The Americas collection focuses on political, economic, and social developments in North and Latin America during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The U.S. collection documents the two world wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and U.S. foreign and domestic policies and international relations generally. Collections range from official government papers to personal diplomatic and research archives. The Latin American collection records political and related developments in countries with strong leftist or rightist regimes and disruptive political or military movements or both. Over the decades selection criteria have followed ideas and events, focusing variously on competing ideologies and actions of legal and illegal organizations; prominent political and military leaders; and archival papers of, and interviews with, national leaders, revolutionaries, political scientists, journalists, and others involved as individuals or groups in influencing, making, and implementing domestic and international policies.