Northwest courtyard. Fine arts. Chief assistant librarian. Superintendent of the reading room. Upon the further consideration that the extension proposed will be also in the interest of architectural symmetry, the Architect of the Capitol has prepared plans for -it, and secured estimates upon them which he will submit in a recommendation to Congress. The interest of Mrs. Frederic Coolidge in the perfection of the auditorium which she has given us extends to the courtyard in which it stands. She has recently contributed the sum of $3,000 for a pool in the center of it which will form a suitable feature in further embellishment of it by shrubs and other foliage. The chief of the music division notes also the appreciated gift of a soundproof room (or rather of soundproofing for the existing inclosure) designed for the trial, with piano, of musical compositions. Constructed by Van Veen & Co., of New York, it is the gift of the president of the Aeolian Co., H. B. Tremaine, Esq. The substitution by the Victor Talking Machine Co., of Camden, N. J., of an Orthophonic machine for the Victrola previously given, together with a large complement of appropriate records, provides us with the latest perfection in such apparatus and the means of expounding it. Among the exhibits of the year mentioned in the report of the division of prints, the most notable was the Joseph Pennell Memorial Exhibition opened on April 2, 1927, and still continued. It was in connection with this that I was privileged to announce Mrs. Pennell's acceptance of the honorary curatorship of the Pennell-Whistler Collections in the Library of Congress in which capacity we shall have the continuing benefit of her expert judgment and counsel. A catalogue of the exhibition was published and also a reprint of Mrs. Pennell's sketch of Mr. Pennell, prepared for an earlier exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. SERVICE The position of chief assistant librarian, vacant since the death of Appleton P. C. Griffin in April, 1926, was on April 1, 1927, filled by the promotion of Frederick W. Ashley, superintendent of the reading room since September 15, 1915, and with a previous varied and appropriate experience in our service since May, 1900. To the post of superintendent of the reading room was advanced at the same date Martin A. Roberts, chief of the accessions division. vision: Charles Included in the statement [see infra Appendix IV] as Manuscript dito the new "chairs" published last spring is a reference Moore. to the departure from our service of Dr. Charles Moore, who having assumed temporary charge of our division of manuscripts in an exigency, has prolonged the relation through a period of 15 years, though always as locum tenens-" acting chief" but who could not be asked to continue further. The important contributions to the collections through his influence and activities are recorded in the annual reports of the division during the period. Though retiring from the Library he continues as chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts, in which capacity the Government will still have the benefit of his service in that development and beautification of Washington which for a quarter of a century he has influentially promoted. Dr. Peter A. Speek, for some years past in charge of the Slavic section, retired from our service on October 1 (1927). His place has been taken by Alexis V. Babine, at an earlier period a member of our staff, who returned to it last June, after a long residence in Russia, succeeded by service at the library of Cornell University. As it was he who 20 years ago, in visits to Krasnoiarsk (Siberia), carried through our negotiations for the Yudin collection, and finally directed the packing and shipment of it, he will now be assuming a responsibility distinctly appropriate. For two years past (beginning September 21, 1925) our service for the blind has had the benefit in its direction of the training and long experience in library and welfare work of Margaret D. McGuffey, who during earlier periods had served the Library as secretary (1905– 1908) and as chief of the order division (1908-9), after a previous responsible work with the public at the Boston Public Library. In September (1927) ill health necessitated her resignation. She died November 16 (1927). The service will suffer seriously from the loss of the intelligence, training, and professional standards which she brought to it, and extended to the promotion of sensible and efficient standardization of such undertakings throughout the country. Slavic section. Service for the blind. Accession divi sion. Guide to French law. Since November 6, 1927, the division of accessions has been in charge of Mr. Linn R. Blanchard, for some years past head cataloguer in the Princeton University library, and previously connected with the Newberry Library, Chicago. Reference was made in my report for 1925 to the action of Yale University in assigning a fellowship in law to the compilation by the recipient of a "Guide " to the law of France, in continuation of the series initiated by Dr. Edwin M. Borchard, while our law librarian. The recipient of the fellowship, Dr. George Wilfred Stumberg, on leave of absence from his professorship of law in the University of Texas, made during June and July of this year an intensive examination of our own collection of French law, after a preliminary study of the field with Professor Borchard in New Haven. He is now spending six months in Paris in the completion of the work. It is hoped to publish the "Guide" next year (see infra "Law library "). INDEXES TO LEGISLATION The report of the legislative reference division notes as actually enacted by Congress at the last session bills for two projects described as desirable in the report for last year, viz, (1) an index to State legislation, i. e., the laws of the several States, and (2) the publication of our index (already existing on cards) to the laws of the United States. An appropriation for the first$40,000 for the ensuing year and a third-was in fact included in the second