This series contains the briefings prepared for President McNamara's official trips. It includes notes by McNamara, some handwritten; correspondence with senior staff and government officials; and staff reports on visits.

The briefings consist of schedules, airport statements, government lists and biographies, lists of topics for discussion, basic data and maps, background information on the political and economic situation and the Bank's operations in the country visited and, for Part II countries, aid programs and IDA contributions. Schedules, statements, biographies, and topics for discussion are often annotated by McNamara, some heavily. If the trip included more than one country, the first file may include general information on the region. While most files contain a full briefing, a few files include only the list of persons visited or a schedule.

The 1980 files on an African trip include a file of Mrs. McNamara's activities. The series includes one photo from McNamara's trip to Peru in 1976.

These files are valuable for any researcher looking at the Bank's relationship with a country. The rich analytical material in the briefing file pulls together the Bank's information on a country at a particular date which, when supplemented with McNamara's notes, give a snapshot of the country's stage of development and its political climate.

This series contains the official statements issued by Robert S. McNamara as President of the World Bank. The material consists of drafts by the President (some handwritten) and drafts prepared by staff (some heavily annotated)' press releases' and occasional background documents. Statements include remarks at the signing of Bank loans' statements at press conferences' airport statements' statements at Annual Meetings and Board meetings' toasts at official dinners including some toasts to McNamara given by Presidents' messages to be delivered at conferences' remarks to the U.S. Congress and messages to staff.

The set also contains transcripts of interviews and newspaper articles. The former include interviews for the NBC Today Show and Meet the Press (1974)' Segment Three (1978)' Bill Moyer's Journal on WNET (1975)' a CBS interview with Peter Jay (1977)' the ABC presentation of A Day in Shrishnagar (1980)' and appearances on the BBC (1978-1980) and on Norwegian' Japanese' German' and French television. There are also interviews for the London Times and Europa (1975)' the New York Times (1978)' Newsweek (1979)' and the Sunday Times (1980).

President McNamara's memoranda to the Board of Executive Directors constitute this series. They are divided into the following subjects:

• I. Lending rate

• II. Profit transfer

• III. Budget proposals

• IV. Compensation

• V. Structural adjustment lending

• VI. Miscellaneous

• VII. International Development Association

• VIII. International Finance Corporation

• IX. Financial policy

• BC. Brandt Commission Pearson Commission Role of the Bank.

The first file of the series consists of 2 finding aids prepared in the President's office. The first finding aid is an annotated list of the President's memoranda to the Executive Directors from 1 April 1968 - July 10, 1980, listing the subjects discussed, the background papers distributed on the subject, the date of the discussion, and remarks. The annotations indicate the file (I through X and BC) containing the documents on the subject. The second finding aid is titled Board Actions Books I-X. It lists all documents filed within the ten numbered subject files plus the Brandt Commission file. Copies of these lists are filed in the subject files, and the lists in the subject files are annotated to show which documents have been removed from that file or have been filed in other files.

The memoranda dealing with lending rate contain the President's recommendations to the Board with regard to the Bank's interest rate policy and its annual and quarterly review. They include background material dating from 1947 and some handwritten notes by McNamara of the Executive Directors' discussions on lending rate policy (1968, 1969 and 1979).

The memoranda on profit transfer deal with the Bank's annual transfer to IDA of part of the year's income. They include some handwritten notes by McNamara of the Executive Directors' discussion on the allocation of net income for FY69. The budget proposals and related memoranda presented to the Executive Directors for review and approval are occasionally annotated by McNamara. The 1973 Review of IBRD/IDA program, FY74-78, is accompanied by the President's handwritten notes of his meetings with H. Kaufman, E. Patberg and L. Parker of Salomon Brothers, the First Boston Corporation and Morgan Stanley respectively.

The memoranda on compensation are concerned with salary policies and procedures, salary reviews, staff retirement and tax liabilities. They include McNamara's proposals of a general salary increase with his notes of the discussions of the Board, drafts and comparative figures (1968-1970), and recommendations with regard to the conclusions of the McKinsey study on staff compensation (1972) and the Report of the Joint Bank-Fund Committee on Staff Compensation Issues (Kafka Committee 1979). There are also notes taken by the President of discussions on tax liabilities (1979).

The miscellaneous memoranda deal with Board procedures, IBRD borrowing, lending policies, procurement practices, operations evaluation, work arrangements with other agencies, the Bank research program, international agricultural research, and office space. They contain McNamara's handwritten notes on the Executive Directors' discussions of his recommendations regarding subscriptions to the capital stock of the Bank (1969, 1970), Board procedures (1971), and the financing of tea (1973). The memoranda relating to IBRD borrowing and bonds issues are heavily annotated by the President (1978-1980), as is a memorandum on development policy for countries dependent on exports of primary products (1973).

The memoranda regarding IDA concern IDA policies, financing and international agricultural research. They bear no annotations by the President.

