370 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



Garrison, Fielding H., Army Medical Museum, Washington, District of 

 Columbia. Preparation and publication of the Index Medicus. (For 

 previous reports see Year Books Nos. 2-19.) 



The Index Medicus for 1920 (Second Series, Volume XVIII) con- 

 tains 932 pages, with an index covering 175 pages, as compared with 

 the volume of 984 pages, with index of 183 pages, for 1919. The 

 decrease in size of Volume XVIII (1920) is due to the fact that Volume 

 XVII (1919) contains a large portion of the great backwash of German 

 medical literature which had accumulated during the war period and 

 which did not reach the editors until during 1919-1920. It was de- 

 cided in 1920 to print future numbers of the Index Medicus (begin- 

 ning January 1921) in strictly alphabetical order of subject-rubrics 

 in place of the arrangement employed during the period 1879-1920. 

 This disposes of the table of contents and the annual subject index 

 common to the first and second series. With the 1920 volume, there- 

 fore, the second series of the Index Medicus ends, the four quarterly 

 numbers covering literature for 1921 being Volume I of the third 

 series. Three numbers of the latter volume have now been issued, 

 and from the comments and criticisms which have been made, it is 

 evident that the views of the majority of the subscribers were 

 correct, that the new arrangement is labor-saving and otherwise a 

 distinct improvement upon the older one. The older arrangement of 

 the table of contents, as a kind of hierarchy of the biological and 

 medical sciences, had outlived its usefulness. It broke down upon 

 the simple fact that it did not provide rubrics and compartments for 

 a large number of subjects common to two or more of the subject- 

 titles employed in it. It was a worn-out scheme of classification, 

 while the newer alphabetical arrangement is not only simpler, but 

 of infinite elasticity. This had already been fairly demonstrated in 

 the alphabetical arrangement of the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon 

 General's Library and in the Quarterly Cumulative Index published 

 by the American Medical Association. The quarterly arrangement 

 of the Third Series also presents the material in more compact form, 

 so that a much larger array of bibliographical titles and entries can 

 be printed in a single number than in three successive numbers of 

 the older series for the same period. 



