Ann Arbor Railroad binders

 Here is an example of 1963-1964 style binders and how you open them. These are legal-size forms for daily reports for the Ann Arbor Railroad. They had a lot of forms, reports, and binders. I've worked with thousands over the years. There are also many letter-size reports and forms.

For ease of use, the company used these binders. They were stored in boxes on shelves, which were easier to find and less apt to fall on the floor then binders. 

Here's how one looks in the box on a shelf. Each has a label and a ring to make it easier to pull it off the shelf. This type of housing was common in courts and businesses as it was compact and functional.

The reports are on onion skin paper. They are held down by a rectangular metal piece. The first step is to rotate a piece of metal which looks like a V into an upside position. This loosens the rectangular piece, which acts like a clamp holding all the papers in place

Next you move the rectangular piece away from the papers. This allows you to move the curved pieces out of the upright metal prongs which are holding the papers. The curves allowed staff to flip through the papers to find something.

Here are the metal parts in an empty binder. In most binders today you have two curve piece of metal that meet in the middle of the open binder, instead of one curve and one straight piece. These reports date 1963-1964, but I've seen this style of binder used  widely in 20th century collections. These had little rust. That is very helpful to the archivist. It is not uncommon for them to rust shut and the rust damages the papers. 

Finally these reports are ready to go into archival folders and boxes so researchers can access them.