College and Research Libraries


By L U T H E R H . E V A N S 1 

History and the Problem 
of Bibliography 

IN its broad sense history is the realm of recorded mind. Informing man about 
man, history affords a prospect of future 
consequences. Society—past, present, and 
future—here finds public judgment, and the 
people of an age and place learn their fail-
ures and their promise from this inter-
preter's voice. T h e ancients seemed to 
know the vastness of the historical matrix, 
sometimes perhaps better than we. "His-
tory," wrote Polybius, "is now an organic 
whole. T h e affairs of Italy and Africa 
are intermingled with those of Asia and 
Greece, and all move to one end." 

O u r own century frankly calls itself the 
age of "global" war. So it will be re-
membered by our children's children and 
theirs, for countless generations. Although 
we do not have the identical "one end" 
that Polybius envisioned, the interrelation 
of peoples, of regions, and of the realm of 
mind is truly as he intimated it would be. 
T h e history of recent civilization, including 
advances in knowledge and the increase of 
"documentation" (in the French sense) 
demonstrates that the web of culture is 
indeed tightly woven. Dramatic revolu-
tions in science or technology, in political 
action or in the literature of imagination, 
hardly constitute isolable phenomena. Cor-
relative, sudden, or gradual changes in 
the remainder of the continuum indicate 
that society, although it may not be "or-
ganic," is in some sense a totality whose 
component parts are separable only for 

1 M u c h of the composition of this article is the work of 
A d r i e n n e K o c h . 

theoretical convenience or tor immediate 
use and action. 

Bacon's ability to classify recorded knowl-
edge in terms of three great "faculties" of 
the human mind—memory, reason, and 
imagination—was possible, even in his time, 
only with strain and largely because of the 
lack of knowledge of psychological opera-
tions. Those who used the Baconian classifi-
cation as the guide to the organization of 
libraries were already finding it unworkable 
in the' eighteenth century, since the presses 
had even then multiplied the products of 
written expression beyond an easily manage-
able quantity. Today the most elaborate 
classification, carried to a fine degree of sub-
division, is at best a practical compromise, 
actually out of date to some small degree 
in the very moment of its conception. In-
tense specialization in professional inquiry 
may continue to be a modern practice for 
certain scholars and scientists for years to 
come; but for the realities of subject matter 
relationship, the "fringes," as William 
James would have said, are thick and they 
involve the separate subject matters in a 
public embr.ace destructive of highly techni-
cal privacy. T h i s condition complicates the 
problems confronting bibliographers and 
makes bibliography peculiarly dependent 
upon the historical contingencies that deter-
mine the character of an age. 

Bibliography derives its chief functions 
from the omnivorous demands of historiog-
raphers. Even so-called "current" bibli-
ography is history—young and fresh history 

195 



—suited to the restless acquisition of further 
knowledge. Bibliography is thus a hand-
maiden to cultural growth, a handmaiden 
now seriously overworked, taxed by the 
enormity of society's published records in-
creasing with the years. T h e older society 
becomes, the more it "grows up," the harder 
it is for bibliographical controls to maintain 
their hold over the voluminous outpourings 
of the mind and spirit, externalized not only 
in print but in the multiple forms of dupli-
cation, photography, etc., spawned by the 
technologists of our times. In the familiar 
battle cry of one of the most imaginative 
librarians in the country: . . W e seem 
to be fast coming to the day when, unless 
it is afforded the most expert sort of bibli-
ographical service possible, civilization may 
die of suffocation, choked by its own pleth-
ora of print." 

Improve Bibliographical Activity 

T h e psychological attack made by these 
ever increasing intellectual materials has 
depressed many a deserving scholar. I t is 
my thesis that to prevent that fatal depres-
sion from becoming an enervating habit, 
deeply engrained in the culture of the fu-
ture, we must improve the scope and quality 
of American bibliographical activity. I 
think the assumption of bibliographical 
leadership on a cooperative basis by the 
United States, Great Britain, and Russia 
—the only great powers possessing the 
necessary resources to fulfil the ensuing ob-
ligations—is practically imperative. For 
whatever German proficiency in bibli-
ographical enterprises may have been (and 
everyone knows that German superiority in 
the organization of scientific literature was 
not only commendable in itself but probably 
had something to do with their genius in 
the pure and applied sciences), there is 
no chance that Germany or any European 
or Asiatic country will have the confidence 

