US Copyright Office: ar-1875

8/14/2019 US Copyright Office: ar-1875

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A N N U A L REPOL.

OF THE

L I BRAR IAN OF CONGRESS

T I lE YEAR 1875.

WASHINGTON:G O V E R NM E N T P R I N T I N G O P P I O E.

1876.


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R E P O R T .LTI~RARPF COXGRESS,Wa.s7tinyton, Januavy 1,1S76.The.undersigned submits herewith his annual report, embracing theperiod of thirteen months, or from the 1s t of December, 1874, to the31st of December, 1S75. The Joint Committee on the Library nbt havingbeen organized until late in December, and holding no session untilJanua ry, it has been deemed best, with the assent of the chairman, t obring the statistics of the Library and the copyright department up to~ a n i a r ~,thus rendering i t possible to lay before Congress the figuresof the Library business for the calendar year hereafter, beginning with

January instead of December. This i s deemed preferable for obviousreasons of convenience, exhibiting the annals of cop~rightpublica-tions for each calendar Fear, instead of from one arbitrary date toanother.I have spin to report a large increase in the numerical extent of theLibrary. M y ast report exhibited an aggregate of 274,157 ~olumes,nthe 1st of December, 1S74. The present enumeration shows a total of503,507 -rolumes, of which there have been added during the last thir-teen months 19,350 ~o lu me s. Out of this aggregate, the lam departmentcoiltains 34,516 ~olu rnes ,ncl the miscellaneous library 255,991 volumes.To these fignres are to be added nearly 60,000 pamphlets, bound andunbound.The additions to the Library haye been from the following sources, .

respectively : Books. Pamphlets.Ilg purchase .................................................. 7,654 28 0l5y copyright.................................................. 8,062 4 ,630......................)y deposit of the Smithsonian Institution 1,420 1,985I3y donation, (includ ing S tate docum ents) ...................... 945 240By exchanges ................................................. 1,269 238-- -otal. .......................2 ......................... 19,350 7,373The fol lo~~ ingable shows the whole number of articles received afthe Library under the laws which make it the depository of all copy-right mat ter :

h o k e .....................................................................Periodicals.. ...............................................................Musical compositiona .......................................................Drnmatio compositions .....................................................lDhotographa...............................................................Engravings and chromos....................................................blnps, charts, and drawings .................................................Prints ....-.............. . .........i..........................


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4 REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAX OF CONGREM.

The copjright business of the year 1875 shows s steady increase ofentries in each class of publications which remain subjects of copyright.Prints and labels used for manufactured articles having been excludedfrom elltry in the office of the Librarian of Congress by ac t taking effectAugust 1, 1874, and made snbject to registry in the Patent-Office, itKas anticipated t,hat there would be a decrease in the aggregate copy-right business to nearly the amount of s ~ ~ c hntries, which had averaged5,000 per nnnum for years past. Bnt the actual falling off of entries hasbben only about one thousand for the pas t twelve months, as comparedwith 1873, and two thousand as compared with 1874, while the 'aggre-gate receipts are only about $1,500 below those of previous years, in-stead of 85,000, as represeuted by th e rejected labels, thus showing thatthe cleficit in this item has been much more than made up by increasedentries of other co p~ ri gh t ublications, while the Patent-Office has de-rived a considerable reyenue from the registry of labels.The actual number of entries of c o ~ jights for the tne lre months end-iog December 1,1575, was 14,364, aud for the thirteen mouths endingJanuary 1,1S7G715,927. The cash receipts paid into the Treasury werefor the same twelve months $11,872, aud for th e thirteen months clos-ing December 31,1875, $13,151.50.The unexpended balances of funds under charge of the Joi nt Commit-tee on th e Library mere as follows, January 1 ,lSiG:Fuud for increase of Library. .................. ..:...................... .$12,23'2 74Fund for contingent expenses of Library ................................. 2,968 47Fund for cspcnse of exchanging public documents....................... 1,200 00Fund for purchase and priutiug of unpublished historical docun~ents elat-?ing t o t l ~ e arly French discoveries. in the Northwest aud ou t he Mis-

