Abstract
"THE ETHNOGEOGRAPHIC BOARD", by Wendell C. Bennett (Smithsonian Misc. Coll., 107, No. 1; 1947), is a history by one of its members of an organisation for harnessing the academic institutions of the United States to the war machine. It was set up by the National Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and the Smithsonian Institution in June 1942 and continued until the end of 1945. It was not an official body and it was financed and supported by the organisations which founded it, particularly the Smithsonian; but it was very largely used by the Armed Forces and Government departments, and is described as a "clearinghouse for Government needs and Academic knowledge". It consisted of a directorate, situated in the Smithsonian, which was the Washington office of the Board and did most of the work, and the copy; Board proper, which was advisory. It produced reports on various areas, and lists of people with knowledge of foreign parts, and it undertook special projects, of which a booklet called "Survival on Land and Sea" was one of the most valuable and was widely circulated to the Armed Forces in the Pacific theatre. It had no equivalent in Great Britain, where the type of information supplied was collected by Service departments, such as the naval and military intelligence organisations and the Inter-Services Topographical Department.
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War-time Work of the American Academies. Nature 161, 304–305 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161304d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161304d0