Here and There

Peter Hirtle Weighs in on SOPA

2012-01-19T08:02:00.000-05:00

Introduction
With the events of yesterday's SOPA protests, I thought I should consult my copyright mentor, Peter Hirtle. Peter is Senior Policy Advisor of Cornell University Library, and co-author with Emily Hudson and Andrew T. Kenyon of Copyright and Cultural Institutions, an incredibly useful set of guidelines for libraries, archives, and museums. His name may sound familiar to you because I interviewed Peter last August when I visited Cornell and toured the archives and the Kheel Center. That interview is posted here.

Below, in a brief email interview, Peter talks about the long-range effects of SOPA; the pros and cons of the legislation; what it could mean for the DNS structure of the Internet; how it could affect libraries, archives, and other educational institutions; alternatives to SOPA, and who ISN'T in on the discussion. I hope you will find it as instructive and interesting as I do.

The Interview

From 10,000 ft, what do you think would be lasting effects of SOPA as it stands today (because who knows what will happen in February) on copyright law?

PBH Even if SOPA is implemented as is, I think that the biggest lasting effect is going to be that it has gotten the tech companies involved in the political process. They may find that they are happy about it because SOPA/PIPA is likely to have a chilling effect on future technical innovation in the U.S., allowing the current tech leaders to try to monopolize their existing practices. But I believe in general those companies are willing to innovate rather than sit on their laurels. That means that we may see an important counter-weight to old media companies develop. This might lead to a more open copyright policy.

How would you summarize the pros and the cons of this legislation?

PBH The legislation does try to do something about counterfeit sites and intellectual property violations in foreign countries. No one wants to buy something on the Internet and discover it is a counterfeit. The cons are that there is no evidence that it would actually be effective in limiting counterfeits and infringements. Furthermore, because it was developed without the input of anyone who understands the internet, it runs the risk of chilling innovation, interfering with free speech, and placing libraries and archives at risk for criminal violations.

How would SOPA affect the functionality of the Internet?

PBH Here you better look at other experts; I am not an Internet engineer. My understanding is that by allowing the U.S. to remove DNS names from DNS servers, it corrupts the universal DNS scheme. The Internet no longer exists if the DNS system in, say the UK, is different from that in the U.S. Security specialists fear that this could actually open security holes by making it easier for sites to pretend that they are a different site.

What does SOPA mean to libraries and archives?

PBH There is a danger that an archives could be accused of willful criminal conduct if it made copyrighted material available – even inadvertently.

How does SOPA affect other educational web sites? Or could it?

PBH For those web sites that allow users to post content, they may feel that they need to actively monitor that content to try to ensure that there is no infringing content being posted. This would be both expensive and invasive. There are also possible criminal violations for streaming content to classrooms.

What would be alternatives to this legislation to accomplish the same high-level goals without causing so much push back?

PBH I think that one could craft legislation to limit access to foreign pirate sites. Wyden’s OPEN Act, which would have the International Trade Commission investigate, is one possible solution. Most importantly, the legislation would need to be developed in discussion with the Internet industry and in an open manner to ensure that it does not harm to high tech innovation, the primary driver of growth in the country.

Have you been involved in crafting copyright legislation? And, were you consulted on SOPA by Congress?

PBH This isn’t strictly speaking copyright legislation. It affects copyright, trademark, criminal offenses, and importation laws. No one, as far as I can tell, outside of the entertainment industry, has been consulted on SOPA. The only public hearing on the bill had only supporters of the legislation speak. As for my involvement, I haven’t been following it that closely in my copyright role – but only because of my personal interest in how the internet will develop.

Thanks again to Peter Hirtle for his speedy response to my questions on SOPA. Stay tuned!

Tour of the United States National Herbarium, Smithsonian Institution

2012-01-17T17:02:00.000-05:00

Introduction
In my fourth and final tour in this series of Smithsonian Institution visits, I will share with you the brief tour Carolyn Sheffield and I took of the U.S. National Herbarium. What’s in an herbarium? Many, many samples of botanical items collected during exploring expeditions all over the world.

Some of the benefits of having a National Herbarium include digitized resources that say what plant might be related to another plant, documentation of what plants grow where, and documentation of new plants that had yet to be discovered. According to the Smithsonian’s web site, the herbarium includes important historical collections such as “the United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), United States North Pacific Exploring Expedition (1853-1856), LaPlata Expedition (1853-1856), Mexican Boundary Survey (1854-1855), California Geological Survey (1860-1867), International Boundary Commission: U.S. and Mexico (1892-1894), and Colombia Cinchona missions (1940-1945).”

I was astonished to learn that researchers are able to borrow specimens, and in some cases, take samples from the specimens or dissect them. Our tour guide, Deborah Bell, Assistant Collections Manager, told us that some researchers use the samples to compare DNA with other samples in order to help identify plants. Additionally, researchers may add their annotations to a herbarium specimen if it adds to the knowledge of the plant.

The herbarium’s patrons include plant-science researchers from museums, universities, and botanical gardens around the world, who are engaged in studies of plant species, taxonomy, systematics, floristics, and evolution, says Rusty Russell, Collections Manager. Approximately 250 patrons per year are served by an army of professionals: 14 research curators, 18 research support staff, 8 collection support staff, and 4 informatics support staff. There also are 12 resident associates, pre- and post-doctoral students, and researchers on sabbatical at the herbarium. Notably, there are 20 volunteers per week who help out.

About the Collections
While the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian was established in 1892, the first samples were collected back in the 1840s for the herbarium’s predecessor, the National Institute, according to the Smithsonian’s web site. The herbarium holds 5 million specimens, with a large portion mounted on sheets such as the one shown below.

From

When I first saw this sheet, I wondered if it had grown some mold (from the gray spotted areas of the sheet). Deborah told us that it wasn’t mold, but in fact, the result of contamination by mercuric chloride. She said that mercuric chloride had been used as a fungicide by the scientists collecting the samples out in the field. When first applied, it appears clear, but then grays over time.

Here’s Deborah showing us some samples from the sample cabinets.

From

Some of the samples are quite old. For example, the materials below date from 1877.

From

Samples of flowering plants can comprise leaves, branches, flowers, fruits, and seeds. Other specimens include algae, lichens, mosses, and related organisms. Below is a sample of algae. I’m amazed by how it was able to keep its color.

From

The collections also include paper-based records, electronic records, images, maps, illustrations, and more. There are more than 280 families of botanical materials at the herbarium, organized from most primitive to most highly evolved. For example, below, Deborah shows us some bamboo skeletons.

From

She said that different bamboo species flower at different intervals and, when they do, every individual of that species flowers regardless of location. When that happens, like annual plants, they all set seed and die. An entirely new generation of that species arises from seed. It's pretty miraculous, if you ask me.

If you’re interested in doing some hunting in the cataloged collections (only one-fifth of the vast collections have been inventoried, but that’s almost 1 million items from which to choose, so it will keep you busy), you can do it online here: http://collections.mnh.si.edu/search/botany/?ti=3. In-person visits must to be arranged in advance, but if you’re a serious botanist, you should definitely visit our nation’s herbarium. It’s run by a great group of folks who tell fascinating stories and are very knowledgeable about the collections.

Contact Information
Rusty Russell
Collections and Informatics
United States National Herbarium
MRC166 - Botany
Smithsonian Institution
P.O. Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
email: russellr@si.edu

Tour of the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution

2012-01-06T18:33:00.000-05:00

Introduction
In this third installment of my Smithsonian Institution tours, I focus on one of the 20 Smithsonian Libraries, the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History. According to the library’s collecting policy, it collects works “that directly support the collections-based research of the National Museum of Natural History, primarily botanical and zoological taxonomy and systematics, as well as various earth sciences and anthropology/archaeology.” The library also holds volumes on “voyages of exploration and scientific expeditions and the history of natural science museums.”

Established in 1978, this group of Special Collections includes 16,000 rare books, nearly all published prior to 1840 (the Smithsonian’s cutoff date for “rare”). Although the library was created in the late 1970s, its volumes had been collected at the Smithsonian for more than 150 years, mostly in the museum offices and libraries, according to the library’s web site. Carolyn Sheffield (see the previous tour) accompanied me on the tour of the Cullman Library, and enjoyed seeing a part of the Smithsonian she had wanted to visit for a while. Our host was Leslie Overstreet, Curator of Natural History Rare Books.

About the Curator

From Smithsonian Tours

Leslie Overstreet, pictured above inside the vault at the Cullman Library, is a 30-year veteran of the Smithsonian. She has degrees in English Literature and Secondary Education from Reed College, and in Library Science from the University of Maryland. She also has attended the prestigious Rare Book School at Columbia University and later the University of Virginia since 1989.

If you ever felt like you were on a long-term research project, think again. For the past 15 years, Leslie has been investigating the printing and distribution of Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, (London, 1731-1743) in order to identify an unusual copy of the work that the library holds. She says, “This includes a copy-census. I am contributing a chapter to a colleague’s book on Catesby’s watercolors and hope to publish my own research (finally!) in the coming year.” To see color images digitized from Catesby’s volume, visit the Smithsonian’s Galaxy of Images at http://www.sil.si.edu/ImageGalaxy/imageGalaxy_MoreImages.cfm?book_id=SIL-007-051.

Leslie’s favorite collections include the James Smithson Library and the 18th century botanical and zoological monographs “for their extraordinarily beautiful hand-colored engravings,” she says. I can understand why she would favor the personal books of the Institute’s founder. It’s a fantastic collection covering a wide range of subjects including chemistry, mineraology, family cookbooks, and much more.

From Smithsonian Tours

In the photos above, Leslie shows us unbound and uncut pages (in signatures) from a botanical book in the Cullman Library’s collections. In Smithson’s day, books were commonly sold un-bound or only partially sewn into a text-block, so that the buyers could select their own covers. Wealthy people would have their books bound into leather and gilt to match other volumes on their library shelves. But Smithson didn’t often bother. He kept most of his books just as he bought them – in paper wrappers (often lined with printers’ waste paper). An example is shown below.

From Smithsonian Tours

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More About the Collections
Because the Cullman Library has limited funds for new purchases, it does not purchase titles that duplicate the holdings in local libraries such as those of the Library of Congress, university libraries, the Folger, etc., unless the works are central to the research mission of the museum. That said, the librarians are happy to accept donations of personal collections. For example, many of the collections have been donated by Smithsonian scientists and staff, dating back to the early days of the Institution.

The library only has two staff, Leslie and a library technician, Daria Wingreen-Mason. They are very busy people, handling research visits, reference queries, scanning requests, and group tours, as well as curating exhibitions, searching for old books to fill gaps in the collection, and managing cataloging and conservation projects. Leslie also has had Library Scholars in Residence, who usually stay for a few months, researching various topics.

During our tour, Leslie showed us some real treasures of the Cullman Library’s collections. Among those items, I have selected just a few to share with you in hopes that the next time you are in Washington, D.C., you will visit Leslie and see the Cullman Library’s excellent collections.

The first example is this Pliny the Elder Naturalis Historia (Natural History) of 1491.

From Smithsonian Tours

The original annotations you can see on the pages were done in two different inks, in different handwriting. It is unknown who the annotators were. Leslie says that Pliny’s was the first truly scientific text from the classical era (ancient Rome) to be put into print.

This next work is an extraordinary hand-colored folio by Maria Sibylla Merian, a German artist who lived from 1647-1717. Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium shows the metamorphosis of insects and butterflies and the plants and plant parts on which they lived during their lives. See the photo below for an example.

From Smithsonian Tours

Early in her career, Merian had been barred from publishing her entomological and botanical drawings because she was a woman, but she worked around the system by presenting them as patterns for embroidery. Later, after her voyage to the Dutch colony of Surinam, she published the Metamorphosis herself in 1705. It was the first folio-sized, fully illustrated, and hand-colored work based directly on first-hand field observation and specimen collection, and it kicked off two centuries of beautifully illustrated works in the natural sciences. To see more of the gorgeous images from the book, visit the Smithsonian’s Galaxy of Images at http://www.sil.si.edu/ImageGalaxy/ and enter the term “merian” in the Search field.

The final example of a rare book in the Cullman Library’s collection is quite a recent work. Published in 2008, the Botanica Magnifica is a breathtaking set of 5 volumes of digital photographs by Jonathan Singer, with text by botanical curators W. John Kress and Marc N. Hachadourian.

From Smithsonian Tours

My photo of the custom wooden case and "Florilegium" volume (above) do not do the work justice. Each volume is a double-elephant folio and is “bound in dark brown goatskin with gold- and platinum-embossed leather onlays in botanical designs; gilt-tooled spines and cover titles,” according to the Smithsonian’s Library catalog page. Singer has said that no other copies of the work shall be made in as large a size. The five volumes are titled “Orchidaceae,” “Florilegium,” “Proteus,” “Zingiberaceae,” and “Botanicus.” To see examples of Singer’s photos from the Botanica Magnifica, visit his web site: http://www.jonathan-singer-photography.com/botanica-magnifica/.

Contact Information
Leslie K. Overstreet
Curator of Natural-History Rare Books
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
NHB CE-G15 / MRC 154
P.O. Box 37012
Washington DC 20013-7012
(202) 633-1184
overstreetL@si.edu

On Hiatus Until January

2011-12-08T08:21:00.000-05:00

My dear readers, I'll be taking a short break from Here and There until January. When I return, I'll feature the remaining two posts from my tours of select Smithsonian archival collections. In addition, I will spotlight the archives at Acadia National Park and the most recent MARAC meeting.

Finally, I should have some news to share regarding the Chester Public Library's Local History program. I've had to keep mum because there are many details that are still being hammered out. In any case, it should be very exciting.

Until then, I hope you have very happy and healthy holidays!

Visit with Carolyn Sheffield, Project Manager of the Smithsonian’s Field Book Project

2011-11-22T15:37:00.002-05:00

11/23/2011 Update: Carolyn has linked to this story from the Field Book Project blog at http://nmnh.typepad.com/fieldbooks/2011/11/an-archivists-tour-part-two-the-field-book-project.html.

Introduction
As I mentioned in the previous post, I met Carolyn Sheffield at a MARAC conference and wanted to know all about her job as Project Manager of the Smithsonian Institution’s Field Book Project. She invited me to visit her in D.C., and was very generous with her time, sharing many interesting stories about the field books and her work at the National Museum of Natural History. Below I have included some of the footage I shot of Carolyn explaining the importance of the project, especially when it comes to natural history and botanical research. Accompanying the videos are some close-up photos of the materials she featured in the clips. It was enormously fun to shoot those pieces with Carolyn, and as you’ll see she’s a natural in front of the camera.

About the Field Book Project
Although the project itself only began in June 2010, nearly 2,500 of the estimated 6,000 field books at the Smithsonian have already been cataloged. The bulk of these materials range from the mid-1800s to the late 1900s. It started as a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the National Museum of Natural History (another arm of the Smithsonian) with the goal of improving access to biodiversity field books. Researchers use these primary source materials to see how biologists documented their discoveries of plants, animals, and cultures in the field.

According to Carolyn, “These materials share a lot of characteristics with archival collections in that they are very much a record of that field work. They also remain an integral part of the specimen collections in the museum because of all the rich supplemental information they provide.” Because the notes (as you’ll see below) are frequently handwritten and later bound when the scientists return from their work, they resemble library items. “What we find is that field books have been managed in each of these contexts—archives, museums, and libraries—and there is a real need for establishing best practices,” she continues.

So, in the future, if a researcher wants to view all of the work done by a certain biologist while he/she worked for different government agencies, the Field Book Project will prevent the researcher from having to visit the Department of Botany, the Archives, and/or a repository outside the Smithsonian to access all that information. In fact, one of the long term goals for the Field Book Registry once it becomes available online, is to link to digitized samples within the Herbarium and other repositories. It’s pretty exciting when you think about how much more connected a huge chunk of biological research will become when the project is completed. In the meantime, though, you can keep track of the great work on the project blog at http://www.mnh.si.edu/rc/fieldbooks/.

This next bit is for the archivists who read this blog. In it, Carolyn does a very good job of explaining the technical aspects of her approach to description and why the methods are important to the end user.

Our approach is to bridge the collection-level description of archives with the item-level description of libraries and to enrich that with authority records for persons, organizations, and exhibitions. We use Natural Collections Description (NCD), which is a natural history metadata schema, for the collection-level access. NCD is a rich schema that lies between Dublin Core and Encoded Archival Description in its breadth. We then use the Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) for the item-level description. MODS is a Library of Congress standard that includes a subset of MARC tags made available as language-based xml elements. We tie the two together with Encoded Archival Context (EAC) records for describing the persons, organizations, and expeditions involved in the creation of the collections and items. This will be especially important as one of the longer term goals for the project is to extend the Field Book Registry to accept content contributed by repositories beyond the Smithsonian and having those persons, organizations, and expeditions entered and described consistently will help end users find all the relevant materials, regardless of how many institutions physically hold field books from a given collector or expedition.

Here’s a short video of Carolyn explaining the basics of the project, how it is funded, and what its goals are (including preservation efforts).

The materials covered in the project include the disciplines of botany, entomology, vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, and paleobiology. In order to cover such a wide array of fields, the Smithsonian partners with a distinguished group of institutions to share collections and work including the Biodiversity Heritage Library, Botany Libraries and Archives at Harvard University, California Academy of Sciences, Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, LuEsther T. Mertz Library at New York Botanical Garden, and Missouri Botanical Garden. Carolyn says, “We also are involved in the Connecting Content project led by the California Academy of Sciences. Connecting Content examines the relationships between field book content, the specimens, and published taxonomic literature.”

Sample Field Books
To begin our sampling of the field books, Carolyn (in the short video below) shows us some of the library-bound journals of Mary Agnes Chase (although in the book shown below, she wrote as “Agnes Chase”), 1869-1963. According to the Smithsonian,

The foremost grass specialist of her time ended her formal education after grammar school. She began collecting and illustrating plants in her twenties, and was hired by Chicago's Field Museum in 1901 and later as a botanical illustrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Scientific illustration was a way for women to enter science at the turn of the century. Chase studied on her own at the U.S. National Herbarium, and in 1906 published her first scientific paper and secured her first professional position, with Albert S. Hitchcock at the USDA. ... After The North American Species of Panicum, by Chase and Hitchcock was published in 1910, Chase published Tropical North American Species of Panicum in 1915, and Grasses of the West Indies in 1917. Chase was actively involved in the women's suffrage movement and aligned herself with the radical Woman's Party. She was jailed several times for participating in suffrage demonstrations, and continued her radical activity despite threats of dismissal from the USDA. Throughout her career, she demonstrated a special concern for the careers of young women botanists, and maintained a correspondence and specimen exchange network, providing training for young women entering the field as well. ... The First Book of Grasses, the Structure of Grasses Explained for Beginners was published in 1922. ... Chase retired from the USDA in 1939, at the age of seventy, but continued to work five or six days a week on her collections in the Smithsonian's tower.

Here is a close-up of the field book in Carolyn’s hands:

From Smithsonian Tours

Next, Carolyn shows us a field notebook from Edgar Mearns (1856-1916), an army surgeon and field naturalist. Among his many accomplishments, from 1892 to 1894, he explored the El Paso, Texas to San Clemente Island boundary, and collected 30,000 specimens of flora and fauna which were deposited in the United States National Museum (USNM). This notebook has particular significance because it originated during the Smithsonian’s African Expedition led by Theodore Roosevelt from 1909-1910.

Below is a close-up of one of Mearns’ pasted-in notes.

From Smithsonian Tours

As was the case with Mary Agnes Chase, David Griffiths (1867-1935) and Emil F. Lange were researchers who worked for the U.S.D.A. The Smithsonian says, “Griffiths was an authority on cacti, especially the genus Opuntia. His collection of cacti was donated to the United States National Museum in 1935.” The field book Carolyn shows us from 1900 isn’t just important because it describes forage and irrigation soil samples. She explains why in the short video below.

Here is a close up of the photos from the field book shown in the video.

From Smithsonian Tours

And, because you know I love maps, I’m also including a close-up below of a map that Griffiths and Lange annotated that was folded up and enclosed in the back pocket of the field notebook.

From Smithsonian Tours

If you are interested in seeing more close-ups of the map, visit my Picasa site (https://picasaweb.google.com/debra.schiff/SmithsonianTours#5669352078790276674).

In the last short video below, Carolyn shares with us an excerpt of field notes by Joseph Francis Rock (1884-1962), a noted botanist who specialized in the flora of Hawaii and China. After moving from Austria to Honolulu, Hawai’i in 1907, he became the state’s first official botanist. He also explored several locations in Southeast Asia, and directed many expeditions during which he collected zoological, ornithological, and botanical specimens. The field notes in Carolyn’s hands are from his journal on Siam, Burma, and Assam in 1920-1921.

Here is a close-up of the excerpt she read:

From Smithsonian Tours

Here is a photo of the map Rock created of his travels:

From Smithsonian Tours

About the Project Manager
Carolyn holds a Master’s of Library Science with a specialization in Archives, Records, and Information Management from the iSchool at the University of Maryland. She became interested in the field because, as she says, she was fascinated with “the stuff.” It later grew into an obsession “with the intersections of information needs and ways of describing the stuff. Add to that the sliding scale of ever-growing online content delivery methods and evolving user expectations, and it’s a stimulating intellectual exercise that you could happily devote a lifetime to (at least I could),” she explains.

Her favorite parts of the work include the collaborative aspects, the access challenges, and the rewards of bringing still-relevant resources to very grateful scientific researchers. For students or recent graduates, her very sound advice should be considered, “Figure out what aspect of the field you are most interested in and work towards getting as much experience in that area as early as possible, whether that means volunteering or interning. Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions! We’re a profession of people who love to help people find the answers that they need. Participating in professional organizations and signing up on list servs is a great way to connect with a lot of librarians and archivists who are happy to answer your questions as you get started in the field.”

Contact Information
Carolyn Sheffield
Project Manager, Field Book Project
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Natural History
Department of Botany
MRC 166 PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
(202) 633-0902
sheffieldc@si.edu

Tour of the Smithsonian Institution Archives

2011-11-08T17:16:00.005-05:00

Update #2: The good folks at the Smithsonian Institution Archives' blog, The Bigger Picture, has linked to this story (http://siarchives.si.edu/blog/link-love-11182011)

Update: Since posting this tour, the Smithsonian's Field Notebook Project blog has linked to this story (http://goo.gl/7mvJG).

Introduction
One of the great things about going to conferences in the field is meeting the remarkable people who work at cultural heritage institutions. One example is Carolyn Sheffield (whom you’ll meet later, in the next blog post), Project Manager of the Field Book Project at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Carolyn and I met at a MARAC (Mid-Atlantic Archives Conference) meeting, and we exchanged cards. When I saw her title, I was instantly intrigued. She invited me to come see her work in person when I told her how I’ve been visiting cultural heritage institutions and writing about their collections here on this blog. She also said that there were parts of the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution Archives that she wanted to see, and that my visit was the perfect excuse to take some tours herself.