sissippi ................................................................ 10,000 00Fund for ornamenting the Capitol with norlis of art...................... 9,327 51Fund for completion of three oolumes of lf'ilkes's Exploring Expedition .. 4,814 51Fund for salaries in Botanic Garden and greenhouses .................... 6,977 75Fuud for improving Botanic Garden ..................................... 1,939 @3Fund to procure plans for accommodation of the Library ................. 1,000 00Fund for portraits of Presidents of th e United States..................... 850 00The undersigned preseuted dliring the last Congress, in a specialreport, a plan for preparing a coiuplete index to the docnmeuts, debates,aud lams of Congress, treated by- topics in a siugle alphabet. Ey rec-ommendation of the Committee ou the Library, Congress granted twoadditional assistants to be employed upon this work. The indexing hasgone forward with vigor, thongh nith a very small force, during thepas t twelve months, about two hundrecl rolnmes having already been

indexed. Bleanmhile, a propositioll has been made froin the trustees ofth e Boston Public Library, in which an approxin:ately full index hasbeen prepared to tlie co~igressioualdocumeuts alone, that this mann-script index should be published a t the expense of the Government, ousuch conditions of distribution as might meet the approbation of Con-gress. The undersigned recon~mcnds, n view of the large amount oftime nnd expense that must necessarily be consumed in indexing the


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R E P O R T O F THE LIBRARIAN O F CONGREBS. 5documents especially, (numbering about fourteen hundred vol.umes,)that the already accomplishecl work of the officers of the Boston PublicLibrnry should be availed of as the basis of au index to the rlocuments,expanding and verifying it throughout as may seem desirable upon fullexamination of the material. A t the same time i t mould not, in thejudgment of the undersigned, be expedient to prin t thi s index to thedocuments separately. An uuder takiug so important shoulcl be madecomprehensive and not fragmentary in plan. Every topic referred toin such an iudex has it s complement in the debates of Congress, and,to a l hg e extent, in the statu tes passed by th at body. To bring to-gether in one alphabetical index of topics, references to th e wholepriuted material bearing upon each subject, whether in the documents,the debates, or the laws, arranged systematically in chrouological order,is a cardinal necessity. Such an index mould be of incalculable perma-neut 1-alae, not only to Congress and t o e rery executive and judicialofficer, but to the student of our political history and to the people at,large. After the esperience already acquired in preparing such anindex, the undersigned thinks that the refereuces to the debates and lawscan be com1)leted witbin t m o ~ e a r dirne, provided a special appropriationbe made for the employ~nent f teml~orary lerical aid. The subject is ,earnestly recommellded to tbe attention of Congress.

The catalogue force of the Library has been conti 11uously elnplo~edormany months 11pon the preparation of t he new general catalogue ahi chit is proposed to issue (inring the coming year, 1S76. This catalogue millcmbrace, in several volumes, the entire contents of the Library np to it sdate, arranged in the alphabetical order of authors' names, ivith brieftitles. to rrllich the collation will be appended. This general catalogue,which will bring for the first time into pr int for ready referencetlle titles of a, collection now numbering almost 300,000 ~olumes,will be,rnnch sought for by public institutions and by the collectors ofprivate libraries. Tbe annual catalogues, six of which h a r e been issuedin volumes of considerable size, with titles of the books given a t large,(but excluding pamphlets,) mere cliscoutinued vi th th e issue of 1872.The great cost of these anuual rolumes was found to be quite out ofproportion to their utility, and the undersigmed has thought best tostlbstitute for them the publication of occasional brief finding lis ts orcntalognes of the more important fresh additions to the Library. Sucha catalogue, embracing the principal accessions and new bool;s of the- past three years, with an index by subjects and ti tles attached, i s nowpassiug through the press, and will scon be distribu'ted to members ofCongress.

