ZEALAND 
THE NEW 
\ 
JQURNAL OF SCIENCE 
FEE. 
& patW ' 
AND 
TECHNOLOGY. 
Vol. II. Wellington, December, 1919. No. 6. 
PROPOSALS FOR A DOMINION SCHEME OF LIBRARIES 
OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. 
• • • 
Bv J. Allan Thomson, Director of the Dominion Museum. 
Need of a* Central Library and of Co-operation. 
One of the first things that strikes a scientific man coming from the older 
countries to reside in New Zealand is the poverty of the libraries in scientific 
and technological literature—and this applies even to the libraries devoted 
almost wholly to science, such as those of the various branches of the New 
Zealand Institute. If he tries to follow up any given subject, not being a 
branch , of local natural history or ethnology, he will probably find that at 
least one-half of the papers he wishes to consult are not to be found in 
any of the libraries of the Dominion, but he will first meet with considerable 
difficulty in ascertaining what books these various libraries possess. 
Research students trained in the Dominion do not, because they cannot, 
exhaust the literature of their chosen subject, and thus lose one of the most 
valuable parts of their research training. It is perfectly clear that if any 
notable advance is to be made in the application of existing scientific know¬ 
ledge to our primary and secondary industries, and in the efficiency of 
scientific and industrial research, a preliminary step must be to improve 
the scientific libraries of the Dominion, and to introduce such a system of 
co-operation between them that the whole library resources of the Dominion 
may be at the disposal of a worker in any part of it. 
But besides this need for libraries containing strictly scientific works 
to be used by those with scientific training, there is a growing demand from 
industrialists for a library which shall contain the trade journals of those 
industries in which New Zealand has been or is likely to become interested. 
This demand was persistently voiced before the recent parliamentary 
Industries Committee and greatly impressed its members. Trade journals 
grade insensibly into strictly technological journals, and these again into 
strictly scientific journals, so that no clear lines can be drawn between the 
three groups of literature, and any attempt to provide for them separately 
in different libraries must lead to overlapping. 
The output of scientific and technological literature has now reached 
enormous proportions, and it is safe to say that not one-twentieth part of 
it ever reaches New Zealand. From the library point of view this literature 
26 —Science. 
