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Excerpt from Publications of Societies: A Provisional List of the Publications of American Scientific, Literary, and Other Societies; From Their Organization The imperfections of these contributions toward a bibliography of American publishing societies, which it is hoped may result ultimately in a really adequate bib liography, cannot be more evident to any critic than to those responsible for the publication. Many of these immrfections, however, are inseparable from any first attempt to gather into one compilation so much diverse material from so many inde pendent sources. In the case of early societies, no longer existing, nothing more could be done than to make the best of existing records, in the hope that the later cooperation of librarians, after the publication of the work, may be of help in filling evident gaps and may add unsuspected material. In the important permanent socie ties - which have existed for many years - the frequent change of officers and of addresses, where there are no permanent headquarters, libraries, or secretaries, has made it a task of especial difficulty to obtain continuous information from the be ginning, but a happy result of the inquiry, in many cases, has been to stimulate such societies toward a better bibliographical record of their own publications. Many such societies lack a complete file of their own issues. Some societies known to exist failed altogether to respond to the repeated inquiries for information, and in such cases nothing more could be done than to utilize the information that could be gleaned indirectly from existing bibliographies and from library shelves. In every case the endeavor has been made to send a proof of the list of each society to its proper officer, but in many cases these proofs were not returned or were returned without adequate examination and revision. The present bibliography covers over a thousand societies, but doubtless omits many societies which properly belong in such a list. It ha