ABSTRACT
In the following sections the special collections and some important classes will be summarily described, with notes of their catalogues. The large bulk of the approximately five million printed books is composed of those received under the Copyright Acts. Most of the largest libraries of the world are swelled by legal deposit, and such a library as Harvard’s, which reaches three million without it, is therefore the more remarkable. Foreign books are acquired by the Museum in very large quantity, the books being ordered from the national trade lists on publication; the work of selection is divided among the Staff, not by subjects but by languages. Each man so detailed is expected to become expert in the literature chosen, and to be a sort of liaison officer to the scholars and bibliographers of the country. This system in a way obviates the need for consulting experts such as were added by Dr. Putnam to the Staff of the Library of Congress. Many of the Staff have in fact taken high rank as scholars, though others who might have done so within the Museum’s walls have been lost to it; Edmund Gosse, for example, carried elsewhere those studies in the Scandinavian literatures, as well as in the English Restoration drama, which, chastened by the atmosphere of the place, would have been so useful there. It would, however, be a valuable addition if there were some advisers in subjects—such as Law—which the Museum’s own scope does not cover.
