There’s nothing like getting up-close and hands-on with some of the rare books in FSU’s Special Collections department, but sometimes it’s not possible for visitors to visit our Reading Room in Tallahassee to see them. Digitization allows us to make our materials available to a global audience who would otherwise never be able to interact with or use our collections.

To help alleviate this problem, the Digital Library Center (DLC) has been hard to expand access to some of our most important collections. We have digitized thousands of pages of our rare books and uploaded them for the public to access at their convenience. Digital reproductions of these books can be viewed in FSU’s Digital Library as individual pages or with the animated book viewer.

Ever wonder how these collections end up in the Digital Library? Turning books into ebooks is a complicated, but exciting process. So, the burning question is:

How do we get from this…

…to this?

Typically our Digital Archivist has a queue of projects lined up for us which range from quick scans of reference material to digitizing vast collections of rare books and manuscripts. Once a project is decided upon, the material makes its way up the production studio where the imaging work is done.

Creating these images using a conventional flatbed scanner is not ideal due to the fragile condition of many of our rare books. Also, many books we digitize in the DLC have tight binding that would be nearly impossible to accurately scan without compromising the integrity of the books themselves. Improper scanning practices can lead to poor image quality and potential damage to the books.

In this case, as it is with most rare books, we’ll head over to our ATIZ BookDrive Pro station to start our work.

As you can see, this setup is specifically designed for book digitization. The V-shaped, adjustable book cradle and platen gently hold the book in place while dual Canon 5D Mark ii DSLR cameras photograph the left and right pages. Freedom to vertically and horizontally adjust the cradle and platen allows us to get the pages nice and flat before shooting, all without putting too much pressure on the book.

Each camera is tethered to the computer via USB and, as they fire, the digital images are automatically loaded into our processing software, Capture One 8 Pro. This powerful piece of software handles the file-management, editing, and exporting of the final image files. Within Capture One we can make any necessary color/exposure corrections, cropping adjustments, sharpening and QC work.

Once all the images are edited and double-checked for errors, they are exported as high-resolution TIF files and are ready for the next step: metadata!

Here in the studio we primarily focus on image production, however we do create basic metadata for certain items. In order for these images to recreate a traditional book-reading, page-turning experience within the Digital Library, we need to provide some basic information about this book’s contents. Some of the metadata we create for digitized books includes the front cover, page numbers, title page, table of contents, back cover, etc… Essentially, we are connecting each image file to its corresponding location in the actual book. This information, along with the more complex metadata entered later by our Metadata Librarian allows the book to be virtually perused and navigated with ease.

By using the Internet Archive’s book viewer within our Digital Library, the individual pages we scanned and edited earlier can be turned back and forth, from cover to cover. This animated display of the full book is designed to give users the next-best experience to actually thumbing through our rare books in the Research Center Reading Room.

So there you have it! That’s our basic workflow from book to ebook. We’ll continue adding more interesting content to the Digital Library, so keep checking back to see what we have to offer. At the moment we’re deep in the middle of scanning a large collection of cookbooks and herbals dating all the way back to the 1400s. There are some fascinating recipes in these books and we can’t wait to share them with you!

Open-book image downloaded from freeimages.com

David Whiteford
Thursday, September 24, 2015 – 11:45

Where SRO’s old AEON online catalogue could only show item titles – which can be uninformative – our new online catalogue allows us to add content and scope notes to the catalogue record. Work is underway on some 1890s Mines Department files in Consignment 964 and catalogue records are now including names of people applying for positions with the Department, people applying for mining leases, Asiatics applying for miner’s rights, and other detail of value to researchers. Some interesting discoveries have been made, such as the employment file (1896/13575) for Ernest Giles, the well-known explorer, who was employed as a clerk with the Department in Coolgardie in 1896 until his death the following year. The file records his feeling unwell and having to go home from work, and his death a few days later.   Two files relating to David W Carnegie, whose book Spinifex and Sand detailing his explorations in W.A. has rarely been out of print, were also found. The Western Australian explorers’ diaries project is presently working on Carnegie and was excited to learn of these two files. File 1897/03219 covers his arrival in Halls Creek and an offer to immediately leave to search for a missing party and file 1897/09856 has correspondence between Carnegie and the Government regarding remuneration for his exploration expenses. This latter file had escaped online cataloguing and is awaiting commencement of loading of new collection listings into the new system.

Today’s brief update highlights wayward youth from Robert Grant’s 1888 book Jack Hall, or the School Days of an American Boy.

The book’s illustrator, F. G. Attwood, created the below likeness of some school boys, including the eponymous Jack Hall, who are obviously, blatantly up to no good:

Cigarettes! A variety of casual yet dashing hats! Big mugs! Knives stuck in the table!

