It was soon discovered that, owing to Dr. Spofford's foresight, the Library of Congress was "uncommonly rich in such books and pamphlets," but "no little difficulty was encountered then and subsequently in identifying them." By the time the world exposition at Paris opened in May 1900, however, Mr. Murray had located 1,100 titles written by Negro authors, of which about 500 were forwarded to the exposition. Thomas J. Calloway, special agent for the U.S. Commission at the exposition, wrote that "the most creditable showing in the exhibit is by Negro authors collected by Mr. Daniel Murray of the library of Congress."
After the close of the Paris exposition, Mr. Murray continued to collect works by Afro-American, Afro-European, and West Indian authors and to amass a varied collection of Afro-Americana. At his death in 1925, the library of Congress received by provision of his will a unique collection of some "1,448 volumes and pamphlets, 14 broadsides, and 1 map, with the idea that it should form part of the material especially selected by him for exhibit purposes." The books that had been sent to the Paris exposition were kept together upon their return to the Library. This small collection, along with Mr. Murray's bequest and a few volumes presented to the library by Mrs. Anna Murray after her husband's death, became the "Colored Author Collection." Many of the titles have since been cataloged and added to the general collections.
_The Preliminary List of Books and Pamphlets by Negro Authors, for Paris Exposition and Library of Congress_ (1900), compiled by Daniel Murray, appears to have been the first effort on the part of the Library to draw attention to works by and about Negroes.
In 1906 Appleton Prentiss Clark Griffin, chief of the Division of Bibliography, directed the compilation of a _Select List of References on the Negro Question_, published by the library. It contained entries for 232 books and 286 periodical articles published during the period 1879-1906. The library also published in the same year a _List of Discussions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments_, which comprised 103 entries. Both bibliographies included titles relating primarily to Negro suffrage and the Negro in the South and were compiled to "meet requests by letter upon topics of current interest."