The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-02-04

DuIAHSs tHC ySci IhC iSiCA ShNC oS- partment answered S,725 recorded questions as well as hundreds of ready reference questions. Of these, about HOO were by telephone. The questions which come to us show a wide variety of interests, for ex- ample:
 Why is there statute of Ben- jamin Franklin in Waterbury. Do West Point cadets drill on | Sunday.
 Real name of "Woodbine Willie" List of lawyers in Chicago. How to manage a soda fountain. Broiler breeding.
 Meaning of Beacon Hill" Boston. | Largest prison in the United States. Material was collected for club members preparing papers, people Iseeking information for speeches and talks, and high school students working on debates. Again, this | year there was noticeable decline in the number of questions asked by high school students but the fact that the students themselves are always present in large numbers in the reference room is evidence that they are using dictionaries, encyclo- paedias, periodical indexes and even the card catalog, without help. This self reliance we believe is largely due to instruction in the use of the library received by these pupils eighth grades.
 We have had many letters from various parts of the country asking questions pertaining to local history and genea1ogy and we in turn have made use of other libraries by bor- rowing books from them in order to furnish our patrons with more accurate information on special sub- jects.
 During the spring and summer months, members of the reference department completely revised and arranged the entire pamphlet collec- tion containing about 10000 pieces which was moved to the second floor stack late in 1929. A great deal of time was also spend in indexing col lections of plays and short bi.. ogra phies.
 The Business and Industrial De- paftment.
 That the business and industrial department is steadily becoming more widely used may be seen from the statistics for the year 1880 which show a total circulation of 7,444- SIS more than in 1929. There | were 2,341 questions answered in this department, making S52 more than in 1929, and an attendance of 19,775-3,33S more than in 1929. The average daily attendance has increased from 51 to 60. With a | seating capacity of 16 people we where people are going to sit. Tho nOn111o y.ify If fipanciol haoIc is now almost a thing of the past, due no doubt to the stock market upheaval and general economic de- pression. It is strange fact, how ever, that the magazines of this | class are still very much in demand,
 probably because the material in them is so much more up-to-date than anything which might be con- tained in book, no matter how re- cent. Books and magazines on ra- dio, especially short wave sets, avia- tion, salesmanship, electricity. and marketing have shown decided in- crease in popularity.
 That the department is called up- on to answer a variety of questions may be seen from the following, which were typical:
 How to clean stone buildings, not using acids.
 First factories manufacturing cop- per in England and America. Construction of a coal pocket. Causes of spots in aluminium pa per.
 Heating value of coal
 Specifications for leather betting. Formulas for mineral wool. Map of air lines in the United States.
 Tables for solubility of metals. systems of group wage payment plans.
 List of aaateur radio stations in the United States
 Construction and operation of fan furnaces.
 Friction coefficients of locomo- tives.
 The Loan Department A survey of our registration re- cords shows that very large pro- portion of new borrowers registered during 1880 are holders of adult cards at the central library. This would seem to confirm a conjecture made earlier in this report that some of our increased circulation must be due to the enforced idleness of large numbers of people.
 There has been a slight decrease HI IhC PSACSHtdSc OL HCSlOH ClTCu- lated from this department, and for erature, biography and history went out than in 1929, while there were rather unusual gains in the less used philosophy, sociology and fine arts groups.
 Those foreign language collections for which we have purchased even a few books during recent years. namely French, German and Italian have almost doubled their circula- tion in these three or four years. This would seem a strong argument for making some effort to add to our Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Yiddish collections during the coming year. It has been brought to my attention several times that the library has bought no new books in these languages for long time. The requests for new Spanish books are from students wanting simple Spanish texts. The thirty-four Arab ic. books purchased in 1880 have been read and reread by the Syrian people who asked for books in this language. A few of the people have read every book in the collection once and some of the books two or three times.
 The number of telephone renewals and reserve requests for books has kept pace with the increased circu- lation in this department. The 6.56S telephone calls asking to haIe books renewed were taken care of at the charging desk and 5,153 reserve re- quests were looked up and reported upon. A total of 236,667 volumes or 43 per cent of all the books which went out from the entire system were handled by this department.
 The Childrcn's Department
 We have often heard 1t said that