Photo courtesy of the National Reconnaissance Office

Executive Order 13526, “Classified National Security Information” and its two predecessors established specific, time-based declassification requirements for all national security agencies.   Despite these identical mandates, a Government-wide approach to declassification remains elusive.  Separate agency declassification programs evolved into a segmented declassification system where each agency reviewed its information and attempted to identify any classified information created by other agencies.  Agencies are required to perform the same tasks, such as completing automatic, systematic, and mandatory declassification reviews, yet their design and implementation of these requirements are disintegrated and lack interoperability, resulting in inefficient inter-agency coordination..  The declassification system has become increasingly inefficient and complex.  Accordingly, the public has become increasingly frustrated and confused by what it encounters when trying to navigate the labyrinth of agency programs.

Declassification performs a service crucial to democratic society, informing citizens and promoting responsible dialogue between the public and Government.  There are significant policy benefits from declassification that can aid national security decisions and diplomacy.  Declassification is a valuable information sharing tool, particularly when information holders must partner with stakeholders outside the intelligence and defense communities.  Information may be the newest and most important policy tool of the modern era, with declassification during operations offering a strategic advantage.  Public release not only makes policymakers accountable for their decisions and actions; it also affords agencies the opportunity to correct misinformation in the public domain and bolster their position in current debates.

One of the main recommendations found in the Board’s 2008 Report to the President on Improving Declassification included the recommendation of creating a center dedicated to declassification.  The center would focus not only on processing the huge paper backlog of records at the National Archives, but would also work to improve the declassification system across government to make it more efficient and effective for users.  The result of this recommendation was the establishment of the National Declassification Center, which has accomplished a great deal in tackling the immense 366 million page backlog of records.  However, many documents still await declassification review.  The NDC’s efforts are often stymied by the needlessly redundant and burdensome referral process, as well as the refusal by agencies to appropriately manage risk.

For these reasons, the Board recommends the President bolster the authority and capacity of the National Declassification Center with specific measures to advance a government-wide declassification strategy.

Specifically, Executive Order 13526 should be amended to eliminate the additional three years now permitted for review of multiple agency equities in all archival records (including those stored outside the NDC).   The requirement of agencies to share declassification guidance with other classifying agencies and the NDC should be strengthened.  Retention of agency declassification authority should be contingent upon sharing agency guidance.  The President should direct Agencies to consult the NDC before prioritizing their records for declassification and transfer to the National Archives.  The Interagency National Declassification Center Advisory Panel (NAP) should have representation from the public, including representation from the Government Openness advocacy community.  An inter-agency effort to develop new declassification review processes should be coordinated by the NDC and be based on a risk management approach.

Without dramatic improvement in the declassification process, the rate at which classified records are being created will drive an exponential growth in the archival backlog of classified records awaiting declassification, and public access to the nation’s history will deteriorate further.  It is am imperative that the NDC continue its leading role in working with agencies and the public to collaboratively look for new technological solutions, rooted in updated policies and practices, that tackle the growing volumes of information, particularly digital information, that await declassification review.

Photograph courtesy of the National Archives

We’ve put images of our entire collection of lantern-slide snipes on flickr. They were collected by Major Matthews, the first City Archivist.

“The rebel maid” Montague F. Phillips will be presented by The Vancouver Opera Society under the direction of Jas. C. Welch, 1923, Reference code AM54-S4-: CVA 371-2806

“Snipes” refers to anything, other than trailers or features, shown in a movie theatre. Digitized versions of these glass snipes were shown before the program at our recent Vintage Vancouver screening at the Vancity Theatre.

We are conforming to all the laws and therefore should be patronized, ~1920, Reference code AM54-S4-: CVA 371-2793

Please take a look and feel free to use them in your own shows.

Richard M. Nixon chooses this 1966 appearance at the Overseas Press Club to lay out his position on Vietnam, but not before amiably ribbing Democrats and the press.

After a boisterous introduction by the journalist Victor Riesel, Nixon explains why he has chosen to tackle the difficult and divisive subject of Vietnam, instead of just letting the current Democratic administration “stew” in its own dilemma. There are three reasons: to address a lack of accurate information, which leaves the public puzzled as to what we are doing there; because Hanoi is looking for signs of divisiveness in the upcoming election, the “loyal opposition” must make clear where it stands; and, finally, because people in this country must not just support a policy solely out of patriotism but from a genuine understanding of the situation.

