The Eighth Congress of the International

Council on Archives will be held in Washington, D. C., September 27-October 1. Sponsors of the quadrennial gathering of archivists are the National Archives and Records Service of the United States and the Society of American Archivists. The annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists is to be held concurrently with ICA '76 and the SAA program; registration blanks will be mailed this summer. Registrants for either meeting can attend sessions of both organizations. The congress will focus on advances being made in policies, procedures, and technology in archives administration and records management. The theme of the program is "The Archival Revolution of Our Time." The SAA program, additionally, will offer a variety of discussions and workshops. For further information on the congress write: ICA '76, National Archives and Records Service (GSA), Washington, DC 20408.

A micrographics symposium sponsored by the NARS Office of Records Management will precede the congress and will be held at the Department of State September 23-24. An exhibit of related equipment will be held at the Statler Hilton Hotel, site of the ICA congress on September 27-28.

The National Archives and National Public Radio recently entered into an agreement transferring to NARS news and public affairs radio programs either produced or acquired by NPR. Beginning July 1 of next year NPR will transfer, yearly, one copy of each of its news and public affairs programs five years after it was produced or acquired, which will be maintained for archival and research purposes. Included in the broadcast material are congressional hearings such as the Watergate hearings, vice presidential confirmation hearings for Gerald Ford, and hearings on the Vietnam War amnesty issue, oil shortages, and SST controversy.

The Archives has also signed an agreement with Movietone News Inc. providing for transfer of the Fox-Movietone News silent newsreel library for the period 1919-30. It consists of about 1.5 million feet of edited and unedited footage. NARS will maintain the films for research and study by the public.

A digest of information made available by federal agencies under the Privacy Act of 1974 has been published by GSA and is on sale at the Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, at $5 a copy. Entitled Protecting Your Right to Privacy, the 740-page digest identifies about 6,600 filing systems kept by federal agencies. Each digest entry identifies the record system name, categories of individuals on whom records are kept, and where to get more information about a particular record system.

The volume in the "Public Papers of the Presidents" series covering the Ford administration from August 9 through December 31, 1974, has been issued by the Office of the Federal Register. Priced at $16, the volume is available from the Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402.

The Seventh International Conference on the History of Cartography will convene in Washington, D. C., August 7-11, 1977, under sponsorship of the National Archives, Library of Congress, Folger Shakespeare Library, and Smithsonian Institution. International conferences on the history of cartography have been held biennially since 1965, all of them in Europe. Papers based on original research in cartographic history will be considered for presentation in one of the technical sessions. For further information, write: Program Committee, Seventh International Conference on the History of Cartography, c/o Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, 845 S. Pickett Street, Alexandria, VA 22304.

The John F. Kennedy Library and museum will be constructed on the new campus of the University of Massachusetts at Columbia Point, South Boston. This decision ends twelve years of effort to build the complex near Harvard University, closely associated with the late president. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, speaking for his family, stated the late president was a public man and said that it was appropriate that he be remembered at a public university.

Now available from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs are proceedings of the 1974 symposium Beyond Today's Energy Crisis: Future of the American Environment. The proceedings may be obtained for $3 a copy by writing to the LBJ School, Office of Publications, Drawer Y, University Station, Austin, TX 78712.

The annual Tom L. Evans Research Grant of $10,000 is offered by the Harry S. Truman Library Institute for National and International Affairs to a postdoctoral scholar. Also obtainable from the Truman library institute are a limited number of grants of up to $1,000. The next deadline is October 1976. Applications for grants can be obtained from the secretary, Harry S. Truman Library Institute, Independence, MO 64050.

The institute encourages young scholars to apply rather than scholars with established reputations in their fields of research. Preference is given to persons working on the career of Harry S. Truman or on the period of the Truman administration and to those using the resources of the Truman library.