These masked marauders are members of “Big Four”, a secret society of fourth-class boys who expressed their “vitality” through hijinks such as “the pilfering of neighborhood hen-roosts, the sealing up of the lock of the schoolroom door, [and] the firing of a tar-barrel in front of the Doctor’s very window”. A later illustration also shows them executing a daring, late-night escape involving a basket and a rope. Dreadful!

Fall and winter are great seasons for settling in to a comfy chair with a good crossword, a compelling book, or a warm quilt– and they’re also great seasons for settling in to a less-comfy wooden chair in our reading room with a compelling whaling logbook, an 18th-century scientific treatise, or a folio of beautiful architectural plates.

To celebrate the arrival of these studious seasons, we’ve extended our weekly open hours. You now have your choice of seven different hours during the week when you can stop by Special Collections unannounced and appointment-free.

The new open hours are:

Tuesdays: 10:00 – 1:00
Wednesdays 3:00 – 7:00

Of course, we’re still open by appointment during other times when the library is open, and you’re welcome to call ahead if you plan to come to open hours and would like to see specific materials during your visit.

Pope Francis arrived in Washington, DC yesterday to begin a six-day visit to the United States. This morning, the White House hosted a welcoming ceremony for the Pope on the South Lawn of the White House, and on Thursday, the Pope will address members of Congress.

Pope Francis arrives in D.C. at Joint Base Andrews, 9/22/15. Photo courtesy of the White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/campaign/pope-visit

This is not the first time the Pope has visited Washington, DC. In fact, his visit this week marks the 10th time a Pope has visited the United States.

Since the Federal Government is heavily involved in a Papal visit, the National Archives holds many documents and photographs related to these events.

In honor of the Pope Francis’ visit, here are some records related to previous Papal visits to the United States:

President Jimmy Carter’s handwritten notes on meeting with Pope John Paul II during his first visit to the White House, October 6, 1979. National Archives Identifier 6207614

Staff Sergeant (SSGT) Hollis R. Huvar, 75th Military Airlift Squadron, guides the Popemobile onto a C-5A Galaxy aircraft during Volant Silver, a joint Military Airlift Command/Secret Service operation coordinating vehicle transportation and Secret Service protection for Pope John Paul II while he visits the United States, 09/10/1987. National Archives Identifier 6427134

Photograph of President William J. Clinton and Pope John Paul II in front of a crowd at Denver’s Stapleton International Airport during the Pope’s fifth visit to the U.S., August 12, 1993. The Pope was in the U.S. for World Youth Day. National Archives Identifier 3172769

President George W. Bush and Laura Bush Greet Pope Benedict XVI on His Arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, 04/15/2008. National Archives Identifier 7582808

Pope Benedict XVI in the Popemobile outside the White House. 4/16/08

The Art

The figures and scenes, all drawn from life by artist Laszlo Matulay, capture the essence of New York’s public radio station in 1939. Fiorello H. La Guardia ran for mayor in 1933 promising to close the station down to save taxpayer money. Seymour N. Siegel and others convinced La Guardia to keep it going, and he became its champion and a regular on-air presence. He is pictured top and center wearing his large trademark cowboy hat, a throwback to his youth as an Army brat on a military base in Arizona, where his father was stationed as a bandmaster. 

The upper right-hand corner of this ink and watercolor work features WNYC Director Morris Novik and his assistant Viola Calder. Calder is sitting on one of the many Warren McArthur Art-Deco chairs that were part of the new WPA-built studios and transmitter site that opened in October 1937. The live studio audience for the little girl seen framed through the studio window is also sitting on these chairs. We have three in our collection. Some of this furniture was featured in a 1986-7 Brooklyn Museum exhibit, The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941.

In the upper left corner is the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street, WNYC’s home from 1924 to 2008. Underneath it is the newsroom, complete with an old Associated Press wire service teletype churning out news copy. I can’t say for sure who the staff is, but it’s possible the drawing includes newsmen Dick Pack, Nathan Berlin and Jack Goodman. The lower left corner reveals WNYC’s small Master Control Room, which had just barely enough room for two engineers to work comfortably in.

Just below Mayor La Guardia is WNYC’s then main reception desk at the north end of the 25th floor, where the elevator banks are. The receptionist is sitting in front of one of four WPA-commissioned murals dedicated on August 2, 1939. This one, by Louis Schanker, still hangs there. Another, in the lower right hand corner with the three performers, is in Studio B. We know this because it is Mural for Studio B by Stuart Davis, on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Artist

Laszlo Matulay was an accomplished illustrator, muralist, painter, designer, and educator who grew up in post-World War I Vienna. He was the product of a mixed marriage, his mother Jewish, his father, Catholic. He was a student and working artist in Vienna.

