24 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
Committee on printing and publication —The advisory committee 
on printing and publication under the Smithsonian Institution has 
continued to examine manuscripts proposed for publication by the 
branches of the Institution and has considered various questions con- 
cerning public printing and binding. ‘Twenty meetings of the com- 
mittee were held during the year and 121 manuscripts were passed 
upon. The personnel of the committee during the year was as fol- 
lows: Dr. Frederick W. True, Assistant Secretary of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, chairman; Dr. C. G. Abbot, Director of the 
Astrophysical Observatory; Dr. Frank Baker, Superintendent of the 
National Zoological Park; Mr. A. Howard Clark, editor of the 
Smithsonian Institution, secretary of the committee; Mr. F. W. 
Hodge, Ethnologist-in-charge of the Bureau of American Ethnol- 
ogy; Dr. George P. Merrill, head curator of geology, United States 
National Museum; and Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, head curator of 
biology, United States National Museum. 
Distribution of publications.—In accordance with the law enacted 
August 23, 1912, requiring that all Government publications be 
mailed from the Government Printing Office, the Smithsonian Re- 
port and publications of the United States National Museum and 
the Bureau of American Ethnology have since been distributed 
direct from the Government Printing Office. 
LIBRARY. 
The library of the Smithsonian Institution is its most valuable 
single possession. The number of publications of learned societies 
and of periodicals and other works pertaining to pure and applied 
science which have been brought together by the Institution since 
its organization aggregates more than half a million titles. In 
1866 many of the scientific works in the library were transferred for 
various administrative reasons to the Library of Congress, where 
they form the Smithsonian deposit, which is constantly being in- 
creased by new accessions. The number of additions to the deposit 
during the past year was 32,195 pieces, including 20,603 periodicals, 
3,765 volumes, 1,729 parts of volumes, 5,755 pamphlets, and 348 
charts. 
In the Smithsonian and Museum buildings there are retained such 
books of the Smithsonian Library as are needed for reference in 
scientific investigations, and there is maintained a reading room, 
where the current numbers of nearly 300 foreign and domestic scien- 
tific periodicals are on file for consultation by students in general 
and by the staff of the Institution and its branches. 
In the main hall of the Smithsonian building steel stacks are being 
constructed for the better care and preservation of the libraries of 
the Government bureaus under the Institution. 
