Appendix IX. 



REPORT ON CONGRESS OF ARCHIVISTS AND LIBRARIANS, AND CON- 

 GRESS OF BIBLIOGRAPHY AND DOCUMENTATION. 



Sir : I have the honor to present the following report as the representative 

 of the Smithsonian Institution at the International Congress of Archivists and 

 Librarians and the International Congress of Bibliography and Documentation, 

 held at Brussels, Belgium, in August, 1910. 



The Congress of Bibliography and Documentation, the first of the two 

 congresses at Brussels, held its meetings from Thursday, August 25, through 

 Saturday, August 27. On the printed list of members there were enrolled 24 

 associations, bureaus, and other organizations; 34 individual libraries and 

 other institutions; and 160 persons by name, including duplications on lists. 

 Forty-six countries were scheduled as in relation with the congress or with the 

 Institut International de Bibliographie, under whose auspices this congress 

 was held, and there were actually present representatives from at least 16 

 countries, including, besides the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, 

 the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Bul- 

 garia, Denmark, Norway, Monaco, and Turkey, about a hundred persons being 

 actually present at most of the meetings. 



This congress was officially opened by M. Paul Otlet, one of the secretaries. 

 He spoke of the work of the Institut International de Bibliographie in collect- 

 ing catalogue cards for every known scientific publication and their arrange- 

 ment according to the Dewey decimal classification system; also an author's 

 catalogue arranged alphabetically; a collection of picture postal cards of 

 institutions and public buildings from all parts of the world, as well as of 

 prominent persons, and a collection of photographic negatives covering all 

 subjects, from which prints could be made, for persons pursuing a certain line 

 of study. He explained that by documentation was meant the collection and 

 preserving for reference of a series of newspaper and magazine clippings with 

 their illustrations. He referred to the International Exchange Service and 

 mentioned in glowing terms the work of the Smithsonian Institution in organ- 

 izing and conducting the service in the United States. The congress then pro- 

 ceeded to consider the following subjects: 



I. Documents : 



1. Books, reviews, journals; 



2. Illustrations, foreign photographs; 



3. Archives, ancient and administrative. 

 II. Works and collections: 



1. Editing; 



2. Library cataloguing. 



3. Collections; 



4. Encyclopedic arrangement. 

 III. Methods: 



1. Cards; 



2. Rules and classification. 



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