Mr. Fletcher: I am very glad that point has been called attention to. I should like it if Mr. Biscoe would suggest an amendment. According to the report, when such an index is furnished, and no table of contents, the index should be printed to follow the title-page. We might say: if an alphabetical index is furnished, it should be paged to go at the end of the volume.
T. L. Montgomery: Was not the committee's report to provide for the printing of the alphabetical index in the place of a table of contents, thereby making it one section?
Mr. Fletcher: The advantage of that would be that there would be something to go with the title-page to make up the section. The title-page should be part of a section for binding as a separate section. I wonder if most of the librarians present haven't had the same exasperating experience which I have so often had with those title-pages which are separate leaves, and have to be pasted into the volume. There is hardly any practice so vicious in bookmaking as having the title-page pasted in. It almost always pulls out before the book is in any other respect at all dilapidated.
A. G. Josephson: I would suggest that the committee recommend that both a table of contents and an index should be furnished.
Mr. Fletcher: The committee would entirely agree to that, and it could very easily be done. If an alphabetical index, in addition to the table of contents, is furnished, a practice to be preferred might be to consolidate them.
Pres. Carr: I think, Mr. Fletcher, you should be able to modify your report, before printing, to incorporate those suggestions.
F. W. Faxon: If the committee is trying to get at an ideal arrangement, it might be well to suggest that the publishers of magazines have some one who knows something about the contents make the index. We have a magazine in Boston that persists in indexing articles under "a" and "the," and proper names under "John" and "James." But if the committee is trying to get a rule that the publishers will be most likely to adopt, it seems to me they might suggest that the index be published in each concluding number of a volume, even though the index is put in place of that many pages of text. Of course it would not do to suggest that these pages be taken out of advertising, but as the text usually costs the magazine something, publishers would probably be willing to devote four of the pages they would have to pay for to an index, which would cost them much less.
Mr. Fletcher: I think it would interest the Association to know of an example that Mrs. Fairchild sent me some time ago of the way these indexes are made. Some periodical in New York had an article on motive power for the canals, and in the index it appeared under "Mule, Must the Canal Go?"
The report was approved and referred to the Council.
In the absence of Dr. J. S. Billings the secretary read the