Carolyn kindly set up a day’s worth of excellent tours for my visit in late September. We began at the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA), so my series on the visit will begin there. Expect to see other posts on my visit with Carolyn, including short videos examining the field books, an illuminating visit to the Joseph F. Cullman Library of Natural History’s Special Collections; and the fascinating Herbarium.

Note: All the photos that include SIA materials are used courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

About the SIA

Although a chief clerk and the first official archivist were on staff beginning in 1852, the official establishment of the SIA happened a little over a century later in 1964. Since then, the SIA has amassed 36,000 cubic feet of material, but due to space constraints, three-quarters of those records are held at Iron Mountain. Because the James Smithson collections initially resided at the Library of Congress (because the country didn’t quite know how to handle the Englishman’s estate at the time), the SIA still retrieves an item or two from the LoC on occasion. Twenty-six lucky souls work with the archives of the Smithsonian doing everything from appraisal and acquisition to web and social media. To help the staff are 4-5 volunteers per week and up to 15 interns a year.

The SIA’s patrons are primarily private researchers, Smithsonian administrators, university professors, and doctoral students, but the Archives also serve many historians, image researchers, librarians, and research scientists, among others. The daily researcher visits are split between staff and non-Smithsonian staff (more than 850 visits in the period between September 1, 2010 and September 1, 2011), and the majority of inquiries arrive via email (more than 4200 in the same time period).

Collection maintenance at the SIA is funded through federal appropriations, private trust funds, and grants. A portion of those monies go to paying for an in-house paper conservator (who works in the space below), as well as external contractors who work on the film, video, and photographic conservation.

About the SIA Supervisory Archivist

Our terrific host for the SIA tour was its Supervisory Archivist, Tammy L. Peters. A 16-year veteran of SIA, Tammy began her career as an intern and was later hired by the Institution. She arrived with a bachelor’s degree in history from Bethel College and a master’s in American studies from Purdue University. Her suggestion for new grads or young professionals in the field? “Seek out as much experience as possible,” she says. (I just gave the same advice to an archives student at a recent map symposium in Philadelphia. Internships, volunteering, and independent studies are the keys to eventual placement in the field.)

Tammy’s favorite part of her job is “working with all the Smithsonian offices, museums, and research centers, and being allowed to go behind the scenes to meet people and see the work that they do every day,” she says. Currently, she is working to convert HTML finding aids into XML EAD (encoded archival description) format. So far, SIA has over 4,000 finding aids to 5,500 collections, a mammoth effort, to say the least. When it comes to her goals, the biggest is making the collections available to researchers. “That includes proper description, digitization, and reference service. Taking in new records and being stewards of our entire collection also is necessary to prepare us to achieve that goal,” Tammy says. If you would like to explore the SIA collections (and I recommend that you do), visit http://siarchives.si.edu/collections. The Smithsonian has many blogs, but the SIA blog, The Bigger Picture (http://siarchives.si.edu/blog) is definitely worth the visit to see some of their incredible digitized photographs.

About the Collections
The charge of the SIA is to document the history of the Smithsonian. The collections originate from a variety of sources: the Institution itself and personal collections that closely relate to the history or collections of the SI. One of the online elements I most like about SIA is the Frequently Used Collections area of the SIA web site (http://siarchives.si.edu/services/frequently-used-collections-smithsonian-institution-archives). When visitors explore that part of the site, they can see which records were popular and why. Specifically, the content on those pages speak to the types of historical records SIA holds as well as their meaning to the wider world. These pages provide a good example of what all of us who describe collections ought to strive for in terms of making our materials more accessible to the public.

At the start of the tour, Tammy showed Carolyn and me this gorgeous slide case in the entryway of the SIA.

In 2008, the SIA received that slide case above, along with the rest of the Smithsonian Photographic Services (SPS) cold vault photo morgue (about 3 million images of the SI’s research photographs from around the world). Next, Tammy took us to the area where the incoming records were held.

The SIA receives records in all kinds of states of preparation and preservation. Here, and during the acquisitions process, the staff makes decisions about how to handle certain records. For instance, anything coming from the Zoo goes immediately into the freezer for two days to prevent pest invasion. Additionally, if records show evidence of water damage, they go directly into the freezer to prevent mold issues.

The records above will be rehoused and processed, mostly by volunteers, in the processing room shown below.

I had to laugh when I saw the poster of “Clip Art or Artifacts of Paper Torture” (below).

Whenever I visit collections, the archivists, curators, and other cultural heritage professionals like to show me their treasures as well as the “hidden gems” that I request. Tammy was no exception. Having access to the records of the Smithsonian, she has some of the most interesting historical documents in the United States at her disposal. A prime example is the handwritten will of James Smithson, which states in no uncertain terms that should he pass, his collections will go to his nephew, and if the nephew were childless (which he was), the collections ought to go to the United States to establish a center of learning (see below).

The reflection in the photo shows that the will has been preserved in mylar to prevent injury while showing it to visitors.

One of the many attractive qualities of the SIA’s collections is that they are so diverse. An example is the correspondence below from Orville and Wilbur Wright to Samuel Pierpont Langley, who was the Smithsonian’s third Secretary, from 1887 to 1906. Langley had been very interested in aerodynamics and had designed a few failed flying machines. He wanted to see their experiments in North Carolina, but the Wrights told Langley that the weather was bad and his request to visit did not come at a good time. The brothers did not want to admit that they had already made their first flight, however they later gave the Smithsonian their flyer.

The archives world is full of fantastic finds. Tammy told us one SIA amazing story that yielded 900,000 visitors to its images on Flickr. She said that in 2005, the SIA had a visiting researcher who was examining radio records from the Science Service. It’s a frequently used collection comprising about 459 boxes. A volunteer had been processing the collection, and later, the researcher took over where the volunteer had left off. In the very last box was a set of little brown acidic envelopes containing nitrate negatives of photographs of William Jennings Bryant and Brian Darrow during the Scopes Monkey trial (known in legal circles as State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes).

The print above shows Bryant making his case on one of the days when it was too hot to hold the trial inside the courthouse, and it was held outside instead. If you want to see the entire set of photos printed from the negatives, as well as others later added to the collection, visit the Smithsonian Collections Search page at http://collections.si.edu/search/.

“Documenting Smithsonian history and how that intersects with American history, scientific discovery, and the history of museums,” is how Tammy describes the contribution SIA makes to preserving our collective historical memory. I’ve only shared the tiniest bit of that monumental contribution here. I hope that it has encouraged you to explore their online collections as well as pay a visit the next time you are in Washington, D.C.

Contact Information
Smithsonian Institution Archives
MRC 507
P.O. Box 37012
Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
(202) 633-5870
http://siarchives.si.edu/services/reference-inquiries or osiaref@si.edu

Next in this tour series will be the Field Books Project at the Smithsonian. Stay tuned!

Building a Local History Department from Scratch – Month 1

2011-10-22T20:40:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of September, you might remember that I announced my new position as Local History Librarian at the Chester Public Library (CPL) (in addition to being added to a grant for the work I do as an archivist at Plainfield Public Library). Now that it’s been a bit over a month, I thought it was time for an update on my progress at CPL.

Introduction
First, when I say "from scratch" I mean it. I didn’t have a desk until October 11. But, that’s an issue easily handled – put a few tables together, and you have a makeshift desk. Ergo, it’s not, but it does the trick for a limited time. One of things about working in a library, archive, or museum, is that you have to be flexible and adjust quickly to change.

Another important trait is being persistent, in a kind and friendly way, while educating folks about information that might be new to them – especially concepts or situations that might be pretty complex or detailed. Some of the folks need repetition, visual aids, and lots of supporting facts and literature (sometimes I fall into that category too, I must admit). I enjoy teaching and training experiences, so that part of the job is fun for me. It also gives me a chance to review my education and pursue new research in order to more clearly educate others and keep up-to-date with best practices in the field.

This new position at CPL was created for a number of reasons, but two in particular are key: 1. Work with the Chester Historical Society (CHS) to process, arrange, describe, and make accessible their collections, and 2. Provide local history and genealogy reference services for the library and the larger community. It sounds pretty clear cut, doesn’t it? Well, it will be once we get a few big details out of the way. But first, you’ll need a bit of history to understand why.

Background
For years, the CHS has been keeping a portion of its collections at the CPL. They also have holdings in a large room within the equivalent of a warehouse in the area. At CPL, they keep resources such as binders with historical site surveys of both the borough and the township of Chester (the land the library occupies sits in both locales); books on Chester, Mendham, Morristown, Morris County, and New Jersey history, as well as the Revolutionary War; Roxbury High School yearbooks; volumes of New Jersey legislature; nearly 200 years of the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society; many decades of the New Jersey Genealogical Society’s publications; cemetery lists; rare, scarce, and not-at-all rare, but old books; and records of the CHS. All these now sit on shelves (with the exception of a few of the Proceedings, which needed conservation, so I foldered and boxed them) in my office (the former Young Adult Room).

Additionally, there is a pretty big storage closet in the new Young Adult room, which holds some other historical items and printed materials that the Society sells from time to time (which we will also begin to sell when we have a system set up to do so). So, what’s the problem with all this? Well, three big issues come to mind. First, there has never been a formal agreement in place between the library and CHS, e.g., a deed of gift or a loan agreement. These legal documents act to protect the collections as well as the institutions involved (more about these later).

Second, there is the issue of security. The CHS has access to my office and the storage closet. Because there are library-owned items in both those locations, this situation presents a security dilemma. Further, because there is no formal agreement in place naming each item of their collections within the library, there’s no control of their materials on site.

I have a good example of what this means. Recently, on a day when I was not working, one of the CHS officers borrowed one of the reference binders from my office. In its place was a note saying which binder and who had borrowed it. Because the collection isn’t formally “open” to the public, and because it is still the property of the CHS, it isn’t a tragedy. However, let’s say that we did have a loan agreement or deed of gift in place. That loan agreement would likely say that in order to ensure that we could offer access to the materials to patrons on a consistent basis, we would need to secure the area where the collections were kept.

Third, there are some big drawbacks to keeping the CHS’ “rare” books and other materials in my office (especially photos and audio tapes – oral histories in file drawers). My office is not designed to be an archival repository. It is not climate controlled (for archival items, we like to aim for a constant 68 degrees F or lower – the lower the better, as far as photos are concerned, and 45% or lower relative humidity). Ideally, archival items would be stored in an area separate from the workspace. That doesn’t often happen in small libraries, unfortunately, due to limited resources. For example, in Plainfield, the archivists and librarians in the Local History Department work in the archival space adjacent to the compact shelving.

Over the past month, I have been educating my very supportive, and frankly pretty awesome, Library Director, as well as the kind folks at the CHS, about why climate control is important to archival materials. Paper, the primary material in the CHS collections, is hygroscopic (it absorbs moisture in the air and swells). When the humidity drops and rises, and when the temperature drops and rises, it causes all kinds of changes in paper that leads to its demise. In short, the more changes in the climate, the faster the deterioration of historical materials. Those changes can be especially painful when it comes to film-based materials (some of which are in those binders). The Northeast Document Conservation Center has excellent resources online explaining in great detail why it's important to maintain lower temperatures and humidity. In some of my communications with the CHS, I have referred them to the Preservation Leaflets.

The last bit of background information is pretty important when it comes to work milestones and realistic expectations. I work for Chester only 20 hours of the week. So, when I track my hours against all the activity (which I do within an Excel workbook), I can see that I have made efficient and effective use of my time so far. I also need to remember that at the beginning of any project or job, there’s a big learning curve and a large amount of activity. In my case, it’s also been deliverables in a variety of formats, but I’ll get to that below.

The Working and Waiting
During the first month, the majority of my work comprised the following:
1. Creating forms and databases that I would need to serve the public,
2. Inventorying the CHS materials on site (including condition reports and conservation recommendations, as well as comparing my inventory against the Morris County library system’s catalog),
3. Researching and/or purchasing supplies for the library and CHS,
4. Corresponding with members of the CHS on a variety of topics, and
5. Researching and composing deeds of gift and loan agreements.

The waiting is due in part to the time it is taking to create the gift/loan agreements. Until these are in place, I cannot begin the actual processing work of the CHS collections. That brings me to an area where I have spent a significant amount of time over the last month -- communicating why I recommend a deed of gift over an extended loan regarding the CHS collections.

There are a number of reasons why a gift is preferable to a loan, but one that is worth considering concerns the members of the community rather than the immediate parties involved. Let’s say the CHS would rather have its holdings on loan (renewable annually) with the library, and we enter into an agreement. As we would do if there was a gift, we would announce the availability of the collection to the public and let folks know that is a loan.

Let’s also say there is a savvy patron who happens to be a tax payer in the area. That person could argue that his/her taxes are going toward housing and caring for materials that the library doesn’t even own, and what if the CHS decided to just remove them? By all rights, they could, since the items would be on loan. The library and its patrons would then lose all their access to those collections, and the tax payer would feel ripped off.

If the CHS decided to make a gift of the collections, they might fear that if the library no longer wanted them at some point in the future, it could just get rid of the items. However, in a draft gift agreement I created (and in no way a final document, since it has not yet been reviewed by legal counsel), the Society would have first crack at anything we would deaccession from the collections.

The point I keep trying to drive home throughout our discussions is the intention. Everyone’s intentions are to make these historical materials accessible to the public, especially local researchers, students, and genealogists working at a distance. I also try to remind folks that while a handshake and good will are wonderful things, we all need to prepare for the time when we are not the ones in charge of these collections and cultural heritage institutions, and there might not be as much mutual admiration among future parties involved.

Postscript
I feel like I should write a book about this – or at least a paper. For now, I’ll be documenting my experience (for the most part) here on this blog because I believe that it’s important to share it. I’ve reached out quite a bit lately, especially to fellow archivists, to find others who also have built local history departments from scratch. There aren’t many of us out there. But, I met someone last night at the MARAC reception who has created a few archives in her time, and I plan to ask her how she did it. I know there will be missteps along the way, but I will try to prevent as many as I can and share the big learning experiences with you here. I hope you’ll do the same for me.

Importantly, I'll still be writing about my visits to cultural heritage institutions and my MARAC experiences. For example, I have upcoming blog posts on my recent visits to the Smithsonian Archives and the Archives of Acadia National Park. Keep tuned!

I Am a Map Magnet

2011-09-17T20:03:00.001-04:00

From Chester Public Library Sept. 2011

Not too long ago, I found a map at the Plainfield Public Library, hidden in an envelope of Courier News clippings. It seems that the universe has recognized my love of all things cartographic and sent another great gift of New Jersey history in my direction.During my first week working at Chester Public Library, Lesley (the library's Director) came into my office holding a long oblong box with an ebony handle poking out of one end, and said there was a map inside. The map had been hidden behind a filing cabinet, and its provenance was a mystery. I immediately rose and said we should go into the big meeting room two doors down and set up a few tables on which to unroll the map.

From Chester Public Library Sept. 2011

We each clad our hands in white cotton gloves and gently began unrolling the map. Lesley followed my speed, taking great care since we saw that the map was acidic and quite brittle (see the photo immediately above). Fortunately, the rest of the map was in very good shape for its age and its storage. It had been pretty tightly rolled, sleeved in a cardboard liner, then placed within a cardboard carton with one open end.

From Chester Public Library Sept. 2011

As soon as we had it unrolled, Lesley held the bottom ebony roller while I took as many photos as possible. The one directly above was taken from atop a step-stool. As you can see from the photo and the ones to follow, the center of the map is a topographic representation of the state, while surrounding images include small illustrations of cities from elevated views, street maps, and a fascinating time dial.

From Chester Public Library Sept. 2011

Above is a street map of Paterson, which has seen its fair share of news lately due to the recent hurricane Irene.

From Chester Public Library Sept. 2011

The city of Newark anchors the lower right corner of the map.

From Chester Public Library Sept. 2011

The border grapevine and flower design, as well as what I'd call "vignettes" of the Delaware Water Gap and Paterson are shown in the illustrations above.

From Chester Public Library Sept. 2011

The map also features a meteorological map designed by Lorin Blodget, author of American Climatology.

From Chester Public Library Sept. 2011

After I had finished photographing the map, I wanted to find out more about it, so Lesley and I began to roll it back up to place back into its original packaging for the time being. During the rolling, we discovered that it had been mounted as two pieces onto a woven fabric that was sewn together (see the photo abov).

As soon as I could, I posted my photos to Picasa and sent out a few emails to the New Jersey State Archives and some contacts at Rutgers Libraries' Special Collections. I heard pretty quickly from archivists at the State Archives who said that they do not have a copy of the map, but that the State Library does (and would we want to sell or donate ours to the archive -- can't blame them really, I'd probably ask the same).

The catalog page of the map states the information found in the title area (shown in the first photo at the very top of this post). If you magnify the image, you can see that it can be dated as 1860 because it states (in rather small print directly above the scale measurement) "Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1860 by Robt. P. Smith in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania."

It would be interesting to see which other state offices, organizations, and/or individuals might have a copy of the "Topographical Map of the State of New Jersey, Together with the Vicinities of New York and Philadelphia, and with Most of the State of Delaware from the State Geological Survey and the U.S. Coast Survey, and from Surveys Compiled by G. Morgan Hopkins, Civil Engineer. Adopted for the use of the Geological Survey, authorized by ACTS of the LEGISLATURE passed March 2nd 1854 and March 14th 1860, under the direction of William Kitchell, SUPERINTENDENT of the GEOLOGICAL SURVEY of NEW JERSEY." (The emphasis is not mine.)

If you have any information on the map that you think might be useful, or if you know about the history of this particular map, please let me know. Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give.

The Good News and the Struggles

2011-09-05T11:09:00.000-04:00

The Struggles
It’s hard to share good news these days without feeling a little guilty. However I have very good news, and I will share it. But since I’m one of those people who likes to hear the good news last (in a choice of good or bad news), I’ll share the struggles first.

A friend at the Plainfield Public Library who had been living in a Rahway basement apartment lost everything in the flood accompanying Hurricane Irene. She and her little boy are staying with family in a very small space, which means that co-workers and friends can’t supply her with replacement items yet. But we’re planning. For instance, John and I talked about what we could give up from our pile of combined-household items sitting in storage. It didn’t take long for a quick inventory to produce furnishings that someone starting from scratch should have.

Some immediate needs had to be met first. My flood-surviving friend only had the shoes she was wearing when she was rescued; all the others were destroyed. As always, I am grateful for unexpected generosity. When I reached out to my local and Facebook friends, used shoes in my friend’s size were readily supplied. For those who might be interested in making a donation, when a complete list of her needs is available, I’ll post it here and on Facebook. In the meantime, I’ll continue to let her know of donations that will be coming later.

In other Irene news, like tens of thousands of others, my parents’ basement furnishings and appliances were destroyed. Because they lost power, they did not have a working sump pump. Consequently, the water soaked into everything until they could bail out from it. It could have been much worse, but fortunately, they were able to save some books, papers, and old family photo albums.

I escaped pretty much unscathed. My power was out for four days, but I was able to pack up my frozen and perishable food, and bring it all to a pal who made room in his fridge and spare room for me until the power returned. Because my pal lives less than 2 miles from my house in the opposite direction from the worst flooding in the area, I was able to check on the house daily. Here’s how fortunate I am in all this: the worst of my circumstances was having to postpone my trip to D.C. to tour the Smithsonian’s archives and Field Book Project due to all the road closings and the lack of power.

We live close to the Raritan River, and the flooding made getting to the Plainfield Public Library difficult. Easton Avenue, a major artery in the area, became a red-brown river. Today, it’s not hard to see how far up the water rose. For those who might recognize the landmarks, the water line can be seen on the white cement wall by the Stop and Shop, as well as on leaves of the trees opposite Landing Lane.

Usually we expect that Easton Avenue will be closed by the entrance to Route 287 because the Raritan Canal and River provide the northern border between Somerset and Piscataway. South Bound Brook (which always floods) is the next town to our west. But we didn’t expect that nearly the entirety of Easton Avenue would be closed from that point up to the park past Landing Lane. Thankfully, the river receded quickly, and we haven’t yet had any rain (although NOAA reports that we’ll see rain for the next 4 days). By Tuesday, I was able to get to the Plainfield Public Library in about 30 minutes.

The Good News
Before Irene beat up the East Coast, I had been interviewing for a part-time position at the Chester Public Library. I had met with Lesley, the library’s director, and with members of the Chester Historical Society (CHS), all of whom were delightful. So, I was very pleased when Lesley offered me the newly created Local History Librarian spot.

I’ll be building the Local History Department from scratch and working with the CHS’s volunteers as well as library staff. It’s going to be an exciting partnership between the library and the CHS, since the society has been collecting materials for quite some time and storing them in local storage facility. I expect that it will be a bit slow going because I’ll only be there on a part-time basis, but the CHS members I have met have already assured me that volunteers will plentiful. I’m looking forward to this big adventure and will be sure to share it with you here.

But that’s not the end of my good news. After a year of volunteering at Plainfield Public Library, I’m now a grant-funded, part-time archivist there. I’ll still be an all-purpose archivist (not assigned to a specific project, as you might find with many grant-funded positions), processing and describing collections, but I’ll also help patrons with their wide ranging requests and handle some administrative archives tasks.

The way this all worked out is pretty fantastic. My work at Plainfield dovetails very well with what I’ll be starting at Chester. Plus, my long-time mentor at Plainfield, Sarah, continues to help guide me in ways that will be key to building a successful department. There are great resources closer to Chester in the Morris County Library system that I can turn to, as well as online resources. Among the helpful list servs of the Society of American Archivists is one for solitary practitioners cleverly named “Lone Arrangers.” It’s a great group of folks, and I’ll have to see if there are T-shirts or bumper stickers for a newly minted Lone Arranger like me.

Stay tuned for updates on the big adventures!

Tour of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University

2011-08-18T10:42:00.000-04:00

Introduction
Recently, I had the great pleasure of spending the day at Cornell University, where I interviewed Peter Hirtle, visited Curtis Lyons at the Catherwood Library), took a tour of the Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC), and visited the Preservation department. My host for the RMC tour was Elaine Engst, whose entire title is Director and University Archivist at the Kroch Library Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University. It was enormous fun seeing some of Cornell’s treasures, and I hope you’ll enjoy the photos and videos below, and be inspired to visit the collections yourself.

About the Archivist
Elaine Engst has been with Cornell for the entirety of her career, 32 years. She received her master’s in History from Cornell, returning to the Library in 1979.

