Finding Aids

The Directors of Industrial Research (D.I.R.) is a forum for the exchange of ideas and information on topics of mutual interest for directors of America's foremost industrial research laboratories, formed in 1923. The records of the Directors of Industrial Research are an important collection, primarily because of their documentation of the development of industrial research. These records provide ample opportunity for the study of a powerful elite of corporate researchers, and a close-up view of certain aspects of the relationship between science and big business in the twentieth century.

Elva M. Chandler (1900-1990) was an active clubwoman, active in many women's professional, church, and political organizations and president of the local Business and Professional Women's Club. She was best known for her involvement in the Delaware Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs (BPWC) and belonged to the Christina branch. Chandler's papers document her role in business and professional women's organizations and the changing role of women in business life from the 1950s to the 1970s.

John McShain (1898-1989) was a Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.,-based building contractor, whose firm, John McShain, Inc., was by 1950 the fiftieth largest construction firm in the United States, with contracts in excess of $100,000,000. John McShain's personal and business papers document his business career, the construction industry, and his investments in hotels, car dealerships, parking garages, transit lines, and racehorses.

The Lukens Steel Company was a medium-sized, non-integrated steel company and one of the top three producers of steel plates in the United States. Lukens operated continuously at its Coatesville, Pennsylvania, site since 1810 and was one of the few successful survivors of the many nineteenth-century iron works that once dotted southeastern Pennsylvania. This collection of Lukens Steel Company records consists of corporate records, mostly from the Secretary's Office. The records are comprised of seven series: Shareholders' meeting agendas; Stockholder lists; Proxies for annual meetings; Board and committee meeting agendas; Financial statements; Secretary's correspondence; and Counsel's correspondence.

The National Industrial Conference Board, later renamed The Conference Board, formed in 1916 as a response by the business community to continued labor unrest and growing public criticism. Their records are an important source for understanding the business community's response to most political and socioeconomic issues. NOTE: The box inventory for this finding aid is not yet online, a full inventory is available onsite in the Reading Room only.

The Purchasing Management Association of Central Pennsylvania was a regional chapter of the national trade organization the Institute for Supply Management from 1959 until 2016. The mission and vision of the regional chapter was to educate, develop, and advance the purchasing and supply management profession within Central Pennsylvania. This collection consists of thirty-two bound volumes of original documents from the Purchasing Management Association of Central Pennsylvania, primarily meeting minutes and correspondence between 1959 and 2004.