e perusal of readers, with a proper check or
receipt, and to make sure of binding each new volume as fast as the
publication of titles and index enables it to be done properly. While
some libraries receive several thousands of serials, the periodical
publications taken by others amount to a very small number; but in either
case, the importance of prompt collation and immediate supply of missing
parts or numbers is equally imperative. While deficiencies in daily
newspapers can rarely be made up after the week, and sometimes not after
the day of their appearance, the missing parts of official and other
publications, as well as of reviews and magazines appearing at less
frequent intervals, can usually be supplied within the year, although a
more prompt securing of them is often necessary. In these publications,
as in the acquisition of books for any library, the collation of each
part or number is imperative, in order to avoid imperfections which may
be irreparable.

First in the ranks of these ephemeral publications, in order of number,
if not of importance, come the journals of all classes, daily and weekly,
political, illustrated, literary, scientific, mechanical, professional,
agricultural, financial, etc. From the obscure and fugitive beginnings of
journalism in the sixteenth century to the establishment of the first
continuous newspaper--the London Weekly News, in 1622, and Renaudot's
Gazette (afterwards the _Gazette de France_) in 1631, followed by the
issue of the first daily newspaper, the London Daily Courant, in 1702,
and the Boston Weekly News-letter in 1704, (the first American
journal)--to the wonderful fecundity of the modern periodical press,
which scatters the leaves of more than thirty thousand different journals
broadcast over the world, there is a long and interesting history of the
trials and triumphs of a free press. In whatever respect American
libraries may fall behind those of older lands (and their deficiencies
are vast, and, in many directions permanent) it may be said with
confidence, that in the United States the newspaper has received its
widest and most complete development. Numerically, the fullest
approximate return of the newspaper and periodical press gives a total
number of 21,500 periodical publications, regularly appearing within the
limits of the United States.

While no one library, however large and comprehensive, has either the
space or the means to accumulate a tithe of the perio