Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/137

Rh to libraries has gone into buildings. Mr. Carnegie is a firm believer in the doctrine that the public should support the public library, and he has regularly stipulated that ten per cent, of the amount which he gives for a building should be pledged by the community as an annual appropriation for maintenance. His gifts have gone both to cities already possessing libraries great and small, and to others where libraries must needs be organized to take advantage of his gifts. Exactly what the results of his munificence, aside from the buildings, will prove, it is too early to say. There seems to be very little likelihood of any but good consequences resulting from his wholesale giving.

So much for the 'bricks and mortar.' On the side of library science substantial progress has been achieved. The spirit of cooperation between libraries was never so strong as at present. That spirit which produced 'Poole's Index' has resulted in the current indexing of over two hundred serials of a technical sort in addition to a continuation of this earlier work on the more popular magazines. Far more important than any other feature of the decade has been the adoption of uniform rules for cataloguing by many of the libraries of the country, for the purpose of securing printed catalogue cards from a central bureau. The master minds among librarians since the middle of the nineteenth century have been urging that it was folly for each individual library to reproduce for itself, after the fashion of the middle ages, manuscript catalogue entries for current printed books. A printed book should be catalogued on a printed card which could be bought either with, or at the same time as, the book. So ran the preaching of the idealists. The American Library Association for a time endeavored to do this through its publishing board; later a commercial organization took the work from the hands of the association and continued it for a short time. Both finally dropped the scheme as financially unprofitable. It was reserved for the Library of Congress to take the first effective step toward emancipating the library profession from the ancient bondage of the scribe. First by a series of compromises the libraries of the country, through a committee of their association, adopted a new set of rules for cataloguing. Then the Library of Congress announced that it was ready to sell the printed cards which it makes for copyright books, its other accessions, and such books as it re-catalogues, at the regular price of government publications, i. e., the cost plus ten per cent. This is now being done with great benefit to all concerned. The result has undoubtedly been disappointing to some enthusiasts who had confidently expected that henceforth their catalogues would make themselves. But while the labor of cataloguing has by no means been completely eliminated, the result attained by the use of this printed card is a far finer, fuller and