Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/252

222 be a business manager to handle this end, for the museum director should be too fully occupied with his other duties to be able to spare the time for getting advertisers and making up a complicated "dummy."

Catalogues are the proper medium for the expression of scientific knowledge. They should not in any way take the place of labels, but they should by all means supplement these. A catalogue, to be of great value, should be a reference book which can be used for special study in the gallery, but which is most valuable for use at home. Illustrations are infinitely more vital than description, and the latter should be used sparingly to supplement the former. But, in order that the illustrations may be more useful, they must be inserted in the text and not placed together at the front or back. An admirable illustration of good catalogues is to be found in the publications of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. The chief fault one has to find with these is the large size in which they are printed which makes them awkward to use on the spot in the gallery itself. The catalogues of the Metropolitan Museum are satisfactory in size but often printed on such heavy paper as to be quite cumbersome to use.

There are a number of firms in the United