158 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1955 



use in its own collections, and 61,017 others were sent to the United 

 States Book Exchange for exchange credit. 



The catalog section classified and cataloged 4,949 volumes, entered 

 21,305 periodicals, and filed 32,371 cards. The important work of 

 combining into a single comprehensive dictionary catalog the two 

 separate Smithsonian union and Museum catalogs was finished, but 

 there is still a great deal of revisionary work to be done on it. This 

 catalog cannot be a fully effective key to all the library's resources 

 until the many thousands of incompletely or wholly uncataloged 

 volumes in bureau and sectional libraries and in special collections 

 have been cataloged in full. 



The use of the library which, with its branches and sectional li- 

 braries on special subjects, is a series of reference and research collec- 

 tions, is always difficult to show statistically, even in those areas where 

 it is possible to keep accurate records at all. The library is freely 

 open to anyone who wishes to use it for reference, but circulation of 

 its books and periodicals is restricted to individual members of the 

 staff of the Institution and, within certain necessary limitations, to 

 other libraries ; therefore 10,263, the recorded number of loans during 

 the year, represents only a fractional part of the large and continuous 

 use of library books in evidence all day, every day, in the main ref- 

 erence rooms, in the bookstacks, and in the many decentralized units 

 throughout the Institution. 



Demands on the staff of the reference section for reference and 

 bibliographical assistance were heavy, as usual, and it was especially 

 gratifying to receive recogTiition from outside as well as from within 

 the Institution of the painstaking and time-consuming skill of the 

 staff in answering difficult questions. Visiting scientists and other 

 scholars from Europe and South America, as well as from institutions 

 throughout the United States, made more or less extensive reference 

 use of the library, and the sphere of its usefulness was further ex- 

 tended by loans to 94 different libraries. 



There were 1,527 volumes, mostly of serial publications, prepared 

 and sent to the bindery for binding or rebinding, and 1,540 volumes 

 were repaired in the library. Most of these latter were old and rare 

 volumes in the Bureau of American Ethnology which had been ac- 

 quired through the years, not at all because of their rarity, but because 

 they were rich and sometimes unique sources of material on the 

 American Indians. 



The installation of 200 feet of shelving in the National Collection 

 of Fine Arts library helped a little to relieve the congestion there, but 

 was only a temporary palliative to the serious overcrowding that 

 threatens deterioration to many beautiful books, and handicaps the 

 ease of their use. 



