A PRELIMINARY GUIDE TO TWENTIETH CENTURY MANUSCRIPTS IN THE U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY LIBRARY

INTRODUCTION

A Preliminary Guide to the Manuscript Collection of the U.S. Military Academy Library was compiled by J. Thomas Russell in 1968. The 260 page guide, containing citations for manuscripts received before October of 1967, has not been updated since that time. A project is now underway to provide access to the great amount of manuscript material in the Special Collections Division by creating a new guide to the collections, beginning with twentieth century items.

The following pages represent the second phase in the preparation of a guide to twentieth century manuscripts. Entries vary in length and detail, depending upon the amount of information presently available on each collection. The collections range in stage of organization from unprocessed to fully inventoried.

The staff and faculty are encouraged to read the entries and use the guide. Your comments and suggestions are invited, and will be useful in preparing subsequent guides.

Preliminary guides to nineteenth century and to eighteenth century materials will be prepared, and distributed to the staff and faculty over the next year or two. The final step in this ongoing project will be to combine all preliminary guides into one comprehensive guide. Procite software has been used because of its capability to utilize existing OCLC manuscript records and its potential to produce an indexable database.

The guide will be updated periodically. The comments of those who use the manuscript collections for research will be continually welcomed.

The guidance of Alan Aimone, Assistant Librarian for Special Collections, and Gladys Calvetti, Rare Book Curator and Cataloguer; and the assistance of Dawn Crumpler, Special Collections Technician, are gratefully acknowledged.

Judith A. Sibley West Point Manuscript Librarian 16 November 1989 INTERPRETING PERSONAL NAME ENTRIES IN THE PRELIMINARY GUIDE TO TWENTIETH CENTURY MANUSCRIPTS IN THE U.S.MILITARY ACADEMY LIBRARY

Many manuscript collections are attributable to Military Academy (USMA) graduates or former cadets. USMA and year following the birth and death dates of a personal name entry indicates an Academy graduate' and provides the year of graduation:

USMA 1915

An "X" preceding USMA indicates a former cadet and the year the person would have graduated:

X-USMA 1915

"Cullum" files, containing data on a USMA graduate's military career for use in the Register of Graduates and Former Cadets of the United States Military Academy, originally compiled by George Cullum, USMA 1833, are located in the Special Collections Division for selected years. A "Cullum number" has been assigned to each Academy graduate. This number has been included after the USMA class number in the Guide entries, because of its link to the biographical files and its unique identification of each USMA graduate:

CU 5356

A typical entry for the papers of a USMA graduate would read:

Bradley, Omar Nelson (1893-1981) USMA 1915, CU 5356 1

PRELIMINARY GUIDE TO 20TH CENTURY MANUSCRIPTS IN THE USMA LIBRARY

1. Ahrends, Arthur Emmett (1879-1951) USMA 1903, CU 4190. Papers; 1896-1951. 1 box. Army officer; Infantry. Correspondence relevant to cadet appointment. Scrapbook of letters, orders, official correspondence, commendations, and newsclippings covering Ahrends' military career.

2. Albert; I; King of Belgians (1875-1934). Speech; 1919. 2 leaves. Autographed copy, dated West Point, N.Y., 25 October 1919; accompanied by letter from War College where this document had been on deposit previously.

3. Alexander, Irvin (1896-1963) USMA 1919, CU 6445. [Memoirs of interment in the Philippines, 1942-1945]. 284 pages, bound. Note: Original typescript bound along with modern typescript. Infantry officer, U.S. Army. Account of last days of fighting on Luzon, before it was surrendered to the Japanese, "death ma