By Mallary Rawls

On May 15th this year the Claude Pepper Library will turn 30! Throughout this month and the rest of the year, the team at the Claude Pepper Library will be providing some history and context about the library and its namesake.

“For more than six decades, Florida has been my home.[i]” That’s how Claude Pepper began the second chapter of his 1987 autobiography, Pepper: Eyewitness to a Century. Claude Denson Pepper loved the State of Florida and many of its lively cities, one of those cities he loved was Tallahassee.

Claude Pepper was born in Camp Hill, Alabama in 1900. Though Claude lived an adventurous life where he was constantly working and traveling, he and his wife, Mildred, chose to build a life in Tallahassee for a period of time. Claude graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1924 and began practicing law in 1925 after he was admitted to the Florida Bar. He practiced civil and criminal law at a law practice in Perry, Florida and from 1929 to 1930, Claude served as an elected member of the Florida House of Representatives, representing Taylor County. Claude spent a lot of time going back and forth between Perry and Tallahassee during this time in his life. He served as a chairman for the Committee on Constitutional Amendments and was a member on a number of committees. It was his stand against another Florida representative that led to his defeat for re-election in 1930. It was after Claude’s defeat in 1930 that propelled him to move to Tallahassee. Claude was urged to continue his political path after his 1930 Florida House of Representatives loss by Judge W.B. Davis who told Claude that he needed a, “more visible stage (in) either Tallahassee or Miami.[ii]” Claude was advised by others to move to Tallahassee as well.

“I was urged also to come to Tallahassee by Justice James B. Whitfield, the patriarch and former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, whom I had come to know during my legislative days. Often he told me: ‘Mr. Pepper, I want you to move to Tallahassee. Florida needs you and this is the capital of Florida. Tallahassee will offer you an opportunity to serve Florida.[iii]’”

Claude moved to Tallahassee in 1930 and by 1931 he was able to move his family, which included his parents, two brothers, and a sister as well. While living in Tallahassee Claude ran a successful

law office with law partner Curtis Waller. Claude also served on the State Board of Public Welfare. It was around this time he was introduced to Mildred Webster. Claude was stunned by a woman in a “bright yellow dress” leaving the governor’s office, “why that’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen[iv]” Claude said to himself before he was introduced to Irene Mildred Webster. She lived in St. Petersburg but was in Tallahassee at the time working for the state legislature. They dated on and off for a period of five years. Mildred helped Claude kicked off a primary senate campaign against then sitting U.S. Senator Park Trammell in 1934 while living in Tallahassee, but he lost the primary in a close election. Nearly two years later in 1936 both U.S. Senators representing Florida died, Park Trammell in early 1936 and then five weeks later Duncan Fletcher died. Claude filed to run for Senator Fletcher’s seat and no one filed to run against him.

Claude Pepper ran unopposed in the 1936 election and became U.S. Senator Pepper. It was also at the end of this year on December 29, 1936 that Claude and Mildred were married. Through his U.S. Senate service (1936-1950) Claude and Mildred kept residences in both Tallahassee and Washington, D.C.

Claude lost his 1950 re-election campaign in one of the most brutal and slanderous elections in U.S. history to George Smathers. After his defeat in 1951 Claude opened up a law practice in

Tallahassee with his law partner and friend Jim Clements. Things were a bit shaky at this point, especially with the law offices in Tallahassee, but Claude stayed close to politics and regularly visited Florida State University to talk with loyal supporters, including the student body president at the time, Reubin Askew. On March 2, 1951 Claude’s law partner and longtime friend, Jim Clements died. Claude’s mother, Lena Pepper and other family members were still living in Tallahassee, but around the mid-1950s Claude and Mildred were going back and forth between all of the law offices between Florida and Washington, D.C.

Claude campaigned for the U.S. Senate again in 1958 for the Republican Senate seat that belonged to Spessard Holland, but Holland won his re-election. The good news that came out of that election for Claude would be that he carried Dade County by 25,000 votes and that weighed in on his decision to run for the U.S. House of Representatives representing a new district in Florida. Claude won that campaign and served his district and country as a U.S. Congressman for the rest of his life.

Claude and Mildred Pepper maintained their close friendships and relationships in Tallahassee during this time. In January 1979, Mildred and Claude attended the Inauguration of Governor Bob Graham. At this time plans were established to build a library dedicated to the life of Mildred and Claude Pepper at Florida State University.

