82 JL 100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



Consortium of Hospital Libraries. This gives same-day access to a wide 

 range of medical journals that the MBL would not otherwise have. 



In 1983, the library undertook a use survey of the journals, wdth 

 financial assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation. For ten months, 

 readers recorded every time they used a journal, and the staff compiled the 

 results — for every bound volume and current periodical in the library, not 

 just some selected samples. The survey showed that the full complement of 

 holdings are used actively, even seemingly obscure, very specialized, and old 

 volumes. Furthermore, even those volumes used relatively rarely prove 

 valuable in special circumstances. Scientists find the completeness of the 

 collection, with its current holdings of 160,000 journal volumes, a resource 

 matched by very few other places. 



One problem that demanded a solution by the mid-1970s was that of 

 space. All those different runs of journals, each slowly increasing in size, 

 take ever more space. Careful evaluation and management provide predic- 

 tions for expansion. With the help of generous grants, the MBL recentiy 

 undertook renovation and remodeling of the Lillie Building, including the 

 library. Eleven laboratories were removed to make room for the library 

 expansion, and a modern climate-controlled rare books room and archives 

 was built. Everything had to be moved — by hand. And everything found an 

 adequate new home except the old reprint collection. Not enough space, 

 they said. The once extremely valued cind fully catalogued collection of 

 reprints lost its appeal as the dust gathered and as copy machines made 

 private collections easier to acquire. History-conscious researchers miss 

 this wonderful unique resource of more than 250,000 reprints, now largely 

 languishing away in a storage hallway, but most of the materials are available 

 in the original journals. And eventually, the librarians insist, the collection 

 will find a new^ space. 



Pubikaticms 



Since 1908, when Lillie effectively took over as director of the laboratory, the 

 MBL has been following Baird's example at the Smithsonian and has 

 exchanged copies of its journal, the Biological Bulletin, for other journals. 

 In the 1940s, the library acquired roughly half of its 1,200 tities that way. Now 

 the exchange accounts for about 600 of tiie 3,000 periodical tities currentiy 

 received. 



The Biological Bulletin began after Whitman decided to begin a new 

 American publication. This happened before the MBL began, when Whit- 

 mcin was director of the Allis Lake Laboratory near^ Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

 A businessman from a business family, Edward Phelps Allis had wanted to 

 do biological work. Advice from England and America led him to set up his 

 own laboratory and to hire a director/teacher. When Whitman took that 



