By city appropriation 1921-1922. $747,120 00 Special appropriation (Jeffries Point reading room) 4,000 00 Income from trust funds 23,531 66 Income from James L. Whitney bibliographic account Interest on deposit in London By balances brought forward from Trust funds income, city treasury, 700 00 $775,724 05 $52,201 68 London 3,747 12 REPORT OF THE EXAMINING COMMITTEE, 1921-22. To the Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston: GENTLEMEN, Your Examining Committee takes pleasure in submitting the following report, which is compiled from the reports of a number of subcommittees. These subcommittees have been as thorough and as faithful as possible in their investigations, and desire, in the first place to make grateful mention of the cordial assistance they have invariably received from attendants and officials in the Central Library, the branches and the reading rooms. FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION. Our first suggestion relates to the functions of the Examining Committee itself. It seems to us that the committee might discharge its duties with more satisfaction to its members and at the same time be of greater value to the library if it were appointed in the spring and permitted to serve throughout the remainder of the year. We suggest, also, as a means of giving continuity to the work of successive committees, that, after the members of each new committee have had an opportunity to make themselves familiar with earlier reports, the trustees meet them in conference and review with them the reasons for action or inaction on the principal recommendations of the previous year. While we realize that these recommendations have no binding force, we assume that the trustees would be glad to discuss the problems of the library with a body of citizens of their own selection. We have observed with some apprehension the inadequacy of the Central Library building and many of the quarters provided for the branches and reading rooms. In the Central Library the Newspaper and Periodical Rooms are at times uncomfortably crowded. There is already evidence of pressure on the Information Bureau, the Document Service Room and the new Open Shelf Room. On the second floor the Children's Room is unequal to the demands made upon it in busy hours. The book stacks, even with the relief accorded by the annex, will not provide for the probable accessions of more than a very limited period. The catalogue space in Bates Hall is almost exhausted. The Statistical Department is hidden away in cramped and somewhat inaccessible quarters and the Industrial Arts Collection is housed on the top floor with the Fine Arts Collection and made subsidiary to it, although of an essentially different character. The Lecture Hall, unattractive, badly ventilated and poorly equipped, is inferior to the halls in many high schools and municipal buildings. All of these are growing departments or features of the library and the future is likely to see much greater congestion in all of them, to say nothing of the creation of new departments. In some of the rooms, no doubt, space may be gained by a rearrangement of the material or the furnishings. But it seems to us that it is not too early to begin considering plans for the new library building that must inevitably be erected in a few years. Such a building ought, if possible, to be adjacent to the present structure and connected with it. It is conceivable that the present edifice might be reserved for the special collections in the fields of music, art, and general scholarship, as well as for the Patent, Statistical and Industrial Arts Departments, and might serve as a storehouse for much valuable but inert material. Special exhibitions might also be given here on a larger scale than the present facilities permit. In a word, the whole interior of this beautiful structure might be set aside for serious research in an atmosphere of artistic distinction. If this should be thought desirable, the new building might contain the collections which are of more general service and those departments that are frequented by the general public. A larger and finer lecture hall might also be included in the plans. As the new Central Building ought naturally to embody the results of experience in a suitable type of structure, so we believe that the outlines of a model branch library should by this time have taken rather definite shape as evidenced by the new building in West Roxbury, and that architects commissioned to design such buildings should be required to conform to the necessities of the library service instead of being left free to follow their personal inspirations. In particular, we believe that one of the great problems of the entire |