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The records of the University of Michigan International Center contain administrative records from the various Directors of the center. These materials include documentation on the establishment of the University of Michigan's foreign student exchange scholarships, records relating to the development of important programs and national associations for international students, housing surveys between 1965-1971, printed materials such as annual reports, newsletters, and manuals, scrapbooks, photographs, and newspaper clippings.

The collection is divided into six series. The first series, Historical Files, contains early filing methods of the Directors and a small amount of background on the Center. It also contains early papers from 1927-1930 on the Cosmopolitan Club and spring trips for foreign students. The second series, Director's Files, has been organized according to the filing systems employed by each of the Center's first four directors: J. Raleigh Nelson (1933-1943); Esson M. Gale (1943-1954); James M. Davis (1954-1964); and Robert B. Klinger (1964-1971). Files of each director comprise separate sub-series. Each of these four sub-series includes administrative records such as papers of the Board of Governors, minutes of committees connected to the International Center, and annual reports. Within each sub-series there are files of particular importance and interest. Photographs compose the third series, including one scrapbook of directors, students, and visitors to the International Center. Printed materials comprise the fourth series. The fifth series is made up of newspaper clippings. The sixth series consists of National Association of Foreign Student Advisers (Publications).

University of Michigan professor of political science, special advisor to the U.S. Military Government in Germany after World War II, participant in numerous government commissions; papers include correspondence, working files, speeches, course materials, and visual and sound materials.

The James K. Pollock papers represent an accumulation of files from a lifetime of academic teaching and research and an extraordinary number of public service responsibilities to both his state and his nation. The files within the collection fall into two categories: types of document (such as correspondence, speeches and writings, visual materials, etc.) and files resulting from a specific activity or position (such as his work as delegate to the Michigan Constitutional Convention or his service with the Office of the Military Government in Germany after World War II).

The collection is large and of a complicated arrangement because of Pollock's many activities. When received in 1969, the files were maintained as received; very little processing was done to the collection so that an inventory to the papers could be quickly prepared. The order of material is that devised by James K. Pollock and his secretarial staff in the U-M Department of Political Science. Recognizing the anomalies within the order of the collection, the library made the decision to list the contents to the collection while at the same time preparing a detailed card file index (by box and folder number, i.e. 16-8) to significant correspondents and subjects. While there was much to be said for this method of preparing a finding aid expeditiously, it also covered up some problems in arrangement. Thus series and subseries of materials are not always grouped together as they were created by Pollock. Files on the Hoover Commission and the Michigan Constitutional Convention, for example, come before Pollock's work in Germany after the war. In 1999, effort was made to resolve some of the inconsistencies and obvious misfilings of the first inventory but because of the numbering system used in 1969 and the card index prepared for the files, there are still some problems. Researchers should be alert to these difficulties and take time to examine different parts of the collection for material on a similar topic.