As a boy, Matulay spent his summers in Transylvania among horses, peasants, gypsies and Jewish laborers. Following his classical training in Vienna at the Academy of Applied Arts, he hitch-hiked to Italy with a sketchbook and went to museums and galleries. Returning to Vienna, he began to work in the theater, painting and designing stage sets under the architect Oskar Strnad. Not long after the first Nazi terrorist attacks in Austria, he fled the country and arrived in the United States in 1935 to settle in New York City. For a while, he worked with one of New York’s largest commercial art studios. In April 1937, some of his illustrations were exhibited at the New York Public Library. He became a highly sought after illustrator following an exhibition of his work at the 1940 New York World’s Fair. His work appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Time and Esquire.

During World War II, he was a cartographer with military intelligence and earned his U.S. citizenship. After the war, he served on the faculty at the Laboratory School of Industrial Arts in New York and was the first artistic director at Rodale Press in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Matulay and his wife Harriet then settled in New Hampton, New Jersey, where he worked as a set designer for the Hunterdon County Repertory Company.

In 1975, he moved to Panama to learn Spanish and put together educational materials on family planning for the poor. Matulay later returned to the U.S. and closed out his career as a freelance illustrator. He was active until his death in 1999 at the age of 86.

Throughout his life, he worked closely with Jewish artists and designers involved with Jewish education. His papers and work are housed and overseen by Rabbi Seth Phillips at Keneseth Israel in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Laszlo Matulay (1912-1999) self-portrait late in life.
(Image courtesy of Ira Faro)

 ____________________________________________

Original Laszlo Matulay illustration from the La Guardia Artifact Collection, The La Guardia and Wagner Archives, La Guardia Community College/The City University of New York.

Special thanks to the La Guardia and Wagner Archives’ Archivist, Douglas Di Carlo and for making a high resolution scan of the original artwork available, Ira Faro from the Matulay Estate for the Matulay portrait permission to publish, and to Neil Kvern for his masterful PhotoShop restoration work on the original scan.

Vintage Viands, an event where staff from the University Libraries prepare foods using recipes from the Home Economics Pamphlet Collection, Woman’s Collection – Cookbooks, and the online collection Home Economics and Household Collections, is happening this Friday from noon to 2:30 in Jackson Library. The tasting event also includes a contest to reward the tastiest ane most unique dishes.

Here are the categories for this year’s contest:

• Appetizer
• Main Dish
• Desserts
• Best Hot Dish [AKA Casseroles]
• Best Jell-O [or other brand of gelatin]

Recipes will be judged by these rankings:

• Tastiest [Over all categories]
• Most Unique [Over all categories]

For this year’s interactive exhibit, we are featuring cuisine from the 1940s, which will include “ration book” specials, “meat extenders” and postwar delicacies featuring items that had been unavailable during the war years. There will also be displays of the cookbooks and pamphlets from the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives.

Although Lord Jeffrey Amherst married twice, he left no direct heir when he died in 1797. When his brother, Lieutenant-General William Amherst (1732–1781), died in 1781, Lord Amherst took his orphaned nephew and two nieces into his household and raised them as his own. Through a special remainder, the title of Baron Amherst of Montreal passed to his nephew, who became William Pitt Amherst, Second Baron Amherst of Montreal.

John Hoppner. William Pitt Amherst (1773-1857), 2nd Baron Amherst of Montreal and 1st Earl Amherst of Arakan (Mead Art Museum, Amherst College)

The Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College holds a small collection of papers by and about William Pitt Amherst. As with our holdings of material related to Lord Jeffrey Amherst, much of this material was donated to the college by alumni, largely by Jack W. C. Hagstrom, MD (Class of 1955) who served as executor of the estate of the final Earl Amherst who died in 1993.

After completing his education at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, William Pitt Amherst went on to a career that carried him far from home, but in the opposite direction from the one his uncle traveled. The collection at Amherst College begins with a series of letters to and from Amherst that document his appointment as ambassador-extraordinary to the court of the Two Sicilies in 1809.

Letter from William Pitt Amherst to Sir John Stuart, 26 June 1809.

The most substantial portion of the William Pitt Amherst Collection is made up of ten portfolios full of manuscript documents just like this one. Six of these portfolios, containing several dozen items each, cover Amherst’s time in Italy between 1809 and 1812.

