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Records of University of Michigan office (and its predecessor administrative offices) responsible for external fund raising and development activities, including subject files of development officials Arthur Brandon, Lyle Nelson, and Michael Radock; staff files; and photographs.

The records of the Vice President for Development date from 1948 to the present and measure 39.5 linear feet. They reflect the basic concerns of the office for these four decades: preserving and improving the university's public image and planning major fundraising efforts. Unfortunately, both activities are incompletely documented. In the area of public relations the records tend to discuss how immediate problems will be dealt with, rather than overall conceptions of the university's image. The thought behind the innovative fundraising devices created or employed by the office is sometimes recorded through consultant reports, but in general is not well documented.

The manuscript records have been divided into two subgroups, one representing the records of the vice president (or senior staff person, for those years in which there was no vice presidency), the other containing records created by the development office. The Vice Presidents subgroup has been divided by the name of each person who has held the office: Arthur Brandon, Lyle Nelson, and Michael Radock. Researchers should note that since Nelson and Radock used their predecessor's files for some time before inaugurating their own records, the relationship between office tenure and file dates is not an exact one. The Development Office subgroup contains records of that office and its subsidiary units. Several accessions of Development Office records received in 1989 and 1990 have been grouped together as Development Office subgroup: 1989-1990 accessions.

Professor of zoology at the University of Michigan, scientist for the Rockefeller Foundation, and scientific writer for both professional and popular publications. Correspondence, journals, manuscripts of writings, and class materials, including papers detailing his work with the United Fruit Company in Central America, 1928-1931, his later activities with the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, especially his interest in mosquito research and malaria control programs during the 1930's and 1940's, and his demographic studies of the people of the Ifalik Atoll in the South Pacific in 1953; and photographs.

The Bates papers cover the period 1913-1974 and include material relating to all phases of his career, including his research in Guatemala and Honduras with the United Fruit Company, his studies of mosquito biology and malaria control programs during the 1930's and 1940's in Albania, Egypt, Colombia, and elsewhere and his later investigations into problems of demography and human ecology. The collection includes correspondence, personal and scientific journals, miscellaneous entomological notes, manuscripts of many of his books, articles, and book reviews, copies of the scripts of his television appearances, and University of Michigan class notes. The collections also includes personal photographs and photographs relating to his scientific research.

The collection has been arranged into six series: Correspondence; University of Michigan; Journals, diaries, research; Writings; Notes/miscellaneous personal; and Photographs.