EEPORT ON SMITHSONIAN EXCHANGES FOR 1882. 

 By George H, Boehmer. 



The growth of the business of receiving and transmitting the scien- 

 tific and literary exchanges of the Institution has necessitated a change 

 in the method of recording and managing the same ; the plans of opera- 

 tion, satisfactory some half a dozen years ago, being no longer available 

 without entailing increased trouble and considerable confusion in trac- 

 ing the history of transactions. 



With increase of duties has arisen the need of more complete organi- 

 zation ; and during the past year a system of double entry, or of debit 

 and credit accounts, has been adopted. These accounts are arranged 

 in the form of card-catalogues, representing the societies in correspond- 

 ence with the Institution ; and upon these cards each society is debited 

 for the books forwarded to it, and is credited for the receipts as commu- 

 nicated in return by formal announcement. 



This experiment has of course greatly increased for the time the 

 amount of work required from the limited assistance allotted to this de- 

 partment, but in return it gives an increased command over the results, 

 and a much greater facility and economy of time in making references 

 and comparisons. 



By this plan, on the arrival of an invoice of parcels or boxes from 

 any establishment in the United States, for foreign distribution, ac- 

 companied (as required by the established rules) with a list of the inten- 

 ded recipients, to each of these is prefixed the number assigned to it in 

 our printed list of foreign correspondents, and the same are entered on 

 the proper cards, giving the date of reception, the name of the sender, 

 and the number taken from the entry in the invoice book (representing 

 the whole transmission considered as a bingle transaction), in which 

 book all receptions are first daily entered in their consecutive order. 



The books or parcels receive the same numbers and are then laid 

 away in bins, each of which represents a certain city or cities or part of 

 them, in any given country. A sufficient number of books having ac- 

 cumulated to justify a sending to any country^ the card-catalogue serves 

 as a basis from which the invoices for the respective societies are made 

 up. This is done in advance, and while the books are being removed 

 from the bins and made up in bundles. In this manner sendings which 

 required a week, on the old plan of making up the invoices from the 

 parcels on hand, while being assorted and packed, may now be com- 

 pleted in two days. 



This system has been introduced in the exchanges with Great Britain 



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