Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/138

134 more perfect card index than any one library could ordinarily afford to make, and that at a cost much less than that of manuscript cards. There is every reason to look forward not alone to a great extension of the present work of supplying printed cards to scholars, bibliographers and libraries, but also to an extension of the scheme in the direction of international exchange or purchase of printed catalogue cards. The beginnings of such a movement are to be seen in the bibliographical labors of the Institute Internationale of Brussels and the Concilium Bibliographicum of Zurich, while the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature for which the Royal Society of London is sponsor is another great step toward international cooperative cataloguing.

Bibliography has received a great impetus in the past decade in America. Among other signs is the inevitable one of an organization. Americans, said Agassiz, when they have anything to do, must have a president, vice-presidents, secretary, treasurer and a constitution. The genial Swiss was right. The Bibliographical Society of Chicago is about to become the American Bibliographical Society. Meantime private and corporate activity has produced some noteworthy bibliographies, of which The American Library Association's 'Guide to the Literature of American History,' Mr. Evans's 'American Bibliography,' the 'United States Catalogue of Books in Print' and the 'American Catalogue' are perhaps the most remarkable. The list might be indefinitely extended. Bibliography, whether seen in the form of the scholarly treatise, such as the catalogue of the Dante collection of Cornell University, or in that of the latest reading list for children, has become a distinct feature of library progress in America.

There has been no small amount of legislation affecting libraries in the period we are considering. This has taken, as a rule, two directions, first, that of laws creating or amending a general act providing for the establishment of libraries, and second, laws establishing library commissions in the several states. The latter feature is the most prominent in the history of the relation of the state to libraries. In 1893 Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut alone possessed these boards. Now twenty states have established them by statute. Generally these commissions are composed of certain state officials ex officio (usually the librarian of the state library and the state superintendent of public instruction) and certain public-spirited citizens who serve without pay. They have a modest sum to be expended in employing inspectors and organizers. In general their work has been limited to helpful suggestion to the libraries of their states, and to the administration of a system of traveling libraries, another new development of the decade. In certain states the commission is empowered to render some small financial support from state funds to