Bureau of Business Practice Collection

The publishing company that eventually became the Bureau of Business Practice (BBP) began as a small, private venture, the National Foreman's Institute (NFI), in Essex, Connecticut, in 1915. For the first thirty-five years of its existence, NFI was exclusively a publisher of training materials for the first line of industrial supervision. The Bureau of Business Practice Collection consists of publications dating from the years when the BBP was known as the National Foreman's Institute to just prior to the closing of the BBP Branch of Aspen Publishers. Publications such as the "Better Secretaries Series" from the early 1960s focus on training for office employees through instruction in secretarial principles, such as accounting or letter writing. Topics range from labor issues in Labor Relations Bulletin to common concerns of the secretary in such publications as Just Between Office Girls and Office Guide for Working Women.