field research in action wirhin a wide variety of natural 

 habitats. 



SERC also continued a very successful work/learn intern- 

 ship program for undergraduate and beginning graduate stu- 

 dents. This is a competitive international program. 

 Prospective interns apply to work with a SERC staff scientist 

 or educator on a specific project. In addition, SERC staff and 

 facilities attracted a large number of graduate students, post- 

 doctoral fellows, and visiting scientists. 



Smithsonian Institution Libraries 



Barbara J. Smith, Director 



The Getty Grant Program awarded the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution Libraries support for a three-year pro]ect to create an 

 Online Index and Finding Guide to the Literature of African 

 Art and Culture which is being developed for access on the 

 Internet as part of the Libraries' online catalog. Responding 

 to the public's growing interest in non-Western art, the index 

 of 52,000 citations was created by Janet L. Stanley, National 

 Museum of African Art Branch Librarian, to identify source 

 materials in this expanding field. 



The Libraries' online catalog has been available on the 

 Internet since January at telnet:\\siris. si.edu: and a second edi- 

 tion of a CD-ROM of the Libraries' catalog, Smithsonian On 

 Disc, was published by G. K. Hall, Macmillan. This year the 

 Libraries launched an Electronic Republishing program with 

 a pilot project funded by the Institution's Atherton Seidell 

 Endowment. The full, searchable text of two volumes in the 

 Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology series of Native 

 American anthropology studies is being prepared for elec- 

 tronic dissemination and will be available on the Libraries' 

 World Wide Web site to Internet users around the world, 

 making a contribution to The National Digital Library. 



All eighteen branch libraries now offer users access to the 

 World Wide Web, and several branches have created Home 

 Pages with links to external reference materials. Branch staff 

 held training sessions to assist the Smithsonian research com- 

 munity in making use of the resources from all over the world 

 now available electronically. The Libraries' CD-ROM Net- 

 work, accessible in most branches and in many Institution of- 

 fices, was upgraded to increase the number of CD-ROMs that 

 are available to users at one time. An agreement with the Li- 

 brary of Congress has expedited access to and delivery of mate- 

 rials from that facility to Smithsonian library users. The 

 Management and Systems Division's Shipping and Receiving 

 section decreased turn-around time for library materials by 

 processing shipments using a new automated system. Thanks 

 to a grant from the Smithsonian Women's Committee, the Li- 

 braries now has software to enlarge type on the screen so that 

 visually impaired users can read from the screen, and thereby 



access computer-based information, including the Libraries' 

 online catalog and databases from the CD-ROM Network. 

 SIL also purchased a closed-circuit rv enlarger to give visually 

 impaired library users access to printed material. The equip- 

 ment was installed in the Museum Reference Center, a cen- 

 trally located branch on the Mall. 



A major event in 1995 was the opening of new and reno- 

 vated facilities at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute 

 (STRI) Branch Library in Panama, both funded by the Tupper 

 Foundation. A new Library Annex provides four levels of 

 stacks to house the collections, and the library building itself 

 was renovated to provide better services for STRI Branch 

 Library, the premiere Central American research library for 

 the scientific community since 1956. These facilities will assist 

 Libraries staff in serving the 18,000 library users who come an- 

 nually, including an international body of students in the nat- 

 ural sciences and anthropology, and students in biological 

 sciences ftom the University of Panama. 



The installation of compact shelving in the Dibner Library 

 of the History of Science and Technology (located in the Mu- 

 seum of American History) has doubled the stack size, in- 

 creased work space for staff, brought the facility into 

 conformance with the American with Disabilities Act regula- 

 tions, and upgraded the electrical system connections for 

 researchers' computers. New dataloggers — electronic hygro- 

 thermographs that can be read from a remote location ■ — in 

 the Libraries' rare book locations have brought greater effi- 

 ciency to the crucial task ot monitoring the environmental 

 conditions in those areas accurately. The Women's Committee 

 provided funds for rare-book foam supports that ensure 

 proper handling of rare books during use by researchers. In 

 May the Libraries appointed William E. Baxter head of its 

 Special Collections Department. 



The Smithsonian Institution Libraries' exhibition Science 

 and the Artist's Book, co-sponsored by the Washington Proiect 

 for the Arts, explores how scientific ideas can stimulate artis- 

 tic creation. The year-long show displays original artist's 

 books inspired by and displayed with pioneenng scientific 

 studies from the rare-book collections of SIL's Dibner Library 

 of the History of Science and Technology. The exhibition, 

 curated by book artist Carol Barton and the Libraries' Rare 

 Book Cataloguer Diane Shaw, opened at two venues, Patt I in 

 the Libraries Exhibition Gallery located in the National Mu- 

 seum of American History, and Part 2 at the Washington Proi- 

 ect for the Arts, the co-sponsor, in late May. This cooperative 

 effort featured twenty-seven original artist's books created spe- 

 cifically for this show by leading book artists from around the 

 country displayed with majot publications in the history of 

 science and technology from the Dibner Library. Twenty-two 

 of the participating artists attended the opening reception. 

 Supported by the Glen Eagles Foundation and the 

 Smithsonian's Special Exhibition Fund, the exhibition honors 

 the gift of the Dibner Library in 1976 and focuses on one of 

 the Libraries' core strengths, the history of science and tech- 

 nology. The exhibition was featured in the illusttated article, 



51 



