With the tremendous recent growth of industrialism and the rapid
multiplication of invention, the manifest need for making available the
vast sum of gathered knowledge concerning the discoveries of modern
science has evolved the great special libraries devoted to the varied
subdivisions of the subject. Munificently endowed as many of them
are, highly organized for ready access to material, administered to
encourage use and to give expert aid as well, their great importance
cannot be overestimated. What they accomplish is not wholly reducible
to statistics, nor can their influence be readily traced, perhaps, to
the great undertakings of today which overshadow the seven wonders of
antiquity. But there can be no question that without the opportunities
that here lie for study and research, and--no less important--without
the skilled assistance freely rendered by librarian and bibliographer,
special talent would often remain dormant and its possessor
unsatisfied. Greater here would be the loss to society than to the
individual.