We shall reverse the order of the program and call for the committee reports first.
The following reports were presented and received, all having been previously printed, with the exception of the supplement to the report of the committee on library administration and that on work with the blind. The committee on international relations stated that they had no report to make.
COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL AND STATE RELATIONS
Your committee's chief activity has been along the line of a parcels post, as we have felt that was the most feasible measure for obtaining lower postal rates. The chairman of the committee had personal interviews with the chairmen of the House and Senate committees on Post Office, and filed with the latter a formal endorsement of the parcels post, as well as the resolution looking in that direction, passed by the Council at its meeting in January last. The committee recommends that the continuance of this advocacy be authorized by the association.
We also recommend that the association endorse a movement for the better safeguarding of the national archives and rendering them accessible to students, feeling that the preservation of these governmental records is one of considerable importance, and one in which librarians have an especial interest, inasmuch as they have under their care manuscripts as well as printed books.
The attention of depository libraries is called to the report of Senator Smoot, on the revision of printing laws (62nd Congress, second session. Report 414, p. 33 and following) which discusses the proposed amendments to the laws with reference to depository libraries.
BERNARD C. STEINER.
COMMITTEE ON LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION
Your committee has not been active during the whole year, the present chairman having been appointed to fill a vacancy. What it has done has been in the way of a small beginning toward a general survey of methods in public libraries, which it is hoped may be carried forward to completion in future years.
The scientific position that the first thing to do, in making an investigation, is to find out the facts, has only recently been taken in work of this kind. It has generally been assumed by those who have desired to better conditions of any sort that the existing conditions were well known to all. The fact is that no one person or group of persons is in a position to know all the conditions thoroughly and that the elementary task of ascertaining them and stating them is usually by no means easy. It is now generally recognized that we must have a Survey—an ascertainment and plain statement of the facts as they are—as a preliminary to action or even to discussion.