The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Global Exchange of Government Documents, 1834–1889

In the United States support for international agreements regarding the official exchange of publications came from those who needed the information published by foreign learned societies and academies. Learned and scientific societies were the most active participants in exchanges of transactions and proceedings, and such exchange programs clearly reflected the growth of American cultural and scientific nationalism during the nineteenth century. In addition, exchange of scientific publications provided a mechanism that helped give America a visible identity within the world cultural community.

One of the first acts of America's earliest scientific society, the American Philosophical Society, founded in Philadelphia in 1743, for example, was to ask its founder, Benjamin Franklin, to distribute volume 1 of its Transactions to institutions in England, Russia, and Italy. By this means the United States began to enter into scientific correspondence, manifested in the exchange of publications.¹ Over time, as governments published growing amounts of information important to scientists, educators, and legislators, two key institutional players began to promote the international exchange of government publications. Although the Library of Congress initiated the first exchange of publications in the 1830s, it was a partnership between the Library and the Smithsonian Institution that resulted, by the end of the nineteenth century, in an international convention for an official worldwide system of publications exchange.

Alexandre Vattemare

Congressional interest in disseminating official government publications began in 1834, when Congress passed a resolution providing twenty-five copies of every U.S.-funded work for the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress to use in return for donations to the Library. Later, on January 10, 1837, the joint committee specifically authorized the Library of Congress to exchange public documents with the French government.² Interest in exchanges with France solidified around a scheme proposed later by the Frenchman Alexandre Vattemare (1796–1864), a gifted ventriloquist and actor known as Monsieur Alexandre who came to the United States in 1839 to perform in a New York theater.³ Vattemare's ulterior motive was to gain the support and participation of Americans in his Central Agency for International Exchange, headquartered in Paris. While visiting libraries and museums throughout Europe, he had developed a compelling, enthusiastic vision for the exchange of publications and cultural artifacts—and he believed that such exchanges would promote mutual understanding among nations and improve chances for a peaceful negotiation of differences.⁴ In two trips to the United States that bracketed the decade of the 1840s, Vattemare managed to persuade many governmental bodies and learned societies to appoint him their official exchange agent and/or pass legislation supporting exchanges with foreign countries.⁵ In addition to the U.S. Congress, his list of exchange partners included seventeen state legislatures and seven federal government departments; city corporations; colleges and universities; and historical, natural history, and other learned societies.

American political rationale for support of Vattemare's system reflected the scientific and cultural nationalism of the first half of the nineteenth century, intensified by the War of 1812, which stimulated the emergence of a number of American scientific and learned societies.⁶ By exchanging their transactions and proceedings for those of European societies, American scientific societies such as the American Philosophical Society, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the Western Academy of Natural Sciences in Cincinnati hoped to demonstrate the validity of American research efforts and to enter into the global scientific communication network. These aims were articulated as early as 1771, when the American Philosophical Society produced the first volume of its Transactions, in an enclosure to each member of the Pennsylvania assembly that read:

As the various societies which have of late years been instituted in Europe have confessedly contributed much to the more general propagation of knowledge and useful arts, it is hoped it will give satisfaction to the members of the honorable house to find that the province which they represent can boast of the first society and the first publication of a volume of Transactions for the advancement of the useful knowledge of this side...