Nixon is careful not to attack the Johnson administration directly, prefacing his remarks by saying, “Great policy is the direct result of competition of two relatively equal parties.” He warns that though this is the most “difficult,” “unpopular,” and “misunderstood” war in American history, “it is also the most important,” for its outcome will determine whether or not we will prevent World War III. China’s aim, he insists, is to dominate the Indo-Chinese peninsula. If it can prolong the war long enough, it will reach a sufficient nuclear capability to use atomic weapons in the region. In order to avoid South Vietnam “falling like a ripe plum” into Chinese hands, we may very well then be forced to match their heightened aggression with our own nuclear arsenal, leading to an all-out war. How do we avoid this? He dismisses vague calls to alleviate poverty in the region or to strengthen the South Vietnamese democratic institutions as well-intentioned but too slow. He calls for a moderate increase in U.S. forces (but not so much as to make it appear that South Vietnam is not fighting its own battles), continued bombing of the North, and a type of “economic quarantine,” punishing countries who persist in aiding North Vietnam.

On the diplomatic front, in any negotiations, he says he would not cede any territory or allow the formation of any coalition government that included the North Vietnamese. As for propaganda, he advocates a push for a “united United States,” recommending the conflict be referred to as “The War to Keep the Pacific From Becoming a Red Sea.” In concluding, he predicts that if these measures are followed, in 25 years, Vietnam will be seen as “America’s finest hour.” During the ensuing question period, Nixon dodges inferences about his own prospective candidacy for president, and defends then-Senate candidate Mark Hatfield who, though running as a Republican, had voiced doubts about continued American involvement in Southeast Asia.

Nixon was born in 1913. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1947. In Congress, he made a name for himself as an anti-Communist by his sharp questioning of suspected Soviet spy Alger Hiss during a session of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nixon’s less “gentlemanly” style marked him as a new breed of Republican, as was evidenced in his next campaign, described by the website biography.com:

In 1950, Nixon successfully ran for the U.S. Senate against Democratic Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas. She had been an outspoken opponent of the anti-Communist scare and the actions of the HUAAC. Employing previous campaign tactics, Nixon’s people distributed flyers on pink paper unfairly distorting Douglas’s voting record as left-wing. The Independent Review, a small Southern California newspaper, nicknamed Nixon “Tricky Dick,” a derogatory nickname that would remain with him for the rest of this life.

After a brief Senate career, Nixon was chosen to be Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice-presidential nominee. He served as vice president for eight years, taking many trips and establishing strong credentials in foreign policy. In 1960, he lost the presidential election to John F. Kennedy. After an unsuccessful run for governor of California, he ostensibly retired from politics. But as the statesmanlike tenor of this foreign policy performance makes clear, by 1966 he was already contemplating another run for the presidency. Two years later, he was elected president. After being re-elected by an overwhelming majority in 1972, however, he became enmeshed in the Watergate scandal, which brought to light many unsavory aspects of his administration and forced him to resign. This event was traumatic not just for its protagonist, but for the nation as a whole. Political reporter R.W. Apple noted:

Mr. Nixon was driven from office by the Watergate scandal, resigning in the face of certain impeachment on Aug. 9, 1974. He often acknowledged that the event would inevitably stain his pages in history, and despite strenuous and partly successful efforts over two decades to rehabilitate his reputation, he was right. It was a spot that would come not out. He never completely dispelled the sense of shame that clung to his last days in the White House. In some ways, American politics has never fully recovered, either. The break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington on June 17, 1972, and the frenzied, protracted efforts to cover it up, helped to convince many Americans that they could not trust their government.

Nixon’s character fascinated the American public. This press conference speech typifies many of the contradictions he embodied. He forcefully condemns those who would “cut and run” in Vietnam, yet critics maintain that as president that is precisely what he went on to do. He goes to great lengths to portray Republicans as “the loyal opposition,” yet once in office his partisanship eventually led to the Watergate break-in, the burgling of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, and the infamous “enemies list.” He jokes with and seemingly charms the press which he then went to extraordinary lengths to deceive and, in the case of certain reporters and newscasters, carry on personal vendettas against. As the Oxford Dictionary of Political Biography concludes: 

Nixon was one of the most controversial presidents in the 20th century and the only one in history to resign. He adopted an adversarial approach and attracted the enmity of a great many opponents. He was shy and insecure, affected by the death of two of his brothers while still young, and awkward in his dealings with others. He was keen to win and adopted tactics that facilitated his winning. Towards the end of his presidency, he adopted a siege mentality. He was a man driven from within. Life was seen in terms of a series of crises — hence the title of his book, Six Crises — and he had an inherent tendency to rigidify. Watergate was the occasion when he rigidified and consequently sacrificed the presidency.

Nixon died in 1994, at the age of 81.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

I couldn’t let St Andrews day pass without a blog post! Last year I talked about ‘The Word’ – the  journal of the United Socialist Movement which was edited and published by Guy Aldred in Glasgow. This year I’m going to stick to women teachers as I found a folder of material on the Women’s Educational Union.  They were the nearest equivalent to the NUWT in Scotland, fighting for equal pay for women teachers, and from the looks of their journal Pass It On they similarly campaigned on a range of feminist and equal rights issues.

