Recent progress in all directions--political, educational,
industrial, hygienic--has been marked by the growth and
strengthening of a social consciousness. It is this chiefly
that has differentiated the modern library from its
predecessors and has made prominent our present insistence
on the reader as well as the book, as a fundamental element
in what we are doing. At first evident only in a general and
somewhat vague recognition, by writers and speakers, of a
vital relation between libraries and the communities that
they serve, it later crystallized into definite discussions
of their reciprocal service--that of the community to the
library, consisting of financial, material and moral support
expressing itself partly in the appointment of adequate
boards of trustees and their proper backing, and that of the
library to the community, showing itself largely in the
provision of books, the collection of information, the
control and guidance of reading, and so-called
"community-centre" service. These facts have guided the
grouping and sequence of the papers and addresses that make
up the present volume. The authors, it will be noticed,
include more statesmen, publicists, and professional men,
and fewer librarians, than was the case with the two
previous volumes, thus reflecting the greater generality and
wider interest of the subject.