Why This is Thus 



Users of the Document Price Lists may or may not have noticed that as 

 successive editions appear their size increases. Many titles are dropped 

 from each new edition, because the supply of the publications has become ex- 

 hausted. But there are always more new ones to be added than there are 

 old ones to be dropped. Of course there must be a limit to the size of the 

 Price Lists. Thousands of them are sent in answer to requests for informa- 

 tion as to one, two, or three small bulletins or circulars. It is evidently not 

 good practice to send a whole volume in answer to such requests. Various 

 devices have been adopted, and others suggested, to keep the Price Lists with- 

 in reasonable bounds without withholding from our correspondents any part 

 of the information which it is their right to have. Several lists have been 

 divided. Documents relating to Alaska have been taken out of the Noncon- 

 tiguous Territory list (No. 32) and made into a new list by themselves (No. 

 60). No. 32 has also furnished the material for another new List, No. 61, 

 made up of Government publications relating to the Panama Canal and the 

 Canal Zone. Thus we have three lists of 33, 18, and 46 pages respectively, 

 instead of one list of 97 pages. The change contributes to economy and to 

 convenience as well. 



Similar changes have been made in other cases and more of them are 

 in prospect. The present List, however, being the 8th edition of No. 16, the 

 most popular of all the Lists, is shortened on a different plan. In the 7th 

 and previous editions the titles of the Farmers' Bulletins and other num- 

 bered publications were given in numerical order and then again in alpha- 

 betical order under headings of the subjects which they considered. For 

 instance, in the 7th edition, at the top of page 26, under the heading " Farmers' 

 Bulletins," is found the entry " 255, Home vegetable garden, paper, 5c."; and 

 near the top of page 53, under the heading " Vegetables," is found " Home 

 vegetable garden, 1906, 47 pp. illus., Farmers' bulletin 255, paper, 5c.," the 

 two entries describing the same publication. Thus each one of the hundreds 

 of publications noted in Price List 16, 7th edition, was entered in duplicate, 

 once under its number and once under its subject. 



The increase in the number of publications and the increased demand 

 for the Price Lists have together brought such a pressure on the Price List 

 Section that it can no longer keep up such a duplication. This 8th edition is 

 therefore a numerical list only. It contains entries for the Agriculture 

 Department Bulletins, the Department Circulars, the Farmers' Bulletins, the 

 Yearbooks with full lists of contents, and the Journal of Agricultural Research 

 also with contents. All of these are given in numerical order only. They 

 are followed by a short subject list of miscellaneous agricultural publications 

 given here because there is no other equally good place to list them. 



It would not do, however, to undertake to carry so numerous and such 

 varied publications by numerical entries only. There must be somewhere 

 Lists under subject headings, and these will be found in the minor agricul- 

 tural lists: 38, Animal Industry; 40, Chemistry; 41, Insects; 42, Agricultural 

 Experimentation; 43, Forest Service; 44, Plant Industry; 45, Public Roads; 

 46, Soils; 48, Weather. 



The change made eliminates not only duplication but in some cases triplica- 

 tion. It is the intention of the Superintendent of Documents to supply all 

 comers with free Price Lists of the salable Government publications, but to 

 meet the rapidly growing demand all admissible economies must be practised. 



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