©Institute of Education Archive

The comment from the NUWT member reads

Just [received] from Scotland.  Good isn’t it. What do you think of a monthly sheet of [pass] like this! Beginning of paper.

From this you can see that it met with the approval of the NUWT! It might even have been part of the inspiration behind the NUWT starting The Woman Teacher just one year later in 1919.

This is just a quick post and the real purpose of it, asides from it being St Andrews Day, is that I can’t locate any archive collection of the Womens’ Education Union. So if anyone knows where their papers are held I’d love to know.  I can’t find any clues to where they’re held online – I do so hope they have survived!

Tagged: archives, Equal pay, National Union of Women Teachers, NUWT, Scotland, St Andrews Day, women teachers, Women’s Educational Union

In this 1959 episode of Recordings, E.T.C., Host Edward Tatnall Canby presents the “voices” of two canonical storytellers: Mark Twain and Hans Christian Andersen. Neither Twain nor Andersen is actually featured on these recordings, but Canby delights in the authenticity of Hal Holbrook’s portrayal of Twain and Boris Karloff’s readings of Andersen’s tales.

Canby excerpts from “The New Mark Twain: a recreation” by Hal Holbrook. In this recording, Hal Holbrook, an actor best known for his long-running one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight,” performs as Mark Twain for a live audience. You can hear Holbrook’s feet shuffle as he moves across stage and perhaps the sound of him lighting up a cigarette…and hear Canby’s laughter mingle with the laughter of the recorded audience as he plays excerpts from the performance.

Canby comments on Mark Twain as

A man who died before he had a microphone to become famous through, but who nevertheless made his voice and his humorous personality famous directly on the stage, the lecture platform, and so on, and became known in person and in voice, therefore, to many thousands of people if not exactly millions in spite of the lack of radio and TV and film to help his career in the modern manner. 
[…]

Mark Twain did actually make a recording way back, and that recording has been used as part of the preparation of “The New Mark Twain,” a recreation by Hal Holbrook–as well as of course the actual written words of Mr. Samuel Clemens (that was Mark Twain’s real name) and the numerous familiar photographs of the man himself as he appeared in his later years in talks and lectures, complete with that famous white suit, the shock of white hair, and the huge cigar.

In the second half of the program, Canby plays excerpts of Boris Karloff reading Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” and “The Ugly Duckling.”

Boris Karloff (1887-1969) is the English actor best known for his portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in “Frankenstein” (1931), “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) and “Son of Frankenstein” (1939), and the beloved narrator in the animated television special of “Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” (1966). (NB: Beginning in 1940, Karloff dressed up as Father Christmas every Christmas to hand out presents to physically disabled children in a Baltimore hospital).

Karloff made many recordings for children–for a full listing see Boris Karloff: A Bio-Bibliography, by Beverley Bare Buehrer. The record Canby features is The Ugly Duckling (Caedmon TC 1109, 1958; CDL5-1109; TC 1397), in which Karloff reads “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Shepherdess and the Chimney-Sweep,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Collar,” “Clod-Pull,” and “The Fir Tree.”

LINER NOTES:

Included in the original reel box for this recording is a piece of paper identified as “CLOSING MATERIAL” for the show as broadcast on WNCN, Thurs Aug 30, 1973–with annotations presumably by Canby:

If you enjoyed Hal Holbrook’s pseudo Mark Twain this evening, you will be glad to know that there are still two complete LP records available of Mr Holbrook’s Twain material, taken from the famed stage show. Boris Karloff, too, is well represented in many superb recordings of his kindly and benevolent voice–so unlikely, from an actor whose most famous roles were horror characters.
As an addition to his musical programs, Mr. Canby has for many years occasionally broadcast the classics of the spoken word on records, a field in which he has long been vitally interested. To vary the musical diet we will bring you occasional examples of Mr. Canby’s spoken-word classics here on WNCN. This evening’s broadcast on Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain, and Boris Karloff’s Hans Christian Andersen, is one of his favorites. 
Listen again to Edward Tatnall Canby and ‘Recordings, E.T.C.’ next Thursday, after the nine o’clock news.

“It is time to reexamine the long-standing tension between secrecy and openness, and develop a new way of thinking about government secrecy as we move into the next century.” -Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, 1997, Senate Document 105-2, Public Law 236.

