28 American Fisheries Society 



it difficult to refer from this index to a set of the Transac- 

 tions on the shelf of any public or scientific library. If I 

 am not mistaken, in the library indexes, like Poole's Index, 

 reference to such societies take the volume number as con- 

 tained on the title page, and not the year. Consequently 

 our references would not agree with the standard library 

 index references. 



Secretary: Do they not contain both the volume num- 

 ber and the year? 



Dr. Ward : The year of publication and not the year of 

 meeting. In the printing of scientific bibliographies I think 

 that custom is absolute. The year of publication is the only 

 date recognized, and not the year in which the meeting 

 happened to be held. 



Mr. Fearing : You need not worry about anybody going 

 to look up the records of this Society in any public library, 

 for the only complete set is in the library of the Bureau of 

 Fisheries at Washington. 



Dr. Ward: As a teacher I feel this side of it. Per- 

 sonally I shall refer to the publications of this Society, not to 

 all of them, because we have not access to all of them. 



There are certain things that are very important, and 

 those things ought to be used more and more in our institu- 

 tions where teaching along biological lines is carried on, 

 lines that involve the work that the Society is doing. I be- 

 lieve the Society can gain wider influence and can exert 

 greater power in the development of this subject if we can 

 only get the periodicals where they can be referred to. I 

 have cited people to publications of this Society and they 

 have replied to me that unfortunately they cannot be found 

 in the library. So there is a real difficulty. Nevertheless, in 

 some libraries in the larger cities, it is possible to get a 

 considerable number of the publications of this Society, and 

 it ought to be possible in future to get all of them. 



I think that the great libraries in our cities should have 

 as nearly a complete series as possible. I know of two cities 

 that have recently searched out as nearly a complete series 



