1024 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
It is to be hoped that the Academy may see fit to provide for 
the completion of one or two of our most important sets, such 
as the Proceedings of the Royal Society and the publications 
of the Leipzig Academy, as well as for the acquiring of smaller 
lots where such are offered at very advantageous prices. 
3. The work of filling gaps has left so far but little time 
for the soliciting of new exchanges. We have, however, inci¬ 
dentally, chiefly at the request of individual members of the 
Academy, made arrangements with seventeen organizations, 
not previously on our list, for an exchange, and from all of 
these we have received publications. Thirteen others, who 
have accepted exchange but have so far sent nothing, are re¬ 
served for a future rejport. There remains much to be done 
in this line, but in order to prevent placing ourselves under 
obligations to societies whose publications are absolutely worth¬ 
less, a cautious progress is necessary. 
4. In all our work, we have constantly been impressed with 
the desirability of a different kind of exchange between our 
library and the other two libraries that share this palace with 
it. There is much in our library in the way of odd volumes and 
partial sets, which would find better place on our neighbors’ 
shelves. University dissertations, for example, we can never 
hope to possess in such numbers as to make our collection use¬ 
ful; what we own of them will, however, greatly enhance the 
value of the university collection. The University, on the other 
hand, owns many rare volumes and partial sets of society pub¬ 
lications which would in many cases complete or nearly com¬ 
plete our sets. The same holds true of our relations to the 
Historical society. Both of these libraries have already re¬ 
peatedly turned over to us valuable works, more appropriate 
to our collection than to theirs. They have also aided us 
most liberally in allowing us to offer their publications together 
with our own to such larger societies whose publishing activi¬ 
ties made such a course advisable. In that way we have sev¬ 
eral times been able to get more complete returns than would 
otherwise have been possible. It may be mentioned here that 
the Geological and Natural History survey has also, and per- 
