PRINTS: New titles added: Copyright, 386; gift, 497; subscription, 58; Smithsonian collection, 202; total, 1,143. Periodicals checked (items), 142,288; Periodical Division office catalogue, volumes added, 8,996. During the past fiscal year there were sent to the bindery from the Periodical Division 6,711 volumes of periodicals and 2,983 volumes of newspapers, making a total of 9,694 volumes, or an average per month of 808 volumes. DIVISION OF PRINTS (From the report of the Chief, Mr. Parsons) The increase in the collection of prints has been: By copyright, 10,445; by purchase, 4,724; by transfer, 1,062; by gift, 984; total, 17,215. The collection of prints now numbers 322,299. Among the gifts of the year were the following: From Mr. George B. Williams, Washington, D. C.: 321 photographs of painting, sculpture and archi tecture. From Mrs. Charles W. Richardson, Washington, D. C.: 47 colored etchings of costumes and 1 aquatint of Battle of New Orleans. From Mrs. Bertha Lum, Minneapolis, Minn.: Io colored wood engravings of Japanese figures. From Funk & Wagnalls company, New York City: From Mr. George E. Senseney, Kent, Conn.: 53 proofs, etc., illustrating the process of etching. From The Gerlach-Barklow company, Joliet, Ill.: 19 lithographs illustrating the 3-color process. From the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission, New York City: 9 medals struck off in commemoration of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. From the Lake Champlain Tercentenary Celebration 107 photographs of the Lake Champlain tercen- From Brander Matthews, New York City: 73 packs of playing cards. By transfer (from the Treasury Department) came 961 photographs of the Paris, Chicago, and Atlanta Expositions. The most important purchases of the year have been: (a) Collection of 37 etchings by American artists in Paris; 37 engravings and etchings by Lepère, Dodge, and Chapin; and 25 etchings by English artists. (b) Collection of 432 portraits of Union and Confederate leaders in the Civil War. (c) Collection of 3,597 photographs of paintings; of subjects in Egyptian, Early French and Indian architecture; and of sculpture in the museums at Athens, Cairo, Constantinople, Naples; and in the galleries at Paris and Rome. (d) Collection of 220 photographs of Colonial architecture. (e) Facsimile reproductions (17) of the works of the old masters, published by the Medici Society, London. PRINTS: Exhibits The following exhibits were put in place during the PRINTS, year: (a) History of painting and architecture (130 photographs). (b) Etchings of Della Bella and Callot (509) from the T. Harrison Garrett and Library collections. (c) The etched work of Whistler, illustrated by reproductions in collotype of the different states of the plates, a publication of the Grolier Club (New York, 1910) compiled and arranged by Edward G. Kennedy. Four hundred and forty-six titles were presented, showing over one thousand various states. (d) Collection of 166 etchings by Sir Francis Seymour Haden, who died June 1, 1910, at the age of 82. Examples drawn from the T. Harrison Garrett collection on deposit in 60811°- -10-5 Loans the Library. They comprise one of the largest collections of Haden's etchings in the United States and include unusual and rare states and impressions. (e) Illustrating the history of lithography (397 prints). This exhibition covers the whole period of lithography, and comprises the works of the best lithographers of the American, Belgian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Swiss schools. The prints are arranged chronologically by lithographers in order that a study may be made of the development of the art. The history of each school is strikingly presented. There are represented in large numbers such masters of lithography as Whistler and Pennell, of the American school; Prout, Harding, Bonington, Lewis, Haghe, Nash, Way, Watson, Short, Shannon, and Hall, of the English school; Vernet, Fragonard, Grevedon, Gericault, Charlet, Isabey, Raffet, Fantin-Latour, and Lepère; of the French school; Senefelder, Strixner, Lauter, Kampmann, of the German school; Calame, of the Swiss school; Lauters and Raps, of the Belgian school; Storm van's Gravesande and Verboeckhoven, of the Dutch school. (f) Engravings (375) selected from a collection of prints presented to the Library of Congress by the Italian Government "in acknowledgement of the generous action of the American Congress and nation in behalf of the sufferers from the earthquake." The loans of material for outside use have included 11,658 photographs (of painting, sculpture, and architecture) lent to educational institutions and classes in art, all of which have been scrupulously returned, and the initiation, through the American Federation of Arts, of what may prove a system of loan of groups of prints desired by local institutions or art societies for temporary exhibit in their own galleries or museums. It is duplicate copyrighted material which is thus made available, so that the loan is arranged without an inconvenient depletion of the collections at Washington, while the expense (of packing, transportation, and insurance) is defrayed by the Federation and the local society jointly, and the responsibility (to the Library) is assumed by the Federation. BINDING The number of volumes bound during the fiscal year was 51,207, as against 41,965 for the year preceding. The work of the branch bindery included, of course, in addition to such binding, the mounting and repair of manuscripts (over 10,000 pieces treated), maps, and prints, to which in the aggregate a dozen persons are regularly devoted. The materials used upon the books bound were distributed as follows: (From the report of the Chief, Mr. Hanson) The total number of volumes catalogued amounted to 116,038. In addition, 880 parts of volumes were added on the serial record and shelf lists, and 4,438 volumes were, after careful search and comparison, rejected as duplicates and turned over to the Order and Documents divisions. There was accordingly a falling off in the number of volumes catalogued as against the preceding year. The main reasons for this are: (a) The building of the new stack, which for six or seven months interfered considerably with the work in the main catalogue room, and finally necessitated a general rearrangement of desks, furniture, and reference books in order to offset somewhat the loss of light from the west. (b) The decrease in the number of assistants actually engaged on cataloguing, owing to increased pressure of proof reading, classification, and shelf listing. Besides, the past year has emphasized even more strongly than the preceding one the difficulty in securing and retaining trained and competent cataloguers, there having been 21 resignations and 23 new appointments during the period July 1, 1909, to June 30, 1910. This is inclusive of student assistants, but takes no account of those who resigned and were reappointed within the year. Among the resignations are an unusual number of the oldest and most experienced cataloguers, whose loss will be keenly felt for a number of years, for only after years of hard training can the new assistants now obtainable hope to measure up with their predecessors, whose training in this Division extended over periods varying from seven to twelve years. In general, it may be safely said that the highest and most responsible duties of the Catalogue Division-i. e., the original classification of books and the final revision of catalogue entries—require assistants with (a) an educational basis, consisting of a full college course (preferably leading to the A. B. degree) and an additional three to five years of post-graduate work; (b) practical experience in certain large university and reference libraries, extending over several years. For cataloguing and classification of a The printing of the classification schedules, the list of subject headings, the preliminary catalogue of American and English genealogies, and particularly the great increase in the number of titles to be reprinted, because the stock of cards has been exhausted, accounts in a large measure for the increase in proof reading. |