134 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1949 
redistribution of work assignments necessary to meet the emergencies 
of the situation could only be made at the expense of neglecting or 
postponing all but the most immediately demanding of the library’s 
responsibilities. While every effort was made to see that services to 
the scientific staff suffered as little as possible, some irritating delays 
and inconveniences were unavoidable, most noticeably from the 
lack of adequate messenger service. 
There was a heartening improvement in one branch of the service, 
made possible by the promotion of an acquisitions assistant to fill the 
much needed new position of assistant librarian in charge of the 
Astrophysical Observatory library. The position from which the 
promotion was made, however, is one of those still unfilled. 
Even more serious than the vacancy of library positions is the 
housing of the library. For many years the shelves have been so 
badly overcrowded that the shelving of each year’s acquisitions has 
been a matter of makeshift contrivance. ‘To relieve the congestion 
double shelving—that is, two rows of books shelved one behind the 
other on a single shelf—has become a common practice, especially in 
the Natural History building. Whole sections of books in relatively 
less frequent use have had to be shifted to inconvenient locations in 
the attic stacks of the Arts and Industries building where dust and 
dryness are particularly bad. The generally poor arrangements of 
the library’s quarters in all the buildings, too, and the lack of any 
well-equipped space for a centralized collection of the indispensable 
reference books needed in common by all the bureaus of the Institution 
are handicaps to the kind of library service that should be expected 
in the Smithsonian Institution. Until some practical means can be 
found to remedy these and many related bad housing conditions, 
progressive deterioration of books and library service alike is 
inevitable. 
SUMMARIZED STATISTICS 
Accessions 
Total 
recorded 
Volumes volumes 
une 30, 
1949 
Astrophysical Observatory (including Radiation and Organisms) -_-____-_--_- 486 13, 073 
Bureau offAmerican Ethnologys-22 oe ee Se eee 112 34, 719 
National MATT M Gsemni 8s es SRS er a ee ee te ee eee 23 40 
INationalCollectioniotibinerArtst 22st ee eee ee oe ee eee 347 11, 791 
Nation alii semrid- 220 82S i ee ee SES Se ee ee ee ee me 2, 775 243, 666 
National ZoologicalPark= “2020 450. Rie eee eee 13 4, 193 
Smithsonian Deposit at the Library of Congress____..._-..----.------------- 1, 978 580, 651 
Smithsonian’ O fiice 2504. eg Pare a ee a ee a 466 33, 073 
