Dr. MUMFORD. We add nearly 1 million pieces of material to the collections each year. Actually, we take into the Library something like 8 million pieces that are acquired through these various ways. After sorting through it to discover what we need and what will fill gaps, we add about 1 million pieces, and the remainder is available for the congressional donation program and for exchange with other libraries.

Mr. ANDREWS. Is this $850,000 that you are requesting to cover approximately 50 percent of your additions each year, or what? Dr. MUMFORD. No, sir. The amount we purchase would not constitute 50 percent of our receipts.

Mr. WELSH. Last fiscal year we received by purchase from all funds 788,000 pieces out of a total of 8,695,000 pieces acquired.

USE OF FUNDS UNDER HIGHER EDUCATION ACT

Mr. ANDREWS. Was this budget made up with full realization and allowances for the added money you are expecting under the Higher Education Act?

Dr. MUMFORD. We had it in mind, Mr. Chairman, but as I think I indicated yesterday, the estimate for implementing title II, part (c), of the Higher Education Act, was based upon supplementing what we were already receiving.

Mr. ANDREWS. You are getting $300,000 in a pending supplemental for 1966, and $3 million for 1967 in the bill as passed by the House recently.

Dr. MUMFORD. May I add, Mr. Chairman, that the emphasis in this program under title II is upon promptness in cataloging and complete cataloging of material received so cards can be available promptly to the other libraries outside so they will not have to go through the wasteful duplication of attempting to catalog.

Mr. ANDREWS. What percentage of the expected $3.3 million that you will get from other sources than direct appropriation by this committee do you plan to use for book purchases?

Dr. MUMFORD. About $900,000, sir.

Mr. ANDREWS. That would be in addition to the $850,000 you are requesting here for book purchases?

Dr. MUMFORD. It would.

Mr. WELSH. May I add something, sir? A substantial part of the one-third for acquisition costs in the $3 million is for airmail, not for the books themselves. The amount for books is $200,000. The costs of getting the materials here and other costs associated with acquisition. raises the total to $900,000 or one-third.

Dr. MUMFORD. It also involves getting materials that are now difficult or impossible to get from countries where the book trade is not organized.

Mr. ANDREWS. Do you think you can usefully spend all this added money in 1 year?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir, we certainly do.

Mr. ANDREWS. Roughly $900,000 out of the $3.3 million plus the $850,000 which you are requesting of this committee?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir. We have made definite plans for implementing the program under title II.

MICROFILMING DETERIORATING MATERIAL

Mr. ANDREWS. On page 125 of the print you show that $210,000 of this item is being used for microfilming deteriorating material. What does this expenditure get for you? How much can you do with this amount of money!

Dr. MUMFORD. We are carrying on an extensive program of microfilming the old materials that are deteriorating. Attention has been concentrated primarily on the old newspapers. We eventually hope to have all our old newspaper files on film, which not only preserves them but saves space.

Another part of the program is to buy current newspapers on microfilm so we will not have the expense of binding or filming them later in order to preserve them.

Mr. ANDREWS. Does this work fall under the category of "Books for the General Collections"?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, that is included in that appropriation.
Mr. ANDREWS. And this will be a continuing program?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir, we want it to be.

Mr. ANDREWS. Are you making a real dent in that preservation work or is annual deterioration an offset? Will you ever catch up on it?

Dr. MUMFORD. We are making a dent, but the problem of deteriorating material is an enormous one. It extends to books too brittle to bind and magazines. Eventually there will have to be a national program for preservation or else we will lose much of what has been published since 1900 or even since 1870; the record of our history during that period will be lost. The problem of deterioration is a national one every library is confronted with it.

Mr. ANDREWS. So you think you are making progress in this field? Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, we are making progress in this area. It is a small amount of progress in respect to the whole program, but at least it is very important and essential that we get the newspapers that are falling apart on film before it is too late.

SPECIAL RESERVE FUND FOR OBTAINING UNUSUAL MATERIALS

Mr. ANDREWS. Last year we provided money to establish a special fund for you to obtain unusual materials when and if the opportunity How much did we allow for that purpose?

arose.