There is a gap in our collection until the next portfolio picks up in 1815 when he was called to lead an embassy to the court of the Chinese emperor. While preparing for his departure, Lord Amherst received this letter from the East India House to remind him of the provision preventing “any individuals who should accompany the Embassy to Pekin from attempting to be at all concerned in any Mercantile Transaction during that Service.”

Letter to Lord Amherst from East India House, 26 January 1816.

In addition to such official documents, the collection also includes some correspondence between Lord Amherst and his wife, Lady Sarah Amherst (1762-1838). During his voyage to China in 1816, he wrote a series of letters that were dispatched to her about two weeks before he arrived in China. He helpfully includes his longitude and latitude at several points, which can easily be plugged into Google to track his progress.

Letter from Lord Amherst to Lady Amherst, 11 May 1816.

Thanks to Google, we can pinpoint Lord Amherst’s location off the southern end of Africa when he wrote the above letter to his wife.

William Pitt Amherst’s position at sea, 11 May 1816

The collection includes some interesting pieces of printed ephemera that round out this glimpse into the workings of the British Empire at the start of the nineteenth century. Apparently, someone in Lord Amherst’s party brought back an “ourang outang” — though it is unclear whether this violates the prohibition against accepting gifts noted in the letter from the East India House.

Broadside. Ca. 1817.

There is another gap in the collection between Amherst’s return from China and his appointment as governor-general of Bengal in succession to the marquess of Hastings. This piece of ephemera, printed by George Pritchard at the Hindoostanee Press, announces the arrival of Lord and Lady Amherst:

John Bull Extraordinary. George Pritchard, Hindoostanee Press, 1 August 1823.

Unfortunately, Lord Amherst’s time in India was fraught with difficulties. Less than six months after his arrival, war was declared between British India and Burma on 24 February 1824. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article about William Pitt Amherst neatly summarizes this conflict:

What had been predicted to be a short and cheap war of no more than six weeks turned into two years of arduous campaigning that cost nearly £5 million, yielded little loot, gained the unprofitable territories of Arakan, Tenasserim, and Assam, and so demoralized the army that not only was there a spectacular rise in desertions but British troops were forced to put down brutally a mutiny of Indian sepoys at Barrackpore in October 1824. Even the short and victorious campaign against Bharatpur conducted between December 1825 and January 1826 could not expunge the memory of the First Anglo-Burmese War. (Douglas M. Peers, ‘Amherst, William Pitt, first Earl Amherst of Arracan (1773–1857)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009)

The collection includes a very small amount of material about Amherst’s time in India. This letter sent from Barrackpore on 20 March 1826 is one of the few items that provides any detail of the military campaign. (View the entire letter as a PDF: Lord Amherst letter 1826)

Letter from Lord Amherst, Bharatpur, 20 March 1826

What the collection lacks in material from Lord Amherst for this period is more than made up for by the extensive diaries kept by Lady Amherst.

Thomas Lawrence. Hon. Sarah Archer (1762-1838), Countess of Plymouth & Countess Amherst of Arracan. (Mead Art Museum, Amherst College)

Amherst’s first marriage was on 24 July 1800 to Sarah, countess dowager of Plymouth (1762–1838), widow of the fifth earl of Plymouth and daughter of Andrew, second Lord Archer, whom he had first met while touring the continent in 1793. Her diary begins with their voyage from England to India and the seven bound volumes cover the entirety of their stay until they return home in July 1828.

Lady Amherst Diary vol. 1, 1823-24.

The diaries are in the queue for high-quality imaging to be added to Amherst College Digital Collections, but these images give a sense of the contents. Lady Amherst took a serious interest in her new surroundings and includes several sketches in her diaries.

Lady Amherst Diary vol. 1, 1823-24.

We hope to have the full finding aid for this collection online soon. It will take some time for us to digitize the entire collection, but we want the world to know that all of his material is available to researchers in the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College.

Although Lord Jeffrey Amherst married twice, he left no direct heir when he died in 1797. When his brother, Lieutenant-General William Amherst (1732–1781), died in 1781, Lord Amherst took his orphaned nephew and two nieces into his household and raised them as his own. Through a special remainder, the title of Baron Amherst of Montreal passed to his nephew, who became William Pitt Amherst, Second Baron Amherst of Montreal.

John Hoppner. William Pitt Amherst (1773-1857), 2nd Baron Amherst of Montreal and 1st Earl Amherst of Arakan (Mead Art Museum, Amherst College)

The Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College holds a small collection of papers by and about William Pitt Amherst. As with our holdings of material related to Lord Jeffrey Amherst, much of this material was donated to the college by alumni, largely by Jack W. C. Hagstrom, MD (Class of 1955) who served as executor of the estate of the final Earl Amherst who died in 1993.

