The
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace and formerly The Hoover Institute and Library on War, Revolution, and Peace) is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic ...
Library and Archives is a
research center
Center or centre may refer to:
Mathematics
*Center (geometry), the middle of an object
* Center (algebra), used in various contexts
** Center (group theory)
** Center (ring theory)
* Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentric ...
and
archival repository located at
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, near
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
Th ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. Built around a collection amassed by Stanford graduate
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium and ...
prior to his becoming
President of the United States
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal government of t ...
, the Hoover Library and Archives is largely dedicated to the world history of the 20th and 21st centuries. It includes one of the largest collections of political posters in the world.
Organizational history
Background
U.S. President
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium and ...
(1874–1964) was an alumnus of
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, graduating in 1895 to become a
mining engineer.
Successful in business enterprise from an early age in a managerial capacity, Hoover also developed a deep affection for
book collecting
Book collecting is the collecting of books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given collector. The love of books is ''bibliophilia'', and someo ...
, building an impressive personal collection.
When
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
erupted, Hoover found himself in Europe, quickly becoming involved in ongoing efforts to provide relief aid to wartime
refugee
A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as ...
s.
In 1915 Hoover's professional life intersected with his bibliophilic proclivities when his friend Ephraim D. Adams suggested that Hoover take it upon himself to preserve the records of the organization he directed, the
Commission for Relief in Belgium
The Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB, or simply Belgian Relief) was an international, predominantly American, organization that arranged for the supply of food to German-occupied Belgium and northern France during the First World War.
It ...
.
Hoover accepted this task and began assembling the mass of
books
A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, mo ...
,
posters
A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. ...
, and documents which would become the foundation of the so-called "Hoover War Collection"—earliest incarnation of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.
Hoover also later recounted that he was further driven in the task of systematic archiving by his own wartime research as food administrator. In the first volume his memoirs, published in 1951, Hoover wrote:
I did a vast amount of reading, mostly on previous wars, revolutions, and peace-makings of Europe and especially the political and economic aftermaths. At one time I set up some research at London, Paris, and Berlin into previous famines in Europe to see if there had developed any ideas on handling relief and pestilence. ... I was shortly convinced that gigantic famine would follow the present war. The steady degeneration of agriculture was obvious.
... I read in one of Andrew D. White's writings that most of the fugitive literature of comment during the French Revolution was lost to history because no one set any value on it at the time, and that without such material it became very difficult or impossible to reconstruct the real scene. Therein lay the origins of the Library on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Andrew D. White donated his vast collection of ephemera from the French Revolution to Cornell University in 1891. A full account of the founding of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives is provided by George H. Nash in "Herbert Hoover and Stanford University," published by the Hoover Institution Press in 1988.
In February 1919, Congress established a new agency known as the
American Relief Administration
American Relief Administration (ARA) was an American Humanitarian aid, relief mission to Europe and later Russian Civil War, post-revolutionary Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program dire ...
as a mechanism for the supply of food aid to the hungry people of post-war Europe. Herbert Hoover was tapped by President
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...
to head this agency, and the records of this great enterprise were also incorporated into Hoover's archival holdings.
The initial holdings documented the end of
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
and the peace conference at the end of the war.
Development
Starting in 1919, Hoover donated the collected materials to Stanford, his alma mater, along with funds to maintain and develop the documents. The collection was called the Hoover War Collection and later the Hoover War Library. In August 1920 the first permanent curator of the collection,
Frank A. Golder, headed a team which traveled across Europe to acquire materials. A massive number of books, pamphlets, documents, and posters were acquired, crated, and shipped back to California on behalf of the project. By 1923 more than 40,000 items had been obtained for the collection.
The documents were initially housed within the main Stanford Library, but by 1929 the collection had reached 1.4 million items and space was becoming a problem. In 1941
Hoover Tower was completed as a repository for the growing collection, which was eventually named the Hoover Institution and Library on War, Revolution and Peace.
Staff members in subsequent decades have continued to expand the collection systematically. The current holdings include 6,000 separate collections that encompass an estimated 50 million original documents.
, the director of the library and archives is Eric Wakin.
Key collections
The archive is a valuable resource for the following subjects related to Russia: the rise of political parties, Imperial Russian diplomatic archives, the revolutionary movement,
Asiatic Russia and its colonization, the "Okhrana", the Russo-Japanese War, and Russia's participation in World War I.
Other special collections include the Hoover Institution/Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG)/Russian State Archival Service Cataloging Project and the Soviet Communist Party Archives Microfilming Project.
Digitized audiovisual recordings and transcripts of more than 1,500 ''Firing Line'' episodes were contributed to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting via external links from The Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University.
The Hoover Institution hosts the
Chiang Kai-shek diaries and the opening of the diaries for study has contributed to a surge in academic publishing China's Nationalist period.
In 2021, it acquired
Wang Jingwei
Wang Zhaoming (4 May 188310 November 1944), widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician who was president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. He was in ...
's personal papers.
See also
*
Ba'ath Party archives, formerly housed at Hoover
*
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace and formerly The Hoover Institute and Library on War, Revolution, and Peace) is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic ...
*
Stanford University Libraries
The Stanford University Libraries (SUL), formerly known as "Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources" ("SULAIR"), is the library system of Stanford University in California. It encompasses more than 24 libraries in all. S ...
Footnotes
Further reading
* Anna M. Bourguina and Michael Jakobson (eds.) ''Guide to the Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection in the Hoover Institution Archives.'' Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1989.
* Rita R. Campbell, "Machine Retrieval in the Herbert Hoover Archives," ''The American Archivist,'' vol. 29, no. 2 (April 1966), pp. 298–302.
* Peter Duignan, ''The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace: Seventy-five Years of its History.'' Foreword by W. Glenn Campbell. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1989.
* Peter Duignan, ''The Library of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.'' Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1985.
* Peter Duignan, "The Library of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace: Part 1: Origin and Growth," ''Library History,'' vol. 17, no. 1 (2001), pp. 3–19. "Part 2: the Campbell Years," ''Library History,'' vol. 17, no. 2 (2001), pp. 107–118.
* Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, ''Archival and Manuscript Material at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace: A Checklist of Major Collections.'' Stanford, CA: Stanford University, July 1975.
* George H. Nash, "Herbert Hoover and Stanford University." Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1988.
* George H. Nash, "The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian, 1912-1917." New York: Norton, 1988.
* Charles G Palm and Dale Reed, ''Guide to the Hoover Institution Archives.'' Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1980.
* Bertrand M. Patenaude, ''A Wealth of Ideas: Revelations from the Hoover Institution Archives.'' Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
* James McJ. Robertson, "The Hoover Institution Collection on the German Working Class Movement 1870/71-1933," ''International Labor and Working-Class History,'' no. 12 (Nov. 1977), pp. 10–18.
* Witold S. Sworakowski, ''The Hoover Library Collection on Russia.'' Collection Survey No. 1. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1974.
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoover Institution Archives
1919 establishments in California
Herbert Hoover
American Relief Administration
Stanford University libraries
Hoover Institution
Archives in the United States
Library buildings completed in 1941