Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 80]

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72

confident that during the coming year I can effect an increase of more than one thousand volumes in the same way. I have given considerable attention to the increase of our pamphlet collection. Its growth has been over two hundred the past year, and will probably be two thousand the next. By Schedule I V it will be seen that sixty periodicals are received. Of these twenty-nine are agricultural, six mechanical, six scientific, eight literary, six news and political. It might be thought that this is too large a number, but the schedule shows that thirty of these are exchanges and cost nothing but postage and copies of our reports. The books have been issued to readers on their filing checks with name and the book wished. The check is a charge for the book until it is taken off the file, and this is done when the bgok is returned. Books are freely taken from the room by teachers in the University, a record-book being kept for thfeir use. Books are taken out by students to a very limited extent, each book so taken being charged to the Librarian or some other teacher. Some liberty of this kind seems indispensable, from the extensive reading demanded by some subjects, and the present arrangement seems to answer every purpose. A very few books (about ten) cannot be accounted for. As the library is constantly used for a study room, and the shelves are easily reached, students some times, but very seldom, take books to their rooms without permission, trusting to a favorable opportunity to return them without detection. The utmost care will be taken to prevent this, but it cannot be absolutely avoided with the present limited room. Considerable progress has been made in preparing a written catalogue, such as shall combine the advantages of directing readers with the least search to all the library contains on any given subject, and permitting the insertion of new books without breaking the arrangement. It is proposed to make this catalogue extend to the separate articles in periodical works, thus making it a perfect key to the whole library. I hope that the coming year will see this work complete for all that we shall then have. Permit me to call your attention to the great interest which might be added to the annual report of the trustees, by inserting such discoveries, inventions and statistics as should make it a place among scientific periodicals. It would thus serve at once to answer the great purpose of the institution in preparing and disseminating useful knowledge, and enable us to make large and valuable exchanges for the library.