NO. I ETHNOGEOGRAPHIC BOARD BENNETT 99 



tarial expenses, and perhaps a modest honorarium. These advantages 

 should have made promotion of research relatively easy. 



The question of scholars having time to produce such reports is hard 

 to answer. The Board found that those who were still in their aca- 

 demic settings managed to find time for something within their com- 

 petence which was directly concerned with the war. Once a scholar 

 moved to Washington it was hard to get much extra out of him, and 

 once he got into uniform, however sedentary the assignment, it was 

 almost impossible. Raymond Kennedy, of Yale, when asked whether 

 others could not have produced reports like his, suggested modestly 

 that the others might not have had as much time as he did. He was 

 only carrying his regular university schedule, plus a series of other 

 obligations in connection with the Pacific area and the war. Still he 

 produced three of the best area reports within a deadline limit of 30 

 days. 



There was a real need for a true clearinghouse, an intermediary 

 group that could discover and adapt the extant academic materials 

 so as to suit them to Government use, and, in reverse, present the 

 Government requirements, both immediate and anticipated, in a frame- 

 work favorable for scholarly reports. 



Techniques and Materials of Future Usefulness 



Most of the Board's activities were directed toward immediate 

 usefulness, but some of the materials have a permanent value as part 

 of the academic record, and some of the techniques would be useful 

 in other situations. 



The Area Roster is a valuable record of the area specialists of the 

 prewar period. Obviously selection is needed, and the roster should 

 probably be cut down to about one-tenth of its present size. The 

 selected file would serve as a base for the recording of new area ex- 

 perience gained during the war. On the other hand, the mimeographed 

 personnel lists, built up both by the cooperating committees and by 

 the Board have probably passed the peak of their maximum useful- 

 ness already. 



The Board's source bibliography files were not built up systemati- 

 cally, but might furnish some evaluated lists of references to basic 

 sources and to little-known areas. A statement on the area resources 

 of Washington libraries would also be useful. The survival library 

 would be of assistance to any agency continuing work on this subject, 

 although the items are by no means unique. Most of the survival 

 articles have been published, as have some of the reports. The 