Document Courtesy of the National Security Agency

After extensive research and discussions with stakeholders in and outside Government, the Board has concluded that the current classification system is too antiquated to fully support today’s national security mission. The system keeps too many secrets, and keeps them too long. Its practices are overly complex, and serve to obstruct desirable information sharing inside of government and with the public. There are many explanations for over-classification: much classification occurs essentially automatically; criteria and agency guidance have not kept pace with the information explosion; and despite numerous Presidential orders to refrain from unwarranted classification, a culture persists that defaults to the avoidance of risk rather than its proper management.

To partially address the concerns of excessive classification, we recommend that classification be simplified and rationalized by placing national security information in only two categories. This would allow proper alignment with the actual two-tiered practices existing throughout most of government for information protection security clearances, physical safeguarding, and information system accreditation.

Top Secret would remain the Higher-Level category, retaining its current, high level of protection. All other classified information would be categorized at a Lower-Level, which would follow standards for a lower level of protection. Both categories would include compartmented and special access information, as they do today.

Newly established criteria for classifying information in the two tiers would identify the needed levels of protection against disclosure of the information. Identifiable risk should be the basis for determining if a level of protection is needed and if classification is warranted and, if so, at what level and duration.

The difficulty of applying the current concept of presumed “damage” during derivative classification would be replaced by a more concrete application of the level of protection necessary for sharing and protecting. This change in guidance would reflect how classification is actually practiced by derivative classifiers – deciding how much protection is needed based on the sensitivity of the information to both protect and share appropriately.

We understand that the adoption of a two-tiered model will pose greater challenges for those agencies whose internal practices are more dependent upon current distinctions between Secret and Confidential. We are not advocating for simply eliminating the Confidential category of classification, thereby exacerbating problems of over-classification in the system. Rather, we believe the adoption of a two-tiered model would align the classification system to what is actually occurring in practice throughout Government. Confidential information is safeguarded on Secret-level systems. The Lower-level of classification in the two-tiers will be defined by the appropriate levels of protection needed to ensure the classified information may be secured and shared appropriately. Guidance must be updated and longstanding practices of rote classification in the current system must be redesigned to make classifiers re-think deep-rooted cultural biases that favor classification and instead choose not to classify in the first instance unless a risk assessment proves protection is needed.

Gerard Foley
Friday, November 30, 2012 – 16:39

Today there is much community and government activity in promoting awareness about people living with disabilities, and widespread support for advocacy, care and their independence in the community. For instance, government agencies such as WA’s Disability Services Commission promotes disability reform, information about disability service providers, the inclusion of disabled people in the community, and issues to do with access and universal design. But these developments are really only very recent.

If we take an historical perspective the State Archives reveal the response by government and attitudes of the community, to people living with disability in WA, since the 19^th century. The beginnings of moves for specialist schools for the blind, deaf and the developmentally disabled, dating right back to the late 19^th century (Cons 1496, item 1900/0320) are well documented in WA’s State Archives. The collection reveals that that many developmental and intellectually disabled people were placed in asylums 100 years ago (Cons 1120, item 25). But they also show the efforts by authorities and the community to cope with the large numbers of World War 1 returned service men, those who were wounded, maimed and ‘limbless’ or suffering from ‘shell shock’ (Cons 1497, item 1922/1903).

Because SRO’s online catalogue AEON is searched through the use of the original words in file and item titles, researchers need to be aware that terms that may now be considered as unacceptable descriptions for disabled people – terms such as ‘deaf and dumb’, ‘slow learner’ and ‘spastic’ – do occur. State Archives are a portal to our past and a bridge to the present and future; they reveal our history and from where we’ve come and sometimes they reveal uncomfortable truths. But it’s not all about insensitive language, because State Archives also document the beginnings and growth of the disability rights movement from the 1970s and the rise of public advocacy for disabled people living in the community, plus WA’s response to the the United Nations sponsored International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981. This event heightened community awareness and contributed to the establishment of the Disability Services Commission in the early 1990s.

The SRO is very pleased to join with the Disability Services Commission in celebrating Disability Awareness Week 2012, by displaying the Count Me In Display Kit in the SRO’s Search Room from 2 to 8 December 2012.

Gerard Foley, Senior Archivist

We are delighted that A. M. Dolan’s play This Verse Business – a one-man play about Robert Frost — will be performed in Amherst’s Kirby Theater at 8:00 on Thursday and Friday this week. Dolan conducted much of his research for the play in the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College and made extensive use of our holdings of audio and video recordings of Robert Frost. At 4:00 PM on Thursday, November 28, I will be on a panel discussion “Robert Frost: From Page to Platform” with playwright A. M. Dolan and actor Gordon Clapp who plays the part of Robert Frost. In preparing for this event, I spent a little time looking into our audio-visual holdings in the Frost Collection.

