DEPAllTMENT REPORTS.' 55 



and labor in care of the room, etc., to prevent their 2;iving a fair average of 

 current years. 



The hours of daily opening have been the same as heretofore, from 4 to G P. 

 M. on week days, and from 10 to 12 A. M. on Sunday. Daring tlie short 

 vacations, when many students remain at tlie college, access to the library has 

 been given for one hour after supper. The new rules for care and use of the 

 library, adopted by the Faculty this present year, make no material changes in 

 the management. In the regular routine of work four different students, two 

 Seniors and two Freshmen, have been engaged ; all have rendered good service. 

 This duty has included: first, care of periodicals, stitching, catting, arranging 

 in places on racks and tables, and careful filing away each month ; second, care 

 of books, cataloguing and labeling of new ones, arranging on shelves, over- 

 sight of drawing, giving information to those consulting, and keeping accounts 

 v/ith each person using the Library; third, general care of the room, sweeping, 

 dusting, warming, lighting, and opening and closing punctually at stated times. 

 In this work tliere has been little to complain of, though my personal attention 

 has been very limited. It has required 073^ hours' work at ten cents an hour. 



During the spring term, work out of tlie regular routine employed two Sen- 

 iors three hours a day, making 330 hours' work at ten cents. To this I gave 

 almost constant supervision for six weeks, and daily direction afterward. This 

 work involved : 1. Sorting, classifying a'nd stitching into cases, several hun- 

 dred valuable pamphlets, with a card catalogue for them, and a table of con- 

 tents for each case. 2. Rearranging and recataloguing of some 500 volumes 

 of United States Documents. 3. Filling a descriptive list of books, giving 

 author, title, volumes, size, pages, editor, date, publishers, binding, purchase, 

 or donor. 4. Perfecting files of newspapers for preservation or binding, and 

 stitching incomplete volumes of old magazines for use without binding. 5. 

 Separation of duplicates from other books, with a complete list of them and 

 their location. G. Introduction of more than 300 new volumes, with full cat- 

 alogue and desci'iption. 7. Impressing every one of nearly 5,000 volumes with 

 the seal of the Library. More of such work is still needed, but my time has 

 been too full to give it the necessary oversight. A fuller catalogue of the con- 

 tents of books would be especially useful, and ought to be begun before the 

 extent of the task becomes an inseparable barrier. 



The library has been more than usually attractive this year from the fre- 

 quent additions received, and the increased number of periodicals. The aver- 

 age daily attendance for the greater part of the two hours during which it is 

 open is reported to be above twenty. Of books consulted in the library we 

 have no record, but those taken away number 1665, of which 103 were upon 

 purely scientific subjects, and 189 pertained to agriculture, horticulture and 

 other arts. Of course in the daily consultation of books, the sciences play a 

 more prominent part. No noticeable losses have occurred, and no serious dam- 

 ages have been discovered. 



The general inventory gives nearly 5,000 volumes of all sorts and sizes, 

 valued at a trifle over §10,000. Of these nearly six hundred volumes are du- 

 plicates, and six hundred more are pamphlets of greater or less value, leaving 

 about 3,750 bound volumes for the working library. These are distributed 

 under various classes in round numbers as follows : 



History, Biography, Travels, etc .- -- 350 



Philosophy, Criticism, lleligion, etc - 275 