The Truman library institute awarded grants last October to Ian J. Bickerton, University of New South Wales, Australia; Larry H. Grothaus, Concordia College; Maurice McCann, Southern Illinois University; Vojtech Mastny, University of Illinois; James I. Matray, University of Virginia; Chester J. Pach, Jr., Northwestern University; Thomas G. Paterson, Jr., University of Connecticut; Monty N. Penkower, Touro College; John R. Stemen, Gettysburg College; Duane A. Tananbaum, Columbia University; Imanuel Wexler, University of Connecticut; and Daniel H. Yergin, Harvard University.

The Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Grants Award Committee, at its fall 1975 meeting, awarded

grants to Mary W. Atwell, Hollins College; Robert Dalleck, University of California at Los Angeles; Wallace B. Eberhard, University of Georgia; Thomas K. McCraw, University of Texas; George T. McJimsey, Iowa State University; Glenda E. Morrison, University of Kansas; Martha H. Swain, Texas Woman's University; and Randall B. Woods, University of Arkansas. The institute awards grants for doctoral and postdoctoral research based on holdings of the Roosevelt library. Grant applications are accepted throughout the year; awards are made annually in the spring and fall. Aplicants should write the secretary of the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY 12538.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation of the Johnson library has awarded more than $12,000 this year in research grants to Frank L. Beach, University of San Francisco; Frederick P. Bunnell, Vassar College; Frank J. Cavaioli, State University of New York at Farmingdale; Wilbur R. Closterhouse, University of Michigan; Eric L. Davis, Stanford University; Stanford P. Dyer, Texas A&M University; Jeff Fishel, Indiana University; W. Sherman Jackson, Miami University; Dennis W. Johnson, Virginia Commonwealth University; Mark S. Kamlet, University of California at Berkeley; Lan Thuc Le, freelance writer; George C. Mackenzie, George Washington University; David C. Mowery, Stanford University; David Naveh, University of Connecticut; Chandler W. Stolp, Carnegie-Mellon University; Duane A. Tananbaum, Columbia University; and Edward J. Pfeiffer, Claremont Graduate School.

Information about foundation grants to do research at the Johnson library can be obtained from the associate director, Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, 2313 Red River, Austin, TX 78705.

A bicentennial publication, the 46-page booklet The Declaration of Independence: The Adventures of a Document, has just been issued. It may be ordered by mail from the Publications Sales Branch (NEPS), National Archives and Records Service (GSA), Washington, DC 20408, at $2.50 per copy. The Story of the Bill of Rights ($2.25) has been re-issued. A brochure, Documents From America's Past, free of charge, lists reproductions of historical documents that may be purchased for a modest fee.

THE WRITTEN

WORD ENDURES

The Exhibit

Littera scripta manet, the motto on the National Archives seal, can be loosely translated as "The written word endures." Millions of documents in the Archives of the United States of America testify to the continuing importance of written words in the life of the nation.

The words written by political leaders during the American Revolution were more important than battles lost and won. From this formative period of American history emerged three great documents whose concepts are as valid today as they were when they were written: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. In a sense, the rest of American history is an outgrowth of those documents, for that history relates the development and application of the precepts laid down by the Revolutionary War generation. The tradition that was established by that generation of expressing ideas and ideals on paper was carried on by those who came later.

The struggles to adapt unchanging principles to ever-changing events and conditions gave rise to other great written documents. Former colonists, who had rebelled against what they deemed an arbitrary and distant central government, devised means to prevent any part of their own national government from becoming too powerful-and wrote the necessary checks into the law. The government of a people spreading across a continent entered into treaties to establish boundaries and developed ways of distributing land and attracting settlers-and put them into words. Expanding from its beginnings as an agrarian nation, the United States built factories based on inventions duly patented and recorded; a growing urban population met its social and economic problems by writing new laws and by giving new legal interpretations to old laws. The United States as a world power prepared statements to explain its policies and entered into written agreements to make alliances and to end wars.

Yet all the documents of American history preserved in the National Archives are not in written form. Important words have been recorded to be heard, not read; other words have entered the record in forms that only a computer can interpret. Many documents have very few words, or none at all; film and maps and drawings and photographs provide a vivid record of an event or an idea. Thus, the recorded history of the American people as it is preserved in the National Archives takes many forms.