For the first time in many years, scholars again can quickly locate most of the more than 10,000 items of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts writing scattered in private collections and university and public libraries across North America.

They can think William H. Bond, Curator of Manuscripts in the Houghton Library, who spend his evenings and weekends for the past five years finding out where the manuscripts were.

His new Census, just published, supplements a 25-year-old "Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada."

Bond's new work has sold 400 copies is the few weeks since publication; and sales may reach 1,000. The purchaser receives for his $23 a 600-page listing of some 5,000 manuscripts acquired by American collections since the 1937 census, which listed 6,000 manuscripts.