She says that her favorite part of her work is “bringing the collections to students and scholars; the ‘puzzles’ of people’s research interests.” Of all the collections, she enjoys the Ezra Cornell Papers and the Willard Straight Papers the most. Cornell’s top her list because the University’s founder’s papers “cover the whole range of 19th century American history,” she explains. Straight’s papers “document China from 1901-1912” and include a “wonderful love story,” says Elaine.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

About the RMC
Elaine (shown above with Ezra Cornell’s safe) says, “RMC was created in 1992, with the merger of the Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, the Department of Rare Books, the History of Science Collections, and the Icelandic Collection.” The first librarian of the university, Daniel Willard Fiske was an avid collector of Icelandic literature, and now the collection which bears his name is one of the three largest of its kind in the world.

If you have never been to Cornell’s RMC, you might find it a little challenging to find it because it’s located in a library within a library. Which is to say that RMC lives in the Carl A. Kroch Library – built as an underground addition to the John M. Olin Library.

When visitors first enter the space, they are embraced by open, airy spaces and modern architecture, with natural light provided via skylights rimmed with reflective mirrors. On one side, the skylights are blocked to control light in the area for archival displays, while unblocked skylights on the other sheds more light for reading and research

From Cornell Visit July 2011

Within its very large, climate-controlled vault, the RMC holds approximately 430,000 volumes (measuring about 46,000 cubic feet); more than 80 million manuscripts; and another million photographs, paintings, prints, artifacts, audio visual and electronic media. In this short video, Elaine talks to me about the vault.

RMC is staffed by 22 full-time employees and 5-6 part-time working students. Eight archivists/librarians are on staff. Patrons run the gamut from serious scholars and students, to journalists, genealogists, and enthusiasts (like me). The archives are being used by long-term researchers currently exploring the history of home economics, as well as city planning. The RMC sees from 5-20 visitors per week, and the staffers give frequent tours, as I saw from the numerous signatures in the visitors’ book in front of the vault’s entryway.

The most heavily used collections are the Cornell Alumni Files. These are created by the Alumni office and are only open after the person has died. John Nolen’s papers also are used fairly frequently. Nolen was a pioneer city planner during the early 1900s. Cornell’s finding aid for the collection is here. The item with the greatest impact on visitors is the handwritten manuscript of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, dated February 29, 1864. According to the RMC Lincoln Presidency exhibit, the “Cornell University Library’s copy of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is one of five known copies in Lincoln’s hand, and the only copy owned by a private institution. The four other copies are owned by public institutions: two at the Library of Congress, one at the Illinois State Lincoln Presidential Library, and one in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House.” I had the opportunity to see a facsimile because as Elaine says, “taking out the real one would require a Cornell Police presence.”

From Cornell Visit July 2011

Like my tour at Stevens Institute, I had the opportunity to see some very old records – cuneiform tablets.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

In the photo above, you can see five different tablets. The large one in the middle was an example of an adoption record from ca. 2250 BCE. In the short video below, Elaine explains why these tablets are so important, especially in teaching about archives.

Sometimes RMC receives donations from faculty members that represent moments of our more recent history. Below is a series of photos I took of RMC’s 2000 General Election Palm Beach County voting machine that Professor Stephen H. Hilgartner, a faculty member in Science & Technology Studies, purchased on EBay for his teaching research into voting technologies and later gave to the archives for posterity.

From the outside, the machine looks like a steel briefcase.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

Inside is a fully-contained voting booth.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

Remember that phrase “hanging chad?” The semi-punched holes shown below are examples of hanging chads from a voting punch chard.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

A voter would open a series of pages, then use the device in the lower right corner to punch the holes for the desired candidates.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

If you use the magnifying function in Picasa to take a look at the example punch cards, you can see that the demonstrator card was punched for several presidential candidates.

One of the most appealing aspects of visiting Cornell’s RMC is the great variety of the types of materials kept in the archives. Elaine showed me some Asia Collections records that were printed onto palm leaves. She also displayed an early example of a book that used both single and double column moveable type printing. Below, the photos show a 1495 book of sermons bound with a chain binding, the medieval security system.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

I was especially impressed by the nifty box the Preservation Department made to accommodate the chain binding.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

Another type of record we hear of often in our field is lantern slides. You find them in pretty much every archive, and in the case of the Plainfield Public Library, they show up prominently in the photograph collections of local photographers. However, at Cornell, Elaine explains (in the video below) a completely different usage.

Elaine was very generous with her time and showed me many more treasures than what I’m sharing here (due to limited space). I hope that you will go visit her at Cornell and see some of these marvelous historical items for yourself.

Contact Information
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
2B Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
(607) 255-3530
rareref@cornell.edu
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu

Visit with Curtis Lyons, Director of the Catherwood Library, Cornell University

2011-08-10T13:48:00.000-04:00

Introduction
Curtis Lyons has a three-line title on his business card: Harriet Morel Oxman Director of the Catherwood, Hospitality, and Management Libraries at Cornell University. I’ve abbreviated it a bit for the title of this entry, but suffice to say, the man has a very big job. A genial fellow, he has a wonderful Tennessee lilt that can be heard as he speaks about the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives at the Catherwood. In late July, he generously gave me a tour of the archives and talked with me at length about the history of the collections and the importance of Kheel Center projects now underway.

About the Library and Archives
The Catherwood Library serves the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell University. The ILR school was opened in 1946 as an effort to help management and labor set aside their differences and work together to train union and management arbitrators. The Kheel Center was opened in 1949 as the Labor-Management Documentation Center, and was renamed in 1996 to honor New York City arbitrator Theodore W. Kheel.

The Center’s holdings include approximately 23,000 linear feet of paper, audio, video, film, electronic records, textiles, buttons, ribbons, and other objects. In the photo below, in the middle shelves, you can see garment workers unions' banners preserved in archival wrapping.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

Most of the banners have been digitally photographed and can be viewed in color here.

The archivists collect primary source materials about American labor unions, management theorists, and arbitrators and negotiators. Alumni in unions have helped to persuade their unions to preserve their records by giving them to the Kheel Center. The most popular collections are the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and Ted Kheel’s papers. Curtis points out that the Center holds “almost all of the U.S. garment workers’ unions records,” allowing the archivists “a unique opportunity to give access to the history of an industry that was a cornerstone of the economy for decades. It also allows researchers to track the migration of jobs first within and then outside the United States.”

The ILGWU is a very large collection (more than 2,500 linear feet) in process. In a move away from the More Product, Less Process methodology, Cheryl Beredo was hired as the ILGWU Project Archivist to process the collection on a very deep level. She also is describing it in detail to help researchers learn more about this very progressive union. For instance, the union provided housing and healthcare for its workers, which means that researchers studying inner-city housing could use these records to learn more about the topic. A short piece by Cheryl Beredo will be appearing in this month’s Archival Outlook, and I'm looking forward to reading about her work with the collection. Soon, the Kheel Center will launch a preliminary web site on the ILGWU records, including digitized photos from the files. But, until then, you can view many of her finding aids on the ILGWU here.

The collection with the greatest impact on patrons so far has been the Triangle Factory Fire. An online exhibit on the fire should not be missed. The site commemorates the centennial of the fire (March 25, 1911) that killed 146 mostly immigrant workers in a sweatshop in lower Manhattan. It is extensive, to say the least. Visitors can view historical narratives, letters, testimonials, photos, and much more. “We hear many, many stories from people who are overwhelmed by the material we have on our web site. High school kids who realize many of the victims were their age, descendants of victims, witnesses, [and others] see the connections between this tragedy and eerily similar tragedies happening right now in Asian sweatshops,” says Curtis.

The materials at the Kheel Center are processed, described, and maintained by 5 full-time archivists, 2 full-time staff, and 1 part-timer. Below is a photo of the well-sized processing room.

From Cornell Visit July 2011

The Kheel Center is patronized by Cornell students and faculty, academic and independent researchers, high school students and teachers, and documentarians. Although they see 5-10 visitors a week, the Center’s staff works to a large degree with off-site researchers. Next to the visitor’s reading room is a large enclosed area where some of the digitization takes place and where many of the paper-based records were previously stored. In the short video below, Curtis talks about the move to digital records and what it means for this space.

Although most of the collections are too “young” to be digitized and made available due to copyright concerns, the Kheel Center is posting some photographs on the Labor Photos site and on Flickr. The Center’s list of EAD finding aids may be viewed here.

About Curtis Lyons
Prior to becoming Director of the Catherwood Library, Curtis was Head of Special Collections and Archives at Virginia Commonwealth University for 9 years. Previously, he was at the University of Tennessee (UT) Special Collections and Archives for 10 years first working with their manuscripts and later the University Archives. Like many of the archivists I have met during my tours, he “fell into” the field of archival science. “I got a job at UT Special Collections as an undergraduate, used it to fund my graduate degree in history, and along the way decided that I liked archival work more than I would like to teach,” he explains. His favorite part of the work is “vicariously sharing the ‘Ah-ha!’ moments with researchers.” Curtis continues, “Playing a teeny-tiny part in the creation and discovery of the world’s knowledge,” is one of the many ways that his work at the Kheel Center is rewarding.

Contact Information
Kheel Center
227 Ives Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-3901
(607) 255-3183
Kheel_center@cornell.edu

Interview with Peter Hirtle, Senior Policy Advisor, Cornell University Library

2011-08-04T10:58:00.001-04:00

Recently, I had the great pleasure of meeting and interviewing Peter Hirtle, Senior Policy Advisor of Cornell University Library. For my readers who may not recognize his name, Peter served as President and Vice President of the Society of American Archivists (SAA); was an active member of the Section 108 Study Group, Library of Congress/Copyright Office; and co-wrote with Emily Hudson and Andrew T. Kenyon Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Those are just a few aspects of his notable service and professional work. Please visit his VIVO page to learn more about his background, experience, and publications.

Over the past few years, Peter has unwittingly become my copyright mentor, answering my emailed questions when I was an MLIS student at Rutgers and providing checklists to follow in Copyright and Cultural Institutions. When I cannot untangle a copyright issue, I turn to Peter Hirtle to help me make informed decisions. So, when the opportunity arose during a recent email exchange, I asked if he would be willing to be interviewed for this blog. Not surprisingly, I was thrilled when he replied that he would be honored to be interviewed for Here and There.

At the time, Peter was in Oxford, England, visiting his wife, who had been Cornell University Librarian prior to her current gig – Bodley’s Librarian. He offered to have the interview via Skype, but since he would be returning to Ithaca in a short time, I offered to visit him at Cornell instead and hoped I could tour the school’s legendary Special Collections while I was there. Peter very kindly set up a series of excellent tours (which will be covered later this month), and was generous of his time, giving me two hours for the interview and a lovely visit in the Olin Library cafe.

Because Peter has been actively involved in the archival community since the mid-1980s, especially in the areas of digital archives and copyright issues, I was looking forward to hearing his thoughts on a range of different topics. Below are a series of videos that represent the breadth and depth of our discussion. I've set the volume at it's lowest setting, which means you'll need to adjust it to your comfort level. The originals were shot in HD, and these all may be viewed in HD by adjusting the setting in the lower left corner of each viewer.

In this first clip, Peter discusses Encoded Archival Description (EAD), the semantic web, linked open data, and other solutions for presenting archival information online in a more meaningful and wide-reaching way. This clip is little over 3 minutes long.

Next, Peter speaks about partnerships (or, if you prefer, collaborative relationships) between cultural heritage institutions, the Hathi Trust Digital Library, and the work involved in identifying potential copyright owners for orphan works. This clip runs for approximately 5.5 minutes.

As a follow-up to the copyright discussion, Peter talks about risk mitigation as it applies to digitizing collections. He also gives tips on what cultural heritage institutions should know when dealing with copyrights. His examples make his points in a very practical way. This clip is a bit over 6 minutes long.

Since I’m still relatively new to this career, I was especially interested in hearing what Peter had to say regarding the “must-have” skills, experience, and attributes every newly minted archivist should have. A deep knowledge of the fundamentals of archival theory and practice may be key, but he wants folks to have a solid foundation in IT and technical skills. Watch the clip to see why (it clocks in at a little over 4 minutes long)

Following along the lines of archival practice, here we talk about the More Product, Less Process methodology. A good portion of our discussion isn’t included here (because we talked about it for a considerable time), but Peter does an excellent job of weighing the pros and cons of MPLP and summarizing the methodology. The clip runs for almost 5.5 minutes.

Finally, we have a short, but powerful clip of Peter explaining the importance of archives and why being an archivist is the best job in the world. I agree with his sentiments and add that being able to discover something different every day is one of my favorite parts of the work. This clip runs 2.5 minutes.

Peter Hirtle’s complete contact information can be found here.

Quick Update

2011-07-28T15:42:00.000-04:00

My July has been filled with adventures, excitement, and new experiences. For example, earlier this week, I had a marvelous time in the Finger Lakes district of New York. In addition to hiking the beautiful gorges and viewing the enticing waterfalls (days in the 90s and very high humidity), I had the great fortune of visiting with Peter Hirtle and some of his wonderful colleagues at Cornell University's Special Collections and Preservation. Next week, I should be able to share my videos and photos of the interview with Peter as well as the tours.

As far as the other adventures and exciting events go, I'll have to keep those under my hat for at least a month, but I'll be posting about them as soon as I can.

On Challenges and Inspirations (many more of the latter than the former)

2011-07-07T22:16:00.000-04:00

Lately, I've been answering my share of questions on the topics of challenges in processing collections, managing projects, and promoting collections. This morning, I turned the questions on their heads and thought "Wouldn't it be nice if I were asked about the benefits of this work." With that in mind, in no particular order, here are some musings on why I find working in museums and libraries so inspiring.

1. The materials -- A great example is the project I'm working on these days at the Plainfield Public Library. The thousands of architectural drawings kept in the local history archives represent a century of architectural styles in the town. The collection also shows trends in architectural drawing as a field -- from lettering and drawing styles to the types of materials used to produce the drawings. But as far as inspirations go, it's pretty high up there for me. When I drive through Plainfield on my way to the library (along 8th and other streets in historic neighborhoods), I see some of the homes depicted in plans from the turn of the last century. I also learn about the different classes in the town from the mansions with gorgeous libraries drawn into the blueprints to the 4-family apartment houses drawn by Charles Detwiller in the 1950s. While I'm still impressed with Adam Winger's cuneiform tablets, I'm also pretty fortunate to be exposed to so many different types of historical records at the Plainfield Public Library.

2. The archivists, librarians, curators, historians and other cultural history pros -- I like working with folks who get as revved up about copyright challenges, historical items, and ephemera from personal collections as I do. It's even more fun when we gather for conferences, or when I have the opportunity to tour a cultural heritage institution. My tour hosts are enthusiastic evangelists for our work, and I can't help but admire them and the work they do. Sometimes, I get to watch conservators think through how they will handle various challenges. I'm in awe of the pros who labor for a year or more on one item to delicately remove a harmful coating or repair beautiful plates in a damaged Audubon book. Recently, a classmate of mine from the Rutgers MLIS program landed a great job in a library at a California university. While I will miss her being close by, I'll get to hear new stories about her exciting work as a faculty liaison (among other fun work). And, I have yet another reason to go back to California!

3. The patrons -- I know a few people who would much rather be behind the door with the treasures than working with patrons, but I'm not one of those people. I like doing both. Just two days ago, a man and his adult son came into the local history room looking for information about a particular building in town. A librarian began to work with the son while the elder man watched me doing some preservation work at the large table in the room. I had two boxes of architectural drawings ranging from the 1860s to 1911 that were particularly interesting examples of mansions. The man began to edge closer to get a better look at the drawings. I looked up and smiled at him and he smiled back. I explained what I was doing and why, while I unrolled one of the precious blueprints for him. It was the front elevation of one of the town's beauties. This fellow lit up and started asking questions. I answered as many as I could before he had to go, feeling that I was probably as entertained as he was by the exchange.

4. The opportunities -- The biggest is the opportunity to learn. I am constantly learning something new, whether it's an historical fact, the proper way to preserve an item I haven't yet encountered, a better way to write or say something, a new software package, or any number of other things. Being able to put these new things into practice is a bonus because then they become what I can teach others. Another great opportunity offered by this field is being able to network easily. Whether it's through member societies, list servs, blogs, Facebook, conferences, or simply by writing a fan email to tell someone you appreciate they work they do (I'm inspired to write these all the time), making new contacts and friends in this field can be done pretty easily. Most of the folks in the cultural heritage fields want to be helpful and tend to be friendly people. How can you not like someone like that?

I'll probably think of a few more inspirations and put them aside for another post. In the meantime, please comment on your inspirations. I'm very interested in what you have to say.

Museum Visit: Museum of Early Trades & Crafts in Madison, NJ

2011-06-30T06:58:00.000-04:00

From June 2011

My apologies to the Museum of Early Trades & Crafts for clipping off the edge of their signage in my photo.

Last week, my mom and I had a lovely time visiting two Morris County museums, the one profiled in this post and the Morris Museum, where she's a member. (We also enjoyed a very tasty lunch at the newly re-opened Sirin Thai restaurant.) We hadn't originally planned to visit the trades and crafts museum, but we usually pass the building, so we decided to visit this time.

The Museum of Early Trades & Crafts started as a way for Edgar and Agnes Land, who lived in Madison and collected thousands of 18th and 19th century objects, to share their collections and educate people about the lives of the early artisans, craftspeople, and farmers in New Jersey. The building housing the museum is nothing short of gorgeous. It is often mistaken for a church, but carved into the stone over the entryway is the word "Library."

From June 2011

Opened on Memorial Day 1900, the Madison Free Public Library was a gift to the town from D. Willis James, a wealthy New York (originally from Liverpool, England) industrial capitalist. James had a summer estate in Madison, now known Giralda Farms (you may know it as the estate of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge). We need another James today. He was so invested in the financial well-being of the library that he set up a trust fund for it based in the income raised from a commercial building he owned across the street from the library.

In the photo above, you can see one of the many beautiful architectural elements of the building. The archway to the Trustee Room shows seven seals from some of America's earliest colleges. Included are Queen's College (later Rutgers College, and eventually Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey), University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, Harvard University, College of William and Mary, Princeton University, and Columbia University. Above the wood with the embedded seals you can see hand-painted designs that continue throughout the building.

Below is an example of a painted column.

From June 2011

In each room with stained-glass windows are beautiful glass-art medallions or plaques within the windows that display inspirational quotations. I can only imagine how stirring it must have been to have sat in the building when it was a library, surrounded by all of the grandeur. It made me a wee bit jealous of the folks who have the good fortune of working in it today.

Below are just a few of those windows that I photographed while walking around the exhibits.

From June 2011

As we explored the building, I was particularly impressed by the main exhibit "Mariners, Merchants, & Pirates." The clever curators use mock magnifying glasses to spotlight items found at the port of Perth Amboy. They also use rope to frame educational materials. It is one of the niftiest exhibits I've seen.

From June 2011

In the exhibit, there is a wealth of information about the tools sailors used to navigate, keep time, build ships, and generally do their work. There also are facts on pirates and privateers (separated only in category by a legal agreement). The exhibit will be featured at the museum until September 4, so add a visit to your summer calendar.

If you can't make it now, the museum has permanent exhibits and changing exhibits, as well as a research library worth exploring if you're interested trades and crafts topics. The permanent exhibits show how craftsmen and artisans created everyday objects like barrels, shoes, cabinets, and more. There also are exhibits on printing (complete with a large press) and other trades.

For more information and to plan your visit, contact the very nice folks at the Museum of Early Trades & Crafts.

My Time at MARAC, Spring 2011 – Part 2, Improving Grant Writing Skills Workshop

2011-06-24T09:28:00.000-04:00

As always, the Spring Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference held in Alexandria, Va. was more than worth the price of admission. My previous post hit the high notes of Rand Jimerson’s amazing plenary, and this entry will spotlight the incredibly useful Improving Grant Writing Skills pre-conference workshop.

MARAC’s organizers provided a great service for those of us who attended the workshop. They gave us access to leaders in the field, who actively engaged us in discussions and exercises designed to increase our grant-winning success. Our speakers were Lucy Barber, Deputy Executive Director of the National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC); Elizabeth Joffrion, Senior Program Ofﬁcer, Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH); and Christa Williford, Program Officer at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). In these days of economic challenges, when many cultural heritage institutions are depending on grants to support their work, I cannot overstate the importance of this workshop and the ability to meet and learn from these three key women.

Prior to the workshop, we were sent three sample grant proposals, one from each organization represented by the speakers. They were not full proposals, but enough material to gain an understanding of what would make a successful submission. At the end of each proposal was a list of criteria for review. I was pretty critical in my review of each proposal so that I would have questions for the workshop. It was interesting to see what was required by each organization, and how detailed (or, in some cases, brief) the proposals were.

The handouts we received at the workshop were particularly helpful. We were handed a sheet providing an overview of what each organization does and does not fund. Further, we received a booklet that goes into much greater detail regarding the organizations’ exact grant programs, awards granted in 2010, and grant evaluation materials, among other handy facts.

During the workshop, each speaker described her role in the organization and how she helps grant applicants. Projects that tend to succeed as well as excellent tips were shared during their introductions. The speakers also talked at length about the importance of applications that lay the groundwork for best practices in the field (especially in the areas of digitizing collections (NEH); more product, less process (NHPRC), and cost control (CLIR).

I was very impressed by how invested they were in the applicant’s success. Christa Williford (CLIR) explained that her organization requires a pre-proposal as well as a final proposal in order to give applicants a chance to make corrections during the process.

After a break, we split into three groups. Each focused on one of the organizations, and was facilitated a speaker. Because I was particularly interested in the “Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives” program at CLIR, I chose that group. We reviewed the sample proposal and looked at the scholarly value of the collection, viability of the project plan, and technical approaches. Then we determined whether we would recommend the project and why, as well as suggested improvements.

It was a useful exercise because we were able to speak with and ask questions of our speakers in a small group. Afterward, each group shared their lessons learned, and the speakers gave us even more great tips. These are my favorites:

1. Make the project compelling – entice the reviewers to visit the collection and help them visualize the outcome.
2. Be explicit in explanations – spell out the innovation(s) in the plan; how is it a model for other organizations?
3. Work out as much detail as possible in addressing all the points, but be succinct.
4. Remember that you are writing for other archivists and curators in the field.
5. Collaboration is a winning strategy (work with other organizations to achieve the goal together).
6. Cost-sharing proposals tend to receive funding.

Finally, our speakers encouraged us to contact them during our grant writing process. They welcomed questions and made themselves available after the workshop for one-on-one conversations. Overall, I left the workshop feeling much more comfortable with the task of writing a grant application, and feeling much more likely to succeed.

