C. U. C. p. ALUMNI JOURNAL 



THE COLLEGE LIBRARY AND ITS ACTIVITIES. 



By Adelaide Rudolph^ 

 . Assistant Librarian. 



With an increase in the staff, and 

 someone in attendance throughout the 

 day, the Library assumes, this year, an 

 appreciable book and reading-room air. 

 While it is not, for obvious reasons, 

 thought advisable to subject copies of the 

 pharmaceutical journals, which are to be 

 bound, to the wear and tear of constant 

 handling, yet there are enough duplicates 

 contributed by generous editors and 

 College of Pharmacy prof-essors to make 

 a good showing on the library tables and 

 to encourage the journal-reading habit. 

 This new order of 'things seems to be 

 duly appreciated by the students. 



Speaking of pharmaceutical journals 

 brings to mind the importance • to any 

 library, which is used by those engaged 

 in research work of a scientific or tech- 

 nical character, of complete sets of peri- 

 odical literature in th-e technical subjects 

 involved. In this respect the College of 

 Pharmacy has a goodly heritage, handed 

 on by such beneficent and discriminat- 

 ing founders and promoters as Dr. 

 Charles Rice and Dr. Virgil Cobkntz. 



Some one was remarking not long 

 ago, how well and to what a high stand- 

 ard the necessarily small collection of 

 chemical books and periodicals had been 

 kept up under Dr. Coblentz's adminis- 

 tration. This was brought otit by com- 

 parison, during a visit to one of the 

 most important and well-stocked techni- 

 cal libraries of the city, when the writer 

 was working with Dr. H. V. Arny on 

 the chapter-end bibliographies for his 

 forthcoming revised edition of the "Prin- 

 ciples of Pharmacy" (which, by the way, 



ought to be a real boon to those who 

 know by experience the irksomeness, be- 

 cause of the lack of general indexes, of 

 finding material on a given subject in 

 the pharmaceutical journals). When it 

 became apparent that the aforesaid tech- 

 nical library was afflicted also with 

 broken sets of periodicals, and that the 

 volumes that had been missing from the 

 C. of P. library were not to be found 

 here, there was a simultaneous expres- 

 sion of restored confidence in and re- 

 spect for our Pharmacy College library. 



As a matter of fact, this library is con- 

 sidered, as it ought to be, the final and 

 exclusive court of appeal in New York 

 City for research cjuestions of a pharma- 

 ceutical character. In no other library, 

 open to the public, is to be found a com- 

 plete set of the American Journal of 

 Pharmacy, dating from 1825, or of the 

 Pharmaceutical Journal, from 1841. 

 Also, the Journal de pharmacie ct de 

 chimie is complete, together with its pre- 

 decessors, the Bulletin de phannacie and 

 the Journal de pharmacie ct des sciences 

 accessoires, from 1809 to date, except 

 for the incomplete volume for the latter 

 half of 1 89 1, and a gap between the 

 years 1893 and 1906, which is often em- 

 barrassing to our own research work, 

 if not to the reputation of the Library 

 outside. 



Wt might note for our own satisfac- 

 tion, though not as an exclusive posses- 

 sion, a complete set (1859 to date) of 

 bound volumes of The Chemist and 

 Druggist, and of The Chemical News 

 covering the same period of time. The 



