44 



COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



[Jan. 



lications from other learned societies. It is often impossible to 

 obtain these publications in any other way. The feasibility of 

 dividing the exchanges thus received by the University among its 

 different departments where provision exists for special libraries, is 

 to be carefully considered. 



Your Committee is of opinion that a library loses its usefulness 

 to a great degree by centralization. To them the system now in 

 vogue among university libraries, of a grand central collection, seems 

 as unpractical as if all the apparatus of the chemical and physical 

 laboratories, the observatory, and the physiological and anatomical 

 departments should be kept together in one general depot and given 

 out only on application from the professors. There are alread} r in 

 the University several special libraries : those of the Observatory, 

 the Law School, the Botanic Garden, the Medical and Divinity 

 schools, and the Museum. Some of these are growing rapidly, and 

 their efficiency would be greatly increased should the general library 

 distribute among them such special works as are not in common 

 demand. By depositing in the general library card catalogues of 

 their contents, these special libraries would still remain accessible 

 to all persons connected with the University. Should each depart- 

 ment maintain regular issues of memoirs or reports, thus acquiring, 

 as suggested above, a claim to corresponding publications of other 

 universities and societies, the special libraries would undoubtedly 

 increase very rapidly, faster than the general library could hope to 

 do in the same branches. That the amount of these additions to 

 special collections is important may be shown by a comparison of 

 the exchanges received in the College Library and in the Museum 

 Library. The former receives, through exchange or donations, the 

 publications of fifty societies and individual editors, while the 

 Museum is in regular correspondence with no less than ninety-three 

 societies, chieffy of zoology and geology. A moderate activity in 

 the departments recently connected with the Museum would greatly 

 increase this number. 



The Smithsonian Institution gives a still more striking instance 

 of what may be accomplished in this direction. This institution, 

 although not more than thirty years old, receives the Transactions 

 of no less than two hundred societies, while Harvard College 

 Library, its senior by nearly two centuries, receives, as stated 

 above, but a quarter of that number. 



Considering the limited means at the disposal of the Museum for 

 the increase of their library, it is urged that, in order to augment 

 the efficiency of the departments connected with it, the central 

 library should not duplicate the books already to be found in the 

 Museum Library or the periodicals and other exchanges regularly 



