Oct. 1902. 



Annual Report of the Director. 



91 



Departmental Inventorying, Cataloguing and Labeling. — All speci- 

 mens received by the Department of Geology have been numbered 

 and catalogued as received, and all descriptive data regarding them 

 filed. The Curator of this department reports steady and nota- 

 ble progress in labeling, both new specimens and in replacing 

 old written labels with printed ones. Over 700 labels were provided 

 for the collection of gold and silver ores, the data being obtained by 

 a careful study of each specimen so that a statement of the minerals 

 it contained might be made upon the label. Each label was made of 

 a size to correspond with that of the front of the block upon which 

 the specimen was mounted. The systematic rock collection to the 

 number of 1,500 specimens was supplied throughout with printed, in 

 place of written labels. The paleontological collection has received 

 labels for the larger part of such specimens as were mounted upon 

 tablets, 2,200 having been made. Sixty-five case labels have also 

 been prepared and about 600 miscellaneous ones. 



The question of properly labeling the economic collections in the 

 Department of Botany has occupied much thought during the past year. 

 Experiments have been made which have led through the following 

 series of considerations, to a final unification of the labels throughout 

 this department. In referring to these experiments Mr. Millspaugh, 

 head of the department, says: ''From observation at various times 

 of the movements of people who were examining the collections, 

 it would seem that the first impulse covering the majoiity of museum 

 visitors is that of curiosity, the second interest and the third a desire 

 for education. Premising the truth of these conclusions, it was 

 decided that the installation of a case should be such as to excite 

 sufficient curiosity in the people who approach it as to attract their 

 attention to it as a whole. The principles involved in such installa- 

 tions are, as I take it, a neat and well ordered arrangement of the 

 specimens not detracted from by strongly contrasting, obtrusive, 

 'sharply defined label cards, scattered about in a confusing, disorderly 

 manner. Next, the individual specimens composing the elements of 

 the complete installation should be rendered as attractive as possible 

 without materially affecting their individual character and natural 

 sequence, in order that, having been attracted by the whole, the 

 observer may be interested in some one or all of the specimens 

 exhibited therein. It is now for the first time important that the 

 labels should become apparent to the eye as an integral part of the 

 specimens, and that they should be of such character as to invite 

 reading; plainly typed and condensed; comprehensible to the aver- 

 age reader rather than abstrusely scientific; short, pithy and direct." 