or the funds with which to assume leader-
ship again. It is clearly the responsibility 
of the three great Western powers from 
now on. T h e f u t u r e availability of knowl-
edge for the whole world is therefore bound 
up with the bibliographical planning we 
do. In this area American librarians par-
ticularly must henceforth live up to the 
exacting demands of statesmanship. T o 
fail here means not only a vital deficiency 
in the sources of information which we can 
put at the disposal of our own scholars and 
general readers, it means the retardation 
of the role of America as a great agent of 
international understanding and progress. 
And this role, as I see it, is not too distantly 
connected with the keeping of peace among 
the united or dissident nations of the future. 

Failures in Our Recent Past 

T h e "ultima ratio regum" through which 
we have just passed and in which the peace-
time intellectual activities of knowledge 
were sharply curtailed, save as they were 
themselves made elements of "total w a r , " 
brought to the surface many of our ominous 
failings in the organization of knowledge. 
Government agencies, pressed for time and 
often scrambled into an "organization" 
overnight, had to construct makeshift bibli-
ographies of research materials in fields 
that were directly related to the activities 
of our land, air, and naval arms. O f t e n 
the gaps in our prepared descriptions and 
locations of materials caused the most costly 
delays in strategy, in direct military opera-
tions, and in home front planning. One 
small illustration: D u r i n g the war several 
groups in the Department of Agriculture, 
in the Navy, and a Congressional Commit-
tee were interested in investigating new 
uses for milkweed floss. T h e y were unable 
to reach a decision until the Department 
of Agriculture Library published its ex-
cellent bibliography summarizing the his-

196 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



tory of the literature pertaining to milk-
weed floss. Once the bibliography was 
available, the decision was immediately 
reached, and milkweed floss proved to be an 
important substitute for kapok in life pre-
servers. 

Insufficient information on the enemy 
country, Japan, and on all the Asiatic coun-
tries included in what the Japanese called 
the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity 
Sphere" was a different type of shortcoming 
in our bibliographical program. T h e r e was 
virtually nothing reliable in this field— 
neither adequate lists, nor abstracts, nor 
subject bibliographies. Unfortunately even 
the material was lacking, our files of Japa-
nese scientific periodicals being meager and 
incomplete. Therefore, the situation was 
not basically remedied while the war con-
tinued. 

But it would be absurd to think of the 
war as the sole context in which bibli-
ographical failures matter or show up. T h e 
fact that most bibliographical ventures, in-
cluding those of the greatest usefulness, 
were business ventures or privately en-
dowed, made them undependable in publi-
cation dates, duplicative of the contents of 
other services, and sometimes tragically 
transitory. One of the best examples of 
a bibliography which filled an important 
need is t h e Social Science Abstracts. B u t 
I need only recall to you the dates of its 
birth and demise (1929 and 1932) to 
make it obvious that its duration hardly 
sufficed to fulfil the expectation it had suc-
ceeded in arousing in the public. Another 
serious failure was the discontinuance, in 
1914, of t h e International Catalogue of 
Scientific Literature which had been 
founded only thirteen years earlier. 

These particular bibliographical projects 
were only small segments of a large prob-
lem. Stating it in general terms, biblio-
graphical controls have not approached close 

enough to the ideal of continuous coverage 
of everything that is being published an-
nually in the countries of the world. N o t 
even the entirety of American output has 
found proper recording, since the C.B.I. 
fails to include many private and research 
publications and excludes all government 
published books and pamphlets. Of equal 
gravity is the failure to have indicated the 
location of all the materials held by li-
braries in this and other countries. Nor 
have we penetrated the wall of sheer 
quantity to carve out the evaluative bibliog-
raphies—bibliographies supplied when neces-
sary with historical surveys and annotations 
of an evaluative and critical sort that might 
heighten the accurate selection of literature 
by the overburdened scholars, thereby 
hastening their research to its fruition. 

