To the book collector and the Librarian, books of bibliography are the tools of the profession. Without them he would be lost in a maze of literature without a clue. With them, his path is plain, and, in exact proportion to his acquaintance with them, will his knowledge and usefulness extend. Bibliography may be defined as the science which treats of books, of their authors, subjects, history, classification, cataloguing, typography, materials (including paper, printing and binding) dates, editions, etc. This compound word, derived from two Greek roots, Biblion, book, and graphein, to write, has many analogous words, some of which, ignorantly used to express a bibliographer, may be set down for distinction: as, for example-Bibliopole-a seller of books, often erroneously applied to a librarian, who buys but never sells: Bibliophile, lover of books, a title which he should always exemplify: Bibliopegist, a book-binder, Bibliolater, a worshipper of books: Bibliophobe, a hater of books: Bibliotaph, a burier of books-one who hides or conceals them: Bibliomaniac, or bibliomane, one who has a mania or passion for collecting books. (Bibliomania, some one has said, is a disease: Bibliophily is a science: The first is a parody of the second.) Bibliophage, or bibliophagist, a book-eater, or devourer of books. Bibliognost, one versed in the science of books. Biblioklept, a book thief. (This, you perceive, is from the same Greek root as kleptomaniac.) Bibliogist, one learned about books, (the same nearly as bibliographer); and finally, Bibliothecary, a librarian.
This brings me to say, in supplementing this elementary list (needless for some readers) that Bibliotheca is Latin for a library; Bibliotheque is French for the same; Bibliothecaire is French for Librarian, while the French word Libraire means book seller or publisher, though often mistaken by otherwise intelligent persons, for librarian, or library.
The word "bibliotechny" is not found in any English dictionary known to me, although long in use in its equivalent forms in France and Germany. It means all that belongs to the knowledge of the book, to its handling, cataloguing, and its arrangement upon the shelves of a library. It is also applied to the science of the formation of libraries, 'and their complete organization. It is employed in the widest and most extended sense of what may be termed material or physical bibliography. Bibliotechny applies, that is to say, to the technics of the librarian's work-to the outside of the books rather than the inside-to the mechanics, not the metaphysics of the profession. The French word "Bibliotheconomie," much in use of late years, signifies much the same thing as Bibliotechnie, and we translate it, not into one word, but two, calling it "library economy." This word "economy" is not used in the most current sense-as significant of saving-but in the broad, modern sense of systematic order, or arrangement.
There are two other words which have found their way into Murray's Oxford Dictionary, the most copious repository of English words, with illustrations of their origin and history, ever published, namely, Biblioclasta destroyer of books (from the same final root as iconoclast) and Bibliogony, the production of books. I will add that out of the fifteen or more words cited as analogous to Bibliography, only three are found used earlier than the last quarter century, the first use of most having been this side of 1880. This is a striking instance of the phenomenal growth of new words in our already rich and flexible English tongue. Carlyle even has the word "Bibliopoesy," the making of books,-from Biblion, and poiein-to make.
Public libraries are useful to readers in proportion to the extent and ready supply of the helps they furnish to facilitate researches of every kind. Among these helps a wisely selected collection of books of reference stands foremost. Considering the vast extent and opulence of the world of letters, and the want of experience of the majority of readers in exploring this almost boundless field, the importance of every key which can unlock its hidden stores becomes apparent. The printed catalogue of no single library is at all adequate to supply full references, even to its own stores of knowledge; while these catalogues are, of course, comparatively useless as to other stores of information, elsewhere existing. Even the completest and most extensive catalogue in the world, that of the British Museum Library, although now extended to more than 370 folio volumes in print, representing 3,000 volumes in manuscript, is not completed so as to embrace the entire contents of that rich repository of knowledge.

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