LXXX ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



year. It promises to be in every respect a creditable evidence of the 

 present state of scientific research in Canada. 



The distribution of this Memorial Volume will afford an excellent 

 opportunity of increasing to some extent the number of learned societies 

 with whom we exchange publications. In this connection the council 

 recommend that a thorough revision of the list of exchanges be made 

 for the j)urp(»se, not only of adding new societies, but of removing the 

 names of societies which no longer send us publications or whose publi- 

 cations are not a reasonable exchange for our own. This revision can- 

 not 1)0 undci-taken by the library committee at once because of the 

 great labour of completing our present, sets of publications, but incident 

 to that work the lil)rary committee are accumulating information 

 which will materially lessen the work of such revision. 



The report of the Librarian is of more than usual interest this 

 year owing to the success which has attended our efforts to fill the 

 vacancies in the sets of publications on our shelves. Letters have been 

 written to 346 societies and publishers and the volumes obtained thus 

 far result from 165 replies to our requests. Since the date to which 

 the figures in this report have reference many additional replies have 

 been received, and when the work is completed we shall certainly have 

 added most materially to the value of our library. In carrying on this 

 important work, however, the council is confronted with the fact that 

 we are unable to supply many back numbers of our own publications 

 and these have been asked for by many of the societies which have been 

 most generous in filling our own wants. The reserve supply of our 

 publications has been carefully examined and a list of our deficiencies 

 will shortly be published in the hope that members who possess such 

 old numbers and who do not intend to preserve a complete set of the 

 institute's ])ul)lic'ations, will donate or sell them to the council. 



It will be remembered that the institute, in conjimction with the 

 City Eeference Library, the Tiibrarian of the University of Toronto, 

 the Education Department and others, undertook the preparation of a 

 joint catalogue of Proceedings of Learned Societies and other journal?. 

 This was issued during the past year and it may be well to draw atten- 

 tion to some refsults which are already noticeable. First, there is an 

 evident increase of the number of students who desire to consult the 

 volumes in our library, and secondly, the various libraries have already 

 made considerable progress in carrying out some of the reforms which 

 it was hoped would result from the preparation of the catalogue. If 

 two or more libraries have l)een obtaining an expensive publication, 

 by mutual arrangement this duplication may be avoided and the cost 

 diverted to some otherwise unprocurable work. Again, if there is not 



