318 EEPOET OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



Members of the staff of the Office of Public Roads gave 523 lec- 

 tures, addresses, and papers in 28 States and the District of Columbia. 

 With reference to the instruction in highway engineering given by 

 the office, the director reports as follows : 



The plau of appointing graduates of the leading engineering institutions to 

 the position of civil engineer student in this office has been continued through- 

 out the fiscal year along the lines previously followed. An examination was 

 held March 9-10, 1910, under the auspices of the Civil Service Commission, and 

 an eligible register established from which seven engineer students were ap- 

 pointed during the fiscal year 1910. 



As evidence of the demand for competent highway engineers throughout the 

 country, and the extent to which the engineers of this office are being utilized 

 to meet this demand, it may be stated that during the past fiscal year eight 

 engineers have resigned from the service to take up road work in various parts 

 of the country. 



The Secretary of Agriculture in his annual report for 1910 states 

 that the publication work of the department exceeded that of any 

 previous year, comprising 1,982 different bulletins, circulars, and re- 

 ports, of which 25,160,469 copies w^ere printed for distribution to 

 farmers in eveiy section of the United States. This was an increase 

 of 46| per cent in the number of publications issued and 41 per cent 

 in the number of copies distributed. Continuing he says : 



The demand for these bulletins from educational institutions is increasing 

 and is far in excess of the department's ability to supply. On account of the 

 elementary character of the bulletins they are considered suitable for text- 

 books in schools of all grades, and such use of the information acquired by the 

 department should be encouraged. The inevitable result would be a tendency 

 to increase interest in agriculture in the minds of the young, which would influ- 

 ence them to remain on the farm. With the present appropriation, however, 

 it is not possible to fully comply with requests received from this source. 



The librarian of the department attended an important conference 

 of the American Library Association at Mackinac Island, June 30 

 to July 7, 1910, at which two sessions of the Agricultural Libraries 

 Round Table rejjresented the first attempt to bring together libra- 

 rians of agricultural libraries and those interested in agricultural 

 literature for the discussion of their special problems. The librarian 

 rejDorts the following topics considered by the round table: (1) 

 Agricultural libraries; (2) traveling libraries for farmers; (3) agri- 

 cultural collections in public libraries; (4) agricultural literature in 

 the reference library; (5) instruction of students in the use of agri- 

 cultural and scientific literature; (6) relation of the experiment sta- 

 tion library to the college library; (7) guides to recent agricultural 

 literature; (8) classification of agricultural literature; (9) indexing 

 agricultural literature; and (10) agricultural periodicals, their selec- 

 tion and preservation. The sessions were well attended, and the 

 papers and discussions were interesting and helpful. At the close of 



