214 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [vOL. 45 



Failing in governmental appropriation for the establishment of a 

 regional bureau in the United States, the Smithsonian Institution felt 

 obliged to render its fostering aid to the project, otherwise the enter- 

 prise might have been abandoned. The Institution was at the time 

 enabled to devote a sum of money to carry on the work here pro- 

 visionally, which, together with gratuitous aid, rendered it possible 

 to make a start. The limited means at the disposal of the Institution 

 at first greatly hampered the work in this country, but, beginning 

 with July I, 1903, it was possible for the Institution to devote a sum 

 of money to the purpose which had hitherto been otherwise employed. 

 This will not only enable the Institution to deal more promptly with 

 the current publications in the United States, but will render it pos- 

 sible to make good the omissions occurring from January i, 1901, 

 to the present time. 



With the exception of zoology all of the volumes of the first 

 year's issue of the catalogue have been published, together with 

 astronomy of the second year's issue. 



It was at first hoped that valuable aid for the work in the United 

 States could be obtained from existing card indexes in the different 

 scientific branches of the government, but experience has shown that, 

 owing to the dissimilar methods used, it is practically as difficult to 

 transpose, verify, and properly classify the references obtained in this 

 manner as it is to procure the data at first hand. 



To give some idea of the extent of the work in this country it 

 may be said that approximately 27,000 classified reference cards have 

 been forwarded by the Smithsonian Institution to the London central 

 bureau. 



The method here employed is briefly this : A numbered card rec- 

 ord file is kept of the titles of the periodicals published in the United 

 States which are likely to contain matter on scientific subjects; this 

 record is systematically gone over at regular intervals and the peri- 

 odicals called for from the Smithsonian library, which aims to re- 

 ceive all such publications. The contents of the publications 

 themselves are indexed separately on cards, and each card duplicated 

 as many times as necessary in order to send to the central bureau 

 (besides the regular reference by authors' names) one card for each 

 of the subjects into which the paper is classified. Duplicate author 

 reference cards, on which are noted the assigned classification, are 

 kept for file, and a record is kept of the entire publication on the 

 periodical cards referred to. By this method it is possible not 

 only to duplicate the work at any time, but to check and make good 

 any omissions. 