After completing his education at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, William Pitt Amherst went on to a career that carried him far from home, but in the opposite direction from the one his uncle traveled. The collection at Amherst College begins with a series of letters to and from Amherst that document his appointment as ambassador-extraordinary to the court of the Two Sicilies in 1809.

Letter from William Pitt Amherst to Sir John Stuart, 26 June 1809.

The most substantial portion of the William Pitt Amherst Collection is made up of ten portfolios full of manuscript documents just like this one. Six of these portfolios, containing several dozen items each, cover Amherst’s time in Italy between 1809 and 1812.

There is a gap in our collection until the next portfolio picks up in 1815 when he was called to lead an embassy to the court of the Chinese emperor. While preparing for his departure, Lord Amherst received this letter from the East India House to remind him of the provision preventing “any individuals who should accompany the Embassy to Pekin from attempting to be at all concerned in any Mercantile Transaction during that Service.”

Letter to Lord Amherst from East India House, 26 January 1816.

In addition to such official documents, the collection also includes some correspondence between Lord Amherst and his wife, Lady Sarah Amherst (1762-1838). During his voyage to China in 1816, he wrote a series of letters that were dispatched to her about two weeks before he arrived in China. He helpfully includes his longitude and latitude at several points, which can easily be plugged into Google to track his progress.

Letter from Lord Amherst to Lady Amherst, 11 May 1816.

Thanks to Google, we can pinpoint Lord Amherst’s location off the southern end of Africa when he wrote the above letter to his wife.

William Pitt Amherst’s position at sea, 11 May 1816

The collection includes some interesting pieces of printed ephemera that round out this glimpse into the workings of the British Empire at the start of the nineteenth century. Apparently, someone in Lord Amherst’s party brought back an “ourang outang” — though it is unclear whether this violates the prohibition against accepting gifts noted in the letter from the East India House.

Broadside. Ca. 1817.

There is another gap in the collection between Amherst’s return from China and his appointment as governor-general of Bengal in succession to the marquess of Hastings. This piece of ephemera, printed by George Pritchard at the Hindoostanee Press, announces the arrival of Lord and Lady Amherst:

John Bull Extraordinary. George Pritchard, Hindoostanee Press, 1 August 1823.

Unfortunately, Lord Amherst’s time in India was fraught with difficulties. Less than six months after his arrival, war was declared between British India and Burma on 24 February 1824. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article about William Pitt Amherst neatly summarizes this conflict:

What had been predicted to be a short and cheap war of no more than six weeks turned into two years of arduous campaigning that cost nearly £5 million, yielded little loot, gained the unprofitable territories of Arakan, Tenasserim, and Assam, and so demoralized the army that not only was there a spectacular rise in desertions but British troops were forced to put down brutally a mutiny of Indian sepoys at Barrackpore in October 1824. Even the short and victorious campaign against Bharatpur conducted between December 1825 and January 1826 could not expunge the memory of the First Anglo-Burmese War. (Douglas M. Peers, ‘Amherst, William Pitt, first Earl Amherst of Arracan (1773–1857)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009)

The collection includes a very small amount of material about Amherst’s time in India. This letter sent from Barrackpore on 20 March 1826 is one of the few items that provides any detail of the military campaign. (View the entire letter as a PDF: Lord Amherst letter 1826)

Letter from Lord Amherst, Bharatpur, 20 March 1826

What the collection lacks in material from Lord Amherst for this period is more than made up for by the extensive diaries kept by Lady Amherst.

Thomas Lawrence. Hon. Sarah Archer (1762-1838), Countess of Plymouth & Countess Amherst of Arracan. (Mead Art Museum, Amherst College)

Amherst’s first marriage was on 24 July 1800 to Sarah, countess dowager of Plymouth (1762–1838), widow of the fifth earl of Plymouth and daughter of Andrew, second Lord Archer, whom he had first met while touring the continent in 1793. Her diary begins with their voyage from England to India and the seven bound volumes cover the entirety of their stay until they return home in July 1828.

Lady Amherst Diary vol. 1, 1823-24.

The diaries are in the queue for high-quality imaging to be added to Amherst College Digital Collections, but these images give a sense of the contents. Lady Amherst took a serious interest in her new surroundings and includes several sketches in her diaries.

Lady Amherst Diary vol. 1, 1823-24.

We hope to have the full finding aid for this collection online soon. It will take some time for us to digitize the entire collection, but we want the world to know that all of his material is available to researchers in the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College.

If you haven’t gotten a chance to see our current exhibit, Iterations: From Paris to Providence, be sure to stop by the library soon!

The exhibit is in place until September 30th, and showcases early 20th-century pochoir prints alongside derivative contemporary works from local artists.

(If you’ve already seen the exhibit and it’s gotten you all abuzz about pochoir, you may be interested to know that RISD’s Continuing Education program is offering a class in pochoir printmaking this fall. You can see details about the class here.)

Stay tuned for our upcoming guest-curated exhibit, Stages of Freedom, which opens on October 19th!

From April, 1929 through January, 1931 music commentator and critic Peter Hugh Reed hosted Around the Disc, a forty minute weekly record review program on WNYC.

Reed was the founder and editor of the American Music Lover, the longest running independent magazine dedicated to the critical review of commercial musical recordings. Beginning in May, 1935, it later was rechristened The American Record Guide. In that founding issue Reed wrote that the monthly would aim to make itself a “handbook” on the best music for the home listener, whether on record or the radio. 

“There will be only one rigid editorial policy pursued in this magazine: to comment upon and to call attention to the all-around best music on records and radio. We will not seek to exploit one type of music above another, but instead will strive to present at all times a sane and unbiased survey of a noble and many-sided art.”

One can only guess that this his earlier broadcasts over WNYC helped to shape this goal which he maintained for more than twenty years as the magazine’s editor. A quarter of a century later Reed was back on WNYC appearing with New York Times music critic Olin Downs and Duncan Robinson of the Berlioz Society on David Randolph’s Music for the Connoisseur. They were part of a panel discussion on the French composer.

Cover of the first edition of The American Music Lover magazine from May, 1936.
(A. Lanset Collection)

We’ve recently updated our online search to add a few new features.

DATE SEARCH

In response to your suggestions, we sponsored development of an improved date search. It’s in Advanced Search, on the left sidebar.

The easy way to use it is through the date picker. In this example, we’re narrowing our search to the dates from February 10, 1975 to July 12, 1976.

Use the Start date picker to select February 10, 1975.

Use the End date picker to select July 12, 1976.

Press “Search”. Your results will contain all records that include any part of the date range you’ve asked for. For example, a search for records created between Feb. 10, 1975 and July 12, 1976 will find records with date ranges such as “1956-1980” and “1975-78”, as shown below.

Tip: The example above will give you more than 15,000 results. Date search works better when combined with other search criteria.

Tip: If you are looking for an entire year (say, all of 1975 and 1976), you can just type 1975 in the start field and 1976 in the end field, and the correct time span will be filled in automatically as you press “Search”.

Tip: You may find it faster to enter the dates by hand rather than using the picker. Remember to use the YYYY-MM-DD format: 1975-06-01, not June 1 1975.

FILTER FOR TOP-LEVEL DESCRIPTIONS

In the past, selecting “Browse Archival descriptions”

produced a list of all of our 256,000+ descriptions.

In the new system, “Browse Archival descriptions” produces a list of the top-level descriptions (fonds and collections), giving a faster overview of our holdings.

You can toggle between the top-level descriptions and all descriptions in the left sidebar.

This can also be used for an overview of results from a Simple search. Using the Simple search box at the top to search for “dog”

produces 519 assorted results.

Toggling to “Top-level descriptions” will show the 6 fonds to which these 519 results belong.

This may help you narrow your search to the most appropriate records.

Tip: The records of the City of Vancouver are one top-level description containing about half of all our descriptions. There are separate top-level descriptions for Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, Vancouver Police Department and Vancouver School Board.

TERMS STAY IN SIMPLE SEARCH

In the past, if you had search words in the Simple search box, they would disappear the next time you clicked in that search box. For example, if you meant to search for “salmon” but made a typo

you couldn’t change “salmo” to “salmon”; “salmo” would disappear.

Now the term will stay put the next time you click in the Simple search box.

LINK TO TOP-LEVEL DESCRIPTION IN SEARCH RESULTS

Lists of search results now contain direct links to the top-level descriptions for any record.

Security Upgrade

Some of the underlying code for the system has been changed to secure it from outside attacks. Unfortunately, this has affected one way of searching. Now, when searching for a term inside quotation marks

the results will be shown with the code " instead of a quotation mark

If you need to adjust this search, you will have to delete it and start again. In other words, if you search using " instead of a quotation mark, the results will be incorrect, as shown below

Another way of searching for records containing these terms is to use Advanced Search and enter the search terms separately. This will give you more results than searching for “dog pound”, since you are just searching for the words and not the specific phrase, but it will allow you to adjust the search terms without deleting them.

We’d love to hear your comments on these improvements.

Today’s Bad Child of History gets himself into a fine mess due to a nest of blackbird chicks. His name is Henry, and he hails from a tiny 1812 volume published in Philadelphia.

