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collection and preservation of private and official papers from different levels of government is an accepted and regular activity of archivists, manuscript librarians, and similar professional workers. In their endless hunt for new collections, these people employ all the arts of wit, guile, and appeals to uour sacred trust to generations yet unborn." In spite of all their rhetoric, their sophisticated approaches, and considerable publicity about their successes, plus the benefits of these conquests to the historical resources of the Nation, there is as yet a persistent, unsolved problem. That problem is to find and take into custody more of the personal papers of senior officials in government, at all levels, whose careers were wholly in the 20th century. It would be gratuitous to subject this audience to a long explanation of the reasons for the problem. Any one of you who has done any collecting at this level has heard the refrain. You have gone to the offices and homes of potential donors and have been greeted with something like the following: "I have nothing of any value among my personal papers, which have been stored in the cellar of my country place on Long Island since I left office in 1904." With the passage and ravages of time, that may indeed be an accurate description of the papers! If that quotation is not evocative enough, there is always this one: "Yes, I have a few things, and I shall consider depositing them after I have had a chance to sort them out and get rid of the junk. Just as soon as I get time I will get to it." So it goes. Men and women of brilliance, common sense, and not infrequently considerable respect for the study of history, faced with the pressure of daily business and their personal involvement as participants in the events of their times, procrastinate until they are no longer in control of their papers. Each day the archivist whose job it is to collect such papers grows a little older, a little wiser, and a little more nervous when he hears of a fire within a hundred miles of one of these unprotected, unsorted caches. The raw stuff of future histories is locked away in thousands of private files, and the one profession whose obligation is to protect and preserve it for the future is frequently, sometimes permanently, frustrated in acquiring and caring for that material. The reasons for this frustration are many and some are very individualized. At all points when dealing with these potential donors