350 The Library. instead of only six and a half or seven, cause the occasional pushing behind of little volumes ; but this is not a frequent occurrence. The height and arrangement of the book-cases make our light rather bad through the day, but, on the other hand, oversight is practically perfect. The temporary misplacement of books occurs chiefly in the presses devoted to prose fiction and juvenile literature. In other classes it occurs to such a small extent as to be unworthy of notice ; but when a book is mis- placed it is never farther off, as a rule, than the shelf above or below, and is instantly detected by the colour label. In fiction and juvenile literature the misplacements are more frequent, though seldom more serious than authors, whose names begin Bi being found among those beginning Bo. This is a small matter in reality, owing to so many books being out, and among the hundreds of readers who have been questioned or have written on the point, not one will admit that misplacement pre- sents a difficulty of any great moment. Nevertheless, it exists temporarily to the extent indicated, but a permanent misplace- ment likely to cause trouble is almost an impossibility for several reasons. The assistants are continually among the shelves tidy- ing them up and assisting readers, and as it does not take more than ten minutes for one to scan every press and put everything to rights, it will be seen that the discovery of a misplacement is inevitable. Besides this, the method of continuous stock-taking and morning checking leaves very little chance for a misplaced book to remain long out of its right position. On the whole, we are disposed to class misplacement as a drawback of no great moment. The final possible drawback is that of thefts, and on this point nothing definite can be said till after more time has passed. We are now taking stock continually in this way. Each assistant is responsible for about eighty shelves, for which he or she is provided with a complete shelf-register. A certain num- ber of shelves must be checked by each assistant every week, and the librarian notes the result in his special shelf -register, so that he can report to his commissioners monthly. The library will thus be overhauled several times a year without closing or loss of time, and the commissioners will be kept informed of losses as they occur. Up to August 31, 4,500 volumes had been checked in this way, with the result that no volumes were missing. Owing to certain economies likely to be effected and referred to later among the advantages of the system, it is very improbable that the losses will ever be so serious as to outweigh the
