During World War II the record holdings of the National Archives more than doubled, and in 1946 the National Archives published a summary guide intended primarily for the general public, Your Government's Records in the National Archives (1946), which provided an overall view of the more than 700,000 cubic feet of records in its custody. More directly intended for the use of the scholarly researcher was the expanded guide that appeared 2 years later, Guide to the Records in the National Archives (1948), which included in its descriptions the 813,000 cubic feet of records accessioned by June 30, 1947. Two years later total accessions. had grown to more than 900,000 cubic feet, and descriptions of the new material were included in Your Government's Records in the National Archives (revised, 1950).

Of the general guides cited above, those published in 1940 and 1948 were the most comprehensive in their coverage of accessioned records and the most detailed in their descriptions. The 1948 guide was intended to supersede rather than to supplement that of 1940. Records accessioned since the cutoff date used for the 1948 guide, June 30, 1947, have been described both in professional journals and in National Archives Accessions, whose 25 numbers appeared intermittently between 1948 and 1968. In January 1969 National Archives Accessions was replaced by Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives, which describes the most important records accessioned since the previous issue.

Guide to the National Archives of the United States

This publication is intended to supersede the 1948 guide and includes all official records of the U.S. Government - now legally designated as "The National Archives of the United States" accessioned as of June 30, 1970, regardless of where such records are located. It does not include, however, Presidential and other personal papers and historical manuscripts in in the custody of Presidential libraries. All records described in this guide are located in the National Archives Building unless otherwise indicated. Those located in the General Archives Division of the Washington National Records Center (designated as WNRC), the relatively small quantity accessioned as of the cutoff date of the guide in the various regional archives branches (each designated by the symbol FRC and the city in which it is located; e.g., FRC Atlanta), and the relatively few official records in Presidential libraries (each designated by the President's initials and the letter "L"; e.g., FDRL) are noted and their specific locations given in the form indicated above.

The nearly one million cubic feet of records described in this guide include more than 1.5 million maps, about 201,000 rolls of microfilm, more than 43,000 reels of motion pictures, approximately 4,523,000 still pictures, about 2.4 million aerial photographs, and approximately 66,500 sound recordings. Most of this material was originally created or received by

legislative, judicial, or executive agencies of the Government in pursuance of their legal obligations or in the transaction of their official business. This material was maintained by these agencies as an official record of their activities or because of the value of the information it contained. A very small percentage consists of records of other governments or of unofficial documentary materials that from time to time and for various reasons has come into the Government's possession.

Collectively, these records document the history of the Government from its establishment through the mid-20th century. In addition they contain information of importance for understanding many aspects of American life, both past and present. Although they do not include the records of States or lesser jurisdictions, they contain much valuable information on particular localities and, in some cases, on individuals. The National Archives of the United States embrace the greater part by far of the Government's records for the period before 1950 that is of sufficient value to merit continued preservation.

The Record Group Concept

The unit of entry in this guide is the record group; i.e., a body of organizationally and functionally related records established with particular regard for the administrative history, complexity, and volume of the records and archives of an agency. A typical record group consists of the records of a bureau or some other comparable unit of

an executive department at the bureau level, or the records of an independent agency of somewhat comparable importance in the Government's administrative hierarchy. Record groups with titles beginning "General Records" have been established for most of the executive departments and several of the independent agencies as a practical modification of the record group concept. Such record groups include the records of the office of the head of the department or agency and the records of other units concerned with matters, such as fiscal and personnel, that affect the department or agency as a whole. Several of the record groups of this type include records that were were produced by bureaus or comparable units but that were incorporated into central files maintained for the entire department or agency.

Collective record groups constitute a second modification of this "records control" concept. For purposes of convenience, collective record groups generally bring together the records of a number of relatively small and short-lived agencies that have an administrative or functional relationship, the records of each such agency constituting a separate subgroup. Examples include Records of Boundaries and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations (Record Group 76) and Records of Presidential Committees, Commissions, and Boards (Record Group 220). The latter collective record group consists of the records of the relatively smaller and less well-known committees

and commissions; the larger and more important ones have been accorded separate record group status.

