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Obituary. 125 LEIPSIC. Herr C. F. Peters, of Leipsic, head of a well-known firm of music publishers, has just presented to the corporation of his native city a magnificent Free Musical Library, supplied with upwards of 15,000 musical works of all sorts, including vocal and other scores, manuscripts, enyclopasdias, dictionaries, and other books of reference, besides a collec- tion of paintings, portraits, and busts of musicians. Apart from the national collections, this is understood to be the first free library of its sort established in Germany. PARIS. NATIONAL LIBRARY. The total number of readers at the Paris National Library during the past year was 117,013 in the room to which admission is only given by ticket, and 58,504 in the public room, while 430,875 volumes were consulted in the former, and 77,146 in the latter. This is nearly double the total of ten years ago, and it appears to be all the larger when it is added that there are only 350 seats in the larger, and 105 in the smaller room. Times, January 27, 1894. SYDNEY, N.S.W. The returns of the Free Public Library for 1893 show a continued increase in the popularity of that institution. There were 216,089 visitors, of whom 10,119 were patrons on Sunday after- noons. During the year 4,000 volumes were added to the collection, now making a total of 101,348. On the ist September, Mr. R. C. Walker, who has held the position of principal librarian since 1869, retired, and Mr. Henry C. L. Anderson, M.A., was appointed to the vacancy. Mr Walker has since been gazetted a trustee of the Institution. DR. WILLIAM F. POOLE. It is with much regret that we make the announcement of the death of Dr. William F. Poole, an honorary member of the Library Association, and one of the most distinguished of American librarians. He was born at Salem, Mass., on December 24, 1821, and died at Evanston, Illinois, on March i, 1894. Dr. Poole's work as a librarian has been influential and varied to an extraordinary degree, and though chiefly known in Europe by his laborious and valuable " Index to Periodical Literature," he has other claims on the gratitude of American librarians. While employed at the Boston Mercantile Library as librarian, 1852-55, he compiled a " title-a- line " catalogue or finding list, which may be accepted as one of the earliest examples of the popular catalogue now so universally used in dictionary form. His work at Chicago, both in the Public and Newberry libraries, has long been recognised in the United States, particularly in the west, as combining simplicity and efficiency in a singular degree ; while his views on library architecture, now realised in the Newberry library of Chicago, prove him to have been one who studied the require- ments of the public before those of the staff, though not ignoring them either. He was one of the American delegates to the International Con- ference held at London in 1877, and from the first took a prominent part in the work of the American Library Association. His works and appointments are detailed with much care by Mr. W. J. Fletcher, his co-editor and successor in the work of periodical indexing, in the Library Journalior March, 1894, and to this sympathetic notice we refer those who desire fuller particulars of the career of this great and influential librarian. His loss will be keenly felt by librarians all over the world, and by none more than those of the English-speaking countries.