The office of the superintendent of docu ments, created in 1895, was made a subordinate bureau of the Government Printing Office. Its functions are to act as a clearing-house and storehouse of United States publications; to distribute them by gift to libraries, especially to those designated as depositories, and by sale to individuals; and to make catalogues and lists of them. Its library, in which is preserved one copy of every edition of everything pub lished by the government, contained 30 June 1916 a total of 193,533 pieces. Complete cen tralization of distribution in this office has, however, not yet been effected. It delivers to t 3 -7 the nearly 500 depository libraries an average of 1,000 publications yearly. It issues a list of new publications each month; an index to the documents and reports of Senate and House each session; and at the end of each Congress a full analytical dictionary catalogue of every thing published during the two years.
Appropriations for the Government Printing Office and the public printing and binding for the year ending 30 June 1915 were $5,907,051.30. Of this sum $331,395 was for salaries and ex penses of the office of the Superintendent of Documents. There came under the trimming
machine 64,151,813 books and pamphlets. Case bound books totaled 1,744,335. Money order hooks were shipped to the number of 677,542. Of postal cards there were produced 1,038,063, 199.
Consult reports of the Government Print ing Office, 1853-date, which include, 1895-date, the reports of the superintendent of docu ments. For divisions of the office, personnel and salaries, consult the United States Census Bureau, Official Register, latest issue. Reports on operations of the main building were made, 1899-1904, by the officer of the Engineer De partment in charge. (Consult entries in docu ment catalogues, issued by the superintendent of documents, for those years. Also brief no tices in annual reports of Engineer Depart ment). For description of office consult Pan American Union Monthly Bulletin, November 1910, pp. 737-755; many illustrations; Whelp ley, Nation's Print Shop and Its Meth ods,) Review of Review; 28:556-563, 1903; Rossiter, of the Federal Atlantic, 96:331-344, 1905. For administration consult United States Printing Investigation Commission, Report, 1906.