Yesterday and today at Amherst and at institutions of higher education throughout the United States, students have gathered to demand a more “just and inclusive environment” on college campuses.  The Frost Library is honored to be a site of this student movement on campus.

Amherst students have a long history of speaking out on issues of race and of public demonstration on campus.  Evidence of past student activism on campus can be found in the Archives and Special Collections.

The Race and Rebellion at Amherst College exhibition is currently on exhibit in the Archives and Special Collections and in the Lobby of Frost Library.  This exhibit “explores the history of student activism and black lives on campus from the 1820s to the present day.  From the founding of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 to the Moratorium on Black Dissatisfaction in May 1969 to the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot! walkout in December 2014.”

1833 Anti-Slavery Society: Records of the Anti-Slavery Society, founded on July 19, 1833, show an early history of activism around race at Amherst and evidence of the first strong challenge to the administration by students of the college.

April 1969 Moratorium: In the spring of 1969, student grievances over College governance, coeducation, the Vietnam War, and race relations on campus led to a two day suspension of classes.  Faculty stated their intent for the moratorium:  “The moratorium can be a constructive period of self-appraisal and provide the framework within which students, faculty, administration and staff can for the first time devote full energies in this way to the questions of education and Amherst College; however, this period will be fruitful only with full participation by all members of the college community.”

pages from “Amherst: A Black Perspective” ca. 1973

May 1969 Moratorium: On May 14, 1969, at the instigation of the College’s Afro-American Society, Amherst held a Black Moratorium, in which seminars were held to address issues of race relations and black dissatisfaction. (This event contributed to the College’s decision to found the Black Studies Department in 1970.)

May 5, 1970 National Student Strike: On May 5, 1970, students and faculty of Amherst College joined more than 1,250 other colleges and universities in a nationwide student strike.  The May 7, 1970 Amherst Student strike resulted in a call by students and faculty to insure justice and full constitutional freedoms for Americans of all races.

Photograph from May 7, 1970 student strike

May 1992 Converse Hall Sit-In: In response to the non-guilty verdict for police officers charged in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, Amherst students took over Converse Hall and issued eight demands, including demands for the hiring of more faculty and administrators of color, as well as an affirmative action officer.

Amherst Student May 6, 1992

Here in the Archives, both on exhibit and in our collections, we have documented evidence of past student activism and protests on campus.  This material is freely accessible to all students and the public.

Lise Summers
Wednesday, November 11, 2015 – 11:22

When we launched our new archive management system in August 2015, we did so without the images which had been a feature of our previous system.  It meant that we had to keep the old system open for the dedicated GIS and map enthusiasts among us, briefly, while our dedicated staff and volunteers worked to load the digital images to the new catalogue. We’ve now loaded over 6,600 digital objects to the system, and over 7,200 images (remember that the pdf files also allow for each page as an image). We’re now going through a process of double checking the images loaded against the number of images we hold on disk. One volunteer, Dr Michael O’Connor, has developed a stringent methodology to enable us to identify where images have been incorrectly loaded, or not loaded, and where items have been misidentified or not identified at all in the original cataloguing. All this means that you can now enjoy your maps online  and a range of other digital goodies, via our new catalogue.

Why did we not import the images with the descriptions at the start? Well, for one thing, it would have substantially complicated and slowed down our migration. For the other, our old system and our new display digital objects and handle the descriptive metadata (the information about the objects) in slightly different ways.

In our old system, we were restricted to only being able to load .jpg files, and originally, only as a single images.  With some funding from the Friends of Battye Library, we were able to develop a new way of loading images to a description, in bulk. When loading images in bulk, we attached them with their digital file names to the metadata of the item to which they belonged, so that users looking at the item as a whole could see that there were multiple pages or images to an item. We had the option of adding metadata about the images to the back end system, on a one to one basis, following the upload; however, this metadata was not viewable by our clients.  The project  also developed a new way of displaying the images. A viewing frame was created, in which users could magnify and move the images around. The frame was an appropriate size for a PC screen of the mid 2000s, but as we moved to larger screen sizes the frame was not resized, meaning that the images were not taking full advantage of the viewing environment.