My Time at MARAC, Spring 2011 – Part 1, Rand Jimerson’s Plenary

2011-06-17T14:22:00.001-04:00

The recent Spring Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference held in Alexandria, Va. had many useful and interesting things to offer its attendees, but my favorites were the “Improving Grant Writing Skills” workshop and the plenary by Rand Jimerson. This post will hit the high notes of Jimerson’s talk, while the next one will spotlight the workshop.

Jimerson, Professor of History and Director of the Archives and Records Management MA Program at Western Washington University, is a very well-known figure in archives and special collections circles. In fact, it was pretty exciting to hear him speak after having read some of his papers for MLIS courses at Rutgers. Jimerson spoke at length about the role archives play in the area of social justice. Afterward, he signed copies of his latest book, Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice.

In these days when electronic records are disappearing so quickly without a thought to their future usefulness, Jimerson reminded us of Enron’s shredding and Oliver North’s record destruction. I sat in the audience remembering when I worked for a company that didn’t keep files older than three years. Even then, not knowing I’d later choose a career in archival science, I didn’t understand how we could simply throw these materials into the recycling. They had value.

I fear that our collective history (especially the present) will not be as richly populated with archival materials as our past because the evidence no longer exists. That’s the problem with these remarkable MARAC speakers – they get into my mind and rattle around for a while, calling me to action.

Jimerson spoke about archivists having the power to shape collective memory. He moved us with stories about how archival work in South Africa is a process of reclamation and restoration. “Archivists cannot remain neutral or passive,” he said. Archival activism requires that we, as workers in that field, be more responsive to social needs.

He focused on nine ways we can be responsive and ensure archives by and for the people:

Ensure diversity in the archival record.
Welcome the stranger into the archives, seeking especially to include previously marginalized groups. “Records become witnesses to a silent society,” Jimerson said.
Document our decisions regarding the acquisition and appraisal of materials, and make these criteria available to donors and the public.
Provide oral testimony by creating oral histories. These incredibly valuable records provide intimate accounts of a large part of the world whose history only exists in oral form. Importantly, make the audio/video available, not just the transcription. Collect generations of stories from descendants, if possible, to preserve the oral tradition.
Make archival description systems sensitive, meaning that we need to be more sensitive to social construction and think more about the way we present our finding aids.
Provide inclusive access and be sensitive to culture, especially when it comes to reference service.
Embrace new technologies. Promote openness and flexibility.
Support open government, accountability, and democratic societies.
Support public advocacy in support of the broader interest, and become whistle blowers, if need be (within a self-preserving construct).

Jimerson’s talk inspired me to take action where I can. He also helped me realize how fortunate I am to have “cut my teeth” at a place like Plainfield Public Library, that seeks to increase diversity in the collections, and is actively collecting oral histories from community members. I hope that in my future work, I can continue to follow Jimerson’s instructions above to be a better archival activist.

Book Review: This Book Is Overdue! By Marilyn Johnson

2011-06-08T07:28:00.001-04:00

This Book Is Overdue is more than a year old, but was new to me when Sarah, the archivist at Plainfield Public Library handed it to me and said, "You will love this." She was right.

I enjoyed Johnson's book because it is a candid look at librarians and archivists from the view of a writer who adores libraries and people who work for them. (I nearly typed "people who work in them," but she writes extensively of the librarians who work within Second Life and who provide web-based services, so that terminology wouldn't be entirely accurate.)

The book focuses on exactly what library folks do to serve their patrons. Johnson relates story after story of how librarians and archivists go to great lengths to locate information, books, manuscripts, and more for writers and ordinary people who might not exactly know what they need. She gives high praise to helpful reference librarians, and well she should. The reference interview is not only a great tool, it is one that can be customized by its gifted user to yield world-changing results, as Johnson demonstrates throughout her book.

Among other topics, the author covers the eternal battle of IT vs. everyone else, but increasingly, I see job ads for "digital librarian," "electronic records manager," or "information systems librarian." As budgets continue to tighten, and because library schools are now "i" schools (she did mention the Rutgers name change that happened during my first semester in the MLIS program), we all must have some grounding in digital applications.

One topic that Johnson did not discuss in depth is the movement in the archives and special collections communities to use EAD (encoded archival description) in collaborative ways to bring more collections into the view of potential users via their online finding aids. The Online Archive of California is a great example of that EAD collaboration. On the other hand, I am very glad she wrote about the virtues of WorldCat, one of my favorite tools for locating materials.

Of course, I am biased, but I thought perhaps the world of the archives and special collections might deserve its own book (and maybe I need to write that book, as Mom often prods me to do). But it was interesting to read about David Ferriero's work at NYPL prior to his current post as the 10th Archivist of the United States (AOTUS). And, it was touching to read about how an archivist processed her late husband's papers for inclusion in Rutgers' special collections (although I would have saved the ephemera because I love the kind of snapshot in time it gives a collection).

If you are a librarian or archivist, like me, you will recognize your friends, former classmates, colleagues, and library bloggers in this book. But we are not the only ones who should read this work -- I'd recommend pointing your local congressperson to its catalog page in the local library and not-so-subtly suggesting that he/she check it out and read it. This Book Is Overdue is a quick read because Johnson is a fine writer and tells an engaging story, but it's an important read because she goes a long way to provide valuable library advocacy in her book with the hero librarian on the cover.

Tour of The University of Arizona Museum of Art

2011-06-01T16:32:00.002-04:00

Introduction
Note: For a short history of the University of Arizona in Tucson, please refer to the previous post.

When I travel, I research local cultural heritage institutions to visit. It is my great fortune to tour some of them specifically for this blog. Still others remain lovely memories of a visit to a unique place. For example, I recently visited two spectacular museums in Phoenix -- the Musical Instrument Museum and Heard Museum, as well as the Desert Botanical Gardens. If you are interested in seeing some of my photos of those great institutions, visit my Picasa site.

In Tucson, I already knew that I would be visiting the University of Arizona because it is home to many cultural heritage institutions. But when I began to dig a bit deeper, I found that the school’s Museum of Art was about to begin construction on its Archive of Visual Arts. This I had to see!

I contacted the Museum’s Executive Director, Charles Guerin, who graciously invited me to visit and tour their collections and new facility (previously the home of a local blood bank). He gave me an excellent guided tour of the museum’s current exhibits and drove me to the site of the archive-to-be. When we visited the archive building, I could see its potential for long-term storage of valuable holdings and a sizable reading room.

The construction workers were taking a break from demolishing the interior walls and repairing portions of the building as Guerin and I walked the length of the building from the back to the front. I saw immediately the appeal of using a former blood bank for the archive – a big cold storage vault for photos and other preservation needs. The team has a big job ahead of it to modernize the building and its HVAC system to protect the art archive, but they are definitely on their way. I decided not to photograph the building during its construction, but promised to return after the archive was up and running to take another tour.

About the Museum's Executive Director
Charles Guerin’s background in printmaking and painting no doubt informs his work at the Museum. Prior to becoming Executive Director of the Museum, he was Acting Director of the Center of Creative Photography at the University of Arizona (located more or less across the street from the Museum). He also served as Director of the University of Wyoming Art Museum, and consulted on the design of the American Heritage Center at the U of W as he built the Art Museum.

During my visit, Guerin was very generous with his time and spoke with me at length about why the museum created the archive.

He also talked with me about how he obtained the Museum’s first record collection, the papers of Robert T. McCall, arguably one of America’s most important illustrators. He is best known for illustrating and documenting much of the American space program. One of McCall’s most famous works hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington , D.C., where a collection of his drawings also can be seen online.

McCall, an Arizona resident, passed away in March 2010, but before he died he had served on the board of the University’s Department of Astronomy. Guerin mentioned that he had been looking for a place to house many of his illustrations because although he had been selling the copyrights to use the works on postage stamps, etc., he did not sell those actual pieces. Guerin was very happy to accept the donation of McCall’s illustrations because illustration is an important field of study at the University’s area of Visual Communications. He also had the foresight to ask McCall for his archive of correspondence. Now, 20 cubic feet of McCall’s papers are waiting patiently for the new archive to take shape.

Guerin’s long-term vision is to target major artists, mainly in Western states, for inclusion in the Museum’s collections. He also wants to avoid circumstances where an artist passes away, and his/her children have all the artist’s boxes, which they might not want to keep and simply bring to the dump. Presently, Guerin has convinced several artists to leave their records and/or art to the Museum.

About the Collections
The best part of having a guided tour of a collection (especially by the institution’s Director) is having an expert on hand to answer all kinds of questions. But, when a cultural heritage institution uses archival records, such as letters, postcards, prints, and sketches, it helps put that artist into context and helps explain why these people are important. For example, in the series of photos below, you can see the exquisite photorealism of Audrey Flack’s work, Marilyn (Vanitas) II. The original transparency for the work was made in 1976, but Flack recently uncovered the study in her archives and made a Cibachrome print of it. The first image shows how the museum mounted the print on the railing above the painting hung in the main staircase. The second image shows the painting, and the third shows the print. All photos are displayed with permission of the Museum.

From University of Arizona

At the time of my visit, the Museum also exhibited a collection of works by Arthur Diehl, a late 19th/early 20th century “speed” painter who happened to be the grandfather of a Museum board member. The collection is on loan from a private family collection. Guerin pointed out how the Museum uses the family’s archive to further shape the exhibit. Below, the series of photos show the archival displays accompanying the Diehl exhibit.

From University of Arizona

I especially enjoyed seeing Diehl’s sketches for his paintings and the ephemera associated with the collection (shown below).

From University of Arizona

Conclusion
The University of Arizona Museum of Art has many claims to fame, including the remarkable Fernando Gallego and His Workshop: The Altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo exhibit. Arizona Public Media produced a great documentary on the conservation of the work. However, my favorite part of the Museum is its curators’ use of archival materials to better tell the story of the artist and his/her work. I look forward to returning when the Archive of Visual Arts has been completed and populated with artists’ archives.

Contact Information
Charles Guerin
Executive Director
The University of Arizona Museum of Art
1031 N. Olive Road
P.O. Box 210002
Tucson, AZ 85721-0002
(520) 621-7567
caguerin@u.arizona.edu
http://artmuseum.arizona.edu/archive/index.shtml

Tour of the University of Arizona’s Special Collections

2011-05-23T15:16:00.002-04:00

From University of Arizona

Introduction
During my April trip to Arizona, I looked forward to touring the University of Arizona’s Special Collections (in the Main Library whose exterior is shown above), especially the school’s book collections and the photographs. However, my time to visit shrank to 30 minutes due to an accident on the only major road between Phoenix and Tucson. An overturned tractor trailer had spilled a container-load of strawberries onto the freeway and caught fire about two miles ahead of me.

Once all the local radio stations had announced that the freeway was closed and I had been sitting in the desert sun for 25 minutes, I took out my cell phone and hoped for coverage. I saw a single, small bar on my phone and called my tour host, Chrystal Carpenter, who was very gracious and understanding. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived in Tucson (more than 2 hours late for our appointment), we didn’t have much time because her guest speaker for that night’s event was about to arrive at the airport and she needed to leave to collect him.

Despite the major snag, Chrystal gave me a great short tour and inspired me to return when we both have more time for a visit.

Background on the School
When I read the early history of the University of Arizona, I thought, "This is a story of the wild, wild West." It begins in 1885, when the Arizona Territorial Legislature convened in Prescott, the then-capitol, to discuss a variety of topics including where the territory’s insane asylum would reside and where the University of Arizona would be established. Those early settlers must have been very confident that Arizona would eventually become a state to start planning its university. Statehood didn’t occur until 1912.

The Tucson delegation intended to petition the Territorial Legislature to have the capitol moved from Prescott to Tucson. However, their wagons had gotten stuck in the mud from torrential rain, and they didn’t arrive until after the monies had already been divided. (Today, it takes between 4 and 5 hours to drive north from Tucson to Prescott – imagine how long it must have taken with a horse-drawn wagon on dirt roads and paths.) Because the Tucson delegation was so late, it missed out on the $100,000 that went with the asylum, and instead received $25,000 for the University of Arizona. Six years later, the school’s first student (a 14-year-old girl) signed her name in the registration book. Special Collections contributed materials to an excellent video about that girl’s experience with the school. Watch Clara Fish’s story here.

About the Archivist

From University of Arizona

Allow me to introduce my affable and accommodating tour host, Chrystal Carpenter, the Manuscript & Congressional Archivist at the University of Arizona’s Special Collections. Chrystal has been in her current position for three years. Previously she served as the photo archivist at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, and an archives and library assistant at the Arizona State Museum. She earned her Master in Information Resources and Library Science from the University and later obtained her certification from the Academy of Certified Archivists.

She fell in love with the profession as an anthropology/archaeology undergraduate student at the University. Chrystal explains, "I had the opportunity to work at Special Collections, and it is here that I developed a passion for archives. I found that an archival career would be similar to an archaeological career except I wouldn’t get as dirty!"

While she knew she wouldn’t get as dirty, Chrystal certainly didn’t expect that she would be called in to oversee the collection of mementos and personal tributes to the victims of the January 8th attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Arizona Public Media’s interview below shows Chrystal describing her process of working with the many volunteers who helped collect and package the materials, as well as decisions she made about how to handle this collection. She also does an excellent job of explaining the archival process and Special Collections without being technical or jargony.

I asked Chrystal about her upcoming and current projects. She told me about some of the fascinating work she’s doing and the big projects on schedule for the summer.

A priority for Special Collections is our Borderlands Cultural Community project. With this in mind I have been working toward acquiring collections that fit its scope, as well as prioritizing our processing activities. This summer, we will be processing the Humane Borders archive as well as a bilingual education collection. I also will be integrating the Arizona Architectural Archives (AAA) into our collection. The AAA materials contain about 600 linear feet of architectural and business records and include over 22 collections that were curated by the University’s Architecture department.

I found Chrystal to be particularly impressive in the area of training. In an innovative move, she trained a subset of catalogers from Technical Services to provide archival processing services as well as their regular work. This initiative allowed her to add 100 hours a month of processing to Special Collections and yielded 2.5 full-time processors. Her work, as well as that of her colleague Erika Castano, also helped add value to the metadata of the digital collections and taught the catalogers highly marketable skills.

Exhibits and Public Outreach

From University of Arizona

Whenever I visit an archive, university special collections, or any other cultural heritage institution, I am often intrigued by the displays and exhibits. The University of Arizona’s exhibit space (renovated in 2001) shown above and immediately below provides the archivists with a great deal of attractive, modern space where they show the role played by archival materials in history.

From University of Arizona

The Special Collections department changes its exhibits every six months. At the time of my visit, the exhibit space focused on the life and impact of Stewart Lee Udall ("I’m for Stew" was its apt title). According to the Special Collections web site, he was an Arizona congressman who also served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961-1969 (under both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson). Udall was "a champion of civil rights, an avid conservationist, a lawyer, a B24 gunner during WWII, and a University of Arizona alumnus," says Special Collections. The next exhibit will focus on Arizona history from 1600-1912 in commemoration of the 2012 Arizona Centennial.

Remember Chrystal’s guest speaker for the night of my tour? He was the second speaker in a three-part lecture series on "Stew." Robert G. Stanton, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and Director of the National Park Service from 1997-2001, spoke on Udall’s environmental work and how he became a leading voice in American environmentalism.

From University of Arizona

The photo above shows the public reading room used for lectures like Stanton’s. There also is another large space inside Special Collections that is frequently used for meetings and other University events.

About the Collections
The University of Arizona’s Special Collections was established in 1958 to house materials on Arizona, the Southwest, and the U.S./Mexico Borderlands. Today it includes audio; video; film; cassettes; electronic records; photographs; and paper-based collections including personal and corporate records, sheet music, maps, and blueprints in a wide variety of areas.

The processed manuscript collections come in at about 12,000 linear feet and growing. The unprocessed materials are about 3000 linear feet and shrinking. Below is a photo of Special Collections’ unprocessed stacks.

From University of Arizona

Because the University also has a library school, Special Collections makes use of paid graduate and undergraduate student assistants as well as interns to help the seven full-time and two part-time employees accomplish their work. Three of the seven full-timers are archivists.

Most of Special Collections’ patrons are associated with the University, whether undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and/or visiting researchers. However, Chrystal notes "We also have a number of researchers from around the country and internationally, as well as local users." They see approximately 50 visitors per week, and host a long-term researcher utilizing the political collections. "More often than not, our long-term researchers are working with our political collections, University-related materials, or early Tucson research," explains Chrystal.

Because the school is renowned for its astronomy, among other research areas, the Special Collections reflects that focus in its rare books holdings. Chrystal showed me a particularly interesting volume by Galileo, published in 1610. (She holds the volume in the photo above in "About the Archivist.") A researcher, who had located the book in World Cat discovered through his descriptive bibliography work that the book was one of three existing hand-edited works by the astronomer. Below are three photos of the book (the first is the title page, the second shows a hand-edited page, and the third is a close-up of the edit).

From University of Arizona

The University of Arizona’s Special Collections also contain a small percentage of three-dimensional objects such as wigs, trunks, costumes, and paintings. Below are two examples of objects that are part of the school’s very popular American Vaudeville Museum collection and related vaudeville collections. First is a pair of pants decorated with shell buttons, worn by a vaudeville actor.

From University of Arizona

Next is a box of wigs, also worn by vaudeville actors.

From University of Arizona

Chrystal also showed me some of Special Collections’ Western Pulp Fiction holdings. Below is some of the creative labeling used for that collection. Following the photo is a very short video of Chrystal in the stacks talking about the Western Pulp Fiction.

Embed photo:

From University of Arizona

Other popular Special Collections at the school include the Josias Joesler collection of architectural renderings and blueprints and the Stewart L. Udall and Morris K. Udall political collections. Chrystal’s favorite collections are the Stewart L. Udall and the Don Alonzo Sanford Collections. She likes Udall’s because it contains so much documentation "from his early life growing up in a rural Arizona town and his life as a WWII B-24 bomber, to the vast documentation on his eight years as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior," she says.

Chrystal is especially interested in the Don Alonzo Sanford collection because it "provides a snapshot into the everyday life of a pioneer businessman/politician and his family in the Arizona Territory--from what it would cost for Tucson to install street lights to what it was like for a Eastern woman to travel across country and take up residence in an unfamiliar western territory."

From University of Arizona

Some of the undiscovered or underutilized gems of the collection include the incunabula holdings (books that were printed prior to 1501), science fiction and fanzines collections, and de la Torre family collection which focuses on the Cristero Movement in Mexico.

Conclusion
The University of Arizona’s Special Collections makes significant contributions to the effort to preserve the region’s collective historical memory. Its acquisition, processing, and digitization programs related to projects like the Borderlands Cultural Community program allow its archivists and librarians to work with community groups in the borderland region to acquire collective histories. With proactive and innovative leaders such as Chrystal Carpenter, the future of Special Collections looks especially bright.

Contact Information
Chrystal Carpenter
Manuscript & Congressional Archivist
University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections
1510 E. University Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85721
(520) 621-6423
carpenterc@u.library.arizona.edu
http://speccoll.library.arizona.edu/

Field Trip: The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, Philadelphia

2011-05-17T15:18:00.002-04:00

Remember this map? It, the other map I found, and a very interesting scrapbook are now in the very capable hands of the conservators at The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in Philadelphia. After a nice bath, the map will be lined with Japanese paper and wheat paste, and given a good, sturdy housing for its return trip to the Plainfield Public Library and eventual storage. CCAHA also offers digitization and facsimile services for clients who wish to keep their treasures safe while offering their content to patrons in usable formats.

From Plainfield Public Library

Sarah Hull, Plainfield Public Library Archivist, and I drove down to Philly on a rainy day with our precious cargo in an archival tube and box in the back of my Subaru Forester. While the maps' plans are set, we were getting a quote on what it would take to remove newspaper clippings that had been glued onto the scrapbook's pages. Why just a quote, and (more importantly) why remove the clippings at all?

It appears that those clippings are on top of content written on the pages of a ledger from one of the Vail family's stores. In their heyday, the Vails were one of the more prominent Plainfield families, and the Library holds quite a few items related to their history.

The photo below shows the cover of the scrapbook. If CCAHA takes it on, the cover will likely be unbound to address the clipping issue.

From Plainfield Public Library

In the photo below, you can see that the clippings are dated, so they have some value and will be saved, if possible.

From Plainfield Public Library

Below, the mystery of the hidden ledgers peek out from among the clippings.

From Plainfield Public Library

Our host for the tour (and the person who talked with us about our conservation needs) was Corine McHugh, Paper Conservator (shown below in the book area).

From Plainfield Public Library

The CCAHA building is a former candy factory, but now it holds several rooms of specialists in the areas of books, manuscripts, artworks on paper, maps, historic wallpaper, posters, and photographs. When we arrived, Jim Hinz, Director of Book Conservation, was assessing an elephant folio (a very large format book) of John James Audubon's Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. Published in the mid-19th century, the book is a follow-up to his famed Birds of America.

Below is a page in the book. For scale, see Hinz's index finger near the spine of the book.

From Plainfield Public Library

His plans for the book include washing some of the plates. However, because some of the prints had been hand-touched with a water-soluble ink after printing, they will not be able to go into a water bath. Hinz will disbind the book, send the plates to the paper lab, and when they return, he will reconnect and sew the book together.

From Plainfield Public Library

Above, you can see one of the original end bands, which Hinz will replace with cotton rather than silk (the original) because silk becomes acidic over time. The image above also shows that the books pages do not rest flat. After Jim's repairs are complete, the book will be able to be displayed and/or used with its pages open flat. He said that they see a lot of Audubons, and apparently there are a few around. The Plainfield Public Library recently received a donation of three Audubon prints.

As our tour continued, we moved on to the paper area (shown below).

From Plainfield Public Library

We also saw other large workspaces and tables prepared for making enclosures.

From Plainfield Public Library

Corine showed us a suction table that acts (as you might expect) like a large draw. Marilyn Kemp Weidner, who started the Conservation Center in the 1970s, invented the table. In the photo below, Corine stands to the right of the table (which has a tiny sign that reads "I love this!" on it) and in front of homemade tubs for bathing large objects. If you are interested in learning more about suction tables and Marilyn's work, the American Institute for Conservation has made some of her papers available online. This one has photos of the table in use.

From Plainfield Public Library

One of paper's enemies is light, but it can be used effectively to treat certain issues such as intensive foxing. Corine gave the excellent example of how hanging sheets to dry in the sun helps to bleach them. In the photo below, she shows us how plant grow lights are used (with eye protection to protect conservators and a curtain to protect other items in the lab) to treat black and white prints. The works are immersed in water and the lights are turned on for a period of time until they bleach as much of the foxing from the prints as possible. The conservator will check on the prints periodically to ensure that the results are as expected.

From Plainfield Public Library

Finally, Corine showed us the CCAHA digital photo studio and the very big printer.

