bilia in their possession. The collection has been placed in charge of Robert Arrowsmith, '82, as Curator.

The problem of space pursues us at every turn in the administration of the Library to keep any sort of pace with its growth and the ever increasing use of its material. The School of Business library has finished its last year in its confined quarters in Journalism, and with the Marvyn Scudder Library, the Montgomery Library of Accounting, and the special collection on Industrial Relations, variously housed, will occupy, with the beginning of the succeeding academic year, the new and ample quarters assigned to it in the School of Business building. The accompanying release of space in Journalism will partially relieve the present library congestion in that building. The transfer of Mathematics from Room 108, now occupied by the Columbiana collection, to Room 302, previously used by the Columbia University Press, gave that departmental library much better quarters, but there was in actuality no gain in shelves. English, German and American History, Government Documents, and Useful Arts are all in need of expansion, but this can not be accomplished without the expropriation to the Library of one or two other rooms now used in the Library building for other than Library purposes. Relief in the growing congestion of use has occurred in the opening of the new library of Teachers College, which has had an effect on the Loan Desk and the general reading-room facilities of the campus in appreciably decreasing the number of readers, who now largely use by preference the Teachers College collections under the greatly improved conditions that the new building affords. The use of the rooms in University Hall-vacated by the removal of the administration of the School of Business to the School of Business building-for the special purposes of reading-room and library for Extension students, for which the necessary provision has been made, will to a most important extent relieve the reading-room and reference congestion in the Main Library and its dependencies, and, what is equally important, will also give these students the reading facilities which they

have scarcely had, and could not have, under the existing conditions of library equipment.

In the academic year, the College Study, during the session of the Summer School and the regular sessions of Columbia College, served 350,000 readers, who borrowed by actual count 191,546 volumes from the open and the reserved book shelves in the two libraries housed in 301 and 312 Hamilton Hall. This greatly increased use of the College Study makes it plain that both rooms should be restricted to chairs, tables and wall shelves, and that the reserve collections, now in each room, should find proper quarters elsewhere on the same floor and be united into one great Reserved Collection, access to which would be made through the wide corridor which now disastrously separates the two reading-rooms. The process would necessitate the release to the library of two or three of the present class rooms which would have to be provided elsewhere. The general benefits to Columbia College students would, however, more than compensate for the possible difficulties of change. In the first place, the space released by the removal of the reserved books in each room would provide for tables and chairs for fifty additional readers, an acutely needed increased seating capacity of one hundred. Under this arrangement, all transactions at the loan desk would take place in the corridor and not in the reading-rooms; the supervision of loans would be simpler and more efficient, the problem of supplying copies of the same book for both reserved book collections would altogether disappear, and the entire machinery of administration would be better and more economically controlled. This matter of providing adequate reading accommodations for Columbia College students is a crucial one and needs immediate attention. The collection of books permanently shelved in the College Study was increased during the year by 1108 volumes.

The books and furniture belonging to the W. Edward Scudder Johnston Memorial Library, for many years housed in Livingston Hall under College Study supervision, having been dispossessed and stored in the basement of that building, were brought back to a useful life by removal to 301 Hamilton

Hall, as suggested in my previous annual report, and for the first time became truly active. In Livingston Hall the collection was open once a week for two hours at a time, and the books had seldom attained a circulation of one hundred volumes in an entire year. Shelved conspicuously in the College Study and available for loans at all times (without an extra cost for an attendant's services) the library attained in one month a greater circulation than it had heretofore known in a whole year. Ephemeral and superannuated volumes have been exchanged for modern novels and a new interest in the whole collection has been awakened. These very evident demands for such literature make it desirable. to add possibly twenty-five new novels annually to the collection as well fulfilling its purpose, particularly to resident. College students for whose benefit it was originally intended.