When we moved to AtoM, we identified that the system allowed us to upload not just .jpg files, but a range of image formats. It also meant that we could upload text documents and audio files. Not only that, but the system enabled us to either link digital objects to an original description, or directly upload digital objects to the system for which descriptive metadata could then be created. This meant that when we digitised an item, such as a map or a plan, we could add the image as a representation of the item, and have all the original metadata in place.  Clients wishing to browse through the digital objects were able to identify the item through its description, and develop references to the original item.

The new displays are appropriate for larger screens, with three levels of zoom at the click of a mouse. Where multiple single objects are loaded to a single descriptive entity (items to series, and pieces or pages to item), a sliding bar provides a ‘cover flow’ teaser to the entire set of images for that entity. Copying and linking by clients is also easier. The system allows us to upload pdf versions of multi page items, both text and digitised images, and provides a small and large thumbnail for greater ease of identification. Logged in users can download the pdf to their own computers, to zoom in on content, annotate information and develop a sense of the whole item. While the individual images lack metadata, other than the file name, the system also provides for additional descriptive metadata to be created and displayed for users at a future date. For those interested in digital archives, the system also allows for the uploading of digital objects as descriptive entities in their own right.

Please remember to provide us with feedback on the new system. As it’s an open source project, your query may prompt another user or developer to create a solution, or we may put it in our list of ideas for further improvements, once we have the resources.

The protagonist of today’s featured book was practically made to be a bad child of history. Yes, I’m talking about Troublesome Tom, the resident scamp in The Mischievous Boy; a Tale of Tricks and Troubles (New Haven: S. Babcock, 1844).

The book opens with a fantastic letter to the reader from author Thomas Teller (a pseudonym for George Tuttle), who wrote an entire series of “amusing instructive and entertaining tales” called Teller’s Tales:

My dear little friends: This tale of a “Mischievous Boy” was written to show you the trouble which you may occasion yourselves and friends by indulging in acts of disobedience and mischief. You all know that what is often called FUN, sometimes turns out to be a bad scrape; perhaps some of you have learned this by experience. Now, whenever any of you are tempted to seek amusement in any thing which you are not sure is wholly innocent, turn from it at once, however great the temptation may be, and my word for it, you will enjoy more real pleasure than if you suffer yourselves to be enticed into any wrong doing.

The book then proceeds to relate a very, very extensive series of “bad scrapes” on the part of Troublesome Tom, including but not limited to: busting into a neighbor’s garden and accidentally letting in a sow and piglets who trample the flowers, bringing the genteel Miss Betsy near a beehive and then shaking the hive and running away, giving bad directions to a woman driving a cow, throwing a “large wooden peg” at a barking dog, and fishing in a forbidden location “nearby a resort for a gang of smugglers”.

Below is an engraving showing Tom with the rogue swine, right before he starts hitting them with a stick in an attempt to drive them out of the neighbor’s garden:

Here’s a truly classic bad-kid move (and one that I vividly remember my older neighbors pulling on me many decades ago):

Tom determined to have what he called a little fun, by putting the boy in the saddle, and then rocking the horse furiously, while he laughed at the fears of poor John, and cried out, “whoop! whoop! gallop! gallop! gee! whoa!” The little boy in vain cried, “Oh stop! Oh stop! pray stop!”– but Tom did not choose to hear him, nor to stop his fun; he kept on rocking still more furiously, and the wooden horse was at length thrown forward with such violence, that  little John pitched over its head, and striking his face upon the hard ground, was most cruelly bruised.

You may wonder why Tom himself is nowhere to be seen in the above engraving– it’s because he proceeds to pull the most classic bad kid move, by running away from the scene of the crime, only to return at dinner time to report that “he had left the hall just before John had fallen”.

Mmhmm.

So far these escapades have been highly entertaining, but not entirely instructive. Is Tom going to learn his lesson? (Hint: of course!)

Yes, Tom is, in quick succession, scolded by Short Sam’s father, chased by a pack of boys whose sport he had spoiled, and whisked downstream on a stolen escape boat that quickly approaches the sea. After a daring landing on a far-away river bank, Tom attempts to walk home through the rapidly darkening forest, where he has his bad child moment of reckoning.

“Weeping piteously”, he hears a rumbling and rustling sound that he fears is a bear. He runs about madly, slipping on loose stones, “stumbling over sand-heaps”, and losing the trail entirely. Caught in a terrible storm as midnight approaches,

then came the wish that he was a better boy, that God would give him a new heart, and make him his own child; and the poor boy wept and sobbed bitterly, for he was now fully conscious of what a bad boy he had been… he knelt down on the wet ground and prayed for safety and relief.

