RIAMCO

Rhode Island Archival and Manuscript Collections Online

For Participating Institutions

Tom Powers collection of Bill Wilson public talks (Ms.2010.002)

Brown University Library

Box A
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: Manuscripts: 401-863-3723; University Archives: 401-863-2148
Email: Manuscripts: hay@brown.edu; University Archives: archives@brown.edu

Scope & content

The Tom Powers collection of Bill Wilson public talks includes 79 talks by Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson on 147 audio CDs. They represent speeches made at AA conventions, Al-Anon gatherings, Founders Days and anniversaries. The collection also includes the entire corpus in one full-length mp3 file for use in computer-based applications, as well as additional mp3 copies of all the talks separated into individually-accessible files. The first 56 talks are present in duplicate.

The talks were originally collected by Tom Powers, a colleague of Bill W.'s who broke from AA in 1961 to begin the program that would eventually be called All Addicts Anonymous. Tom Laperriere purchased the talks as a set of cassette tapes and converted them to digital files, editing them as needed to improve the sound quality.

The talks are arranged chronologically. The original numbering is present in the note field for each talk.