and sections was completed. Brief extracts from the reports of these divisions and sections, which are supervised by the Executive Officer, are given below, and in the case of the Division of Photographic Reproduction and Research, a separate report is submitted because of the highly specialized nature of and the general interest in its work.

The Executive Officer also has immediate supervision of the law clerk, who was appointed on October 1, 1936, and was charged with reading and extracting information of interest to The National Archives from the decisions of the Attorney General and the Comptroller General and from the Congressional Record and the Federal Register; of the nurses in the welfare room, who gave 9,049 treatments during the year to members of the staff and other workers in the building; and of the cabinet maker, who received and filled 74 work orders and made numerous minor repairs to furniture and equipment.

Division of Purchase and Supply.-During the fiscal year 1937 approximately 3,500 requisitions for supplies and equipment were submitted to the Division. In order to fill the requisitions that were approved, 1,844 purchase orders were issued, and 771 contracts were executed in acceptance of lowest bids received in response to invitations. Vouchers to the number of 1,808 have been promptly prepared for the settlement of all accounts due, and without exception all have been certified for payment by the General Accounting Office substantially as submitted. A large number involved administrative deductions for liquidated damages chargeable to the contractors in accordance with the terms of the contracts, and a considerable saving of appropriated moneys has been effected thereby.

Division of Personnel and Pay Roll.-There were 3,481 new applications received in the Division during the fiscal year, bringing the applications now on file to 23,907. Each of the new applications was carefully examined with reference to the training and previous experience of the applicant, and 1,760 were found eligible for further consideration and were classified according to the type and grade of work for which each applicant was best qualified. Interviews with 1,137 applicants were held during the year, 824 stenographic and typing tests were given, and letters of inquiry were sent out concerning 373 applicants. The majority of the classified applications were in circulation during the year, being routed to the heads of offices and chiefs of divisions for their consideration from time to time.

A total of 110 positions, some of which were identical additional positions, were classified by the Division and allocated by the Personnel Classification Division of the Civil Service Commission during the fiscal year. This figure includes 10 reclassifications, that is, posi

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tions the duties and responsibilities of which had so increased as to justify a change in grade. There have now been classified and allocated a total of 642 positions for The National Archives.

Appointments in The National Archives were given 87 persons during this fiscal year; 13 separations were recorded, however, leaving a total of 249 employees as of June 30, 1937, a net increase of 74 employees over the preceding year.

The aggregate pay roll for personal services prepared by this Division for the fiscal year was $489,035. Of this amount $273,190 was expended for salaries of employees engaged in professional activities; $49,217 for those having to do with publications, including the Federal Register; and $166,628 for those engaged in administrative work.

Division of Finance and Accounts.-This Division, under the general supervision of the Executive Officer, allocated appropriation funds to the amount of $615,579 and supervised obligations and expenditures amounting to $607,185 during the year, and kept the necessary accounts in connection therewith.

Division of the Central Files.-During the fiscal year this Division established and developed a filing system which effectively handled all correspondence and material submitted by the various divisions of The National Archives, and 21,015 pieces were received and filed.

Division of Printing and Binding.-This Division began to function on October 16, 1936, with the appointment of Harry M. Forker as Chief. From July 1, 1936, to October 15, 1936, a total of 38 requisitions had been sent to the Public Printer, representing an encumbrance of $1,062. From October 16, 1936, to the end of the fiscal year a total of 276 requisitions were prepared and forwarded to the Public Printer, representing an encumbrance of $9,622. During the latter period 215 finished jobs were received from the Government Printing Office, were inspected, and were approved for distribution.

Stenographic pool.-Caroline C. Covington was appointed as head of the stenographic pool on August 3, 1936, at which time there were 16 stenographers and typists in the pool. During the year 14 stenographers and typists were transferred to various offices and divisions and 23 others were employed. Except in cases of emergencies or rush jobs, stenographers and typists were assigned to the different offices on a weekly basis.

Mail section. This section received and distributed 96,306 pieces of mail and 765 telegrams during the year. It also checked, folded, inserted in envelopes or wrapped, sealed, and dispatched 244,235 pieces of mail and sent 104 telegrams.

Messenger and transportation service.-In addition to operating the messenger and guide service within the building, the service made 78 transfers of archival material and library books, returned 39

shipments of property to Government agencies, and made 3,113 outside messenger trips.

Telephone switchboard.-The switchboard handled a total of 147,957 calls during the year.

BUILDING AND EQUIPMENT

A large portion of the time of the Executive Officer is taken up with matters pertaining to the building and grounds. During the fiscal year 1937 the following areas and offices, which had not been completed on June 30, 1936, were either completed or were placed in such condition that they could be occupied and used: The division offices on the twentieth tier, east and west, a portion of the permanent receiving room, room 106, nine offices on the sixth floor, the cloak rooms in the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance lobby, and room G-13, which was partitioned to provide additional space for the Divisions of Photographic Reproduction and Research and of Repair and Preservation. By the end of the year the murals had been placed in the Exhibition Hall and the special lining for the exhibit cases had been installed, the card catalog trays had been placed around the wall in the central search room, and the opera chairs had been installed in the auditorium.

