DEJPARTMENT 01^ HISTORICAL RESEIARCH. II7 



Congress the Director, by invitation, appeared in this interest before the 

 Committee on PubHc Buildings and Grounds of the House of Representa- 

 tives, and, at the request of the chairman of that committee and of a member 

 of the corresponding committee of the Senate, prepared bills which it is 

 hoped may form the basis of enactments and appropriations in the next ensu- 

 ing session of Congress. He has also, at the request of members of these 

 committees, made active efforts, for which his position has given him excep- 

 tional advantages, to collect information, applicable to our circumstances, 

 respecting the most approved archive buildings in European capitals. 



PLANS FOR 1912. 



. The immediate future work of the Department is not likely to differ essen- 

 tially in character from that of the past six years, though many improvements 

 in process and method may be hoped for. Modifications of the departmental 

 program may perhaps be looked for in two directions. On the one hand, 

 when all the European archives most important for American history have 

 been reported upon with sufficient fullness, the amount of effort expended 

 upon European materials may be lessened and an increased amount bestowed 

 on materials in America. Yet, on the other hand, the activity of our Ameri- 

 can historical societies and State historical departments with regard to these 

 latter sorts of material is all the while increasing, and the efforts which have 

 been made to persuade Congress to institute a working commission on na- 

 tional historical publications may at any time take effect. In that case, a 

 number of domestic tasks which the Department has held in mind would be 

 felt to lie properly within the field of such a national commission. The con- 

 tinuance of work upon the materials for American history in foreign archives 

 might in that case be thought, by such a commission, an appropriate matter 

 to be left in the hands of this Department. Political considerations would 

 also make it less likely that certain American fields of work, such as docu- 

 mentary publications on the history of political parties, or on the history of 

 slavery and the American negro, would be entered by such a national com- 

 mission than that they should be left to the freer action of a private institu- 

 tion. None of these considerations, however, affect the plans made by the 

 Department for the year 1911-1912. 



REPORTS, AIDS, AND GUIDES. 



It should be possible before the end of October 1912 to publish Professor 

 Learned's "Guide to the manuscript materials relating to American history 

 in the German State archives" and the first volume of Professor Andrews's 

 "Guide to the manuscript materials for the history of the United States to 

 1783, in the Public Record Office." Professor Andrews expects to devote 

 the summer of 1912 to the recasting and final revision in London of his 

 second volume. It is by no means certain that the official reclassification of 

 all the materials involved in the latter will have been completed by next 



