EDITORIAL. 881 



It will thu.s he .seen that the convenience and puri)o.se of the user 

 has been considered in allowing- a selection of cards along any given 

 subject or class of publications, and in providing duplicates at slight 

 cost for cross-reference or other purposes, l^p to the present time 

 al)out eight hundred titles have been printed. 



The value of these cards and the use which may be made of them 

 will be quite evident. The Department of Agriculture is expending 

 through its Library a])out seven thousand dollars a year in the pur- 

 chase of l)ooks. These are for the most part on subjects relating (juite 

 directly to agriculture and agricultural science, and include all the 

 new ))ooks of value which come to the notice of the Librarian and the 

 large corps of Department workers in various lines, as well as many 

 old and rare works. The Department Librar^^ is fast becoming an 

 unusually complete repositor}' of historical and new literature on agri- 

 culture and the sciences relating to it, and its lists of accessions have 

 a special value to persons interested in that field. 



The printing of these cards will be a convenience to libraries, as 

 they may be incorporated in anv card catalogue and thus save the 

 la)>or of cataloguing a book which the library has, or show where it 

 may be found. They contain much more information than the ordi- 

 nary librar}' card, and are less expensive. In time they will naturally 

 form quite extensive bibliographies on a variety of subjects, and thus 

 enhance the value of the small library for reference purposes. For 

 the agricultural colleges and experiment stations they have a special 

 value, and will be an increasingly useful contribution. 



The Department Lil)rary is now engaged in preparing a card cata- 

 logue of the contents of scientitic ])eriodicals, and Avill begin printing 

 this soon. A selected list of the more important journals has been 

 made, and these will be catalogued in order, beginning in each case 

 with the first volume of the journal. Cards will be made not only for 

 the title of each article, but for each important subdivision of the 

 article, making the catalogue quite detailed and enabling intelligent 

 classification of the cards. 



This undertaking is in line with the suggestion of the Committee on 

 Indexing Agricultural Literature, which has been working in this 

 direction for several years past. It will be of the greatest assistance 

 in looking up literature upon any subject, and will be available to all 

 college and s^-ption men, as sets will be distributed gratis to the college 

 and station libraries. As the sets of periodicals included in the cata- 

 logue are all on the shelves of the Department Library, and as these 

 books are now loaned out to college and station men under certain 

 restrictions, this catalogue of periodical literature will help to relieve 

 the difiiculties of workers at institutions where librar}^ facilities are 

 meagre. 



