Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891
Various
Science -- Periodicals
Such digests may or may not be intelligently made, and, even under the
most favorable circumstances, will hardly serve any other purpose than
helping to the reference to the original articles, and this could
undoubtedly be done more satisfactorily to the stations and to the
people at large by general and classified indices to all the State
documents, made as full as possible and issued at stated intervals.
Only a small proportion of the bulletins have been so far noticed by
digest in this record, with no particular rule, so far as I can see,
in the selection. In point of fact, those will be most apt to be
noticed whose authors can find time to themselves send or make for the
purpose their own abstracts. This is, perhaps, inevitable under
present arrangements. Complete and satisfactory digests of all, if
intelligent and critical, imply a far greater force than is at present
at Prof. Atwater's command.
Under these circumstances, it would seem wiser to devote all the
energies of the bureau to digests of the similar literature of other
countries, which would be of immense advantage to our people and to
the different station workers. Judging from the recommendations and
resolutions of the general association, this is the view very
generally held, but except in chemistry and special industries like
that of beet sugar, very little of that kind of work has yet been
attempted.
What is true of the station publications in general is equally true of
special publications. As entomologist of the department, I have been
urged to bring together, at stated intervals, digests of the
entomological publications of the different stations. Such digests to
be of any value, however, should also be critical, and it were a
thankless task for any one to be critic or censor even of that which
needs correction or criticism. Moreover, to do this work intelligently
would require increase of the divisional force, which at present is
more advantageously employed, for, as already intimated, I should have
great doubts of the utility of these digests.
I believe, however, that the division should strive for such increase
of means as would justify the periodic publication, either
independently or as a part of the department record, of general and
classified indices to the entomological matter of the station
bulletins, and should work more and more toward giving results from
other parts of the world. This could, perhaps, best be done by titles
of subject and of author so spaced and printed on stout paper that
they could be cut and used in the ordinary card catalogue. The
recipient could cut and systematically place the titles as fast as
received.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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