Remarks at the Society of American Archivists annual meeting

Meeting of the SAA at the Truman Library from October 5 to Oct 7, 1961. The first portion of this tape is the program at 10 AM on Oct 7, 1961. President Truman's voice is heard for about 2 minutes as he welcomed the conference, however, his remarks were inadvertly copied over by the TV group in error. The final portion is a history of the historical collections at the University of MO. Prof. Richard Kirkendall gave the main address at the conference and it could be Dr. Kirkendall giving the history of the U of MO collection. In the main speech, Dr. Kirkendall praises the Presidential Library system for having vast collections available in one place, but notes that decentralization means more travel by historians to get various aspects of an issue. He notes that while many insignificant items are held by the libraries, it is better to have to go through trivial papers than to have lost a valuable paper to an incinerator. Also heard on the tape is Dr. Phillip Brooks, chair of the conference, and the director of the Truman Library. A partial copy was received from NARA and added to the collection on October 28, 2008. The newly added copy has only the speech by Dr. Kirkendall at the meeting. It does not contain the talk about the U of MO collections. Other recordings of this conference exist in at SR63-19 and SR63-20.