Research

Administrative History

In 1945, the War Emergency Act was amended to authorize the War Council to provide a uniform method for the care, custody, control, and disposition of records maintained by the 108 local war councils in New York State during World War II. This was part of a larger survey designed to inventory all War Council records created under the authority of the War Emergency Act.

The purpose of this part of the survey was to inventory local war council records in order to insure the retention of those records deemed to be of permanent historical value, and to determine which of the two or three available local repositories should receive these records for storage. Local war councils were otherwise permitted to include for permanent retention any remaining records they wished to preserve, with the exception of personnel cards and enrollment blanks containing information of a highly personal nature. These were marked for destruction by the War Council. Examples are occasionally included in the folders.

Information on the inventory is provided in "Home Front Records of New York, 1940-1945: The Problem of Disposition," (American Archivist, volume IX, no. 2 : 152-160, April 1946) by Karl Drew Hartzell.