Rena Datta correspondence

Description

Title: Rena Datta correspondence
Creator: From the Collection: World Student Christian Federation
Published / Created: 1930
Provenance: From the inception of the WSCF until 1940, John R. Mott was the primary person concerned with the archives of the organization. He kept as complete a file as possible through 1919, when he stepped down as General Secretary, and continued gathering materials through 1940. In the fall of that year, he had to move out of his offices at the International Missionary Council Building in New York City. In consultation with Rev. Dr. Clarence P. Shedd and Raymond P. Morris, he decided to deposit his “personal” collection of WSCF materials in the Divinity School Library at Yale. Those materials were catalogued by Ruth Rouse, and now constitute RG 46. The records from the WSCF Geneva offices were stored at 13 Rue Calvin as long as the Federation occupied those offices. At some point in the 1950s, Adeline de Pasquier instituted the practice of transferring a number of years of past files from file cabinets to transfer cases. The contents were listed on the outside of each case, and the cases numbered. No weeding was done, and no paper record of the original box listings is extant. This formal practice appears to have been followed until approximately 1960, although some transfers did occur after that date. The records moved with the WSCF to the John R. Mott House, then to the Centre John Knox, where they were deposited with the World Council of Churches library. A portion of the records (circa 1925-1980) were processed in preparation for the WSCF’s centennial in 1995. The project was commissioned by the History and Archives Committee. Processing was done by a series of interns in Geneva, supervised by Terry Thompson, General Synod Archivist of the Anglican Church of Canada. The collection was arranged into chronological series, with each series spanning two or four years. Additionally, there was a series for committee minutes, conferences, publications, and records from the temporary Toronto office (1941-1945). This section of the collection has been re-processed intellectually, but left physically intact. Its physical arrangement is reflected in the box numbering system; all boxes with numbers beginning “213.X” are from the Geneva archive processed in 1995. The original series are reflected in the second decimal place: e.g. 213.08 for records 1925-1929, and 213.12 for Toronto Office records. The third decimal place indicates the box number within each series. These records, along with those accumulated since 1980 until approximately 2010, were transferred to Yale in 2018 from their previous location in the library of the World Council of Churches.
Language: English