(That second photo isn’t blurry; the printing is slightly off and the text itself is fuzzy.)

As for Henry’s troubles: he and his closest friend, George, discover a nest of blackbirds, which they check on frequently. One day, overcome by a sudden terrible urge, Henry picks up the nest for himself and carries it out of the woods, a move which elicits a dire warning from the author:

Evil thoughts insinuate themselves so easily into the hearts of men, that they have need to be always on their guard against their approaches. Children, especially, should be watchful of the first impulse to do wrong, as from their weakness they are prone to error. This attention to themselves is an easy task, because they have their parents, or teachers, at hand, to assist them with their advice. Neither are they sufficiently aware, that a small fault in the beginning, may increase to an odious vice, which will corrupt their hearts, and debase their characters as long as they live.

I’m not certain that Henry’s theft increased to an odious vice, but it did escalate into a fine mess.

Uncertain what to do with the nest, and afraid that his friend George will find out that he took it for himself, Henry hastily trades the nest for a bag of marbles carried by a passing boy. Phew! He meets up with George and tells him that he found the bag of marbles.

While they’re playing marbles, another passing boy says, “Hey, you found my lost marbles!” Henry insists that he bought them. Whoops! As the author warns, “however cautious you may be, you will betray yourselves, for you will not be able to invent so many falsehoods as will be requisite to hide your dissimulation from your companions.”

In an effort to defend his dissimulation, Henry refuses to turn over the marbles, resulting in a melee between some Bad Children of History and an unfortunate bloodied nose:

The following twists and turns are too complex to relate here, but the book ends with Henry burning up with fever, sobbing on his knees and begging for forgiveness from George and from his father, the latter of whom is now in possession of the nest of birds. How dramatic!

In a slight deviation from most moral tales, Henry doesn’t die of fever; instead, his big-hearted companions forgive him, and he learns an important lesson about telling the truth. He also grows into a man of “noble and generous sentiments”, which is really the best future scenario we could ask for.

Today we would like to wish a happy 115^th Birthday to Senator Claude Denson Pepper. Claude was born on September 8, 1900 in Camp Hill Alabama, to sharecropper parents Joseph and Lena Pepper, to whom he would remain a devoted son. After graduating with his undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama in 1921, Pepper applied and was accepted to the Harvard Law School Class of 1924. From his youth, Pepper nourished a desire to serve in public office, and after a brief stint as a law professor at the University of Arkansas, he moved to Perry, Florida in 1925 where he established his first law practice. Pepper was a devoted public servant who served the state of Florida for over 40 years as a member of the Florida House of Representatives (1926-27), the US Senate (1936-1950) and the US House of Representatives (1963-1989). During his time in the Senate, he was a proponent of President Roosevelt’s New Deal Legislation and was instrumental in the passing of the Wage and Hour Bill as well as the Lend Lease Act.

In the House of Representatives, Pepper served as an impassioned advocate for elder rights, health care and for strengthening and protecting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other government sponsored programs on behalf of millions of Americans. He died in Washington D.C. on May 30, 1989 and was the 26th individual to have lain in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Senator Pepper’s collection resides within the Claude Pepper Library at Florida State University and reflects the many of the challenges and changes that took place in American life throughout his distinguished career. Topical strengths within the Pepper Collection include aging, Civil Rights, crime and drug prevention, National Health Care, New Deal Legislation, Lend-Lease, McCarthyism, U.S. foreign and domestic policy, welfare and worker’s rights.

During the summer of 2015, the Claude Pepper Library and the FSU Digital Library collaborated to bring the Senators personal diaries to researchers’ fingertips. Scanned by the staff of the digital library, Senator Pepper’s 1937 and 1938 diaries and transcripts are now available to view online in the FSU Digital Library. Over the coming months, the Digital Library will continue to add to the diary collection, one that spanned 48 years from 1937 to 1985. The diaries offer unique insight into one of the more active American politicians of the 20^th Century and the 1937 and 1938 diaries are especially unique as they chronicle the young Senators first two years in office; the beginnings of a career that would span over 40 years.

The Claude Pepper Library is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9:00am to 5:00pm. Continue to follow our posts as we continue to bring you more interesting finds from the Pepper Papers as well as the Reubin Askew Papers and the National Organization for Women, Tallahassee Chapter Records.

The University Libraries’ Digital Projects Priorities Team met earlier this summer to hear the status of last year’s projects and to determine the priority projects for the upcoming academic year.

