A CUMULATIVE WORLD THESAURUS Available to Purchase

Mr. Theodore Besterman recently proposed the printing of a cumulative edition of the Library of Congress catalogue. The vision of his proposal provokes ideas of an even more comprehensive tool beyond the limitations of one great, but nevertheless far from universal, library. On the basis of a statistical sample developed by Mr. LeRoy C. Merritt for use in his part of Union catalogs, it was found that the Library of Congress held approximately 37 per cent. of the total number of titles listed in the U.S. national union catalogue in 1940. Of these about one‐sixth were not to be found in any other library in the United States. Presumably the situation has not been greatly changed by accessions at the Library of Congress since 1940.