Holidays in Chester Exhibit. Photo credit Deb Schiff, copyright 2013.
In early October 2013, I began asking my coworkers and volunteers if they had any holiday objects, photos, or other items I could borrow for the upcoming Holidays in Chester exhibit I was planning. Unfortunately, no one had anything to offer. I then turned to our most generous donor, Joan Case, to ask if she had anything I could display.
Later that week, Joan came to my office with a giant smile and a three-ring binder filled with the most marvelous holiday postcards from the early 1900s and 1910s. They had been sent to her mother and uncle when they were children. The cards were in excellent condition and properly housed in polyester sleeves. Importantly, they scanned and printed well when I made facsimiles for the months-long exhibit (November through early January). While I'd love to use the originals in an exhibit, it would be a shame for these gorgeous cards to fade while on display under UV lights.
All of the items in the exhibit (with the exception of a turkey-shaped salt shaker and some fabric leaves I'd bought at the dollar store) were facsimiles. Because the postcards were overwhelmingly Christmas-themed, I needed to supplement them with a diverse array of holiday items. I also required enough items to populate the main display case by the front desk and the new small, wall case I recently purchased. The little case is mounted on a wall adjacent to my office. The facsimiles in that case show the backs and fronts of holiday postcards, so that patrons could see the warm greetings sent to Joan's family members.
Holidays in Chester Exhibit. Photo credit Deb Schiff, copyright 2013.
Although it also was Christmas-themed, I made a smaller facsimile of a masthead from the Christmas 1944 issue of The Honor Roll newsletter. I remembered what a striking image of the town it had, and thought it would provide a focal point for the main display. You can see it in the upper right corner of the photo above this paragraph.
The remaining items in the exhibit originated in The Mendham-Chester Tribune and the Observer-Tribune, its successor newspaper. These materials included local stories that highlighted the season, as well as advertisements. Surprisingly, there weren't many holiday stories that could be used in the exhibit. Perseverance pays, however, because I did manage to find one item highlighting former Mayor (and famed chicken farmer) Janet Abeles cooking in her kitchen (lower center of the photo above).
The early (1950s) Tribunes' publishers kept a tradition of selling ads to local businesses for a special holiday section. These notices included thank yous to patrons, holiday greetings, and reminders of items for sale. Often, they featured lively holiday designs.
Holidays in Chester Exhibit. Photo credit Deb Schiff, copyright 2013.
Above is a close-up photo of three advertisements and one postcard. The original postcard has a lovely 3D effect with raised gold sections indicating a folded-back area where an attractive, blonde, early 19th century woman dressed hat to toe in holiday red is carrying a gift. It's a lovely card and the facsimile doesn't do it justice. Thankfully, our donor has hinted that the card's future includes becoming part of her family's collection at the library.
The advertisements include one for a Jeep on sale at Apgar's Garage, as well as two New Year's Eve parties at the Chester Inn and Red Cricket Inn.
Two major exhibits are in the works for 2014:
Celebrating the 350th anniversary of New Jersey, I'll be mounting an exhibit showcasing select sections of our 1860 New Jersey Topographical Map. The exhibit will be coordinated with a featured speaker, Maxine Lurie, on April 29th.
The 10th anniversary of the Chester Library addition and renovation takes place in 2014. We have many blueprints and photographs that will be highlighted in the exhibit occupying the cases during the second half of the year.
As I continue to learn more about exhibits, I try to put my new knowledge into practice. The greatest teacher has been the viewing of other exhibits, whether in libraries, museums, or other institutions. So, my cultural institutional friends, don't be surprised if I pinch one of your better practices!
You might remember my nephew Tyler from other adventures we've had -- a Famous Fat Dave's food tour of NYC and a special food tour of our own devising. Tyler's now in the undergraduate engineering program at Rutgers University. With that in mind, I asked him if he would be interested in visiting the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange. "I'm all in!" he replied.