Mr. ROSSITER. $25,000.

Mr. ANDREWS. The committee report asked that you render a list of the uses you might make of that special fund. Did you use all of it? Dr. MUMFORD. We have used part of it, about a third.

Mr. ROSSITER. We have spent $8,741 to date and we have here a list of the items purchased.

Mr. ANDREWs. Read one or two of the items and then we will insert the list in the record.

Mr. ROSSITER. We have bought John Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson letters for example, and a group of Van Buren's letters.

Mr. ANDREWS. Were they original letters?

Mr. ROSSITER. Yes.

Mr. ANDREWSs. Handwritten?

Mr. ROSSITER. Yes.

Mr. ANDREWs. What was the condition of them?

Mr. BASLER. Very good.

Mr. ANDREWS. Give use some of the prices you paid for some of those unusual documents.

Dr. MUMFORD. If we may go off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. ANDREWS. Of course, there is no market price for those kinds of documents. How do you arrive at the price?

Dr. MUMFORD. There are records, Mr. Chairman, which show what similar pieces have brought at auction or private sales.

Mrs. HAMER. And dealers' catalogs which show the going market prices.

Dr. MUMFORD. There are guidelines as to whether they are overpriced or not.

(The following was submitted for the record:)

From the Special Reserve Fund of $25,000, $8.741 has been expended to date during fiscal 1966. The following were purchased because of their historical and literary value to fill gaps in the Library's collections or to add significant groups of material of research value. The following items were purchased during the year: 2 John Adams letters; 1 Alexander Hamilton letter; I Thomas Jefferson letter; 55 Martin Van Buren letters; approximately 200 Admiral Alfred T. Mahan letters; 60 letters from the Charles T. Jackson correspondence; and 1,000 items in the Grant Richards collection of A. E. Housman manuscripts.

Mr. ANDREWS. How much are you asking in this budget for that special fund?

Dr. MUMFORD. The same as last year, $25,000.

Mr. ANDREWS. You have spent $8,741 out of the current fund?
Mr. ROSSITER. Yes, sir.

Dr. MUMFORD. You will recall that last year I pointed out we might let this accumulate in case a very rare collection came on the market that was extremely desirable for the Library to have and available at a reasonable price. I believe you asked us if this money would burn a hole in our pocket and we said no, we would scrutinize every item carefully, and we think we have done this during this year. It is highly desirable to have some reserve, for an important collectioneven an unusual item-might well cost the $25,000 or more.

Mr. ANDREWs. I will read from the committee report, page 18:

The committee has endorsed the special fund with the understanding that it will be used only for unique materials-probably mostly relating to American history-deemed of special significance to the collections and that if little or no material of special interest becomes available on terms acceptable to the Librarian the fund will be allowed to accumulate. The annual budget presentation should include a list of purchases made.

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Langen.

VARIATIONS IN BOOK PRICES AND VOLUME OF ACQUISITIONS

Mr. LANGEN. Page 153 of the justifications has a reference to the volume of material purchased and the price per piece. What is the significance of those figures as they indicate the increases of each?

Dr. MUMFORD. The main significance is that it reflects a continuing increase in the price of publications both in this country and abroad.

Mr. LANGEN. I note, for instance, there is quite a variation in the increase in price per piece. For example, in the United States since 1962 there has been an increase in price per piece of 14.6 percent while in East Germany there has been an increase of 141.8 percent. By the same token, the volume of the purchases or the number of purchases has dropped 43.8 percent in East Germany where there is this high increase in the price per piece, and I find that ratio or combination prevails all through the listing. So, as the price per piece goes up the volume has gone down?

Mr. WELSH. Sir, if you are comparing East Germany and West Germany, a change in our purchasing procedure is reflected. We realized that the price per piece in East Germany had risen considerably and we also realized some of the material we obtained in East Germany was available in West Germany, so we switched from buving in East Germany to buying in West Germany.

Mr. LANGEN. What about Russia?

