Hidden Collections Registry - Dev

Items

• Revealing Hidden Collections in the Northwest

  Representing a broad range of institutions in the Northwest, records in this proposal range widely. Materials include government, religious, personal, and corporate records, and date from the mid-19th century to 2006. The primary geographic scope of the records is Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, although selected collections touch on Mexico, Virginia, California, and Nevada. Highlights include the records of recent Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, who served from 1998 until 2006, when he was appointed Secretary of the Interior. Natural resources in Oregon are documented through films, photographs, maps and textual records relating to forestry, irrigation, the wood preservation industry and agricultural methods and products. Oregon's women's history is highlighted through the records of women in both the political and the academic arenas. A broad range of topics on Alaskan history is represented, including Alaska Natives, World War II in Alaska, African American soldiers, reindeer herding, mining, and the gold rush. Montana and the larger creative community of writers are documented through correspondence in the Goedicke-Robinson Papers. Correspondents in this collection include two Nobel Prize winners and a number of luminaries of the writing/poetry world. Washington's history is explored through individuals key to the development of the Pacific Northwest as a frontier territory and as a state. Religious heritage is also a strong theme.

• Cataloging The Field Museum Library's Laufer Collection

  Berthold Laufer (1874-1934), one of the most distinguished Sinologists of his generation, was a renowned Asian scholar, bibliographer, linguist and collection curator. Between 1907 and 1934, Laufer built the core of the Field Museum's Asian collection including an extensive collection of books. Numerous other institutions have items collected by Laufer. A 2007 survey of the Laufer collection has revealed it contains items of great importance and numerous rarities. The Field Museum Library's Laufer Collection can be divided into two main categories based on location of publication: Asian works and Western works. Both sections cover a broad range of topics including arts, anthropology, archaeology, biographies, customs and manners, encyclopedias, geography (gazetteers), history, industry, literature, philosophy, religion, science, and travel. The Asian works originate from China, Tibet, Japan, and Mongolia. The collection is particularly strong in the Chinese works on bronze and stone inscriptions (jinshixue). This section of the collection covers the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The geographic scope of these Asian language publications is primarily China and Japan. The Western language publications include books largely Eastern European and Russian in origin. These books were all published between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. These Western publications focus on China, Tibet, Japan, Mongolia and Eastern Europe.

• Providing Access to California's Hidden Collections: A Collaborative Proposal

  The California Historical Records Committee, under the aegis of Califa Library Group and on behalf of libraries and archives throughout the state of California, would like to enable California's libraries and archives, large and small alike, to convert, encode, and post on the California Digital Library's (CDL) Online Archive of California (OAC) (http://www.oac.cdlib.org/) 2700 finding aids for previously undescribed "hidden collections" documenting 19th- and 20th-century California and the West. Building on the state's sizable investment in the OAC infrastructure and recognizing its success as a discovery tool, our project aims to take the OAC to the next level, following the principle of "more product, less process" to quickly and efficiently describe en masse previously inaccessible collections, based on archival descriptive standards. Currently, the OAC contains some 9000 finding aids representing the holdings of 120 libraries and archives. But notable institutions are completely unrepresented, such as many campuses in the California State University system, or minimally represented, such as the Huntington Library. Our estimates indicate that there are some 2700 finding aids, which provide access to a quarter of the state’s processed collections, yet to be converted, encoded, and mounted on the OAC. Examples of currently hidden collections include MGM set designs (UCLA), the Christopher Isherwood Papers (Huntington), and the William Everson Papers (Cal).

• Luther College Archives/Vesterheim Archives - Journeys to American: Documenting Norwegian-American Collections

  The materials contained within the Luther College Archives and the archives at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum document the history and culture of emigrants from Norway to the United States and their descendants, with additional emphasis on the origins of the Norwegian Lutheran church in America west of the Mississippi River and the founding of Luther College, the first Norwegian-American college. The collection includes, but is not limited to, photographs, diaries, letters, sermons, institutional records from Luther College (the first Norwegian-American college), records from other early Norwegian-American educational institutions, the Norwegian Lutheran Synod, congregational records, audio, and moving images. These collections are used by students at Luther College, the staff and faculty at the college, genealogists, emigration scholars and other researchers from the United States and abroad.

• Quick & Clean Cataloging of the Hidden Collections in The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  The hidden collections at the University of Illinois consist of imprints from Europe and North and South America dating from the sixteenth century to the present. The library is already recognized as one of the world’s leading repositories of English imprints from 1475-1800, but other strengths exist in a variety of discrete collections acquired over the course of the last 80 years that are not accessible through formal cataloging. The collections we intend to bring to light include a remarkable array of early modern play scripts and dramatic works from several nations and periods (Spanish, Italian, and neo-Latin); a collection of Confederate state imprints, early and defining works in chemistry and economic literature, a wide-ranging Italian collection that includes material from the 12th to the 20th century; an important collection of Irish imprints, early travel literature, collections of early Mexican and Bolivian imprints, Carl Sandburg’s personal library, German theological dissertations, and a collection of free speech material. In all, some 42,000 items currently shelved as 25 individual “named” collections need to be cataloged. Under a Mellon-sponsored grant, we have cataloged some 30,000 items, but the collections mentioned above will remain uncataloged when that grant ends in 2009. Because of our experience, we can hit the ground running, maximizing production and the impact of a CLIR grant. We can finish the job and bring ALL our hidden collections to light.

• Archival Processing of Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP/PDC)

  Founded in 1996 at Harvard University, the Civil Rights Project (CRP) serves as a multidisciplinary research/policy national think tank which focuses on the U.S. civil rights movement. In 2007 the CRP relocated to UCLA and became the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP/PDC), along with the archival research files of the current CRP/PDC co-directors Gary Orfield and Patricia Gandara. [see: www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu] The CRP archives reflect an unusually broad spectrum of U.S. civil rights activities and advocacy. Dating from c.1960, the files and documents civil rights activities and advocacy in the areas of education, employment, housing, the law, and city/state/federal legislation among the African American, Asian, Latino, and Native American communities.

• The May Massee Collection Finding Aid.

  The May Massee Collection was compiled during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a memorial tribute to May Massee, a prominent children's book editor who founded two of the first three children's book divisions in American publishing houses. The collection was intended to convey the scope of May Massee's contribution to the world of children's book publishing from four perspectives: that of the publisher, the editor, the author and the illustrator. It holds nearly 3,000 original book illustrations by 56 artists who worked for May Massee, including Caldecott Medal winners Robert McCloskey, Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire, Robert Lawson, Elizabeth Orton Jones, Maud and Miska Petersham, Berta and Elmer Hader, Lynd Ward, Leo Politi, Ludwig Bemelmans, Feodor Rojankovsky, and Marie Hall Ets. The collection also houses first editions and international editions of more than 1,000 books that Massee saw published in her career. Correspondence with many of the artists and authors with whom Massee worked, and multi-media adaptations of the books that were published under Massee's editorship are also included. Additionally, the collection contains correspondence documenting Massee's role as Nobel Prize poet Carl Sandburg's literary agent. The office that Massee used at Viking Press in New York, which was designed for Massee by Eric Gugler, the architect of the Oval Office in the White House, is also included. Bulk dates: 1921-1966. The collection is international in scope.

• Oral History Collections

  George Mason University has four distinct collections of oral histories related to the University and the Northern Virginia area: The Northern Virginia Oral History Project is a collection that contains interviews with individuals from the area and focuses on the dramatic shift that has occurred here since World War II. The interviews cover such topics as agriculture, development, health, education, transportation and religion. The late Professor Roy Rosenzweig, who is best known for his work in social history and as the founder of the Center for History and New Media, supervised the final phase of this project. The George Mason University Oral History Program records and preserves oral histories with individuals who have been members of the GMU community for a substantial amount of time and who have made an important impact on the history of GMU. Through these interviews we acquire information on the University's physical, social and academic development. The Planned Community Archives Oral History Project showcases the recollections of individuals connected with the residential and commercial development of the Washington D.C. area. The highlights of this collection are the interviews with major figures involved in the award-winning planned community of Reston, Virginia. The Northern Virginia Leadership Project is a collection of interviews with prominent figures from the Northern Virginia area, all of whom are affiliated with the University.

• The Alexis Carrel Collection: materials of the French physician and philosopher Alexis Carrel, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1912

  By far the most extensive and important body of materials relating to Alexis Carrel, the Georgetown collection encompasses the entire career of this Nobel Prize-winning researcher, collaborator with Charles Lindbergh, and controversial public health theorist. The collection contains Carrel’s research files, laboratory notebooks, offprints, photographs, and specimens relating to his many achievements in experimental medicine, including the work on suturing blood vessels for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1912; his innovations in France and at the Rockefeller Institute in wound sterilization, cell research and tissue culture; his pioneering work in the preservation of organs outside the body, which laid the groundwork for modern organ transplants; and his voluminous correspondence with many leading intellectual and literary figures, including Paul Claudel, Paul de Kruif, John Dewey, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and Charles A. Lindbergh. Carrel’s writings on a prodigious array of topics, much of it unpublished, include the relationship between medicine and faith, war, and human rights, as well as drafts, revisions, and the final manuscript of his influential book Man the Unknown. While scholars of Carrel have had inventory-level access to part of the collection, full cataloging would have a major bearing on such hotly contested fields as the sociology of religion, bioethics, and the history of eugenics.

• Revealing Hidden Women's Collections

  The collections included in this project address women’s involvement in education, medicine, anthropology, public policy, and daily life. Other women’s collections focus on the documentation of daily life and culture, the Civil War, social services, naturalism, arts, science, and midwifery. The oral histories provide first-hand accounts of African American college students, coal mining women, midwives, and many other experiences. The material spans the years 1850-1990 with a primary geographic emphasis on Kentucky but often extending well beyond the commonwealth. The diversity of the research materials includes: oral histories, photographs, diaries, correspondence, research papers, and records, and the time period covered provides unique and in-depth research opportunities. The influence of the women represented in these collections is rich and thoroughly documented. The medical initiatives started by women in Kentucky not only impacted rural Kentucky but influenced development elsewhere. The collections document national trends that influenced Kentucky women but they also provide evidence of women leading movements. Kentucky women have played key roles in women's suffrage, science, education, and the arts. These materials provide a comprehensive survey of the important positions of Kentucky women.

• World Peace Foundation Subject Files

  The World Peace Foundation Subject Files are a collection of pamphlets, broadsides, booklets and other ephemeral materials created by and relating to organized international peace movements.

• The Grove Press Records, 1953-1981

  The collection spans formats and includes editorial records, manuscripts, legal and office files, Evergreen Review files, financial records of the Film Division, books, and miscellaneous printed material, including publishers' catalogs and posters. Correspondence and office memorandums of Grove Press editorial staff include those of Donald Allen, Fred Jordan, Richard Seaver, and Judith Schmidt. The editorial records contain a variety of materials which for any particular title may include contracts, correspondence, legal records, photographs, publicity material, reviews, royalty statements, and production records relating to the publication of books by Emmanuelle Arsan, Alan Ayckbourn, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Samuel Beckett, Eric Berne, Paul Bowles, James Broughton, William S. Burroughs, Marguerite Duras, Wallace Fowlie, Robert Frank, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg, Maurice Girodias, Witold Gombrowicz, Juan Goytisolo, Nat Hentoff, André Hodeir, Eugène Ionesco, Jack Kerouac, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Pablo Neruda, Frank O’Hara, Charles Olson, Joe Orton, Harold Pinter, George Reavey, John Rechy, Kenneth Rexroth, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michael Rumaker, Hubert Selby, Gilbert Sorrentino, Amos Tutuola, Parker Tyler, Tomi Ungerer, Alan Watts, and others. Extensive legal records and clippings files relating to the censorship trials surrounding the American publication of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

• Catalog the Long Island Division's Maps

  The Long Island Division’s flat map collection of 5,267 maps is an incredibly rich resource documenting the United States’ most congested metropolitan area: Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, Long Island, New York City, and New York State, and its transformation from 17th century rural, empty farm land into 21st century urban, suburban sprawl. The maps detail this region’s neighborhoods, villages, towns and counties, land ownership, homes, political and property boundaries, land formation, bodies of water, transportation routes, significant landmarks and more. Approximately 75% of them are rare and unique and the remaining 25% are duplicates and held by other libraries and archives. Their diversity of documentation is matched by their diversity in size from very small to very large, and type from hand-drawn surveyor’s maps to mass produced maps. One of the largest groups in this collection is the William G. DeBevoise Maps, 1815-1927, 1,481 maps. The William G. DeBevoise Maps (1,481 maps, 42 cubic feet, 1815-1925) contain the maps the two surveyors, William G. DeBevoise and John L. Nostrand, created. The maps document the buildings, streets, boundaries and property of the farms, neighborhoods, villages, towns and counties of Long Island; though the majority of the maps document the old towns of Brooklyn, Bushwick, Jamaica and Newtown.

• Cataloging of Chinese and Korean Language Hidden Collections

  The materials to be cataloged include the McCormick Collection, a group of rare monographs, calligraphy, and rubbings in Chinese and classical Korean; selected materials from the Asian Studies Collection, including an 80-volume Chinese Bible, materials from the California College in China, textbooks in Chinese, and rare literary and historical monographs in Chinese and Korean; papers of Chen Shou Yi, a Claremont Colleges faculty member and pioneer of Asian Studies in the U.S.; 120 posters from the Cultural Revolution; and the Jessie Chambers Collection of 20th century Chinese children's books. Scholars in the Asian Studies community have noted the rarity of the materials in the collections, have stressed their significance, and have expressed interest in working with them. Cataloging of the collections will enable The Libraries of the Claremont Colleges to work with UCLA and the University of Southern California (USC) to build a regional web of significant Asian Studies collections and enable further collaborations on scholarly communication projects with an international scope. All of the materials are deeply connected with the significant legacy of Asian Studies at The Claremont Colleges. The materials are also of key interest to faculty teaching in this area for their linguistic, cultural, and historical value. Cataloging would allow for an expressed desire by faculty for primary sources to be accessible for senior theses and other advanced undergraduate projects.

• Clementine Collection Rare Book Cataloging Project

  The Clementine Collection is comprised of the combined personal libraries of the Albani family of Urbino and Rome, Italy. This family of minor nobility included a number of cardinals as well as Giovanni Francesco Albani who reigned as Pope Clement XI from 1700-1721. Subjects well represented in the collection include Roman and canon law, church history, philosophy, and a significant collection pertaining to Jansenism, to the Gallican church of the 18th century, and particularly to the aftermath of the bull Unigenitus. Also included are books of Italian literature and drama which one would expect in the library of cultured and educated men who were also important patrons of the arts. A number of these works are dedicated to members of the Albani family, especially Clement XI and his nephews, Cardinals Annibale and Alessandro Albani. The books date from the 15th century to the early 19th (although the incunabula have been removed and located elsewhere in the Department). Of the remaining volumes, a preliminary analysis of the collection places over eleven percent of the imprints in the 16th century, with the largest number dating from the 17th, and a slightly smaller percentage dating from the 18th century. Owing to the frequent past rearrangement of the materials and in-depth analysis only of select subject areas, no accurate picture exists of the collection's overall chronological breakdown.

• Exposing Biodiversity Field Notebooks and Original Expedition Journals at the Smithsonian Institution

  The content being exposed consists of original objects (field books, unpublished journals, expedition logs) that are held and maintained by various Smithsonian units (incl. archives and libraries) and which were produced by individuals who engaged in field research related to all disciplines of biology. These materials are original accounts of the events that led to the collection and description of millions of plants and animals, including countless new discoveries. These are reference materials that, in most instances, have not been itemized or incorporated into existing catalog systems. In extreme cases, they live on bookshelves in offices and labs distributed across many Smithsonian research units and truly bear the "hidden" label. These original materials span two centuries of fieldwork and cover both terrestrial and marine environments. A significant strength of the collection lies in its coverage of 19th century expeditions across North America, incl. the 1820 Long Expedition, Mexican Boundary Survey (1848), Expedition of Major John Wesley Powell (1868), Jenny Expedition to the Black Hills (1875), Death Valley Expedition (1890-91), Peary Expedition to Greenland (1897), Harriman Alaska Expedition (1899), and numerous voyages of discovery, e.g. North Pacific Exploring Expedition (1853-1856), HMS Challenger (1873-1876), US Eclipse Expedition (1889-1891), and US Steamer Albatross (1906).
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  Uncovering Archives and Rare Photographs: Two Models for Creating Accession-level Finding Aids Using Archivists' Toolkit

  The GRI has processed and described hidden collections in two broad categories. In the first category are seven archives that document the intersection of art and language in the 20th century in Europe and the United States. In the second category are 34 collections and albums of rare 19th- and early 20th-century photographs organized into three subject areas: Asia and Orientalism, Cities and Sites, and Expositions and World Fairs. Of great research value to scholars across disciplines, from art history to literature to cultural studies, the art and language archives document experiments with concrete and sound poetry, spoken word, performance art, conceptual art, and criticism based on the premise that making art and talking about art are related enterprises. The archives include the papers of Arthur Petronio, David Antin, and the conceptual art collective Art & Language New York; letters received by collector, critic and curator Jasia Reichardt; papers relating to the Lettrist movement; and the records of Oracle Press and High Performance magazine. Of scholarly interest to historians, architects, anthropologists and archaeologists, as well as art historians, the collections of rare photography document landscapes, people, architecture, material culture, expositions and world fairs in numerous locations with an emphasis on western perspectives of the Middle and Far East. The collections include slides, stereographs, cartes-de-visite, postcards, and thousands of photographic prints.

• Southold Historical Society Archive

  The Southold Historical Society Archive contains: documents, letters, ledgers, receipts, bills, books, pamphlets, photographs, maps, etc., relating to the history of the North Fork of Long Island, NY. This includes several hamlets and villages located within Southold Township, which was founded in 1640. The collection includes items dating from 1664 to the present, with the majority of items dating c. 1780-1950. The Archive is a resource used regularly by amateur and professional historians. Recent researchers included Brooklyn based archaeologists and a history professor from the University of Connecticut.

• Uncovering Primary Sources from South Florida's African Diaspora

  This project will focus on materials housed at the University of Miami Libraries Special Collections department and The Black Archives History & Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc. The core holdings of the University of Miami's Special Collections document the history, development and culture of Florida, the Caribbean, and Latin American. The Black Archives is a non-profit 501c(3) Community Based Organization that collects preserves and makes accessible primary source material that documents the history and culture of black people mainly in Miami-Dade County from 1896 to the present. The focus is the Jim Crow Era during the 20th century urban south- specifically the immigrants generally from the West Indies and the Caribbean, and migrant settlers in Miami's Colored Town/Overtown and other pioneer Colored Towns throughout Miami-Dade County and Florida. The combined materials total approximately 900 linear feet and include documents from some of the most significant local activists and social engineers of the time such as Father Theodore R. Gibson, Marian Shannon, Father John E. Culmer, Robert Simms, Vernika Silva, and Dr. John O. Brown. Materials also include affiliated organizations such as the NAACP, Florida State Teachers Association, the Congress on Racial Equality, the Crusade for Voters, and the Negro Ministerial Alliance.

• Brooklyn: Creation to Consolidation

  The collections included for "Brooklyn: Creation to Consolidation" cover the period from just before the Revolutionary War to the consolidation of New York City in 1898. They include historic maps and atlases illustrating Brooklyn's development from farmland to city. Archives & manuscript collections date back to the period of colonial settlement and include: Native American land deeds; contracts of labor and indenture; slave bills of sale; Revolutionary War military records of both loyalists and patriots; Civil War diaries; documentation of the beginnings of Brooklyn's mass transit system; and records of commercial, residential, and community development of the emerging urban area throughout the 19th century. Photograph collections depict the various sections of the Brooklyn waterfront, street scenes, major events such as the Blizzard of 1888 and the Revolutionary War Centennial celebration, people in the midst of recreation and daily activities, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and many portraits in varied historical photographic formats such as glass negatives and slides, tintypes, stereographic prints, and daguerreotypes.

• Moving Image Access in OpenCollection: From Accession to EAD

  The material to be described is one hundred 16mm and 8mm film collections recording work life in northern New England in the first half of the 20th century. Like NHF's two films named to the National Film Registry, From Stump to Ship (1930) and The Making of an American (1920), our accessions reward scholars with largely untapped records of labor and society at all levels. The reels hold hidden and unknown research materials -- with a range of cataloging requirements – from among the 800 collections gathered at NHF over the last 22 years. With high research value, many relate to non-moving image documents in other repositories. Moving images represent a demanding category of archival holdings, often separated from related materials. For example, NHF's Albert Farwell Bemis Collection, 25 reels of 16mm film (1920s-1930s) shot by Bemis, an industrialist and benefactor to housing research, should be known to scholars at the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections, home of the Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation papers. Film from our Edwin Bienick Collection of the American Writing Paper Company in Holyoke, Mass., will be of interest to researchers at Special Collections & University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, repository for American Writing Paper Company Records, 1851-1960. The hundred collections selected for this one-year project represent critical mass, the heart of a research base of work-life records in moving images.