I quickly contacted the Park's archivist, Leonard DeGraaf, who very kindly made space in his schedule to give us a tour and show us some of archive's treasures. The tour was one of the most fun and interesting archives tours I've had -- not only due to DeGraaf's depth of knowledge and generosity, but also because Tyler had a great time learning about Edison and why archives are important to researchers and the public at large (from someone other than his Auntie Deb).
The big surprise came at the end of our tour when we sat down in the archive reading room to see some of the treasures DeGraaf had set aside to show us. Not only did we see some remarkable examples of Edison's documentation, but we learned that DeGraaf was about to publish a book! Since our visit, the book has been published (with a Forward by Bill Gates, no less), and it is called Edison and the Rise of Innovation. DeGraaf very kindly gave me select portions of the book which whet my appetite to read the entire text. The photos are beautiful, and the text is very well written.
About the Archivist
Leonard DeGraaf has just celebrated his 12th year as an archivist at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park's archives. DeGraaf says he became an archivist "because I enjoy working with original documents and making them available to researchers."
In addition to publishing his new book, his current project is arranging Edison's correspondence files for the years 1920-1931. Because the inventor was so connected to his businesses and interested in what the general public had to say about products, I can only imagine the linear footage dedicated to those correspondence files.
As archivists, most of us love what we do. DeGraaf is no exception. "I enjoy the diversity of archival work -- processing documents, writing finding aids, answering reference questions. I also enjoy learning new things. Edison was involved in so many different activities -- there is always something new to learn," he says. But as with any profession, ours comes with inherent challenges, mainly concerning storage space. At the Park, DeGraaf concurs, "lack of proper storage space to protect the collections is our biggest challenge."
When I asked DeGraaf what advice he would give a student or young professional, he replied,
I would advise students and young professionals to look for meaningful volunteer opportunities at cultural institutions and take advantage of free or low-cost training opportunities. Libraries, museums, and archives often offer workshops – a great way to learn new skills and meet other professionals. Anything you can do to enhance your writing and public speaking abilities – two important career skills – will also make you more competitive.
About the Archives and Collections at Thomas Edison National Historical Park
One of the most remarkable things about the Park is that "most of it is left as it was when Edison was here," says DeGraaf. The U.S. Congress designated Thomas Edison’s West Orange laboratory and nearby estate, Glenmont, as Edison National Historic Site in September 1962. In 2009, the lab and Glenmont were re-designated Thomas Edison National Historical Park.
The archive houses 5-6 million pages of material. While the Park has 29 full-time staffers, only two are archivists. The Park's patrons run the gamut from students and academics to all manner of media, park staff, and the general public. As far as the archive goes, most of its patrons contact the archivists by email or telephone. DeGraaf and his colleague respond to 800-1000 reference requests per year.
"Because Edison employed thousands of workers in his factories, we receive many requests from people doing family or genealogical research," DeGraaf clarifies. There are no personnel files, but there are payroll records. However, those records are not yet indexed or digitized (sounds like a volunteer opportunity to me).
Among the unsung heroes of the collection are Edison's business and financial records. Two examples are shown below.
The experimental accounts in particular are valuable because they give a snapshot of the work in the lab on a given experiment. Was is profitable? If not, why not? These are the relevant questions that researchers can answer by looking at the notebooks and account books. DeGraaf says, "We need more research on the operation of Edison's companies to understand why they succeeded or failed."
Another fascinating, but underutilized part of the archive "are the many letters Edison received from the public on a wide variety of topics. These letters offer an opportunity to study social attitudes about technology and invention in the early 20th century," says DeGraaf.
Eighty of the collections have been processed, and he notes that while finding aids are sent out at request, the Park does need a way for researches to access a guide to the archives. Meanwhile "the Thomas Edison Papers Project at Rutgers University has published material from the Edison archives for the period up to 1919. Of this published material, documents for the period up to 1898 have been digitized and are available at the Edison Papers Project website: http://edison.rutgers.edu/," says DeGraaf.
