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Records of the Office of the Historian

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Chronological files

This chronological series contains both incoming and outgoing correspondence transmitted through email, postal mail, or fax. Some handwritten notes between the three co-authors are included. There is no general chronological file between August 1, 1991, and June 30, 1994. Some of the correspondence includes commentary on the history of the Bank, particularly in the chronological file of John Lewis, but the majority of the messages are routine, such as requests for oral interviews and requests for data and documents from Bank offices. Other correspondence consists of comments on drafts, either on draft chapters of the history or on other writings by the authors. Two small files contain a single incoming letter from Sidney Dell (1990) and Peter Wright (1992), each enclosing multiple documents for the authors to use.

Chronological files

This chronological series primarily contains outgoing letters and memoranda. Many of the items relate to the oral history program: making appointments for interviews; sending proposed questions; and sending transcripts to the person interviewed. Other memoranda send Bank reviewers draft chapters from the World Bank history project and send comments to the project from the reviewers; some memoranda also send the work of the Historian's Office out for comment. Letters and memoranda to the Brookings Institution and to senior Bank staff track the progress of the history project.

Correspondence - March 5, 1990, letter

In February, 1990, John Lewis and Richard Webb sent approximately 700 letters to senior Bank staff, followed by hundreds more letters on March 5, 1990, to Bank alumni, present and former Executive Directors of the Bank, and present and former members of the Development Committee, asking them for ideas about which subjects the study should emphasize. They asked for responses by the end of March. This series contains the responses to the mailings in the form of letters as well as a few notes of telephone calls. Some responses are very brief, while others provide extended comments on suggested topics or enclose copies of speeches or documents. The responses from former Executive Directors often include information on representational duties and the influence the EDs had on the Bank's policies. While some of the respondents were later interviewed, for others this is the only source for their views. Replies drafted by Lewis and Webb are also included.

Correspondence with Volume II authors

The World Bank History Project commissioned essays for the second volume of the history. This series contains the correspondence between the project staff and the essay authors and some correspondence between readers of draft essays and the project staff. Also included is correspondence about essays that ultimately were not included in the volume.

Correspondence/manuscripts by former staff

When the Historian's office was established, a number of former Bank staff contributed documents or reminiscences to the office. This series includes the incoming correspondence and the enclosed papers, reports and manuscripts, some written by the sender and others written by colleagues of the sender. The items cover various topics, including: early Bank operations (William Katzenstein's Budgeting in the World Bank, 1947-1956); language training; and the Young Professionals program.

Items within this series may also be found among the records of the Bank, but these copies were regarded by their authors or possessors as so significant that the Historian's office needed to be made aware of them.

Interviews

At the first meeting of the project's advisory committee in January, 1990 the authors were advised to undertake a series of interviews. The authors agreed and embarked on an extensive interview program, ultimately talking with 149 persons. The interviews were conducted during the entire life of the project and included discussions with current and former Bank staff and executive directors, persons from related institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank, and prominent external observers of the Bank. Some of the interviews were noted in footnotes in the published volumes of The World Bank: Its First Half Century. Series contains dupicate reference copies of almost all of the original interview tapes.

A series of interviews were conducted during a research trip the authors made to India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines in November, 1991. These interviews were primarily with national leaders and focus particularly on the 1980s.

Some of the persons interviewed by the authors were also interviewed by the Bank's own oral history program; some also were interviewed by Robert Oliver for his biography of Bank president George D. Woods. The series also contains some of the transcripts from these older interviews.

Publications

The terms of reference for the Office of the Historian included the responsibility to develop and maintain an authoritative record of events . . and maintain a running narrative of them, prepare background papers and ad hoc histories, and select and prepare records for publication. This series contains the files of the publications - whether final or draft, articles or books, published or unpublished - that Office staff or contractors developed. Some files contain only the final publication, while others include background documents and occasional correspondence.

Records of the Office of the Historian

  • WB IBRD/IDA HIST
  • Fonds
  • 1946 - 1999 (predominant 1989 - 1998)

Because of the broad scope of the work of the office, which was essentially the entire history of the Bank, the records are extremely varied. They include: written reminiscences, solicited or volunteered, by former Bank staff members; drafts of various publications, both Bank and non-Bank; commentaries on drafts, discussing the commenters' views of particular issues and events; and background research materials used by the World Bank History Project.

The largest body of original source material in the fonds is the set of interviews conducted by the World Bank History Project authors as part of their research for the two-volume The World Bank: Its First Half Century. Typed notes are the only record of some interviews, but most interviews have both the tape of the interview and a transcript.

Office of the Historian

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