| Summary/Abstract |
While scholars of the Cold War have long critiqued the relationship between the academy and the U.S. security apparatus, research libraries have largely escaped interrogation.1 Libraries have not elicited calls to read “against the grain”; the contingencies and pressures that shaped their collections remain unexplored.2 This paper traces the connections between national security, information science, and area studies through a history of the vast overseas collections of U.S. research libraries, particularly from South Asia and the Middle East. Created by an unlikely alliance of librarians, defense agencies, foundations, and lobbyists, they are a testament to the enduring influence of national security priorities on the production of academic knowledge. Indeed, as this paper shows, they are an enduring legacy of the Cold War state—a legacy that continues to shape the contours of scholarship.
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