In terms of use, the Park's collection of 60,000 historic photographs is the most popular. For example, here is one of the man himself that DeGraaf kindly sent me. Edison is sitting at the desk that still resides in library shown in the photo of DeGraaf.
Photo courtesy of Thomas Edison National Historical Park.
While the archival collection is mostly paper-based, the museum collection contains 400,000 objects and 35,000 sound recordings on disc and cylinder formats. When Tyler and I toured the museum, we saw where Edison would audition new musical acts for his recording label.
Tyler in Edison's Music Room
Edison's Music Room
Edison's Music Room
DeGraaf's favorite items are Edison's laboratory notebooks. He says, "They offer an intimate look at how Edison approached invention and provide details about how he designed the phonograph, electric light, and many other laboratory products."
It is especially illuminating to see the shared research and meticulous data collected at the laboratory. It is even more profound to discover the impact all this work had on the world. DeGraaf's new book points out the monumental affect Edison's labs had:
When he was born in 1847, there were no industrial research laboratories, no phonographs, no motion picture cameras, and no electric power systems, let alone practical electric lights. In 1931, the year Edison died, the United States produced 320 lightbulbs and consumed 110.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. Seventy-five million Americans attended the movies each week, spending $719 million ($10.6 billion today) at the box office.
When the National Parks re-open, I encourage you to tour the museum and outlying buildings. Along with self-guided phone tours, some of the park staff give tours. Also visit Edison's home, Glenmont -- it's a short ride away on a large piece of property that should be especially pretty with the leaves changing now.
The archive is not open to the public, so I appreciate DeGraaf letting a fellow archivist and her nephew have an inside peek at the Thomas Edison National Park's archival collections.
Contact Information
Since National Parks are closed at the moment, I recommend emailing so that any inquiry would be waiting when the furloughed workers return.
I'll admit it. I'm a bit envious of libraries with multiple display cases and areas dedicated to exhibits. While the image above shows a fine, sizable display case, it's the only one we have at Chester Library. If we had, perhaps a square museum case, I could place it in that corner all the way in the back by the quiet study rooms. I could outfit the case with one of our not-quite-rare, but certainly scarce, old books. For now, I'll be happy with the one above.
The exhibit shown in the image above is focused on the terrific Tommie Barker, our resident sports legend. She played professional women's baseball in 1950, not long before the end of the All-American Girls' Baseball League. Tommie (whose father wanted a boy and whose real name is Lois) played softball on a team she helped create, the Chester Farmerettes and previously on the Roxbury High School team before the League's tryouts in Irvington, New Jersey.
After earning a spot in the "camp" phase of the tryouts she took several trains to finally arrive in Indiana. Tommie earned her spot as the oldest rookie in the League at age 27, although she fibbed about her age and said she was 21. She was signed to the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Chicks for the 1950 season, and quickly made new friends in her teammates. The framed photo in the upper right corner of the image above shows her team photo.
Because Tommie's items are on loan from her personal collection, she agreed that I could make digital facsimiles of all the materials for a future online exhibit. The yearbook in the center bottom of the case is from the Chester Library collection, although it was a donation from a former Chester resident who wanted it to go to a good home. You can see Tommie in the yearbook on the left page, top-most photo.
When I visited Tommie to talk with her about her life and experience as a professional women's baseball player, I learned that she only played for one year because her father had become ill. "Back in those days," she said, "You had to come home and take care of your parents." When the League mailed her a renewal contract for 1951, she returned it unsigned due to her devotion to her father.
She didn't keep her uniform, but she did hold on to the round sweater patch (on the right) and the shield-shaped uniform patch (on the left). They are in excellent condition, and I placed them on top of some black velvet cut in a way that I hoped would make them pop even more against the light blue background. The blue paper is actually archival wrapping paper which is acid-free and buffered. I thought that it would provide a stable background for the items in the case.
