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Copyright business prior to July

1, 1897

Credited articles to the number of 21,962 had been filed away under year and number, those desired by the Library being forwarded to the shelves for use. In the case of 562 articles, identification and credit could not be made, and they were accordingly indexed and (except those desired by the Library) filed for convenient reference.

Titles to the number of 106,738, being the remainder entered prior to July 1, 1897, but heretofore filed only in rough bundles, had been collated, arranged, and permanently filed.

During the past twelve years the business done by the Office shows the following:

Total number of entries_.

Total number of articles deposited_

Total amount of fees received and applied.

Total expenditure for service

Net receipts above expenses for service

I, 232, 529

2, 153, 919 $858, 422.75

$729, 468. 07

$128, 954. 68

During the thirty-nine years since the copyright work became a business of the Library of Congress the total number of entries has been 2,113,385.

The new copyright act will considerably increase the burdens of the Office. There may be expected a larger volume of business under it; and there is certain to be a great and difficult labor in interpreting and in making clear to the public its novel requirements. The burden can be met efficiently only by a considerable increase of the staff. On the other hand, the receipts of the Office are equally certain to increase so as fully to cover the additional expenditures for service.

INCREASE OF THE LIBRARY

Library June 30,

Adopting the count of printed books and pamphlets made Contents of the in June, 1902, as being accurate, the total contents of the 1908, and June Library, inclusive of the Law Library, at the close of the past two fiscal years were as follows:

30, 1909

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ACCESSIONS:

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

Books and

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a This includes the Yudin collection not hitherto enumerated.

The only collections purchased during the year (reserving for mention under "Music" the Schatz collection of opera librettos) were one of African linguistics (about 500 pieces), formed by Mr. Wilberforce Eames, and one of early English plays (about 2,000 pieces), which strengthen a department still meager (for a research library) in original editions of the early English dramatists. Among individual items of importance were, however, sets of Liebig's and of Poggendorf's Annalen; a set of the linguistic publications of Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte; a set (171 volumes) of the "Inventaire sommaire des Archives Départementales," issued by the French Government; and the great edition (101 volumes) of the sacred books of Tibet (The Kanjur) in the Dergé print, secured through Mr. Rockhill, our minister to China (now ambassador at St. Petersburg). Included also was a selected collection (nearly 700 pieces) of Hungarian publications to form a foundation in the general literature of Hungary, of which the library had up to that time scarcely any examples.

Gifts: CHINESE EN

The most momentous gift of printed material was from the Chinese Government, a set of the great Chinese encyclo-CYCLOPEDIA pedia (The Tu Shu Tsi Cheng), comprising over 5,000 (Chinese) volumes. This was brought to Washington by the special ambassador charged with the acknowledgments of China to the United States for the remission of the "Boxer indemnity." Its significance is indicated in a letter on behalf of the Library, which I append:

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Washington, December 29, 1908

Mr. SECRETARY: It is with high gratification indeed
that we have received the communication from the
Acting Secretary informing us of the gift to the United
States by the Chinese Government, through His
Excellency T'ang Shao-Yi, its ambassador on Special
Mission, of a complete set in 5,041 volumes of the great
encyclopedia, the Tu Shu Tsi Cheng, and stating that

it is destined for the Library, as an addition to its collection of Chinese literature.

This collection, already comprising over 10,000 volumes-due chiefly to the interest, learning, and generosity of Mr. W. W. Rockhill, now American minister at Peking is now one of the largest outside of China. The addition of the encyclopedia will make it one of the most notable.

As you are well aware, the term "encyclopedia" expresses very imperfectly the scope of this work. "Encyclopedias," so called, are profuse in the Occident, each attempting an epitome of knowledge and varying in dimensions from one to several score of volumes. But each such an encyclopedia represents but a particular private undertaking, the product of a small group of writers whose selection is conditioned by circumstances and who as a whole constitute but a fraction of the knowledge within the community. China alonethe Government itself of China-has attempted to embody in a single literary record the entire knowledge of an epoch. She has done this on two different occasions, in the early fifteenth century and again in the early eighteenth.

The first attempt (under the Ming dynasty), involving the concentration upon the task of over 2,000 of her foremost scholars, under an elaborate directorate, resulted in a compilation of over 22,000 volumes. But this, although copied for printing (by blocks), was never printed, and of two hand copies, made a century and a half later, only fragments survive.

The second attempt (in 1726), similar in its initiative, purpose, scope, and direction, was for posterity more fortunate in that its results were embodied in print. The edition printed (from movable copper types) seems, however, to have been a very small one. A copy, secured in 1877, forms a prized possession of the British Museum.

A copy for our own National Library has been for some time past one of our chief desires. As, however, the work is not in any way upon the market, and the

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