Mildred Pepper died from cancer on March 3, 1979. Claude held two funerals for his beloved wife, one at the Coral Gables Methodist Church in Miami and the other at the First Baptist Church where she and Claude worshiped while living in Tallahassee.

Claude remained active and vigilante while serving in the U.S. Congress. The Mildred and Claude Pepper Library opened here at Florida State University on May 15, 1985. The original library was located in Dodd Hall and moved to Call Street in 1997. Claude Pepper lived an ambitious and productive life of 89 years where he worked hard and accomplished many great things. We’re honored that he chose to spend an exceptional amount of time carrying out that work in Tallahassee.

[i] C. Pepper, H. Gorey, Pepper: Eyewitness to a Century, Orlando, 1987, p.33

[ii] Ibid, p.43

[iii] Ibid, p.43

[iv] Ibid, p.50George

Tomorrow is Tuesday, which means that we’ll have Art//Archives open hours from 10:30 – 1:00. This week’s theme is GEOMETRICS.

We’ve pulled some fascinating books full of shapes, geometry, repeating patterns, and designs.

You can look at a 19th century geometry textbook, a Japanese design book, an 18th century builders’ guide, colored idea books for wallpaper and fabric designers, a book of photographs of Peruvian textiles, and numerous other strange and wonderful tomes.

Stop by Special Collections tomorrow and take a look. We’re on the 3rd floor of the Providence Public Library, at the top of the big marble staircase. Bring your friends– Art//Archives is open to everyone!

One of the most important things I’ve learned as a Library and Information Studies student is how to navigate the lingo of the profession, which includes a dizzying array of acronyms. If it all starts to look like a bowl full of alphabet soup, here’s a (certainly nowhere near exhaustive) list of a few acronyms you can you use next time you want to impress a librarian!

A

AACR2 – Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd ed. – National standards for cataloging rules first published in 1967 and now succeeded by Resource Description and Access (RDA).

ACRL – Association of College & Research Libraries – The largest division of the American Library Association (ALA), comprised of academic librarians from institutions like Florida State University Libraries.

C

CCO – Cataloging Cultural Objects – Guidelines for cataloging cultural objects, such as works of art, architecture, and historical artifacts.

D

DACS – Describing Archives: A Content Standard – The content standard used for describing archival collections, which expands upon AACR2 but provides additional guidelines for describing unpublished materials, such as personal papers and manuscript collections.

DC – Dublin Core – A set of vocabulary terms, originally based on a set of 15 elements (Title, Creator, Subject, Description, Publisher, Contributor, Date, Type, Format Identifier, Source, Language, Relation, Coverage, and Rights), that can be used to describe resources such as webpages and digital images. It is a very simple framework, but it can be combined with other metadata standards to control vocabularies. Dublin Core standards were applied to items in the digital exhibit That I May Remember: the Scrapbooks of Florida State College for Women (1905-1947). Shown at right, an image is described using the Title, Subject, and Description elements.

E

EAD – Encoded Archival Description – A markup schema which allows us to encode DACS descriptions and make them appear as nice, neat, human-readable web documents on the Finding Aid Database.

F

FRBR – Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records – A conceptual model that seeks to help users make sense of bibliographic records by defining relationships between entities. For example, if a patron is looking for a signed edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species, FRBR recognizes a hierarchal relationship between the work (the abstract vision of the work created in Darwin’s head), the expression (Darwin’s vision expressed in words), the manifestation (Darwin’s words published in a specific form – a book), and the item (the unique signed edition of Origin of Species held by FSU Special Collections & Archives) that the patron is searching for.

G

GIS – Geographic Information System – A system for analyzing, manipulating, and displaying geographic data that offers exciting possibilities for aiding access to library collections.

H

HTML – HyperText Markup Language – the language that provides structure to web pages.

I

ILS – Integrated Library System – The data management system that seeks to integrate all the different functions of the library.

ISBN – International Standard Book Number – A unique identification number given to every edition of a book.

ISSN – International Standard Serial Number – A unique identification number given to periodical publications.

L

LCSH – Library of Congress Subject Headings – A controlled vocabulary for subject headings created by the Library of Congress.

