76 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



date of May 14, 1921, the first shipment, consisting of 18 boxes, was 

 dispatched to Poland. 



The Government of the free city of Danzig, in reply to a letter 

 from this Institution asking whether it would be willing to under- 

 take the distribution of packages intended for correspondents in the 

 territory comprising that city, stated that the Stadtbibliothek has 

 been designated to act as its exchange bureau. 



Among the requests received from foreign establishments for as- 

 sistance in procuring especially desired publications may be men • 

 tioned one from the Societe Beige d'Etudes et d'Expansion at Liege. 

 That society stated that having in view a closer relationship between 

 its peoples and the nationals of friendly and allied countries, it had 

 established a new service of general documentation, and was anxious 

 to receive for the use of that service publications which would tend 

 to make the United States better known in the Kingdom of Belgium. 

 The Institution procured for the Society of Studies and Expansion 

 from the various bureaus of this Government such publications as it 

 was thought would answer the purpose in question. 



Last year mention was made of the fact that a shipment weighing 

 over 25,000 pounds had been made to the library of the University of 

 Louvain, and that that consignment was the largest single shipment 

 ever forwarded through the Smithsonian Exchange Service to one ad- 

 dress at one time. While that statement still holds good, it might be of 

 interest to note here that during the last three months of the current 

 fiscal year three shipments were made to the German Exchange 

 Agency for distribution to various addresses throughout Germany 

 which weighed over 30,000 pounds each. These shipments, as I have 

 mentioned in the foregoing part of this report, were made up of ex- 

 changes suspended during the war. 



During the year 2,752 boxes were used in forwarding exchanges 

 to foreign agencies for distribution, being an increase of 393 over 

 the number for the preceding 12 months. This is the largest number 

 of boxes shipped abroad through the exchange service in one year, 

 being about 300 more than are handled during a normal year. It is, 

 of course, due to the accumulations received for the countries with 

 which exchange relations were resumed. The gross weight of the 

 boxes forwarded abroad aggregated a total of 546,279 pounds, being 

 an increase of 81,093 pounds over the preceding year. 



Of the total number of boxes sent abroad, 383 contained full sets 

 of United States official documents for authorized depositories and 

 2,369 included departmental and other publications for depositories 

 of partial sets and for miscellaneous correspondents. 



The number of boxes sent to each country is given in the following 

 table : 



