622 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



The library would circulate to the members of a society 

 abstracts of all papers on that subject published in all languages. 



A member of a society would, after seeing the abstracts,') 

 decide that he would like to read certain of the papers. These 

 he could obtain on loan from the Central Library, and any 

 which he wished to keep he would be able to purchase for a 

 small sum. In this way every member of a society would be 

 able to read the literature of his own subject in his own home ; 

 he would have a complete set of abstracts for searching the< 

 literature and could always obtain any paper by return of post. 

 If all societies printed their papers in a standard size, it would 

 be possible for a member of a society to collect and bind in 

 volumes all papers on particular subjects. 



The function of the library is fairly well explained above, 

 but in order that papers should be available to people in all 

 English-speaking countries, it would be necessary for a certain 

 number of copies to be kept in a branch library in each English- 

 speaking country. 



If all copies of a paper were used up owing to a large demand 

 for this paper, another edition would be printed, and this would 

 generally be a business proposition, and entail no financial loss 

 to the library. 



The library would translate, print, and store copies of 

 scientific papers published in all other languages. This will be 

 found more necessary as time goes on, for though it is now 

 possible to obtain access to the large majority of scientific 

 papers by a knowledge of English, French, and German, it is 

 probable that there will be scientific as well as social revolu- 

 tions in some of the countries of Eastern Europe, and the Slavs, 

 Poles, and Czechs will probably wish to publish the results of 

 their investigations in their own language instead of in German 

 as at present. Even now the publications in Russian and 

 Italian, which are of no mean order, can only be obtained in 

 the form of imperfect abstracts by the majority of British 

 scientific workers. 



This scheme may appear large and expensive, but I do not 

 think that the organisation would be too difficult for the 

 British and American nations, who have shown their capacity 

 for forming huge organisations during the war. As to the cost, 

 money expended on scientific research could not be better 

 invested. 



