The administrator of general services is authorized by law to accept for accessioning as part of the National Archives of the United States the records of a federal agency or the Congress that the archivist of the United States judges to have sufficient historical or other value to warrant their continued preservation by the United States government. In addition, certain personal papers and privately produced audiovisual materials that relate to federal activities may also be accepted. Normally, only records at least twenty years old are considered for transfer; the chief exceptions are essential documentary sources of federal actions and the records of terminated agencies.

Excluded from the recent accessions described below are those that merely fill minor gaps or extend the date span of records already in the custody of the National Archives and Records Service. As noted, some of the accessions have been made by the archives branches of the federal archives and records centers and by the presidential libraries.

OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

CIVIL ARCHIVES DIVISION
Diplomatic Branch

The Diplomatic Branch has received additional State Department lot files relating to

World War II and the immediate postwar period. Lot files are groups of records that the department maintained separately from its central files. The largest group consists of 74 cubic feet of records of United States participation in international conferences, 1947-49. These records relate primarily to sessions of the Council of Foreign Ministers, including the Fourth Session in Moscow, the Fifth Session in London, and the Sixth Session in Paris, as well as meetings of deputy ministers. The accession also includes records relating to the Austrian Treaty Commission, the six-power discussions regarding Western Germany, the Conference to Establish an International Authority for the Ruhr, and numerous other conferences.

The State Department has also transferred the records of more than one hundred State Department committees and interdepartmental committees for which the department provided chairmen or secretarial services, 1943-50. These committees dealt with a wide variety of topics including administration of the department, intelligence, social and cultural affairs, national security and military policy, transportation, and economic problems. The various committees dealing with the European Recovery Program, 1947-49, and the Executive Committee on Economic Foreign Policy, 1944-50, are of particular interest.

Since Department of State records are currently open for research through 1947 only,

some of these records are not available for research.

Industrial and Social Branch

The branch has received 40 cubic feet of varied records of the President's Advisory Committee on Labor Management Policy, 1961-68. The committee, which consisted of representatives of the public, management, and labor, studied policies affecting the economy, labor, and American products in the world market.

The branch has added 6 cubic feet to its holdings of the records of the Small Business Administration. The new accession consists of the minutes from 1954 to 1968 of national, regional, and state advisory organizations that affected SBA policies.

The branch has added 38 cubic feet of statistical tabulations of poverty in the United States to its holdings of Office of Economic Opportunity records. Included are tabulations by the Bureau of the Census from its March Current Population Survey, 1970-72; tabulations based on the Census Bureau Fourth Count Summary of 1970 census; Community Profiles of the Poor, 1960-66, covering geographic, social, and economic characteristics of every country and independent city in the United States; and Dimensions of Poverty in 1964, containing tabulations of data on income by state, county, and family size as reported to the Census Bureau

in 1959.

The regulation of civil aviation in the United States in the areas of safety and technology, 1944-49, is documented in 120 cubic feet of the general subject files of the former Civil Aeronautics Administration. The branch also has custody of the earlier files, 1926-43.

The branch has accessioned vessel documents, which are certificates of enrollment and registry, and ancillary documents for ten ports in Virginia and one in North Carolina, 18701966. The records provide information about the vessels, their builders, owners, masters, and sale.

Legislative, Judicial, and Fiscal Branch

Records of the Commission on the Bankruptcy Laws of the United States, 1970-73, have been accessioned. The records, amounting to 12 cubic feet, document the commission's analy

sis and evaluation of the current system of bankruptcy administration in the United States and its recommendations for changes. The accession includes minutes of meetings, transcripts of hearings, correspondence, and reports and studies.

Natural Resources Branch

The Natural Resources Branch has accessioned the opinions of legal officers of the District of Columbia government, 1889-1967, amounting to 18 cubic feet and dealing with a wide range of questions that required day-today decisions by the District Board of Commissioners and other District officials.

The branch has also received the records of two presidential commissions on water resources and natural materials: National Water Commission, 1968-70, 60 cubic feet, and National Commission on Material Policy, 1970-73, 30 cubic feet.

MILITARY ARCHIVES DIVISION

Modern Military Branch

The branch has accessioned 27 cubic feet of the records of the Army War College, 1912-40. The accession consists of instructional material containing processed transcripts of lectures, reports of student committees, and records relating to field trips.

SPECIAL PROJECTS DIVISION

Center for Polar Archives

The Center for Polar Archives has received personal papers of Thomas C. Poulter, scientific leader for the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, 193335, and more recently the director of the Biological Sonar Laboratory, Stanford Research Institute. The papers include observational data, journals, correspondence, aerial photographs, still pictures, and scientific publications from the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, 1933-35; original engineering drawings of the "Snow Cruiser" designed by Poulter; still pictures from the United States Antarctic Service Expedition, 1939-41; and copies of Poulter's later scientific publications. Poulter has also donated the polar library of David Davis, con

sisting of 232 volumes and additional pamphlets and magazines.

The center has also received motion picture films taken by Earle B. Perkins, a biologist on the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, 1933-35, and a map and overlay sheets relating to aerial photographic flights in the Antarctic in 1956 by Walter A. Seelig, a topographic engineer with federal agencies.

with the Office of Geography and under the guidance of Burrill, made thousands of decisions regarding the correct usage and spelling of foreign and domestic place names that were to appear on federal government maps, charts, and atlases.

CARTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES DIVISION

Approximately four hundred manuscript and published townsite plats of towns mostly west of the Mississippi River were accessioned from the Bureau of Land Management of the Department of the Interior. The plats date from the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The office files of Meredith F. Burrill, former executive secretary of the interdepartmental Board on Geographic Names and director of the Office of Geography in the Department of the Interior, have been accessioned. Some records relate to activities of the Board of Geographic Names from its beginning in 1890, but most of the approximately 14 cubic feet of textual records date from the 1940s to 1973. During this period the board, in conjunction

AUDIOVISUAL ARCHIVES DIVISION

George Smith, vice-president of Universal Pictures, a division of Universal City Studios, Inc., has given the National Archives the deed of gift transferring Universal's reserved rights in the Universal Newsreel Collection to the United States government. The collection, which consists of 30,000 reels of outtakes and finished productions, 1929-67, is in the custody of the Audiovisual Archives Division, where it is available for research. Because the collection is now in the public domain and free of copyright restrictions, it is one of the most valuable sources of visual documentation for the period 1929 to 1967 in the world.

The Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., has granted a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to the National Archives to record and maintain a collection of all news, documentary,