Page 152 - Training for librarianship; library work as a career

TRAINING FOR LIBRARIANSHIP
medical librarian, estimated that less than
10 per cent, of medical literature is of value
after ten years, and present opinion would
indicate that to-day this proportion is even
still less. Compendious reference books at
one time so prolific and so popular are con-
stantly forced to the background by new
works and new editions. Textbooks con-
forming to the latest opinion and practice,
even by the time they are placed on the
market, are somewhat out of date. In medi-
cine as in the other sciences, the latest de-
velopments are to be traced through the
medical journal, the monograph, the labora-
tory study, the government document, and
the society proceedings or transactions. Yet
the caution of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes,
that " there is a dead medical literature, as
there is a live one," and that " all that is
ancient is not dead, all that is live is not mod-
ern," should be remembered.
From all this two conclusions may be
drawn. First, the bulk of the hterature is
so much on the increase that mastery of the
technical problems involved in its proper care
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