The memoranda regarding IFC contain some notes by McNamara of the discussion by the Executive Directors of papers on operating policies (1973), as well as personal comments by R. L. Knight regarding IFC policies (1973).

The memoranda on financial policy contain McNamara's papers to the Board on the Bank's borrowing program, financial policies and capital increase, and the establishment of the Third Window. They include the President's drafts of statements and closing remarks for the Executive Directors' discussions of memoranda on the scale of financial operations FY74-78 (1972) and IBRD financial policies (1973) and notes accompanying his 1976 memorandum on IBRD capital increase.

The memoranda on the recommendations of the Pearson and Brandt Commissions relating to the Bank bear some annotations by McNamara.

A set of documents concerning the discussions of memoranda to the Board on the future role of the Bank and its associated capital requirements was put together by President McNamara. It contains summaries of informal meetings with the Directors, technical notes, memoranda and handwritten notes of the discussions, and correspondence. An index to the documents in the file Role of the Bank, both in McNamara's handwriting and in typescript, is included in the file.

Barber B. Conable's term as President was noted for the major reorganization of the Bank he directed in 1987 and the emphasis on poverty reduction as a central mission of the Bank. He identified environmental protection as an important goal, culminating in the Bank joining with the UN Development Program and the UN Environment Program to establish the Global Environment Facility in 1991. Conable supported an increased role for women in development and he appointed a woman, Marianne Haug, to his senior staff. Broad political changes occurred in Eastern Europe during his tenure, and he maintained extensive liaisons with international organizations including the increasingly influential NGO community. Conable also authorized the project to write a history of the Bank; Brookings Institution was given the contract for the study which resulted in the two volume The World Bank: Its First Half Century. Conable gave the authors access to his Presidential files, and the use of some of the files by the Brookings team is noted in the series descriptions.

The records of President and his staff are extensive. The minutes of his President's Council reveal the mechanisms of Bank management. The usual Annual Meeting files are supplemented by his country files and the records of his travels around the globe. The two series of liaison files show his political skills with varied constituencies.

The records of the Office of the President also include separate series of records of the Executive Counselor to the President, J. William Stanton; the Executive Assistant, Marianne Haug; and the Special Assistant, Anapum Khanna. The file of Conable's Executive Assistant, Jennifer A. Volk, on the lunches between Conable and Michel Camdessus, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, is a separate series, while within the President's files on travel and Annual Meetings are other files that Volk maintained.

This series contains records of President Conable's meetings with Michel Camdessus, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, between June 1989 and July 1991. The records consist of meeting agendas, briefing notes, talking points, and minutes of the meetings. The topics include Bank and Fund collaboration and operations involving debt reduction, country matters, environmental issues, and preparations for Annual Meetings issues, among others.

The file was maintained by Jennifer Volk, an Executive Assistant to the President. The official file on the lunches is missing from the Liaison files - Non-governmental and international agencies; consequently the working file provides the existing information on the meetings of these two executives.

Lewis T. Preston became President of the World Bank on 1 September 1991 and resigned on 4 May 1995. Relatively few records from his term exist. One of Preston's first decisions was to suspend the President's Council, and as a result there are no formal records of the interaction of the highest levels of management. Furthermore, Preston was in ill health and retired before finishing his term. He continued to make speeches and undertook some business travel, but the files on those activities are noticeably fuller in the early years of his tenure. No subject files exist, nor do files on his liaison activities with United Nations organizations, non-government institutions, and international banks. The few files on liaison with the U.S. Government are thin, but there is additional information on this relationship in the records of the Counselor to the President, Matthew F. McHugh.

The most complete files are those on Member countries. These include information on Bank projects in the countries, reports of discussions with country representatives, agendas for meetings, and other representational matters. The files on the Annual Meetings have some unusually interesting briefings for Preston's meetings with financial and other institutions.

The important records of the Portfolio Management Task Force (Wapenhans Report) and the follow-up to it are part of the records of the Special Adviser to the President, Visvanathan Rajagopalan.

Note that a small portion of the Chronological File series contains correspondence and executive memoranda records from the period when Ernest Stern served as acting President. These date from February 1 to May 31 of 1995.

This series consists of President Preston's files for the Annual Meetings and the records of the logistical arrangements made by his office staff. The general organization of the Annual Meeting is the responsibility of the Corporate Secretary, so the records in this series are those of the President himself and the arrangements made by and for his immediate office.

The records consist of agendas, background material, briefings, speeches, correspondence, and related records regarding the Annual Meetings. The 1993 and 1994 files include briefings on commercial banks and financial institutions and the 1993 files include a Reference book. Market that has briefings on the Bank's FY94 funding plan, official borrowings, and country briefs. The briefings provided to the President for these meetings give a useful snapshot of the state of the particular country or institution as of the date of the meeting.

