DIVISION or PUBLICATIONS. 385 



These articles do not represent the total number prepared for pub- 

 lication by members of the department. According to the lists pub- 

 lished in the Official Record from January 1 to June 30 there were 96 

 articles prepared for publication in outside journals which were not 

 referred to this division for approval. It may be assumed that dur- 

 ing the early part of the year a proportionate number of articles 

 were prepared for publication without the approval of this division. 

 A continuance of this practice will make the record kept in this divi- 

 sion of little value. 



The careful reading of these articles and entry of title, etc., for 

 record requires a, large part of the time of one person. A com- 

 plete record of articles written for outside publication should be kept, 

 but in view of the wa}' in which they are now handled it is not ap- 

 parent that their review in this division serves any useful purpose. 

 On the contrary, it is felt that the present regulation is distasteful 

 to many of the workers in the department and serves only to en- 

 courage them to write under assumed names or not to write as much 

 as they otherwise would. It is consequently recommended that the 

 regulation be modified so as to place upon the bureaus responsibility 

 for statements made in articles published and for keeping a record 

 of them. 



INDEXING WORK. 



There were no outstanding changes in the method of conducting 

 the indexing work during the fiscal year. The volume of work com- 

 pleted was in some respects larger than in previous years and the 

 current work was kept more closely up to date than had been pos- 

 sible in the past. A total of 27,232 pages of department publica- 

 tions, and 2,126 pages of Congressional Eecord, were indexed. This 

 included 75 Farmers' Bulletins aijd 175 Department Bulletins. 



Material assistance was rendered the library of the department in 

 rearranging and bringing up to date a duplicate card index formerly 

 maintained in this division, but which was turned over to the library 

 two years ago. This index covers all important statements in all 

 department publications and should be invaluable to research 

 workers. Although no provision was made at that time to keep the 

 index up to date, and for lack of space it has not been possible to 

 give it much attention and care, it was reported that the index has 

 been of material assistance to the research workers of the department 

 and arrangements have been made to supply duplicate copies of index 

 cards prepared in this division, so that the value of the index may be 

 increased. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



The efforts toward securing better distribution of department pub- 

 lications reported for the year 1921 were continued with success. 

 During the fiscal year 1922^ 35,249,498 publications, including peri- 

 odicals, were distributed. This was 2.881.867, or about 10 per cent, 

 more than the total for the fiscal year 1921. Of the publications dis- 

 tributed, 14,487,790 were Farmers' Bulletins and the remainder were 

 miscellaneous publications, including 8,731,700 lists of Farmers' 

 Bulletins. The number of Farmers' Bulletins distributed showed an 

 increase of 1,721,298, or about 13 per cent more than the previous 



