For help in pursuing this study the author owes many debts of gratitude, first to friends who added chance-read titles to the bibliography; especially to those who had no basic interest in the subject. An even heavier debt is due all the librarians who made available rare or restricted material, negotiated interlibrary loans, or merely rendered much ordinary service. Staffs of the following institutions deserve special thanks: the Union Catalogs of the Library of Congress and the Philadelphia Bibliographic Center; the libraries of Bryn Mawr College, the University of Chicago, Emory University, Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Swarthmore College, and Yale University; the medical libraries of Emory University Hospital, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Philadelphia College of Physicians; the public libraries of Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia; and the Library of Congress.
Particular mention is due the special library of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, of which the author was librarian for four years (1948-1952). It should be made clear that the present study is unrelated to that of the Institute, does not reflect its views, and has not been approved by members of its staff. The librarian’s function was cataloguing, not sex research, and almost all of the material considered here was seen elsewhere. Nevertheless, acquaintance with what may be the largest extant library related to sex served to reassure the author that she had overlooked no important area of the field she wished to study. Gratitude is thus due also to the Institute and its Director, the late Dr. A. C. Kinsey.