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INTRODUCTION

with less than 300 volumes which have state and national recognition as libraries and tens of thousands called libraries less formally.

The United States government also recognizes officially a library of exclusive public documents, while, in this era of "special libraries," there are not a few which consist almost exclusively of business documents, public or private, railway reports, insurance company reports, government and state documents, law reports, collections of statutes and the like.

Size of course does not count. The smallest man is yet a man and even the smallest private library is yet a library. When Mr. Fleming said that his "whole library, like that of Abraham Lincoln, consisted of a Bible and a blue-back speller" nobody either misunderstood or objected. Indeed a small man may be much more of a man than a big one, and a library of 10 volumes more valuable

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