186 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1957 



it financially necessary to charge for them in order to assure continuity 

 of publication. 



There were 22,359 publications sent to the Library of Congress, 

 5,086 of which were books and periodicals to be added to the Smith- 

 sonian Deposit. The others, not individually recorded in the library, 

 were documents, doctoral dissertations, and miscellaneous publications 

 of no immediate interest to the Institution. The library transferred 

 1,474 publications, mostly medical dissertations, to the National 

 Library of Medicine. 



The year's record of cataloging included a total of 4,044 volumes 

 cataloged, 26,184 cards filed, and 23,173 periodicals entered. The cat- 

 alog section had full responsibility for the much-expanded bindery 

 program which was continued for the second year, and 11,900 volumes 

 of periodicals and books, new and old, were prepared and sent to be 

 bound or rebound. Again, through a waiver from the Government 

 Printing Office, the work was done by a commercial binder, under con- 

 tract. The very considerable reduction in the long-standing arrearage 

 of binding during the past 2 years has saved from progressive deteri- 

 oration and possible loss many thousands of hitherto unbound num- 

 bers of important scientific journals, and has greatly increased the 

 ease of use of the journals. By no means to be minimized is the im- 

 proved appearance that fresh, newly bound volumes give to the library 

 shelves. 



The position of bindery assistant skilled in the repair of rare and 

 fragile old books has been vacant since October 1956, and so only 

 321 volumes from among the large number requiring special handling 

 were repaired in the library. It is regrettable that there are now so 

 few available craftsmen skilled in the hand-binding and repair of 

 books. 



The staff of the catalog section continued the work begun last year, 

 partly in connection with the binding program, of sorting and arrang- 

 ing the accumulation of wholly uncataloged or incompletely cata- 

 loged publications in the library of the Bureau of American Ethnol- 

 ogy. Those needed to fill gaps in sets, or found to be otherwise im- 

 portant to the work of the Bureau, were processed, and 4,406 others 

 as well as 1,360 similar pieces culled from the main library shelves 

 were discarded. 



David Ray, foreign language specialist of the catalog section, was 

 called upon frequently by staff members of the Institution to trans- 

 late short letters written in different languages, including Russian, to 

 make resume's, in English, of longer ones, and to give advice about 

 meanings of special words and phrases. Requests for more extensive 

 help, such as translating scientific articles from the Russian, had to 



