The United Nations Archives

The United Nations Archives1 By ROBERT CLAUS United Nations Archives T HE United Nations Archives can trace its history as an agency from the days of the San Francisco Conference in the spring of 1945, when an archives unit functioned as part of the documents service. It was engaged primarily and almost exclusively in the job of maintaining custody of the documents of the Conference—"documents" in the particular sense in which the word is still used by the United Nations, that is, the printed or mimeographed serial issuances produced by or for the Conference or submitted to it and reproduced as working materials. A similar archives unit operated as a part of the secretariat of the Preparatory Commission in London from August 1945 to January 1946, and was succeeded by an archives unit in the United Nations Secretariat. Mr. Arvid Pardo, who became Acting Archivist early in 1946 and served until October, was an enthusiastic and energetic campaigner for the recognition of the Archives as an important operating agency, whose functions ought to include not only the custody of "documents" in the strictest sense but also the custody of all noncurrent files and the responsibility for appraising, indexing, and describing the records and for exercising the other professional functions of larger archival establishments. To these views strong support was lent by the National Archives document, "Proposal for a United Nations Archives," issued in October 1945. This report antedated the establishment of the Secretariat by several months, and it is safe to say that even its authors did not expect that its recommendations would be made effective immediately. Nevertheless, though some of its suggestions are still considered to be a little premature, the responsible administrative officials of the United Nations became acquainted with it early in the life of the agency and recognized the validity of its principles even while they were still unable to put them into practice. By the fall of 1946, however, the United Nations had moved into its "permanent-temporary headquarters" at Lake Success, the most pressing organizational problems had 1 Paper read before the joint luncheon of the Society of American Archivists and the American Historical Association, at New York, December 27, 1946. 129 130 THE AMERICAN ARCHIVIST been dealt with, and the decision was finally made to establish the Archives as a full-fledged administrative unit, to recruit a professional staff, and to undertake the manifold archival activities that had so far been neglected. The staff is now actively engaged in all of the functions described as "essential" in the National Archives "Proposal." Valuable non-current records of the United Nations are being accessioned, stored, maintained, arranged and described, and serviced, and advice and assistance are given on the disposal of useless records. Considerable time is also devoted to the receipt, registration, and filing of the official record copies of current documents. A comprehensive statement of functions was drafted in October and, it is hoped, will shortly be approved and circulated. Certain other responsibilities, in addition to those mentioned above, have been recognized in principle, but staff and facilities are not yet available for carrying them out as fully as one could wish. It would be desirable, for example, for the United Nations Archives to serve as a central source of information on the archives of all international bodies, both past and present. Collection of such information is a difficult task, however, and little has yet been done. Advice and assistance in current records management could usefully be rendered by the archivists, and special research projects might often be carried out by the Archives for other units of the Secretariat, but these are still plans for the future. The records in the United Nations Archives are so far limited to four groups: the records of the San Francisco Conference, April-June 1945; the records of the United Nations Preparatory Commission and its Executive Committee, August 1945-January 1946; the records of the so-called "Princeton Mission" of the League of Nations Economic Section, 1940-46; and the official record copies of United Nations documents. The records of the United Nations Conference on International Organization held at San Francisco in the spring of 1945 are of course of basic importance in the history of the United Nations and should provide rich source materials for studies on that subject as well as on the origins of several of the sub-agencies and associated agencies. The United Nations Archives possess complete sets of the officially issued documents in all five official languages (plus two documents in Portuguese), as well as copies of verbatim minutes of the plenary sessions and the meetings of the four commissions and the numerous working committees. It also has the drafts and working papers of the committees, the documents submitted to them by the various delegations and by the public, and the correspondence files of the conference. There is also a set of official photographs of the conference. The United Na- THE UNITED NATIONS ARCHIVES 131 tions Information Office has published a useful, though not quite complete, set of the documents issued by the conference, and the United States Department of State has recently issued a collection of the more important documents. For the research worker, however, these published sources must be supplemented by the working papers and particularly by the verbatim minutes. At the conclusion of the San Francisco Conference, arrangements were made for the establishment of a Preparatory Commission to meet in London for the purpose of drawing up an agenda and arranging for the convening of the first session of the General Assembly. An Executive Committee performed the preliminary studies for the Preparatory Commission, and its records, together with those of the Commission, contain the story of much of the detailed organizational and procedural planning that preceded the formation of the Secretariat and the convening of the General Assembly on January 10, 1946. The records now in the Archives consist of serially issued documents, verbatim minutes of meetings, and committee working papers. Preparatory Commission correspondence files have not yet been accessioned. The official files of United Nations documents have already become the bulkiest of the collections. They comprise mimeographed or printed copies of the various classified series issued by or for the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Secretariat, as well as the typed copies of verbatim minutes and drafts of documents. The document series include, for each agency, such items as agenda, journals, summary reports of meetings, proposals for action, drafts of reports, copies of important communications received, and other working documents. All correspondence files of the United Nations are still considered administratively active and remain under the jurisdiction of the Registry Section. In the fall of 1940, the League of Nations, finding increasing difficulty in conducting its economic research activities in Geneva because of the war, transferred those activities to Princeton University, where they were continued until August or September of this year, at which time much of the work was taken over by the United Nations. The files of the Princeton Mission, covering a six-year period, are now in the United Nations Archives. They contain a wealth of material, not only on the administration of the office and the work it did, but also on world economic conditions and trends in general. Reports, studies, and memoranda produced by the office or collected by it from other sources deal with such topics as agricultural production, balance of payments, foreign capital needs, cartels, commodity stabilization plans, currency conditions, control of inflation, customs unions, demographic problems, 132 THE AMERICAN ARCHIVIST employment policy, monetary problems, prices, rationing, raw materials, and reparations. Their value is great for the economic historian as well as for the Economic Affairs Department of the United Nations. All of the Geneva records of the League of Nations, amounting perhaps to three or four thousand cubic feet, remain in Geneva in the custody of the United Nations office there. Naturally they contain much material of tremendous value to the work of the United Nations, and activities in preparation for their transfer to the United Nations Archives are now under way. It is hoped that at least the more useful parts of them will be well established at Lake Success by the time the second session of the General Assembly convenes next fall. Mention should also be made of another large accession that is being arranged. This consists of the files of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, comprising a vast and so far unanalyzed body of records scattered all over the world. UNRRA officials are collaborating with the United Nations in making arrangements for their transfer at a mutually convenient time and in weeding, arranging, and otherwise preparing the records for shipment and future research and administrative use. Reference should also be made to two specialized activities that the Archives hopes to undertake soon. One is the custody, indexing, and servicing of a large quantity of sound recordings of speeches made in United Nations meetings. These were prepared for use in checking official minutes and translations and for incorporation in radio transcriptions as a part of the public information program. Their historical value has not been thoroughly explored, but it seems reasonable to believe that the speaker's own words on a crucial point may often convey much more than the written record of them. The second type of activity concerns the making and distribution of microfilm copies of important series of documents. The initiative in planning such a program has been taken by the Documents Division, but the Archives will collaborate closely, and it is hoped that it will be possible to develop something along the lines of the National Archives file microcopy program.