deficiency bill, and one for the second was intended as an amendment. The bill, failing of passage last spring, is likely to be revived and passed at the outset of the present session. In the case of the index to Federal legislation the appropriation mentioned is but $25,000 as against $50,000, which was the final estimate of cost, and before action under it an amendment may be necessary. The enactment of the bills (upon recommendation of the Committee on the Judiciary) was induced by representations from interests at large-jurists, historians, economists, librarians, and others as to the necessity of the first index and as to the possible general utility of the other if it could be published. Our duty to the record of Federal legislation is obvious; and our index of it under preparation during the past 20 years has been in routine fulfilment of this duty. The legislation of the several States is, however, a matter of primary concern, chiefly to their sister States; so that an index to it might have seemed appropriate for the States themselves in cooperation. The assumption that it could be undertaken effectively only at the National Library, and with Federal appropriations placed at our disposal, seems one further evidence of a conviction that all such bibliographic undertakings, involving a large literature within such a field, must centralize here. ORIENTALIA The recital of accessions to our Chinese collection, as usual, prepared by Dr. Walter T. Swingle, of the Department of Agriculture, to whose extraordinary enthusiasm and exertions we owe all recent developments in this field, will be found in Appendix III. In transmitting it, however, Doctor Swingle appends some general reflections, which are of such pertinent general interest that I quote them here: IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY OF CHINESE BOOKS IN ORDER TO UNDER- At this time, when the Chinese people are going through a very troublous period and when many of the old traditions are rapidly losing force and the newer ideas being taken over from western countries have not yet been sufficiently mastered to give a stable administrative procedure, it is perhaps worth while for thoughtful people the world over to pause for a moment and inquire just what are the qualities of the Chinese people and what have been the methods that have enabled them to maintain for many thousand years, almost uninterruptedly, a very high standard of civilization. Had the Chinese been a barbarous people without printed records they would long ago have been completely studied and thoroughly understood by western peoples, but instead of being barbarous, they are a highly civilized people having a well-developed historical sense and probably the most magnificent set of records to be found in any country in the world. The enormous number and wide scope of these records has operated to keep them practically a sealed book to the western world. Here, indeed, we are in the presence of an embarrassment of riches a mass of documents and of records so colossal that the Chinese collee tion. human mind is appalled in any effort to take an inventory of this gigantic accumulation of records, annals, biographies, practical and scientific treatises, encyclopedias, literary and dramatic works, bibliographies, etc. Furthermore, Chinese civilization has shown certain marked elements of permanency which are conspicuous by their absence from the great civilizations of the west. The great Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, the Sabaean civilization of southern Arabia, that of Egypt, of ancient Greece and finally that of Rome, have collapsed and largely disappeared from the face of the earth. It is only in China that a truly permanent civilization was ever developed, that is, permanent in the sense that it would doubtless have persisted for indefinite millenia had not the western world invaded China both by force of arms and still more effectively by force of ideas, and caused, first the decay and finally the rapid disintegration of the whole Chinese civilization. It would seem worth while, while this ancient civilization still persists, while old-style Chinese scholars, steeped in the lore of past ages, still live, for the world to concern itself actively with the unsurpassed records to be found in China which, if studied by properly qualified scholars, would enable them to present a clear picture of just what were the vital principles of Chinese civilization. Many of the basic discoveries utilized by all modern civilized people were made by the Chinese. The printer's art in its entirety from manufacturing of paper, printer's ink, blocks for printing and movable type, both engraved and cast, to the printing presses themselves, are all without doubt Chinese inventions. Is not printing on paper the basic art of civilization? The art, indeed, which renders civilization possible without which it could not persist in its present form? Centuries ago the Chinese faced, and to a certain extent solved, the problems arising from pressure of population, that nightmare of statisticians and far-sighted statesmen. They have, unlike most other peoples, been able to maintain a stable and orderly society with a relatively high level of intelligence and culture in spite of a pressure of population probably not equaled anywhere else in the world. Doubtless one of the means which permitted them to maintain their relatively high civilization in the face of such an ominous pressure was the adoption, centuries ago, of a truly democratic civil-service system which actually opened all careers, even the highest administrative positions, to any young man, however humble his birth, provided only that he possess sufficient talent. The old-style Chinese examination has been contemptuously dismissed by many western educators who have not taken the trouble to investigate its action carefully by the statement that it did not give adequate training and was occupied with a stereotyped copying of the old traditions as embodied in the classical literature. As a matter of fact, the |