October 4, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



535 



than the preglacial Miami had, but hardly 

 steeper than the gradients of streams occupying 

 the channels of its present tributaries, whether 

 they flowed north or south. 



The accompanying map only shows a portion 

 of the Silurian drainage areas to the north of 

 the Ohio. It might have added force to the 

 above argument, to have shown the drainage 

 from the south as well. It would have been 

 found to present an appearance symmetrical 

 with that from the north. In spite of argu- 

 ments derived from width-of channel compari- 

 sons, etc., it still looks as if the Ohio River 

 were the parent stream and that its present 

 tributaries, the Miami, the Licking, the Ken- 

 tucky have never been tributary to anything 

 else, but represent normal lateral stream de- 

 velopment. Arthur M. Miller. 



State College of Kentucky. 



a post-graduate school of bibliography. 



To THE Editor of Science : It will not be 

 difficult for any one familiar with the develop- 

 ment of libraries and librarian ships in this coun- 

 try to see that we have arrived at a turning- 

 point in their history. The large and even 

 moderate sized libraries are developing and will 

 continue to develop special departments in which 

 acquisition is done by collecting rather than 

 selecting. These departments will need for 

 their care and utilization librarians with special 

 knowledge. The largest libraries will specialize 

 in several departments and consequently will 

 need a staff of reference librarians each a 

 specialist — a 'faculty,' as Mr. Melvil Devey 

 calls it in a very suggestive article in the July 

 number of The Library. Lastly, highly spe- 

 cialized libraries, each devoted to some special 

 science or group of sciences, will grow up. 



This development will necessitate some very 

 radical changes in the class of men who will 

 take up library work, and consequently in the 

 provision for the education of librarians. We 

 shall see men with university education taking 

 responsible positions in libraries instead of seek- 

 ing university professorships, and the demands 

 of such men for opportunities to prepare them- 

 selves for their life-work without having to go 

 back to the college or even high-school grade 

 must be met. It cannot be met by the pres- 



ent library schools as now constituted. The 

 work these schools are doing in preparing young 

 men and women for subordinate positions in 

 popular libraries is an absolutely necessary one 

 and one that must not be slighted. In addition 

 to these we need special schools for the educa- 

 tion of scientific librarians and bibliographers. 

 Perhaps one or the other of the library schools 

 can develop a school of this grade. However 

 that may be, there should be established at the 

 large universities special schools of bibliography 

 of the same rank as the schools of engineering, 

 commerce and history. 



The present writer had occasion to bring this 

 question to the attention of the librarians at the 

 conference of the American Library Association 

 in July of this year, as has already been noticed 

 in Science. The question is certainly of great 

 importance, not only to librarians, but to the 

 scientific and educational world at large, and 

 the purpose of these lines is to invite a discus- 

 sion of the ways and means for the establish- 

 ment of such schools. I hope that Science will 

 open its columns for this discussion and that 

 educators and scientific men and librarians, too, 

 will take part in it. 



A school such as here proposed would natu- 

 rally be open to any one who would take up the 

 study of bibliography or any of its branches, 

 and not exclusively to prospective librarians. 

 These studies have a fascination of their own, 

 just as literary history, philosophy or mathe- 

 matics, and are just as capable as any of these 

 sciences of inspiring with enthusiasm the 

 searcher after truth. 



The curriculum of a school of bibliography 

 should include the following subjects : 



1. The literature of bibliography, with prac- 

 tical exercises in the handling of bibliographical 

 repertories and indexes and in bibliographical 

 compilation. 



2. History and methodology of the sciences, 

 and comparative history of literature (literature 

 taken in its broadest sense), including the study 

 of the systems of classification of knowledge 

 and their relations to the schemes for classifica- 

 tion of books. 



3. History of printing and bookselling, with 

 special emphasis on the invention of printing, 

 and exercises in the cataloguing of incunabula. 