Steps in the Right Direction 

T w o projects, recently proposed, seem to 
us at the Library of Congress to be moving 
in the right direction. I refer to the pro-
posed "International Index of Scientific and 
Technical Literature" and the initial studies 
of the Joint Committee on Indexing and 
Abstracting in the M a j o r Fields of Re-
search. It is not yet certain whether these 
proposals will eventuate in satisfactory 
action, but, clearly, coverage of every im-
portant field is essential. A rational plan to 
ensure that there will be no important 
lacunae is the first big task on the agenda of 
libraries and scholarly societies in this 
country. 

Such a plan would recognize that bib-
liographical controls must operate on two 
levels—library control and subject control. 
Advances on the two levels are usually 
interrelated. Subject control concerns 
special bibliographies, and I should like to 
comment that there is a limiting factor here 
of the kind of researcher for whom the 
bibliography is prepared. Some good re-

J U L Y t 1946 
20 7 



searchers are unwilling to rely on another 
person's or institution's bibliography or will 
do so only for certain areas of knowledge. 
But all readers (including good researchers) 
want bibliographies to help eliminate the 
clutter of out-dated, incompetent, and triv-
ial publications. Subject control must, as a 
minimum, provide this. 

In library control we are confronted with 
an over-all problem. T h e objectives here 
must be to ensure comprehensive and con-
tinuous coverage and to employ all the aids 
of cooperative acquisitions policies, national 
commercial book indexes and government 
publications indexes, and "complete" union 
catalogs. Retrospective library lists enu-
merating holdings are also important in this 
connection. Admittedly, this is the far-off, 
long-range ideal. I do not think that if we 
were somehow mysteriously endowed with 
ample funds for bibliographical ventures, 
we would at this point be ready to set up 
the most reasonable, economical, and far-
sighted program. N o w is the time for ex-
ploratory studies, based on sound philosophy 
and backed by the most careful statistical 
and scientific data and investigations. 

Growth of Book Production 

T o show you the unhealthy state of li-
brary statistics (and, for a basic picture, 
statistics have considerable bearing on the 
program we construct for bibliography), let 
me simply ask the reasonable question of 
how rapidly the book production of this 
country and of the world is growing? Is 
there any librarian in the country who can 
answer that question? Practitioners of li-
brary "science" ought to have some fairly 
respectable quantitative hypothesis about the 
books they believe are in existence and the 
amount they roughly calculate they will 
have to provide for in their libraries and in 
their bibliographical reports and journals, 
before they can plan intelligently for the 

future. I will only call your attention to 
the figures given in Union Catalogs in the 
United States, a book admirable and justi-
fied in so many respects that I hope you will 
not assume that I am putting the blame for 
our incomplete and inadequate statistics at 
the door of authors whose primary job was 
not the analysis of such estimates. But 
figures are cited and tables reproduced 
which make little sense from a statistical 
point of view. W e learn, for example, that 
the United States in 1940 ranked eighth in 
production of books, while Japan ranked 
first, Germany second, and France third. 
These rankings I find curious. Are they 
reliable statistical findings, based upon a 
complete count of trade, government, and 
private press publication of books and 
pamphlets in every country of the world? 
O r are they a hodgepodge, as the sources 
upon which the figures are based so elo-
quently indicate, of partial listings, incon-
sistent definitions of what constitutes a 
"book" or a monograph or a pamphlet? In 
short, are we adding up figures and deriving 
comparative ranks from totals which have 
not been subjected to proper statistical 
scrutiny to determine whether they are 
based upon homogeneous units? Besides, 
I have a hunch that things have changed 
pretty radically in the past six years and 
that the United States at the present time 
ranks higher in world book production. It 
seems worth while for us to investigate so 
that we may know if this is true. And 
finally, of the total number of books pub-
lished since the beginning of printing, it is 
estimated that U.S. libraries hold about 
two-thirds of world library resources— 
about ten million titles. As the authors 
justly comment, the assertion that we hold 
two-thirds of total resources must be taken 
with "reservations," principally the incom-
pleteness of book production statistics in 
general and the "padding of American li-

198 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



brary holdings with manuscript and minor 
printed materials that do not find their way 
into production figures." In addition, most 
of these estimates fail to go beyond works 
in the Latin alphabet. It seems obvious to 
me that what is required is a thorough sta-
tistical survey, giving us a more reliable 
quantitative picture of where we stand with 
respect to the past, present, and future of 
books, pamphlets, newspapers, and even 
smaller pieces. Perhaps then it will be 
possible to do more than match wits about 
whether college libraries double every thir-
teen, fifteen, or sixteen years and grow in 
"geometric" rather than "arithmetic" pro-
gression. 

