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Physicians for Social Responsibility Records
Notifications
Held at: Swarthmore College Peace Collection [Contact Us]500 College Avenue, Swarthmore 19081-1399
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Founded in 1961 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by a group of physicians. PSR is an organization, and association of doctors concerned with the challenge of the nuclear age: "man's scientific knowledge now provides an unprecedented opportunity for medical and social advance; yet thermonuclear war poses a supreme threat to the health and survival of mankind." Since prevention is the only effective remedy, and therapy, these physicians are attempting to explore a new area of preventive medicine: the prevention of nuclear war. Their aims are to "provide for the medical community the scientific data on which political decisions must in part be based; to alert physicians to the dangerous implication of the arms race; to involve physicians in serious exploration of peaceful alternatives..."
This collection includes correspondence, financial files, memoranda, newsletters, legislative files, publicity materials, and videocassettes.
Series I, Box 8 and Series II, Boxes 37, 50, 70, 76, and 79 only contained audiovisual materials. One reeltape from Series I, Box 22 was moved to Series I, Box 8.
The Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) records have not yet been processed by the staff of the Peace Collection. The materials have been refoldered, but remain in the exact order they were sent. Files are not in completely chronological or alphabetical order. The collection is divided into several sections, reflecting how and when each section was received by the Peace Collection. Each section is labeled by its Accession number, the internal Swarthmore College Peace Collection record number each time PSR records are received.
The Swarthmore College Peace Collection is the official repository for these papers/records.
These web sites were created by the Physicians for Social Responsibility national office. Beginning in 1997 the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive periodically captured Peace Action's web site.
The links provided here are for the convenience of researchers interested in the history of the Physicians for Social Responsibility's web presence. The Swarthmore College Peace Collection has no control over the web sites or how they are saved by the Internet Archive.
Gift of Physcians for Social Responsbility, 1994 [Acc. 94A-073]; 1997 [Acc. 97A-003]; 2000 [Acc. 00A-037]; 2001 [Acc. 01A-007, Acc. 01A-034, Acc. 01A-044]; 2003 [Acc. 03A-009, Acc. 03A-068]
This collection is unprocessed.
Audiovisual items were moved to the Audiovisual Collection.
Organization
Subject
- Publisher
- Swarthmore College Peace Collection
- Access Restrictions
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The collection is open for research use.
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All or part of this collection is stored off-site. Contact Swarthmore College Peace Collection staff at peacecollection@swarthmore.edu at least two weeks in advance of visit to request boxes.
- Copyright to the Physicians for Social Responsibility records created by the organization has been transferred to the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Copyright to all other materials is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
- Use Restrictions
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None.
Collection Inventory
This material was sent to the Peace Collection from the PSR offices and storage facility. It had to be reboxed immediately upon arrival as the shipping boxes were falling apart. The storage facility (and PSR?) had labels and numbers on some of the original boxes. We have retained those numbers on the boxes in case they are ever needed for identifying material. Accession 94A-073 is divided into Series I (41 boxes of material) and Series II (118 boxes of material). This division is a temporary and artificial one imposed by the Peace Collection to designate current storage location information. This checklist is a folder listing only. Folders have been placed in new boxes as they came from PSR. There has been no attempt to organize the material. Duplicates have been discarded when possible. PSR periodicals have been removed and sent to the SCPC periodical collection.
(4 connected folders)
[6 folders]