M

MARC – Machine-Readable Cataloging – A standard for encoding metadata that was developed in the 1960s as libraries made the transition from card catalogues to computers. MARC records use a system of data fields with alphanumeric tags, indicators, and subfield codes to create bibliographic descriptions. Seen without the help of the OPAC’s display interface, a MARC record might be mistaken by the untrained eye for the opening credits of a Keanu Reeves movie (as seen above left).

MODS – Metadata Object Description Schema – A metadata schema that is more complex than Dublin Core but simpler than MARC. It uses language-based tags (i.e. titleInfo, language, relatedItem) that are much more intuitive to understand than the MARC data fields seen above.

N

NLP – Natural Language Processing – a method of computer processing that seeks to improve information retrieval by studying the nuances of language in free text searches. Instead of searching by keywords, NLP seeks to understand the semantics of what a searcher is really asking for.

O

OCLC – Online Computer Library Center – The largest bibliographic network in the world, which links databases of records from libraries all across the world.

OPAC – Online Public Access Catalog – When you perform a catalog search at lib.fsu.edu, you are harnessing the power of the OPAC.

R

RDA – Resource Description and Access – As of 2010, the successor of AACR2. A standard for cataloging based on FRBR.

T

TEI – Text Encoding Intiative – A schema that provides guidelines for encoding texts for use in digital humanities.

X

XML – eXtensible Markup Language – A markup language used in metadata applications such as MODS.

Our collection includes a number of books containing scientific explanations and medical advice that are, by current standards, alternately alarming and comical.

For instance, our copy of Dr. Chase’s Recipes; or, Information for Everybody: an Invaluable Collection of About Eight Hundred Practical Recipes (from 1867) contains appealing cocktail recipes and some respectable recommendations for herbal remedies, as well as instructions for this medicinal ointment that sounds suspiciously like a pudding:

MAGNETIC OINTMENT–SAID TO BE TRASK’S–Lard, raisins, cut into pieces, and fine-cut tobacco, equal weights; simmer well together, then strain and press out all from the dregs. The above is an excellent ointment, and looks like its namesake, and its action is really magnetic. Mix this in equal parts with the first Green Ointment No. 4, and it will make a good application in Piles, Salt-Rheum, and all cutaneous or skin diseases, as well as cuts, bruises, &c.

In 150 years, I’m confident that our current medical journals will elicit a good chuckle. That said, the facing page in this volume contains a tragicomic description of a young man whose fiancee won’t marry him until he rids himself of the scabs on his head.

The treatment for such “very bad skin diseases” includes perseverance and a tincture including both corrosive sublimate (also known as mercury chloride) and sugar of lead (lead acetate), both of which may well remove scabs but which are now known to cause heavy metal toxicity.

(Mercury chloride was also a common treatment for syphilis in the age before antibiotics; its use is described in the folk ballad “The Unfortunate Rake”. Said rake’s presumable misfortune was an advanced case of syphilis, and he laments to his friend that had she but told me before she disordered me/ Had she but told me of it in time/ I might have got pills and salts of white mercury/ But now I’m cut down in the height of my prime.)

We welcome guest blogger, Dr. Dave Sherman, Associate Director for Policy and Records at the National Security Agency, who describes below details about NSA’s recent accomplishment: the declassification review and release of records in the Friedman Collection.

During the past two weeks I’ve had the privilege of participating in a series of events marking the National Security Agency’s declassification and public release of the official papers of an individual who, were I asked to name a single person as the founder of that agency, deserves the title more than anyone else:  William Friedman.

On Monday, April 20, 2015, NSA released over 50,000 pages (or 7,000 records) of Friedman’s official papers to the public.  These newly declassified records are now available at the National Archives and Records Administration.   NSA also posted digital copies of the entire collection to its website and provided electronic copies to NARA and to the Marshall Foundation, which holds Friedman’s personal papers.  On Thursday, April 23, 2015, the Foundation hosted a symposium marking the public release and featuring speakers from both government and academia.   It also opened an excellent exhibit on the life and work of William Friedman and his wife Elizebeth – a renowned codebreaker in her own right – with numerous photographs, papers, and artifacts from its collections.   Five days later, the National Cryptologic Museum, located on NSA’s Fort Meade campus, cut the ribbon on its own exhibit honoring the Friedmans.