Visiting the CCAHA made Sarah and me want to go back to school to become conservators. It is a field that combines science with history, art, and technique. The pros at CCAHA who do the hard work conserving art and historical materials are very lucky indeed.

Contact Information
Corine McHugh
Paper Conservator
Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts
264 S. 23rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
cmchugh@ccaha.org
215-735-9313
http://www.ccaha.org/

Tour of the Utah State University's Special Collections and University Archives, Part I

2011-05-03T13:20:00.004-04:00

Introduction
When I initiated this project of visiting libraries, archives, and museums to spotlight their gems (hidden and otherwise) on this blog, I had no idea my world would expand as much as it has. Experiencing (and sometimes holding) important historical objects, books, and manuscripts is life-altering for sure. However, my favorite part of this project is visiting with some of the best storytellers I've ever met. These historians, archivists, and curators enthusiastically share the history of their collections in such a way that I always leave wanting to see more.

My hosts at Utah State University Merrill-Cazier Library's Special Collections and Archives were no exception. Despite spending a day in Logan, UT (about an hour and a half north of Salt Lake City), seeing a wide range of collecting areas, I could easily return many times and still only experience a fraction of their treasures. The fact that the school is located in the gorgeous Cache Valley doesn't hurt either!

Copyright 2009 David Densley.

Background on the School
Since we're at the beginning of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, it is fitting that the history of Utah State University (USU) begins with an act signed into law in 1862 -- the Morrill Act. According to the Department of State,

The act gave to every state that had remained in the Union a grant of 30,000 acres of public land for every member of its congressional delegation. Since under the Constitution every state had at least two senators and one representative, even the smallest state received 90,000 acres. The states were to sell this land and use the proceeds to establish colleges in engineering, agriculture and military science. Over seventy "land grant" colleges, as they came to be known, were established under the original Morrill Act; a second act in 1890 extended the land grant provisions to the sixteen southern states.

Like Rutgers, USU counts itself as one of those public land-grant schools. When it was founded in 1888, it was known as the Agricultural College of Utah, but eventually became Utah State University in 1957. (The school still uses a typographic "A" as its symbol, though, because the students are "Aggies.") In the early 20th century, USU's educational offerings were greatly limited because state lawmakers feared that it would overshadow the University of Utah. They tried to combine the two schools, but failed. Instead, "the legislature passed a bill limiting [the school's] curriculum to agriculture, domestic science, and mechanic arts. Many once-thriving programs in the arts, humanities, education, and others are closed, despite the college's initial mandate that it offer such instruction. By 1927, all curricular restrictions except law and medicine are lifted," says USU.

During World War I, USU turned into a military installation, with enlisted students housed in barracks that would later become lab space and classrooms. USU also is known as "The West Point of the West" because it has graduated more officers than any other school outside the Army academy.

In the 1950s, the Space Dynamics Laboratory and the Utah Water Research Laboratory were established. (For those who may not know, a great deal of the US space program's testing happens in Utah.)

At about the same time, the University Archives and some of the historical collections were brought together by History Professor S. George Ellsworth. The Special Collections and University Archives department was formally established around 1967. For more USU history, visit the History and Traditions page.

About the Collections
The USU Special Collections and University Archives currently houses approximately 80,000 volumes (including theses and dissertations), 18,000 linear feet of manuscripts and university archives, and 500,000 photographic images. In other words, the department is gigantic.

From Utah State University

The size of the western collections I have visited never fails to impress me. The general scale of pretty much everything seems about 10 times larger than here in New Jersey.

USU's Special Collections and University Archives employs 10 full time (five faculty, three professional, and two classified) staffers and one part-time worker. They include four archivists and one processing assistant, although some of the archivists hold the title "Curator." The staff serves about 30 patrons per week, including USU faculty and students, community users, and outside researchers. Their long-term researchers include one person working on a local history project and another researching historian Leonard Arrington. This summer, they are expecting another professor from Alabama who is researching Brigham Young.

The school's collecting areas are regional history, the Mormon experience, and the history of the West. They also have strong collections in Western literature and the Western environment. "Our university archive is extremely strong and complete back to the founding of the university," says Brad Cole, my gracious primary tour host and the Associate Library Dean.

Brad has been at USU for 18 years. "I graduated with a Master’s degree in history and was not sure what I was going to do for employment. A position opened up in the Special Collections and Archives department of the library and that was how I started," he says. Primarily he works on donor relations and larger projects. In fact, he and his Folklore staff are finishing a ranch documentation oral history project.

His favorite collections are those related to environmental issues -- the Sierra Club papers, Utah Wilderness Association, and diaries about the environment, among others. Brad explains, "I guess I like these collections because they really relate to Utah State and also to very current issues in the American West."

I asked Brad to tell me about some of the items in the collections that don't receive as much attention as they probably should. He names a few,

Some of our collections include diaries from forest rangers, others are related to Utah State University’s role in developing Western agriculture. Other collections are about USU's involvement in Iraq and Iran during the 1950s. We worked a lot in that area of the world to help rebuild after WWII. In addition to these would be a large collection about Czech patriot, Thomas Masaryk, and one of the largest Beat Poetry collections in the US.

Books and Manuscripts
USU's Beat Poetry collection comprises 10,000 volumes. I was especially impressed with the Wallace Berman Semina collection. Below, Brad tells me a bit more about the seminas and why they are important to the university's special collections.

Below are close-ups of the materials Brad showed in the video.

From Utah State University

Moving backward in time from the mid- to the early 20th century, USU holds one of the largest collections of first-edition Jack London books. But, they're not classified as books in the Special Collections -- they're manuscripts. Why? Well, I'll let Brad tell you.

Below are some close-up photos I took of these remarkable manuscripts.

From Utah State University

To see the collection of books inscribed to Charmian online, visit USU's Jack London exhibit. Additionally, Jack London researchers might also be interested in USU's 42 boxes of his papers.

On the topic of manuscripts, I had an opportunity to meet briefly with recent Conference of Intermountain Archivists Service Award recipient and outgoing Manuscript Curator Stephen Sturgeon about USU's 400 collections of unpublished papers. He spoke with me about several of the key collections. One of the school's largest manuscript collections is the Leonard J. Arrington Historical Archives. According to the archives' site, Arrington is known as the "Dean of Mormon History," having published many books and papers on the subject as an economics professor at USU and afterward. He served as "Church Historian" at the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City from 1972-1982, and later transferred to head the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History at BYU in 1982.

Arrington kept voluminous diaries (kept sealed in the collection until 2010) as well as correspondence and other papers. This collection, measuring 319 linear feet, has become a premier research resource on Mormon, Utah, and Western history.

In addition to collecting in the area of the Mormon experience, USU actively collects regional history. For example, a new collection the archivists are processing is Utah Representative Jim Hansen's papers. So far, they have processed 400 of those Hollinger boxes (below).

From Utah State University

Design Workshop Landscape Architecture Archive and Exhibit
A few days prior to my visit, USU had announced the creation of the Design Workshop Landscape Architecture Archive and Digital Collection. It was well coordinated with their hosting of the American Society of Landscape Architects Annual Meeting. The new archive is a three-way partnership between the USU Special Collections, USU Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and Design Workshop, a legendary landscape architecture firm founded by two class of 1963 USU graduates.

Below, Brad shows me early examples of digital landscape architecture drawings in the collection.

From Utah State University

One of the challenges USU is addressing is the lack of map cabinets to store all the drawings flat (it's a very common issue as map cabinets are expensive). Their solution is to use acid-free tubes to store the drawings rolled. Below is an image of some drawings that have been processed and stored in the tubes.

From Utah State University

There are approximately 5,000 more tubes in storage. So far, the materials are being processed by landscape architecture professors and graduate students who can assess the drawings and describe them accurately. Upstairs, in the Merrill-Cazier Library was a sizable exhibit showcasing Design Workshop's long history as a trailblazer in urban planning. A few photos of the exhibit are shown below.

From Utah State University

Preservation
Brad helped produce the exhibit with Rose Milovich, Preservation Manager and Exhibition Program Director. She's been with USU Special Collections and Archives for 15 years and USU for 21 years. Rose has managed the Preservation Lab since 2008, and previously, she was Curator of Art and Book Arts. She comes from a museum studies background, and you can see that influence in the exhibits and her conservation projects.

Below is a short video of Rose showing me one of 80 custom boxes she and her students made for the Larry E. Elsner sketch book collection.

In some cases, they would find ephemera in the sketchbooks. In others, the students would make cushions to help protect the spiral-bound notebooks. Below are two close ups -- one of the enclosure and one of the sketchbooks open to a page of drawings.

From Utah State University

Because this feature on USU's Special Collections and Archives is quite long, I have broken it into two parts. The remainder of the tour begins with University Archives on this page.

Tour of the Utah State University's Special Collections and University Archives, Part II

2011-05-03T13:20:00.003-04:00

This is a continuation of my tour of the Utah State University's Special Collections and University Archives. The first portion may be found on this page.

University Archives
Remember when I mentioned great storytellers earlier? Well, Bob Parson, the USU University Archivist since 1995, is one. He showed me an amazing copy letter book of John T. Caine, Jr., the secretary of the school back at its humble beginnings in 1888. Caine's correspondence with the Board of Trustees and the school's first president, Jeremiah Wilson Sanborn, showed that he set up the school and found the people with the expertise to run it. Below is a photo of one copy book open to correspondence from 1909.

From Utah State University

Bob showed me a letter from 1890 in which Caine tells a seal maker charged with forging the official school seal that he is dissatisfied with the quality of workmanship. There were no other records of the seal until 100 years later, when workmen excavating the flower bed of Caine's descendants' home found the original brass seal. They brought it to Bob who was able to identify it from the records in the University Archives.

Here is that legendary seal.

From Utah State University

What is so remarkable about the USU University Archives is the completeness of the records. With the exception of presidents #2 and #3 (whose records may have burned in a fire in 1905), the school holds all the administrative papers from all the presidents. Bob has personally processed three presidents' records. Rose Ernstrom, the Executive Secretary to the president had a system that made it a pleasurable experience for Bob. He explains why below.

Photographs
Another USU staffer who loves his work is Daniel Davis, Photograph Curator. He manages the 500,000 photograph collection (150,000 have been processed and a much smaller portion has been digitized). One of his passions is stereo views related to the Transcontinental Railroads. Below is a short video of Daniel explaining why.

Below are a selection of close-ups of the stereo views in the video.

From Utah State University

The photographer was A.J. Russell & Company, and the Utah photos were taken in 1868. As working documents, the stereo views documented the progress of the railroad in a way that a written report never could. Daniel is writing a book on the subject and has followed the whole route, photographing the same images. I can't wait to see his work as a published book!

Fife Folklore Archives
To wrap up my tour of the Utah State University Special Collections and University Archives, Brad introduced me to Randy Williams, Folklore Curator and 17-year veteran of USU's Special Collections. If you need to know anything about the folklore of the American West, the Fife Folklore Archives is the place to go. Austin E. and Alta S. Fife traveled the West with the intention of capturing on film, audio, and paper the folklife they encountered. They recorded cowboy and western songs, Mormon folksongs and stories, and lyrics read aloud. Essentially, they were oral historians with a knack for field work.

In the mid-1960s, the Fifes donated their extensive field work collections to the library, including acetate discs and reel-to-reel field recordings, 67 bound volumes of field notes/transcriptions, and their extensive folklore book collection. In 1972, the library created the Fife Library of Western Folklore, known today as the Fife Folklore Archives, and worked with the Fifes to create a folklore program at USU.

According to USU,

The Fife Folklore Archives collects field data, oral histories, monographs, slides, photographs, periodicals, books, audio recordings, and non-commercial video recordings on the subject of folklore, particularly but not exclusively in the areas of regional folklore (including the Intermountain West, especially Utah and Idaho); folk groups (including ranching culture, Native American culture, Latino culture, and Mormon culture); genres (including belief, folksongs, foodways, proverbs, and legends)and themes (including family, ethnic, and religious folklore). As well, the Archives maintains a basic folklore research and reference collection.

Below Randy shows me the card files created by the Fifes to organize and catalog their collection. "Alta Fife was a computer before there were computers," she says.

From Utah State University

In 1984, the Fife Folklore Archives gained copies of 324 student field work projects (spanning 1968-1978) conducted by upper-level folklore students at BYU. The courses had been taught by Professor William A. Wilson, who became the first director of USU's Folklore Program and the Fife Folklore Archives. When he returned to Provo, he not only gave copies of the BYU students' work to USU, he did the same for his USU students and took those copies to BYU.

Today, the collections in the Fife Folklore Archives number 46 and include the Latino/Latina Voices Project, Peggy Seeger Folk Song Collection, John S. and Orpha S. Boyden Family Native American Book Collection, Cache Valley Presbyterian Church Oral History Collection, Skaggs Cowboy Poetry Collection, Grouse Creek (Utah) Cultural Survey, and many more. Of particular interest is the Fife Slide Collection of Western U.S. Vernacular Architecture, available at the USU Digital Library. Randy has prepared very detailed registers (think finding aids) that are well worth the scanning.

Conclusion
USU certainly has a lot to offer patrons and researchers in a wide range of areas. I hope I have inspired you to explore the collections both in person and online.

Contact Information
Interested users and donors should contact

Brad Cole
Associate Library Dean
Special Collections and Archives
Merrill-Cazier Library
Utah State University
3000 Old Main Hill
Logan, Utah 84322-3000
435-797-8268
Brad.Cole@usu.edu
http://library.usu.edu/specol/index.php

Tour of BYU's Special Collections

2011-04-27T15:19:00.000-04:00

Introduction
If I had to sum up Brigham Young University's (BYU's) L. Tom Perry Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, UT, in a few words I'd say they were "impressive," "secure," "surprising," and "epically immense." "Well-funded" also springs to mind because even in today's tight economic climate, BYU's Special Collections are funded completely through donations and endowments.

My photos could never do justice to the hugeness of the place because it would be like trying to show someone the Grand Canyon in a snapshot. "At last measure, we had 9,000 manuscript collections, 300,000 books, and 750,000 photographs," says Maggie Gallup Kopp, Rare Books Curator. The collections also include prints of feature films, audio recordings, and objects. Most of them are processed or are being processed and cataloged.

In 1999, the Special Collections were moved into their current home on the first floor of the Lee Library. Along with what seems like miles of compact storage space, BYU boasts five vaults. Yes, five. The ones I saw dwarf some of the archives I've visited.

To care for all those collections, BYU employs 13 full-time curators and manuscript processors, and two adjunct curators. The school also has a strong culture of employing student workers. Special Collections has more than 30 students who process, manage collections, and staff the reference desk.

Speaking of reference desk work, BYU estimates that the Special Collections see 80 patrons per week, who range from undergraduate and graduate students to faculty, genealogists, and outside researchers.

About the Collections
Although my visit focused on two specific areas of BYU's collections (rare books and arts and communications), I did manage a peek at the stacks in the cathedral-sized manuscripts area (below).

From BYU Special Collections

The collections focus on seven key areas:

* Utah, Mormonism, and the West (print and manuscript)
* Music
* Arts and Communications (including film archives and film music archives)
* University History
* Photographs
* Literature (Mormon literary manuscripts, and print collections in 19th and early 20th century British and American literature)
* World History (print history, Renaissance/Reformation, history of science, Folklore Archives, and a small collection of Japanese print and manuscript items).

As would be expected of a large university, "much of the collecting focus is to serve undergraduate and graduate student research in these areas," says Maggie. A list of specific collections is available at http://lib.byu.edu/sites/sc/special-collections-home/collections/.

Three-quarters of a million photographs require a great deal of processing. In fact, BYU has a room in the Special Collections just for the student photo processing staff (a small section of the room is shown below).

From BYU Special Collections

One of the five vaults is dedicated to photos and films. It is lit by a special yellow light to keep light exposure to the collections to a minimum. The photo below shows a print of the original "King Kong" kept in the yellowy vault.

From BYU Special Collections

Rare Books
Because I had the good fortune of being hosted by Maggie Gallup Kopp, the Rare Book Curator, I spent some time among her favorite collection, the Victorian Collection.

From BYU Special Collections

"It is a wonderful assortment of literature by major and minor authors and other books which document Victorian society, culture, thought, and 19th century life in general," explains Maggie. She and her predecessors have collected beautifully bound novels (below),

From BYU Special Collections

periodicals (below),

From BYU Special Collections

and a sizable collection of penny dreadfuls, among others.

In its efforts to document the history of the book as well as the history of science, BYU has collected a remarkable astronomy collection. One example is The Rudolphine Tables shown below.

From BYU Special Collections

On her "show and tell" cart in one of the vaults, Maggie showed me a French Bible from 1468. You can see its beautiful illumination and binding close-up below.

From BYU Special Collections

Another "art of the book" technique Maggie showed me was fore-edge painting. The Book of Common Prayer from 1823 demonstrates how skillful book painters can be. (below) On one edge, the painter has depicted Washington, D.C., while on the reverse is an image of St. Louis.

From BYU Special Collections

Maggie also showed me some beautiful tooled leather bindings that epitomize book art (below).

From BYU Special Collections

Another form of book art can be found in the prints within the rare books. For instance, BYU holds an 1888 copy of Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, which has original prints inserted in the pages (below).

From BYU Special Collections

Utah is a wonderful place to go if you are interested in book arts. Between the University of Utah's artists' book collections and book arts program and BYU's remarkable rare books, a researcher could spend years there.

Arts and Communications Archives
Most people probably wouldn't think of BYU when naming the top important film archives outside of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But they would be very surprised to see the substantial holdings at the school. For instance, the Special Collections are home to Cecil B. DeMille's papers, Argosy Pictures Corporation archives (Mighty Joe Young, among others), Merian C. Coopers' papers (King Kong and Little Women, among others), and Jimmy Stewart's papers, to name a few. Also impressive are the film music archives. But more to come on that topic.

One of the most charismatic people I have met during these tours has got to be Jim D'Arc, Curator of the BYU Motion Picture Archive. He shared some Jimmy Stewart stories and showed us some real treasures in the collections. In the short video below, Jim talks about Max Steiner's handwritten score for the Gone With The Wind soundtrack and its value to researchers. Following it are two photos of the score Jim is holding.

From BYU Special Collections

Earlier, when I mentioned that BYU also holds a variety of objects, I was thinking of one in particular -- Max Steiner's Oscar for Best Scoring Achievement. In the short video below, Jim tells us why this particular award is rare and important. Below the short video is a photo of the award (with a regrettable image of me taking the snapshot in the reflection of the frame).

From BYU Special Collections

Finally, Jim gave me a real treat by showing me Steiner's original score for the King Kong opening credits. In the photos below, you can see the composer's notes to the orchestrator "King Kong Zooms Up."

From BYU Special Collections

As is the case with all of the tours I have taken, seeing a small portion of the collections just made me want to see more. In the case of BYU's Special Collections, I wish I could have seen some of the Mormon manuscripts in their vast collection. I'll just have to save that for another Utah trip.

Contact Information
Interested users and donors should contact

Russ Taylor, russ_taylor@byu.edu or
Maggie Gallup Kopp, maggie_gallup@byu.edu
L. Tom Perry Special Collections
1130 HBLL
Provo, UT 84602
801-422-3514
http://lib.byu.edu/sites/sc/

Plainfield Public Library Local History Project Updates: Blueprints

2011-04-19T22:30:00.001-04:00

From Plainfield Public Library

Arguably one of the best things about the Plainfield Public Library's local history holdings is the diversity of its collections. For example, my new long-term project is to create an updated descriptive inventory of the library's very large collection (15,000 sets of drawings) of blueprints (known as the Detwiller Blueprint Collection). While most of the information I'll be collecting (such as the permit number, the date of inspection, etc.) already exists, among other bits, I will be adding important condition information and the dimensions. The library periodically exhibits less-fragile blueprints and architectural drawings, so having the condition report is especially helpful.

Note: To see close-ups of these images, double click on the image. When the Picasa page appears, click on the magnifying glass in the upper right corner. Use the slider in the lower right corner to increase the magnification on the close-up, and grab the image (click and hold while moving the mouse) to shift the viewing space.

On the blueprint below, the right edge is torn and a bit fragile. However, the content of the image is still very interesting and legible. The amount of detail makes it a good candidate for exhibits, however it will be handled very gently.

From Plainfield Public Library

Plainfield is home to many historic houses and buildings. These blueprints are an excellent resource for their owners and prospective owners because they can see the original plans, any additions made, and intentions of the architects. They also provide fine examples of architectural drawing and styles, while illustrating how people lived during earlier times.

Case in point, here's a detailed first floor plan with a grand entry hall as well as a butler's pantry drawn in 1888. It was drawn in pencil with ink and colored marker on paper.

From Plainfield Public Library

Below is another example of a doctor's home office, complete with examining room and laboratory.

From Plainfield Public Library

The blueprint below is a spectacular example of how an architect's ideas may not necessarily translate into the actual build of the house. However, I love the detail down to the copper finials and the leaded glass. It is my understanding that the original building still stands in the historic neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, although I'd have to drive by to see exactly how much detail of the original remains.

From Plainfield Public Library

Not only do the blueprints and line drawings span a wide time frame (from the mid-to-late 1800s to the early-mid 1900s), they also are on a variety of materials. Some are your typical cyanotype blue prints, like the one above, while others were done in ink on waxed fabric (see below).

From Plainfield Public Library

And, some were drawn in pencil on paper (see below).

From Plainfield Public Library

Most of the blueprints are available for viewing online, and the search tool is easy to use. Just bear in mind that while most have been digitized, there are a few that have not. Either way, the librarians in the Local History Room are happy to help.

Tour of Special Collections at Weber State University's Stewart Library

2011-04-12T07:22:00.000-04:00

Introduction
Recently, I visited Utah where I had the great fortune of touring some of the largest and most interesting collections I've seen yet. It required a bit of driving in some cases, but it was more than worth the trip to meet the very friendly and knowledgeable archivists and curators who work with these materials. The next few tours on this blog will feature special collections and archives from that Utah trip.

Background on the Area and the School
Weber State University (WSU) sits in the foothills of the gorgeous Wasatch Mountains about 40 minutes north of Salt Lake City, in Weber County in a town called Ogden. Weber County and the Weber River, which flows throughout the Wasatch and Unita Mountains and drains into the Great Salt Lake, are named for fur trapper John Henry Weber.

Ogden, like many of the towns and cities in Utah, was settled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Individual LDS congregations are called "wards." When there are more than three wards in a geographical area, they are grouped into "stakes." In the early 1850s, when Weber County was being settled, the Mormon church designated the area as "Weber Stake of Zion." Later, when the school was founded in 1889, it was named Weber Stake Academy and served the local area with religious and secular education.