Proposed Bibliographical Planning Project 

Investigations like these, and many others 
of a more cultural character, can perhaps 
best be conducted from a bibliographical 
center. In our present estimates submitted 
to Congress we have asked for funds to 
inaugurate a bibliographic planning project, 
a pilot unit to analyze the problems of 
bibliography and make preliminary recom-
mendations, indicating priorities among the 
most important tasks. W h e n this pilot 
project has contributed its reports, the next 
steps can be charted with more realistic de-
tail. It is hoped that by that time we can 
expect informed decisions on how to make 
available knowledge of what exists in print. 

I have already referred to our present 
ignorance about what is being published by 
the governments of the world, by the book 
trade, and by private publishers. It is 
likely that we at the Library of Congress 
may be able to spearhead the movement in 
this direction; but, unless an international 
organization like the United Nations Educa-
tional, Scientific, and Cultural Organization 
devotes part of its educational services to the 
bibliographical listing of documentary ma-
terials, it is dubious whether significant ad-

vance can be made in this total long-range 
job. It is obvious that knowledge will not be 
diffused or advansed to an optimum degree 
unless we have arcess to books. T h i s means 
that there must be listed at least one copy of 
every book published, for, without complete 
listing, books cannot be rationally acquired 
by libraries. Is it necessary to add that the 
whole enterprise would be useless if it ex-
cluded the listing of the contents of period-
icals as well as books? In the sciences 
particularly the absence of periodicals would 
greatly lessen the value of subject lists of 
"literature" in a field. T h e cooperative 
practice of exchanging books and pam-
phlets, particularly those issued by the 
government, would be a concomitant of ade-
quate bibliography on the library level. 

Let us anticipate that the bibliographical 
surveys take these initial hurdles easily. 
T h e n I would suppose that the next type of 
inquiry would concern itself with the major 
levels of organization in bibliography. T h e 
purpose of reviewing the different levels in-
dividually is to ascertain the urgency of 
initiating new publications in different cate-
gories. W h a t will we need in listing? In 
abstracting? In review journals? In sub-
ject literature reports? Obviously not 
every subject matter can exert the same just 
claim about the urgency of inaugurating 
review journals. 

A Few Achievements for the Score 

T h e Library of Congress has made con-
siderable progress in bibliographic activities 
within the last few years. First there is the 
union catalog. I will not review the history 
of the expansion of our union catalog, but it 
now has under listing and locational control 
about three-fourths of the total number of 
titles held by libraries in the United States. 
It may prove necessary to develop classed 
union catalogs, and we have already started 
to build the nuclei of union catalogs for 

J U L Y , 1946 199 



works in the non-Latin alphabets. Second, 
there is bibliographical synthesis on the 
highest level being carried on by the Legis-
lative Reference Service and by sections on 
the Public Reference Service. I know from 
library mail and from personal conversation 
that many newspaper and magazine editors, 
research groups, and individual scholars 
would be grateful if the bibliographical 
services undertaken for Congress were regu-
larly made available to consumers on the 
outside. These groups of consumers are the 
intellectual advance guard of this country, 
and keeping them informed is a vital part of 
the job of democratic political education. I 
have on my desk now a memo from the 
library of one of the most influential maga-
zine combines in the country saying that the 
reports prepared by the Legislative Refer-
ence Service are "splendid works" and, 
though they are prepared for the use of 
Congress, it would be a great aid to receive 
them or at least to receive a list of the re-
ports prepared in the Library of Congress; 
and similar comments are made about the 
Public Affairs Bulletins. 

