Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/357

GERMAN LIBRARIES. 343 sent 3,444 letters in connexion with the books demanded by non-local borrowers. The results of the whole system for the student may be shown by two examples. A Berlin under- graduate who had to write a thesis on the war of the Cevennes, besides other works, wanted ten books no copies of which were in the Berlin libraries. By the aid of the Auskunftsbureau and the inter-library loan service he obtained the ten books within four weeks from nine different places and ten different libraries viz., the University Libraries of Breslau, Gottingen, Halle, Kiel, Heidelberg, Leipsic, and Tubingen, the Munich Library, the Royal Library at Dresden, and the Town Library of Breslau. A Munich savant wanted out-of-the-way German literature of the last third of the i8th century. He applied to the information- bureau, asking for the whereabouts of 258 books. 193 were found immediately in the catalogues of the bureau or by the search-cards, 65 were put on the search-lists. Ten of these were found, 1 1 turned out not to exist (errors in the bibliographies), and 44 were not found. He then decided by the help of the Munich Library to ask the respe&ive libraries for 171 of these books not extant at Munich. Six were ' not transportable ' or 'lent,' but he received 165 works in 171 volumes (most of them pamphlets) in 40 parcels from 26 German libraries viz., from the Royal Libraries at Berlin (92 vols.) and at Dresden (i), the Royal and Provincial Library at Hanover (2), the Royal and University Libraries at Breslau (5) and at Konigsberg (13), the Grand-ducal Libraries at