The Smithsonian Library 271 



Smithsonian Institution may, under a proper system, become 

 a centre of literary and bibliographical reference for our en- 

 tire country. Your committee recommend that the librarian 

 be instructed to procure catalogues, written or printed, of all 

 important public libraries in the United States, and also, in 

 proportion as they can be obtained, printed catalogues of the 

 principal libraries in Europe, and the more important works 

 on bibliography. With these beside him, he may be consulted 

 by the scholar, the student, the author, the historian, from 

 every section of the Union, and will be prepared to inform 

 them whether any works they may desire to examine are to 

 be found in the United States, and, if so, in what library ; or, 

 if in Europe only, in what country of Europe they must be 

 sought. Informed by these catalogues, it will be easy, and 

 your committee think desirable, for those who may be charged 

 with the selection of books, to make the Smithsonian Library 

 chiefly a supplemental one ; to purchase, for the most part, 

 valuable works, which are not to be found elsewhere in the 

 Union ; thus carrying out the principle to which your com- 

 mittee has already alluded as influencing all their recommen- 

 dations, that it is expedient, as far as may be, to occupy 

 untenanted ground. 



"Exceptions to this rule must here, of course, be made; as 

 in the case of standard works of reference required for the 

 immediate purposes of the institution, and also of the very 

 numerous works, many of current science, which, by a proper 

 system of exchanges, we may procure without purchase. In 

 this latter connection, the Transactions and Reports of the 

 institution will obtain for us valuable returns." 



In all the early discussions of the Board of Regents the 

 library received the fullest consideration. Indeed, one of the 

 first definite acts of that body was a resolution passed at its 

 third meeting, September 9, 1846: 



" That the Secretary be requested, without unnecessary de- 

 lay, to collect, on behalf of the institution, all the documents. 



