Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/133

GERMAN LIBRARIES. 121 (books referred to as printed, but never printed, etc.) are inserted too. 3. A colle<5lion of bibliographies and printed catalogues, which have been partly presented to the bureau, partly bought by the bureau, as the State, besides the annual grant mentioned before, has given 6,000 Mark for this purpose. A union list of all learned periodicals currently taken by all great general libraries and a good number of important special libraries in Germany containing about 16,000 titles has been compiled by the Information-bureau and the supporting libraries (the Prussian State accorded a special grant for this purpose, too), and will be published within the next few months. There are a small hand-press for printing forms, etc., an 'Adresso- graph' for printing the addresses, and so on. The work is done in the following way : If the letters seeking information have complied with the regulations, when they have been entered in the day-book and received the day-book number, the books enquired for are first looked out in the catalogues. If these do not settle the question, the books are ' bibliographiert/ i.e. looked out in the bibliographies. If the bibliographies of the bureau prove insufficient, the bibliographies and books of the Royal Library are resorted to. The correct title obtained in this manner, with a reference to the bibliography recording it and the day-book number of the application, are type- written with heclographic ink on one side of a form the size of a post-card. From this card thirty or forty copies may quickly be obtained