Friedman served in almost every one of the signals intelligence agencies which preceded NSA and at NSA itself.  He is remembered to have brought the discipline of a scientist to the making and breaking of codes and ciphers, or cryptology, a field previously left mostly to inspired amateurs and some less than noble dilettantes.   After the first U.S. codebreaking organization, the American Black Chamber, was shut down in the 1920s, Friedman carried on as the Army’s lone cryptologist.  Then, in the early 1930s, he founded the Signals Intelligence Service…with an initial staff, including Friedman himself, of six!  The SIS grew slowly throughout the 1930s, but its small size did not keep it from achieving one of the most significant feats in the history of cryptanalysis:  the breaking of Japan’s “Purple” cipher, which that nation used to protect its most sensitive diplomatic communications.  But Friedman and his team were not just codebreakers.  They also were code makers,  devising an encryption machine – SIGABA – which, unlike the German Enigma or the Japanese Purple systems, protected Allied communications through World War II and beyond without ever having been cracked…at least not that we know of.

It took NSA almost two years of work to get to the point where we were ready to publicly release the Friedman papers.  Here’s what I’ve learned in the process.

First, the declassification and public release process looks easier than it is.  What could be simpler than getting out a few thousand pages of records from (mainly) the 1950s and 1960s, right?  I would be the first to agree that the government, and especially NSA, needs to get more historically significant information into the public domain more quickly, and in a more complete and comprehensive form.  On the other hand – and I can understand why the historical community would have difficulty believing this – there remains some information that must remain secret to protect certain intelligence sources and methods still active and relevant today, even for example from the early Cold War period.  Just enough, in fact, that for a collection covering the wide range of topics which the Friedman collection encompasses we had to review much of it page-by-page to ensure we inadvertently did not endanger such activities.   But – and this is my first lesson – what we must not do is allow the complexity of the task to deter us from undertaking it.  As Public Interest Declassification Board member Bill Leary observed at the National Declassification Center’s recent public forum, declassification projects which are the most challenging to undertake are also likely to be the most historically relevant.  They should be at the top of our to-do list, and we also need to find new ways to do them quickly and comprehensively.

The second thing I’ve learned is that there is no single approach that will succeed for every declassification effort.   For the Friedman project, for example, we made a decision early that in addition to making the paper originals available at NARA we also would release the entire collection in digital form.  We did this to ensure the broadest public access to the records.  Other efforts have taken this route as well, including a smaller NSA release on Vietnam POWs and MIAs last year.  However, it remains to be seen whether our process would prove feasible for projects with millions of pages.  We also decided to conduct a line-by-line declassification review of the records, redacting still secret information when required.  More time-consuming than a simple “pass-fail” declassification review, our objective was to tell as complete a story as possible without compromising national security or fostering historical misinterpretation.  As a result, roughly 85% of the Friedman collection was released in full.  Understandably – and reasonably, in my view – we’ve been criticized a bit for our redactions, on the grounds that any excisions from a record increase the likelihood of its significance being misinterpreted.  That criticism is not unfair.  It also, at a minimum, reminds us in government to wield the redaction knife – or, as it was more colorfully described to me recently, meat cleaver – with care.  We strove to minimize the redactions on this project.  However, this approach may not be suitable for other projects.  And those of us who resort to it would be well advised to institute checks against the risk of our enabling historical misinterpretation, inadvertently or otherwise.

Finally, I’ve come to an even greater appreciation than before that declassification is a team sport and partnerships – both within the government and between the government and the public – are critical to success.   The more obvious reason for this is that, with the increasing integration of the Intelligence Community over time, many of our records contain classified information which falls under the jurisdiction of multiple agencies.  That is absolutely necessary as a matter of analytic tradecraft in order to provide the policymaker or military commander with the most comprehensive and authoritative intelligence possible.   To be effective, then, declassification will require increasing use of cross-agency teams, both at the National Declassification Center and elsewhere.  But partnerships with public institutions and individual researchers are equally important.  This is not just because, in the final analysis, the government’s records are the public’s records.   Public institutions and individuals also provide essential steerage in helping those of us in government identify records of highest interest.  They also hold their own records collections, ones which – as we have seen in the case of the Friedman release – when augmented by government materials create a full and complete documentary record ripe for historical interpretation and public understanding.  And, finally, the public, academia, and the advocacy community can and must hold us in government accountable to ensure the soundness of our declassification processes and their outcomes.

