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ASIS&T (or ASIST) is a professional association which creates, organizes, disseminates, and applies knowledge regarding information and its transfer. ASIS&T was preceded by the American Documentation Institute (ADI), which was founded in 1937 with the goal of acquiring and indexing the knowledge of the world. Name changes followed in 1968 (ASIS) and 2000 (ASIS&T). The records consist of correspondence, business and financial documents, minutes, bylaws, memoranda, manuscript and printed journal articles, printed promotional material, microfiche, photographs, and audio and video tapes covering the society's activities (and those of its predecessor organizations) from 1925 to 2001, with the bulk falling between the 1930s through 2000. Organizational business affairs and activities, including the conceptual evolution of its purpose and mission, are well-documented in several series, most notably in the Council Files. These broad areas are also covered in the Committee Files, but in a more detailed fashion, focusing on specific activities or issues. This series also represents the scope of ASIS's liaison committees, ranging from the American Library Association to the Egyptian Society for Information Technology. Documents generated by ASIS-approved regional and student chapters and the organized professional groups within ASIS devoted to special interests (SIGs) are found in the large Chapter Files and Special Interest Groups series. The Publications series includes significant editorial and administrative documents as well as some manuscript submissions for the "Annual review of information science and technology, and the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science." Special note may be made of the Special Libraries Association Merger Files which chronicle the history of the ultimately unsuccessful merger of ASIS and SLA. The main correspondents found in the collection include: Robert McAfee, Assistant Executive Director; Joshua I. Smith, Executive director (1973-1976); Bonnie Carroll, Councilor and President; Linda Resnik, Executive Director (1985-1988); Samuel Beatty, Executive Director (1976-1984); and John Brokenshire, ASIS Financial Officer.

For the purpose of clarity, the organization shall for the most part be referred to as "ASIS"--the name by which it has been known for most of its history and to which it is mainly referred in the records--throughout this section.

Throughout the record group, the year listed for a folder is often the fiscal year rather than calendar year. This is particularly so for records in the Financial series. The fiscal year for ASIS runs from October through September.

Socialist and pacifist active in labor, civil rights, cooperative, and world government movements. The papers comprise scattered meeting minutes of various organizations, notes (some very detailed) on speeches and other social functions attended by Tekla in the Cleveland area in the 1930s, carbon copies of outgoing correspondence, and a collection of mailing lists. There is a considerable amount of print and nearprint material -- single issues of labor periodicals, newspaper clippings, for m letters, flyers, etc. The papers reflect to varying extents Tekla's activities in North Dakota as an organizer for the Civilian Public Service Union, a national organization of conscientious objectors performing alternative service during World War II; his efforts to recruit Cleveland auto workers for the Socialist Party in the late 1930s; and his membership on the national executive committee of the Socialist Party, the executive committee of the War Resisters League, the policy committee of Democracy Unlimited (ca. 1952-56), the Cleveland Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Committee for a Socialist Program and Action (ca. 1959-64). Tekla was heavily involved in the cooperative movement in Cleveland and to a lesser extent in the Saskatchewan Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in the mid-1940s.

The collection consists of material created and collected by Tad Tekla, individually and in various roles in socialist and labor organizations.The collection has been arranged alphabetically by topic.The most voluminous material includes: minutes and other records of the Socialist Party and the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation, ca. 1945-1958, including records relating to the Committee for a Socialist Program (founded by critics of the Socialist Party who wanted to serve as an "educational and organizational center within the Party"); records and other material relating to labor unions and labor issues, including records of the Civilian Public Service Union, 1946, and records relating to a crisis in the United Auto Workers and efforts by the Socialist Party to recuit auto workers, ca. 1939; "public meeting notes" by Tekla, which include typewritten notes and diaries relating to a wide variety of meetings and events, 1933-1955 (bulk, 1933-1936); material relating to the world citizenship movement, ca. 1945-1958; material relating to the cooperative movement, ca. 1936-1954; records of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), ca. 1948-1952; and outgoing correspondence, 1961-1964.