Archive - December 3, 2010

  The first official mention of a Peace Corps Library is in a July 1965 memo to Charles J. Patterson, a former Acting Associate Director, supporting such a library “for the primary purpose of improved overseas staff orientation.” It was proposed that the agency “gather together in one convenient place a copy of fundamental materials which reflect our experience and which will help overseas staff. Of course these materials would prove of considerable value to the entire Peace Corps. If properly set up it will save the government time, space, and money and will help the agency learn what it has learned already: thus each new employee need not be condemned to relearn for himself what the agency already knows.” (Peace Corps ICE/Library Study December 22, 1982, page 2)   Nineteen sixty-five was an important year for Peace Corps. The agency was four years old, had weathered the assassination of . . .