Abstract
BESIDES the usual statistical information regarding the number of visitors and attendances at lectures, notes on special exhibitions, on acquisitions and the progress of the five main divisions of the Museum, the annual report of the Advisory Council of the Science Museum for 1936 is of especial interest as it contains a review of the growth and activities of the Library, which is being developed as a National Library of Science. During the year, the Library was used by 22,000 readers, while the issues on loan of books and periodicals to Government departments, scientific and technical societies, colleges, etc., was 21,000. The Library receives more than 9,000 current periodicals and the contents of these are all indexed, references to these and to other matters now running into millions. There are about 250,000 books in the Library. "The two main functions of the Library,“the report says, "may broadly be stated as the acquiring of documents and making them readily available", the latter consisting of cataloguing the volumes, maintaining indexes of their contents, provision of the volumes to readers, loan service, supply of bibliographies, supply of photostat copies, and Library publications. There have been many valuable additions to the collections in the Museum, and during the year under review special exhibitions were arranged illustrating the progress of research at very low temperatures, the scientific aspects of smoke pollution of the atmosphere and the developments in electric illumination.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Science Museum. Nature 140, 353–354 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140353c0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140353c0