A third modification of the record group concept is its application to one or more bodies of collected records, such as the Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library (Record Group 45) and the National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1941- (Record Group 242).

When the name of a particular agency is part of a record group title, it should be understood that the records of predecessor agencies are frequently included in the record group. For example, Records of the United States Coast Guard (Record Group 26) include the records of the Bureau of Lighthouses, the Life-Saving Service, the Revenue-Cutter Service, and other predecessors of the presentday Coast Guard. When a successor agency has been concerned chiefly with liquidation of the affairs of its predecessor, however, the name of the predecessor appears in the title of the record group. For example, the War Trade Board Section of the Department of State succeeded in 1919 to functions of the War Trade Board, one of the major emergency agencies of World War I, and continued some of its activities for a short time; nevertheless, the records of both predecessor and successor agencies together constitute the Records of the War Trade Board (Record Group 182). In Records of the War Production Board (Record Group 179) are records not only of the Board itself,

but also records of its predecessors, the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board and the Office of Production Management, and of its successor, the Civilian Production Administration. The index to this guide provides the most convenient method of locating the descriptions of records of such predecessor and successor agencies.

At the time the record group system was developed in 1944, the 190 record groups first established were numbered consecutively in the order in which the first records in each group had been accessioned. Record groups subsequently established generally have been numbered in the order in which they were established. When all of the known records records of archival value that should be allocated to a particular record group are in the National Archives, that record group is considered "closed." Record groups to which further accessions are expected are regarded as "open." Generally, the latter record groups are for continuing agencies, while closed record groups contain the records of discontinued agencies. Record group numbers canceled for any reason are not used again until at least 10 years have elapsed in order to minimize confusion in reference service and in citations. For the convenience of persons who may have use for it, a list of record groups arranged by record group number is provided in appendix C.

General Organization of the Guide

This guide to the National

in this guide by a brief administrative history and a concise statement of the major functions of the agency or agencies that created the records. The descriptions of records usually provide general information as to their type, purpose, content, chronological span, and quantity. At times they provide information as to the completeness and the arrangement of the records and the existence of indexes, registers, and other devices for facilitating their use, but such information has been provided on a selective basis only, with no attempt at completeness. Dates given are generally those between which a particular body of records was accumulated and organized, rather than the dates of the oldest and most recent documents included in the records, although in many instances these two sets of dates are identical. When a body of records is known to include documents dated earlier or later than the inclusive dates given, this fact is mentioned in the description. The total volume of records in each record group is given in cubic feet. For the convenience of researchers the quantity of specific bodies of records is given in linear feet, with the linear footage representing the approximate number of feet of shelving or filing equipment that would be occupied by the records if they were all shelved or filed vertically. Cartographic and audiovisual records are described in separate paragraphs following the description of textual records for each record group if warranted by

either their volume or significance; otherwise no separate description is provided for such records.

This guide can present only the most general view of the records that constitute the National Archives of the United States. Some conception of the degree to which the entries are necessarily generalized may be gained from noting that 1,500 cubic feet of records-about 3,000,000 individual sheets of paper are covered, on the average, by about one one page of description. It should also be noted that the amount of information given about any record group or subgroup is not necessarily in proportion to the quantity of the records or their value for research or other purposes. The degree of completeness with which the records are described has frequently been determined by such considerations as the relative administrative complexity of the agency, its history, and its records.

The task of analyzing, arranging, describing, and otherwise establishing completely adequate control over all the records described in this volume is still far from finished. The description of records. should be understood, therefore, to be necessarily provisional in character; there are, no doubt, errors and deficiencies that will need to be corrected in later and more detailed finding aids and guides.

At the end of many statements in this guide pertaining to record groups and subgroups are indicated those published finding