College and Research Libraries


· braries. For these, as the book indicates, 
there is no substitute. 

Library Resources and Graduate Work is 
without doubt one of the most important 
documents concerning librarianship to come 
out of the South in recent years. It has done 
much to focus attention on a problem so 
pressing and so gigantic as to be almost over­
whelming-yet the way it was conjointly at­
tacked by administrators, teachers, and 
librarians alike lends high hopes for the fu­
ture. 

For their significant contribution to higher 
education in the South, Philip G. Davidson; 
dean · of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt 
University, and A. F. Kuhlman, director, · 
Joint University Libraries, deserve the sin­
cere thanks of educators throughout the na­
tion. Their accomplishments, reflected as 
they are in Library Resources and Graduate 
W orkJ should do much toward charting a 
proper course for future Southern scholarship 
and research.-W. Stanley Hoole, director 
of librariesJ University of Alabama. 

Wisconsin Manuscripts 

Guide to the Manuscripts of the Wisconsin 
Historical Society. Edited by Alice E. 
Smith. Madison, State Historical Society 
of Wisconsin, 1944. 290p. 

This guide is the work of the curator of 
the Wisconsin Historical Society's manuscript 
division, assisted by the members of the staff 
of the Historical Records Survey of Wis­
consin. In the preface the editor says the 
collection contains over 720,000 pieces and 
2,500 volumes of manuscripts, a vast accumu­
lation for any society. Certainly it is one of 
the largest and richest in the United States 
in the character of its materials. The guide 
makes no attempt to list individual items, 
and packages containing ten or fewer items 
are not listed. But, as it is, any student may 
obtain a clear idea whether there is any 
major amount of material for his researches 
at Madison. 

No one conversant with the history of 
American manuscript collections will be sur­
prised at the richness of the library's re-· 
sources. The Wisconsin His'torical Society, 
in its nearly one hundred years of history, 
had in the formative years two of the ablest 
collectors in the· field to direct its work­
Lyman C. Draper and Reuben , Gold 
Thwaites. Either Draper's collection of 
nearly five hundred volumes of manuscripts 
relating to the first great West or Thwaites's 
on the French in the Northwest and on the 
records of his own state, would make any 
society famous. The John R. Commons col­
lection on the history of labor and the papers 
of the economist, Richard T. Ely, also are 
of more than local significance. 

JUNE~ 1945 

The Wisconsin Historical Society has as­
sumed as its primary task the gathering of 
material for the history of its own environ­
ment. But in common with the practice 
among other historical societies, the collection 
has become national in scope. Whatever 
source material will help the citizens of 
Wisconsin to better understand the nation's 
past has become grist for zealous assembling 
and arrangement for use. A study of the 
guide, with its record of correspondence , 
diaries, minutes of meetings, reminiscences, 
personal papers, addresses, and public docu­
ments, should serve similar agencies and 
individuals everywhere in knowing what to 
save. 

There are more than eight hundred his­
torical societies , large and small, some very 
small, in the United States. That means one 
for every I50,ooo people. The ambition of 
the American people to secure for all time 
the materials for their own history has be­
come a major industry. The Handbook of 
Historical Societies in the U.nited States and 
Canada, published by the American Associa­
tion for State and Local History, Washing­
ton, 1944, and the Wisconsin · guide are 
manuals greatly needed by those who would 
be intelligent leaders in an important field 
of modern social activities. 

The United States may not have the monu­
ments of the Old World, but it can have, if 
it does not already have, the best basis for 
an understanding of its own past. There is 
a growing list of similar . guides available for 
scholars. Most notable among the recent 
ones are Howa~d H. Peckham's GuMe to the 

287 



Manuscript Collections in the William L. 
·Clements Library, A Guide to the Manu­
script Collections in the Archives of theN orth 
Carolina Historical Commission, A Guide 
to the Personal Papers in the Manuscript 
Collections in the Minnesota Historical So­
ciety, and The American M anus·cript Collec­
tions in the Huntington Library. 

To historical students it is at times shocking 
to 'learn that material greatly needed has 
been .destroyed or is hidden away in some 
unappreciative persqn's storage spaces. For 
example, to the Western Reserve Historical 
Society there came not long ago the full 
records of an interesting but defunct uni-

Clarifying Bibliographical. Citation 
(Continued from page 249) 

recommended that the citations be arranged 
in the order in vvhich they are referred or 
quoted from and appended at the end of the 
paper. Each reference should be a complete 
bibliographical citation, e.g._, author, title, 
journal, volume, pagination, month, year. 
This is the form used by the journals pub­
lished by the American Medical Association. 

To group tvvo is assigned the papers of 
some length, including monographs and 
papers published in revievv journals. Such 
papers present a comprehensive study of a 
given subject, including its history and an 
outline of the experimental vvork accom­
plished. These articles contain a consider­
able amount of general information as vvell 
as references to a specific .statement. In 
these cases it is recommended that citations 
be label~d "bibliography," arranged alpha­

,. ,J. 

betically by author, and numbered and 
appended at the end of the article. Through­
out the paper, vvhenever it becomes necessary 

versity in Ohio for the years 1834-47. They · 
had been resting in a box of family relics all 
these years, a curiosity for the owner but 
unavailable for any serious uses. Whatever 
will help to enlighten the people of the 
United States on the usefulness · o£" the papers 
in private homes and. public archives is a 
national service of great value for the future. 
The librarians, curators, and directors of 
some eight hundred historical societies have 
an ever-present challenge. They have the 
chance for a mass attack on apathy and ignor­
ance which ought to bear good fruit.-Elbert 
J. Benton, director and secretary, Western 
Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. 

· to refer to a citation, the number of the ref­
erence simply may be listed follovving the 
statement. In those cases where it becomes 
necessary to refer to a specific page in a cita­
tion, the number of the page may follovv the 
number of the reference. As an example of 
the use of this type of citation refer to the 
monograph bY. T. E. Keys. 2 

To the third group is assigned papers of 
such a general nature as to make reference 
to any one bibliographical item unnecessary. 
To these papers it is recommended that the 
bibliography be alphabetically arranged by 
author and appended at the end of the 
article. 

This classification has simplified the in­
terpretation of the principles of bibliographi­
cal citation to a marked degree and has also 
served as a logiCal explanation in explaining 
the different forms to the students. 

2 Keys, T. E. The Development of Anesthesia, n.d. 
78p. 

'288 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES