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Barbara Bach first worked as a Boston area schoolteacher and creator of television documentaries. After receiving a Master's degree in Education in 1969, she became an Ann Arbor, Mich. businesswoman, networking facilitator, fundraiser, and lifelong educator/mentor to individuals and organizations. The collection includes business records, association newsletters, campaign literature, photographs, and correspondence representing her multiple careers as an entrepreneur, legislative aide, community activist, and executive director in a policy environment promoting economic development in Michigan.

The Barbara Bach papers reflect a context of turbulent economic conditions and ground-breaking socio-political events. Some defining highlights of Bach's political efforts include her work with the Ann Arbor Public Schools Title IX Monitoring Committee for gender equality in sports, her nonpartisan campaign work for the county-wide Washtenaw County SAFE House proposal to assist victims of domestic violence, and her Democratic Party campaign work on behalf of Albert H. Wheeler, Ann Arbor's first African American mayor.

However, Bach's business experience and activities on behalf of economic development and job training in the State of Michigan, in connection with the Michigan Community Colleges Association (MCCA) and as Executive Director of the Inventors' Council of Michigan (INCOM), represent the bulk of the collection.

During the 1980s, community colleges were becoming a focal point for job-related training as a precursor to economic development. Organizations such as the Michigan Technology Council (MTC), with support from the University of Michigan, brought together leaders from business, industry, and government in an effort to facilitate technology transfer through commercial applications and new product development.

Economic recession had helped to heighten interest, at all levels of government, in the policy concept of economic development through entrepreneurial successes. Ideally, through teaching, research, and networking assistance, an entrepreneurial "supercenter" would encourage new product and business development, ultimately creating jobs throughout the economy.

Throughout much of her career in Michigan, Barbara Bach was known as Barbara Eldersveld. The collection also includes some materials from her early public service activities in Massachusetts as Barbara Damon.

The collection is organized into eight series: Personal/Biographical, Greater Boston Area, Teaching and Educational Settings, Political, Business and Entrepreneurial, State Government, Inventors' Council of Michigan (INCOM), and Ann Arbor Community Service.

Statewide organization based a the University of Michigan to promote cooperation between industry and educational institutions and to encourage industrial and economic development in Michigan. Records include correspondence, minutes of meetings, topical files and reports.

The records that make up the 1992 accession of the Michigan Technology Council record group document the founding and formative years of a broad-based Michigan organization concerned with an issue of vital concern to educational, business, and governmental leaders of the 1980s: the impact of high technology upon industry and society as a whole. Researchers interested in the changing nature of research and industry in the United States (and particularly in Michigan) during the technological boom of the 1980s will find in the record group ample accounts of such changes from the perspective of the people most interested in promoting them and profiting from them. Resistance to and fear of such changes are documented in the record group, as well, through letters and newspaper articles that present views opposing those of the MTC. The record group also provides insights about the relationships between industry, higher education, and government; particular technological topics such as computers, robotics, and biotechnology; tactics for promoting and marketing technological advances in various sectors of the community; and, of course, the history and organization of MTC itself.

Because the records of the 1992 accession were donated to the Bentley Historical Library not by the MTC but by a loosely related organization, the Industrial Development Division of the Institute for Science and Technology, and because the IDD's 1986 reorganization substantially diminished its connections to the MTC, the record group cannot provide a complete picture of the MTC; it documents the early rather than the recent history of the organization, and it concentrates heavily on a few MTC subcommittees and activities while providing scant details about others. Anticipated subsequent accessions to the record group should be able to fill in these gaps. Nevertheless, the records of the first accession document relatively comprehensively the organization's primary goals and concerns, as expressed through agendas, minutes, correspondence, reports, and pamphlets.

Artificially constructed collection of University of Michigan publications received from a variety of sources. The publications have been sorted by the name of the creating unit, office or organization. Publications within the units or organizations have not been arranged.

The Publications in this artificially constructed collection of drop boxes include annual reports, brochures, bulletins, catalogs, directories, ephemera including flyers, invitations, posters, and programs, histories, manuals, newsletters, proceedings of conferences, reports, and topical publications.

A small number of publications for which no creating organization is discernible are listed at the end of this finding aid by title. These publications include a number of student newsletters and campus guides. Major continuing units are represented as well as smaller and defunct units.

Some university publications have been individually cataloged and exist in their own record groups. As this collection serves as an unprocessed drop box for university publications, not all units will be represented. Most of the units represented consist of a few folders of material, unless otherwise indicated in the finding aid. Consult MIRLYN for individually cataloged items as well as other related items.