REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 97 



received, after being duly entered on the records. During the fiscal 

 year 2,886 of these were catalogued and accessioned, consisting of 

 1,736 volumes, 301 parts of volumes, 805 pamphlets, and 44 charts, 

 thereby extending the accession numbers from 525,256 to 527,150. 

 Several thousand publications remained unaccessioned at the close 

 of the year, owing to a position of cataloguer being vacant for over 

 nine months. The existing practice of transferring to the Library 

 of Congress, without stamping or recording, public documents re- 

 ceived in exchange for Smithsonian publications, mainly of a sta- 

 tistical character, has been continued, with the result that 2,349 were 

 forwarded in this manner. 



During the year the titles of 757 new publications were added to 

 the catalogue. Want cards to the number of 535 for series in the 

 Smithsonian division at the Library of Congress were considered, 

 with the result that 154 volumes, 571 parts of volumes, and 51 title- 

 pages were secured, thus completing 44 sets to date. There were re- 

 ceived from the periodical division 105 cards, action on which re- 

 sulted in securing 9 volumes, 79 parts of volumes, and 32 title-pages ; 

 and in response to 32 cards from the order division, 28 volumes and 

 12 parts were obtained. 



The number of dissertations and technological publications re- 

 ceived showed a marked decrease over previous years. They were 

 contributed by the following: 



Kejserliga Alexanders-Universitet i Finland. 



Technische Hochschule, Breslau. 



Kongliga Tekniska Hogskolan, Stockholm. 



University of Wiirzburg. 



University of Breslau. 



Koniglich Sachsische Technische Hochschule, Dresden. 



Office reference library. — The accessions for the office library, 

 which includes the Astrophysical Observatory and the National Zoo- 

 logical Park, amounted to 1,025 publications, distributed as follows: 

 Office library, 899 volumes and pamphlets; Astrophysical Observa- 

 tory, 55 volumes, 18 parts of volumes, and 39 pamphlets; National 

 Zoological Park, 11 volumes and- 3 pamphlets. 



Reading room. — The reading room has now about 311 foreign and 

 domestic periodicals, which have been in constant use by the staff 

 and members of the scientific bureaus of the Government. During 

 the year 3,701 publications from the reading and reference rooms 

 were in circulation, of which 3,367 were single numbers of periodicals 

 and 334 were bound volumes. 



The aeronautical library. — The aeronautical library is probably 

 one of the most complete series on the subject in the United States, 

 and the policy has been to maintain it as such. 



