The amount expended for salaries ($102,552.47) includes the sum of $4,680 paid in salaries to certain employees who have been classifying and crediting the old deposits received prior to 1897. This expenditure is chargeable to arrears. The current expenses of the Office are therefore considerably more than met by the current receipts.

The above statement includes all disbursements except the cost of furniture, of printing, and of binding, but only cash receipts. In addition to cash fees, the copyright business brings each year to the government, in articles deposited, property to the value of many thousands of dollars. During the past fiscal year 201,802 such articles were received. The value of those drawn up into the collections of the Library far exceeded the amount of net cash earnings.

The work of the Copyright Office is divided into two parts: (1) The current business, covering applications received since the reorganization of the Office under the Register in 1897; (2) The arrears, the classification, crediting, and indexing of the entries and deposits prior to 1897 (i. e., from 1870, when the copyright business was first placed under the Librarian of Congress).

right business

On the 10th day of July, 1916, when the report of the Current Copyright Office was submitted, the remittances received up to the third mail of the day had been recorded and acknowledged; the account books of the bookkeeping division were written up and posted to June 30, and the accounts rendered to the Treasury Department were settled up to and including the month of June, while earned fees to June 30, inclusive, had been paid into the Treasury. All copyright applications received up to and including June 30 had been passed upon and refunds made.

The total unfinished business for the full 19 years from July 1, 1897, to June 30,-1916, amounts to but $1,383.27, against a total completed business for the same period of $1,649,776.15.

сору

REPORT

OF

THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Washington, D. C., December 4, 1916

SIR: I have the honor to submit herewith my report as Librarian of Congress for the year ending June 30, 1916. The report of the Superintendent of the Library Building and Grounds (and Disbursing Officer) follows, beginning at That of the Register of Copyrights is, as usual, page 153. attached as Appendix II.

It had been my purpose to devote the (customary) introductory paragraphs to a consideration of the present state of our collections; i. e., an estimate of our resources in material as compared with the total to which we owe a duty. To be significant, however, and truly instructive, such an estimate must involve considerable detail; and the inclusion of it, added to the necessary statements of routine, would, it was found, add unduly to the bulk of the report. I therefore In its stead I insert a somereserve it for a later occasion.

what full analysis of the operations of the Legislative Reference Service, which in completing its second year has completed also the period (a long, added to a short, session) which seemed necessary as a test of its utility. But I relegate this to the end of the report, so that the customary statistics of routine may be encountered promptly.

64394-16-2

7

SERVICE

There have been no new appointments to important positions. The return, however, of Mr. J. David Thompson, who was able to resume his work in the Legislative Reference Division at the opening of the session, assured to the conduct of that Division the qualities I had noted in my last Report as so invaluable. Upon his recommendation the work itself was more definitely subdivided, questions involving law, to which he has given particular oversight, being assigned to one group of investigators, and the rest to another. Among the higher assistants in the Division the only important change has been the substitution of Dr. P. A. Speek for Dr. J. G. Ohsol, who resigned in January to accept a higher salary with the Federal Trade Commission.

I must note, however, as a loss to one branch of the work— the indexing the death, last May, of Mrs. A. M. Munson. She was no longer directly in our service, but the qualities which she had shown in it-the specific work she had done in it--had left her in effect a continuing part of its structure. And her interest and good will were such that we should have had recourse to her in any problem requiring outside counsel. The combination in her of a thorough preliminary education, a specialized training, a free and flexible intelligence, a power of close application, and a precision in detail, was notably adapted to work such as this. And her death is a severe deprivation to the scientific treatment of the problems which it presents.

The death in November last of the Chief of our Division of Prints, Mr. A. J. Parsons, was followed within a few weeks by that of one of his three chief assistants, Miss Lucy Ogden, who had been many years in the Division; a woman of cultivation, refined and rendered definite by foreign travel, an intelligent and loyal worker, and with the pleasantest of dispositions toward her associates and the public.

For the conduct of the Division the Library fortunately did not have to go outside to seek a successor to Mr. Parsons, for in Prof. Richard A. Rice it had at hand an expert perfectly equipped who was willing to bridge over the exigency. He is now, therefore, Acting Chief of the Division, and as such extends to its operations as a whole the counsel and direction that for some years past he has rendered to its development in certain branches.

The Chief Cataloguer, referring to resignations, makes appreciative mention of the service of two of his assistants-Mrs. A. F. Stevens and Miss Julia Gregory-who for years have been a main reliance in the higher technical work of that Division. I heartily concur in the appreciation-the more because it is not merely in itself just, but recognizes a type of service little obvious to the general public but, in a research library, fundamental and farreaching in its consequences; for while a question answered at the Issue Desk may have but a single and momentary importance, a specification given in a catalogue contains a direction which is permanent, and in our catalogue cards, which become part of the apparatus of over 2,000 libraries, becomes also widely influential.

The call upon the National Guard for active service at the border drew from our staff at the outset no less than 17 employees. Twelve were retained in active service and their places in the Library are being held for them. Of the twelve, seven were from the Copyright Office.

Among other changes (merely regrading) in the Copyright Office, some were incidental to the departure from our Service, on May 6, of Ernest Bruncken, who, since November 1, 1909, had occupied the position of Assistant Register-except for the period of the second session of the Sixty-third Congress (through June, 1915), when he was temporarily assigned to the Legislative Reference Division. His place has been