Research


Scope and Content Note

This series consists mostly of photographs, news clippings, and press releases used by the Public Relations Office to promote Civil Service Commission and Department activities. The series also includes some planning files, copies of historical documents, and publications.

The photographs are contained in scrapbooks and files. Subjects include Department social events, special occasions (e.g. signing ceremonies, the unveiling of the Department mural), past Department officials and Commissioners (sometimes biographical information is filed with the photograph), and the Department's State Fair exhibit.

Press clippings from the late 1940's are contained in a scrapbook and relate to local and State civil service activities. The series also contains clippings from the 1950's and 1960's relating to civil service history. Press releases concern changes in Department or Commission policy, special events, new appointments, and the inauguration of new programs.

The publications and copies of historical documents contained in the series relate mostly to the history of civil service and civil service reform in New York and the nation. Most of these materials were collected for either the seventy-fifth anniversary of civil service in New York or the opening of the Roosevelt-Cleveland History Room (a small Department museum now dismantled).

Planning files relate to events connected with the Civil Service Commission's 1958 Diamond Jubilee; they were created by a special Diamond Jubilee Committee. These contain mailing and invitation lists, memoranda, correspondence, press releases, financial records, drafts of publications, speeches, scripts, invitations, menus and publications.