His prayers answered in due time, Tom falls asleep on a pile of hay in a tool shed, where he is discovered by his fretful father the next morning. Relieved, Tom’s father carries the reformed scamp home to his family’s loving embrace.

The political causes and effects of war are well-documented by scholars and politicians, but the details of life during wartime are the provenance of the fighters on the ground, in the air, and at sea. Throughout recorded time, soldiers have shared their stories, told with humor, pathos, hope, and pride. In honor of Veterans Day, library staff have assembled a new exhibit, “War Stories,” featuring veterans’ experiences in their own words from across 2,000 years of human history.

In 1941, Consolidated Book Publishers of Chicago published pocket-sized journals titled “My Life in the Service” for members of the armed forces, with blank pages intended to be filled with first-hand accounts of military life. A short introduction to this volume says it best:

Your experiences in the armed forces of your country are your part of living history. By all means KEEP A DIARY! Times without number, historians and writers have found more information of real human interest in the diaries of enlisted men than in the studied accounts of generals and admirals…Your personal record may supply vital information that is available at no other source.

Stop by Strozier Library between now and January 2016 to see “vital information” on display on the first floor, near the Special Collections Research Center.  All materials exhibited are from the holdings of FSU Libraries Special Collections & Archives, and are available to researchers and the general public in the Special Collections Research Center in Strozier Library, Room 110.

Sammy C. Hawk stopped by the Midnite Madness exhibit to say hi and take a few photos!

read more

The latest exhibition in the Library commemorates the 300th anniversary of the 1715 Jacobite Rising. The display includes books, manuscripts, artwork and artefacts from the University Library’s collections, as well as some books and broadsides from partner institutions – the Library of Innerpeffray (http://www.innerpeffraylibrary.co.uk/) and the Leighton Library in Dunblane (http://www.spanglefish.com/leightonlibrary/).

You can see the exhibition during November, and then again in the New Year.

A pair of shoe buckles from our collections, which supposedly belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie

Helen Beardsley

Senior Subject Librarian (Arts and Humanities)

The Archives returns to the Vancity Theatre this November with Vancouver – A Distant Mirror. Over the summer, we worked with local historian and artist Michael Kluckner to program this year’s archival screening. This year’s roster will premiere newly digitized films not yet available in our online database. We will be showing home movies, and industrial and promotional films from the 1920s to 1960s that focus on the city’s landmarks, transportation, industry and domestic spheres. Here is the trailer for this year’s screening.

As with previous screenings, this showing will feature two live elements. The silent films will be accompanied by renowned jazz pianist Wayne Stewart, and Michael Kluckner will provide historical commentary. He will present this year’s screening using four themes:

• Filming Friends and Family,
• Out With A Camera,
• Old False Creek, and
• A Distant Mirror.

Filming Friends and Family (1920s to 1960s) focuses on the private lives of Vancouverites. Originally created for personal viewing, these home movies reveal a genuine spontaneity among the films’ subjects. Some of the films include excerpts of a dramatized home movie, doing the twist in a living room, and playing with cats and dogs in the backyard. Despite the different eras from which these films originate, they exhibit the same timeless human characteristics of people today.

Cat playing with string in yard; Reference code: AM1477-2-S5—: CVA 1477-529.

Out With A Camera (1930s to 1960s) transitions the screening from the private to the public, and features some once-common pastimes in Vancouver, including maintaining the automobile at the neighbourhood service garage, a visit to Queen Elizabeth Park’s arboretum, viewing a grain elevator fire near the Burrard Inlet, and riding the last streetcar. This section also features an Obon Japanese Buddhist lantern festival on Jackson Avenue near Powell Street in the 1960s, and the aftermath of the Second Narrows Bridge collapse in June, 1958.

Streetcar ads; Reference code: AM1545-S3-: CVA 586-1872.

Old False Creek (1950s to 1970s) portrays an industrial False Creek with a focus on the Sweeney Cooperage factory, once the largest barrel manufacturer in the British Empire, and now the site of Coopers Park and BC Place Stadium. Old False Creek also features a sound version of the City-produced film “The new Granville Bridge”. This film was produced during the post-war golden age of the automobile, when traffic congestion over False Creek was at its limit. The film emphasizes the need for a more efficient and accommodating bridge to replace the old Granville Bridge. Highlights include scenes of 1950s Vancouver in colourful Kodachrome, and the old Granville Bridge swing span (since demolished) in action.

