Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/126

 1 1 4 CO-OPERATION AMONG Gicssen arrangements for lending books to one another existed as early as 1837. The p resen t Prussian c Leihverkehr ' (loan service) has been preceded by a number of less comprehensive arrangements (since 1893). The information- bureau connected with the Royal Library at Berlin is the offspring of the Prussian Central Catalogue, and again the ' Supplement Catalogue ' is the off- spring of the information-bureau. There is a theoretical point of view : librarians and readers may criticise the present system and form schemes for modifying or extending it ; they may especially plead for linking up the information-bureau and the inter-library loan service more closely. The present writer can only approach the subject from the librarian's point of view, and must confine himself to the a6tual state of affairs and mutual help among libraries. He must also pass over all merely local co-operation (common catalogues of single towns, etc.). Readers of the following pages will do well to bear in mind some general features of the German libraries. A great many of them belong to the State (to one of the federated States, not to the Empire) immediately, or to a State institution (a school, etc.), or at least to an institution under the superintendence of the State. Many receive books printed or published in their State or a part ot their State under a Copyright Act, so that one may expect to find this or that book in this or that library, only because it is printed or published at this or that place. But as there is no Public Libraries Act nor a Carnegie, and as many old