18 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1928 



daily in connection with the Smithsonian deposit, the office library, 

 the Langley aeronautical library, and the libraries of the National 

 Museum and the Astrophysical Observatoiy. The technological 

 library was reorganized, and the reference room was greatly improved 

 and made more attractive, 



A number of special activities were undertaken during the year, 

 including the sorting and distribution of a large accumulation of 

 reprints; the making of a list, preparatory to cataloguing, of some 

 of the special collections, including the Casey, Dall, Gill, Henderson, 

 Lacoe, Roebling, Schaus, Springer, Teller, and Vaux; and work on 

 the reorganization of the west stacks in the Smithsonian Building. 



NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The appropriations for the maintenance of the National Museum 

 totaled $650,960, an increase of $41,640 over the preceding year. A 

 large part of the increase was for the purpose of providing for a 

 much-needed one-rate promotion for the staff, leaving a small sum 

 available for purchase of specimens and certain other necessary mat- 

 ters. A special appropriation of $12,500 permitted the construction 

 of a gallery in the National Herbarium, wdiich was completed during 

 the year, nearly doubling the available space for plants. 



The two most important needs of the Museum to enable it to func- 

 tion efficiently and expand normally are for additional personnel 

 and more adequate housing. There are several groups of collections 

 with no specialist in charge, and in a number of divisions there are 

 no assistants in training to carry on the work when the older men are 

 gone. The two buildings of the Museum are filled to overflowing, 

 both in the exhibition halls and in the study rooms. The older struc- 

 ture, built in 1881, is antiquated and should be replaced by a larger 

 and more modern one, and the newer Natural History Building 

 should be enlarged by the addition of two wings, as originally planned 

 for by the architect. 



Additions to the collections during the year reached the total of 

 832,912 objects, more than twice the number received during the 

 previous year. Specimens given to schools numbered 6,267, and 

 more than 25,000 specimens were loaned to specialists for study. I 

 will mention here only a few of the outstanding accessions, and others 

 will be found listed in the report of the assistant secretary. Ap- 

 pendix 1. 



In the department of anthropology there was received an excellent 

 series of ivory, bone, stone, pottery, and wooden objects representative 

 of the Eskimo culture of Nunivak Island, Alaska, collected by Messrs. 

 Collins and Stewart, of the Museum staff ; a series of objects collected 

 by the Bureau of American Ethnology from a basket-maker village 



