LIBRARY PROGRESS IN AMERICA. 133 



to libraries has gone into buildings. Mr. Carnegie is a firm believer 

 in the doctrine that the public should support the public library, and 

 he has regularly stipulated that ten per cent, of the amount which he 

 gives for a building should be pledged by the community as an annual 

 appropriation for maintenance. His gifts have gone both to cities 

 already possessing libraries great and small, and to others where li- 

 braries must needs be organized to take advantage of his gifts. Ex- 

 actly what the results of his munificence, aside from the buildings, 

 will prove, it is too early to say. There seems to be very little likeli- 

 hood of any but good consequences resulting from his wholesale giv- 

 ing. 



So much for the ' bricks and mortar.' On the side of library sci- 

 ence substantial progress has been achieved. The spirit of coopera- 

 tion between libraries was never so strong as at present. That spirit 

 which produced ' Poole's Index ' has resulted in the current indexing 

 of over two hundred serials of a technical sort in addition to a con- 

 tinuation of this earlier work on the more popular magazines. Far 

 more important than any other feature of the decade has been the 

 adoption of uniform rules for cataloguing by many of the libraries of 

 the country, for the purpose of securing printed catalogue cards from 

 a central bureau. The master minds among librarians since the mid- 

 dle of the nineteenth century have been urging that it was folly for 

 each individual library to reproduce for itself, after the fashion of the 

 middle ages, manuscript catalogue entries for current printed books. 

 A printed book should be catalogued on a printed card which could be 

 bought either with, or at the same time as, the book. So ran the 

 preaching of the idealists. The American Library Association for a 

 time endeavored to do this through its publishing board; later a com- 

 mercial organization took the work from the hands of the association 

 and continued it for a short time. Both finally dropped the scheme 

 as financially unprofitable. It was reserved for the Library of Con- 

 gress to take the first effective step toward emancipating the library 

 profession from the ancient bondage of the scribe. First by a series 

 of compromises the libraries of the country, through a committee of 

 their association, adopted a new set of rules for cataloguing. Then 

 the Library of Congress announced that it was ready to sell the printed 

 cards which it makes for copyright books, its other accessions, and such 

 books as it re-catalogues, at the regular price of government publica- 

 tions, i. e., the cost plus ten per cent. This is now being done with 

 great benefit to all concerned. The result has undoubtedly been dis- 

 appointing to some enthusiasts who had confidently expected that 

 henceforth their catalogues would make themselves. But while the 

 labor of cataloguing has by no means been completely eliminated, the 

 result attained by the use of this printed card is a far finer, fuller and 



