October 24, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



649 



give substantial and permanent aid to re- 

 search in all directions, they cannot accom- 

 plish this better in any other way than by 

 instituting bibliographical research and 

 publication on a large scale. By endowing 

 a Bibliographical Institute along the lines 

 suggested by the present writer in an 

 article in Science for. October 18, 1901, 

 and in an address before the American 

 Library Association this summer, printed 

 in their 'Papers and Proceedings,'* the 

 trustees would in fact endow all scientific 

 and literary research. 



The bibliographical question needs a 

 thorough solution if it shall be possible for 

 future students and investigators to keep 

 informed of what has been written in their 

 lines of study. The 'International Cata- 

 logue of Scientific Literature' solves the 

 problem for pure science only, leaving out 

 altogether both the applied sciences and 

 the humanities, and it does not at all touch 

 the literature of past centuries. It is par- 

 ticularly unfortunate that the immense lit- 

 erature of the nineteenth century has been 

 allowed so long to remain an unorganized 

 mass. Here, it seems to me, is the greatest 

 opportunity for the Carnegie Institution. 

 The cost would not exceed fifty thousand 

 dollars a year. 



An entirely new institution is needed to 

 take care of the bibliographical interests of 

 the new century, as none of the agencies 

 that have attempted to systematize it so 

 far, in this country at least, will be likely 

 to cover the field in a way that would 

 satisfy scientific research. I may mention 

 four such agencies, first among them the 

 office of the Publishers' Weekly, from 

 where a series of trade bibliographies have 

 issued for more than twenty-five years. 

 Mr. Bowker has certainly systematized this 

 work in a very efficient way, but his office 

 being a business house, he must of course 

 see that his undertakings are put on g,, 



* See Library Journal, July, 1902. 



paying basis (and bibliographical work of 

 scientific nature can hardly ever be put on 

 such a basis), and, furthermore, the work 

 of his office is almost exclusively restricted 

 to trade bibliography. The Publishing 

 Board of the American Library Associa- 

 tion has for years with very limited means, 

 seconded, it is true, in a very remarkable 

 way by Mr. George lies, and with the partial 

 cooperation of certain libraries, carried on 

 effective cataloguing, indexing, and even 

 bibliographical work, in aid of our public 

 libraries;' now, with the interest of the 

 Carnegie endowment, the board will extend 

 its work, but undoubtedly keep on in the 

 lines already laid out. The interests of the 

 Smithsonian Institution in bibliography is 

 merely incidental, and although it has 

 shown not a little activity in this field, it 

 has with few exceptions stuck to the 

 field of chemical bibliography (besides 

 . Pillings 's bibliographies of Indian lan- 

 guages). The most hopeful agency for 

 scientific bibliography at present is the 

 Library of Congress, which, especially 

 through the printed cards prepared by the 

 catalogue division, will do excellent service 

 to bibliography; its division of bibliog- 

 raphy seems at present to be more or less 

 restricted by the duties of the library to 

 Congress, but will undoubtedly as the years 

 go on develop its very interesting work of 

 indexing the resources of the library more 

 fully and more minutely than the cata- 

 logue division; but it is doubtful whether 

 it will be able to, or even ought to go out- 

 side of the library's own collections. At 

 least, it has been the experience of some 

 libraries who have tried to do more ex- 

 tended researches in the bibliographical 

 field, that by doing so they have encroached 

 upon the time and the forces that were ex- 

 pected to be utilized in the immediate in- 

 terest of those who were using the libraries. 

 "We need a separate institution, devoted 

 exclusively to purely bibliographical wori. 



