Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association: Held at Ottawa, Canada, June 26-July 2, 1912
Science
Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Library Association: Held at Ottawa, Canada, June 26-July 2, 1912
American Library Association; Library science -- Congresses
In the state college of Washington, the experiment station library
is said to be separate from the college, but under its control. Our
college library building occupies a central position on the campus,
not over two hundred yards from the offices of most of the members of
the station staff. Part of the lowest tier of the college library book
stack is set aside for the accommodation of the station library, the
point of division being marked by a gate. A specially designated member
of the college library staff acts as station librarian, under the
direction of the college librarian. Her salary is paid largely but not
wholly out of the station funds. Her duties as station librarian occupy
about one-third of her time, but these duties have precedence over her
college library work. In the absence of the station librarian, members
of the station staff are served by the college library staff.
Our station library is made up almost entirely (1) of publications of
the U. S. Department of agriculture; (2) of publications of the state
experiment stations, and departments of agriculture and horticulture;
(3) of the agricultural, horticultural and kindred periodicals. The
college library contains duplicate collections of the first two classes
of material. The third class in our experience is relatively of less
importance, as it consists chiefly of the popular "farm-papers." The
station library, like the college library, has its own card-catalog of
U. S. Department of agriculture publications, and its own card-index of
experiment station literature.
Students and practitioners of the science of agriculture seem to be
specially fortunate in that so much of the valuable material on their
subject is published and freely distributed by the federal and state
governments. There is perhaps no other science in which the unofficial
literature is so relatively unimportant. It is true, the technical
journals of the allied sciences contain much that is of value to the
experiment station worker. But so far as my experience goes, the use of
this is not constant and continuous, as is the case with governmental
material. Let us have separate and distinct sets of state and federal
"Bulletins," for our college workers and for our station workers, as
both classes need to refer to them so frequently. But is not this going
far enough? Is it not the wisest policy to confine our station library
collection principally to these well-thumbed publications, and to place
the less constantly used and more expensive unofficial material in the
college library, where it can be of service to a larger public?
MISS MARGARET HUTCHINS, of the reference department of the University
of Illinois library described type
=(c) Experiment station library consolidated with the university
library.=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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