A Iternatives 

Perhaps citing bibliographical examples 
from the field of politics, history, and the 
social sciences in general is instructive about 
the direction of development for a subject 
bibliographical program. I feel confident 
that subject bibliographies in the field of the 
sciences will be given extensive treatment 
by government research, scientific groups, 
and business firms throughout the country, 
for funds are easily forthcoming for pur-
poses of scientific research. Librarians 
should perhaps give more intensive attention 
to the problem of bibliography in the 
humanities and social sciences. 

T h e question of bibliographical planning 
is one which can be surveyed only in the 
most general terms, without raising the 

fundamental question of financing. In 
theory, the Library of Congress and prob-
ably libraries throughout the world recog-
nize that their bibliographical activities 
depend upon the closest cooperation with 
the professional experts in every field, who 
are capable of interpreting changes and of 
informing bibliographers about changing 
needs and, frequently, about the changing 
terminology of their respective subjects. 
W h e t h e r the Library of Congress should 
perform a significant role of national co-
ordination and organization of bibliograph-
ical projects, depends to a great extent upon 
the kind of government subsidy or founda-
tion support the learned societies and pro-
fessional groups are able to arrange for. It 
seems safe to assume that the services and 
resources of the Library of Congress will 
doubtless be enlisted, and it is more than 
likely that it will be expected to act as a 
clearing house of bibliographical informa-
tion for the entire country and in some cases 
for the entire world. But certainly there 
is little to be gained by thinking in terms of 
a high concentration of bibliographical 
activity in any one center. 

Differences of viewpoint already exist, 
not only inside the Library of Congress, but 
throughout the world, about the best ap-
proach to ensure the establishment of ade-
quate bibliographical control over the 
world's literature. I am sanguine that 
these differences will be immaterial in the 
long run, since they tend to run to extremes 
as opposed viewpoints often do. One theory 
is that only the "selective" evaluative bib-
liography is worth sponsoring; another, that 
only the complete listing of works provides 
the needed base for intellectual sorties and 
that the scholars can concoct bibliographies 
to suit their own needs. I am at a loss to 
see why there must be war about these 
issues, since it seems plain to me that both 
types of activity are absolutely obligatory 

200 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



and indeed mutually complementary,. T h e 
trick is to find the comprehensive pattern 
which will satisfy the needs of all significant 
groups who have occasion to approach re-
corded knowledge with important questions. 

History Presents New Issues 

In a special sense, history enters the 
domain of bibliography at the particular 
juncture of our present development. T h e 
exigencies of the war placed peculiar em-
phasis upon the "area" or regional approach. 
By and large, library practice in America 
had been structurally determined in terms 
of functional classifications. T h e functional 
versus the regional remains a vexed question, 
affecting the development of bibliographical 
programs. Yet, in principle, it seems 
sensible to me to make a distinction between 
the usefulness of regional organization for 
bibliographers on a purely factual or event 
level of interest, and of functional organiza-
tion in terms of broader theoretic and 
analytic interests. T h u s the geography, 
economic organization, political events, cus-
toms, and living conditions of Northern 
Borneo can be successfully treated on an 
area basis, although only up to a certain 
point. But questions arising about geo-
graphical theories, economic theories, politi-
cal hypotheses and principles, and the 
broader issues in any science, as in philoso-
phy and art, involve a typical viewpoint 
which is nonregional, nonnational, but 
properly international, conceptual, and test-
able by the usual canons of evidence to de-
termine adequacy and inadequacy, rather 
than by place of origin or existence. 

Separate collections and separate library 
sections—like those devoted to Slavic stud-
ies, to the F a r East, or our Hispanic Foun-
dation—can sponsor a certain kind of 
regional bibliography, like the Handbook 
of Latin American Studies. B u t a bibliog-
raphy like the "History of Science and 

Civilization" contained in Isis performs a 
very different function and can have 
regional categories introduced only on a 
minor, subdivisional basis. Those who work 
with the history of ideas are primarily in-
terested in themes, or concepts, or subject 
matter, if you prefer; and the very broadness 
of the Isis classification, straddling the fields 
of history of science, philosophy, and civil-
ization is and must be characteristic of 
bibliographies organized to achieve synthesis. 
Only experts in the literature of these fields 
can perform the selection and authenticate 
the judgments implicit in "broad" bibliogra-
phies of this order. Whether the experts 
put in an eight-hour day as members of li-
brary staffs or show their virtuosity on the 
outside in universities or as members of pro-
fessional groups is immaterial. Possibly a 
better classification than the one in Isis 
might have been devised—"better" in the 
sense of aiding the user to find the books he 
wants in one rather than in any one of three 
or four categories—had intensive and en-
lightened library study been an integral part 
of the professional approach to this complex 
subject. But the unique service provided 
by the Isis bibliography nonetheless deserves 
appreciation. 

