134 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 30 



RADIATION AND ORGANISMS LIBRARY 



The library of radiation and organisms, which was established in 

 1929 as a major unit of the Smithsonian library system to meet 

 the needs of a brancli of research recently organized under a separate 

 division of the Institution, made satisfactory progress during the 

 year. An excellent working nucleus of reference books was obtained 

 for it, and arrangements were made to receive regularly the out- 

 standing magazines in the field of the division's special interest. A 

 dictionary card catalogue was begun for the collection. At the end of 

 the year the library numbered 74 volumes, 8 pamphlets, and 6 charts, 

 besides about a hundred unbound periodicals. 



LANGLEY AERONAUTICAL LIBRARY 



During the year the Institution's famous collection of aeronautical 

 publications, known as the Langley aeronautical library, was re- 

 moved from the main hall of the Smithsonian Building, where it 

 had been kept for many years, to the Library of Congress. There, 

 with other and larger collections of its kind, it will be more cen- 

 trally available to the technician and historian as well as the general 

 student. 



The collection will be under the immediate supervision of the 

 chief of the newly organized division of aeronautics, in the develop- 

 ment of which the Guggenheim fund has recently taken a generous 

 interest. But it will remain a unit of the Smithsonian library sys- 

 tem — a second deposit in the Library of Congress, distinct from the 

 main unit of that system known as the Smithsonian deposit, but 

 subject to the same conditions that Congress specified in providing 

 for the establishment of the older and larger deposit. Its identity 

 will be shown by a special stamp and book plate, and the collection 

 will continue to bear the name of the Langley aeronautical library 

 and will be increased from time to time by sendings from the 

 Smithsonian — it being the desire of the Institution to preserve the 

 collection as an independent and growing memorial to its third 

 secretary, whose work marked the beginning of the scientific study 

 of aeronautics in the United States. 



Many of the library's rarest items once belonged to Secretary 

 Langley; others to such well-known investigators and experimenters 

 as Alexander Graham Bell, Octave Chanute, and James Means. 

 The library numbers 1,734 volumes and 923 pamphlets and includes 

 files of most of the early aeronautical magazines, together with a 

 large number of photographs, letters, and newspaper clippings. It 

 was increased the past year by 37 volumes, 3G2 parts of volumes, 

 and 85 pamphlets. 



