92 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



Japanese art : 



Bronze 3 



Lacquer 72 



Paintings , 171 



Pottery 124 



Wood sculpture 2 



Korean art : 



Bronze 1 



Pottery 18 



Near Eastern art: 



Bookbindings 25 



Crystal 3 



Glass 12 



Manuscripts 32 



Metalwork 68 



Paintings 173 



Pottery 59 



Stone sculpture 5 



Tibetan art : 



Paintings 2 



LIBRARY 



The library was reopened to the public on December 19, 1955, after 

 being closed for a year for installation of steel stacks and decoration. 

 The folio shelves are especially appreciated, as the many elephant 

 volumes are now shelved not more than two to a shelf. These major 

 improvements in the library facilities are due to the initiative and 

 imagination of the librarian, Mrs. Bertha M. Usilton, who devised all 

 the plans for the new arrangement and saw them to completion. 



The geographic breakdown of Far East, Near East, South Asia, 

 West, and Orient was discontinued in the reshelving. The Dewey 

 decimal classification scheme controls these breakdowns in the various 

 categories in the Western languages. Orientalia are cataloged and 

 shelved separately as before. A thorough reading of the shelves in 

 the shelving process revealed that only 15 books can be termed "lost" 

 in the 33 years of the library's history. 



The library is the laboratory of the entire staff, and it is here that 

 data for correct attribution, comparative material, and recorded 

 facts can be searched for and found. It has research material of the 

 greatest value in the realm of Oriental art. Welcome gifts from 

 scholars and learned institutions included a reproduction of the world 

 by the twelfth-century geographer Idrisi, received from the Embassy 

 of Iraq. An autographed letter of Mr. Whistler written to Thomas 

 Way was purchased. Books, pamphlets, and periodicals now number 

 35,000. 



Despite the fact that the number of the year's accessions was greater 

 than the previous year, and the added labor of moving into new 

 stacks, the accessioning and cataloging have been kept up to date. 



