APPENDIX 9 



KEPORT ON THE LIBRARY 



Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on tlie ac- 

 tivities of the Smithsonian library for the fiscal year ended June 30, 

 1936: 



THE LIBRARY 



The Smithsonian library, or library system, comprises 10 major 

 and 35 minor units, each an important instrument in the work of 

 the Institution or of one of its affiliated bureaus. They are as fol- 

 lows: The main library, or the Smithsonian deposit in the Library 

 of Congress — a collection which, while somewhat general in char- 

 acter, is chiefly scientific and technical and contains extensive files 

 of monographs and serials, American and foreign, including the 

 reports, proceedings, and transactions of many learned societies and 

 institutions; the library of the United States National Museum, 

 which also concerns itself largely with natural history and tech- 

 nology, and has more or less closely connected with it the 35 sectional 

 libraries of administration, administrative assistant's office, agricul- 

 tural history, anthropology, archeology, biology, birds, botany, 

 echinoderms, editor's office, engineering, ethnology, fishes, foods, 

 geology, graphic arts, history, insects, invertebrate paleontology, 

 mammals, marine invertebrates, medicine, minerals, mollusks, organic 

 chemistry, paleobotany, photography, physical anthropology, prop- 

 erty clerk's office, reptiles and batrachians, superintendent's office, 

 taxidermy, textiles, vertebrate paleontology, and wood technology; 

 the library of the Bureau of American Ethnology, concerned with 

 the history, life, and culture of the early peoples of the Americas, 

 notably the North American Indians ; the library of the Astrophysi- 

 cal Observatory, on astrophysics and meteorology ; the library of the 

 Freer Gallery of Art, related to the special interests of the Freer 

 Gallery, namely, the art and culture of the Far East, India, Persia, 

 and the nearer East, and the art of James McNeill Wliistler and 

 other American painters, and containing the celebrated Biblical 

 manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries, known as the Wash- 

 ington Manuscripts; the library of the National Gallery of Art, on 

 the fine arts of Europe and America; the Langley aeronautical 

 library — the famous collection of aeronautical publications, many of 

 them very rare, that once belonged to Samuel Pierpont Langley, 



112059—37 7 ga 