Other Important Problems 

Other important problems emerge from 
the historical actualities of the period in 
which we live. One of these is the inevit-
able effect of that specialization in knowl-
edge referred to earlier. For we find that 
we must concentrate more than ever before 
on securing more adequate (meaning more 
comprehensive, standardized, and exhaus-
tive) finding lists. T h i s is work begun 
by the National Union Catalog and by 
p u b l i c a t i o n s like t h e Union List of Serials 
a n d American Newspapers, 1821-1936. 
Yet, at the same time there is an equally 
pressing necessity to circumvent the general 

JULY, 1946 201 



character of cataloging and to provide lists 
with some "personality" of their own, by 
which I mean special lists and other bibliog-
raphies constructed for rather well-defined 
groups whose particular interests can be 
anticipated. I am emphasizing that the his-
toric juncture in which we now find our-
selves no longer permits us leeway to debate 
whether we shall aim at more universality 
or more specialization and individualization. 
It rather makes it imperative that we be-
come more comprehensive than we ever 
fancied we would have to be before and, at 
the very same time, more specialized on both 
the research and "general reader" levels. If 
it should turn out that the I . B . M . card can 
fulfil the promises predicted by those who 
are now investigating its bibliographical and 
cataloging potentialities, some of the more 
sensitive and discriminatory cataloging and 
bibliographical work may be performed with 
an economy of human labor. 

But specialization places still other bur-
dens upon us; for example, in attempting 
to control the periodical literature of the 
sciences and the humanities. Some years 
before the war an American expert on 
Chinese civilization decided that the impor-
tant periodical T'oung Pao required index-
ing, in order that the subjects discussed in 
its articles, and even in the weightier foot-
notes documenting certain articles, be listed 
for the benefit of students and experts in 
Oriental civilization. O f t e n titles of 
articles and the authors' names are insuffi-
cient to identify the contributions to knowl-
edge they may contain. At the time the 
proposal was made, money was not available 
to finance the project; more recently, it has 
been revived by the American Council of 
Learned Societies and is being carried out 
at the University of Chicago. 

Unrealistic Objection 

I have purposely chosen this illustration 
because it may draw someone's objection 

that this is indeed descending to a fine level 
in the subject matter direction and that it 
belongs wholly to the scholars! However, 
such a position is as unrealistic as it is un-
imaginative: unrealistic, because even if 
university faculties wanted the onerous 
additional labor of supervising and editing 
indexing projects for serial publications and 
were willing to assume such new assign-
ments without extra pay, they probably 
would not be able to command the right 
number and quality of library assistants. 
And they might not always undertake the 
project at the right time nor be prepared to 
see it through on a systematic year-by-year 
basis. Shall we try to pass the buck to 
professional societies? Are they not fre-
quently straitened for funds and are they 
not in many cases composed of the same 
overworked instructors and professors whose 
difficulties in assuming this new responsi-
bility we have just mentioned? And are 
their interests too individualistic to sustain 
such group planning and effort ? Obviously, 
the organized profession in each field should 
give counsel and should participate in both 
the over-all rational program of bibliography 
and in the special bibliographies to be under-
taken in separate fields. But nothing less 
will do to solve this problem than ( i ) a 
dependablef ample endowment to be routed, 
as the case may be, to the Library of Con-
gress, other libraries, and professional 
groups, depending upon the program agreed 
upon by all qualified interests; and ( 2 ) a 
systematic procedure, suggested by a top 
planning group responsible for a cooperative 
national (or world) bibliographical pro-
gram, perhaps centered for clearing house 
purposes in one or several great research 
libraries. 

