[PUBLIC DOCUMENTS ROUND TABLE]
A Public Documents Round Table was held on July 1, Mr. George S. Godard, State librarian of Connecticut, in the chair. Miss Elizabeth M. Smith of New York state library was appointed secretary.
The preliminary report of the Committee on public documents already printed was read, in order to bring briefly before the session the status of the bills now before Congress relating to the printing, binding and distribution of public documents.
The chairman reported his efforts to bring to the conference the Superintendent of Documents, Mr. August Donath, to present in person a paper on the new printing bill. A failure of Congress to provide in the appropriations for traveling expenses for this and similar purposes, made this impossible. The chairman, Mr. Godard, reported that he had laid before the Senate Committee on appropriations the advisability of appropriating funds to pay expenses of the Superintendent of Documents, or some other competent official, while trying to get into closer relations with the depository and other document libraries. The secretary read a letter from the clerk of the Committee on appropriations reporting that Mr. Godard's letter would be called to the attention of the committee at the proper time. The following letter from Mr. Donath on the subject of public documents, dealing especially with the new printing bill, was read by Mr. Geo. N. Cheney of the Court of Appeals library, Syracuse, N. Y.
Office of Superintendent of Documents,
Washington June 8, 1912.
My dear Mr. Godard:
Complying with your kind invitation to send to your committee a paper dealing with the subject of public documents from a standpoint of interest mutual to your association and to this office, I herewith submit a few words covering the subject as briefly as its intelligent discussion will permit. I deem it a privilege to be able to address those to whom this is a live subject, and regret all the more that Congress does not seem inclined to endorse recommendations, repeatedly made, that would bring the members of your association and the official in charge of this branch of the public service into more intimate intercourse. This would surely be in the interest of better service on the part of this office and a clearer interchange of expert opinion that could not be otherwise than beneficial to the cause which the law creating our connection was intended to serve.
The idea underlying the legislation that created "designated depository libraries" was undoubtedly the intent to create five or six hundred places throughout this broad land where the history of the country, as expressed in the printed page, should be accessible to the public. A very good intention, and one very largely impractical. When it is remembered that the yearly output of public documents is nearly a thousand, and that a steadily increasing amount of shelf room is required to make all these accessible, even those who only have a superficial acquaintance with the subject will see that to live up to the requirement which accompanies the designation is beyond the ability of perhaps the major number of the libraries now regularly supplied. Only in the larger cities and the most prosperous communities are there libraries able to cope with this "contract." Added to this cause for failure to carry out the intent of thus creating permanent places accessible to the student of the history of his country has been the right of a Senator or Representative to change the designation at the beginning of a Congress, thus leaving the discarded institution with a partial supply of public documents, and starting the new selection with a void that is never filled. Poor business, surely. And it is this condition that the official now in charge of the Public Documents Division has worked very hard to have amended.
I am glad to be able to state that light seems to have broken on this matter. After repeated searching inquiries on the part of the Printing Investigation Commission the true situation seems to be understood, and the measure popularly known as the New Printing Bill, which deals with the whole subject of the public printing, promises to establish a connection between the libraries of the land and this office that shall be of more benefit to the public and at much less expense than the operation of the law of January 12, 1895, permitted. At present writing this bill has passed the Senate, has been favorably reported, with amendments, to the House, and appears to be in shape for speedy final action. It contains many provisions that make for economy in the public printing, but I will only mention what is of more immediate interest to the libraries of the country.
To begin with, the law will permit selection, at stated intervals, of the class of publications that a designated library is able or desirous to handle. What a relief that will be can best be appreciated by the officials in charge of the smaller libraries. It will serve them, and it will likewise save money to the Government. The volume of literature sent out from here that later is returned can only be realized from personal observation. My personal acquaintance with it began on the day I took charge of this office. There were mountains of it, and in a few months, so the Public Printer informed me, he desired to lay before the Committee on Printing his report recommending how much of the accumulation seemed worth returning into stock, and how much should be sold as waste paper. However, the subject has become so familiar to the law-making body that remedial action is now apparently in sight.