During the early 20th century, the school became Weber College, and in 1933, the LDS transferred ownership to the state of Utah. Weber College became a 4-year university in 1964, and finally, in 1991 was renamed Weber State University. (Sources for the preceding paragraphs: WSU in-depth History page) and MormonWiki.com.)

From Weber State University Special Collections

About the Archivist
It is my pleasure to introduce Sarah Langsdon, the Associate Curator of Special Collections at WSU. She has been at WSU for 12 years and previously served in the archives at Utah State University (another school I'll showcase in an upcoming tour). Like many of the archivists and curators I've spoken with, Sarah started as a student worker in the archives and found that she had a "knack" for the profession. "It allowed me to use my love of history and preserve the local history of Ogden and the surrounding areas," she says. Her masters in History as well as on the job training, conferences, and workshops keep Sarah sharp and in touch with the field.

Sarah's favorite collections at WSU are the Rich Diaries and the diaries in the Dee Family Collection. She explains, "I like them because they give such a glimpse into Ogden’s history from 1900 to the 1960s. These women were all prominent members of Ogden’s society and attended the major events in the city. They also give insight into the goings-on in their husbands' chosen professions." For a detailed look into the Rich Diaries, see WSU's digital collection here.

Below is a photo of Sarah holding one of Emily Almira Cozzens Rich's diaries from 1926.

From Weber State University Special Collections

"I also love the mug shots we have of three prostitutes arrested in the 1940s in Ogden. These help illustrate the seedy side of Ogden’s history," she says.

About the Collections
WSU Special Collections, established in 1971, collects materials that document Ogden, Weber, and Davis Counties specifically, and Northern Utah generally. Three full-time staff, one student worker, and one hourly worker care for the 45,000 books and 2,000 linear feet of records. This summer, Sarah will be receiving a donation of an additional 1,100 linear feet from the Utah Construction Company archives. Utah Construction, its predecessors, and successors (prior to merging with GE) comprise the lion's share of the holdings and is the collection that has had the greatest impact upon the patrons. "The Utah Construction Company collection has opened us to international research and users. With the vast construction and mining projects the company completed from 1900-1976, we have had requests from Australia, Peru, Canada, and all over the United States," says Sarah. Utah Construction is probably best known for building the Hoover Dam, and the collection documents the building of the dam in a few different ways. Visually speaking, one of the most interesting is the scrapbooks from the 1930s. They can be viewed online here.

The portion of the collection shown below will be moved to a much larger space that will accommodate the new donation as well. Sarah had processed the collection, which arrived in 1999 and opened to research in 2001. Having dealt with less-than-ideal conditions, I sympathized with her when she told me how it arrived. "The archivist didn't pack the records, the movers did," she says. In some cases, that meant the records were "dumped" into boxes.

From Weber State University Special Collections

To see Sarah's register (think finding aid) on the collection, click this link for the PDF.

Along with Utah Construction, WSU's most popular collections are Ogden Prisoners of War (POWs), WWI collections, and photos of historic homes and businesses. Some of the most fascinating materials came from the Ogden Defense Depot. The materials that weren't sent to the National Archives were sent to WSU.

When they cleaned out the Ogden Defense Depot, they found the WWII Italian and German POW photos. Hundreds of them. A portion has been digitized, and the images illustrate the conditions in the camps in amazing detail. Even more telling are the oral histories taken of the POWs wives. Below is a snippet of the project's description found in each oral history's opening pages:

The Ogden Defense Depot, designated as a POW camp on October 11, 1942, was one of the first ten camps in the country. An estimated 5,000 Italian prisoners and approximately 4,000 German prisoners were sent to the facility. The prisoners worked in local warehouses, farms, and orchards. After Italy surrendered in 1943, Italian Service Units were created which allowed the Italians greater freedom than the Germans, including visits to downtown Ogden. The camp closed during the summer of 1946 after the 10,000 prisoners were shipped home.

This project contains interviews from people who had interaction with the Italian and German POWs, including the community of Weber County and POW widows. They discuss the daily lives of the prisoners which includes conditions at the camp, work related issues, and the feelings of the community surrounding the POW camp.

I highly recommend visiting the World Wars and Weber County web pages. The designer did an excellent job, and the digitized materials are nothing short of fascinating. For example, there are WWI service cards for each person from Weber County who served.

Within the collections is Ted Littlefield's WWI diary (shown below). WSU also has his correspondence during that period. Ted was the father of Ed Littlefield, a driving force as principal officer at Utah Construction and later on the board of GE, after the merger.

From Weber State University Special Collections

Sarah and I talked a little about the importance of diaries to special collections (see the short video below).

Although diaries are in the form of books (in most cases), we think of them as manuscripts because they are unpublished materials. In the case of rare books (or scarce books), these are published volumes that are difficult for collectors to find (especially in a given geographical area). That rough definition spans a wide array of materials over a long time period. For instance, WSU holds a Bible from 1578 (shown below).

From Weber State University Special Collections

The school also holds a first edition Book of Mormon (shown below).

From Weber State University Special Collections

Which is rarer? It's going to depend on who you ask. But, the first edition Book of Mormon is considered to be very rare because there was a rash of thefts of the book in the 1990s. Consequently, WSU keeps theirs (and that early printed Bible) in a safe (below) within a vault.

From Weber State University Special Collections

The WSU Special Collections also include a variety of other items including objects and textiles such as the lace (immediately below) and the linen embroidered handkerchiefs (below) donated by the prominent Becraft family of Ogden.

From Weber State University Special Collections

WSU also holds maps and beautiful architectural drawings like the ones below from the Ogden Iron Works from the 1930s. The second photo is a drawing of the water meter cap they designed. The school received a donation of three map cases worth of the Iron Works' drawings.

From Weber State University Special Collections

Although I've touched on a just a handful of WSU's holdings, there are a few other gems that deserve some attention. Sarah says, "I think our most underutilized collections are our those of the different women’s clubs in Ogden. These women were savers and documented their histories through scrapbooks, minute books, and correspondence. They also helped shape the history of Ogden through their charitable activities. Other important ones are our personal or family history collections. Sometimes the history of a local person can really highlight bigger concepts by showing how events affected one person or family."

Exhibits
Also of importance are WSU's special collections exhibits. Running now until August 1 is the “Say Little, Do Much: St. Benedict’s School of Nursing 1947-1968” exhibit. According to Sarah, "the exhibit documents through photographs and oral history quotes, the history of the nursing school and its alumni."

Additionally, WSU Special Collections is preparing a 40th anniversary event to occur in October. It will include exhibits highlighting 40 years of collecting along with a lecture on Ogden’s historic 25th Street.

Sarah and her colleagues at WSU have digitized an impressive amount of their collections so that users will have increased access to those materials. I hope that you will visit the links I have included above to learn more about their holdings, and be inspired to see WSU's Special Collections in Ogden in person.

Contact Information
Interested users and donors should contact

Sarah Langsdon
Associate Curator of Special Collections
Stewart Library
Weber State University
2901 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408-2901
801-626-6540
slangsdon@weber.edu
http://library.weber.edu/asc/speccoll/default.cfm

Tour of Rider University's Special Collections and University Archives

2011-04-07T09:39:00.001-04:00

From Rider Special Collections

About the Archivist
Meet Bob Congleton, a fellow Rutgers library school alum and the Rider University Archivist. (He's also a graduate of Rider, class of 1978.) After earning an MA in History, he enrolled in a doctorate program in philosophy, when he was hired as periodicals coordinator at Rutgers' Kilmer Library. A year later, he transferred to the library school and earned his MLS. His next move was to Temple University, where he headed the serials unit and eventually led the binding/preservation unit. When he moved to Rider 13 years later, he joined the faculty as professor/librarian in charge of serials.

"When the archivist retired, I assumed responsibility for all the Special Collections. I have attended archival workshops, conferences, and other training to enhance my knowledge. My history background is the foundation for my enthusiasm. Preserving primary sources is an important way to maintain a connection to our past and help us understand our development as a society and as individuals," says Bob.

In addition to curating the Historic Business Machines Collection (think of it as a small museum), he's leading an effort to digitize several of Rider's collections and increase access to its items with a more enhanced public database. Because the school changed hands and names so many times during its early existence (1865-1920), and because, at that time, Rider supplied over half the business teachers for New Jersey, that time period is of specific importance to Bob. "I think our material preserves this heritage. I am constantly looking for more material on this era to add to our collection," he says.

Bob's favorite items in Rider's collections are from the 19th century. "I am researching the first 20 years of Rider’s history from 1865-1886 as the Trenton Business College. So many websites have incorrect information on Rider’s founding and early development, and overlook important people involved with the school’s evolution. Even the University’s own website has errors in the biographies of its presidents. I think it is very important to correct these errors, though it may be an impossible task," says Bob.

"I also enjoy the Historic Business Machine Collection. On vacations, my wife often has to pull me away from typewriters and other office equipment displayed in historic homes/homesteads we visit. She tells me that the owners or trustees of the places are not about to donate the material to my museum. Though, on occasion we have been able to enhance the information these sites have about their own collections," says Bob.

In the three very short videos below, you can see his enthusiasm for these machines that have paved the way for today's keyboards and computers.

First, here's Bob in the Historic Business Machine museum showing me the 1874 Sholes and Glidden typewriter, which is among the highlights of their collection of antique business machines.

Below he demonstrates the antique understrike Remington 6 typewriter.

In the final video, Bob shows me a wall of newer business machines and talks to me about backward compatibility and what he has in the collection.

An important note -- if you or people you know have old typewriters or computers that you wish to donate, please contact Bob. He would be very happy to talk with you about what the museum has and what it needs. Mind you, Rider will not appraise your typewriter or other business machine.

Additionally, close-up photos of the collection's business machines and typewriters are available to view at my Picasa site as well as within the Rider University Moore Library online catalog.

About the Special Collections and Archives
In the top photo of this post, Bob stands in the University Archives or Riderana, which includes (among other very interesting items) diplomas from every incarnation of the school during its lifetime. The diploma below is from 1888, and the close-up shows Andrew Jackson Rider's signature.

From Rider Special Collections

Although the early schools were in Trenton (see the diploma above), Rider moved to its current location in Lawrenceville in the early 1960s. The Archives were started in the 1950s, but received increasingly less attention, until in the 1980s, "so much of the collection had been moved to a closet. My predecessor, Lyn Livingston, worked with Walt Brower, a retired administrator, to gain a room for the archives so the material could be moved from the closet. Lyn spent years organizing the items, a project I continued," says Bob.

From Rider Special Collections

One of the largest collections at Rider, and arguably one of the largest of its kind in the country, is the Louis A. Leslie shorthand collection (a portion of it is shown above). Because Rider was a business school, it initially taught students the Pitman method. Later, when Rider was known as the Rider-Moore and Stewart School, Franklin B. Moore changed the teaching to the Gregg shorthand method. Leslie had served as chief editor of Gregg Publishing, "a leading shorthand material publisher, as well as a leading authority on shorthand systems," according to Rider.

In 1983, Leslie donated his more than 5,000-item collection to Rider, where they have begun to digitizing its contents. The collection contains samples of every type of shorthand dating back to the 17th century. Although the school stopped teaching shorthand 20 years ago, the collection is still important to researchers of shorthand education and of successful and unsuccessful methods of stenography.

Within the approximately 33,000 items in Rider's Special Collections and Riderana are its most popular collections: historic business machines, yearbooks, student newspapers, and images of college buildings. Bob's three student workers are in the process of digitizing the Rider News from 1926 to the present, as well as digitizing the student yearbooks from 1923 to the present. Look for them online soon.

Exhibits
While I visited Rider's Moore Library, I noticed two very interesting exhibits in the lobby.

From Rider Special Collections

The first (shown above and immediately below) is the very nifty independent study project of Melissa Kowalczyk, a History Department student who graduated in 2010. She used some of the typewriters in the collection to show the models used by various authors to write their books. Examples include Margaret Mitchell, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and George Orwell, among others. Above, Rachel Carlson and Ernest Hemingway typed on the Royal Quiet Deluxe. Below, George Orwell and Margaret Mitchell used the Remington Portable no. 3.

From Rider Special Collections

The other exhibit was created by Bob (see below). He explains, "it shows the evolution of how typewriter keys strike the paper and includes typewriters showing the different methods such as understriking, overstriking, the letter ball and more. The display also shows examples of different key layouts such as QUERTY and Dvorkic." The photo shows (left to right) the following typewriters: a Hammond Multiplex, a photo of the 1874 Sholes and Glidden, a Blickensderfer no. 5, a photo of an Oliver no. 9, and an Underwood Universal.

From Rider Special Collections

Whether you have a penchant for antique business machines, wish to know everything known about shorthand, or are looking into Rider's past for genealogical reasons, the Special Collections and Archives at the school are well worth the visit.

Contact Information

Interested visitors and donors should contact

Robert Congleton, Archivist, rcongleton@rider.edu or 609-896-5248
or Julia Telonitis, Archives Specialist, jtelonitis@rider.edu 609-896-7094
Moore Library Special Collections
Rider University
2083 Lawrenceville Road
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
http://www.rider.edu/academics/libraries/moore-library-4

Plainfield Public Library Local History Project Updates: Maps

2011-03-10T08:43:00.001-05:00

"Map of Building Lots and Villa Sites beloinging to Evn. Jones Plainfield, N.J., Union County 1868. Plotted by J.W. Soper, C.E. and Surveyor, Bergen, N.J." Part of the Local History Collection of the Plainfield Public Library, NJ. From Plainfield Public Library

For the past month or so, it's been one exciting discovery after another in the Plainfield Public Library's Local History archives. First, Sarah Hull, archivist, discovered a host of important historical documents in the shelves. Then, I found these maps (above and below) in a collection I have been processing. (I stood on a ladder while just barely leaning above the processing table to capture these images.)

"Map of 41 Villa Sites in the City of Plainfield, New Jersey to be sold at auction on Tuesday, October 12th, 1869 at 12 o' clock M., on the premises. By Adrian H. Muller, P.R. Wilkins & Co., John Medole, 163 Pearl St., N.Y." Part of the Local History Collection of the Plainfield Public Library, NJ. From Plainfield Public Library

Maybe I should back up a bit to explain how I uncovered the maps. After I had completed my work on Plainfield's clubs, Sarah gave me the Courier News clippings to inventory. The newspaper donated its photographs and negatives to the library, as well as its clippings collection (about 12 Paige boxes full). As it turns out, there weren't just acidic newspaper clippings in the files.

During my inventory, I uncovered all kinds of records, pulling them out of the crumbling yellow and nearly orange newsprint to protect them from further damage. The two most significant discoveries were those maps, folded into tiny envelopes next to clippings. As I gingerly unfolded them onto the Local History room table, I called over another volunteer to show her what I had. I showed Sarah, who asked Jane Thoner, the library genealogist, to take a look, as well.

Jane was able to tell us that the second map shows a portion of what is now North Plainfield, and that several of those streets do not exist today. Both the maps are important findings because 1. the library did not have copies of them, 2. they show a very specific point in time in the city's history, and 3. they document intended building developments (the second one wasn't built, as Jane was able to tell us from the houses in that neighborhood).

Some of the other noteworthy items in the collection include a set of original photographs of the eccentric inventor Samuel Rushmore. He became quite famous for cutting down all the trees on his Plainfield property (numbering more than 1,200) to protest the corrupt election of a New Jersey state judge. (From what I understand, the land has since been reforested.) The photos also include a few shots of the famed coffin he placed on the upper story balcony of his home to protest corruption in Jersey City's highest offices during the 1930s and 1940s.

A good portion of the larger folders hold stories and background information filed by reporters. There also were numerous transparencies with accompanying print versions. The more I uncovered, the more evidence I had that these weren't just clipping files, they were reference files. I suspect that the reporters used these files to write their stories.

When I finished removing all the ephemera and other non-newspaper clipping records, I was able to create several series from the materials (which now fill two heavy Paige boxes -- library school grads, you DO need to be able to carry 40 lb boxes, as mandated in many job ads). The "Churches" series is very interesting. If you want to know the history of the Plainfield area churches, their ephemera files is one good place to start. Nearly all the places of worship published little booklets with their histories, especially when they were celebrating big anniversaries.

Within the "History" series, I found the contents of the "Plainfield Riots" folders at once riveting and disturbing. There were first-hand reports of the events as well as other records of the riots. Many of the reports link the Newark riots to the Plainfield riots, naming the youth of the two cities as the primary drivers of the events, especially the killing of a police officer. Also in the same series is one of my favorite records, a thin, red leather-bound book published in 1901 that describes the history of the Plainfield Fire Department. The images within the little book are fascinating. Best of all, other than the binding being a bit worn, the book is in excellent shape!

Another source of amusing images was the file for the now-defunct Muhlenberg Hospital, the home of a noteworthy nursing program. The pamphlets and booklets in the folder show images of many, many nurses over the years. One booklet from the 1960s, shows a nurse and doctor in a particularly provocative pose. I was especially tickled by their headwear. Their nurses' caps were very tall. I imagine that they were not easily balanced on their heads, even with all the hairspray and pins.

Finally, this treasure hunt of an assignment reminds me yet again that our local archives and special collections, whether they live in local history rooms such as Plainfield's or at nearby universities such as Drew and Stevens, are infinitely important to preserving our cultural heritage. I cannot drive that point home often or strongly enough. I hope that my little project of writing about my visits to archives and special collections, as well as sharing my work experiences and the collections with you will help raise public awareness to local treasures.

Please continue passing my blog along to anyone who might be able to help fund your local archives and special collections.

Tour of the United Methodist Archives Center and Special Collections at Drew University

2011-03-01T08:19:00.009-05:00

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Last week, I had the pleasure of taking a tour of the United Methodist Archives and History Center (to be abbreviated as UMC Archives from here on), University Archives, and Special Collections at Drew University. Seen above are my gracious tour hosts (from left to right), Chris Anderson, Methodist Librarian and Coordinator of Special Collections; Evan Dodge, Preservation Assistant; Masato Okinaka, Library Conservator; and Matthew Beland, Acquisitions/Archives Assistant. Chris and Matthew were my guides in the UMC Archives, and Evan and Masato joined us when we moved across the street to the main library where the Special Collections and University Archives are held.

The United Methodist Church Archives
Drew University, first founded as a seminary in 1867, has been collecting archival materials since its inception. The sizable United Methodist Archives and History Center was built in 1982, when the original seminary’s records were moved from the main library. The international archive for the United Methodist Church was moved from Lake Junaluska, N.C., to Drew not long afterward. Although most of the collection has not yet been digitized, Chris is collaborating with 12 other United Methodist seminaries to digitize select holdings from each of the theological schools that will be included in the Internet Archive.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Although the images I snapped in the processing area of the UMC Archives are a bit grainy, they do reflect the sheer size of the place. These archives, the University Archives, and the Special Collections total nearly 10,000 linear feet.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

As soon as I walked into the processing area of the UMC Archives, I thought “What a pleasure it must be to be able to spread out and arrange large collections here.” In the photo above, you can see their processing archivist’s work on a collection of more than 100 boxes of the Bosley collection. Bosley was a 20^th century minister who collected quite a bit of material during his lifetime. Currently, theology grad students are processing the materials. This arrangement reminds me a bit of the work I did back in the summer in Utah.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Above is a view of the processing area from a little catwalk leading to the archives shelving. In the background, you can see two doors at different levels. One leads to the audio-visual materials vault, which houses among other things, films from the 1936 Berlin Olympic games. Mostly, it holds films from missionary excursions and Methodist television programs. The other vault holds church artifacts. Unfortunately, I did not get to see inside the vaults, but I did see quite a lot of the place, nonetheless.

The UMC Archives, Drew University Archives, and Special Collections employ 3 full-time staffers. One part-time (10 hours a week) archivist services the archives. The UMC Archives also has its own conservation space, although no one was in the space when I took the tour.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Moving upstairs to the holdings area of the UMC Archive, I was able to see how the church’s archives were separated from the original seminary’s archives by clear labeling practices (UMC above and below, Drew following).

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Among the shelves also are the papers of former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean. Kean served as President of Drew University after his two terms as governor.

February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

You might be interested to see Drew’s very nicely done finding aid of the 125 box Kean collection (that’s 156 linear feet, for you sticklers for detail).

Along with the records, photographs (of which UMC Archives holds 250,000), films, and artifacts, visitors can find 4,000 hymnals in the Methodist Library. A miniature one is held by Chris below.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Recently, the archives received a large donation from the Byron Society of America, an organization devoted to Lord Byron and everything remotely related to him and his works. Below is a photo of about half of the material waiting to be processed. Drew University’s library publishes a marvelous newsletter that features the acquisition in its Fall 2010 issue. Visions, the newsletter, does an excellent job of describing new donations and work being done at the UMC Archives and Special Collections. If other libraries had the resources to produce such a newsletter on a regular basis and distribute it widely, they would do well by referring to Visions as a “best practices” example.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Most of those Byron Society boxes hold books, but the collection also includes a number of artifacts, artwork, and posters, some of them framed. In fact, when we sat in a room usually reserved for researchers, I saw a few of the framed Byron posters waiting to be preserved. The Methodists were exceedingly good record keepers, as can be seen by the Archives’ collections of annual conference reports. Some of these documents date back to the 1770s. As we walked along, Chris pointed out shelves of missionary minutes from Methodists of all stripes. The Western Christian Advocate from 1851 is shown below.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Here is a very short video of Chris describing The Western Christian Advocate and its relationship to larger newspapers.

One of the other large collections at the UMC Archives is the pamphlet collection. The archives hold approximately 20,000 pamphlets, some dating back to the 18^th century. Chris compiled a 1,200 page bibliography on the collection and put it online. Once researchers had access, he received emails daily from researchers around the world requesting information about the pamphlets. Below are just three examples of pamphlets in the collection.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Drew’s archivists have a three-step process for the pamphlets: 1. Identification, 2. Conservation, and 3. Digitization. Currently, they are in the identification phase, so these will rest in acid-free paper until they can have their staples removed and be placed in pamphlet covers (see Preservation Department later in this story).

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Some of the materials in the archives’ holdings become stars for a little while when they make it to the exhibit space where visitors enter the building. Underneath that space is a tunnel that connects the building to the library next door. It was used to transport some collections during inclement weather. Below is a photo I took of the exhibit space. Because February has just ended, they are preparing for a new exhibit to replace the one below on African American Methodist history. In the fall, the UMC Archives will be displaying an exhibit on Methodism and the American Civil War to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

In the background of the exhibit space, you can see the reading room where scholars from around the world, authors, students, local historians, and genealogists use the archives’ holdings to do their work. Currently, the archivists see between seven and ten patrons per week. At the moment, they aren’t hosting any long-term researchers. However, a researcher from Chile recently spent five days at the facility working on a book about South American Methodism and visual culture.

