1963 - Letter from Cyrus R. Vance, Secretary of the Army, to Dr. Albert Sabin, confirming his appointment to the AFEB

The past couple of days I have been looking at administrative documents from Dr. Sabin’s time as a member of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB) during the 1960’s, to make sure there are no classified documents in this part of the collection. I thought I would share some things that I have encountered.

In 1963, Dr. Sabin was appointed a member of the AFEB based on a joint nomination by the Surgeons General of the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force for a four year term (see letter to the right). As a member of the AFEB, Dr. Sabin was required to vote on contracts and commission appointments, as well as other issues applicable to military medicine. The memos and letters included in this part of the collection give insight into the issues addressed by the AFEB. They also provide researchers with information about Dr. Sabin’s opinions about these issues, through his own letters to other AFEB members and the notes he scribbled on the various memos he received. Topics included disease prevention and vaccination of troops. Here is just one example of Dr. Sabin’s involvement as a member of the AFEB.
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Yesterday, my colleague Laura Laugle and I were discussing how to arrange archival collections, which reminded me of a letter (seen below) that I recently came across during the redaction process. I wanted to share this letter since I thought other archivists reading the blog would also appreciate it.

First page of letter from Dr. Sabin to Dr. Feldman, April 28, 1952

First, a little bit of explanation – one important task that archivists perform when they are processing a collection is referred to as “arrangement.” According to A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology by Richard Pearce-Moses, arrangement is “the process of organizing materials with respect to their provenance and original order, to protect their context and to achieve physical or intellectual control over the materials.”[1] I realize that definition contains a lot of archival jargon, such as “provenance” and “original order.” Provenance, according to the same glossary, essentially refers to the person or organization that created the collection of materials.[2] Original order is the “organization and sequence of records established by the creator of the records,” which hopefully provides perspective into how the record creator used the materials.[3] Continue reading →