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Cooperative leader and liberal activist. Topical files and photographs relating to his work with an Americanization program for immigrants in Akron, Ohio in the 1920s; his involvement in the National Farmers Union, including radio transcripts of programs presented by the North Dakota Farmers Union; and his interest in the Danish folk school movement and the administration of Ashland College in Grant, Michigan; also material concerning the American Friends Service Committee, the Grant Community Church, pacifism, economic cooperatives, and other social and political liberal causes.

The papers of Chester Graham reflect the multifaceted activities of his career. The papers are arranged in a single alphabetical series, without regard to the chronological relationship between the various folders. Thus material from the late 1970s can be found next to material from the 1920s. In general, folder material begins whenever Graham first became involved with the subject and continues more or less to the present, although material becomes far more ephemeral as time passes and Graham's primary concerns shift to other subjects.

The largest bodies of material deal with Americanization in Akron, Ashland College, the National Farmers Union, and Graham's radio transcripts. There is also a body of material dealing with the Society of Friends and the organization's various political and social activities.

Professor of community and adult education at the University of Michigan; correspondence, writings, teaching material, subject files relating in part to his university activities, the Adult Education Association, and the American Youth Commission; also photographs and sound tapes.

The papers of Howard Yale McClusky span the years 1921 to 1982. They include correspondence, clippings, bibliographies, speaking notes, reports, teaching material, minutes, photographs, and sound tapes. The bulk of the-papers are the files he kept in his office in the Department of Community and Adult Education. Every important aspect of McClusky's professional career is documented. His non-professional interests--such as his work with religious groups--and his personal life are only lightly touched upon in the collection.

The arrangement has tried to respect the original order of the papers. However, in order to highlight McClusky's most important commitments, some material was removed from his "Topical File" and consolidated into separate series. Respecting original order meant, among other things, leaving correspondence scattered throughout the collection in different subject folders. Only loose letters or folders composed entirely of letters were grouped in the Correspondence series.

The papers have been divided into eleven series: Personal and Biographical; Correspondence; Writings; Teaching Materials; Department of Community and Adult Education; Adult Education Association; American Youth Commission; Topical File; Visual Materials; Sound tapes; and Miscellaneous.

Professor in the University of Michigan School of Education. Subject files relating mainly to his interest in adult and continuing education.

The Berlin papers pertain to those several areas of service which Professor Berlin performed for the University of Michigan School of Education, primarily in the area of adult and continuing education. The papers focus on curriculum and program development for the Department of Adult and Continuing Education, with a small amount of information about other areas in which Berlin was involved.

The collection is arranged into one alphabetical series. By far the richest of the collection concerns his involvement with Adult and Continuing Education (ACE). It is organized by date in five separate folders, spanning the years 1971 through 1983. These files include reports and other information on the curriculum's development, departmental memos regarding faculty and staff, and Berlin's rise within the department from professor to department chair. ACE was, at times, a controversial endeavor for the School of Education and sparked much discussion on the theories and practices of adult education. The ACE files end with a folder containing issues of the ACE Reporter, a student publication of the ACE Department where Berlin was a frequent contributor and subject for student writings.

Smaller in size are files relating to Continuing Education and Community Development (CECD), the U-M Extension Service, and the Gerontology and Program in Human Resources Development. While these files are interesting because their presence testifies to a relationship between the School of Education and these branch areas, the records are so sporadic that none of them significantly clarify the relationship shared with the School of Education.

The collection concludes with miscellaneous correspondence and publications. The publication file contains a copy of Continuum, an adult education magazine to which Berlin contributed.

Photographs (positive and negative), slides, and transparencies taken by the company's photographers to document company activities, products, services, employees at work and at leisure, company exhibits and commemorations, and the response of the company to natural disasters and civil disturbances.

In 1993, Michigan Bell as a corporate entity was subsumed within the Ameritech Corporation. As a by-product of this reorganization and the downsizing resulting from it, the company agreed to deposit with the Bentley Historical Library its extensive archive of photographic images. Totalling approximately one million images, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company photo archive consists of negatives, copy prints, and color transparencies taken in the period since World War II (the bulk beginning in 1949). The collection does not include photos taken since 1983; interspersed throughout, however, are numerous images from before 1949.

The collection has been maintained in the order received with two principal series: Positives and Negatives.

The content of the photographs in the two series varies considerably. Naturally the collection documents the products of the company (phones and other communication devices) and the services provided (e.g. employees at work or the company reacting to a specific customer need). These photos were taken both to inform the general public as accompaniment to press notices and advertising copy and as a communications vehicle within the company, informing employees through the company news publication, Tielines, of activities going on in other divisions of the company or among the various regional Bell offices.

More importantly perhaps, the collection has value for its documentation of events and activities that are common to all large companies. These include images relating to: 1. The activities of employees within the corporation at their work (office workers, repairmen, operators, various support personnel, managers, etc.); 2. The activities of employees outside their work routine as members of corporate social groups (i.e., the company baseball or ice hockey team), at home engaged in leisure time activities, or involved in company-sponsored charitable or public service functions; and 3. Commemorations of specific milestones or events (company parade floats, area office open houses, corporate displays at public events such as fairs, etc.).

In addition, the collection documents the extraordinary and unforeseen as the phone company reacts to events and emergencies not within its control (floods, tornadoes, fires, the 1967 Detroit riot, strikes, and the like) or as a participant in history-making events (the announcement in Ann Arbor of the success of the Salk polio vaccine or the preparation involved in the 1980 Republican National Convention that convened in Detroit).