This is the only series in the President's office records that covers the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Bank. The files document the anniversary activities, and one file relates to the Commission on the Future of the Bretton Woods Institutions, a commission established by the private Bretton Woods Committee. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Bretton Woods Conference, the commission issued a report with recommendations on state of the international monetary system, development finance, and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and this file provides the Bank's view of the work of the commission.

This series contains records of President Conable's meetings with representatives, delegates, and heads of the member countries; briefing notes for meetings with country leaders; general background information on countries and governments; press releases; correspondence with government leaders; memoranda of advice from staff members; and congratulatory and thank you letters. Topics covered in the records include external debt; Bank lending operations and criteria, and environmental concerns. Three files cover regions in Africa - Eastern, Southern, and Sub-Saharan - rather than an individual country, in addition to individual files on most countries in those regions. No files on the United States are included.

The files on the USSR are significant, as the period of the Conable presidency covers the late twentieth century political changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Of particular interest are the files on a joint study that the 1990 economic summit in Houston, Texas, asked the Bank and the IMF toundertake. The study, completed between July 1990 and May 1991, surveyed the Soviet economy, made recommendations for its reform, and established criteria for Western economic assistance to support reform.

Many of the files contain records dating from the Clausen presidency, some as early as 1984; apparently Conable used the Clausen country records as building blocks for his information on the countries. Similarly, the files on the USSR contain some records that post-date the Conable administration by several months (until December 1991), as the incoming Preston administration continued to use them.

This series consists of the records of meetings of the President's Council that were maintained by Anapum Khanna, Special Assistant to the President. The files contain agendas and minutes of the meetings, Khanna's handwritten notes taken during meetings, talking points for the President, and papers for discussion by the Council. The series is not a complete record of all President's Council meetings for the period covered, and not all records of meetings contain an agenda or minutes.

This series is a useful supplement to the official records of the Council in WB IBRD/IDA EXC-11-32S. Not all of the official records include minutes, and Khanna's handwritten notes may fill in gaps in the official files. Furthermore, this series includes talking points for the President, all of which may not be included in the official files.

The majority of this series consists President George D. Woods' briefing papers for the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Boards of Governors. The briefing papers for each annual meeting are organized by geographical region and thereunder by individual countries. The country sections contain background information on each country's economic and political situation (including occasional economic reports), the country's relations with the Bank, and lists of each member country's delegates at the annual meeting and the topics they are likely to raise. In the case of Africa and Latin America, there are also memoranda concerning the caucuses held by the countries in these regions and texts of remarks the President intended to deliver to them.

Also part of the series is a briefing file on the 57th session of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in July 1965. Two small files contain briefs for visits to Argentina and Brazil.

This series contains a fragment of President George D. Woods' correspondence, both private and official. Notable among the official correspondence is a letter to Hector Prud'homme, University of Hartford, Connecticut, on education projects; an exchange of letters with the President of Pakistan, Marshall Ayub Khan, on the political situation for Pakistan in July 1965; a letter to Antonio Montero, a banker from the Bahamas, on external financing of local currency components of public projects; and a report from World Bank Vice President J. Burke Knapp on his talks with the President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, on the situation in Rhodesia in December 1965.

This series consists of copies of President Clausen's outgoing correspondence during his entire Presidency. Correspondents include government heads and officials, heads of the United Nations, international agencies, banks, development banks and other corporations, U.S. government officials, the Governors of the Bank, the Bank's Executive Directors, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and Bank staff members.

The files document the views of the President on the economic situation, theproblems faced by the Bank and the IDA in securing resources, debt management, Bank-Fund collaboration, the Bank's poverty oriented lending programs, the energy program, and other specific Bank operations. A number of circular letters are included on topics such as subscriptions to the General Capital Increase of the Bank, requests for IDA contributions, the establishment of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency ( MIGA ) and the establishment of a special facility for Sub-Saharan Africa. The correspondence also contains more routine letters, invitations, congratulations and condolences. The thank-you letters include correspondence following official trips and thanks for aid, particularly for contributions to IDA replenishment. Invitations include invitations to Annual Meetings, to special panels, to senior staff retreats and meetings, and to luncheons.

Letters to staff regarding personnel matters, including welcomes to new positions and farewells on retirement, and general administrative matters such as the implementation of the Performance Planning and Review (PPR) Program, are also in the file.

This series contains correspondence, memoranda, reports and other material related to personnel issues generally and senior management personnel issues specifically. The files include descriptions of positions, a 1983 attitude survey, a grade and salary structure design, management succession and development plans for senior positions and vice presidents, data on vice presidents and directors (1983 - 1985), and similar materials.

This series consists of a chronological collection of President A. W. Clausen's speeches delivered at seminars, meetings, and conferences to a wide variety of audiences. It is closely related to the Speech background file; sometimes there is a file unit in both series on the same event, but neither series appears to have files on all the Clausen speeches.