STATES RELATIONS SERVICE. 583 



and is not in accord with the expectations in maintaining an ex- 

 periment station as a competent going institution. 



Another matter to which effort has been directed is the securing 

 of a more definite and exact exposition of the financial resources of 

 the stations for research. Conditions have left considerable to be 

 desired in this respect. This is especially the case with certain 

 stations where there are difficulties in drawing the lines between 

 the research activity and other activities of the college, or where 

 there have been turned over to the station large regulatory, commer- 

 cial, and other enterprises. A clearer determination of the funds 

 actually available and emplo^^ed for constructive inquiry will enable 

 more critical examination of their use and develop more definitely 

 the actual need for added support. It will furthermore avoid error 

 in the public mind as to the support already accorded. It is planned 

 to inaugurate a classification of returns in connection with the 

 annual financial report which will make possible a more reliable 

 interpretation of the amount and use of non-Federal funds. 



EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



During the year volumes 47 and 48 of the Record were com- 

 pleted, each consisting of the usual nine numbers and an index 

 number. No large deviation was made from the prevailing policies 

 relative to the periodical, about 92 per cent of the space available 

 being utilized for the presentation of technical abstracts of the cur- 

 rent scientific literature pertaining to agriculture, and the remain- 

 der to monthly editorials discussing problems relating to the promo- 

 tion of agricultural education and research and brief notes on the 

 progress in these subjects at home and abroad. 



The primary function of an abstract journal such as the Record 

 is, of course, to conserve the time of investigators, teachers, and other 

 workers interested in the current and previous literature in their 

 respective fields. The magnitude of this task for the individual 

 under present-day conditions may perhaps be better appreciated 

 when it is stated that in the case of the Record an average of about 

 200 periodicals are examined daily, together with fully 9,000 books, 

 pamphlets, and similar publications each year. From this great 

 bulk of material a total of 6,644 articles, aggregating nearly -300,000 

 printed pages, were selected for abstracting, reduced during the 

 process to about 13 lines per abstract, and assembled in classified 

 form to make a total for the two volumes of only 1,653 pages. 

 When it is recalled that these publications originate all over the 

 world and appear in more than a dozen foreign languages, the need 

 for a service of this sort from a centralized agency becomes ap- 

 parent. In the case of the Record the mere assembling of the raw 

 materials is in itself a large undertaking and one which would 

 hardly be feasible but for the resources and facilities of the depart- 

 ment library and the active cooperation of its staff. 



With the beginning of volume 47 the listing in Experiment Sta- 

 tion Record of the various scientific contributions of members of the 

 department to outside publications was discontinued. A similar list 

 is compiled by the staff of the Official Record, and as this periodical 

 appears weekly more prompt dissemination of the information is 

 secured through this channel. 



7S007— AGR 1923 38 



