The constitution of the association says that “Any person or institution engaged in library work may become a member by paying the annual dues, and others after election by the executive board.”  We have thus two classes of members, those by their own choice and those by election.  The annual lists of members do not record the distinction, but among those in the latest list we find 24 booksellers, 17 publishers, 5 editors, 9 school and college officials, 8 government employees not in libraries, and 24 wives and relatives of other members, while in the case of 132 persons no qualification is stated in the list.  We have or have had as our associates, settlement workers, lawyers, lecturers, indexers, binders, and so on almost indefinitely.  Our membership is thus freely open to librarians, interpreting this word very broadly, and to any others that we may desire to have with us, which means, practically, any who have sufficient interest in library work to come to the meetings.  We must, therefore, be classed with what may be called the “open” as opposed to the “closed” professional or technical associations.  The difference may be emphasized by a reference to two well-known New York clubs, the Players and the Authors.  These organizations would appear by their names to be composed respectively of actors and writers.  The former, however, admits also to membership persons interested in the drama, which may mean little or much, while the Authors Club, despite repeated efforts to broaden it out in the same way, has insisted on admitting none but bona fide authors.  In advocacy of the first plan it may be said that by adopting it the Players has secured larger membership, embracing many men of means.  Its financial standing is better and it is enabled to own a fine club house.  On the other hand, the Authors has a small membership, and owns practically no property, but makes up in esprit de corps what it lacks in these other respects.  It is another phase of the question of specialization that we have already considered.  The larger and broader body has certain advantages, the smaller and more compact, certain others.  We have, doubtless been right in deciding, or rather in accepting what circumstances seem to have decided for us, that our own association shall be of the larger and less closely knit type, following the analogy of the National Educational Association and the various associations for the advancement of science, American, British and French, rather than that of the Society of Civil Engineers, for instance, or the various learned academies.  Our body has thus greater general but less special influence, just as on a question of general scientific policy a petition from the American association might carry greater weight, whereas on a question of engineering it would be incomparably inferior to an opinion of the civil engineers.  There is in this country, it is true, a general scientific body of limited membership—­the National Academy of Sciences, which speaks both on