The other framed items include a tinted black and white portrait of Tommie and her certificate from the Baseball Hall of Fame, which had inducted the League in 1998. When I unframed the items to make digital facsimiles, I discovered two other photos in the portrait's frame. First, there was black and white signed portrait of Tommie in the same pose, and a baby picture with three children. When I see Tommie next, I'll ask her about that baby photo.
I used small bench weights to keep the framed items in a tilted standing position, hiding them with other items. For future exhibits, I will likely wrap them in black velvet to make them less noticeable. One of the items used to camouflage the weights is a digital facsimile I received from the Grand Rapids Public Library. It is a copy of a 1950 program from a Grand Rapids Chicks game. The Special Collections librarian at GRPL made a digital copy of a few of the inside pages, including one that shows the team photo. I'll hang onto that one for the online exhibit.
The baseball is held in place by a coiled string weight that you cannot see from above. These types of weights are typically used to hold book pages open. They resemble white shoelaces. Finally, I also used the tilted frames to hide some silica gel packets to help prevent humidity from causing damage to the items.
On top of the case, I used an acrylic stand to hold a list of the items within the case. I hope that it helps to discourage patrons from using the case as a stand for their items. Because the case is currently located between a copier/print station and another copier, I've seen my share of people setting items on top of it.
Last, but far from least, I was able to locate an historian who is an expert on women in baseball for a companion program on July 25. Leslie Heaphy is the author of the Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball, and is an associate professor of history at Kent State University. Tommie Barker has the date on her calendar, and although the 90-year old has had some health challenges, she can't wait for an evening of women's baseball history in her hometown of Chester.
Some may characterize library service as being available at the reference desk for appointments, phone calls, email and web requests, and "walk-ins." However, library service is all-encompassing, from the moment a patron enters or contacts a library until (s)he leaves/disconnects. Libraries are places that people trust for their ability to provide answers whether via the reference desk, a book or database, a special collection, or any number of resources, especially the library workers. It is for that reason that I take an holistic approach to library service.
At both of my employing libraries, I regularly work with some terrific volunteers. In Chester, one is a Friend of the library who shares great photos of her husky dog and clips newspaper articles for Local History. She had attended one of my "Caring for Your Family's Treasures" workshops and asked if I might help her with some specific preservation questions concerning some old photos and a Bible. I readily agreed because
1. She asked for my help, and that's what I do...HELP.
2. Preservation isn't work for me, it's fun.
3. I was excited to see what she would bring to my office.
4. The request entailed shopping for archival supplies, and those web sites are my kind of candy stores.
Later, the Friend brought to my office a huge family Bible, cabinet cards, and larger mounted photos all dating from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. The Bible clearly had some binding issues and had been used (as many are) to hold genealogy documents, which had become acidic and fragile. Some of the photos were in better shape than others, however all were notable not only for the sentimental value to the volunteer, but for the subjects' expressions, costumes, and poses. After we measured them, I placed the photos into suitable folders until she could put them into polyester sleeves.
She also asked me to help her select supplies and house the Bible because it was so large. The illustrated family Bible would require a custom sling to help place it inside (and remove it from) the box she would purchase. Typically, a special collections department would purchase a custom drop-front box for such an item, but these types of custom boxes can be cost-prohibitive for many people (such as our volunteer). In her case, I let her know that I would be happy to create a way of working with a box already available in dimensions suitable to her needs.
I guided her to items that she would need for this project. She navigated the University Products site easily and placed her order within an hour of her first showing me the photos. We were able to stay within her budget and begin her early preservation work.
The Friend was very grateful, and her gratitude was contagious. Not two days after our shopping session, she brought to my office the president of another local organization who needed help preserving the group's 20+ scrapbooks. As ever, I was happy to help.
