{"value"=>"<p>In 1946, in order to keep track of the increasingly heavy correspondence between its New York office and the overseas missions, CARE began assigning numbers to all such intra-CARE letters and cables as they were written. Each country's correspondence has its own numbering sequence, and outgoing and incoming letters are numbered separately: for example, Poland-New York letter #2432 was a response to New York-Poland letter #1951.</p> <p>A carbon copy of each numbered letter (or a mimeograph of each cable) routinely goes to the Overseas Operations Department for its numbered correspondence files. Thus, while copies of these items are found throughout CARE's papers, Subseries 3.2 is the all-inclusive collection of letters and cables between CARE headquarters and each mission in the order in which they were written.</p> <p>The correspondence is mostly of a routine nature, concerning such matters as the shipment of commodities, visits from representatives of fund-raising organizations to project sites, staff leave reports, and purchase of motor vehicles. The loose-leaf books in which CARE's New York staff recorded the numbers, dates, and recipients of each letter and briefly described their contents provide an overview of the topics covered in the numbered correspondence. (See Subseries 3.3, Log Books, Boxes 818-828).</p> <p>Boxes 538-812 contain the numbered correspondence from 1947 through 1984, filed by year and alphabetical by country within each year. Box 813 holds numbered correspondence between CARE-MEDICO's Washington D. C. office and MEDICO countries, 1971-1978. Other MEDICO-related files, by country, are scattered throughout Subseries 3.2.</p> <p>Boxes 814-815, country files, 1980-1984, contain both numbered and unnumbered correspondence, alphabetical by country. The contents of Boxes 816 and 817, new country files, pertain mostly to proposals to initiate or resume operations in non-CARE countries. Box 817 also holds files on the closing of missions in some CARE countries.</p> <p>Readers should note that in Subseries 3.2, files for countries that have changed their names are under the name in use at or near the time the files were created. For example, correspondence to and from Ceylon, which became Sri Lanka in 1972, is under Ceylon through 1973 but under Sri Lanka thereafter. In using this subseries, researchers interested in CARE's activities in one country over a long period of time should look under all forms of that country's name.</p>"}