Those of us at NSA who have been involved in the public release of the Friedman collection are proud of the results.  But we are even more gratified to have learned what we have along the way.  We realize that there is much more left to do.  We also know that there is always more we can and will learn about how to make our records available to the public in ways that do not harm our nation’s security but do increase public understanding and accountability, something which is now more than ever critical to sustaining an intelligence service in a democratic society.

Blog by Roelie Reed

During a recent visit to Cornwall, I visited St Enodoc Church, Trebetherick. The church itself was well worth the visit; it was built in 1430 but parts of it date back to the 12^thC, as does its font.

The church is situated in the dunes at Daymer Bay on the River Camel Estuary and was almost buried in sand during the 18^th and 19^th C during which time the priest was lowered through the roof into the church to carry out its annual service so that he could keep his stipend!  

A Celtic Cross is in the entrance porch which was relocated to the church from a nearby location. On the adjacent Brae Hill there are three Bronze Age burial mounds.

There are some tenuous links with the Archives; Sir John Betjeman was a friend of archaeologist Stuart Piggott (he wrote a poem about Stuart – there is a signed copy in the Piggott archive); Sir John first came to Trebetherick in 1910; his father owned several properties in the area. He retired to the village where he owned a house on the 12^th hole of the golf course, wrote several poems about the area and Cornwall, and he is buried in the churchyard.

We’ve also found some beautiful images of Cornwall in our glass plate photographic archive. This site was identified for us by a Twitter follower as Polruan:

We haven’t found any old images of Trebetherick though – yet!

It was a very poignant experience to sit on the bench where Sir John must have sat often, admiring the view over the estuary; the beach and see the waves breaking over the rocks in the distance.

Today marks the first installment of a new series of Special Collections highlights: Bad Children of History.

Our Edith Wetmore Collection of Children’s Books is a veritable treasure trove of illustrations: it contains 1,850 children’s books in 20 languages spanning more than 500 years of grammar instruction, rhyming poetry, anthropomorphized animals, Bible stories, and, yes, naughty children.

We’re starting off the series with an illustration from a truly classic book of misbehaving youth: Struwwelpeter, first published in 1845. These photos come from an 1890 English translation published by Porter & Coates.

Here’s a picture of Pauline lighting a match, despite the exhortations of her pet cats:

And what happens to children who light matches when their mother is away? That’s right, they burn into a tragic pile of ash.

So she was burnt with all her clothes,
And arms and hands, and eyes and nose;
Till she had nothing more to lose
Except her little scarlet shoes;
And nothing else but these was found
Among her ashes on the ground.

This image from the June 1964 issue of M-U-M: Magic, Unity, Might shows John F. Levy with two chickens, two rabbits, two monkeys, and a Cocker Spaniel in a tiny hat. Not pictured: additional trained dogs, guinea pigs, and skunks.

The accompanying profile piece also contains this outstanding paragraph:

For a number of years, John was a private detective but could not stay away from the entertainment field. He also had a poultry and pecan ranch, but now his shows and rides occupy all his time. He also has a midget car that he might adapt to a clown act.

On Saturday, wearing my Chair of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission hat, I accepted the Thomas Jefferson Prize from the Society for History in the Federal Government for the NHPRC in creating Founders Online. This is a particularly meaningful award because of the caliber of the professional community represented among the Society. There was great joy in “my house” when we received the good news!

In accepting the award on behalf of NHPRC, I said:

As the steward of Federal Government records, the National Archives has provided leadership in the archives and records management field for over 75 years. As far back as 1939, the American Archivist summed up the central challenge: “Just as librarians promote the use of books, and as teachers defend before the public the value of education, so archivists have as part of their duty to give stimulus and guidance to the use of archives, and to their use not by the few but by the many.”

I take that as our biggest challenge and opportunity. How do we ensure that as many people as possible can find and use the historical records held not only by the National Archives but by the nation’s archives?

One way is to continue opening our doors to the public. Every day I am lucky to witness the crowds of people in the Rotunda of the National Archives lined up to see the Charters of Freedom and other documents. More than 9,000 people, for example, came by to see the Emancipation Proclamation on the 150th anniversary of its signing. And all across the country in our many facilities, ordinary citizens get to examine original records in their family history journeys, researchers use originals to track down evidence, and hold our government accountable for its actions.

