APPENDIX 11 

 KEPORT ON THE LIBRARY 



Sir : I have the honor to submit the following report on the activities 

 of the Smithsonian library for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1947 : 



In this second postwar year of rehabilitation the work of the library 

 was not greatly different in kind or amount from that of the previous 

 year. Books are integral parts of the world of practical affairs as well 

 as of ideas, and their production, distribution, and use, as well as their 

 conception, follow the changing times. With the coming of peace 

 there began a rise, not as yet very sharp, in the number of new books and 

 serials important for the library to acquire. Prices rose and are still 

 rising. The purchasing power of the inelastic allotment of book funds 

 has correspondingly decreased. Paper shortages continued to limit 

 the size of editions, and not a few new books went so quickly out of 

 print as to make it diiRcult to get those for which prepublication orders 

 had not been placed. Many fine and desirable works came into the old 

 book market but prices were too high and funds too small to make it 

 possible to buy more than a few of those most immediately important to 

 the work of the Institution. 



Among the more noteworthy of the 1,693 purchased books were the 

 following : Description Methodique du Musee Ceramique de la Manu- 

 facture Royale de Sevres, by Alexandre Brongiart and others, 1845 ; 

 Mammals of Amazonia, by Eladio da Cruz Lima, volume 1, 1945; 

 A Monogi-aph of Oriental CicadAdae^ by William Lucas Distant, 2 

 volumes, 1889-92; Histoire de la Locomotion Terrestre, les Chemins 

 de Fer, by Charles Dollf uss and Edgar de Geoffroy, 2 volumes, 1935 ; 

 Illustrationes Florae in Insularum Maris Pacifici, by Emmanual 

 Drake del Castillo, 6 portfolios, 1886-92 ; The Royal Commentaries of 

 Peru, written originally in Spanish by Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca, 

 and rendered into English by Sir Paul Rycaut, 1688; Histoire et 

 Technique de la Montre Suisse de ses Origines a Nos Jours, 1945 ; The 

 Etched Work of Whistler, Illustrated by Reproductions in Collotype 

 of the Different States of the Plates, compiled, arranged, and described 

 by Edward G. Kennedy, 1 volume of text and 3 portfolios of plates, 

 1910; The Artists of America, a Series of Biographical Sketches of 

 American Artists, with Portraits and Designs on Steel, by C. Ed- 

 wards Lester, 1846 ; The New World ; the First Pictures of America, 

 made by John White and Jacques Le Moyne and engraved by Theodore 

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