(From MARAC, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference): For the first time, finding aids for fifty-six World War I and II collections at the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs (AFS Archives) are searchable online on AFS’s Web site: www.afs.org/afs-history-and-archives. The unprecedented availability of the collections was made possible through a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC.) This grant allowed AFS to survey 175 cubic feet of archival material, arrange, describe, and preserve collections at a basic level, and to create a Web site where researchers can easily browse subject terms, creators, record groups, and fifty-six new finding aids. The finding aids are now also catalogued in regional and national databases.
The AFS Archives contains documents, photographs, works of art, recordings, and artifacts related to the history and development of the organization that is now referred to as AFS Intercultural Programs, Inc. AFS began as a voluntary ambulance and camion corps serving with the French Army during the First World War. The ambulance service was reactivated during World War II, and American volunteers drove ambulances in France, North Africa, the Middle East, Italy, Germany, India, and Burma, and carried over 700,000 casualties by the end of the war. Today, AFS is an international exchange organization for students and young adults that operates in more than eighty countries, and organizes and supports intercultural learning experiences.