Some of the fun things to see in the library I did not photograph, unfortunately, but I encourage you to go see them. For instance, how often do you get to see a death mask in a library (or anywhere else for that matter)? John Wesley’s (founder of the Methodists), is displayed upstairs in a glass case, not far from a reliquary supposedly holding British colonial evangelist George Whitfield’s thumb. In a room off the reading room, you also can see many, many ceramic busts of Wesley (also encased in glass).

Speaking of exhibits, when we walked next door to the library (where Matthew took over as primary tour host), I had the chance to see a little of the graphic art novel exhibit in the lobby. Also in the lobby, floating above the entryway is the gorgeous Rose Window from the original Cornell Library.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

During my tour of Special Collections, Matthew showed me some photographs of the Rose Window in its original setting. The photo below has been preserved in a polyester sleeve, hence the milky glare (sorry!), but you can still see the round window at the end of that glorious library.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Preservation Department
After winding our way through the library, we reached the Preservation Department, where Masato and Evan met us. Masato showed us his latest project, making an enclosure for a small addition to the Willa Cather collection (below).

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

He had folded sheets of archival paper around some of the pieces to prevent them from becoming acidic.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Remember the pamphlets? Masato’s enclosure below is an example of what a pamphlet cover looks like.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

University Archives and Special Collections
After Preservation, we moved on to the University Archives, “a labor of love” for Matthew. He gets to spend 10 hours a week on the archives started in the early 1970s by Rae Jones, the wife of former Library Director Art Jones. Although Drew had been collecting for the previous 100 years, there is a bit of a murky line between where the University Archives starts and where the seminary records end. Fortunately for all involved, there is an effort to house all the archives under one roof.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

In the University Archives area, the holdings include the Drew University Bulletin, student dissertations, and the Drew Acorn, one of Chris’ favorites because it provides snapshots of the campus over the past 50 years. Also found in University Archives are many architectural records of the school’s buildings, the George D. Kelsey Papers, and the Gibbons Family Papers. Kelsey was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mentor at Morehouse College, and later became Professor of Christian Ethics at Drew University. William Gibbons owned the land on which university now stands; his father Thomas won the U.S. Supreme Court case “Gibbons vs. Ogden” in 1824.

One of the most-used records in the University Archives is the Matriculation Book for the Drew Theological Seminary. Below is a short video of Matthew describing its importance to the school and its students.

This is a close-up view of the Matriculation Book’s opening page.

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Matthew’s current work includes gathering photos for Drew publications and the theological School in preparation for the upcoming theological dean installation.

Among the Special Collections at Drew are the Bela Kornitzer and the Georges Simenon Collections. Kornitzer’s papers and photographs of him with luminaries of the highest stature fill a room (below).

From February 2011, Visit to Drew University Special Collections and Archives

Kornitzer spent his time interviewing and corresponding with very famous men for the purpose of documenting their relationships with their fathers. Records of his experiences collecting this information exists in cassette tapes, phonodiscs, paper-based records, photographs, and ephemera. The Simenon collection also has its own space, filled with first editions of the author’s works in French and English, notebooks, and assorted ephemera.

There are many intriguing treasures in Drew University’s Special Collections and Archives. A researcher could easily spend months at the UMC Archives, depending on his or her historical bent. Best of all, the folks who keep it running smoothly are very knowledgeable, quick with a smile, and love what they do.

They encourage researchers to use their online finding aids (Drew University Special Collections and University Archives website: http://www.drew.edu/depts/library.aspx?id=292 and/or UMC Archives web site: http://www.drew.edu/depts/library.aspx?id=45889). Donors who wish to give their personal collections to Drew University may contact Chris or Matthew at the information below.

Contact information
Interested users and donors should contact

Christopher J. Anderson
Methodist Librarian and Coordinator of Special Collections
Drew University
36 Madison Avenue
Madison, New Jersey 07940
http://www.drew.edu/depts/library.aspx?id=208
cjanders@drew.edu
973-408-3910

Or
Matthew Beland
Acquisitions and Archives Assistant
Same address as above.
mbeland@drew.edu
973-408-3532

Tour of Special Collections and Archives at S.C. Williams Library at Stevens Institute of Technology

2011-02-14T08:07:00.000-05:00

From February 2011

About the Archivist
Allow me to introduce you to the very kind Adam Winger, Head of Special Collections & Digital Initiatives Librarian at the S.C. Williams Library at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. He’s standing amidst selected books from the personal library of the Stevens family. Adam has been with the Institute since April 2010, and has had his hands full with all manner of archival and conservation challenges, to put it mildly.

I first came in contact with Adam last fall after reading about his work in an article he published in the September/October issue of Archival Outlook. Amazed by his treasure hunt of a job, I was inspired to write him what amounts to a fan email and an offer of help. Lots and lots of snow later, I finally had the opportunity to see for myself the monumental work he has done and the huge task he faces to whip a pretty sizable and diverse collection into shape.

[Just as an aside, it seems that the more I visit archival collections, the more I see archivists putting in an enormous effort to clean up, sort out, describe, and preserve collections that were managed by well-meaning folks without archival or preservation training. For instance, Adam’s work could easily fill 3 full-time archivist positions, but he’s doing it with 1 full-time assistant curator and some part-time student workers due to lack of funding. Because institutions like Stevens are the guardians of our cultural heritage, they deserve the funding to care for their holdings in the way they should be preserved. It’s not a lot to ask, frankly.]

One of Adam’s biggest challenges is not having finding aids (very handy, descriptive documents that serve as a guide to a given collection, stating its contents and historical importance) for any of the collections. As a result, it’s difficult to tell where one collection ends and another begins. More importantly, there are many mysteries as to provenance that remain unsolved (for now).

Adam has a very strong background in conservation, having worked as a conservator at Utah State University. He also holds an MLS from the University of North Texas. Consequently, he sees areas of improvement in multiple dimensions. When he showed me some of the “before” photos, I couldn’t help catching my breath more than a few times. I can only imagine how he felt when he discovered these incredibly important historical items stored in damaging ways.

He mentioned that he’d like to do some conservation work on a 1509 work of Luca Paciolo's called De Divina Proportione. It’s a remarkable work on the golden ratio, featuring beautiful woodcuts by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Adam said he could easily spend 150 hours working on the book. See why below.

From February 2011

(My apologies for the poor quality of this one.)

From February 2011

We all become archivists and conservators for our own reasons, but Adam’s is particularly interesting. He says, “I wanted to become an archivist after I read about the Mormon forger Mark Hofmann. I studied his methods for forgery, which led me into conservation and eventually into Special Collections.” If you’re interested, here’s an article from The New York Times that summarizes Hofmann’s criminal history.

At the moment, Adam is processing the Taylor manuscript collection, preparing about 20 digital collections, processing the university archives (a full-time job unto itself), and juggling many other projects. He says, “My favorite collection is the cuneiform clay tablets that date from around 2500 B.C.E. They are the oldest items in the collection materials, and I am fascinated with the writing system employed. I also really enjoy our da Vinciana 16th century books. They are beautifully printed. We also have a large collection of mechanical models which pose an interesting challenge to identify. I enjoy the mechanical models because of the research involved in describing them accurately.” Visitors to the Williams Library can see many of the mechanical models displayed throughout the building, especially in the main reading room. And, lucky visitors to the library will be able to see the cuneiform tablets in an exhibit in the near future.

Here are a few photos of those amazing cuneiform clay tablets. I couldn’t believe I actually held them in my (gloved) hands! (That's Adam's hand in the photo, though.).

From February 2011

Among other items, you can see several mechanical models standing on top of some file cabinets in the Special Collections room.

From February 2011

About the Archives/Special Collections

While it’s unclear exactly when the archives were established, Adam has found references to them as early as 1919. It’s also a bit difficult to tell exactly how large the holdings are at the moment because not only are they in the process of being organized as a whole, but “they extend beyond the boundaries of the library,” says Adam.

“We have 1 dedicated archive room and 3 exhibit rooms that contain artwork and objects. The library collections also are exhibited in several houses and educational building across campus,” he continues, “I am in the process of trying to locate all of the materials belonging to the library.” The day I visited Adam, he received a delivery of furniture from the President’s mansion for storage in the library because the Institute no longer has a museum. All told, the holdings include objects, artwork, manuscripts, rare books, printed materials, maps, audio materials, and visual materials.

Here's a wee video of Adam showing me some of the records and the way they used to be stored.

One of the exhibit rooms is the Mary Stuart Stevens Room (shown below).

From February 2011

Another exhibit room used as a reading room for the archives is the Taylor room (shown below).

From February 2011

Finally, there’s the da Vinci room, home to a huge facsimile collection of his works.

From February 2011

It holds cabinets full of da Vinci reference materials for researchers.

From February 2011

Visitors to the archives number 3 to 4 per week, although there are no long-term researchers there now. Adam says, “We are digitizing a large portion of our collection as well as working to provide better finding aids. So, we anticipate research use to steadily increase.” The most widely used collections are the Stevens Family and F.W. Taylor collections. “The Institute collection has a lot of draw” for those in the local community, he says.

Some of the underutilized gems of the collection include the da Vinci collection and the manuscript collections. “We have to do a better job of getting the word out about our collections so they can be used by researchers and in the classroom,” he says.

Most archives have formal collecting policies describing the boundaries of the materials and areas in which they accept donations and actively collect. However, these archives don’t. Although the policy hasn’t been written, “we do collect areas of the Stevens family, Stevens Institute, F.W. Taylor, and Leonardo da Vinci,” Adam says. Donors with small personal collections in those areas are welcomed. “We also have accepted several paintings from the Ben Wilson Foundation this past year. The estimated value of the donation was $20,000,” he says.

One trend that has become ever more important lately with funds drying up everywhere is inter-institution collaboration. Stevens has teamed with the Hoboken Public Library and Historical Society in the past. I connected Adam with a friend of mine (remember Teresa?) who works on the Rutgers end of The New Jersey Digital Highway collaboration. This way, he can get their incredible maps digitized and online much sooner (and much less expensively) than he originally thought he would.

Speaking of digitization, Adam plans to go live with his digitized collections in the spring. I’ll post the link when the content has been added and visitors have great items to explore. He is working toward creating finding aids for researchers and making the collections searchable online in the near future.

Contact information

Interested users and donors should contact

Adam Winger
Head of Special Collections &
Digital Initiatives Librarian
S.C. Williams Library
Stevens Institute of Technology,
Hoboken, NJ
http://www.stevens.edu/library
awinger(at)stevens.edu
201-216-5416

For updates to the archives and Special Collections, see the blog here: http://stevenslibrary.blogspot.com/.

Project Updates

2011-02-06T10:07:00.000-05:00

Lately, I've been working on some pretty interesting projects at the Plainfield Public Library. The Local History Archives hold a very wide range of items related to the town, from police log dating back through the 1800s to scrapbooks from the Muhlenberg Hospital School of Nursing Alumnae Association (and everything in between). I especially enjoy the personal records and the prints made from the glass plates in the collection.

Paul Collier Prints
Lately, I've been cataloging and describing some of those prints by a Plainfield photographer named Paul Collier. The library's collection of Collier materials is quite extensive. Here's a direct quote from the Plainfield Library's site describing his photos:

The Paul R. Collier Photographs are some of Plainfield's most well-known images, containing views of local homes, landmarks, churches, businesses and community activities. Collier was a prolific photographer who documented the Plainfield area for 40 years. He worked for the Plainfield Courier News and did private work for insurance documentation. In the late1990's, the library's collection of 175 Collier images grew sizably with a donation of about 14,000 glass plates and nitrate negatives. All glass plates have been conserved and printed. Prints are generated from the nitrates as funding permits.

Prior to processing this particular group of prints (many others had previously been processed and cataloged), I had the great fun of processing his ephemera. I'm glad that I had a chance to take a good look at those items and describe them first because they helped me frame some of the photo descriptions later. Sometimes, they were just amusing. For example, Collier was known for documenting car accidents and police activities. In the ephemera I processed, I found quite a few receipts for his own car repairs.

Some of my favorite Collier prints are from the "Ice House" series and the "Town Hall" series. The Ice House photos show how laborers cut portions of a frozen lake into large blocks and moved them along a conveyor belt into the ice house. The images are fantastic. The expressions on the laborers' faces and their stances compared to their supervisors say quite a bit.

I love the Town Hall photos because they show how the grounds of Town Hall changed over time, as well as big events that happened at and around the building. Recently, I spoke with an arborist friend who mentioned that he was overseeing an historical arborist in charge of protecting the trees at City Hall in New York during restoration work to the building. As I described the Collier prints of Town Hall in their catalog entries, I realized that these prints can now be used by researchers for the same purpose (among others).

Clubby Clubs of Plainfield
Some of the other fun projects I work on at Plainfield include processing (or in some cases, re-processing) the records of the local social clubs and other organizations. For instance, I've processed the Friends of the Plainfield Library records. That collection covers in detail a very interesting time in the history of the library, the demolition of the original building and the construction of the current building.

The most recent club records I've processed were those of the Cosmopolitan Club. Between all the snow storms and other events, we haven't yet updated the finding aid, but that will come soon. The scrapbooks are priceless! They show photos and clippings of members at their activities, as well as little snippets of fashion magazines and other realia.

One thing I've noticed from these and other clubs I've processed over time is that the record keeping changes dramatically over time. During the 1940s - 1960s, the records are somewhat organized, the minutes are detailed, and generally, things are in pretty good shape. Once the clubs' records move into the 1970s-2000s, the degree of detail diminishes and organization deteriorates rapidly. I'll have to do some research to see if anyone has written any papers on this pattern, but if they haven't, perhaps I ought to think about it since it's pretty consistent in Plainfield, at least.

Next post: Last week, I had a wonderful time visiting the special collections and university archives at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. I'll be showcasing some of the amazing collections and introducing you to the incredibly nice and informative Adam Winger, Head of Special Collections and Digital Initiatives Librarian at the S.C. Williams Library at Stevens.

Yellowstone National Park Heritage and Research Center Tour

2010-12-07T13:17:00.001-05:00

From September 2010

Last week, Anne Foster (the archivist from Yellowstone National Park) asked me to let job seekers know that three new archivist positions had been posted at USAJobs. Because a few of you readers might just apply for one of these great opportunities, I thought I'd share my experience touring the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center where the archives live and the parks' museum collections are stored.

From September 2010

The very large, very clean, friendly building was built in 2004 because the park needed more space for its archival and museum holdings. As far as the archives go, there are three collections: natural resources, donated materials, and scheduled records. The administrative records for the world's first national park (some shown above) include some pretty interesting records, especially the work journals of military personnel who ran the park in the early days.

From September 2010

Although the park is affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), records "born" at Yellowstone remain there instead of being sent off to NARA. It makes sense because if you are already at Yellowstone researching a given topic, such as the park's wolf population, it could be cost/time prohibitive to travel to NARA for records or pay for them to be digitized.

From September 2010

(There's Anne above, giving a tour of the big map room.) John and I were lucky enough to experience two tours, a private one with only Anne, and a public one shared with about 10 tourists. Prior to the public tour, I had the opportunity to ask Anne a bit about the collections. She told us that she was only a few months into the job (had come from the University of Alaska) and already had plans to do a lot of weeding, research into provenance, and much more work. That's when I first learned she would be hiring a few archivists to help.

From September 2010

The public tour started in the rare books room. Not only were there rare books but the park has scrapbooks and clippings ranging from 1914 through the 1940s. There we saw an exhibit of a note found at the top of a flag pole that showed the names of some of the workers.

From September 2010

There were signed copies of rare books, including the first book published in the Montana territories, "Vigilantes of Montana."

From September 2010

From the rare books room, we returned to the archives in the public tour, where we learned more about the content of the materials.

From September 2010

Early on, the military hired civilian scouts. Researchers can see their diaries. They can also see how park workers' attitudes toward the animal inhabitants changed over time. In the early days, the animals were referred to as "pets."

From September 2010

Here Anne is showing the important wolf migration maps. She also mentioned the documentation of elk overgrazing that can be shown in the elk movement maps. As an archivist very interested in advocacy, I was inspired by how Anne showed through the materials that archives help people understand how visitors experience wilderness over time.

From September 2010

After the archives tour, we were treated to a fun tour of the museum's storage area by registrar Bridgette Guild. There we learned that the photographs are kept in the museum storage area, not upstairs in the archives. Ken Burns used 900 images from the collection in his PBS miniseries on the national parks.

From September 2010

Among the museum's more than 300,000 items, they hold approximately 10,000 specimens, including 96 wolf skulls. Some of the items on the table are from the archeology collection. Researchers who take samples during their surveys of the park are required to submit samples to the museum.

The gun on the table is called a "Thumper Gun" made by Smith and Wesson. They originally used liquid slugs to break up riots. Now they are used with rubber bullets to deter bears.

In another part of the storage area are the Thomas Moran watercolors. They are kept in special cabinets to prevent as much deterioration as possible. Although they do get out, to protect them, the works are not loaned out on any long-term basis.

Overall, the Yellowstone National Park Heritage and Research Center (which also includes a lovely research library, by the way), is a stop that should not be missed on your next visit to Yellowstone. Best of luck to the candidates who apply for the prize archivist positions.

EAD Workshop at MARAC in Harrisburg

2010-11-14T12:20:00.001-05:00

Once again, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) delivered big conference value. Probably the biggest bang for the buck for me was the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Workshop on Thursday.

Background
For my non-archivist friends and family who read this blog, here is a quick overview (archivists, feel free to scroll down to Workshop). Because archivists want potential visitors and researchers to easily find and use our collections, we write documents called finding aids and put them on the Internet. (We also publicize collections by launching exhibits, press releases, and other outreach efforts, but for now, let's just stick with the topic at hand.)

Finding aids can hold a little or a lot of information. It all depends on the cultural heritage institution's preference. But to offer the same types of information categories across the board, we follow a set of standards called "Describing Archives: A Content Standard" (DACS -- rhymes with quacks).

Because we put our finding aids online, we have the option of adding more information and/or making edits later. This flexibility provides a good argument for entering the minimal amount of information required by DACS into a finding aid and throwing it up on the web, even if we haven't processed the entire collection yet. That way, folks can find the repository that has the historical information they need and use it. Otherwise, some backlogged collections could take years to process, and no one would know they even exist (happens all the time, sadly). That brings up the topic of "More Product, Less Process," but I'll just give you a link to the original piece and you can read about that at your leisure.

[In practice, I prefer to give a substantial amount of information in my finding aids. I want to give the researcher a leg up on his/her work by providing a good historical foundation for the collection as well as descriptions of each series in the collection. This way, when the researcher goes to look into a given folder or box, he/she will know what else there is nearby that might fit into his/her work. They might not have the time to fish around for it otherwise.

I also like to provide links to related materials elsewhere in the repository. For an example, at Rutgers, I processed a box of materials from an administrator who served during the late 1800s through the early 1900s (until he died, slaving away at his desk). When I wrote my finding aid, I researched his biographical history and found that he never left the place since entering as an undergraduate. Rutgers keeps files on students, and I was able to locate this administrator's undergrad box, which held all kinds of interesting items, including a number of photographs of him through the years. I also found his obituary describing his dedication to his students and death at his desk. I believe it to be true because he corresponded with every single student and potential student during his tenure. He was a very busy man.]

One last, very important piece on EAD before I start in on the Workshop -- EAD is a markup language based on XML (extensible markup language). XML code works on the premise that content is separate from structure and appearance. It's very flexible and allows the user to change how information appears without changing the actual content. It also allows users to easily make different versions of a document by applying different style sheets. Style sheets decode the XML to display the document on the web.

EAD has its own set of elements and attributes that specify the characteristics of a document. These characteristics are based on recognizable standards, and there are a lot of organizations that have made public their style sheets for others to use (awfully kind of them). OK, on to the workshop!

Workshop
Now that you have a little background, I can tell you about the workshop given by the very knowledgeable and helpful Michele Combs, from Syracuse University. Prior to the day-long class, I had used EAD, but had never taken a course on it. So, I was counting on this introductory workshop to provide me with a good working knowledge of the basics. I was not disappointed. In fact, Michele said that SAA typically covers the same material in a two-day workshop (for a LOT more $$$).

Michele and Dale Patterson (archivist at the United Methodist Church Archives in Madison, NJ) provided us with software (XML and text editors) and an array of handy files to use in the workshop and afterward. Via PowerPoint slides, she gave us a good background on EAD and XML. She also explained how to use the code correctly, since there are a number of ways to make errors (although the XML editor, oXygen, showed us immediately where and how we went wrong).

There were around 35 people in the class, and most had no experience with EAD. At times, the class was slowed by individual class members' technical challenges, but we thoroughly covered all the ground in the agenda and had time for lots of questions.

Michele talked a bit about the standards to use with EAD and why it is very important to use them. What I found out later, when I sat in on the NY Caucus meeting, was that she's working with a few other EAD pros to create a consortium of organizations that will put all their EAD finding aids in one spot so that they are easily locatable and searchable by potential users. The idea is based on the Online Archive of California (definitely check it out). All these organizations need to apply the same standards to their EAD documents to make the search functions and style sheets work correctly on each.

Michele also explained how EAD documents are divided into two main sections, the "header" and the "archdesc." Because so much of the information we deal with as archivists and librarians is specific to the repository, the top section of the EAD document is dedicated to the finding aid itself, and not the collection. That portion is the header. It contains specific codes for the repository and descriptive and identifying information about the finding aid (names, dates, creator, etc.). This portion of the finding aid usually is invisible to the public, but provides valuable information to someone working with the document on the back end.

The other section, the archdesc, is further divided into two parts:
1. did = the description of the collection as a whole
2. dsc = the actual inventory (boxes, folders, etc.)
Here's one example of the did portion of a finding aid, as displayed online: The Plainfield Garden Club Finding Aid (I reprocessed the collection, but did not write the finding aid). So, from the top all the way down to the Container Listing is the did. After that, it's all dsc.

Mind you, many organizations do not go into as much detail as we did in the inventory. Here's an example of a short, but sweet finding aid with a pretty nifty style sheet: Alice Gold and Silver Mine Records. It fulfills many of the DACS requirements, but does it in a minimalist way.

In the workshop, we worked off our own finding aids to enter content into a template Michele provided. She also gave us a style sheet that unfortunately didn't include some of the elements I had in my finding aid. As the class went on, I wished more and more that we had another workshop on style sheets. It seemed that the answer to many of my questions revolved around them and other things we wouldn't be covering in the introductory course.

Because he was sitting to my right, I was able to ask Dale quite a few questions. He was very helpful and pointed me to the EAD Cookbook, where I could learn more about the more advanced stuff. Now I just need to carve out some time to apply what I've learned.

