San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Special Libraries, 1920 Special Libraries, 1920s 12-1-1920 Special Libraries, December 1920 Special Libraries Association Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1920 Part of the Cataloging and Metadata Commons, Collection Development and Management Commons, Information Literacy Commons, and the Scholarly Communication Commons Recommended Citation Special Libraries Association, "Special Libraries, December 1920" (1920). Special Libraries, 1920. 9. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1920/9 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Libraries, 1920s at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Special Libraries, 1920 by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Special Libraries A ADELAIDE R FlASSE, Editor Council ot National Defcnae Washington, D. C. Vol. I I. Ucce~nl)cr,1920 No. 10 Co-ordination in Libraries and Abstracts By A. B. EASON, M. A. a Ilooli, lie could go Lo the most conveniently siLuate11 card in~les and leuni in which 11 I~:lril?sthe liook required could be found. 11 may 11e ol~iectedthat :llmosL every book ci111 lie l'ouncl In the British &Iuseum, but lt tl!a.\ not I)e coiivenler~lto gel to the Nuseum d11ri11g the honrs ;11. which ~t is open. There nc~ulrlIJ~ no reason tor ~nalimgthe entries In Ihis rivtl intlcx catalogue refer only to booLs held in thc four above mentioned lil)~xries. Certain ~olumeswhich are not In these lil)r.u.ies inay exist In the smaller Iil~rarics,and an entry to this effect could 1.e m:\clc For thosc bnolts in the slnaller Ilbr;~~,inswhich are also available in the main libra~y no entry aonld be made of the tar1 t11:ll Lhcy conld be seen at the smaller lil~ral'ies The need for going from one li11r:il'y to wa not her to find a particular book on c1iaiic.c ot ~tsbeing there, should be avoltlcd it ~~ossible Lists of Scientific Books. Delore leilrrng this subject the question oi 11qts ol ~OO~Son scic~~tific subjects may Ilc rcferrrtl lo The writer does not lmow what is the niosl co~npleteone. Apn:(t from ortlii~;t~'ylil)~xi.y r;~t:dogues there esist: (1) ~.'l'c~.l~~~i>t~l~c.Iiirt lwr~i." 1111l11isliod 111 1913 by the Fr:l~lli'st.hr! Verlngshnndlnng, Stuttgnl't, girt~lr:CI I~st01 Gerinan, French, English a~id.\nlericiul IJOO~S on various technical -~~l)jects:(2) 1hc Brit~sllSciencc Guild cala- Iogue indt~des ;I ~ection with naines of I.(:oI\s-this )ear Lhe 1151 is to contain Brit- 1hl1 I~ool\s\vliich ;~rcin 11rint and available I~I.~l~~l~*li~se; (21 the Cllemiral Engineering (':cr~~logt~c11 3Iiulison :\venue, New York) 11~1sil scclion nienlioning various boolrs. It is very iticomylcte, nnd does not mention thr ]1111ll1sherof lhe IJOO~S. 202 SPECIAL LIBICARIES December, i920 The Need of Good Abstracts. of the various places where articlcs are re- produced (i.e., if the E. T. Z. publish an secondly, as regards abstracts. In THE article which is reproduced in The Electri- ELECTRICIAN, vol. LXXXII., p. 326, March cian, or the "Journal" of the American So- 21, 1919, the author mentioned various ciety of Mechanical Engineers, these refer- bibliographies and abstracts in existence. ences :IS given). Considering the scope and Since the war has ceased others have been type or article referred to, it seems that the resuscitated. They all tend to overlap one field of journals surveyed could be increased another, and none of them is complete. with advantage. The fleld of engineering as a whole would The "Technische Zeitscl~riftenschau" be surveyed with more certainty if tpey (~111l)lishrt1117 tl~cVerein Drntschcr Ingr- etrch dealt with :I restain dcRnec1 nren. rhc ~lieurer,Bcrlin, X. W. 7, Sommc~rstlnsse.4.1) proposals and criticisms outlined here fall contains b~l~liograpllicalreferences which, under three heads. (a) Definltely divide up in addition to the tille, give a list of the the field of scientific articles from which contents of the article. The alphabetical abstracts are made, and increase the num- indesing is fair, one only needs to glance ber of journals surveyed; (b) index ab- clown the Itey-words at the right-hand side stracts definitely under subjects, using the of the page. The references are grouped Dewey system if desirable. A suggested under four big heatlings: (a) General En- decinlal nomenclature for the classification gineering, 57: (b) Electrotechnics, 20; (c) of engineering subjects is given in the k[an~~fncturing,11: (d) Mining, 11. The flg- "Transactions" of the American Society of uses give the numbel* or references in each Civil Engineers, Vol. LXXXII., p. 1,620, Ue- section oC the January 17th issue, there cember, 1918; (c) abstract articles of the being 11 or 12 references per page. It is "r6sum6 of progress" type, which are left easy to look through 11 