The Editor Visits the Medical Library                29

abouts which we should hke to get rid of. They've outlived their
usefulness—and it costs us $3.00 to house a book here. That's
$33,000 for the lot. But here's the rub. It costs money to throw
a book away! A trained librarian has to decide about the obso¬
lescence of each item; then, there are three or more cards to be
withdrawn from the catalogue, and often other cards have to be
corrected because of the changes in arrangement. It costs, we
estimate, 36 cents to withdraw a book from circulation, or a total
of $3,960 for the 11,000.1 wish some kind friends would give us
$3,960 in order to make $33,000 worth of book space available!"

In spite of the growth of the collection, the Medical Library
can meet only 60% of the literature requirements of research
workers, compared with 90% in 1937. This is partly because the
literature has grown faster than the Library. "Medical knowl¬
edge," said Mr. Fleming, "increases by geometric rather than
arithmetric progression. Fifteen years ago there was only one
journal of Anesthesia. Now there are twelve. The use of the
Medical Library has increased about 1200% since the opening of
the Center. It started as a collection of books and journals pri¬
marily for medical students. It has now become the nucleus of one
of the world's greatest centers for medical research."

"Here's one of the services we offer," he continued, leading us
to a table loaded with a stack of books. "Dr. X is doing research on
cancer of the breast. We scan the literature for him, and when
we find a pertinent article we put it on this table. Whenever he
has a quarter of an hour or so he dashes in and makes notes. As
fast as he gets through the volumes we put out, we feed him more.
He pays us one dollar a month and ten cents for each reference
found. This streamlined bibliographical service saves valuable
time for Dr. X and the thirteen others who are using it."

As Mr. Fleming demonstrated his overflowing shelves, and
told us about the thousands of volumes he had had to transfer to
the nearby Deaf and Dumb Asylum, now used for storage, it be¬
came obvious that the only solution to his problem was a new
building. He said that in fact they had clans for such a building,