Some folks had difficulty with the inventory section, but since it was hierarchically based, I could follow the code pretty well. I liked using oXygen because it made it so much easier than coding by hand. The templates and style sheets were already entered into the software, so we just needed to apply the elements and attributes to our content. We also were able to open "working document" versions of our EAD files within our browsers. This way, we could track our progress each time we saved a new change to the document. Talk about instant gratification!

Overall, this workshop exceeded my expectations. Michele and Dale did an excellent job making EAD easy to understand and apply. I now feel a lot more comfortable noodling around with EAD and look forward to learning more about this very useful way of making collections more accessible.

The Kindness of Strangers

2010-11-05T11:38:00.000-04:00

My dear friend Jerome used to say, "If you do what you always did, you'll get what you always got, so change it up." Sometimes when I bump up against a wall, I'll hear his voice in my memory, gently reminding me that it's time to stop being Super Deb and ask for help. This week, I asked for help with my resume/CV.

I started by reaching out to the Archives & Archivists (A&A) list serv sponsored by the Society of American Archivists (of which I'm a member). Individuals do not have to be members or even archivists to post to the list. I've read inquiries posted by professionals in other fields seeking advice and the useful and speedy responses by list subscribers.

After thanking list members for their help in the past, I asked if the A&Aers would be willing to send me their resumes and if anyone would be willing to give mine a review. Essentially, I was looking for some typical examples of archivists' resumes and some constructive criticism. I was impressed and gratified by the number of people willing to help. Further, I was moved by the people who took the time to pick through my CV and provide thoughtful and practical suggestions (nearly all of which I've been applying to the document I'm reworking).

It was interesting to see how many people had worked at their university libraries and later had been hired at those institutions. At one point, I felt a bit intimidated by some of the CVs of people who have been archivists for many years and were quite accomplished. However, I was reminded that my internships and other recent work experiences are valuable and worth a look, too.

Probably the biggest challenge is balancing my previous careers with this new one. For years, I straddled a few different, albeit related, fields: technical writing and editing, feature writing and editing, and corporate communications. There were logical career moves that could be linked easily within a chronological resume. Now that I've changed careers to something quite different, the challenge is to write an appealing resume/CV that will show how key experience and skills from the previous fit comfortably within the current work.

While not all of the A&A topics are as collegial and helpful as my "help request" has been, I remain a big fan of the list's members. Now, it's up to me to give help where and when I can to pay forward the kindness that was extended to me.

Archive and Library Visits (Updated, Corrections)

2010-10-21T15:18:00.002-04:00

From August 2010

November 29, 2010 update: This morning, Gina from the Utah State Archives took the time to send me an email that corrected some of my misunderstandings. Consequently, I've updated the text below (in bold) to reflect the changes. Apologies for any inconveniences my misinterpretations may have caused.

The week before John and I left Utah for our cross-country adventure, I had the opportunity to visit the Utah State Archives, Utah State History (formerly known as the Utah State Historical Society) and the University of Utah's Marriott Library. I had contacted both facilities in advance to arrange for private tours. Whenever I ask for tours, I am asked "why?" in some polite way. So, I've developed a very quick elevator speech telling folks that I'm an archivist and I'm interested in learning more about the institution's holdings and preservation techniques. I also want to know more about the kinds of research questions the archivists, historians, and librarians handle. Luckily, I had excellent tour guides.

By the time I visit one of these cultural heritage institutions, I've usually scoured the web site to see how these pros describe their collections -- the content on their web pages as well as any finding aids that might be online. Why expend all the effort? Well, despite the MLIS degree and recent experience, I'm still learning, and I enjoy the research process.

I believe everyone has at least one specialty -- whether it's career related or otherwise (just look at all those food blogs, mine included). For instance, one of my specialties is research. Back when I wrote feature stories for a popular engineering magazine, my favorite part of the job was the research, especially the interviews (which probably explains my love of oral histories). I also enjoyed putting together all the pieces of the puzzle to tell the story -- a big part of describing collections, it turns out.

Utah State Archives/Utah State History
Visiting the Utah State Archives had been on my to-do list for a while since I'd heard about their big, automated, climate-controlled records area. While that's certainly impressive (see the photo above), it doesn't hold a candle to what's in the basement of Utah State History. According to Gina, of the Utah State Archives, it "is a division of the Department of Administrative Services while Utah State History is a division of the Department of Community and Culture. The collections held by each are separately acquired, organized and stored (not to mention funded).

From August 2010

OK, it's a fancy shower from a Salt Lake hotel, but it's only one of a city block's worth of objects under what people typically think of as the state archives. Again, Gina says, "The joint research center was opened in 2005 as a service to research patrons since the collections are next-door to each other and it did not make sense to have two research locations. Previously, the Historical Society operated a library on the second floor of the depot and the State Archives operated a research center in its old location behind the State Capitol building."

From August 2010

My apologies for the less-than-optimal photos; it was a bit dark in some areas. Utah State History used to have a full museum space upstairs in what used to be the Union Station train depot. Although there are exhibits in the entry hall, it no longer has a formal museum space, and most of the objects live down in the basement (regrettably not climate controlled, unlike the records building, which also protects some records dating back to 1850).

From August 2010

Along with those acres of objects, the space holds a range of items you'd expect to see in an archives, papers, lots of pamphlets, rare books (many on aspects of Mormonism), maps, photographs, films, video tape, and a lot of microfilm.

From August 2010

Speaking of film, the archivists found that they had quite a few nitrate photographs that were deteriorating rapidly. Since that's not just a problem, but a hazard, they arranged for special packaging and some meat freezers to be brought downstairs so that the photos could be frozen to prevent fires and possible explosions.

From August 2010

The research center (think reading room of a library) holds old-fashioned card catalogs of the photo collections. It also has a large collection of school yearbooks. One issue with holding yearbooks is that they tend to get torn (it's true! people come to tear out their photos or photos of others) or vandalized (mustachioed girls, crossed-out eyes, etc.). Fortunately, Utah State History keeps multiple copies of the yearbooks they receive from donors in case of such actions.

From August 2010

Visitors also find volumes on Utah law and history in the research center.

From August 2010

My very knowledgeable tour guide and research center reference librarian Greg Walz showed me some of the microfilm stored off the main room.

From August 2010

Because the Latter Day Saints have genealogy pretty much sewn up in Salt Lake City, Utah State History historians tend to send folks to the Family History Library a few blocks away when those kinds of questions arise. Gina let me know that the State Archives only sends people to the Family History Library for records they do not hold, such as items from other countries.

Finally, I was amazed that State Archives' records received the red carpet treatment, while the historical items were stored without any climate control (with the exception of items receiving conservation help in refrigerators or freezers). I wish them a great, big, preservation grant to retrofit the building for climate control.

University of Utah, Marriott Library
While I would have liked to have taken photos inside the library, my guide, Peter Kraus said it was prohibited due to student privacy protections. That's fine by me, so other than my photos of the Special Collections Department, you'll find the photo credits as given on Flickr.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Marriott Library is that there are art works everywhere, down to these bronze book sculptures found on the exterior of the building.

Copyright Marriott Library, University of Utah.

It's an impressively large building with lots of space for studying...

Copyright Marriott Library, University of Utah, photo taken by Mary Ross.

taking classes...

Copyright Marriott Library, University of Utah, photo taken by Mary Ross.

developing new techniques...

Copyright Marriott Library, University of Utah, photo taken by Mary Ross.

and much more.

Copyright Marriott Library, University of Utah, photo taken by Mary Ross.

The Marriott Library holds 3.2 million volumes, but it continues to weed in favor of electronic versions of journals, etc. There is a storage facility very similar to the one in the state archives, which holds 1.2 million volumes including rare books and items from the Fine Arts Library. The first floor is designated as a food zone, and students/staff may have meals delivered there. The library recently completed a $5 million renovation, which included those lovely study alcoves shown above. I was a bit jealous, and thought I'd probably have spent more time on campus if my colleagues and I had those alcoves (and pizza delivery).

Six percent of the collection was weeded in order to make space for those fancy computer classrooms. Each of the 12 classrooms can hold up to 70 students. Outside the classrooms were very fancy (and in my mind, vastly overpriced at $5000 each) chairs designed just for the U's students. Speaking of the students, the library serves the students especially well by providing academic advisors within the spacious Knowledge Commons.

The Marriott is pretty famous for its Middle East Study Center (2nd oldest after Harvard). They have on staff a Middle East Cataloger as well as several multilingual librarians to help researchers and students.

Throughout the library are spaces where students can use a variety of techniques to study and learn. My favorite was the glass walls where students wrote with dry erase markers to demonstrate their theories.

Special Collections Tour
When Peter needed to go back to work, he put me in touch with Dr. Paul A. Mogren, a librarian and professor working in Special Collections. Luckily, Paul was providing reference desk support, so I sat with him as he described the holdings at Marriott Library. We overlooked the reading room, which happened to be empty at 4 pm in the afternoon.

From September 2010

The Special Collections floor is the only place in the library where visitors can see exhibits. When I was there, the exhibits included a Mexican book exhibit and an artists' book exhibit, showcasing works from their book arts program. Yet another reason to move to Utah.

As Paul showed me around, I was impressed with the sheer size of the place.

From September 2010

Well, that and the fact that it wasn't located in the basement.

From September 2010

Since it was recently renovated, the archives still had room for expansion. The holdings include more than 1,500 manuscripts. Some of those include the papers of Marriner Stoddard Eccles, probably most well known for having served as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve between 1934 and 1948. Also among the collections are the papers of Barney C. Clark (developed the Jarvik-7 artificial heart), loads of winter sports and ski archives, and the university archives.

The whole library is pretty darn impressive, and I'm looking forward to my next visit when I'm back in town.

Back in New Jersey

2010-10-03T09:14:00.000-04:00

Typically, I keep this blog updated about once a week, but since the previous post, John and I have taken an epic cross-country adventure road trip in my 13 year old Honda Accord (which now sports over 180K miles on the odometer). We stopped at every national park and monument along our path, and then some. Although half our trip was spent at Yellowstone National Park, we explored the southern portion of Montana, a good deal of Wyoming and South Dakota, and stopped at museums in Michigan and New York State (The Ford and Corning Museum of Glass, to be exact).

I took more than 1500 digital photos. Probably 600 more than was necessary. (Really, how many shots of bison do I need after the first 20?) While I continue cropping and adjusting the photos I've selected for online sharing, please enjoy the tiny videos (36 seconds or shorter) I've posted at YouTube (just click on the links below).

Bison Walking Very Close to the Car

Geyser in Full Force at Yellowstone

Fountain Paint Pots at Yellowstone

Coyote in the Hayden Valley of Yellowstone Capturing a Mouse

Coyote Called Back by His Fellows in Yellowstone

Park City Museum Posts

2010-08-29T08:19:00.000-04:00

Now that my work at the Park City Museum has ended, I thought this one-stop link page would be handy for those interested in my writings on the topic. The posts below are in chronological order from earliest to latest. Please leave any thoughts or suggestions in the comments section below the links. Thanks!

Wednesday June 10, 2010
Sunday June 20, 2010
Tuesday June 29, 2010
Saturday July 17, 2010
Saturday July 24, 2010
Saturday July 31, 2010
Monday August 16, 2010
Friday August 27, 2010

Tying Up Loose Ends

2010-08-27T00:22:00.000-04:00

I have been writing this post in my head for about a week. As is the case in any work transition, it has been hectic wrapping up the work and planning to move back East. But, I have been thinking, in a very user-centric way, how to best present everything I've learned about the New Park Mining Company records and how to instruct those who come after me to do the same.

Since my last blog post, I have accomplished two big goals:
1. I wrote a finding aid based on the descriptions in the inventory of the collection (in Word and not EAD, as I would have liked, but that's another story that involves the Archivists' Toolkit and a great deal of sighing), and
2. I developed a plan with step-by-step instructions on how to keep the collection moving along after I've gone.

Earlier today, during my last meeting with Emily the Archivist, I mentioned that my favorite part of the post-processing work was the research and writing of the History and Scope and Content Note portions of the finding aid. I also enjoyed writing the series and subseries descriptions because the conciseness of those sections really made me focus on the nuggets that would attract researchers.

Because I had done a portion of the processing (along with three other History Chicks) and reviewed the meatiest records (the 20 boxes of General Files, those marvelous journals, and the oversized items) during the description process, I had a feeling of what needed to go into the up-front sections of the finding aid. Along the way, I had photocopied items and kept a running Company History file of my own, which I passed along to Emily during our meeting.

At slow points during my three hours of front desk coverage this week, I combed the Past Perfect database for related images in the museum's collection (for potential exhibits and for the Related Materials section of the finding aid). I used the personal names, corporate names, and subjects from the Keywords and Search Terms section of the finding aid to research the photos. It was especially useful to sort by Description field because all the terms are indexed in that field. I was rewarded with approximately 50 images of predecessor mines, New Park Mining Company personnel, and plenty of exterior photos of the company's holdings.

In writing the finding aid, I also described the arrangement of the collection and its series/subseries. This part of the process was greatly helped by all the notes I'd taken along the way in the Moleskine notebooks my mother-in-law had given me for Christmas. I also had asked the others processing the collection to note on folders when arrangements changed or differed from others in the materials they handled. There were many cases where we imposed order because the materials came to us in such a rough state. The Arrangement Note also allowed me to explain some of the decisions we made in order to make the collection useful to future researchers as well as other archivists.

On that subject, I'm just going to digress for a moment. I am now convinced that when working on a large collection with a group of people, it is key that at least one person has the big picture view of the collection. In this case, that person was me because I was writing the inventory as well as doing my share of the processing. Because I had the bird's eye view, I could take responsibility for the arrangement.

After I had completed the portions of the finding aid that I could (there is still a quantity of canceled checks requiring processing and description), I set to work on the documentation for what should come next. For a day, I focused my energy on envisioning the future of the collection. I began to prioritize the activities that needed to be accomplished first, then I filled in the steps needed to achieve those goals. In today's meeting with Emily, I walked her through the plan and checklist, discussing everything from completing the remaining processing to budgeting for and promoting potential exhibits. We also discussed responding to calls for papers for conferences in fields such as mining history and archival studies.

I'm a bit sad that I might not be in Park City when the exhibit happens, but I will keep in touch with Emily and the other fantastic women at the Museum who have made my summer so meaningful. I will miss my morning commutes through the canyons to one of the nicest places I have ever worked.

From August 2010

The View from 10,000 Feet

2010-08-16T13:16:00.000-04:00

As I flew back to NJ for a short visit, I had a few hours to consider the work coming to a close at the Park City Museum. While it may seem like there is a large quantity of work left, we had decided to rehouse the checks as simply as possible, thus saving a lot of processing time. I've been focused on describing and arranging the 20 boxes of general files and 16 boxes of oversized items, so it was Emily who developed the system for housing the checks in the oversized boxes.

From August 2010

Here, you can see Emily's technique. As she opened the drawers, she found bundled (so far) checks, bank statements, and duplicates. She kept the original order since the majority of what she had found was in chronological and numerical order. In some cases, she used "blue board" (or acid-free, thick corrugaded board) to create a bridge of sorts to keep the lid from touching the checks, but still have it fit the box. She's very resourceful!

Other than the checks, last week we finished sorting through the vouchers and check copies. The New Park Mining Company kept multiple copies of checks, vouchers, and other documents, but in our materials, we didn't find a lot of overlap from year to year. That meant we would need to keep all the materials.

Well, not all the materials. After some friendly emails back and forth, the lovely folks at the Utah State Archives came to visit (while I was at storage, regrettably) and look at 6 boxes we wanted to give away to a good home. Most of these items were newsletters or reports from the Lead Industries Association, or publications of the Utah Mining Association that the president of the New Park Mining Company collected. Because these materials were not personalized in any way, did not fall into the collecting policy of the museum, and would fit better at the state archives (not to mention give us precious space), we were happy to put them into safe hands.

Otherwise, I still have yet to make the Archivists' Toolkit work at the musuem. Since I only have a few weeks left to do my work, I'm going to use an EAD template to build a framework for the museum to use after I've gone. I'm also going to develop a Word version of the finding aid in case they want just the content to add to the Past Perfect database.

The important part of the finding aid is the content, although making it accessible online is key (whether in EAD or HTML). Because it will describe a sizable collection, it will need to be easily searchable for researchers focused on specific elements, e.g., mining injuries, union negotiations, or stockholders. No doubt, I will be very busy with the task of writing the finding aid (well, as much as I can do without all of the collection being processed).

I wish had more time to work on the collection and its finding aid, but my last day is coming very quickly. Then, John and I take an epic road trip back to NJ, stopping at national parks and museums along the way. In the meantime, I keep sending out resumes and hoping that a good spot opens soon.

The Curse of the Clean Desk

2010-07-31T22:32:00.000-04:00

From July 2010

The curse of the clean desk is that once it's cleaned, there will inevitably emerge a pile of interesting, albeit complex, items that will land upon it requiring work of some sort. On the other hand, the joy is in the journey to the clean desk. Why else would I choose to become an archivist if I didn't love the challenge of solving the historical puzzle that is a set of records in heavy disarray? Well, there also is the art of the description, which has been such a big part of this experience at the museum this summer.

From July 2010

The funny-looking tube hanging from the ceiling is a fume vent (very handy for dusty and dirty collections such as the New Park Mining Company records I've been working on lately). It's somewhat loud, but as I've been working at this desk, I have hooked the laptop up to the network, and have been listening to my Pandora.com stations at a loud volume to cover the noise.

I really should have taken a before photo. The desk had been covered with items of varied purposes and origins, as well as oversized boxes with their contents. I also had been using a cart to hold several boxes since I kept having to return to the same 6 or 7 boxes to file more items.

From July 2010

I really like having a workspace shared with museum objects. There's just something about being present with all that history that seems to make me smile from the inside out. From the shelves' perspective, to their right are expandable shelving units where all kinds of interesting objects are held. For example, Wendy and I recently made space for the New Park Collection's oversized items by moving a beautiful, yellow, intricately beaded dress that once belonged to one of Park City's earliest millionaires, the Silver Queen (Susanna Egera Bransford Emery Holmes Delitch Engalitcheff -- she was married a few times).

This room was originally a liquor store. Although you cannot see the doors to the right of the desk, there are Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control stickers still on the glass of the doors.

From July 2010

Here's how I left the general files and oversized items yesterday. We've been hanging slips of paper out of the boxes to keep the subseries easily accessible. Miscellaneous items keep popping up in the vouchers that Jenette and Kate have been processing at the storage facility. Now that I've "finished" (until all the vouchers are done, I won't really consider them done) the box lists in an Excel file, it's much easier to locate which box holds a folder I need.

For example, on Thursday, I had created a file for licenses and registrations since we found a registration for a still, among the other items. (Why the miners would have a still up at the mine is ponderous. These fellow spent a great deal of time blasting in the mines, and had large stores of explosives on site. All safety issues aside, the registration said that as long as the paid registration was posted publicly, there was no issue.)

Late yesterday, in a pile of very unrelated items (a document for a course taught by mine manager Tom P. Costas for a local vocational school, Utah Taxpayers Association flyers, and mining injury reports), I found a purchaser's license. It took just seconds to find where that folder I'd created the day before was now housed.

Tom P. Costas is one of the many frequently occurring names we've found in this collection. He's easily remembered for his gorgeous handwriting and flourished signature. His correspondence with W.H.H. Cranmer, mine president, is well worth the read. Yesterday, Emily found some great photos in Past Perfect of Cranmer, Costas, and the mine itself. They will be key to an exhibition of the collection.

From July 2010

It's not pretty, but it works great for the moment until we can say this portion is no longer "in process." However, I'm looking forward to when the box labels arrive and these can be labeled properly.

I also will be very happy when I've properly installed the Archivists' Toolkit. I've tried quite a few times to make the MySQL and AT programs talk to each other in a kind and loving way, but have been very frustrated at my inability to make that happen. The developers had been very helpful, but I haven't heard back recently. Hopefully, we'll be able to resolve the issues and I can start working on the actual EAD finding aid. Otherwise, I'll have to code it by hand, which is no trivial task.

In either case, I don't have much time left out here in Utah to accomplish the task. If need be, I can always make copies of those Excel files (where I've included detailed descriptions of the materials) and other historic documentation I've been collecting along the way, and write the finding aid back home in NJ to email back to Park City. Until then, I'll just keep plugging away at the New Park Mining Company collection.

Behind the Scenes in the Changing Gallery

2010-07-24T23:10:00.000-04:00

While every day arranging and describing the New Park Mining Collection yields fun and riveting surprises, one of the other elements of working at a museum I enjoy is seeing what happens behind the scenes of exhibit preparation.

From July 2010

Two weeks ago, I took this set of photos while one of the museum's many dedicated volunteers, Mary, examined an original uniform of Park City's marching band members. There are quite a few holes in the lower right front of the jacket, possibly from the tuba playing, possibly from moths.

From July 2010

Mary, along with Wendy (the curator of exhibits) and Emily (the archivist), decided the best way to handle displaying the jacket would be to temporarily sew in a black fabric backing and support. It's important that work of this nature (improvements done to an historic object for display purposes) be reversible, so there was a bit of discussion about the type of thread to be used.

From July 2010

Here, Mary is measuring for temporary mending. We're down in the research library, where we keep large copies of Park City maps from the turn of the last century (and before); great photos of the City, it's inhabitants, transportation, and events; historical objects; and some records.

From July 2010

Here's a close-up of the damage to the wool.

From July 2010

Wendy putting the band uniform pants onto her homemade mannequin.

From July 2010

Mary and Wendy made some adjustments to the mannequin when we discovered that its legs wouldn't fit inside the pant legs the way they are hanging in the photo. Velcro was added to the opposite sides of the "thighs" and torso, which made the pants hang "normally."

From July 2010

Last week, the mannequin was moved upstairs to the changing gallery in preparation for the Park City Music exhibit. On the table is a large display of a photo with removable portions that tell the stories of some of the marching band members. The tuba player, whose uniform is on the mannequin, kept playing with the band despite having the lung disease silicosis.

From July 2010

Under this vitrine are pieces that go with the story of the singing cowboys. It's a great little story displayed here:

From July 2010

One of the biggest parts of the exhibit centers around the history of local radio station KPCW and its contributions to Park City. The station, which recently celebrated its 35th birthday, donated some of its equipment (which reminded me of my college radio days) for the exhibit. On the right side of the photo, you can just about see the pink gum stuck to the side of the console. I'm sure there's a story there, but we don't know what it is.

From July 2010

After taking the photos above, I went back downstairs to the library to continue working on the New Park collection. When I came back up, on my way out for the day, I saw that the gallery's preparation was in full swing.

From July 2010

I can only imagine how inviting the exhibit will be on Monday.