28 AXXUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAIST INSTITUTION, 1922. 



in clerical or routine work, such as clerks, stenographers, book- 

 keepers, messengers, and skilled laborers, and afterwards to be ex- 

 tended to employees engaged in professional, scientific, technical, 

 administrative, or executive work, or any other work involving 

 for the most part original or constructive effort. This was inauf^i- 

 rated bj^ a survey of all the positions existing in the Museum on 

 November 15, 1921, carefully prepared and submitted to the Bureau 

 of Efficiency. An initial report on the efficiency of each employee 

 was made dating May 15, 1922, and similar reports are to be made 

 every six months hereafter. The installation of this system added 

 considerably to the duties of the officials of the Museum. 



The changing of the system of keeping Government accounts, to 

 make the items of expenditure identical in all Government offices, 

 whether large or small, likewise, temporarily at least, added to the 

 work this year in the administrative office. Efforts were also made 

 toward unifying other business methods of the Government offices 

 generally, as to the handling of supplies, traffic matters, etc. 



BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT. 



The National Museum completely occupies tAvo large and two small 

 buildings, besides considerable space in two other structures. The 

 combined floor space is approximately 670,000 square feet. To keep 

 these buildings in repair requires all the available appropriation, 

 so that radical changes in arrangements, however much needed, are 

 almost impossible. This year by the removal of one partition and 

 the erection of another, two small exhibition halls were added to the 

 floor space for the display of specimens in the Arts and Industries 

 Building, though the storage space was correspondingly diminished. 

 Other repairs consisted, as usual, of repainting of Avails and ceilings 

 in places Avhere most needed, the replacing of certain Avorn-out floors, 

 and repairs to roofs, gutters, etc. The hot-water heating system was 

 extended to the concrete building in the east court of the Natural 

 History Building, replacing the temporary heating arrangements 

 installed there Avhen the structure Avas erected during the AVorld War. 



In the Natural History Building a thorough inA'estigation was 

 made of the dome and the great piers supporting it. The slight 

 displacement of the stone arches Avhich span the piers, the opening 

 of joints at the end of the balustrades under these arches and in the 

 fourth-story floor at the ends of the piers, have been brought about 

 by a movement at the upper end of the piers, doubtless caused by the 

 eccentric application of the .Aveight of the dome. The piers are 

 fully braced by a large number of steel beams to the walls of the 

 building and, since the walls are successfully resisting the pressure 

 from the piers, the moA^ement of the latter, it is belieA^ed, Avill 



