Page:Essays in librarianship and bibliography.djvu/206

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186
ESSAYS IN LIBRARIANSHIP

as well as for the librarian's "extraordinary expenses in correspondencies and transcriptions for the public good." It seems to be expected that he will frequently make advances out of his own pocket. Dury glides lightly over these ticklish financial details, which, however, remind him of the existence of a law of copyright, and the probable accumulation of accessions undesirable from the point of view of mere scholarship. His observations on this point are full of liberality and good sense:—

"I understand that all the book-printers or stationers of the Commonwealth are bound of every book that is printed, to send a copy into the University Library; and it is impossible for one man to read all the books in all faculties, to judge of them what worth there is in them; nor hath every one ability to judge of all kind of sciences what every author doth handle, and how sufficiently; therefore I would have at this time of giving accounts, the library keeper also bound to produce the catalogue of all the books sent unto the University's library by the stationers that printed them; to the end that every one of the doctors in their own faculties should declare whether or no they should be added, and where they should be placed in the catalogue of additionals. For I do not think that all books and treatises, which in this age are printed in all kinds, should be inserted into the catalogue, and added to the stock of the library; discretion must be used and confusion avoided, and a course taken