references, but 67 unnoticed sometimes, as not being directly in one big group is rather too many. A the report of original work. A good example valuable feature is the list of new boolrs; in of snch articles are Pannell's on air flow each case the index of the contents is measurement which appeared in "Engineer- given, but only German boolts seem to be ing," Vol. CVII., p. 261, 1919. This was a included. valuable pager to those who were interested The "Revue GBnernle de l'Electricit6" (12, in the subject, but who had not been in Place do Laborde, Paris, published fort- direct contact with some of the features nightly) has a separate portion ("Docu- mentioned by Pannell The article did no1 ~nentation") containing abstracts of sclen- appeal to some abstractors. tiRc articles and patents concerlling elec- Bibliographies and Abstracts. trical work. The classification follows a numerical syskm; soqe entries have un- The following bibliographies and abstracts necessarily complicated numbers-viz., 621. are now published: 312, 16, 00, 46-to explain the contents of 1. Revue de 111ng4nieur el Index Tech- an article nique. Trade Abstracts 2. Tecllnisrhe B~itsc.l~~iftensc.llau. "Les Fisches Inclustrielles" (Paris, 21 3. Revue GBn4rale d'Electricit6. Boulevard Uonne-Nouvelle, 20, publislied 4. Les Fiches Industrielles. monthly) contains abstracts of articles in n 5. Technical Review. large inimber of journals Thosc journals 6. Institution of Civil Engineers' Ab- are ol' a very miscellaneous nature, and are stracts. of the "trade" type rather than the "tech- 7. Science Abstracts. nical" type. Each monthly issue deals with 8. Industrial Arts Index. n particulnr group of subjects. The Decem- 9. Engineering Index. ber, 1919, number clealt with paper, rubber, 10. Journal of the Society ot Chemical etc.; the February, 1920, number clealt wit!] Industry. mining, metallurgy and electricity. It con- 11 Engineering Management (Gassier's tninecl al~stractsfrom 55 journals. The ab- Abstracts). stracts ere all of the same length, prinled The publications 7 to 11 have been dealt on one side ot the paper only, and take up with in the article previously mentioned. onequarter or a page, so that if a page is We shnll now give some indication of the cut in fonr the abstracts can be filed in a scope of publications 1 to 6. card-index cabinet. The index follows the The "Revue de l'Ing4nieur et Index Tech- Dewey system. The number of the page nique" (published monthly by the Bureau upon which the original article appears IS dlOrganisation Economique, Paris, 124, Rue not given, and the references are not clear. de Provence, and Kew Yorlr, 119 Broadway) Part numbers may be confused with volume contains a l~ibliograpl~yof current articles numbers indexed on the Dewey system; the titles or The "Technical Review" (published fort- the articles are in the original language, nie;htly, 2, Central Bwldings, S. W. 1) is the the subject headings being in French, Eng- offshoot or continuation of the "Technical lish, Italian and Spanish. Mention is m~de Supplement" published by the War Office. b December, 1920 SPECIAL LIBRARIES 203 It contains hot11 allstracts and bibliographi- Electrician," "Electrical Review" and "Elec- ca] notices to articles appearing in scien- trical Times" type. This means that they tific: publicntlons, colll~rising62 British, 42 somerimos miss papers of use to general American, 50 Gcrman, and 55 of other na- engineers. The "Technical Review" avoids tions. BIontion is lllntle of new boolts. Tlus this mistake If the Institution of Civil En- IISL~L~to be dour in ollc section at the end gineers left the field of electrical engineer- of the review, but is now done nnder val-ious ing abstracting to "Science Abstracts," ex- Subjects, which is n pity. A single hst of cept where articles covered by hydro-elec- boolrs seems more conven~ent,as the list is tric schemes and sim~lar work involving never largo, x~ldbooks on one subject may "civil" worlr, and If "Science Abstracts" in- be uselul to mcn engngod on subjccts of an cluded references to papers in journals of entirely different nntwe. The references interest to the less scientifically trained but to boolis are noL restricted to English books. more co~nnlercialengineers, and if the ab- AnoLller val~~ablefealnre is that the revlew stracts were published sooner after the pub- IS up to diite. lication of the original article, additional Inst,tutlon of Civil Engineers' Abstracts. abstracts could be provided at no extra cost. The Institution of Civil Eng~neers' "Ab- It is undesirable that the "Civil Engineers' strncts of Papers in Sc~entilicTransactions Abstracts" should duplicate abstracts ap- and C-'er1odic3ls" is now issuecl sepnrately pearing in "Science Abstracts,'' Series B; Prom the minutes of proceedings.