But what about the many who cannot come to Washington, DC or who are searching for records far from home?

In a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, Walter Isaacson describes the “tingling sensation” people feel in the company of the original documents, but he also describes the power of providing access to the many through digitization and online publishing “when millions of curious people, with new technologies in hand, get to dive into the papers of historical figures.” And he then he holds up our Founders Online as a model for thinking about the whole question of access.

Founders Online really is a remarkable achievement built out of the tireless work of many. From the print publication of the very first volume of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson to decades of collecting, transcribing, annotating and publishing the papers of Franklin, Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Madison. The print editions alone make access happen.

But through the leadership of our National Historical Publications and Records Commission and with our partners at the Rotunda project at the University of Virginia, we realized that not only could we broaden the audience for these records by making them freely available online, we could also improve and deepen that use through the ability to search across the papers of six Founders, including early access to currently unpublished letters.

The hybrid result is this massive database—currently at 167,000 separate documents—that changed fundamentally how people can find and use these historical records. Gone are the days when a search might take hours—or days or weeks—across multi-volume sets and indexes. Now scholars and students and lawyers and genealogists and enthusiasts for the history of federal government, now faceted searches pull up results in the blink of an eye. Speed and accuracy increased, and the capacity for analysis has improved.

And we are seeing great results. Since its launch in June 2013, over 1 million people have visited Founders Online. We regularly get emails from researchers excited by the results and engaged in improving the site.

The White House has featured the site twice on its blog since the launch, and the site is regularly cited on Facebook, twitter, and other social media. National Journal used the site to identify Thomas Jefferson’s activities as a brewer of beer. The New York Times’ Art and Culture blog announced the site with the headline: “Founding Fathers Go Electric.”

But here’s what really excites me. Educators of all kinds at all levels are using Founders Online in the classroom. University of Virginia historian Peter Onuf used Founders Online last spring to teach his first massive, open online course (MOOC) entitled, “The Age of Jefferson,” attended by several thousand participants. And one high school history teacher writes, “This resource is breathtaking in its scope and value. I already have students accessing it for their class projects. It defies description. Powerful, powerful, resource.”

The education staff at the National Archives has linked the material to facsimiles on our www.DocsTeach.org site for teachers. The National Endowment for the Humanities includes it on its EDSITEment webpages. The National Humanities Center in Research Triangle, NC offers faculty webinars and interactive lesson plans using this new resource exclusively. Monticello also uses Founders Online for some of its online lesson plans.

At least one course at Smith College requires students to investigate Founders Online. The site is also on the reading list for courses at George Mason, Brandeis, Furman, and more.

Scholars are beginning to make use of the site. “Citations have appeared in The American Historical Review, Constitutional Commentary, and The Journal of Church and State, among other journals.

New books that use Founders Online include The True Geography of Our Country: Jefferson’s Cartographic Vision (UVA Press), Thomas Jefferson’s Philosophy of Education: A Utopian Dream (Routledge), and Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America (Simon and Schuster). Scholars such as Ron Chernow, author of bios of Washington and Hamilton and Jill Lepore on Benjamin Franklin’s sister Jane have spoken out about the value of combining the “tingling sensation” of seeing the original documents but also of the enhancements of online access.

I, like Walter Isaacson, “…hope that archives will remain inspiring places to visit and to meet people with like-minded passions. They can blend the virtual world and physical space to become 21st-century museums for the mind.”

With more than 12 billion pieces of paper and 42 million photographs—and a goal of digitizing everything—the National Archives will long blend the physical and virtual worlds. And I am also convinced that “tingling sensation” that can be achieved in seeing for the first time a piece of history through Founders Online.

I’ll close with a well known citation from Mr. Jefferson. In a 1791 letter to the editor for the first collection of the nation’s historical records, Jefferson wrote, “Let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use . . . . but by such multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.”

Jefferson, and the other Founders of the nation, readily understood that the value of historical records lies not primarily in the paper artifacts, but in the ideas embodied within the words, and the public’s ability to understand and use those records. It is those ideas that give us that tingling sensation in the museums for the mind.

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 5 strike followed on the heels of a May Day demonstration at Yale protesting the trial of the New Haven Black Panthers and the surveillance of the Black Panthers by the FBI.  As the protest grew into a national movement, the motivation for the strike expanded to include President Nixon’s recent expansion of the Vietnam War and the death of four students at a demonstration at Kent State.

