Main Phases of the Development of Public Archival Administration in the United States to 1940

Archival development in leading European countries, which far surpassed that in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, served as a powerful stimulus for improvement in this country. The American scholar, privileged to study or work among the European archives, began to realize how utterly the United States government had failed to make similar provisions for archival preservation, and hence he began to clamor for more adequate facilities in the United States.