• West Virginia Statehood Papers Project

  The West Virginia and Regional History Collection preserves the papers of the three individuals who, along with Abraham Lincoln, are responsible for the creation of West Virginia as the nation’s thirty-fifth state. Francis H. Pierpont (1814-1899) was elected governor of the Restored (Union) Government of Virginia which was established within weeks of Virginia’s secession at the outset of the Civil War. Gov. Pierpont served in exile in Wheeling, and later in Alexandria, until Lee’s surrender whereupon he assumed power in Richmond. Elected to the U.S. Senate to represent the Pierpont Government, Senator Waitman T. Willey (1811-1900) introduced the bill that led to the creation of West Virginia on June 20, 1863. Arthur I. Boreman (1823-1896) served as West Virginia’s first governor and played a key role in establishing the state and grappling with the difficulties of reconstructing a state which was divided more than any other by the events of the Civil War. Together, these collections tell a highly significant tale in our nation’s history which relates to Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, the debate over slavery, the constitutionality of secession at both the national and state levels, and Reconstruction among others. These materials are unique to this repository. They are unknown to many who would have an interest in them as a significant cache of largely unexplored primary documents dating from a time in American history which has perhaps been scrutinized more than any other.

• The Wolfsonian Florida International University (FIU) Library Archives and Ephemera Collection

  The Wolfsonian - FIU library holds approximately 35,000 ephemeral items and 17 archives that illustrate the persuasive power of art and design in shaping modern culture and society during the period 1851-1945. The postcards, leaflets, calendars, and small-format print materials promote 19th and 20th century international expositions, war propaganda, travel, and product advertising. The collection reflects many of the significant modern aesthetic movements, including Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Moderne, Futurism, and Constructivism. The items express this period’s major ideological tendencies and serve as artifacts of critical historical episodes (e.g., European colonialism, the “total wars” of the 20th century, "New Deal" America, and totalitarian regimes in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union). The museum’s archives also reflect these same strengths. The archival collections are comprised of promotional materials from the Great Lakes Exposition (Cleveland,1936) and the New York World's Fair (1939); war-time propaganda from the sinking of the Lusitania (1915) to American areal operations aimed at liberating Italy during World War II; the final years of Mussolini's Fascist Republic (1943-1945); architectural designs and interior decoration projects by Americans Henry Hohauser, Paul Silverthorne, and Frederick T. Rank; Robert Delson's tenure as Federal Arts Project coordinator for Florida; and the exhibition designs and advertising materials of Herbert Bayer.

• Wyoming Aerial Photo Collection

  The Wyoming Aerial Photo Collection covers the entire state of Wyoming and spans from 1936 through the 1990s, with most photos from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Most were produced by Federal agencies. The collection includes some private sets sponsored by oil and gas exploration companies or public utilities.

• WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA): Foreign Policy Media Materials

  WGBH MLA holds primary elements from the television production process. Comprised of interviews, footage, research files, images, etc., these materials comprehensively document the subjects explored in programs. Producers filmed hours of interviews with respected scholars, politicians, decision makers, and eyewitnesses to history, but use a small selection in the final programs. Foreign policy in the 20th century represents a significant volume of our collection. We selected 3122 tapes of primary importance, with a particular emphasis on China. Core to this project is the series China: A Century of Revolution. Made over a ten-year period, this series was the first to explore the turbulent and transformative events in China between 1911 and 1997 from the perspective of people who lived through them. Other titles include Solzhenitsyn at Harvard; Crisis in Central America; Prospects of Mankind; Middle East: US Disaster; East Asia and Our Future; Mexico; and Korea: The Unknown War. These tapes contain interviews with 403 people on subjects such as China, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the former USSR. Other topics include an interview with Joseph Stalin’s daughter, Henry Kissinger discussing the Middle East crisis in 1958, a critical look at US foreign aid to underdeveloped countries in 1964, and a 1960 program of leading US and Soviet scientists discussing nuclear disarmament. These programs were produced between 1958 and 1998.