摘要：Upon the resignation of Dr. Walter A. Jayne, the undersigned was appointed Chairmatn of the comnmittee. Although it has not been possible for the committee to get together for a meetinig during the present year, the Chairman proposed to one or two of the members and to Dr. Ruhrah the following plan of pirocedure, viz: that the larger medical libraries send in their classifications, to which those of some of the European medical libraries miglht, in time, be added, as a basis for general discussion and final revision. Miss Noyes has already carried this out to the extent of printing those of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Library of the Surgeon General's Office in the Bulletin, and I believe that those of the New York Academy of Medicine and the Kings County Medical Society of Brooklyn are in print. It is to be hoped that the libraries in other cities will follow suit. It is submitted that it would be best for the medical libraries to print these classifications in the Bulletin, wherever possible, for the reason that this plan would make theni better accessible to the members of the Association in its files, or in the convenient form of reprints, which can be furnished. I personally request that all interested comply with this arrangement in aid of the possibility of rendering a final report. The main object of such a report, as I see it, would be to evolve, by process of exclusion or inclusion, the simplest possible classification for a smafl medical library of respectable size and to show how new subjects and subdivisions might be added to suit the needs of a library expanding in size through new shelf-room, acquisitions of books in large number or of collections relating to a special subject, and of the many special items making up a large working medical library of modern type. There should be little difficulty with the general classification of medical anid correlated subjects, as the classification of the late Dr. Farr, standardized in the Index Medicus, is ample and inclusive enough to meet most requirements, beginning with those of the Surgeon General's Library; while it is elastic enough to admit of amplification, compression and variants to cover occasional donation or acquisition of the comllplete literature of unusual subjects. The main interest of a shelf-classification in a large medical library is the tactical arrangement of certain groups of books to suit the daily and hourly requirements of puiblic service.
