THE 
NEW ZEALAND 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 
AND 
TECHNOLOGY. 
VOL. 1. 
Wellington, January, 1918. 
No. 1. 
EDITORIAL: SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS OF GOVERNMENT 
DEPARTMENTS. 
Hitherto the scientific reports of Government Departments have been 
issued in a haphazard fashion, in the sense that each Department has issued 
its reports when and in what fashion it pleased. Many of these papers 
have been published as separate pamphlets, some as bulletins of regular 
series, but the majority have been issued as parliamentary papers and bound 
up in the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives. The 
disadvantages of this procedure are manifold. In general, the reports are not 
advertised or placed in the hands of booksellers for sale, so that scientific men, 
even in the Dominion, do not readily hear of their publication. They are not 
issued to the principal scientific libraries of the world, and are not generally 
indexed in catalogues of scientific literature. The parliamentary papers, issued 
in foolscap folio, are of an inconvenient size for placing upon the shelf, and the 
irregular method of issue is puzzling to librarians who do not receive bound 
copies of the Appendices. In the case of reports published as pamphlets 
librarians have no means of knowing whether their series is complete. 
The duty of co-ordinating all these publications was by the Science and 
Art Act, 1913, placed upon the Board of Science- and Art, a body consisting 
of the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Director of the Dominion Museum, 
the President of the New Zealand Institute, and five persons appointed by 
the Governor in Council. The Act states that it shall be the duty of the 
Board—“ As to all papers and reports of a scientific nature issued or pub¬ 
lished by or under the authority of any Department of the Government of 
New Zealand, to consider in each year all such papers and reports; to direct 
the printing or reprinting of such of the said papers and reports as the 
Board determines to be of such scientific value or of such general public 
interest as to deserve permanent record ; to cause such papers and reports 
as last aforesaid to be annually printed or reprinted by the Government 
Printer in a volume or volumes in form uniform for every year. 
The first annual meeting of the Board of Science and Art was held 
on the 31st January, 1916, when the question of co-ordinating scientific 
publications was referred for report to a sub-committee consisting of the 
members of the Board resident in Wellington and the heads of Government 
Departments interested. Several meetings of the sub-committee were held 
in 1916, and their report was adopted at the second annual meeting of the 
Board on the 1st February, 1917. 
1—Science. 
