The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1921-01-20

ability.
The last % years have Witnessed
the development of this government
institution into genuine national Ii
brary. This has been the ambition of
the present librarian who has already
realized his dream. Dr. Putnam
clearly distinguished the function of
the municipal library, the state Ii
bIary, and the library on the one
hand from that of the national Ii
brary on the other. Each of the three
former serves a constituency not
within the purview of the national
library.
Methods Of Service.
The head of the library planned to
make the national library serve the
entire country through other Libraries
in the following ways
l. BY the sale and deposit of cata-
logue cards. of which there are now
in stock 6OOOOOOO
3 Interlibrary loans by which any
person, in however remote part of our
country, can secure through the local
library books from the national Ii
brary.
g. Distribution of the publications,
including its photographers.
A. BY cooperation in publication.
In this way the research investigat-
or is not limited to the books on the
shelves in his local library. In every
library center can be found a card
catalogue of the congressional library
which informs the attendants and the
patrons of the various centers of the
collections of the national library
This organizes the library centers in
to one stupendous library system, with
Washington as the center as a general
clearing house for library informa-
ton throughout the nation. 1t thus
serves the general reader, who is not
limited to the authorities found in the
congressional library enormous as
are the present sources, numbering in
the collection 2SS1,333 books and
pamphlets 166,44S maps 500 400 vol
umes and pieces of music and the
4S.976 prints Through the interli
brary arrangement he has access to
the collection of about 5000 Libraries
scattered throughout the nation.
World Center for Scholarship.
! think there are by actual count 80
libraries of foreign countries that
draw upon this library here in this
capital for research work.
The foreign list does not include
many municipal Libraries in the old
world with which we have afiliation.
It may not be known generally that
here in Washington, connected with
the various research divisions of the
are located the greatest
group of great scholars that can be
found in any center in all the world.
/ want to emphasize that statement.
It is absolutely true. These scholars
are associated with the various gov
ernmental departments, each of which
has has special library facility for its
use. There are a score of such spe-
cial libraries which a dozen years ago |
considerably over a million
volumes of books and pamphlets. |
Among them the Libraries of the sur |
gcon generals Office, the agricultural |
department, the bureau OF education, |
the bureau of standards, the fish COM
mission and the geological survey are |
the finest of their kind in the world |
however the congressional library |
contains not an insignificant portion |
Of the force Of experts to be found in
A General Statement.
The library is still third in dimen-
sion, but overtaking the first two |
Rationale and British /
Museum In point of quality it can
not overtake them, for they have ma
erial original in form which it can
never secure. But it tries as far as
possible to secure the substance of ,
his, most important to an American
Investigator, by copies and facsimiles,
specially material relating to Amer
can history. It thus saves many an
Investigator a trip abroad or directs
lin where he should go to best adj
It gets and preserves many volumes
rot suitable for a local library The
esult is to save local libraries the