of compact: shelving and an independent heating, ventilating, 

 and ait conditioning system to protect the many irreplaceable 

 items that will be housed in the new facility. 



Mr. and Mrs. David Dibner of The Dibner Fund were in- 

 ducted into the Smithsonian's Benefactor's Circle. The Dibner 

 Fund has provided annual support for both the SIL/Dibner 

 Library Resident Scholar Program and a Dibner Library Lec- 

 ture since 1992. The Jaques Admiralty Law Firm of Detroit 

 became a Smithsonian Corporate Member; SIL is the first 

 Smithsonian unit to bring in a corporate member The S. Dillon 

 Ripley Library Endowment Patron Program brought in 

 $18,380 to add to the fund established in 1993. 



In April the Libraries purchased the Charlotte and Lloyd 

 Wineland collection of Native American and western explor- 

 ation litetature with 48 titles (88 volumes) of rare books of 

 singular importance to the study of the American West and 

 Indians of North America, which complements the Libraries' 

 strong Native American collection. In the collection is the 

 first edition of Prince Maximilian's beautifully illustrated 

 Reise in das Innere Nord- America in denjahren 1832 bis 1834 

 (1839— 1841) including the rare map, a work fundamental to 

 the study of early exploration in U.S. western territories. The 

 purchase was made possible through the efforts of the Office 

 of the Secretary, the Office of the Provost, the Libraries, and 

 the National Museum of Natural History and its Anthropology 

 Department. 



The Libraries focused on enhancing the quality of service to 

 the research community of the Institution. A full-time 

 Ubtarian was assigned to the branch libraries at the Anacostia 

 Museum and the Environmental Research Center, and staffing 

 was increased at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute 

 and the National Postal Museum branches. SIL introduced 

 improvements in information access, including expanded 

 services in indexing and abstracting, document delivery, and 

 electronic journals throughout the 17-branch system. With 

 funding from the Getty Trust, staff have created more than 

 10,000 analytic index records on African art ptinted resources, 

 which are available on che Libraries online catalog at 

 (www.sitis.si.edu). Staff members are reviewing the collec- 

 tions housed in the Libraries' Annex, a three-year project that 

 will result in a completely accessible collection, available to 

 the research community, both on site and online. The major 

 area of increased access has been afforded the Libraries 

 through its membership in the Chesapeake Infotmation 

 and Research Library Alliance (CIRLA) of which SIL is a 

 founding member. CIRLA implemented a reciprocal 

 borrowing program which facilitates ditect borrowing for 

 Smithsonian staff from the seven othet member libraries. 

 This service will expedite research through prompt 

 response to loan requests and reduce costs associated with 

 interlibrary loan. Other members of the regional consor- 

 tium are Georgetown University, Howard University, 

 Johns Hopkins University, University of Delaware, Univer- 

 sity of Maryland College Park, the National Agricultural 

 Library, and the Library of Congress. 



Reference librarians in the 17 branch libraries answered 

 52,938 reference questions this year, in addition to an average 

 of 50 inquiries a month teceived at the Libraries' e-mail 

 address. Questions come from various sources: Smithsonian 

 research and program staff, scholars around the wotld, mem- 

 bers of the public, and schoolchildren. Staff handled 32,534 

 tequests fot interlibrary loan, serving Smithsonian staff and 

 fellows as well as library users in public and private facilities, 

 and in college, research, and corporate libraries around the 

 country and the wotld. Each year, the Libraries disttibutes 

 hundreds of copies of English-language translations of scien- 

 tific works published through its Translation Publishing 

 Program. One title, Wild Reindeer by E. E. Sytoechkovskii, 

 was sent to more than 80 libtaries and to scientists in colleges 

 and public libraries from Alaska to West Virginia. Catalog of 

 Type Specimens of Recent Fishes in the National Museum of Natural 

 History is one of the 1997 titles from the Smithsonian Contribu- 

 tions scientific series that is distnbuted to 4,600 exchange 

 partners, 1,818 of which are in the United States, through the 

 Libraries' Gift and Exchange (G&E) Program. Recipients 

 include universities, museums, libraries, and individual 

 scholars, and the number of G&E partners in the United 

 States has increased by more than 600 since 1995. 



The Libraries continues to participate actively in the 

 Capitol Area Preservation Netwotk (CAPNet) which was or- 

 ganized by the Libraries in 1994 to provide a forum for D.C.- 

 area libraries and archives to share preservation information 

 and to promote preservation education through local, affor- 

 dable seminars. On June 10 a CAPNet-sponsored panel 

 discussion addressed problems related to "Those Pesky 

 Accompanying Materials," such as CD-ROMs and floppy 

 discs that are changing the character of library collections, and 

 shared practical suggestions fot storing these nontraditional 

 library materials. Cataloging department staff began to partici- 

 pate in the NACO (Name Authority Cooperative Program), 

 an international proiect with 213 participating libraries that 

 cteate original authority records for inclusion in the Name 

 Authority File maintained by the Library of Congress. Sys- 

 tems office staff oversaw the upgrade of SIRIS (Smithsonian 

 Institution Research Information System) to a new circulation 

 module fot all branch libraries. Staff began to define require- 

 ments for a successor system to SIRIS. Much of the year was 

 spent on improving the Libraries' technical infrastructure. 

 With more than 100 users and 6 gigabytes of data, the SIL 

 local area network (LAN) migrated to a high-end server that 

 supports full data security. All SIL staff migrated to Gtoup- 

 Wise E-mail, and the majority of workstations are now Win- 

 dows-based machines offering users a graphical user interface 

 for their information. 



SIL convened a Digital Library Committee to oversee all 

 aspects of SIL digital products. The Libraries contributed 

 more texts to its Digital Library, available to a worldwide 

 audience at (http://www.sil.si.edu). On March 28 a digital edi- 

 tion of the final List of Publications of the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, Bulletin 200 (End of Series) (1971 print, 1997 digital 



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