REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 79 



satisfaction of the Institution, and T desire to express here appre- 

 ciation of his faithful and efficient service during his connection with 

 this office. 



The Institution was advised through diplomatic channels that the 

 Governments of the Dominican Republic, Hungary, Latvia, and the 

 Free City of Danzig had adhered to the two exchange conventions 

 concluded at Brussels March 15, 1886. 



Toward the close of the fiscal year the librarian of the Storting 

 advised the Institution that the Norwegian depository of United 

 States official documents had been changed from the Stortingets 

 Bibliotek to the Universitets Bibliotek, Christiania. 



The Japanese Association of the League of Nations submitted to 

 this country through the Embassy of Japan in Washington an ap- 

 peal for books for replenishing the libraries of Japanese universities 

 and colleges which were destroyed by the earthquake. The associa- 

 tion stated that that disaster wiped out huge collections of books 

 in many libraries, including the collection of 700,000 volumes in the 

 library of the Imperial University of Tokyo. The appeal was 

 heeded by many American establishments and thousands of publica- 

 tions were forwarded to the Smithsonian Institution for transmis- 

 sion to Japan through the International Exchange Service. 



From time to time some of the establishments that make use of 

 the exchange service in the distribution of their publications abroad 

 add to their announcements a word of appreciation. During the 

 year a number of such gratifying expressions have been received, 

 particularly from the Argentine Republic, England, Germany, and 

 this country. 



During the year 2,464 boxes were used in forwarding exchanges to 

 foreign agencies for distribution, being an increase of 241 over the 

 number for the preceding 12 months. Of the total number of boxes 

 sent abroad, 289 contained full sets of United States official docu- 

 ments for foreign depositories, and 2,175 included departmental 

 and other publications for depositories of partial sets and for other 

 correspondents. In addition to the packages sent abroad in boxes, 

 the exchange service mailed directly to their destinations during the 

 3'ear about 40,000 packages. "While it is the practice of the service to 

 send exchanges by freight to foreign agencies for distribution, quite 

 a number of packages are received for remote places which can not 

 well be reached through any of the agencies, and these packages are 

 forwarded by mail. Furthermore, owing to the high ocean freight 

 rates it often happens that it is cheaper to mail packages to some 

 countries than to pack them in boxes and ship them by freight. 