The contract for the extension to the building was completed on February 19, the final inspection was made on April 1, and the final payment was made by the Public Works Branch of the Treasury Department on June 22. The completion of this contract provides The National Archives with 29 additional stack areas. After stack equipment has been installed in the extension, The National Archives will have an additional 1,120,049 cubic feet of document area with a storage capacity of 448,813 cubic feet.

By June 30, 1937, the manual fire-alarm stations and the watchman stations had been put into operation in the entire original building; the aero system, which sets off an alarm immediately in case of fire, had been installed in the receiving room, in the trucking room, and in a number of the stack spaces; and the automatic burglaralarm system, which records in the office of the captain of the guard any entrance into or any noise within an area, had been installed in the same stack spaces. Other installations during the year included the hydraulic press for the Division of Repair and Preservation, the table for the cleaning of film for the Division of Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings, and the temporary film-storage cabinets for the storage of film while it is being processed, viewed, and studied by the latter Division.

The following work was unfinished at the end of the fiscal year 1937: The cutting of a window in room G-7, occupied by the Division of the Central Files; the erection of a storeroom for the National

Park Service on the loading platform in the trucking room; the partitioning of a central workroom for the cabinet maker; and the partitioning of the offices of the Chiefs of the Divisions of Department Archives. In the area occupied by the Division of Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings, although the film vaults had been prepared for the installation of a special air-conditioning unit, the purchase and installation of the unit was delayed by lack of funds, and the shelves and specially designed film-storage cabinets had not been installed in the vaults. A contract for additional paneling in the auditorium had been let, but the work was unfinished; and certain changes on the thirteenth tier to permit the construction of a workroom for treating motion-picture film were incomplete.

Under the provisions of the second contract for the equipment of the stack areas, stack equipment, including containers for documents, had been installed by June 30, 1937, in the third tier east and in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth tiers, west and southwest, thus making available for use a total of 80,144 cubic feet of document area and 29,454 square feet of floor area.

The third stack contract was awarded on April 6, 1937, and provided for the installation within 120 days of metal stack columns and metal floors only, in the thirteenth to nineteenth tiers of the northwest, southwest, south, southeast, and northeast stack spaces, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth tiers of the north stack space, all of which are in the original building.

Under the fourth stack contact, which was let on June 10, 1937, metal stack columns, metal floors, cork composition floor covering, and metal shelving, but no document containers, are to be provided for the entire extension of the building, with the following exceptions: The third tier in all parts of the extension, which will be reserved for the Division of Maps and Charts and will be equipped with portable map cases already contracted for, and the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first tiers in the northeast central stack space, which will be reserved for the use of the Division of Photographic Reproduction and Research in conditioning and storing still film and in processing microfilm.

MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES

The Executive Officer continued to serve as liaison between The National Archives and the National Archives Association, and in March 1937 he became a member of the board of directors and chairman of the credit committee of the National Archives Employees' Federal Credit Union. During the year he also attended the annual meetings of the American Historical Association and of the Society of American Archivists.

DIVISION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTION AND RESEARCH (From the report of the Chief, Mr. TATE)

The year 1936-37 has served to clarify the diversified activities of this Division, and a distinct tendency toward stratification of its work is evident. Four classes of activities predominated: (1) Photographic work, including the making of photographs of various kinds, microphotography, photostatic work, and the photographic restoration of documents; (2) photo-mechanical and mechanical services, including the reproduction of forms, form letters, memoranda, and the like by means of the multilith process, the making of addressograph plates and the mechanical side of maintaining a mailing list, and the use of plan-copying equipment for the reproduction both of plans and of limited quantities of typewritten material; (3) the conditioning and storage of still film; and (4) research into the applications of photography and similar processes to documentation.

Some 6,000 photographic negatives and prints, 2,383,149 microcopies, and 15,214 photostats were made during the year. In the field of mechanical and photo-mechanical services 669,930 pieces were produced by the multilith process from 1,094 duplicating plates, 3,568 addressograph plates were prepared, and 23,788 pieces were run through the addressing machine. Although the plan-copying machine was not available until the closing weeks of the year, 91 square feet of copy were produced on it. Miscellaneous work included the mounting of 3,505 photographs, the making of 135 lantern slides, and the completion of various experimental projects.

PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK

General. The photographic work has been exceedingly diversified during the past year. The routine photographing of records in depositories or in transit and of buildings in which records have been stored has been continued and expanded. The resulting photographs, many of which are now irreplaceable, show the exact condition of various archival depositories before the transfer of all or part of their contents to the National Archives Building. Shipments of records in transit were photographed to illustrate the precautions taken when valuable papers are being moved. Additional photographs were taken of the National Archives Building to show details of its construction and use. Photographs of equipment undergoing tests at the National Bureau of Standards were made for purposes of record. Full tone and line copies of documents in The National Archives were made, and some of them have been used by various publications.

Microfilming. Two large projects of microfilming undertaken during the year were the reproduction of the Veterans' Administration index and the reproduction of the "refer from" cards at the Library of Congress.