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CONNECTICUT STATE LIBRARY AND SUPREME

COURT BUILDING, HARTFORD.

DONN BARBER, Architect, New York.

Main Lobby. Looking west into the Supreme Court Room.

The fact that the United States is now in both hemispheres and that Connecticut is found in the front rank in all spheres of our country's activity, requires that we have accessible the current law of those with whom we deal. Therefore our library has been strengthened along these lines. Even a hasty glance through our shelves will show what rapid strides are being made throughout the world by the English speaking people.

ACCESSIONS.

The Connecticut State Library, like its sister state libraries, acquires its additions through three main channels: exchange, purchase and gift.

A total of 86,176 items have been thus received during the twenty-four months ending September 30, 1914. Of these, 13,913 were bound volumes; 27,950 were pamphlets and 44,313 were miscellaneous. The number of pamphlets and miscellaneous items here recorded, gives something of an idea of the large number of records and briefs, town, borough and city reports, experiment station and legislative material received. They have been received as follows:

The large increase in the number of frequenters of the library, the ever-increasing number of official and other publications received, and the large amount of work to be done upon the material long since in the library and never catalogued, continues to make our State Library a busy place. The labor of

getting from and returning to the shelves books called for is but a small part of our work. The real labor comes in the selection, securing, preparing, cataloguing and maintaining

these volumes.

So rapidly has the library advanced along its lines of activity, and so many are the demands made upon it, that it has been necessary from time to time to increase the force of assistants and specialize their work. As competence, adaptability, preparation and enthusiasm are essential to the success of any library staff, it is a pleasure for me at this time to express my appreciation of the work which has been accomplished through the interested co-operation of the several members of my staff, each one of whom it has been my privilege to select, having in mind the special lines of work to be accomplished.

The following colleges and library schools are represented upon the staff: Yale, Wesleyan, Cornell, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Simmons, Drexel and Albany.

LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE DEPARTMENT.

Members are reminded that the Special Legislative Reference Department of the State Library, located in the new State Library and Supreme Court Building, is at their service. In this department there has been assembled and conveniently arranged for ready reference not only the laws, journals, printed bills, special and departmental reports of Connecticut, but the special reports, literature, laws, and proposed laws relating to the principal questions now before the General Assemblies of the several states. As the material in this section is being added to daily, it is hoped that this department may be used freely. Messengers between the State Capitol and State Library will be on duty in the corridor on the second floor near the House.

The following letter, written in reply to one of the several inquiries received asking concerning our special work in this department, may serve to show something of what is being

done.