New projects for 2015-2016:

Tier 1:

• Cello Manuscripts (Phase 2): This will increase the number of items available online. UNCG has the world’s largest collection of cello music. These items are primarily music scores hand-annotated by noted cellists.
• Maud Gatewood collection: Correspondence, Sketchbooks, etc. from an art faculty member at UNCG. This is very interesting materials and gets us started working with visual arts collections.
• School of Music programs: Recital programs from UNCG’s predecessor institutions through 1963. Like the theatre programs we digitized a few years ago, this is a heavily used research collection in SCUA.
• Student Handbooks (Phase 2): This completes what we started with one of the collections in Textiles, Teachers, and Troops. Again, this is a very heavily used research collection that will complement yearbooks, catalogs, and newspapers already online.

Tier 2:

• Children’s literature project: Vintage children’s books, much like the Lenski items we’ve already done.
• Student life records: Vertical files covering student activities at UNCG over the years. This will be part of the exiting University Archives collection and is similar to the “class of” files we digitized a few years back.

Additional projects:

• Digital Greensboro portal: We plan to expand the custom-created Textiles, Teachers, and Troops interface to tie together all our local history collections and to create a framework for adding additional material from our own collections and from our partners
• American Publishers Trade Bindings metadata cleanup: Fine tuning as we plan to add this final collection to WorldCat and make it more user-friendly.

2014-2015 project status:

Ongoing projects from 2013-2014:

• Lois Lenski Children’s Literature: Complete.
• Manuscript Collection Scrapbooks: Complete. 

New projects:

• Fisher Park Neighborhood Association: Complete.
• OHMS oral history project: Complete. Additional (new) items still being added.
• IMLS/Hayes Taylor grant project: On schedule.
• Anna Gove correspondence: Largely done. Completed more than originally planned.
• Cello Manuscripts: Completed all items from the original proposal, including “contingent on time and resources” items.
• Civil Rights Greensnboro infill/additions: We added more than one hundred articles hosted by the Greensboro Public Library on the 1960 sit-ins.
• Home Ec Pamphlets (Phase 3): Complete.
• PE Pamphlets (Phase 2): 50% complete.
• Urban Development in Greensboro: Complete. We were able to add additional materials from the Greensboro Public Library.
• Women Veterans Historical Project migration and redesign: Complete.
• World War I Pamphlets (Phase 2): Should be complete this fall.

“Ad hoc” additional projects:

• Completed project to standardize place of publication/publisher field in all digital collections to provide better WorldCat/MARC consistency.
• Worked with OCLC to eliminate substandard MARC records created in initial sync of American Publishers Trade Bindings and Hansen collections in 2008. All but 200 records deleted from WorldCat.
• Navigation improvements to CONTENTdm site.

FSU Special Collections & Archives collects historical materials in support of all of the University’s academic programs and for the benefit of local, national, and international scholars. The collections include handwritten documents, published and unpublished textual works, printed posters and flyers, sound recordings, motion pictures, and more, covering a wide range of content including Florida history, the American Civil War, the American civil rights movement, University faculty papers, French history, and literary manuscripts.

For more details on our extensive archival holdings, consult the online Archon database or contact Special Collections staff.  Highlights of the manuscript collections include:

• Paul A.M. Dirac Papers (01/MSS 1989-009)
  Personal papers, photographs, manuscripts, galley proofs, and published papers, lecture notes, and office records of Dr. Paul A. M. Dirac, winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (1932-1969), and Professor of Physics at Florida State University from 1972 until his death in 1984.
• Donald D. Horward Papers (01/MSS 2011-0415)
  Operational and financial records of the FSU Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, as well as the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, each founded by Horward.  Includes addresses, awards, correspondence, research materials, speeches, writings, and publications related to Dr. Horward’s scholarship on the Napoleonic Era.
• Tallahassee Civil Rights Oral History Collection (01/MSS 1990-001)
  Sound recordings and and transcripts of nineteen oral history interviews  related to the civil rights movement in Tallahassee during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Topics include the Tallahassee Bus Boycott of 1956, lunch counter sit-ins, theatre demonstrations, school desegregation, voter registration, and race relations.
• Robert M. Ervin, Jr. Collection (01/MSS 1980-09)
  Publications by and about Marvel Comics, DC Comics, underground comix publishers, foreign language titles, pulp magazines, and Big Little Books. Over 1200 serial titles are represented, predominantly from the 1950s through the 1970s.
• Cinema Corporation of America Collection (01/MSS 2004-008)
  Production materials for “The King of Kings” and other motion pictures; correspondence, business records, legal materials; educational filmstrips; religious film catalogs, and the “Cap Stubbs and Tippie” newspaper cartoon strips created and drawn by Edwina Dumm, which first appeared in 1918.

All of the manuscript collections are available for use in the Special Collections Research Center, 110 Strozier Library, during normal operating hours.  Visit us today!