Report 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, 1957 : 



The 54,316 publications received during the year included purchases 

 and gifts, but the larger number of them came, as usual, from scien- 

 tific, technical, and cultural institutions and societies all over the 

 world, in exchange for publications of the Smithsonian Institution. 

 These exchange publications, foreign and domestic, especially the 

 files of scientific serials, form the backbone of the library's collec- 

 tions and are the principal primary sources of information upon 

 which the library's services to the Institution are based. There were 

 87 new exchanges arranged this year. 



Many friends of the Institution gave books and papers to the library. 

 Among the 7,972 publications so received were L. L. Buchanan's gift 

 of 475 books and many bulletins, pamphlets, and separates from his 

 own private scientific library ; Frank Morton Jones's gift of 39 vol- 

 umes on Psychidae ; and Mrs. George P. Merrill's gift of 100 volumes 

 from the library of her late husband, formerly head curator of geol- 

 ogy. Harold J. Coolidge most generously turned over to the library 

 some 400 handsome publications of the Institut des Pares Nationaux 

 du Congo Beige, with the privilege of selecting anything needed to fill 

 gaps in our own sets, the remainder to be sent to a designated library 

 on the west coast. 



From among the much larger number of recommended titles, funds 

 permitted the purchase of only 621 books and subscriptions for 475 

 periodicals not obtainable in exchange. These were the reference 

 books and journals most urgently needed for the common use of all, 

 and the most important of the primary sources of information in 

 special subject areas of the Institution's researches and curatorial 

 responsibilities. The list of desiderata of books, new and old, that 

 it would be useful and time-saving for the curators and other special- 

 ists to have immediately at hand continues to grow. The expanding 

 program of work and the many new projects being initiated in the 

 Institution find many subjects inadequately covered by the literature 

 in the library, and there are serious gaps in the working collections 

 that ought to be filled. Unfortunately, the prices of books and peri- 

 odicals continue to rise, and a good many institutions and societies 

 that formerly sent their journals freely in exchange, or gratis, now find 



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