The outstanding features of the year in the Law Library have been systematic preparations for building up the foreign law collection, a satisfactory growth of the whole library, and the improvement of physical conditions. Following out the plan previously approved by the Committee on Education of the Trustees for the purchase of material to complete, so far as is possible, the resources of the library for research purposes, attention has been given chiefly to Anglo-American law and international law. An elaborate bibliography for foreign law books, accordingly, has been prepared, covering statute law, law reports, periodicals and monographs, which will be the basis for purchases in successive years. From this general bibliography, a special list of the most important sets has been made for immediate purchase, and the Law Librarian went to Europe at the end of May for the purpose of purchasing such sets and in order to make connections with publishers, book-dealers and government departments useful in the future development of this field. The budget for the present year contained a special sum for equipment, which was used to install in the reading-room book-stands and tables to provide for the greatly increased student and outside reference use of the library. During the year 6,750 volumes were added to the Law Library. Of this number, 3,044 volumes were added

by purchase, and 3,130 by gift. The total number of volumes in the library at the end of the year is 108,093.

During the year two gifts of money were received: $250 from William G. Low, '69L, and $100 from Dean Harlan F. Stone, for the purchase of books for the Officers' Library. Important gifts of books have been received from the Estate of Roger Foster, '80L, in all 1,078 volumes and pamphlets, of which 827 volumes and 40 pamphlets, including valuable trials, went to the Law Library; from Princeton University Library, 2,595 German legal dissertations, chiefly of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries; and from the Massachusetts State Library, 8 volumes.

The Law Librarian, as Associate Professor of Legal Bibliography, gave, as in previous years, a course of instruction in the Winter Session in legal research and the use of law books.

During the Spring Session, the Librarian of the Avery Library has had leave of absence for the continuation of work already under way with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and to preserve the requisite continuity in administration, Miss Mildred Starrett, cataloguer in the library, was promoted to the position of Assistant Librarian. The Fine Arts Department has continued to draw more and more on the Avery collection. On the other hand, and apart from purely architectural questions, the reference work of the Avery has been greatly facilitated by the availability of the increasing collection in Fine Arts. Although buying for Avery has always been fundamentally architectural in scope, it has always been necessary to include a certain number of books dealing with the allied arts. As the Fine Arts Library grows it is directly desirable, and, in point of fact, essential, to group its material within easy access of the Avery, so that each library from the inherent community of interest may readily supplement the other. With the Fine Arts Library accessory to Avery, appropriations can be much more definitely utilized along purely architectural lines. Additions to the Avery Library during the year were 402 volumes. The library now contains 28,709 volumes.

The following exhibitions were held in the Avery Library during the year: Etchings and Their Processes, loaned by the Keppel Galleries, Moroccan Textiles, from Miss Niblack of Teachers College, Illustrated French Books, Pottery from Various Kilns in the United States, July-August; Keppel Memorial Etchings (Avery collection), September-December; Magni's Collection of Plates, showing Baroque architecture and sculpture in Rome (Avery collection), January; Current Work of the School of Architecture (designs for cabaret), February; Japanese Architectural Photographs (Avery collection), March; Reproductions of Architectural Drawings in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence (Avery portfolios), April; Architectural Water-colors by Edgar I. Williams, Associate in Design in the School of Architecture, April-May; Etchings, Woodcuts and Lithographs by Czecho-Slovakian artists, May; Competition Drawings for the Schermerhorn Fellowship in Architecture (a war memorial), June.

Library conditions at the College of Physicians and Surgeons are not essentially different from those outlined in my previous report. Aside from congestion in the main library and the unfortunate housing of some of its material, the important matter at the College of Physicians and Surgeons is the obvious necessity of the provision for the student and research worker of better facilities of access to the technical periodical literature housed in the various department libraries, and hitherto in many cases administered for specific department purposes. The resources of the Physiological Library, however, have for the first time been made generally available by the loan for use in the reading-room of its material. The Alumni Library, which is always open to readers, presents a somewhat different problem. The privilege of using this department library under present conditions cannot continue much longer, unless some relief in the way of assistance for care and supervision is provided, and the general library administration to preserve it for general use should assume its full control at the earliest possible date to make it available in a separate periodical reading-room, for which additional space can apparently be found, and in charge of a reference librarian. Such