THE N. W. HARRIS PUBLIC SCHOOL EXTENSION 



The Museum's extension service whereby portable exhibits of nat- 

 ural-history material are made available to the schools of Chicago 

 continued in operation through the year. The service consists of 

 delivery to each school of two portable exhibits followed by two re- 

 placements on every tenth schoolday thereafter, so that in the course 

 of a year each school receives 34 different exhibits. The increased 

 emphasis today on science in the schools gives the exhibits greater 

 significance than ever before. 



At the beginning of the j^ear 516 schools and other public-service 

 institutions were receiving the exhibit-loans on schedule, and at the 

 end of the year the lending list numbered 505. Four new schools were 

 added during the year. Of the fifteen schools that were dropped, one 

 was destroyed by fire, two were closed as fire hazards, nine were 

 closed because of population shifts or for expressway land-clearance, 

 one became inaccessible because of road reconstruction, and two 

 asked to have the service discontinued because of disciplinary prob- 

 lems within the schools. The two departmental trucks were on the 

 road during 167 days of the year and traveled 11,191 miles. 



Breakage in circulation was moderate. Of 278 cases repaired in 

 the shop, 22 had been broken in circulation and in only 6 of the 22 

 was there damage to the installations. An exhibit (short-eared owl) 

 was stolen from an elementary school. In summer, when all of the 

 portable exhibits were in the Museum for cleaning and storage, the 

 catalogue numbers on some 400 of them were relettered. One new 

 exhibit (a native wild rose) was completed in October, for which 

 Staff Artist E. John Pfiffner painted the habitat background. Five 

 duplicates of the exhibit will be ready early in the new year when the 

 background paintings for them are finished. Several short trips into 

 the field were made in order to gather the plants, soils, and environ- 

 mental material needed in the preparation of the exhibits. 



Requests for the loan of specific materials reached an all-time high. 

 Sixty-one such requests were filled, an increase of 26 over last year, 

 and Harris Extension signed out more than 600 birdskins and mounted 

 birds, as well as other materials such as shells, rocks and fossils, in- 

 sects, and mammal skins. Assembling these items was more time- 

 consuming than in past years because 40 per cent of our floorspace 

 had to be transferred to another department, and our study-collec- 

 tions, from which loans are selected, are now stored on the ground 

 floor where they are less readily accessible. Sixteen of the standard 

 portable exhibits were sent out as special loans apart from the routine 

 lending program that is the primary function of Harris Extension. 



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