LIBRARIES, PUBLIC. 



361 



tricts. Cities and library boards are given 

 greater freedom of action in the establishment 

 and management of libraries; special appropria- 

 tions are larger, and in six States the maximum 

 tax limit has been raised." 



Increase of Books. President C. W. Eliot, of 

 Harvard University, advocates storing the mass 

 of unused books in a depository away from, and 

 on cheaper ground than the main library, so that 

 shelves and catalogue in the latter may not be 

 clogged by a mass of dead matter. This deposi- 

 tory could be a storehouse for the disused books 

 of all the libraries in a certain denned district, 

 and the books would be " reasonably accessible to 

 real students." While the Harvard Committee 

 reported that the policy of discarding books from 

 the library in any large numbers is inadmissible, 

 yet the problem of want of shelf-room, in face 

 of the increasing rate at which large collections 

 are growing, certainly becomes more perplexing 

 and seems to call for " some new policy concern- 

 ing the storage of these immense masses of 

 printed matter." This recalls the processes of 

 sifting or weeding advocated by C. F. Adams 

 (1893) and others. Correlated principles referred 

 to are that of forwarding to the library which 

 makes dead subjects a specialty books which 

 accumulate on those subjects, and that of the ex- 

 change of duplicates, the latter bringing up the 

 oft-discussed scheme of a general " clearing- 

 house." At all events, a scheme like Prof. 

 Eliot's increases the dependence on interlibrary 

 loans. 



Methods of cooperation between the great ref- 

 erence libraries as to purchases, by agreement as 

 to which specialties shall be cultivated by each 

 library, help also to avoid unnecessary duplica- 

 tion of certain large groups of books. 



In connection with this question, Dr. Billings, 

 in his address as president of the American Li- 

 brary Association, said : " I think it well, how- 

 ever, to remind you of your duties to this your 

 national library, and especially that the librarian 

 of every city, town, or village in the country 

 should make it his or her business to see that 

 one copy of every local, non-copyrighted imprint, 

 including all municipal reports and documents, 

 all reports of local institutions, and all addresses, 

 accounts of ceremonies, etc., which are not copy- 

 righted and do not come into the book trade, is 

 promptly sent to our national library." 



New Buildings. Among the larger library 

 buildings completed during the year are the fol- 

 lowing: St. Joseph, Mo., Free Public Library 

 ($96,500 for building, $11,000 for site) ; Trenton, 

 X. J., Free Public Library ($115,000) ; Cheyenne, 

 Wyo., Carnegie Public Library ($50,000) ; first 

 Carnegie library building in New York city 

 Yorkville Branch of New York Public Library. 



Fiction. The large proportion of works of fic- 

 tion drawn by readers is always a fruitful subject 

 for discussion. Herbert Putnam, of the Congres- 

 sional Library, makes the radical suggestion that 

 no work of fiction be purchased by libraries until 

 a year after its publication. Certainly the pub- 

 lic library can not satisfy the demand for an 

 immediate supply of a new novel to all \vho 

 desire it; some must wait, and wait long. The 

 question of indexing fiction by subjects has also 

 been brought up again, and in one library, at 

 least, they have classified fiction on special sub- 

 jects (as history) with the subject on the shelves. 



Bibliography. Cataloguing. An important 

 event was the transfer of the issue of printed 

 catalogue cards from the Publishing Board of the 

 American Library Association to the Congres- 

 sional Library. The former body issued in 1902, 



as a result of cooperative effort, the carefully 

 annotated Literature of American History: A 

 Bibliographical Guide, edited by J. N. Lamed, 

 which exemplifies in a striking manner the prin- 

 ciples of the " evaluation of literature " advocated 

 by Mr. George lies. The work of the board has 

 been greatly aided by the gift of $100,000 from 

 Andrew Carnegie, the announcement of which 

 gift by President John S. Billings formed a mem- 

 orable event in this year's convention of the 

 American Library Association. It is " a dona- 

 tion for the preparation and publication of read- 

 ing lists, indexes, and other bibliographical and 

 literary aids." 



The issue of index eards for periodicals not 

 covered by Poole's Index is going on, and cards 

 have also been printed for miscellaneous sets, 

 such as the British Parliamentary Papers, the 

 Massachusetts public documents, the National 

 Museum Bulletin, Smithsonian publications, Uni- 

 ted States Bureau of Education Circulars, and 

 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections. 



Traveling Libraries. In New \prk State, 

 which has 1,000 traveling libraries, pictures are 

 now sent out as well as books, as also apparatus, 

 scientific collections, and maps; even traveling 

 libraries for the blind have been started. It ap- 

 pears that in many of the States the development 

 of the traveling-library idea is largely due to- 

 women's clubs. In the lumber regions of Canada, 

 traveling libraries not seeming expedient, perma- 

 nent reading-camps are being established, and 

 appear to have good results. 



Home Libraries and Beading Clubs. "-Sta- 

 tistics show that the majority of a large city's 

 population will not come to the library." The 

 work of the " home libraries," referred to here in 

 1900, is extending. Boston is reported to have 

 60 of them, Baltimore 30, Chicago 30, Philadel- 

 phia 4, the New York Public Library 25, Cincin- 

 nati 15, Helena 2, and Pittsburg 31. They are 

 usually managed by charitable institutions and 

 libraries, either separately or in conjunction. In 

 the Congressional Library readings for the blind 

 have been begun, T. N. Page and F. H. Smith 

 being among the readers. 



Associations. The New York Library Club 

 has issued a manual which gives information con- 

 cerning 298 libraries, with branches, 350 in all, 

 and serves as a useful guide to the collections on 

 important special subjects which may be found 

 in the various libraries of the metropolis. 



France. The French Ministry of Public In- 

 struction passed an order on Dec. 24, 1901, per- 

 mitting and regulating interlibrary loans, the Na- 

 tional, Ste.-Genevieve, Mazarin, and Arsenal Li- 

 braries, Library of the Institute, and university 

 libraries being authorized to lend duplicates to 

 each other. 



Germany. Adalbert Roquette's pamphlet on 

 Die Finanzlage der deutschen Bibliotheken (1902) 

 calls attention to the insufficient means at the 

 disposal of German university libraries. Not 

 only have but few annual endowments been in- 

 creased, but the large increase in the number of 

 books published as well as augmented prices have 

 served further to reduce the proportion of neces- 

 sary books which the libraries are able to buy. 

 Impaired usefulness is the natural result. Be- 

 sides the obvious need of larger appropriations, a 

 well-developed system of interlibrary loans, with 

 a few large libraries as bases of supply, is sug- 

 gested. 



Dr. Chr. G. Hottinger opened a library school 

 for women in Berlin in 1900, with the purpose of 

 opening a wider field for women's work rather 

 than to develop the public-library idea. 



