Conrad Gessner's Bibliotheca Universalis (1545) is the first universal bibliography of the world. He intended to record all literature in Greek, Latin and Hebrew whether extant or not at his time. For this purpose it was necessary to use various information sources.
The sources can be divided into two categories, primary and secondary. The primary sources included Gessner's own collection, libraries, private collections and bookfairs, which allowed Gessner to examine books first hand. The secondary sources included library catalogs, bibliographies, other books, printers trade lists and personal letters, which allowed Gessner to collect information about the unavailable literature.
The author analyses the characteristics and values of each source. In summary, the following can be said;
(a) Most of the secondary sources Gessner used were the publications of Basel. According to this tendency, it can be supposed that the place of publication of most of the books in Bibliotheca was Basel.
(b) Gessner got a lot of citations from ancient or medieval authors rather than his contemporaries. This tendency can be considered a distinguishing trait of Bibliotheca.
(C) Usnally he used printed books rather than manuscripts as secondary sources. The characteristics of printed books at the time may be traced in Bibliotheca.
(d) As he gained reputation for his writings, he came to acquire more information using such informal communications as personal letters.
(c) By using various sources, inconsistencies occurred in the levels of Gessner's bibliographic descriptions. This means that it is not worth counting the literatures in Bibliotheca before deciding on the acceptable norm of his bibliographic descriptions.

抄録全体を表示

This paper presents the summary of results obtained from our sectional follow-up search conducted on the process of formation of reading habits in a same group of children over a period of close to ten years. In summing up, the results can be expressed in the following terms:
1) I can be assumed that reading habits are usually formed while the subjects are still infants as they repeatedly listen to texts being read to them, and that the habit is firmly established by the time the children are in junior high school.
2) Acquisition of the reading habit requires a certain stimuli at a certain period of time. Children in primary school are motivated by the channel of obtaining reading materials, while in junior high school, the motivation itself is the basis of formation of the reading habit. At the stage of senior high school, it is again the channel of procurement of reading materials that is important in their acquisition of the habit.
3) Acquisition of the reading habit is a continuous process. Even if the subjects lose the habit temporarily, it seems reasonable to expect that they will regain the habit sooner or later due to some kind of stimulus.
4) It is apparent that the parents' own idea about reading, based on their pedagogical concepts, does not have any direct influence on the quantity of the child's reading. We could say that the parents' wishes act as a strong motive for the children to read.
5) When these young adults are classified into two groups of which one is characterized by substantial reading and the other by the absence of such an inclination, one of the qualitative differences between these two groups is the difference in their respective attitude towards the acceptance of self-learning by means of reading materials.
6) The subjects' conception of reading, formed as the result of their reading experience in the past, leans towards self-realization and effective utilization of leisure.
7) The present survey does not indicate any ground to modify the results of the past analysis of reading behaviour conducted on the basis of a cross-sectional survey.

抄録全体を表示

Dr. Mankichi Wada (1865-1934), professor and librarian of the University of Tokyo, visited more than one hundred libraries in Europe and America in 1908-1909. I have found a list of evaluations of the libraries visited, in which he marked (*) for “good” libraries. (see the list)
He evaluated them based on the following points: (1) functional buildings and stacks (2) staff expertise (3) professional services to customers and (4) good card cataloging. He presented to the Director of the University “A proposal on the expansion of the scale of the Imperial University Library” in 1896. Before he presented the proposal, he had been absorbed himself in the study of library science, reading books and magazines. and examining statistics and annual reports. After the presentation, he read many theses and examined annual reports, which would provide him with standards for his evaluations.

抄録全体を表示