University Times

Hillman Library's archives were bolstered this month with the addition of the former Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad records. The records were donated to Pitt by Jack Polaritz, director of the Western Pennsylvania Interactive Railroad Learning Center Project, a subsidiary of the Coraopolis Economic Revitalization Center.

Hundreds of boxes of employee job applications, labor union agreements, maps and other historically important documents (some dating back to the 1870s) were donated in an effort to make the railroad's past available to the public. These records tell part of the history of operations and personnel of the P&LE, which played a major role in the development of the region's steel industry.

"This is a very rich collection," said Ruth Carter, head of the University Library System's Archives Service Center. "These records show where the P&LE employees were born, their wages, the railroad's employee turnover. The materials are a significant addition to the Archives of Industrial Society, which already has an extensive P&LE photo collection, heavily used by researchers."