Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/86

 London. At the Bibliotheque Nationale, in order to avoid overcrowding with material that would detract from the scientific and literary character of the institution, certain series eliminables have been formed, consisting of reprints of school-books, religious and other popular books, which will be housed in a branch library more or less removed from the centre of Paris.

The enrichment of libraries by interchange of surplus books or their own publications is a matter for individual arrangement, but national libraries often benefit by governmental arrangements for the exchange of official documents on a large scale. Thus the British Museum receives the documents sent by Austria, Chili, France, Italy, Norway, the United States, and certain British colonies (Canada, Cape Colony, New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria), in return for sets of British parliamentary papers and other non-confidential State documents. The unfortunate part of the arrangement is that there exists a yearly list of the British documents, and if the other parties to the agreement do not get them all, they want to know the reason why. Only one of them, however, publishes a similar list, and that one, issued by the United States, is by no means comprehensive, so that the situation is somewhat one-sided.

To make room for new acquisitions, or, it may be, to benefit his confreres, the librarian will at times indulge in a process of "weeding out." The strict horticultural value of the phrase need not, however,