NO. I ETHNOGEOGRAPHIC BOARD BENNETT 5I 



2. INDIVIDUALS 



The Board depended on specialized personnel as sources of infor- 

 mation. Naming individuals who might have additional information 

 has already been mentioned as a standard practice in answering 

 requests. In some cases the Board got in touch with tlie specialists, 

 in others this was left up to the requester. When the Army Air 

 Corps asked for information on the topography and soil conditions 

 of one of the Aleutian islands where a new air base might be con- 

 structed, the names of the few individuals who knew the island were 

 furnished, so that the Air Corps could consult them directly. On the 

 other hand, the Board itself got in touch wnth Mr. Cornelius Crane 

 in answer to a request for his maps of the South Seas. 



Three cases illustrate further how individuals were used as sources. 

 Dr. Collins, in his library survey, came across a reference to a certain 

 Japanese bulletin known to contain valuable material, but which was 

 not to be found in any of the larger American libraries. He sent this 

 information to the Military Intelligence together with a list of special- 

 ized libraries and individual scholars who might possess copies. A 

 map of Iceland which showed political subdivisions smaller than 

 counties was needed to complete the publication of a map on that area 

 by the Army Map Service. The Board, through its connections, rec- 

 ommended Prof. Stefan Einarsson, professor of Icelandic at Johns 

 Hopkins, and the map was obtained. A rush call for a picture of 

 a Yangtze River steamer was answered in an hour by sending the 

 name of a captain of the Marines in Washington who had been in 

 charge of the Yangtze River Patrol. 



3. COOPERATING COMMITTEES 



Some requests for information were answered by referring to 

 the cooperating committees as sources. For example, requests for 

 a tribal ethnic map of Africa and for data on language distribution 

 in Africa were handled by the Committee on African Anthropology. 



4. INSTITUTIONS 



In surprisingly few cases the scholarly institutions were cited as 

 sources of information. Some requests were about institutions, for 

 example, which universities were interested in the study of French 

 Canadians, or which institutions specialized in Roman, Anglo-Saxon, 

 Mohammedan, Russian, or Indie law. Requests for information on 

 atabrine, or on color transparencies for training films on New Cal- 



