Hoover Institution Library and Archives

The Hoover Institution Library and Archives is a research center and archival repository located at Stanford University, near Palo Alto, California in the United States of America. Built around a collection amassed by Stanford graduate Herbert Hoover prior to his becoming President of the United States, the Hoover Library and Archives is largely dedicated to the world history of the 20th and 21st centuries. It includes one of the largest collections of political posters in the world.

President Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) was an alumnus of Stanford University, graduating in 1895 to become a mining engineer. Successful in business enterprise from an early age in a managerial capacity, Hoover also developed a deep affection for book collecting, building an impressive personal collection.

When World War I erupted, Hoover found himself in Europe, quickly becoming involved in ongoing efforts to provide relief aid to wartime refugees. In 1915 Hoover's professional life intersected with his bibliophilic proclivities when his friend Ephraim D. Adams suggested that Hoover take it upon himself to preserve the records of the organization he directed, the Commission for Relief in Belgium. Hoover accepted this task and began assembling the mass of books, posters, and documents which would become the foundation of the so-called "Hoover War Collection" — earliest incarnation of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Hoover also later recounted that he was further driven in the task of systematic archiving by his own wartime research as food administrator. In the first volume his memoirs, published in 1951, Hoover wrote:

...
Wikipedia