120 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
sets of the catalogue, now in the hands of the central bureau in 
London, could be disposed of to new subscribers of the catalogue 
wishing to complete their records to the date of the beginning of 
the enterprise, and if these sets were sold for even half of their 
original price the receipts would be suflicient to repay the amount 
advanced by the Royal Society. The money needed to resume pub- 
lication would not be expected to include payment of these obliga- 
tions, but would be used solely to defray the necessary costs of 
printing and publishing until subscription receipts were sufficient 
to pay expenses. 
The International Catalogue was never intended to be a commer- 
cial enterprise, but rather the means whereby investigators and 
students might be supplied at cost with data necessary to keep them 
in touch with scientific progress throughout the world. No 
private undertaking publishing an index of 10,000 pages annu- 
ally, in editions of 1,000, could possibly assemble, classify, index, 
and print approximately 250,000 references, which was the average 
number contained in each annual issue, and afford to sell the finished 
work at anywhere near the price charged by the International 
Catalogue, for the cost of all the clerical and technical labor involved 
in preparing the original manuscript was borne by the regional 
bureaus as their contributién to the need of scientific bibliography. 
Material for the catalogue is collected by the various regional 
bureaus supported in every case by the countries they represent, this 
support being mainly derived through governmental grants. The 
work of editing and publishing the material furnished by the various 
regional bureaus was intrusted to a Central Bureau in London whose 
support was derived from the sale of the catalogue to subscribers. 
The subscription price was $85.00 for each annual issue containing 
about 10,000 pages assembled in 17 volumes varying in size to meet 
the requirements of the several sciences. 
The cost of printing and publishing alone has to be met through 
funds derived from the sales of the catalogue. This cost was, in 
1914, approximately $35,000 which in 1922 was estimated, on account 
of war conditions, to have increased to more than twice this sum. 
However, based on the offer of a large and reliable commercial 
printing house in the United States it is estimated that the cost 
would be no greater now than it was in 1914, provided not less than 
10,000 pages per year were printed and the work were distributed 
evenly throughout the year. Assuming this estimate to be approxi- 
mately correct it is believed that with a capital fund sufficient to pay 
for two annual issues the catalogue would again become self-support- 
ing, for the current income, even if less than half the edition 
were sold, would be sufficient to pay the running expenses of the 
gn ON 
