Buff, blue and pink: What’s in a card ?

The permanent recorder cards in the four main sets created by
Rockefeller-endowed organizations all share two characteristics. First, they were produced on cardstock paper measuring five by seven inches. This provided more room for typing than the three-by-five cards typically used in library card catalogues.

Second, virtually all the cards were created (and then stored) in New York City, using the same typewriters.¹ These were most likely flat-platen machines of the type that had been manufactured and sold by the Fisher Company since the turn of the twentieth century (figure 10). Designed to accommodate paper formats ill-suited to a cylindrical platen, these typewriters were used for bookkeeping, billing, and recordkeeping. They allowed typists to use a card’s full surface, neatly align their entries, and create duplicates. As an unintended consequence, they also provided latter-day historians with easy-to-read source material.

Figure 10: The Fisher Card-Writing Platen. These machines, or similar devices from other manufacturers, were likely in use at Rockefeller-endowed organizations.

Source: “The Fisher: A Billing, Tabulating, Book-recording Machine” (Fisher trade catalogue, 1904, from the amazing trade literature collection of the Typewriter Gazette )

However, that is basically the extent of the similarities between the
cards in the different sets. Each organization or division made
different choices, right down to the color of the stationery. Whereas
the International Education Board used a mix of blue and pink (to
distinguish between recipients who traveled to Europe and those who came to the United States), the General Education Board preferred buff. And while most Rockefeller Foundation divisions started out using buff cards, adding blue ones to identify scholarships starting in the 1960s, the China Medical Board exclusively used blue cards and the Foundation’s Paris office opted for white ones. Looking beyond questions of hue, we set out to understand other features of the permanent recorder cards with a view to determining the circumstances, rules, and objectives surrounding their creation, updating, and use. In all these matters, we faced a scarcity of information.

Historians who have conducted research at the Rockefeller Archive Center have good reasons to question the reputation of nimbleness acquired by Rockefeller-endowed organizations. The collections reveal a baffling and at times overwhelming collection of rules, policies, and principles governing the work of staff. The latter were regularly reminded of the importance of using pre-printed forms and letterheads. They were tasked with preparing a constant stream of decision-making and operational documents. They had to master various record-keeping devices in the course of carrying out their extensive secretarial duties. And yet, the vast collections of documents held by the Rockefeller Archive Center fail to shed much light on the history of administrative practices at Rockefeller-endowed organizations, making it difficult to trace the origins and development of the four main sets of permanent recorder cards. We found no reports or instructions directly addressing their creation, content, upkeep, or use. And what information we did find -scattered across a multitude of memorandums, diaries, and
correspondence- was invariably brief and cryptic.

This section aims to piece together the available clues in a way that provides an overview of why, when, and how cards were created; how they were formatted; and the types of information that was added to them. It highlights the heterogeneous nature of our source material, a characteristic that persisted despite standardization efforts. We also attempt to identify the reasons behind this diversity, so database users can better understand the different institutional visions reflected in permanent recorder cards created at different moments and by different organizations. Often, these visions help explain why individual cards contain specific types of information and why they are structured in a particular way.

To a great extent, the cards themselves—their physical characteristics, their layout, their contents—helped us develop or confirm hypotheses regarding the circumstances under which they were created and the ways in which they were used. We also relied on the diaries kept by most officers of Rockefeller-endowed organizations from the 1920s to the 1960s. This collection of volumes bound in green, black, and red makes up Record Group 12 at the Rockefeller Archive Center (all following citations come from this collection). A number of diaries have been digitized, allowing us to conduct fine grained full-text keyword searches for references to permanent recorder cards once entered into a DevonThink database. Finally, conversations with staff members at the Rockefeller Archive Center provided additional insight². The information gathered from these different sources made it possible to sketch the material history of permanent recorder cards at Rockefeller-endowed organizations.

Why and when were permanent recorder cards created?

We were unable to pinpoint the origins of permanent recorder cards. In other words, we found no document clearly stating that, starting on a specific day, certain information should be collected on awards granted by Rockefeller-endowed organizations and that 5×7 index cards should be used for the purpose. Nevertheless, by analyzing scattered bits of relevant information, we were able to develop some hypotheses on why these documents were initially created. To begin with, card systems appear to have been an integral aspect of information management efforts at Rockefeller-endowed organizations. Different card indexes had been in use at the Rockefeller Foundation since at least 1917, when one was created to track the minutes of the Foundation, the International Health Board, and the China Medical Board (Embree’s diary, 3 October 1917). Officers’ diaries from the 1910s and 1920s contain references to various proposals for developing other card indexes for similar purposes.

An affinity for this particular record keeping strategy likely reflected
the Rockefeller Foundation’s background in the field of public health.
Common in libraries since the late eighteenth century, card indexes were popular among medical and public health professionals for keeping track of patients, laboratory specimens, surveys, and campaigns. This would help explain why the International Health Board—the source of the earliest known permanent recorder cards—began using a card index to track award recipients, just as it had used one to track survey data and fieldwork related to hookworm and malaria.

Card indexes were also a common management tool at major US
corporations—including Standard Oil, the firm founded by John D.
Rockefeller, Sr. The famous custom-designed Rolodex used by his
grandson, David Rockefeller, shows how subsequent generations of the family took this records management approach to new extremes (figure 11). And when the International Health Board created its first permanent recorder cards for award recipients, it relied on the same stationery it had been using to keep records on its staff.

Figure 11: David Rockefeller kept some 200,000 cards with information on personal and professional contacts in a custom-designed Rolodex.

© Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center. Reproduced with permission.

