REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 105 



editions, the library has had reason to feel especially grateful to the 

 issuing institutions who have sent us voluntarily, or upon request, 

 many needed publications over and above the hundreds distributed 

 regularly in routine exchange. 



CATALOGING 



Current cataloging according to the plan of work adopted last year 

 was well kept up, and it was even possible to do a little recataloging 

 of some of the older, inadequately cataloged material most in demand. 

 The union catalog was considerably improved, and work on it was 

 simplified by adopting some clarifying and labor-saving devices in 

 its arrangement, and by withdrawing from it old donor cards and 

 other extraneous records which were serving no present useful 

 purpose. 



There are still many thousands of volumes of older accessions in 

 the different bureau libraries and in special collections that are not 

 represented in the union catalog at all, and a large number of them, 

 especially those in the Museum library, are not adequately cataloged 

 in the unit catalogs of the bureau libraries themselves. 



Since its founding, almost a hundred years ago, the Smithsonian 

 Institution is so fortunate as to have acquired exceptionally rich col- 

 lections of literature in certain special fields of its interests, notably 

 in anthropology, zoology, botany, and geology, in addition to the pub- 

 lications sent as part of the Smithsonian Deposit to the Library of 

 Congress. Provision for the cataloging of this and other material, 

 mostly in the different bureau and sectional libraries of the Institu- 

 tion, has always lagged so far behind its inflow, through the years, 

 that the large accumulated "backlog" of work to be done on it might 

 almost be termed permanent. Certain it is that it cannot be satisfac- 

 torily reduced within any predictable future time except by a staff 

 of competent catalogers engaged to do it as a special project. 



But only when the library finally has a complete catalog of all the 

 Institution's books, so that it is possible to know exactly what and 

 where they are, can it be the scholarly tool and can its staff give the 

 fully effective service that contemporary scientific and technical 

 research requires. 



duplicates 



The resources of the library's large collections of duplicates and of 

 other publications on subjects not pertinent to the work of the Institu- 

 tion continue to be drawn upon by other Government libraries, and 

 many parts needed for the completion of sets of scientific serials 

 have been supplied to them. More than 6,000 of these publications, 



