210 



THE AGRICULTURAL NE'.VS. 



July i, 1914. 



Curiously enough, in scientific and agricultural 

 Tesearch, it is the makers of the library who are the 

 principal users. This is different from the case of 

 ;general public libraries where the users are merely 

 readers and not always even critical readers. There- 

 fore in the case of scientific libraries it is to the double 

 interest of scientists and investigators of all kinds to 

 express their results with proper care and caution in 

 «uch a form as will facilitate reference, and to co-operate 

 in the matter of aiding those who are immediately 

 responsible for the management of libraries to prevent 

 anything in the nature of stagnation. The academic 

 student, though also a user of the library, confines himself 

 more particularly to text-books and treatises. Unless 

 there is some special problem in hand, it is not necessary 

 nor indeed is it possible, to keep up-to-date. The 

 degree of modernity of the student's facts will depend 

 largely upon the amount of attention his various 

 lecturers bestow in the library upon publications con- 

 cerning their respective lines of study. The gap 

 between text-books and what is known, is very wide, 

 and none but specialists are in a po.sition to keep this 

 gap properly bridged. 



But however keen and conscientious the user of 

 the library may be, these virtues must be even more 

 in evidence in the librarian himself. The popular idea 

 of a librarian would not appear to be such as to over- 

 estimate the attractiveness of the occupation. Yet 

 the position is one which calls for considerable versa- 

 tility. The librarian must adopt vitalized methods 

 and must fully appreciate that books and periodicals 

 are as necessary as apparatus or any other working 

 equipment for the conduct of research. He must 

 preserve a live mental attitude towards the general 

 trend of investigation in every direction, and possess 

 the ability to understand the inter-relationships 

 of the various branches of knowledge. As a bib- 

 liographer he must be acquainted with the vari- 

 ous centres of research and with the names of the prin- 

 cipal investigators; this is of special value when it be- 

 comes necessary to supplement available references with 

 information obtained by correspondence. Then in the 

 organization of the library an efficient card-index 

 system is desirable, as well as various other systems of 

 record. The efficiency of the general work of a large 

 library depends to a great extent upon the provision of 

 an adequate staff of reliable assistants, for if over- 

 burdened with too much detail the librarian is 

 restricted is his grasp of matters covering a wider 

 range. Lastly, the office of librarian demands a 

 .knowledge of modern languages. At the present day 



when the speaking of English has so widely spread, 

 and at a time when English-written periodicals 

 embrace in their pages notices of foreign papers, 

 the necessity for ,a knowledge of foreign languages on 

 the part of the librarian is perhaps less than is gener- 

 ally imagined. But it is desirable, as is shown for 

 instance by the large amount of Russian work that has 

 until lately remained hidden: only to be brought out 

 and properly circulated by those invaluable summariz- 

 ing publications that have within recent years made 

 their long-needed appearance. 



Agricultural libraries have special problems to 

 face which are absent in the case of other literary 

 establishments From the very scattered nature of 

 agricultural research, results might be expected to 

 appear diffused through a large number of publications. 

 Though this would not appear to be unavoidable it 

 nevertheless for the present exists and places a vast; 

 amount of work upon those \i'ho are engaged in 

 the classification and recordance of the literature in 

 question. Then, on the other side, the wide distance 

 of separation between experiment stations themselves 

 and between central libraries makes the utilization of 

 central bureaus by investigators a matter of difficulty. 

 Hence in agriculture a large number of small libraries 

 have sprung into existence many of which contain but 

 the bare essentials for the conduct of research in the 

 various branches of applied science. In America, and 

 to a less extent in England, the Government agricul- 

 tural libraries \xa,Ye endeavoured to surmount this 

 difficulty by lending out bound volumes and by 

 distributing duplicates. But all this means consider- 

 able organization and expense. For the practical 

 agriculturist the provisions made by mo^-t <-TOvernments 

 are much more efficient. In the United States publi- 

 cations are distributed free on application and if these 

 are carefully preserved they form in time the very bes~ 

 and reliable collection of literature that the practical 

 man in that country could desire. 



From all that has been said it will be seen that 

 the modern conception of a working library is not 

 the dusty and gloomy sanctum for out-of-date books 

 that many persons may unknowingly think it to be. It 

 is a vitalized source of power to be . drawn upon 

 incessantly, to be fed by current literature periodically 

 and to be engineered with skill by those who are in 

 possession of real ability. Large libraries are more 

 desirable than small libraries, but it doos not follow 

 that the small need be less efficient than the large ag 

 regards their activities. 



