CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES OF 
CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES 
Tue Conference was held at Marischal College, Aberdeen, on Sep- 
tember 6 and 11, under the Presidency of Col. Sir Henry Lyons, D.Sc., 
F.R.S., and was attended by 44 delegates representing 49 societies, in 
addition to a large audience. 
Thursday, September 6. 
ADDRESS ON 
SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES AND MUSEUMS 
By Cou. Str Henry G. Lyons, D.Sc., F.R.S., 
President of the Conference. 
Tue field of scientific activity covered by the Societies which are represented 
here to-day is so wide that an address on almost any subject might be con- 
sidered to be appropriate to their interests ; and in fact, when I look at 
those that have been delivered of late years, I can discover no definite trend 
in them, other than the desire to contribute to the advancement of the 
knowledge of science and its applications. And this is as it should be ; we 
should address our colleagues on those subjects of which we have personal 
knowledge and can speak from practical experience. 
For the last twenty years I have been occupied not so much with any 
particular branch of science as with making available to others scientific 
and technical information of various kinds ; and that by display and exhibi- 
tion rather than by writing. In this task it has been brought home to me 
very vividly the need that there is for fuller organisation in this field, how 
large are the resources which are in existence and how real the difficulties 
which workers may experience in gaining access to them. ‘The problem, 
which is familiar to every student of any branch of knowledge—that the piece 
of information for which A is seeking is often a commonplace to B, but 
there is no connecting agency to bring them together—still remains for the 
great majority but very imperfectly solved. Bibliographies have multiplied 
and are multiplying in every subject, until they now form an important 
section in a library of any size; efficient and rapid handling of them is 
becoming a specialised side of the librarian’s work. 
At the same time steady progress is being made in several directions, and 
in none do I see more hopeful prospect than in the co-operation of the three 
classes of institution which have already done so much to this end—I refer 
to the scientific society, the library and the museum. Each of these has 
its own special mode of distributing information—by discussion, by books 
and other publications and by display—and they offer much to the scientific 
student and worker who does not perhaps always utilise them to the full 
extent, or who may not know the assistance that they can render to his 
special needs. 
