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The accessions of books and pamphlets during the past ACCESSIONS: two years, in detail, classified by source, were as follows:

Books and pamphlets by

sources

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By transfer froin U. S. Government libraries...
From the Public Printer by virtue of law. .. ..

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Library of Congress publications (specially bound)..

Gain of volumes by separation in binding, and by binding of books and periodicals previously uncounted or uncounted in their present form.

Total added-books, pamphlets, and

pieces.

DEDUCTIONS

By consolidation in binding.

Duplicates sent in exchange.

Returns of college and library catalogues...
Books withdrawn from stacks and returned

to Copyright Office.

Net accessions.

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a This includes the Yudin collection not hitherto enumerated.

Gifts

Purchases

Among the gifts of printed material notable for their bibliographic interest were the privately printed illustrated catalogues of the collection of pictures and also of the collection of old plates owned by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan; five fascicules of the "Catalogue raisonné de la collection Martin Le Roy;" the catalogues of the Demotic Papyri and the Coptic Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library; and seven volumes of the facsimile reproductions of early editions of Don Quixote, issued by the Hispanic Society of America. Other notable gifts of the year in the form of manuscript, of music, of map, and of print are mentioned and described under their respective heads. See especially those of manuscripts.

The purchases of the year have not included any considerable collection of printed books. Deserving of mention, however, are the following:

Collection of early editions of old English plays (in many cases the first), including the plays of Addison, Beaumont and Fletcher, George Chapman, Cibber, Congreve, Davenant, Dekker, Dryden, George Farquhar, Fielding, Fletcher, Heywood, Aaron Hill, John Home, Ben Jonson, Nathaniel Lee, David Mallet, Massinger, Shadwell, Steele, and more than fifty others. This serves to round out and complete the Longe collection bought last year. It also gives standing to the library as possessing a considerable body of the works of the early English dramatists in their first texts.

London News Letters, comprising official news of daily occurrence, dated from Whitehall and London, 1665–1685, addressed to William Scott, of Harden, County Berwick, and other Scotch lairds, comprising several hundred letters on upward of 3,000 leaves, written by various contemporary hands, in nine volumes. In consequence of the ban upon printed periodicals, these news letters, which did not require a license, form the best sources of information upon current events.

Readers of Macaulay are familiar with his

picturesque description of the historical significance of these writings. It is so illustrative that I quote some passages:

The news-writer rambled from coffee room to coffee room, collecting reports, squeezed himself into the Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an interesting trial, nay, perhaps obtained admission to the gallery of Whitehall, and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In this way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to enlighten some county town or some bench of rustic magistrates. Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest provincial cities and the great body of the gentry and clergy, learned almost all that they knew of the history of their own time.

Purchases from the Deneke collection to the extent of 76 items, embracing some rare Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing material and the "Phöbus. Ein Journal der Kunst, 1808," 12 parts; a collection of civil war material from the J. W. Eldridge collection, containing important contemporary prints and periodicals; 43 issues of the Kelmscott press. For other notable purchases see the reports of the manuscript, music, map, print, and document divisions.

Every opportunity that offered has been taken advantage of to perfect our collection of early American session laws, and considerable additions have been made during the year in the laws of Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Rhode Island, etc.

A considerable portion of our current expenditure must still be for serials. Among those purchased during the past year (to mention only examples) were the "Berg- und Hüttenmännisches Jahrbuch der K. K. Bergakademien zu Loeben und Přibram und der K. Ungarischen Bergakademie zu Schemnitz;" "Gazeta de Lisboa. Historia annual, chronologia e politica do Mundo & especialmento da Europa;" "Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Botanik;" and (in a

different category) a set of the Hansard's Debates of the Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope, 1886-1909.

The scientific serials (especially transactions and proceedings of societies) which formed the Smithsonian Deposit when brought over from the Capitol showed numerous defects-missing sections, missing volumes, and even missing sets.

During the past decade many of these have, with the aid of the Smithsonian authorities, been made good. In many cases the missing material had merely been temporarily withdrawn and was in the Smithsonian building. In many others, however, it had never been received even there; and in numerous cases, doubtless received there and forwarded to the Library, it had disappeared in the confusion of the collection while at the Capitol.

(Over

Incessant solicitation has filled many of the gaps. 1,700 fragmentary volumes were completed in 1908–9 and over 2,000 in 1909-10.) The point has now been reached where the remainder must be filled, if at all, by purchase, and the duty of the Library to prosecute this purchase is quite obvious. Lists of the desiderata (aggregating 227 printed pages) have therefore been placed with our representatives abroad and are being rapidly reported and acted upon.

The notable purchases of music include, besides the Martorell Collection, 127 of the choicest items from the sale of the library of M. Weckerlin, librarian of the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique at Brussels; and the purchases of manuscripts, the Madison and the Polk papers, the William Short papers, as well as various similar groups (Clinton, Gerry, etc.), noted in the report of the Manuscripts Division. The collection of maps and atlases has been enhanced by various individual items of importance and one of great distinction, to wit, the Lafreri Atlas (1554-73). Among the reproductions received during the year have been two beautiful examples of map work, hand facsimiles of two unique originals in the Dépôt de la Marine at Paris. These

are described in detail in the List of notable accessions to the Map Division forming Appendix IV of this Report.

It is not primarily to purchase that we may look for the development of our collection of prints, and the only expenditure in this department has been for (1) a few representative examples of contemporary or recent etchers and engravers; (2) photographs of masterpieces in painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Occasions are frequent in which the owner of precious Deposits material, book, manuscript, or print, while unwilling to make a decision for the final relinquishment of it, desires, pending this decision, to place it where it will be safe (particularly from fire), fitly accommodated, administered by expert and sympathetic custodians, and made useful. If the material is "family papers," there may be an additional consideration in the confidential character of part of it, which during some interim should be distinguished from the rest and reserved from the public.

The Library of Congress is in a position to aid in such problems by offering to the owners of the collections hospitality for them, pending the decision as to their final location. It does this, of course, in the hope that this decision will be in favor of itself; but that, even if not, the material will in the meantime have been preserved to history and been doing useful service here through exhibit and reference.

The collections thus deposited have until this year been chiefly collections of prints (as, the Garrett and the Bradley collections) and collections of manuscript family papers. Within the past fiscal year, however, there has come to us under a similar arrangement a notable collection of printed books. It consists of the Incunabula brought together by the late Mr. John Boyd Thacher, of Albany, N. Y., and represents one of the four specialties upon which he lavished his efforts as a collector and bibliographer (the 608110-10- -3

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