office until his election as librarian of the Philadelphia Library in 1887, when his successor, the present librarian, Mr. Gregory B. Keen, was chosen.

In 1888 Dr. Morris Jastrow, jr., was elected assistant librarian. In 1887 the prospect of erecting a suitable and special building for the library, which had long since outgrown its totally inadequate quarters, was seriously undertaken; so that with Mr. Keen's entrance upon his duties a new era in the history of the library may properly be reckoned. The following year saw the corner stone laid with the rites of the Masonic order, and on February 7, 1891, the building was formally dedicated in the presence of a large and distinguished assemblage, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, as chairman of the building committee, handing over the building to the provost, Dr. William Pepper, who in receiving it on behalf of the University made the important announcement of the intention to open the library to the public in general. The library thus safely launched upon a career of widened usefulness may be taken as an index of the general plane reached by the University. As in the past its fortunes have ever been closely bound up with the growth of the various departments of the University, so it may fairly be expected that in the future it will keep pace with the rapid unfolding of numerous projects that are tending to produce a new ideal of the University, commensurate with the changed conditions of intellectual life.

It will be appropriate to close this sketch with a description of the new library building which in many of its features is unique and represents in the adaptation of means to ends the accumulated experience of the past.

The new library of the University of Pennsylvania, which was formally opened on February 7, is an imposing structure of red brick and stone, the effect of which is heightened by its advantageous position in the complex of university buildings at the intersection of Woodland avenue and Thirty-fourth street. The architects are Messrs. Furness, Evans & Co., of Philadelphia.'

The building may be divided into two parts: the tower 95 feet high, with the extension in amphitheatrical form, in all 140 by 80 feet on the one side; and the glass-covered stack 32 by 110 feet, on the other. Passing through the handsome entrance at the center we come into the spacious hall, to the right of which is the wardrobe, while to the left the space under the imposing staircase has been temporarily fitted up as a museum for Egyptian antiquities. Crossing the hall we enter the main reading room, again divided into two sections, the one 40 by 42 feet is an uninterrupted space to the roof, a height of about 60 feet; the other an extension in semicircular form, 40 by 54 feet, terminating in six alcoves 12 by 18 feet. In addition to these, there is a larger alcove at

This description is reprinted (with slight modifications), through kind permission of Messrs. Harper & Bro., from an article prepared by the writer for Harper's Weekly of February 14, 1891.

the side lighted by windows. The walls of the reading room are finished in brick, relieved by numerous terra-cotta pillars and arched windows. Two archways, supported by columns, separate the front of the reading room from the back, which is set aside more particularly for the students, while the alcoves are devoted to periodicals, seminary purposes, and private work.

A feature of these alcoves is the strong light which is let in through a skylight. The smaller reading room receives its light from the semicircular row of windows at a height of about 20 feet, while in the larger room ample provision for light is made by a row of windows on one side and a large skylight in the center. At the one end, and immediately adjoining the entrance to the reading room, is the receiving desk, from which there is the entrance to the book stacks immediately be hind, while further to the left is situated the librarian's office, a cosy little apartment that again communicates with the cataloguing room; the latter, 16 by 60 feet, is in reality an extension beyond the reading room and, like the alcoves, it receives its light from the top. The separation between the cataloguing room and the reading room is formed by an elaborate series of drawers containing the catalogue cards of the. library, one case being devoted to an arrangement of cards according to subjects, the other to a duplicate arrangement according to authors. A feature of the cases is that they may be pulled out in either direction, and can thus be consulted as conveniently by the clerks in the cataloguing room as by the readers in the reading room. The long wall of the cataloguing room has accommodations for 6,000 volumes, while in the basement beneath there is a storeroom with accommodations for 15,000. A delivery room in the basement with a separate entrance from the street communicates with the cataloguing room by means of an elevator. As rapidly as the books are catalogued they are placed on trucks and rolled into the book stack.

Passing from the receiving room into the latter, the visitor is struck by the novel features for the accommodation of books; you almost fancy yourself in a glass palace, for, wherever one looks, the ceiling, the flooring, and the upper part of the walls, one sees nothing but glass. Running the length of the building are the shelves, conveniently divided into rows, each accommodating about 5,400 volumes, besides shelves along the ends, which give a total capacity of 100,000 volumes for the ground floor. The basement beneath, which is at present set aside for newspaper, pamphlet, and periodical collections, is equally spacious; while everything is in readiness to raise three stories of glass flooring, whenever required, above the ground floor, and without materially affecting the light of the latter and of the basement. The total capacity would thus reach over 350,000 volumes, with a further possibility of extending the stack itself through the exterior wall. The construction, glass and iron, is entirely fireproof; and cut off as the stack is from the rest of the building by low walls of brick with an air space