154 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1022 



possible for any chemist to communicate 

 with any other chemist in the whole world. 



THE ABSTRACTING DEPARTMENT 



Chemists long ago realized how extremely 

 uneconomically the abstracting of contempo- 

 rary scientific literature is done. Not only 

 is all chemic literature abstracted in Ger- 

 man in the Zentralblatt, in English ab- 

 stracted twice, once by the English and 

 once by the American society, in French 

 by the French societies, and in other 

 languages, such as Italian and Eussian, by 

 their societies ; there are in addition a large 

 number of periodicals for special branches 

 of chemistry which prepare quarterly, semi- 

 annual or annual bibliographies in their 

 own fields. It can be said without exag- 

 geration, that every article is abstracted on 

 the average from five to ten times, and this 

 so necessary work is done with from five to 

 ten times too great an expenditure of 

 energy. And withal the individual ab- 

 stracts, for the reasons already given, are 

 always more or less incomplete. If carried 

 on by a central bureau, with assistants all 

 over the world, if necessary, this work 

 would be done for a small fraction of the 

 present expense and far more quickly and 

 accurately. 



I realize that it will be some time before 

 the centralization takes place, for the pres- 

 ent institutions will not vanish at a word. 

 But even those who cherish a prejudice 

 against such centralization can not deny 

 that with the rapid increase of chemic 

 literature the old organizations will sooner 

 or later prove inadequate, and a central 

 organization become a necessity. It is 

 always better to recognize such necessities 

 as early as possible, because the changes 

 can more easily be introduced when the 

 material is not yet too overwhelming than 

 when up to our necks in the water of 

 chemic literature. 



CHEMIC REFERENCE AND TEXT-BOOKS 



From the reference department will come 

 eventually the material for the great ency- 

 clopedia of all chemistry. In this book 

 everything done and being done in the 

 fields of chemic science and technology will 

 be systematically compiled. Such a work 

 would necessarily be of so enormous a 

 scope that its complete publication could 

 not be considered for the present. But it 

 will exist in the form of the systematically 

 arranged references in the International 

 Institute of Chemistry. 



There wiU, of course, be a second copy 

 in America. It will be possible for any one 

 who has a special interest in any question 

 to have compiled for him the entire refer- 

 ence material on this subject. The Insti- 

 tute will make special arrangements for the 

 copying of single portions of the complete 

 work, at nominal prices which need scarcely 

 cover the actual cost, so that any chemist 

 can have access to the part of this huge 

 work covering his own field. 



It need scarcely be mentioned that 

 smaller reference and text-books can be 

 compiled from the same material. The 

 preparation of the literary structure of all 

 chemic texts would be placed on a much 

 higher scientific and technical basis than at 

 present. Now each individual author must 

 write work all over again which has been 

 written many times before, or lay himself 

 open to the charge of plagiarism. 



INTERNATIONAL AUXILIARY LANGUAGE 



There would also be various departments 

 for the more complete utilization of the 

 work done by the main institution. I would 

 mention specially the bureau of translation 

 which, if necessary, could be later devel- 

 oped into the bureau of an international 

 auxiliary language. The great variety of 

 chemic literature which appears in differ- 

 ent languages is very imperfectly utilized 



