160 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



sent for credit to the United States Book Exchange in the Library of 

 Congress. Incoming publications found to be unneeded duplicates 

 were disposed of as promptly and as usefully as possible. 



By agreement with the Library of Congress, some hundreds of pub- 

 lications, forming part of the Langley Aeronautical Library that had 

 been sent as part of the Smithsonian Deposit to the Library of Con- 

 gress in 1930 and later, were returned to the Institution for incorpora- 

 tion in the library of the National Air Museum. 



Records of the catalog section show that 4,234 books were cataloged 

 and that 22,473 periodicals were entered. There were 31,156 new 

 catalog cards filed. A good deal of further progress was made in the 

 work of combining into a single comprehensive dictionary catalog 

 the formerly separately maintained Smithsonian union catalog and 

 the Museum catalog. More than 172,000 cards were handled in the 

 process of revising, reconciling discrepancies, and integrating the 

 records. It is hoped that this important work may be finished during 

 the coming year. 



There is no arrearage in the cataloging of the routine inflow of cur- 

 rent acquisitions, but the arrearage in the cataloging of special collec- 

 tions mounts with each such acquisition. Not increasing, but also not 

 being reduced, is the arrearage of cataloging of many hundreds of 

 other volumes in bureau and sectional libraries throughout the insti- 

 tution, which badly needs to be done. In all, there are estimated to 

 be about 153,000 volumes that are either not represented in the main 

 library catalog at all, or of which the records, made many years ago, 

 are now so obsolete as to make their exact identification and present 

 location uncertain. The library staff must have more help before 

 these conditions can be rectified. 



Circulation records show that 11,654 publications were borrowed 

 for use outside the library. This figure does not include 6,219 new 

 books and current numbers of periodicals assigned to sectional 

 libraries for circulation and filing. 



So large a part of the library's collections are decentralized among 

 unstaffed bureau and sectional libraries, housed in many different 

 parts of four separate buildings, that no statistical records can be 

 kept of the very intensive use made of these thousands of books on 

 highly specialized subjects. There is direct access to the stacks in the 

 main library, too, and readers make large use of this privilege, but 

 no count of the number of persons entering the stacks or of how many 

 books they consult there is attempted. 



That the services of the library are by no means limited to the 