//The publication of the la rge an d valuable selection of original Frenchtlocuments relatjng to tlie discoveries and exclorations made in tbe~rorthmestern ortion of the United States and 011 the Nississippi, underIh e auspices of the French government, from 1614to 1758, was authorizedby act of Congress of Mnrch 3, 1Sj3,under the direction of t he Join t


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6 REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGIIESE.Colnmittee on the Library. After some delays, the printing of thesedocuments ~ v a s ommenced a few months since under the superiutend-ence of Xr. Pierre Blargry, o highly colnpetent historical writer ant1archiaiste of the department of the navy a t Paris. The collection willform six octavo volumes, of about 600 pages each, and will embrace agreat mass of hitherto unpublished papers, comprisiug letters andjotlrnals of early ~uissiouaries nd other explorers, the first three volunlesbeing devoted to t he di sco ~er ies f Cavelier de l a Salle and his corn-panions. These documents, the first volnnie of which is near ly ready,will throw new ligh t upon the set tle ~ne nt nd early history of a mostimportant portion of oiir couiitry,exhibiting as they will the history ofthe early French colonial enterprises which, ephemeral as they mere inmany quarters, have stamped so large a portion of the republic withFrench names, which h:we remained indelible to tell the story of ear lycolonization.

Ainong the richer collectioiis embraced in the Library of Congressmay be reckoned it s materials of American mannscripts, chiefly consist-in g of uii1it:iry an d historical papers. Many of these are of grc;itcst~ a l u e ,omposed as they are of autograph letters, journals, and tlocu.ments of our statesmen and gelierals of the revolntionary period. Be-sides these there Lye the xet unpriuted materials gathered fo r theAmerican archives of the la te Pete r Force, of Washingto i~,ml~icli avenever ~ e teen bonnd or even arranged so as to render tlieln accessibleto the studen t of our history. It is very important th at ere ry manu-script or mrittcn paper in the Library, ~ h i c han throw ally ligh t on anyportion of American history, should be sys tem ;tt icJ lj r,rraugetl a udiudesed. The iucreasiug attention tha t is paid to these ~n cl ~~ or ia l sfthe past, and tbe new uses that are foru~ d or olcl documents, with th egrowth of the historical spirit in this country, gi re force to the sugges-tion i~ommade to the committee, that a couipetent historic;J scholarsho~ild e eml~loyed o put all these loose materials for history in order,and to prepare a tliorough intles to their contents, nuder the directionof the Librarian. Tho present Library force, rery snlall for so estensivea collection, and for a copyright blisiiiess as multifarious as th at of abureau, is too fully absorbed in needfill clerical and catalogiie labors torender it possible to treat this mass of f ~ig iti re ~nnn scriptswith thereq~ iisit e ime and care. While the undersigned is sensible th at aniucrease of permaneut assistants might be reluctantly granted by Con-gress in the ljresent st ate of the public finances, he is coufident tha t a nallowance for temporary hely could not be more wiscly bestowed thanin arranging for nse these manuscript stores and in completing a full

; ndex to them, a s well as to the debates and documents of Congress.This is t he fourth Sear in which the necessity for proriding additionalroom for the rapidly growing stores of this Library llas bee11 urged upon

the atteution of Congress. During that tinie about G0,000 volumesha re been added to the collectiou. The two m i ~ ~ g shich were built in


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REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAS O F COh'GRES8. 7ISGG, and which absorb all the space wi:hin the Ca~ i to l hich could h: t ~ ~ ~ ~ e s e do the Library, have been more than filled. The temporaryvspedieuts of placing 1)oolis iu double rows upon shelves, and of iutro-tlllciug llundreds of wooden cases of shelving t o contain the overflowor' the alcol-es, have been exhausted, and books are now, from sheerli)lScef necessity, being piled upon the floors in all directions. A1 thoughit is still possible to produce books a t call from any par t of the large: t ~ dmbarrassingly crowded collection, it must be manifest to all that111edifficnlties of administration, and the prompt suppljr of the wants( ~ t 'Congress and the public who use t he Library, are daily increasing.Sor is t he e~nbarrassmeut oufined only to the b001is vbich form theItlore important part of the large collections gathered in the Capitol.'J'llere is, besides, accumulated throngh the accessions of Scars, an im -ltlcnse mass of chart s and maps in unbound form, of r e r j great ralue,:)I1 of which :Ire piled up unused, aud incapable of service, because111el.e s not a rooln or a part of a roo~u nywhere for their arrangement:111d tilization. The official researches of gentlemen connected rrithtlle exploring and scientific espeilitious of the Government, to whomll~esemaps rnight be of essential service, are hindered b~ nearly insu-1)crable obstacles Ro ~n e~ ~d er iu ghisgreat mass of material subservientlo the perfection of their i~llpor tal lt nd valnable reports.