But history is not yet done with bibliog-
raphers. For, to cap the climax, the past 
(with which the naive believe they are done, 
for once and all, after it has been " p u t " 
into history books) constantly returns to 

202 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



upset finished bibliographies. T h i r t y years 
ago, if we had consulted a bibliography of 
ancient Chinese history, we would have 
found mention of certain "emperors" of the 
period of about 2200 B.C. Recent research 
has shown that in fact these "emperors" 
were inventions of a later date. Bibliogra-
phies of ancient Chinese history will now 
have to follow the lead of the reinterpreted 
"past" and doubtless will need revision after 
revision as the past continues to cause a row 
in the "present." 

The Present and Future 

If the past is troublesome, bear in mind 
that the present and future are even less 
docile. A few years ago when Princeton's 
archeological expedition turned up a great 
cache of Roman mosaics never before 
viewed by the modern world, the new finds 
added to the artistic sources of enjoyment, 
they added to our knowledge of civilization, 
but they inevitably added too to the work-
load of the bibliographers of art history! 
Remember that we are getting to know 
more and more even about that amorphous 
period hitherto described as "prehistory." 
O u r microfilming techniques make materials 
available from the far corners of the earth. 
O u r manuscript sources are constantly 
swelling the size of library collections. And 
the enormous quantity of government publi-
cations and war records has not begun to be 
subdued for listing and bibliographical 
processing. 

From inside the libraries themselves 
comes another type of historical challenge. 
W h a t major libraries contain is far from 
known by library patrons. T h i s is true 
both for general and special book collections 
and for special forms like manuscripts, sound 
recordings, photographs, etc. In this field 
complete bibliographical control is feasible, 
requiring only adequate staff and time to 
prepare complete enumerative lists. H o w 

important such lists may be, can be shown 
by the following illustration. An editor 
was recently preparing a one-volume edition 
of the political writings of one of our great 
early presidents. Published sources were 
used first, and then the question of manu-
script collections arose. No professional his-
torians were certain about the location and 
description of these collections, and when 
they were finally located (after considerable 
loss of time) the historical societies and li-
braries holding them were unable to supply 
printed lists or typescripts calendaring their 
collections. For research in American his-
tory it is vital that scholars be given these 
initial aids if they are to do their best work 
—indeed, if this nation is to learn the 
accurate story of its own development. 
Should the day ever arrive when early im-
prints and manuscripts in this important 
field are adequately listed and described, 
we may be saved from the plague of 
secondary source rewriting of nineteenth-
century American histories. 

Question of Distribution 

Extending this criticism further, brings 
up the inevitable question of the distribution 
of information and bibliographies by the 
libraries. If my account of the special sense 
in which history is forcing our hand, biblio-
graphically, is true, we need a pretty radical 
revolution in our methods of reaching the 
public with information. T h e more the 
sociologists can learn about special reader 
group interests, the more obligation we will 
have to prepare bibliographies suited to 
reach them with pertinent information. 
T h e more our scholars turn to creative his-
torical interpretations, the more need there 
will be to publish bibliographies suited to 
their needs—not only locating valuable col-
lections, for instance, but giving them reli-
able lists of work-in-progress throughout the 
country, throughout the world, to save the 

JULY, 1946 203 



heartbreaking waste of years devoted to a 
project which someone else completes the 
day your own manuscript is finished. T h e 
more the movement for adult education 
grows roots, becoming a permanent feature 
of our national existence, the more demand 
there will be for listing, indexing, and ab-
stracting motivated at the adult education 
level. 

Understand that I don't care at this stage, 
who does what. Let small libraries, uni-
versities, colleges, research centers, govern-
ment agencies, each do what they can and 
are specially fitted to do. But the work 
must be done, and it is the responsibility of 
the national library to voice the view that 
it should be done, supplying the lacks which 
others do not supply and taking priority on 
jobs that would suffer unless the greatest 
library in the world were behind them. If 
there is agreement on the principle that we 
ought to reach serious groups, interested in 
knowledge and in the long or short run in-
fluential in the character of opinion sustained 
in this democracy, a great many specific 
duties must follow. I am sure that many 
can be anticipated, but let me call attention 
to one project that I believe would be of 
great value to the efficiency with which 
work gets done by the federal agencies. 
O u r Legislative Reference Service looks 
with favor upon the idea of routing to ap-
propriate research and analysis groups in 
the different government departments and 
agencies, references to periodical literature 
appearing in every important country in the 
world. Only those who have worked in-
side a government agency during the war 
can understand the saving in time and the 
assurance of completeness of sources in-
volved in this suggestion. N o w this is in 
itself not a very difficult project, but it does 
involve distribution of material previously 
not distributed in this same constant and 

dependable way. And there are countless 
other services of this kind which can help to 
utilize the material the library possesses and 
is acquiring in constantly increasing ade-
quacy. 