The Frost Collection at Amherst College grew out of donations of books, manuscripts, and other materials from a variety of sources — mostly alumni and faculty who had relationships with Robert Frost. Among these, Jack W. C. Hagstrom (AC 1955) is chiefly responsible for the outstanding collection of audio tapes of Frost’s readings.

Jack W. C. Hagstrom (AC 1955)

During his years at Amherst, Jack developed a friendship with Frost and began collecting his work in earnest. In 1959 Robert Frost sent Jack a letter empowering him to gather copies of as many recordings of Frost’s “talks and recitations” as could be had. Our files from the 1960s are filled with correspondence with Jack and others about the acquisition and delivery of many of our Frost recordings.

Robert Frost to Jack W. C. Hagstrom, October 23, 1959

In the 1980s, all of our reel-to-reel Frost recordings were transferred to cassette tapes — a total of 171 tapes that range from March 1941 to December 1962, just one month before Frost’s death. These cassettes are available for use in the Archives and are listed in the Finding Aid to the Robert Frost Collection. Currently, none of our audio recordings of Frost are available online.

Another facet to our collection is the range of materials that document Frost’s appearances on film during his lifetime. We have fewer than a dozen films, but among them is one of the most interesting documents of Frost as a performer and a persona: Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World (1963).

This documentary by filmmaker Shirley Clarke won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1963 and it captures Frost in performance near the end of his life. It includes footage of Frost speaking at Sarah Lawrence and Amherst College along with interviews and other footage of Frost.

Frost speaking with Amherst College students.

This film was recently re-released as part of the Shirley Clarke project by Milestone Films (as reported in the New York Times in April 2012). A copy of the new DVD is available for viewing in the Frost Library circulating collection and two copies of the original 16mm film released by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston are available in the Archives & Special Collections.  Beyond the finished product of Clarke’s labors, the Archives also holds complete transcripts for all of the interviews conducted with Frost for the project. One can read the full text of the interviews to discover what parts did not make the final cut of the film. These transcripts sit alongside the many folders full of transcripts of other Frost tapes, including tapes of Frost not held by the Archives.

The documentary was part of a larger marketing campaign for Holt, Rinehart, and Winston who also released a book and a record of Frost reading his poems at the same time. The book, the record, and several copies of their advertising flyer are included in the collection.

Their advertising slogan — “Frost should be read…and seen and heard as well” — is most fitting for a poet who so frequently performed his poems and whose performances provide essential insight to his work.

Due to the ongoing construction here at the library, we’ve decided to postpone the 3pm Friday tours until construction is finished. You’re always welcome to set up an appointment for a tour anytime, though.

Now that the housekeeping details are out of the way, here’s the best logo (and logo explanation) of the day:

It’s taken from the end of an excellent periodical / advertising brochure / paper specimen book:

Hurlbut’s Papermaker Gentleman:

The regular portrait series takes the week off today. In it’s place, the first of an occasional series that highlights an item from the collection created on this day in the past.

The first post celebrates the completion of our project to re-house the Updike Autograph Collection. (Mentioned previously here.) As you might recall, this collection of fascinating manuscript items was previously difficult to access and stored in acidic folders and boxes. Thanks to volunteer Ramon Cartwright, a finding aid for the collection is now available online; and thanks to funds provided by subscribers to our Occasional Nuggets publication and the efforts of volunteer Pat Loan, the entire collection is now rehoused in archival folders and boxes.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting a few items from the collection on the day of the year they were created, starting with this letter from Raymond Perry to his mother Sarah, dated 28 November 1812. In the letter Raymond describes the public response to his brother Oliver’s heroic actions at the Battle of Lake Erie.

The following transcription accompanied the letter:

Off Bristol Harbor
28th Nov. [1812]
My dear Mother –
I have not written
your for some days, owing to being
to much engaged getting down the
River this far – Alex. left me
day before yesterd in Providence
he recd. the attention due [to his?]
gallantry. every one was anxious to
be introduced to the young Hero
of Erie – his mind is much improved
so much so, that, it was a subject
of remark at our mess Table. he
supported a conversation for some
time – my Father was on b[oar]d this
Eveng. on his way to New Port
where he says it will be necessary to
visit often – I cannot express how much
my satisfaction is, to see him so
much pleased with his appointment
he is in excellent spirits, every one in
Bristol seems anxious to know him. the
De Wolfs are raped up in his interest
The Female part of‘the Family talk
much of the pleasure of your society as
soon as you can join them – The House
is a very good one, and stands in the
best part of the Town – Mary An
De Wolf is a charming girl, and I have
reason to believe very much my Friend
[They were married in 1814]
We were to a pleasant Ball two evengs
since in honor of Oliver – the House
was brilliantly illuminated, and over
the entrance was the appropriate motto
“Dont give up the ship”. I was recd
with more politeness than all my
vanity could flater me I deserved
but, I was next Brother to the greatest
man in our Country -. Of Comd Rodgers
[I?] have but little to say, only that
[he?] is wonderfully polite to [?]
and on duty, he is extremely
careful how he acts. I think
our cruise will be pleasant – our
mess is cheerfull – The wind is now
from the northw[ard] nd a probabilty
of a snow storm & fear we shall get
out – I will write the girls if we
do not get out – but this letter is for them too. Your affect Son
Raymond

Addressed to:
Christopher R. Perry Esq
Chelsea Landing
Norwich
Con.

