Should the size or growth of a medical library be restricted? / by Charles Perry Fisher.

  • Charles Perry Fisher
Date:
1907
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Should the size or growth of a medical library be restricted? / by Charles Perry Fisher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    their disposal with the object of making as complete as possible what some call a “reference” and others a “working” library? Old editions of books to be discarded when later ones are obtained; or, when the space is needed for other books; the editions thus discarded to be sent to the Library of the Surgeon- General’s Office if wanted? The three classes or divisions I have mentioned will give, I believe, ample scope for the discussion of the subject. Person- ally my sympathies are with the first. It seems but natural that every executive librarian should endeavor to bring his library into the first class. Such a collection appeals to the literary men of the profession who are not satisfied to quote references second hand or to rely for information upon the abstracts they are able to find in the various year books. When the need of additional shelf room has been brought to the attention of the Fellows of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, at various times, the statement has been made (not by members of the library com- mittee), that from ten to twenty per cent, of the books could be packed in boxes and stored away without interfering with the usefulness of the library. In reply to this I have stated that we have requests for old editions; a certain edition will contain a statement which does not appear in any other issue of the book, and the reader is desirous of verifying that statement. Again there is not a month, perhaps not a week, passes that calls are not made for old books ranging as far back as the fifteenth century. Also there are visitors from other cities who come to Phila- delphia for the purpose of consulting books in the Library of the College of Physicians that could not be found elsewhere; for these reasons I would hesitate to take the responsibility of making the selection of the books to be discarded. It is un- doubtedly a fact that a large percentage of books in all libraries are never used, but with more than twenty years’ experience I certainly would not care to be the executioner and condemn so many books to obscurity. I will close these remarks with quotations from addresses given by two of the most eminent literary men of the medical profession. Dr. Abraham Jacobi, our President, on the occasion of the opening of the new building of the New York Academy of Medicine said* “A large library, besides being the proof of exist- *Trans. of the New York Acad, of Med., 1891, 2 Sen, vii, p. 407.