The Amherst Student, May 4, 1970 states the three strike demands as follows:

1. That the United States government end its systematic oppression of political dissidents and release all political prisoners, such as Bobby Seale and other members of the Black Panther Party.
2. That the United States government cease its expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and Laos; that it unilaterally and immediately withdraw all forces from Southeast Asia.
3. That the universities end their complicity with the United States war machine by immediate end to defense research, ROTC, counterinsurgency research and other such programs.

The editions of the Amherst Student leading up to the strike include editorials on reasons Amherst College should participate in the national strike, letters to the editor encouraging students to resist the draft, and articles calling for Amherst faculty to suspend classes for the length of the strike.

The May 7, 1970 Amherst Student includes the faculty and student resolutions, including the announcement that the faculty of Amherst College had voted to suspend class for the remainder of the spring semester, stating “The Faculty of the College formally declares its support for the national movement to end the war in Indochina, to end the vilification of youth by public authorities, and to insure justice and full constitutional freedoms for Americans of all races”.

In the weeks following the suspension of classes, students organized daily talks, teach-ins, rallies, and draft counseling.  Our Moratoria Papers collection contains the Student Assembly Bulletin, a schedule of on-campus events published daily with announcements about progression of the national strike.  The Moratoria Papers also include screen-printed posters and single page sheets of information for strikers, including facts about the Vietnam War, types of tear gas used by police, medical aid advice, and a flyer titled “Pocket Lawyer” informing students of their legal rights.

More information on Amherst College’s participation in the national strike of May 1970 can be found in the Moratoria Collection, General Files (Political Activity and Activism), Photographs Collection, and other sources in the Archives and Special Collections.

As discerning blog readers may have noticed, this post was written by a brand-new staff member. Hello! My name is Angela DiVeglia, and I’m PPL’s new Curatorial Assistant.

Now that the personal introduction’s out of the way, let me introduce an awesome new weekly happening in Special Collections: Art//Archives Visual Research Hours.

These open hours will take place Tuesdays from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., beginning this coming Tuesday, April 28th, 2015.

Art//Archives is a time for artists, creative workers, designers, illustrators, printers, curious bibliophiles, and anyone else interested in doing visual research in our vast collections of illustrated books, manuscripts, and periodicals. These weekly hours allow time for creative exploration and special collections browsing time.

Here’s a cool postcard advertising our open research hours:

I can sense your burning question, blog readers: “Why?”

First, our collection is a fantastic and free resource for local artists and designers. We’re fortunate to be located across the street from AS220, and within vigorous spitting distance of other great arts organizations, galleries, printshops, and graphic design firms, not to mention the Rhode Island School of Design. Being situated in a city that bills itself as The Creative Capital naturally means working closely with the arts community.

Second, we know that methods of visual research often differ significantly from methods of informational research. People often come to Special Collections hoping to unearth a highly specific piece of information—say, a letter mentioning a long-ago ancestor, or a sample lunch menu from a whaling ship—while visual researchers often want to browse a broad sampling of materials in search of the surprising, the inspirational, the beautiful, or the fascinatingly strange. Serendipitous encounters generally don’t happen in collections with closed, non-browsable stacks, but we want to make that kind of discovery-based experience possible.

Third, we want to create a comfortable setting for people who may not have done much, if any, archival or historical research before. Visiting Special Collections shouldn’t feel daunting; we want to foster a time and space when one can drop in, sans appointment, to explore some of our materials. Think of it as a once-weekly, enormously extensive visual encyclopedia.

To sweeten the deal, each week we’ll pull a selection of interesting illustrated books pertaining to a loose theme. We’re also happy to pull other books related to people’s specific interests.

Now I sense your next burning question: “How can I attend the Art//Archives Visual Research Hours?”

All you have to do is come to Special Collections on a Tuesday between 10:30 and 1:00. You don’t need a scholarly recommendation; you don’t need proof of citizenship, membership, or any other type of –ship. All you need is yourself, clean hands, an ID (to register on your first visit), and a sketchbook/ camera/ laptop if you want to take notes or photos. Then you’re free to hang out in our reading room with amazing old books (and amazing fellow artists).

Hope to see you on Tuesday! This week’s theme will be ANIMALS.