96 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
of science may be made available for general reference, and then 
through their representatives and delegates agree with the other na- 
tions on a plan to continue this great international index to science. 
Methods and means were very thoroughly considered before be- 
ginning the publication of the catalogue in 1901, and the methods 
then decided on and the classification schedules then published 
were probably at that time the best means of attaining the end 
sought; but the condition of the world and the methods and aims of 
scientific workers have now so changed that it is apparent that the 
organization and methods of the International Catalogue need re- 
vision. The Royal Society of London, which has been the principal 
sponsor of the catalogue since the beginning, has recently announced 
that after the completion of the fourteenth annual issue it will be 
necessary for some new financial agreement to be made in order to 
continue the work, and has requested the scientific academies 
throughout the world to offer suggestions as how best to accomplish 
the end in view. 
It may be well to here consider the need and aim of an inter- 
national organization to catalogue scientific literature. 
Many of the greatest minds of the day are engaged in researches 
and investigations the results of which are finally published in some 
form. It is obvious that means should exist to enable other workers 
in the same or similar fields as well as the general reader to refer to 
these publications. 
Revolutionizing advances in many of the arts, mdustries, and 
trades are often made by means of scientific research, and what to-day 
appears to be an abstract investigation in pure science to-morrow 
becomes a stepping-stone to some epoch-making invention which 
either entirely changes an old or establishes a new trade or industry. 
This was true even before the present war, but since then cases cf such 
revolutionary discoveries have multiplied to such an extent that it 
is hardly necessary to cite examples. AIl of the sciences have their 
special journals, many of which publish very complete indexes and 
even abstracts likely to be of interest to the specialists in various 
sciences, but there is no publication similar to the International Cata- 
logue of Scientific Literature, whose aim is to index and classify 
all of the literature of the pure sciences of the world. It has been 
one of the aims of the catalogue since the beginning to cooperate with 
the editors and publishers of other similar indexes in order to obviate 
duplication of labor. Cooperation of this kind has been accom- 
plished in several cases, notably that of the Zoological Record, which 
from 1906 to 1914 was published through the cooperation of the 
International Catalogue and the Zoological Society ef London, with 
the result that the combined volume was universally acknowledged 