If you’re interested in finding out what else happened today in history, check out our RI Collection Blog, where Tracy Connolly has begun a series called “100 Years Ago Today,” which draws on items from the Providence Journal of a century past.

Promoting his collection Parents Keep Out, poems aimed primarily at teenagers, the poet Ogden Nash displays the well-known rhyming ability and whimsical attitude of his widely appreciated, inimitable light verse at this 1951 Books and Authors Luncheon.

“What is life?” the poet Ogden Nash asks the audience at this 1951 Book and Authors Luncheon, and then responds by reading his poem You and Me and P.B. Shelley, which includes the answer “…it is a concert with a trombone soloist filling in for Yehudi Menuhin.” Promoting his just-published collection Parents Keep Out, a selection of poems aimed primarily at teenagers, Nash displays his well-known rhyming ability as well as the whimsical attitude that marked his particular type of widely appreciated, inimitable light verse. In a juxtaposition worthy of  one of his own couplets, he addresses the following speaker, Justice William O. Douglas, describing a recent visit to Yakima, Washington, where he was awarded “a hand-painted yellow tie flaunting a bowl of fruit and the words POET LAUREATE written on it.” Called back to the dais by the Mistress of Ceremonies, Irita Van Doren, for a rare encore, he reads a short poem about a gander and his wife, ending with the query: “Is she happy? What’s the use/of trying to psychoanalyze a goose?” 

Born in 1902, Frederic Ogden Nash came to poetry via the unlikely route of bond salesman and advertising copywriter. Some lines fished from a wastebasket and sent to The New Yorker led to a steady stream of appearances in many of the nation’s magazines and his eventually attaining that most unlikely of all positions: a financially successful writer of verse. Albin Krebs, writing in Nash’s 1971 New York Times obituary, quoted this initial effort (“I sit at an office at 244 Madison Avenue/And say to myself You have a respectable job, havenue?”), noting:

…the near rhyme and extended line which he [Nash] likened to “a horse running up to a hurdle but you don’t know when it’ll jump.”

Nash worked briefly for The New Yorker but spent the rest of his career writing poetry and giving combination lecture/readings, like the one heard here. He also collaborated with S.J. Perelman, providing the lyrics to the Broadway musical “One Touch of Venus” (1943), which included the song “Speak Low.” No poet of his time was as popular or as widely quoted, to the extent that, as the website eNotes claims, some of his works:

… have reached near-proverbial status. “Candy / Is dandy, / But liquor / Is quicker,” and “If called by a panther, / Don’t anther” are two Nash poems that are so familiar to the public that they are often attributed to “Anonymous.” While the unconventional nature of his verse has denied him the status of a “serious” poet, Nash remains one of the most read and quoted poets of this century.

At the same time, Nash was able to retain a large readership among the literary establishment. In 2010, looking back at his continuing contributions to The New Yorker, Jenna Krajeski wrote:

In 1956, we ran his “Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New, but Don’t Get Caught in Between,” in the year’s last issue, just in time to suggest that people take some time from their festivities to contemplate the growing pains of American innovation and the very odd feeling, as the clock shifts to midnight, of being between two years. As always, Nash’s smarts are peeking from behind a curtain of wry silliness.

But nothing illustrates how Nash’s interests coincided with that of mainstream America better than his enduring love for his local football team, the (then) Baltimore Colts. This reached its height in a 1968 Life magazine cover story featuring admiring poems paired with full-page photographs of the individual player eulogized, like one beginning “When hearing tales of Bubba Smith/You wonder is he man or myth?”

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

This year our advent calendar celebrates the natural world. Every day in the run-up to Christmas a new image from our collections will be revealed including animals, butterflies and flowers from our Victorian illustrated books and some weird and wonderful drawings from our Norman McLaren Archive! The advent calendar can be viewed here.

A rabbit in winter. From The Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland, J. G. Millais (1905).

The images included in the calendar highlight the rich holdings we have relating to the natural world, both printed and archival. In 2012 we put together an exhibition entitled ‘Going Wild in the Archive’ which displayed material from our collections alongside items from the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences museum collection. Material was displayed across the campus, including a full tiger skeleton which took up residence in our reading room for several months! The calendar also provides a nice introduction to the Year of Natural Scotland 2013 which will celebrate Scotland’s outstanding natural beauty.