And yet, as discussed below, the sequence of events leading to the
emergence of permanent recorder cards does not support the idea that they organically materialized under the influence of scientific or
corporate culture, in organizations that we have described as a
real-life Buribunkdom. Rather, these documents provided a practical
solution to pressing record-keeping issues related to awards management.

Tracking Recipients

When the number of awards being granted soared in the early 1920s,
permanent recorder cards appear to have provided Rockefeller Foundation staff with a convenient and effective way of tracking information on recipients.

Earliest cards at the Rockefeller Foundation seem to have been created around 1919, both at the China Medical Board and the International Health Board. Yet, we remain cautious about this conclusion (again, no smoking gun here). We also have found Division of Medical Education cards with converging clues that suggest they were created in 1923. But the most important is that the first explicit mentions of the creation of a systematic card index come a bit later, in the Foundation president’s diary. The system was considered as a manner to allow for quickly accessing information on recipients and their locations during their award terms, as well as to follow up on their subsequent activities (Vincent’s diary, Tuesday, August 12, 1924).

We also know that, in late 1924, Foundation staff based in Paris sent their counterparts in New York City a collection of biographical information on previous award recipients, quite possibly for the purpose of creating permanent recorder cards. By 1925, it is certain that the Paris office had already created cards for an index of its own (Gregg’s diary, 7 December 1925). We have no proven evidence of when the International Education Board began to write their first cards, but they would seem to be here from the beginning of their activities in the Spring of 1924 (these first cards show a mix of handwriting and typewriting). For all these reasons, we believe that the years 1924-1925 were the moment when something like a card index system became common practice in different Rockefeller-endowed organizations and especially within the Rockefeller Foundation, where cards had been created at the initiative of some officers in their divisions.

We also found evidence that several sets of cards had been created for the same individuals. For instance, we came across 1137 blue copies of buff cards created for awards granted by the General Education Board between 1941 and 1953. In addition to the copied biographical information on recipients, these blue cards include handwritten notes about the payment of tuition fees, travel expenses, and stipends during what were the organization’s final years of operation. These accounting documents appear to have been accidentally included with the main set of General Education Board permanent record cards. Their existence suggests that Rockefeller-endowed organizations documented day-to-day awards administration on duplicate sets of cards, most of which were later
destroyed. With time, index cards for recipients had obviously become usual practice at Rockefeller-endowed organizations and they were a type of record that was used for different purposes.

Records Management

Prepared in 1939, the Rockefeller Foundation’s first “records retention schedule” made no mention of keeping data on award recipients. And yet, such information continued to be collected, filling a growing number of drawers and filing cabinets. Called “letter records” by Foundation staff, dossiers on individual recipients were stuffed with forms, letters, diary excerpts, receipts and invoices. Today, they are listed as fellowship files by the Rockefeller Archive Center. Although we found passing references to such material being destroyed as early as the late 1920s, these dossiers appear to have largely remained intact until the mid-1940s. But by 1945, a lack of storage space had become a pressing issue, with letter records alone filling some fifty drawers at the offices of the Rockefeller Foundation.

At the time, the head of administrative staff observed that the card index “is so complete that she wonders if it is quite necessary to maintain the old letter file on fellowships” (Appleget’s diary, Wednesday, 31 October 1945). Within a few weeks, decision-makers had taken these comments to heart and committed to making permanent record cards the focus of their information management policy (Appleget’s diary, Wednesday, 27 November 1945). Meanwhile, consultations with the heads of administrative and reference services had determined that the cost of transferring the full collection of letter records to microfiche would be prohibitive (Rockefeller Foundation Vice-President Thomas B. Appleget estimated it would take two years). Accordingly, it was decided that “the cards institute an adequate record” and that the “old letter file” dossiers should be destroyed after ten years.

Implementation of this new policy appears to have been swift, since the collection of Rockefeller Foundation fellowship files now held by the Rockefeller Archive Center does not include any material related to awards whose term was completed before 1935. Nor are there many files on recipients whose award term ended at some point during the next twelve years after 1945. Yet, strict implementation of the ten-year retention policy appears to have been abandoned around 1957 : the red “Correspondence Discarded” stamp ceased to be ubiquitous starting with cards created in 1947 (see figure 12) and records disposal remained minimal until 1964 .

Figure 12: a permanent recorder card carrying the “Correspondence discarded” stamp.

Source: Fellowship recorder card for Olov Wilhelm Fryckstedt. Rockefeller Foundation records, R.G.10.2.
© Courtesy of Rockefeller Archive Center.

At that point, it ceased altogether, meaning that fellowship files for awards approved after 1954 have remained intact. Although the General Education Board considered a similar purge of older documents in 1947-1948 (Appleget’s diary, Wednesday, 3 September 1947), the measure was put on hold to give Julia Carson the chance to complete her research on the history of the organization³. It remains unclear whether the ten-year rule was ever implemented at the General Education Board.

In any case, the increased reliance on card indexes after 1945 explains Flora Rhind’s use of the term “permanent fellowships records cards” in her report on the creation of an archive center. By 1965, these documents had become the primary instrument for preserving selected types of information on past award recipients. Although their arrival on the scene had reflected the popularity of card indexes as an information management technique in the corporate and academic worlds, their continued use had more to do with the need to free up space in overflowing drawers and filing cabinets.

1. Some cards produced by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Paris office are included in the four main sets. Although we have been unable to determine exactly how they were created, a number of clues point to the use of ordinary typewriters [↩]
2. special thanks to Michele Hiltzik Beckerman and Beth Jaffe-Davis [↩]
3. Carson was the home historian, and her work also provided the basis for two other books on the history of the Rockefeller Foundation, published under the name of Raymond B. Fosdick [↩]

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