Xot on l j the mays and charts, but the vast collection of engravings,lithographs, photegr:~phs,cllrou~os, ud other objects of art, accumu-I:~tcd or years u ~ ~ d e rhe provisious of the law of copglight., are duly~~nmbered,tampecl, and stored away in inaccessible and constantly ac-c.urnulati~~giles, from the want of any space whatever in wliich to ar-~ n n g er to eshibit them.

Congress provided some xears since, a t the instance of the CommitteeO I I the Library, an appropri;ltion by which two of the principal news-Ilnpers of each Sta te in the Union, representing different politics, areI:~kenand bound up fbr l)reser\-ation as a part of the his tor j of thel ilues. This important accession to the periodical stores of the LibraryIS rendered coml)aratirely useless, so far a s the current files are con-I-erned,because there is no possible space in which the newspapers canI)c daily filed for the use and reference of Congress. Though carefully~ ~ l e s ~ ~ r e dnd promptly bound fbr preservatiou, there is I IO longer the~~ossibilityve11 of shelring half the issues of these representative jonr-I I . ~ S ,O important in our current history awl politics; and the time millhoon come when the legislator in search of a fact, a date, a political arti-rlc, or a table of statistics known to be in n certaiu newspaper at a cer-I : ~ i udate, will find i t only a t the bottom of a lofty pile of journals, allI I I ' which must be displaced before it can be reached. Besides the issues1)1'the aily press, the periodicals which are taken nuder the copyrightI I L \V or by subscription, embracing nlost of the moutlrly aud quarterly11l:igazines nd reviews, accumulate with such rapidit j that c o deviceJ 1% in-i-ented will long avail to produce them when wanted.


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Three methoils of relief from the e~l ~bar ra ssmeutsf this overcrowdedLibrary h ar e been proposed. It has been suggested that the collectionmight be largely reduced by the sale or alienation of duplicate volumes,and by restr icting the Library to certain classes of books selected byson~euthority from the rapidls-encroaching mass. This propositionoverlooks the fact th at the Library of Congress has, through the legisla-tion of Congress, become national in its character, and by the legal re-quirements of the copgright l a n is becoming a complete repository ofth e rrhole product of th e American press, for which exclusive rightsar e secured to authors or publishers. Such a library i s not for one gen-eration alone, but its ~ a l u es developed in banding down to successivegenerations the approxi~natelycomplete representation of the nation'sliterature.

The American people should rely wilh coulidence upon finding in onegreat and non nu mental library, and that belonging to the Government,every book ~ h i c hheir country has producetl. To reduce or cripplesuch a collection, so well begun, aud no^ in the full tide of a successfuland inexpensive accu~nulationof those literary stores vbich cau besecured in no other way, and which, once lost, could uever be reassem-bled, could not bnt be looked upon a s a narrow and unwise policy, uu-worthy of a natiou claiming to bold a front rank in civilization.A second suggestion has been made, th at large portions of the Library

might be colonized or stored in o ther bnildings, while those found to bemost constantly used might be retained in the Library. Eu t experience

i,shows th at no one can foresee when the books least frequently used maybe anted for an immediate emergency. The segregation of large por-tions of the collection into a building or bu il di np necessarily remotenould be an almost intolerable inconvenience; uor has the Governmenta t present auy fire-proof building whatever where such storage coultltak e place. And thi s leads to the stat.e:nent of the third remedy for theexisting and rapidly growing accumulation, which will soon become,unless remedied, an almost insurmountable obstruction to the utility ofthe Library. This remedy is, in short, the erection, a t such place as thejudgment of Congress may sanction, of an adequate and permanerltLibrary-bui lding, constructed of fire proof materials, an d plannedthroughout with a view to the accolumodation of the Library and thecopy-right department for a t least a century to come. Thereservation withinthe Capitol of a library, not only of reference, bnt of jurisprudence, andof all the leading Eugli sh writers, so that Congress mould hare underits own roof the colistant facility for supplying those necessities fordaily reference whicii arise during the session, would be entirely com-patible with this plan. The duplicates of all important books wouldpermit such retelltion ~ i t h o u t eakening the maiu collection.