Front and back cover of Programme and Abstracts from the first International Symposium on C-14 and Archaeology held at Groningen in 1981, with Martyn Jope’s pencilled notes.

Professor Martyn Jope of the Queen’s University, Belfast was active in the promotion of archaeological science. He was one of a group of scholars who developed and promoted research in radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis, collagen and molecular archaeology. Our small archive of Jope’s reserach notes, correspondence, offprints and other material relating to archaeological science has now been catalogued by our fieldwork student, Charlotte Robinson, and the outline of the archive is available at http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/files/institute/Martyn%20Jope%20Archive.pdf. This archive is the history of archaeology in the making….

(Updated Below)

I recently received a package containing my very first Kickstarter purchase, the ScanBox Plus. The Scanbox is basically a small box with a hole in the top (the “Plus” adds a set of lights powered by a 9-volt battery), designed to be used with a smartphone camera as a portable scanning station. The whole apparatus folds flat and fits inside a paper envelope.

The Scanbox seemed like the perfect tool for some guerrilla digitization, so I set myself the following challenge: Digitize a complete (if small) manuscript collection in an hour. That’s everything from soup to nuts, including installation of software and uploading the images. I decided to use a small collection of manuscripts (34 folders), the correspondence of Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell. The collection itself was recently removed from less-than-archival housing

and processed by a volunteer (finding aid). Here’s the newly-rehoused Pennell Collection next to the Scanbox:

I put an hour on the timer and got to work:

Step One: “Scanning”. Time: 18:54 (Time remaining: 41:06)

Each page with writing was scanned (blank versos were skipped), including envelopes. Items were moved in and out of the box quickly but carefully. The total number of resulting images was 76, which means it took about 15 seconds per image. The scanning process involved nothing more than sliding each item in and tapping the photo button.

Step Two: Setting Up the Online Gallery. Time: 13:14 (Time remaining: 27:52)

While the photos uploaded from the phone to the computer via Dropbox, I downloaded and set up the software I’d be using for the digital collection. I decided on Gallery because it’s the quickest and easiest option I know of. Given the time to add image metadata or create a nicer interface, I might have chosen something else. The quick installation was also a plus: I set up a MySQL database on the server, uploaded the Gallery folder, visited it in a web browser, and that was about it.

Step Three: Image Rotation. Time: 4:14 (Time remaining: 23:38)

No time for cropping or any other image editing, just time to make sure everything pointed in the right direction.

Step Four: Re-Scanning. Time: 7:44 (Time remaining: 15:54)

While going quickly through the images I noticed a few that were just too bad to use. Back to the Scanbox.

Step Five: Uploading. Time: 12:30 (Time remaining: 3:20)

Most of this time was wasted trying to figure out a plugin I didn’t even need to use.

Step Six: Cleanup. Time: 3:20

With all the images online, I still had a few minutes to tweak things a bit. I clicked “Save” on the last edits as the stopwatch reached an hour.

The Results:

The collection is available online at http://pplspc.org/pennell/ for the moment. (In the future I might tweak things a bit more. Update: Tweaking began almost immediately. I soon realized I had somehow uploaded two copies of each image, so I deleted everything and re-uploaded the images.)

Cons:

Image quality isn’t very good: Smartphone cameras are handy, but they don’t currently match the resolution of scanners. And the Scanbox lights were underwhelming. In most cases one side of a letter is illuminated more than the other.

Absent metadata: A great deal of the work that goes into good digital projects takes place in the metadata and the rest of the apparatus supporting the images themselves. This collection is just a pile of images (it’s not necessarily even clear what images represent different sides of the same item).

Limited longevity: Don’t expect any of these images (or the collection as a whole) to be around in 100 years. Or 50. Maybe 10 if we’re lucky. Keeping digital reproductions alive takes a lot of effort.

Pros:

A number of letters by two interesting people that weren’t available an hour ago suddenly are now.

One of my favourite archive blogs for surprises is Awesome Archives. Here’s the blog synopsis –

A celebration of archives, archival material, and the amazing history that they protect.

I’d highly recommend adding it to your blog feed.  Guaranteed every time I check this blog there’s something new to catch my interest.  Today it was a colourful map from Beringer Bros Winery in California, which led me to the original blog ‘Quick Kills’.  The aim of the ‘Quick Kills’ project at Bancroft Library, California is to increase access to ‘legacy’ collections by speedy processing of about 160 priority collections.  The blog provides short insights into collections, usually one or two images with a nice, concise description.

