ir)8 Pin-clor's Rcf^ort for iQip. 



for press work, and the Museum priutcr was euabled to devote 

 liis tiuie to niiscellaucous work. 



A couiparative study of costs, (juality and couditions of work 

 in various cstablislinicnts resulted in a decision to dispose of the 

 printing- equipment owned by the Museum and to contract with 

 some rehable concern for all printing- required. 



SPECIAL TOPICS 

 Library 



During- the year, the present condition, the scope, purpose. 

 and needs of the Museum Library have been given considera- 

 tion by the Trustees, the Librarian, and the Acting Director. It 

 w^as found that the Library is unusually rich in ethnolog-ical works 

 of Pacific races and in accounts of early voyagers. Most of the 

 books are essential to students within the Polynesian field and 

 some of them could be replaced with difficulty. Compared with 

 similar institutions, the Library of the Museum is relatively defi- 

 cient in maps and other geographic material, in general reference 

 works and compendia and in results of researches in Natural His- 

 tory published during the last decade. The report of the Committee 

 on Publication is summarized as follows: 



"Your Committee believes that the library should be built 

 on the lines already marked out and should eventually occupy 

 first rank as a center for students interested in Polynesian prob- 

 lems : that it should be enriched by large additions of scattered 

 pamphlets of recent date bearing on Polynesian Ethnology and 

 Xatural History and that outside this field purchases should aim 

 primarily at procuring reliable works for comparative study and 

 treatises needed by students. The library should be primarily for 

 use of scientific investigators, and wT)rks of merely popular inter- 

 est should bud no place on the shelf. The guiding principle 

 should be not to make a complete or well-rounded library but to 

 get together publications likely to aid students of Pacific Ocean 

 and especially of Polynesian problems. With this principle in 

 mind it is probably unneces.sary to list the subdivisions of natiu-al 

 history which should be represented." 



The funds allotted to carry out the iK)licy adopted by the 



18 1 



