Scope and Content Note
The records of the Joint Committee on Materials Research span the years 1925-1940. They reflect the activities of an organization formed jointly in 1929 by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council to promote the acquisition, identification, and preservation of materials for research in the social sciences and humanities. Robert C. Binkley was appointed secretary of the committee in 1930, and served as chair from 1932 until his death in 1940. T. R. Schellenberg became executive secretary of the committee and together they spearheaded the large-scale microfilm publication in 1934 of the records of the hearings of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and National Recovery Administration. Included in the collection is information on library and archives projects, permanence of paper stock, union catalogs, offset reproductions, microreproductions, other duplicating techniques, sound reproduction, and copyright. The records consist of correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes and agenda of meetings, inventories, printed matter, technical information, and miscellaneous matter.
Correspondents in addition to Binkley and Schellenberg include Solon J. Buck, Robert Treat Crane, A. F. Kuhlman, Waldo Gifford Leland, Harry Miller Lydenberg, Thomas Powderly Martin, Archibald MacLeish, Arthur Hobson Quinn, J. M. Scammell, James T. Shotwell, and Vernon Dale Tate.