Published
Spanning Woods' life both before and after he was President of the World Bank, this material provides insight into his principal interests, as seen by his biographer. Particularly well represented in the copies are memoranda and correspondence on India. A number of items concern Woods' part in the IBRD negotiations of the Suez Canal dispute in 1958, prior to his tenure at the Bank. Internal Bank documents include notes on the Economic Development Institute and the economic work of the Bank, correspondence relating to the IDA replenishment deadlock of 1965-1966, and documents regarding the nomination of a new president. Later documents include his 1974 statement to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on IDA replenishment and correspondence with notable figures such as Barbara Ward.
The topic file consist of: Aid (E. Martin, DAC), Brookings Institution SDR [Special Drawing Rights], Study Group, Columbia University, John Foster Dulles Oral History Project, First Boston Corporation, Foreign - Miscellaneous (India - Egypt), Foreign Economic Assistance Task Force, India, IBRD, Miscellaneous personal messages, Notre Dame University, New York Times, Suez Canal, UN, and White House, Trip to Europe, Yugoslavia and Egypt.
Records are arranged in four parts:
*Correspondence, A-W
* Topic files
* Clippings
* Speeches
Accruals are not expected.
In the Preface to his biography of George D. Woods, Robert W. Oliver writes, Bernadette Schmitt, Woods' secretary, who served him from his days in the army until his death and who helped Louise Woods until Louise's death four years later, allowed me to go through many boxes of Woods's letters, articles, and speeches. In the end, she sent them to me at Caltech, where I perused them at leisure. In 1982, after George Woods' death, Louise Woods donated his papers to Butler Library at Columbia University, andthe papers were delivered in increments between 1983 and 1987, except for those that Oliver was using.
Oliver had 13 boxes of papers. In 1993, when the biography was completed and with the agreement of Columbia University, Oliver shipped the Woods papers in his possession to the World Bank. The Bank staff selected roughly half of these papers for copying, and then shipped the entire corpus of original papers to Butler Library at Columbia University. The Archives also had a few copies from the Woods papers that had been deposited at the Columbia University Library prior to the deposit of the papers that Oliver had in his possession; these copies were added to the Bank's copies of the papers Oliver had used and can be identified by the Columbia University Library stamp on the copies.
Interviews are subject to the conditions in the donor's instrument of gift for each interview and to the World Bank Policy on Access to Information.
Records are subject to the Copyright Policy of the World Bank Group.