DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH.* 



J. Franklin Jameson, Director. 



The following report, the eleventh annual report of the present 

 Director, covers the period from November 1, 1915, to October 31, 

 1916. The regular staff of the Department has continued without 

 change during the year. During several months of the year the 

 Department had the aid, at first for a portion of the time, but afterward 

 continuously, of Dr. James A. Robertson, librarian of the PhiUppine 

 Library at Manila, who rendered valuable services in connection with 

 the preparation of the proposed Atlas of the Historical Geography of 

 the United States. 



The Department has continued to occupy the same quarters as in 

 preceding years, in the Woodward Building in Washington. During 

 the summer months, in accordance with its usual custom, the Director 

 and a portion of the staff worked at its sunmier headquarters in North 

 Edgecomb, Maine, while several other members of the staff worked at 

 the library of Harvard University, where most gratifying privileges 

 were accorded to them, and some in Washington, where, it can not be 

 too often emphasized in these reports, the Library of Congress, with 

 the greatest liberality, affords the Department every facihty and oppor- 

 tunity that could be desired. Special acknowledgments should be made 

 of the constant kindness of Dr. Gaillard Hunt, chief of the Division of 

 Manuscripts, and Mr. P. Lee Phillips, chief of the Map Division, as 

 well as of the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Herbert Putnam. 



The main purpose of the Department, as set forth in former reports, 

 is, briefly expressed, to serve the interests of present and future makers 

 of historical monographs and general histories, by providing aids 

 belonging to one or the other of two main classes — either books which 

 show the inquirer the existence and location, or assist him in the use, 

 of bodies of historical sources, or books which themselves present in 

 proper scientific form the full text of important historical materials. 

 Thus the pubUcations of the Department fall naturally in tw^o classes, 

 the one that of reports, aids, and guides, the other that of textual 

 pubUcations of documents. It has been customary in these annual 

 rfeports to consider, successively, first the work of the past year, in 

 respect to each of these two classes of publications and in respect to the 

 miscellaneous activities of the Department, and then the plans for the 

 ensuing year, under the same three headings. 



*Address: 1140 V/oodward Building, Washington, D. C. 



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