UNESCO: Center of International 

Bibliography 

History has been forced through its own 
growth to be generous with the race of 
bibliographers and in effect has bid us to 
prosper and multiply. T o the historical 
conditions affecting the f u t u r e of bibliog-
raphy, I must now add the logical 
c u l m i n a t i o n — U N E S C O ' s possibilities as an 
international center of bibliographical ac-
tivity., In one sense the whole national, ra-
tionalized bibliographical program referred 
to throughout depends upon international 
bibliographical controls. O r , to put it more 
accurately, national controls and interna-
tional controls are interdependent. Since 
U N E S C O ' s activities will themselves be de-
termined by what America and the other 
leading powers propose, I believe it is im-
portant for us to urge a most ambitious 
bibliographical program in the interests of 
intellectual progress and the interchange of 
the materials of knowledge and art. Prob-
ably no other historic epoch will be better 
suited to this undertaking than is the present 
one, for the grave lesions inflicted by the 
war have only highlighted the necessity for 
large-scale international exchange of infor-
mation and promotion of cultural under-
standing. 

I therefore believe that a number of long-
range objectives for international biblio-
graphical policy must be coupled with 
practical measures sympathetic to them. 
U N E S C O must prepare to carry out a 
program ensuring equal access to all 
scholarly material, implemented by trade 
agreements providing among other things 

204 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



for freedom of these materials from export 
and import duties and currency controls. 
It should sponsor an international trade and 
document bibliography, composed largely of 
national bibliographies covering all publica-
tions for the country of origin, and national 
bibliographies of periodical literature. T o 
aid scholarship in progress throughout the 
world, it might possibly find desirable 
to create an international union catalog, 
based of course on catalogs of holdings by 
each nation. U N E S C O should further 
provide for the exchange of bibliographical 
searching services and for the extensive and 
systematic international exchange of micro-
film copies of publications. 

T h e final provision that I consider highly 
significant for U N E S C O ' s potential biblio-
graphical activity is one which has been the 
subject of much planning and discussion on 
the national level in America; namely, the 
establishment of responsibility for the in-
clusive acquisition in designated subject 
fields. Although there are grave difficulties 
attendant upon the assignment of specific 
responsibility even on a national scale, it is 
obvious that the lines of national specializa-
tion must follow national interest and cul-
ture and that some kind of complementary 
assignment of responsibility must be intro-
duced in order to maximize the pooled 
knowledge of the nations of the world. 

Will We Miss the Bus? 

I know these suggestions will involve in 
the years to come many men, many minds, 
and the almost endless patience required by 
group discussions and committee meetings. 
And, as I have pointed out, the specific 
modifications of some of my proposals and 
the forms in which they are to be imple-
mented still remain to be worked out—I 
hope by the cooperation of libraries, scholars, 
and government agencies interested in this 
field. But I am convinced that we are his-
torically at the crossroads of national ma-
turity and know-how, and not only on an 
industrial, technological scale. W e must 
act now, in the directions I have suggested, 
to control, extend, and exploit the fulness 
of the world's knowledge. Otherwise, we 
will find ourselves at some future day look-
ing back with regret on the period when 
lack of historical imagination permitted 
bibliographical ventures to be sporadic pri-
vate enterprises and individualistic struggles 
for recognition. W e will be forced to 
realize that we flunked the challenge to co-
operative problem-solving presented to us by 
the present historic juncture. W h a t will 
there then be left to do but to shake our 
heads over our hapless folly and say in the 
words of our friends, the whole French 
people: "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pou-
vait." 

J U L Y t 1946 
20 7