#accessionanniversary

[pittarchives]

Founding Anniversary- The Archives of Industrial Society

Cartoon from a Pittsburgh Press feature on the opening of the Archives of Industrial Society in the Fall of 1963. Pictured in the background are Heinz Chapel and the Cathedral of Learning. (Pittsburgh Press, November 3rd, 1963).

This post was written by Jon Klosinski, Archives Assistant

October 7th marks the 57th anniversary of the first accessions and founding of the Archive of Industrial Society (AIS)- one of the foundational collections for Pitt’s Archives & Special Collections department.

Preparation of the AIS program began as early as 1960 under the guidance Dr. Samuel Hays, the Pitt History Department Chair, who was already an avid collector of historical material related to industry and its environmental impact in the region. Hays intended for AIS to serve as a primary source collection that would meet the research demands of social history, a new discipline which had emerged in the early 1960s and sought to understand the lives of ordinary people whose experiences had been underrepresented in the historical record.

Samuel P. Hays, founder of the Archives of Industrial Society

Historians in the region had combed the area for records before, but generally for colonial-era material and records related to very small group of people- mainly white, male, public figures. Older institutions in the region, such as the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, founded in 1879, had up until the middle 20th century only focused its collecting work on prominent individuals and families in the region. Archival scholar Richard Cox describes the founding of the Archives of Industrial Society at Pitt in the early 1960s as “…a conscious effort to deal with the omissions in the acquisition policy of the Historical Society and to support the research needs and interests of the urban and social historians located at the University of Pittsburgh and other institutions of higher education.”[1]

Hays received a grant for the AIS project from the Wherrett Memorial Fund of the Pittsburgh Foundation, administered by Dr. Stanton Belfour. Monte Calvert, a Pitt History PhD candidate, was appointed as the first curator of AIS, and began work with a small team of graduate students providing assistance. Calvert, a native Californian, had worked in various capacities at archives and museums across the country, and spent time in August 1963 visiting the Baker Library at Harvard Business School to learn more about proper organization and management of an archival program.

Monte Calvert, then a Pitt History PhD and first curator of the AIS, in a Pittsburgh Press feature on the AIS launch (Pittsburgh Press, November 3rd, 1963)

Calvert anticipated the project to be very large, from single letters to roomfuls of records that detailed mines, large corporations, and other types of records generally thought to be outdated and thrown away by their creators. From the outset, the department intended to use the archive to reach beyond the field of history, envisioning a broader program for the study of industrial society in general that would connect with other departments at the University. All of the material gathered in the first few weeks of the program was piled into a single room, 2916, on the 29th floor of the Cathedral of Learning, along with a loan of additional storage space on the 3rd floor of the Mineral Industries Building. Clearly needing more adequate space to facilitate research, Calvert and his supporting staff anticipated an eventual move to facilities in the new Hillman Library, which opened in January 1968.

The initial scope for the archives project aimed to collect records created between 1850 and 1900, a period of great industrial expansion in the region. Early literature and outreach materials created by the AIS details the types of materials that were being sought, which included papers of important civic and political leaders and organizations, minutes and manuscript records of ethnic, nationality and religious groups; newspapers created by ethnic, labor and religious group; and books, printed documents and broadsides related to the history of Western Pennsylvania in the 19th and 20th centuries. Calvert and the AIS project also identified material that had been traditionally neglected at libraries. Known (and often dismissed) as “ephemera”, this included catalogs, pamphlets, instruction books, price lists and other printed matter that contained useful data on prices, specifications, principles or other information that could not be easily found elsewhere.

Archives of Industrial Society Promotional Brochure, c. 1966

The first two accessions into AIS were entered on October 7th, AIS.1963.01 and AIS 1963.02. The American Service Institute, AIS, 1963.01, The Records of the American Service Institute, was founded in Pittsburgh in 1941 with the purpose of working through the organized structure of the Pittsburgh community to promote better understanding and appreciation among people of all cultural and national backgrounds. The collection is comprised of material and includes minutes, unpublished studies and reports, immigration and naturalization files, publications, general information on local organizations, material on local community projects, context about the aged population, youth immigration records, and information about customs and traditions of cultural groups. The collection has been previously featured on this blog as part of the Archival Scholars Research Award program.

The first two entries in the Archives of Industrial Society Accession Log on October 7, 1963. (Archives and Special Collections Department Internal files).

AIS.1963.02, The Sumner B. Ely Diaries, is a series of 50 small diaries that detail the daily activities of Sumner B. Ely, an engineer who worked in the iron industry from 1899 until 1920, and became Superintendent of the Bureau of Smoke Prevention, part of Pittsburgh's Department of Public Health in 1941.

Today, building on the Archives of Industrial Society 's mission of documenting underrepresented and underserved communities, The Archives and Special Collections Department of the University of Pittsburgh Library System continues to pursue those broad objectives through its robust collecting initiatives. The Archives of Industrial Society continues in the Library System under its prefix “AIS” but has grown to represent new historical resources in areas such as African American studies, LGBTQIA+ studies, women’s studies, gender studies, medical innovation and other materials that document Western Pennsylvania's continual growth from its industrial past.

[1] Cox, Richard, Documenting Localities: A Practical Model for American Archivists and Manuscript Curators. (Lanham, Md & London: Society of American Archivists and Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996). 74