What we have been saying to-day is only the rough blocking out of a subject for which anthropology and the excavations in the eastern Mediterranean region have furnished and are furnishing an enormous amount of source material, as yet wholly unexplored for library matters. A small part of the material has indeed been roughly explored and has yielded rich results in fields where there was absolutely nothing known before, but the unexplored matter is large and increasing rapidly every day. Library research it may fairly be said is itself in its beginnings, and American research in libraries for the older periods hardly yet begun. Of course, as we know Aristotle had some faint notion of anthropological methods and all the mythologizing people were, as is very thoroughly recognized now, pursuing a sort of scientific research and expressing and thinking in these figures of speech. In this point of view the myths as to Hermes and Thoth, Seshait and Minerva were, if not research, at least speculation on the origins.

Research, however, as now understood, is the product of modern natural science and goes hand in hand with the doctrine of evolution. In this sense there has already been much good research work in palaeography and other branches of the book sciences in European countries. In America a little real scientific work has been done in palaeography, more in the history of printing and a trifle in some other branches of library science, but the total is small and little or none of it directly connected with the library school. It is likely, however, that in the near future many of the library schools will be teaching methods of research and giving diplomas which require some real contribution. Possibly they will even have recognized departments for research. Of this movement you will be a part and the character of the development will be in part, possibly in large part, through what you think and do and become during your course here. Probably we have as little notion of what record keeping will be a few thousands of years hence, as the inventor of the knotted cord had of this library school—and yet what we do may perhaps affect the state of things then as the inventor of the quipu, the alphabet, papyrus, vellum, printing, the photograph, phonograph, or any of the great inventions in the evolution of books and their keeping, has affected the present state of things.