REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAN. 



United States Department of Agriculture, 



Office of the Librarian, 



Washington, D. C, September 1, 1923. 



Sir: I have the honor to submit herewith the executive report of 

 the Ubrary for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1923. 

 Respectfully, 



Claribel R. Barnett, 



Librarian. 

 Hon. Henry C. Wallace, 



Secretary of Agriculture. 



The outstanding events of the past year in the work of the library 

 were the acquisition of 4,313 square feet of additional space in the 

 basement, the changes in the arrangement of the stacks and reading 

 rooms on the first floor, and the consolidation of the book collections 

 of the Bureau of Plant Industr}^ library with the main library collec- 

 tions. The additional space provides for 191 double-face sections of 

 shelving, or, since it was necessary to remove 83 from other parts of 

 the library, a net addition of 108 double-face sections, approximately 

 4,000 linear feet of shelving. This has brought much-needed relief 

 to the crowded condition of the book shelves and provides a mod- 

 erate amount of room for future growth. The space acquired, al- 

 though in the basement and for that reason not very desirable, is on 

 the whole fairly satisfactory for the storage of books and is perhaps 

 the best that can be hoped for until the library has a permanent build- 

 ing especially designed for its use. 



The complete consolidation of the book collections of the Bureau 

 of Plant Industry library with the main library, which was antici- 

 pated in the report for last year, took place in the spring and has 

 made necessary many readjustments of space and work. The pres- 

 sure for office space in Laboratory A, occupied by the Bureau of 

 Plant Industry, made it seem necessary to reduce the space occupied 

 by the bureau library and hastened the transfer, which was already 

 planned, of its collections to the main library. The transfer of the 

 collections also made it seem desirable to transfer to the main library 

 the card catalogues maintained in the bureau library, and the transfer 

 of the catalogues made it necessary for the assi^itants who work on 

 the catalogues to have their desks 'in the main library. The addi- 

 tional office space and the additional space needed for the catalogues 

 necessitated taking out some of the book shelving on the first door. 

 It was therefore decided to change the location of the reading room 

 in order to provide more light and to make it easier of access by 



Eroviding an entrance directly opposite the main entrance to the 

 uilding." These changes had not been entirely completed at the 

 close of the year. An urgently needed addition to the space avail- 