The undersigned will not renew sugges~ions, ully discnssed in hisformer reports, regarding the locality of such a building, or the feasi-bility of so expanding the present Capitol edifice a s to atlnlit of doub-


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REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAL9 OF CONGRESS. . '9ling or quadrupling the Library accommodation. While former Commit-tees upon the Library have sabsta~itially greed npon the immediatenecessity for a SepiLrdte building, questions of locality and other mat-ters uot ueedful to be here referred to have prevented the adoption byCongress of an 1 plan of relief whatever. That th is postporlement cango on no longer without serious injury and deterioration t o the bookstbemselvcs, as well as the most embarrassing diEcultles in making themuseful to Congress and to the public, the'uudersigaed now earnestlypresses upon the atteution of the con~mittee.

Congress appropriated a t it s last sessiou a sum exceeding half a mil-lion dollars ($502,000) to secure a creditable representation of the ra ri -ous departments of :he Gorernmeut a t the Centennial Exhibition a tPhiladelphia. While this large sum w, ~shus tleroted to a, temporarypurpose, (though close1~- onnected with the development of the coun-try,) it cannot fail to excite t he regret, not only of scholars and men ofletters, bu t of all the people who are jealous of our r~at ional ood name,that Fear after p a r goes by without any provision for housing or shelv-iug the overflowing stores of a grea t national library, which representsthe growth of a country's literature.

The steady and immense growth of the copyright department alonewill soori require a space which can only be provided for by tt separstfbuilding. No possible enlargement of the Capitol which is likely to bengreed upon could accommoda$e the existing Library and it s normalgrowth (without auy extraordinary purchases or accessions) for morethan a very brief period. Besides this, the history of the growth ofevery great library, and especially of national ones, proves tha t such 'scollection cannot long be accommodated within walls devoted for thegreater part to other purposes. The 300,000 volumes now forming th eLibrary of Congress are bestowed in three halls and one detached roomfor the law department . All the Library rooms cover a space of only11,600 square feet. Comparing this with the principal governmentlibraries abroad, we fiud th at the library of the Briti sh Museum covers

pace of 110,000 square feet for books alone, besides nearly half asuch more for it s other collections. The Notioual Library a t Pari s fillsspace of 70,200 square feet. Every European nation has a separa.teilding for its gove~.ument ibTary, although in uone of them is theree same necessity for space th at exists in ours, to furnish in addition

e library an office of public record for the copyright business of thee country. While it may be said th at the United States,compared

th these nations, is ye t young in years, we are ;~lr eadgich in our nrt-1 literature, and in the accumtilations gathered from t he best of .of other lands. Congress has deliberately founded by its legisls-

n this great repository of a nation's l~t era tur e nd a rt ; an d nowat it has grown to a magnitude which will favorably compare withme, a t east, of, the most useful libraries of t h e world, i t is impossiblebelieve tba t the legislature of a gr eat and intel ligent people wiU con-


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10 REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS.tinue to negleat making some suitable provision to preserve and extendthis noble collection. I eft in its present condition, the neglect of

V~ on gc es s ill soon place its Librarian in the unhappy predicament ofpresiding orer t he greatest chaos in America; but if permanently pro-vided for, with a liberal foresight for the future , this Library will becomenot only one of the foremost ornaments of th e national capital, but aperpetiial honor to the United States.

A. R. SPOFFORD ,Librai.ian of Congress.Hon. T.0.H o w ,Clmirnlan of tlre Joint Oovnniittee on the Library.

US Copyright Office: ar-1875

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