Mr. WELSH. The statistics for purchases from Russia in 1962 reflect a duplication of purchasing to insure getting comprehensive coverage of Russian material. We had in one instance two blanket orders for just about the same material. When we saw that we were actually receiving duplicate materials we canceled one order. The substantial reduction in 1963 represents a reduction in duplication.

Mr. LANGEN. There is a reduction of 22.9 percent in volume and at the same time if you make a comparison of the average price per piece in fiscal 1965 it is $1.30 in Russia compared to $8.15 here, so on a piece basis one might come out with the interpretation it is pretty cheap in Russia.

On in Italy, there has been an increase of 74.9 percent in price per piece and the number of pieces has gone down.

I ask these questions in trying to understand whether or not there is a relationship between the total number of purchases and the price, and the experience of that price having gone up or down.

Mr. WELSH. There may possibly be. We have not established that as yet except in Germany where we deliberately switched from East Germany to West Germany. These prices do reflect an uneven price structure which we cannot satisfactorily explain.

Mr. LANGEN. What about Italy?

Mr. WELSH. I have no explanation for what happened in Italy. I tried as late as this morning to discover the answer but I was not successful.

Dr. MUMFORD. But since we buy only one copy ordinarily I do not think there would be a relationship between the volume we buy and the price. Your question is why we are buying less?

Mr. LANGEN. The indication by these figures is that in every instance where there has been a substantial percentage increase in the per-piece price the volume has gone down and I was wondering why. It does not particularly follow a precise pattern in Italy. I note there that the purchases in 1962 were 1,798 while in 1963 they dropped to 640 and since then they have been coming up somewhat but they are still substantially below what they were in 1962. Is this an indication they do not have as much material or that the material is not of value to you or is it an attempt to save money? What accounts for the varia

tion in volume? I gathered by putting this chart in here you intended it would mean something.

Mr. WELSH. Yes, the chart was included to show a trend in price increases.

Mr. LANGEN. What about England? Here there is a substantial increase in price per piece and in volume.

Mr. WELSH. In England the increase in volume reflects the greater availability of material of interest to the Library of Congress, and the price increase reflects the general trend of price increases in book publishing.

Mr. LANGEN. If that is the justification for those figures would it not follow in Italy there is not availability?

Mr. WELSH. Except for the 1962 figure, the trend is upward. In 1964 we bought more material than in 1963 and in 1965 more than in 1964. I cannot explain that 1962 figure.

Mr. LANGEN. Are these increased prices per piece an indication of what is happening to the general economy of those countries? Mr. WELSH. Yes, sir; it seems to be.

Mr. LANGEN. It seems to be?

Mr. WELSH. It seems there is a gradual inflation, a gradual increase in book publishing costs.

Mr. LANGEN. So that would indicate a minimum inflation in West Germany, where the price per piece shows an increase of only 3 percent since 1962?

Dr. MUMFORD. I do not think we could answer that other than in the book publishing field. Whether this is true in other industries or not, I do not think we could deduce from this. We do know this reflects the trend in the cost of publishing.

Mrs. HAMER. It may reflect the type of publishing, also. If a country went in heavily, for example, for paperbacks, the average cost of all items obtained by us would be low, whereas if a country published mainly in well-bound hard covers the average cost per item would be higher. Or an expensive multivolume work might become available one year, while nothing comparable might be available the next; that would also raise the average cost of materials purchased that year. These are possibilities.

BASIS FOR 1967 ESTIMATE

Mr. LANGEN. As we look at these figures and associate them with the total amount of money requested, it would seem that a great deal will depend on which countries you will buy the publications from. It is possible you could buy the same number of pieces for less money than you had last year if you were selective in the countries you bought from. So I am now wondering, in view of the request for increased moneys, where do you expect to buy the increased volume of books, which countries?

Dr. MUMFORD. The number of pieces obtained is not significant. We need to buy the publications important for research, whatever country they might be from. The volume published in a particular country in a particular year might vary somewhat. We cannot concentrate on a particular country merely because the cost of library materials is lower in that country.