Wednesday
September 18, 2024 
The Industrial Archives & Library (IAL) said staff and volunteers finished a yearlong project to digitize and make accessible approximately 476 issues of Bethlehem Steel newsletters from a variety of steel plants, shipyards, mines and other operations across America. The newsletters not only tell stories about the industrial giant, but also its employees.
The newsletters, dated 1978-1985, are as much a story of Bethlehem Steel as the communities in which the company had its plants, yards, and offices. Most issues include corporate news, but also include stories about hobbies of miners, corporate picnics, and academic accomplishments of blue-collar workers’ children.
“The newsletters are a treasure trove of interesting information about Bethlehem Steel, much of it from the perspective of its everyday employees,” said Stephen G. Donches, IAL president & CEO. “While the scope of our collection strategy is national across a variety of industries,” Donches added, “our Bethlehem Steel holdings are central to our mission at IAL, and we are looking to expand them at every opportunity.”
“This collection would not have been available until much later if it were not for the work of one of IAL’s talented volunteers, George Myers,” said Missy Nerino, IAL’s digital archivist, who oversaw the project. Myers, who has been volunteering with IAL for over 15 months, has been digitizing the newsletters each week throughout the year.
“George is a huge asset to IAL,” stated Nerino, “and he approaches every job with a positive attitude. I know he enjoyed digitizing these newsletters with an enthusiasm in finding interesting articles that was infectious on everyone involved with the project.”
“My main takeaway from these newsletters,” Myers noted, “Was that you get to see the real face of Bethlehem Steel through the stories of individual employees. The newsletters covered everything, and it was only on the front page you’d see the corporate line.”
In total, 28 different titles, and about 2,732 pages were digitized in the effort. Nerino then provided metadata to each newsletter before uploading them into IAL’s digital asset management system, Preservica. The newsletters can be viewed online at: https://indarclib.access.preservica.com/
Can you help us fill the gaps? IAL is looking for missing issues of newsletters. Contact IAL by email at info@industrialarchives.org or by telephone at 618-868-1115.
Established in 2015, the Industrial Archives & Library (IAL), is a 501(c)(3), private operating foundation located in Bethlehem, organized as an independent institution to collect, organize, conserve and preserve industrial records and to make them available for education and research to historians, scholars, and the public. Current holdings include records relating to banking, slate quarrying, coal mining, silk and textiles, steel, shipbuilding, transportation and railroads. IAL also houses an oral history program.
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