274 Kansas Academy of Science. 



partment has about 20,000 volumes in- its rooms, in the west 

 wing of the basement. 



The most considerable collection of books, outside of those 

 under direct management of the state librarian, is the library 

 of the State Historical Society. By its act of incorporation 

 this society is directed to procure by gift or exchange not only 

 material illustrative of history, but books, maps, etc., of every 

 description, which will "facilitate the investigation of his- 

 torical, scientific, social, educational and literary subjects." 

 To enable the society to augment its collection, the law has 

 given to it "sixty bound copies each of the several publica- 

 tions of the state and of its societies and institutions," except 

 supreme court reports. Besides these collections, every de- 

 partment in the state-house has its own more or less consid- 

 erable library, which may be regarded as tools of these offices. 



It will thus be seen that the capitol contains large sources 

 of possible information in books, but if one seeks here for any 

 particular article or book the quest is often not easy and may 

 be fruitless. Our Academy is on record, more than once, as 

 favoring such a consolidation of all the book interests of the 

 state-house as will insure a separation into departments and 

 a complete cataloguing, by the Dewey system, of all the books 

 found here. 



One way of doing this is to extend the authority of the 

 state librarian so that he may divide the collections into de- 

 partments and have his cataloguers include them all. By such 

 an arrangement the duplication of books would be avoided, 

 which is now a common occurrence. 



The individuality of the Academy library and that of the 

 Historical Society would be modified from what it now is, but 

 not destroyed, and each organization would go on adding to 

 its collection, only each would be restricted to its ov^n field. 

 The main thought would be not to glorify this or that depart- 

 ment, but to build up the library as a whole. 



THE MUSEUM. 



It has always been a function of the Academy to foster col- 

 lections of natural history, especially those which have a dis- 

 tinct educational or economic value. Our membership has 

 always embraced quite a percentage of botanists, entomolo- 

 gists, mineralogists, etc., and it has been customary for them 

 to bring specimens to the Academy. These used to be dis- 

 played in the rooms of the State Board of Agriculture, and 