While browsing their posts I noticed some familiar looking documents – suffrage material including a Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) poster for a demonstration in Hyde Park.  The material is from the McLean family papers, a family from California. This includes the papers of a daughter Fannie McLean, a suffragist and teacher.  The papers shown here even include a leaflet she wrote ‘Why the Teacher should be a Suffragist’ – sounds like she would have been a kindred spirit to NUWT members!

Image re-blogged from ‘Quick Kills’ at Bancroft Library tumblr

There is a finding aid to the collection, which can be accessed via the Online Archive of California.

Tagged: archive, archives, Bancroft Library, Fannie McLean, National Union of Women Teachers, NUWT, suffrage, suffragist, women teacher, Women’s Social and Political Union, WSPU

Before the controversy of the American publication of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov cuts a different figure at this 1958 Books and Authors Luncheon.

Introduced here as “a distinguished teacher and writer,” Nabokov warns his audience that “this is going to be an impersonation, in iambic pentameter, with fancy rhymes” of a talk his character Professor Pnin would have given to an audience at Waindell College, an all-girls school.

He proceeds to recite his poem “An Evening of Russian Poetry,” written in 1945 and first published in The New Yorker.  For those only familiar with Nabokov’s cool, masterfully written prose, with its implied voice of a super-civilized international man of letters, the passion with which he reads, as well as his highly Anglicized pronunciation, will be a revelation. In contrast to the plainspeaking tone most poets adopt, this “lecture” is practically declaimed, making the anguish of its author’s double exile (first from Russia, then Europe) all too clear, as in the lines: “Like a small caterpillar on its thread/my heart keeps dangling from a leaf long dead.” Nabokov famously stated, “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.” This recording gives lie to the last part of that claim. 

Nabokov was born in 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The son of a high-ranking civil servant, he and his family were forced to flee their homeland during the Bolshevik revolution. After completing his education at Cambridge, Nabokov lived in Berlin and then France, writing novels for the large Russian expatriate community in Europe, also gaining a reputation as a lepidopterist, while giving tennis lessons as well. Notable among the works of this period are Invitation to a Beheading (1936) and The Gift (1938).

With Hitler’s rise to power, Nabokov (whose wife was Jewish) accepted an invitation to emigrate to America. For a writer who had already lost one homeland, this could easily have resulted in a nostalgic retreat. As Nabokov recalled, “It had taken me some 40 years to invent Russian and Western Europe, and now I was faced with the task of inventing America.”

In America, he classified and studied butterflies at various museums while teaching Russian language and Russian literature, first at Wellesley College, then Cornell University. His novels written in English gained a slow but steady appreciation. But the reception of such works as Bend Sinister (1947) and Pnin (1957) could not have prepared him for the success of Lolita (published abroad in 1955 but not in America until 1958), a story told by a middle-aged professor who conceives an all-consuming passion for a 12-year-old girl. Critics debated whether the novel was pornography or brilliant literature or both. Charles J. Rolo, writing in The Atlantic, opined:

…above all Lolita seems to me an assertion of the power of the comic spirit to wrest delight and truth from the most outlandish materials. It is one of the funniest serious novels I have ever read; and the vision of its abominable hero, who never deludes or excuses himself, brings into grotesque relief the cant, the vulgarity, and the hypocritical conventions that pervade the human comedy.

This debate still rages, with some denouncing the book as a glorification of pedophilia and rape and others rejecting that interpretation as puritanical, arguing that the book is a metaphor for the author’s encounter with and eventual love for a juvenile culture and its, in Nabokov’s words, “second-rate brand of English.” 

Nabokov’s style, with its wordplay and love of theatrical effects, was a freeing influence on the generation of writers who followed him. His refusal to countenance the prevailing political correctness of the time, when it came to authorial attitude or subject matter, was also influential. In a 1968 self-interview, he admitted:

I am bored by writers who join the social-comment racket. I despite the corny philistine fad of flaunting four-letter words. I also refuse to find merit in a novel just because it is by a brave black in Africa or a brave white in Russia — or by any representative of any single group in America. Frankly, a national folklore, class, Masonic, religious, or any other communal aura involuntarily prejudices me against a novel, making it harder for me to peel the offered fruit so as to get at the nectar of possible talent.

With the money Nabokov received from Lolita, he was able to retire from teaching and spend the rest of his days at the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland. There, he continued to produce novels in English, as well as supervise the translation of his earlier Russian works. But despite his “repatriation,” he insisted he remained an American writer. As he told Alden Whitman, in an interview for his eventual 1977 obituary:

An American writer means, in the present case, a writer who has been an American citizen for a quarter of a century. It means, moreover, that all my works first appear in America. It also means that America is the only country where I feel mentally and emotionally at home.

 

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

Note: Some poor audio quality due to condition original recording.