The problem: old (second) Granville Street Bridge with swing span open; Reference code: COV-S593-: CVA 216-2.03.

The last section, A Distant Mirror features Vancouver’s first Grey Cup Parade in 1955, and a bus tour through Vancouver in the 1940s. This section shows a recognizable Vancouver as signified by unchanged intersections, and notable buildings marked by present-day heritage status. This film captures the Sam Kee Building (now the Jack Chow Insurance building), the former Vancouver courthouse (now the Vancouver Art Gallery), and the UBC Main Library. Despite all the similarities, the film makes us realize how much the city has changed and progressed since that time.

43rd Grey Cup Parade, on Granville Street, Welcome to Friendly Vancouver Grey Cup float, police on horseback and spectators; Reference code: AM1517-S1-: 2008-022.290.

A Distant Mirror will screen twice on two separate dates in November. Tickets are likely to sell fast–despite additional showings scheduled in previous years, the theatre still had to turn away many hopeful theatre goers. So if you are interested, purchase a ticket early on the Vancity Theatre website.

We will also present a slightly revised version of our archival screening programmed in 2013, Reflecting the City. The previous showing initially had a section entitled Family Abroad which featured a local family’s travels to Hong Kong. This year, however, we have replaced that section with a newly digitized film “We Drivers” featuring 1920s road scenes throughout Vancouver and the north shore. Below is the trailer for Reflecting the City. Purchase the tickets by clicking on the links below.

A Distant Mirror will screen on the Sundays of November 15^th and 29^th at 3:00 PM, and Reflecting The City will screen on Sunday November 15^th at 7:15 PM.

Last week, A’Lelia Bundles, the Chair and President of the National Archives Foundation, and I presented the 2015 National Archives Foundation Records of Achievement Award to Taylor Branch, an American author and Pulitzer Prize winner. This award recognizes Branch’s lifelong work chronicling the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the history of the Civil Rights movement in his landmark series: America in the King Years.

Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer Prize–winning narrative of the Civil Rights Movement has helped shape our understanding of that turbulent time in our history. He conducted extensive research at several National Archives facilities including the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Presidential Libraries where he mined the notes of meetings, reviewed oral histories, and listened to countless hours of presidential recordings—all carefully collected, preserved, and made available by generations of National Archives staff.

The National Archives holds many records pertaining to Civil Rights, including March on Washington photographs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We even have Taylor’s own Freedom of Information lawsuit against the FBI!

Taylor Branch’s work demonstrates the power of the stories preserved in the National Archives. We house the tangible reminders of where we have been, how far we have come, and see every day how these reminders inspire others to discover other important stories to share with the world.

Our partners at the National Archives Foundation share our passion for educating our citizens about the important work of the National Archives in preserving our history and making it accessible to the people. The Records of Achievement Award is the Foundation’s highest honor, and each year, the award itself includes facsimiles of records from the National Archives collection that is of special significance to our honoree.

This year, in recognition of Taylor Branch’s groundbreaking research on the Civil Rights Movement, we presented two facsimiles of a document that he sought under a 1986 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the FBI, Branch v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Civil Action No. 86-1643.

The FOIA request was for classified records that the FBI had compiled between 1962 and 1963 on Stanley Levison, a friend and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The first facsimile shows the heavily redacted page that was originally provided to Branch by the FBI. It is a 1962 memo from the FBI Director to the Attorney General concerning Dr. King.

1962 memo from the FBI Director to the Attorney General concerning Dr. King. This heavily redacted page was originally provided to Branch by the FBI.

This next facsimile shows the memo after it was recently declassified on September 18, 2015.

1962 memo from the FBI Director to the Attorney General concerning Dr. King, after it was declassified on September 18, 2015.

The facsimiles were accompanied by the Records of Achievement medallion, which is composed of bronze from the original document encasements which were removed from the Rotunda of the National Archives during the 2003 renovation.

We presented the award and the records to Taylor Branch as our tribute to his commitment to consulting primary sources as he continues to tell the stories of our nation’s history. Congratulations, Taylor.