HISTORICAL RESEARCH — JAMESON. IQI 



whether there is any field of our activities where each hundred dollars of 

 expenditure brings so large a future profit to the cause of historical science 

 in the United States. 



Hitherto this report, in treating of the ideals of a department of historical 

 research, and of the preparation of reports, aids, and guides as a necessary 

 element in its program, has spoken only of guides to unprinted materials. 

 I should be sorry to be supposed to hold that such a department has no func- 

 tion with respect to those that are in print. The distinction between the two 

 is broad as respects convenience of use, and therefore has its proper claim 

 to be regarded in our work. But for many purposes in historical science the 

 distinction simply does not exist. The worker wishes to have before him all 

 the first-hand statements that bear upon his theme. It is little to him, save 

 as to expense perhaps, that some come to him in the guise of print, some in 

 that of manuscript. Multitudes of them are annually passing over from the 

 latter to the former class. The distinction is external and superficial. An 

 organization that means to do what is most useful in the way of mediating 

 between workers and their original materials will not adopt it as a primary 

 basis of classification. Such an organization will not print in its text-series 

 that which is already printed, but in constructing some of its aids or guides, 

 as, for instance, in supplying historical scholars with lists of materials of 

 specific sorts, such as lists of colonial charters, or governors' commissions, or 

 legislative journals, or missionary relations (a most useful variety of guide, 

 of which we should have many more, of the type of certain European 

 regesta), it will surely list without distinction those members of a series that 

 are printed and those that are not. Whatever may be thought of ordinary 

 bibliographies — lists of writings original and secondary, good, bad, and indif- 

 ferent, on a given subject — for classified lists of original materials there will 

 always be a legitimate demand. 



It is not without reason and intention that a heading making reference to 

 aids as well as to reports and guides has been chosen for the title of the 

 present section of this report. Besides reports upon archives, and guides to 

 particular masses of archival and other material, there are certain sorts of 

 historical reference-books that can best be produced by endowed institutions, 

 as the Art de Verifier les Dates was produced by the Congregation of St. 

 Maur, as the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographic has been produced in our time 

 by the Bavarian Historical Commission, or as the great historical atlas of 

 the Netherlands is being produced by the Historical Society of Utrecht. 

 Several such enterprises may ultimately, with permission, be proposed by the 

 department, the most interesting and important among them being the project 

 of an atlas of American historical geography comparable with the best of the 

 historical atlases now in course of preparation in and for various European 

 countries. 



