S22 Kansas Academy of Science. 



uses all the resources of the library and makes clippings bearing- 

 upon all important questions that may be before the public; and 

 here the legislators may find help in preparing bills, etc. 



The law provides for assistant librarians and clerical help in each 

 of the departments, and appropriations are made for office expenses^ 

 postage, and $200 each year for buying books. 



The Historical Society, established primarily for the purpose of 

 collecting and preserving historical records, especially of Kansas^ 

 is made a trustee of the state for the historical objects and books 

 that may come into its possession. It also is a repository to which 

 are sent all government publications at Washington, and probably 

 has the most complete sets of these of any of our statehouse collec- 

 tions. It maintains a system of exchanges, not only by means of 

 its own bulky biennial volume of Collections, but the state gives 

 it for exchange purposes sixty bound copies of each of the several 

 publications of the state and of its societies and institutions, except 

 the supreme court reports. This provision is made with the ex- 

 press object of facilitating exchanges, and the result has been that 

 in number of volumes of books and pamphlets it far outranks the 

 other combined collections in the statehouse. State, county or other 

 officials may turn over to the Historical Society, for preservation^ 

 any books, manuscripts or newspaper files, which are to be cata- 

 logued or kept by the society as a part of the public records. On 

 application, certified copies may be made of these by the secretary^ 



Another unique feature of this collection is its files of newspa- 

 pers. The statutes make no direct reference to these, but the fact 

 that both its secretaries have been newspaper men has enabled the 

 Bociety to appeal successfully to newspaper publishers to turn over 

 copies of their papers to the society, until its collection of bound 

 files of newspapers exceeds that of any other western state. While 

 mainly interested in Kansas papers, it has files of some prominent 

 papers of the great cities, like St. Louis, Chicago and New York. 

 It takes a great amount of space to care for such a collection, and 

 requires a clerical force of nearly a dozen persons to assist the sec- 

 retary in all parts of his work. In the great flood of books and 

 curios that are ever drifting into this society there is a good per- 

 centage of "junk" which must eventually be cleared out, for there 

 is a limit to the use of a public museum as a haven for worn-out 

 and antique furniture and discarded books. 



Next to these in extent and importance is our own collection of 

 books. These have been acquired by exchanges and donations, 

 and a few have been purchased with funds of the Academy. The 



