About 90% of materials that will be included in the Greenfield digital project on the Bankers Trust Company of Philadelphia come from the Albert M. Greenfield Papers (collection 1959). The other 10% include items from other collections here at HSP that also provide information about the bank.

One such collection that Dana and I have decided to use is the Philadelphia Record news clippings morgue (3344). Like Temple’s Urban Archives, which owns the Evening Bulletin clippings morgue, HSP holds the clippings morgue of the Record, a Philadelphia daily newspaper that ran from 1877 to 1947.

This large collection, dating from 1918 until the newspaper ceased publication, could potentially provide a wealth of information for researchers. However, its current condition makes access an issue. The clippings, folded and contained in envelopes, are housed in about 30 filing cabinets and 30 cardboard/wooden drawers.

Although the clippings are organized by person and subject, no subject guide or inventory currently exists. And the clippings themselves are extremely brittle.

Dana and I thus had some issues to deal with in using the collection. The approximately 25 envelopes of clippings relating to Bankers Trust Company that we pulled were given to Conservation. The staff humidified and flattened the clippings so that we could make preservation photocopies of them onto archival quality paper. These copies of the articles are those that we will digitize for the project.

These newspaper articles not only enhance the information found in the Greenfield Papers by offering a human side to the story, but also help to fill in gaps concerning the story of Bankers Trust. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, one of these gaps deals with the failed efforts to reorganize the bank and its subsequent liquidation. Articles from the clippings morgue have given us a much better understanding of this period in the bank’s history.

Although articles from the Record clippings morgue will provide key information, one factor that Dana and I, and researchers, need to keep in mind is the paper’s potential bias on topics relating to Greenfield and Bankers Trust. Albert M. Greenfield played an integral role in the newspaper’s history, including serving as one of its primary supporters and financial contributors.