will add to the attractiveness of the place, for it will not be difficult to give to them adequate furnishings. Grass plots will be here and there, with plashing fountains; trees will accentuate the corners, and the greenery of shrubs will relieve the classic architecture. And once within, elevators will take the visitor speedily to the spacious floors above in which the library already finds itself pretty well settled. A reading room under a dome is already a usual method of treatment, and the disposition of books about its walls and of stacks in a concentric ring does not offer much in the way of novelty. The dimensions are of consequence, however, for the library quarters are within a drum of one hundred and twenty feet diameter, of which the inner circle of seventy-five feet is the reading room with the sweep of the dome, with its Pantheon-like "eye," more than one hundred feet above the floor. The exigencies of New England climate preclude the possibility of maintaining this eye as the open ring that is permissible at Rome, so that it is a glass eye that lights the room, and even on cloudy days affords abundant illumination for the tables below. In architecture, the interior of the dome meets with the commendation of everyone who views it. It rests on four groups of engaged columns, Corinthian in style and compass-oriented. Pilasters define the limits of the groups, the interval walls being decorated at capital height with wallsof-Troy motifs and panels below, while the inter-columnar spaces are relieved by the grilles of the mezzanine stack room. The cornice of the reading room is a dignified one of dentelles and egg-and-dart, while the parapet member, the drum of the dome, is simple with squared niches paralleled by pilasters in pleasing fashion. The base course of the dome decoration is a band of conventionalized lotus leaves in quintuples. The great sweep of the dome itself is cut into four zones of concentric, receding squares, emphasized by a bead fillet within and divided one group from another by twist mouldings with rosette intersections. Above is a clear zone from which rises the narrow drum of the eye, giving in its inner surface an opportunity for concealed illumination by powerful electric lamps. The whole interior is cream tinted in harmony with the warm luster of the marble bases of the columns in contrast to which are the tables-in arcs of a circle -and the Roman chairs of dark oak. It is a restful room, and if the eye wanders aloft it is charmed with the quiet tones and the wonderful patterns of the cross shadows, hardly more than hinted at along the diagonals of the recessed decoration. The outer ring of the library floor is devoted first to administration and then to stacks. The delivery room is quite spacious, with its desk projected out into the reading room; the librarian has a suite of offices, and the cataloging room is conveniently situated with reference to the stack and the receiving office. About twothirds of the ring is stack, and this is continued in the mezzanine story above the librarian's offices. The plans call for the extension of the stacks in this story which will virtually double the present capacity, while there is large storage space above between the outer and inner domes, which may well care for thousands of volumes for which there is only occasional demand. The stack now in place will care for about 150,000 volumes. Till now the library of the M. I. T. has been an unconnected group of special libraries housed with the different departments and in different buildings. The departments have sprung into being one after another, and the departmental collections of books, from small beginnings have grown to be important each in its own way. The lack of room in the older structures prevented any attempt at gathering them-altho properly carded in the central catalog-but this has been done most successfully and efficiently in assembling them in Cambridge. The central library may now be described as a general and a reservoir library; it contains the books that are not of special sciences and the less novel works, together with the periodicals a year or more past. The new books and the current periodicals find places in small departmental libraries located in the departments to which they pertain. There are really fifteen libraries in the 125,000 volumes belonging to Tech. Of these, the architectural books remain in the Rogers building on Boylston street, Boston, this being now the architectural school of the institute. The collections that are housed in the central library now are the old general library, biological, William Ripley Nichols chemical, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, geological, and the physics library, altho every department has a reservation within its own quarters of latest books and periodicals. These departments are all conveniently situated, being in the buildings clustering most directly about the library itself, electricity and biology being, indeed, within the same wing of the buildings. Quite a good deal of the civil engineering library is retained by the department, and the same is true of history and economics, mathematics, mining and metallurgy, modern languages and naval architecture. Independent libraries are that for women in the Margaret Cheney room and the little library for the students in the Walker Memorial, which are not controlled by the central office. There will be no time more opportune than the present to pass in brief review the libraries of Technology, which, having been gathered within the last half-century, represent modern ideas towards the formation of an efficient working tool in education. So rapid is progress in the sciences, where it may be literally said that two are springing up where there was one before, that dependence upon periodicals and recent volumes is the more evident. Periodicals, therefore, are to be seen in constantly increasing numbers, and these, as has been said, in current volumes are close at hand to the student in the departmental libraries, while the great mass of back volumes, useful for occasional reference, are in the central stacks. The general library is in reality a com bination of volumes for the use of the English department, together with general reference works, and with these a considerable number of volumes for the out-ofschool reading for pleasure of the students. This was housed in the Rogers building, and in its reading room were the popular periodicals in various languages for student use. The library of mathematics, named in honor of the late Professor John D. Runkle (professor from 1865 till 1880). has for its nucleus the private collection of Professor Runkle given during his lifetime. It is a cerefully selected group of books, about two thousand in number, to which new volumes of merit are added as fast as issued. On account of the very special nature of the library, which appeals principally to the advanced student, is housed by itself under the eye of the department. The library of history and economics includes about 16,000 volumes and several thousand pamphlets which have been gathered about the economic library of the late president, Francis A. Walker (1881-1897). It had thus the best library of its times for its beginnings and ranks to-day among the most important ones of the country. The policy of the institute has been not to duplicate in any large way the splendid collections of the Boston Public Library, so that students are referred to the latter, in which are deposited the books and pamphlets of the American Statistical Association. The economic library, formerly on the fourth floor of the Rogers building, is now in the central library beneath the dome. The library of modern languages includes about 2000 volumes of works in the languages of Europe, and this again, having limited circulation, is kept in the department to which all the students repair more or less frequently. In older days the libraries of civil and sanitary engineering, together with that of mechanical engineering, were combined in one of the engineering buildings on Trinity place, some 20,000 volumes in all, with 240 current periodicals. A good working library is retained apart from the central library, occupying a tower room on the river front, but the larger part of the volumes have |