This guide to, and microfilm edition of, temperance and prohibition papers is a joint venture of the Michigan Historical Collections of the University of Michigan, The Ohio Historical Society, and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The project was the first of its kind funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and it sets a high standard for any similar projects to follow. It grew out of two separate institutional attempts to collect and and film papers on temperance and prohibition. In 1974 the Ohio Historical Society secured on loan the complete records of the Anti-Saloon League which included extensive records of related organizations totaling over 350 linear feet. At the same time the Michigan Historical Collections sought to microfilm its varied and significant nineteenth-century records regarding this reform movement. Together the two institutions held the most important extant national collections on the subject except for that still in the custody of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) headquartered in Evanston, Illinois. The WCTU agreed to the filming of their records and a joint proposal was funded by NHPRC.