Relation of the Federal Government to Research 



243 



the majority with the new characters of a modified and 

 simplified "Cyrillic" alphabet, introduced by that Em- 

 peror and remaining in the Ivussian language to our 

 day. 



The Russian collection is especially rich in the classes 

 of bibliography, historj-, and belles-lettres. Among 

 its source material it has complete sets of the Russian 

 chronicles and the publications of Russian historical 

 societies. It also has very large sets of the most im- 

 portant periodicals published in Russia during the last 

 150 years. 



In the class of belles-lettres, the collection contains 

 the works of almost all the chief Russian novelists, 

 poets, short-story writers, dramatists, critics, and his- 

 torians of literature for a period of over 100 years; 

 among those works there are many first and early 

 editions of the Russian classics. 



The great interest of the Yudin collection proper 

 lies in the material relating to Siberia, the Far East, 

 and Alaska, which provides important material for the 

 study of Russian discoveries, early settlements, adminis- 

 tration, trade, economic condition, and the spread of 

 Cliristianity in those territories. 



Service for the Blind 



The Service for the Blind has custody of 35,733 

 volumes in embossed types (Braille, Moon, etc.) and 

 709 containers of talking book records. It cooperates 

 with the American Red Cross in placing many titles 

 in hand-copied Braille. The Red Cross also conducts 

 courses in teaching of Braille. 



The project. Books for the Adult Blind, has the re- 

 sponsibility for selecting and having books embossed in 

 raised type and for furnishing talking book records. 

 Congress appropriates annually $100,000 for books in 

 embossed types and $175,000 for talking book records. 

 Through grants of $679,000 from President Roosevelt 

 under Emergency Relief Acts, this project is lending 

 about 17,300 talking book machines to the needy adult 

 blind. 



The Hispanic Room 



In 1927, Mr. Archer M. Huntington of New York 

 City established in the Library of Congress an endow- 

 ment of $100,000, the income of which is applicable 

 to the purchase of books, not more than 10 years old, 

 relating to Spanish, Portuguese, and South American 

 arts, crafts, literature, and history. In the following 

 year, Mr. Huntington established a fund of $50,000 

 to provide a consultant in the field of Hispanic litera- 

 ture. There remained but one step to complete this 

 series of gifts. Within the past year an anonymous 

 donor made possible the equipment and maintenance 

 of a room in which may be assembled our important 

 holdings and later accessions in the Hispanic fields, 



with a view of concentrating there the studies and 

 lesearches in connection with them. This room (plans 

 for which have been prepared under direction of the 

 Architect of the Capitol by Paul P. Cret) is now 

 (April 1938) in process of preparation. The collec- 

 tions in Hispanic fields which will be brought together 

 here will far exceed those existing in any other Ameri- 

 can library. 



Collections of Philosophy and Psychology 



Philosophy and psychology comprise a body of lit- 

 erature in the Library of Congress consisting of about 

 45,000 volumes. These works are grouped under the 

 general classification of philosophy. In one respect 

 at least, that classification might very well be revised, 

 for the subordination of psychology to philosophy is 

 nominal rather than real. In the grouping of books on 

 the shelves works on psychology constitute, as a matter 

 of fact, a group coordinate with and not subordinate 

 to philosophy. Although the literature of laboratory 

 and experimental psychology might, on account of 

 its methods, very well be grouped with certain of the 

 sciences, that separation of the relatively recent litera- 

 ture has been found (at least for the present) to be 

 undesirable and impracticable. Consequently, works 

 in phychology, including experimental and laboratory 

 psychology, are placed on the shelves as a separate 

 group, located conveniently near the writings with 

 which, both in life and literature, they have been tra- 

 ditionally related, i. e., with works on epistemology, 

 ethics, and aesthetics. Certain exceptions, however, 

 to this classification have been made. Psychological 

 writings which are ancillary to a science, that is, whose 

 principal aim is to aid in the solution of problems in 

 medicine, sociology, psychiatry, or in the physiology 

 of the nervous system or in the functions of various 

 glands, are, in the Library of Congress, classified with 

 these several sciences. In the public catalogue, of 

 course, all of the literature of psychology, wherever' 

 it may be housed in the Library, is conveniently 

 brought together and properly organized under its 

 various subject-headings. Consequently, there would 

 be for the practical convenience of Library users little 

 or no gain in undertaking to separate from the general 

 mass of psychological literature that part which experi- 

 mentalists might regard as scientific. 



The Library's equipment for the systematic study 

 of the history of philosophical theories, both occi- 

 dental and oriental (there are more than 170.000 vol- 

 umes in the Library's Chinese collection, also a con- 

 siderable collection of Sanskrit works), is very exten- 

 sive. The classical writers are represented in stand- 

 ard editions, frequently in numerous editions, and these 

 editions are supplemented by the most approved com- 



