214 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1443 



despite government aid and the purse of great 

 foundations. Even now we are threatened 

 with a curtailment, if not the ending, of the 

 catalog. Such 'books are very costly, but with- 

 out them, science must perforce halt its 

 progress. 



The pure sciences have had no such Amer- 

 ican record as these two in medicine. The 

 Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 

 appearing years after their publication, is the 

 most conspicuous British effort. And then, 

 after yeare of incubation, came the great inter- 

 national undertaking known as the Interna- 

 tional Catalog of Scientific Literature, bearing 

 the Royal Society's imprint and prepared by 

 regional bureaus under an international coun- 

 cil. This was to begin with the twentieth cen- 

 tury and to be the final word in all branches 

 of pure science. Now unhappily the world 

 war has brought it to a standstill, probably to 

 an end. But it was already breaking down of 

 its own weight before the war. The plain 

 speaking of the few librarians who were given 

 any chance to be heard between 1895 and 1900 

 was utterly disregarded. They insisted, if I 

 remember correctly, that without some pro- 

 vision for cumulation of entries at intervals of 

 about five years the scheme would defeat its 

 own ends. And their prophecy was amply 

 justified before the war brought a halt to the 

 already huge series of annual volumes. The 

 set remains a monument to the difficulties of 

 the task of an adequate index to the published 

 work of scientists. 



A few attempts at overcoming this difficulty 

 by card bibliographies have been made. Of 

 these the most conspicuous is the work of the 

 Concilium Bibliographicum in the field of 

 zoology, paleontology and anatomy — an under- 

 taking which is likewise due to an American, 

 the late H. H. Field. This is, as you doubt- 

 less know, a classified bibliography printed on 

 cards, arranged in very minute sub-divisions of 

 the decimal classification. When you once 

 learn how to use it, it is most valuable. It 

 usually takes us about a year to train a girl to 

 file the cards, and how long it may take a 

 zoologist or an anatomist to learn how to use 

 them to full advantage, I can not say. This 

 bibliography was also stopped by the war, 'but 



will soon be resumed with money supplied by 

 the Rockefeller Foundation. I know of no 

 other current card subject bibliography on a 

 similar scale. 



The tendency has been, on the whole, to de- 

 velop special annual reviews in rather minute 

 sub-divisions of the general field. Of these by 

 far the most conspicuous have been the 

 Jahresberichte appearing in Germany. There 

 was formerly no end to these special bibliog- 

 raphies — often accompanied by critical notes 

 on the scope or value of the works listed. They, 

 too, were mostly stopped or cm-tailed by the 

 war, and various efforts have been made to 

 revive them or produce hew ones. You each 

 know your own favorite bibliographical re- 

 view — but do you know the difficulties under 

 which they have labored and which are well- 

 nigh fatal at the present day? The chaotic 

 condition of the world from an economic or 

 political viewpoint is we'll matched as regards 

 the record of science. Publication of results 

 is still slow and defective — indexing of pub- 

 lications is more so. The obligation rests on 

 America to provide both the means of publi- 

 cation and the proper clue to recorded work. 

 I can hardly stress this too strongly, as I neces- 

 sarily am forced to take a broad and general 

 view of the whole situation. If the needed 

 indexing of scientific (and indeed all learned) 

 literature is to be done at all — it must be 

 financed in this country. I can think of noth- 

 ing more important for the attention of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science than this very problem of adequate 

 successors to those special and general indexes 

 which have been so useful and which are now 

 either suspended or definitely dead. 



May I, as a layman, venture a suggestion to 

 you who are experts? I feel that most of you 

 tend to ignore in the organization of your 

 work of instruction any presentation of two 

 things which help to mark a scientist of real 

 distinction. The first of these is a knowledge 

 of how to use to the full the various biblio- 

 graphic tools provided. It seems to me that 

 such instruction in their use is a real necessity 

 — perhaps not for elementary classes, but cer- 

 tainly for any studv of an advanced character. 



