STUDIES ON MUSEUMS AND KINDRED INSTITUTIONS. 455 



the books falling- down when the shelf is not full. The vertical arm 

 has two rounded wings standing out at right angles to it. When 

 books are quickly put up these prevent the thin plate from passing 

 between the book leaves and injuring them, as often occurs when 

 other kinds of supports are used. If an employee of the library takes 

 a book from a case for his own temporary use he puts a red card in 

 its place; the books that are given out to the public are recorded only 

 in the office. 



The li])rary now contains 70,000 volumes. The normal yearly 

 increase has hitherto been about 10,000 volumes. In 1900 there were 

 of general works, 13, .590; social sciences, 16,106; physical sciences, 

 10,380; natural sciences, 9,131, and applied sciences, 16,435. It ma}^ 

 be remarked that the 14 per cent devoted to the natural sciences cost 

 three times as nuich as did the 24 per cent devoted to the social sciences. 

 According to the agreement which was previously mentioned there 

 were bought from the Newberr}' Library 8,023 volumes on natural 

 science for $16,000, besides 300 special ornithological works for $4,.5O0. 



The library is catalogued according to the rules of Linderfelf* and 

 classified according to the system of Dewey,* with independent ampli- 

 fications. The lettering and the numbering are printed with gold 

 directly upon the backs of the books. The greatest care has been 

 given in the selection of bindings, and the edges of many volumes are 

 gilded in order that thej^ may be more easily cleaned in the dusty and 

 sooty atmosphere of the center of the cit3\ Pamphlets are simph^ 

 bound and provisionally kept in cases. In 1900 there were 5,431 vol- 

 umes bound at a cost of $5,570, or at an average of about $1.19 a vol- 

 ume. The printed card catalogue, directl}^ accessible to the public, 

 contained in 1900 over 90,000 cards, 41,000 of them author cards and 

 49,000 subject cards, among which were also a small number of those 

 published b\^ the American Library Association.'^ There are also 

 about 30,000 cards to which are added bibliographical information — 

 from the Concilium Bibliographicum in Zurich, from the American 

 Library Association, from the Torrey Botanical Club, from the Depart- 

 mentof Agriculture in Washington, from the Bibliographic des Sciences 

 Mathematiques in Brussels, and some others. This bibliographic 

 information, accordingly, relates to zoology, agriculture, American 

 botanical literature, names of new botanical genera and species, math- 



o K. A. Linderfelt. Eclectic Card Catalogue Rules. Boston, 1890. 



&M. Dewey. Decimal Classification, etc., 5th ed., Boston, 1894. See also p. 399 

 of this paper. 



cThese relate to 250 scientific societies, institutes, and periodicals which, by divis- 

 ion of labor, are written liy the John Crerar Library, the New York Public Library, 

 the Boston Athenanini, the Harvard University Library in Cambridge, and the 

 Columbia University Library in New York. The John Crerar Library includes 

 however in its card catalogue only such of the cards as relate to the books and pam- 

 phlets in its possession. 