Introduction
Earlier in the summer, my friend Jen and I drove down to Kennett Square, PA to visit the lovely (and quite large) Longwood Gardens. Aside from visiting the legendary gardens, we specifically went to see the Bruce Munro exhibit, Light. The works (on display until September 29) use light and color to express the artist's exhilaration felt while visiting the gardens.
The history of the gardens can be traced to the end of the 18th century, when Joshua and Samuel Peirce established an arboretum on their nearly 100 year-old family farm. By 1906, economic concerns put the arboretum in danger of being sold for lumber. Enter our hero, Pierre S. du Pont, a wealthy industrialist and renaissance man who purchased the land just to save the trees.
Jen and I toured nearly all of Longwood Gardens, staying from mid-morning until nightfall to see the changes in the Light installations as well as the water shows. Below are just a sample of the many photos I snapped of our visit. I hope you'll enjoy them and visit Longwood Gardens before the end of September to enjoy Bruce Munro's Light.
Introduction
It's difficult to be objective when I'm such a big fan of Karen Guancione and her art works. However, I made an effort during our second interview when we visited her "In Stitches" exhibition at the Long Beach Island Foundation for the Arts and Sciences, that ran from May 10 through June 18, 2012.
The large-scale installation is a different format than that of "A Portable Constant Obsession." The interview is different as well. Karen not only speaks about her work, but also of her relationship with her mother, a woman who has had a profound influence on her life and art.
Prior to the interview, I photographed the exhibit from a variety of different angles and heights. It's difficult to convey the size of her Bolsas de Mandado (the hanging panels of sewn plastic bags), but this opening video shows the exhibit from the vestibule of the building. As Karen walks diagonally through the installation, she helps to show the scale of the work.
The Nature of the Bolsas de Mandado
In the next video, Karen talks with me about how she fashions the panels and works within a space to mount an installation. Following the video is a close-up of a panel's grommets.
The name Bolsas de Mandado originates from the Mexican shopping bags used to carry groceries, small items, laundry, and so forth. Below, Karen tells me about the bags and what it was like to sew them into the panels. The video is followed by a photograph of the panel she uses to explain the name.
Karen's Favorite Panels and Bags
In the next series of videos, Karen and I talk about the panels that have special meaning for her. I'm especially interested in her stories of the people who have donated bags from all over the world, even under extreme circumstances. Because the videos fit together so nicely, I won't interrupt them with text.
A Mother's Role in Creating Art
In this final video, Karen talks about her very first Bolsas de Mandado panel. She also talks about her mother's bag folding, and enduring influence on her art and life. If you're like me, you'll need a tissue when you watch this piece.
Conclusion
As ever, I am privileged to be able to help document Karen's work. She makes it very easy by articulating her techniques and purposes in a lively and educational way. I look forward to the next opportunity to experience her art and ask the questions I don't normally get to ask an artist when spending time with her/his work. But that will have to wait until she returns from her rejuvenating trip to Nice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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."
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.
In the beginning of the month, I did a lot of baking and cooking for Mom's annual family party. One of the recipes is based very loosely on the Garlic and Basil Chickpea Tart of Roy Guste's The Bean Book. It's based so loosely on it in fact that I'd hardly call it the same at all.
I used 1 lb of black beans that I had soaked and cooked, then pureed to make the tart shell. In the future, I will add complementary spices to the beans before pressing them into the tart pans. By the way, they worked spectacularly well as tart shells. Flaky, like the best dough, yet much more healthy and interesting.
The filling is purely my creation -- goat cheese mixed with sun-dried tomatoes and fresh basil. That was wonderful. I should have kept some to spread on crackers or bread, it was so yummy.
Finally, I topped the tarts with asparagus I'd sauteed in olive oil with shallots, and pine nuts. The result was that the beans could have been more seasoned, but the topping was great. Lessons learned. Regardless, they were a hit with my aunt and step-uncle (who wanted the recipe). So, here's a short film about how I made the tarts.
