Tew. FJ 9177

THE WALTER AND ELIZA HALL INSTITUTE

OF @
MEDICAL RESEARCH

DIRECTOR

C/o ROYAL MELBOURNE
SiR MAGFARLANE BURNET. F.R.5.

HOSPITAL POST OFFICE,
MELBOURNE,
VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

25th February, 1958

Professor J. Lederberg,
Department of Genetics,
University of Wisconsin,
Madison 6.

Dear Josh,

Thank you very much for your letter in regard
to the possibilities of improving interchange of journals. It
arrived just as I am in the last struggles to finish everything
before leaving, so I] have not time to write a satisfactory answer.

Iam, of course, in complete agreement with
your point of view in principle, the only difficulty being to find
the necessary funds.

On the other side, getting Australian material
available elsewhere in the world, I have been thinking hard over
the possibility of persuading the C.S.I.R.O., which is the main
publisher of scientific journals in this country, to provide a
service of one page comprehensive abstracts of each paper by air
mail to any library or individual requesting this service. In many
ways this would provide what is needed to ensure that the general
lines of work in Australia are known overseas with a minimum of
delay.

I hope very much there will be an opportunity to
chew over some of these ideas with you when I am in America.
Just when will presumably have to wait very largely on chance and
circumstance.

With good wishes from us all,
Yours sincerely,

Aor Arne

F.M. Burnet