In 1952, the International Council of Scientific Unions proposed an International Geophysical Year (IGY) (which was actually the 18 months from July 1957-December 1958).  Members of the global scientific community would coordinate their efforts in order to enhance human understanding of the Earth.  Special attention was to be given to the Antarctic continent, for which comprehensive data did not exist.  To this end, twelve nations established 36 scientific stations on the Antarctic Ice Shelf in the years leading up to the IGY.  Little America V was one of six bases established by the United States during this time.  (Four previous bases named Little America had existed in other locations on the continent, but had been discontinued.)  Logistical support for the base was delegated to the US Navy by the US Department of Defense, as Navy seaplanes had already been operating on the Antarctic continent for decades; Navy forces under Admiral Richard E. Byrd had been essential to the establishment of previous US research facilities there.

The resulting Navy mission, Operation Deep Freeze, was planned in two phases, to avoid flying during the punishing Antarctic winter.  Deep Freeze I ran during the 1955-1956 austral summer, delivering equipment necessary to outfit the six research bases.  Lieutenant Commander Robert E. Hancock Jr. was a supply officer with the US Navy, and spent much of 1957 on the Ross Ice Shelf as a result of Deep Freeze II, which ran further supplies to Little America V and other bases from October 1956 to February 1957.  Hancock brought many souvenirs back from Antarctica, including photographs, Navy-issue maps and survival guides, schematics of Little America V, and coal from the volcano at Mt. Erebus.

Later in life, Hancock collected other artifacts related to Antarctic exploration, including model ships and aircraft, an empty can of cocoa from one of Captain Robert Scott’s expeditions, even ceramic and glass penguins.  All of these items and more now reside in FSU Libraries Special Collections and Archives as the Robert E. Hancock Jr. Antarctic Collection, and are open to all researchers from the FSU community and general public.

Operation Deep Freeze and the International Geophysical Year each had lasting impact on the global community.  Cooperation among international scientists in Antarctica laid the foundation for the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, which still guarantees that no single country will claim territorial sovereignty over the Antarctic continent.  The IGY saw the first scientific satellite launches by the United States and Soviet Union, and thus the birth of the “space race” that led to the creation of NASA and the multiple agencies of the Soviet space program.  Deep Freeze has continued far beyond its initial two phases in 1955 and 1956, and today,  under the command of the US Air Force, still services military and civilian bases across Antarctica.

Further Reading:

Robert E. Hancock, Jr. Antarctic Collection, Special Collections, Florida State University Libraries, Tallahassee, Florida.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. “The International Geophysical Year.” Accessed December 3, 2015. http://www.nas.edu/history/igy/

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. “IGY History:  International Geophysical Year.” Accessed December 3, 2015.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/spo/igy_history.html

Ellery D. Wallwork & Kathryn A. Wilcoxson.  Operation Deep Freeze: 50 Years of US Air Force Airlift in Antarctica, 1956-2006.  Scott Air Force Base, Illinois: Office of History, Air Mobility Command, 2006.

We had another successful run showcasing our moving image series at the Vancity Theatre this past November. Every year, we are thrilled to see the enormous interest our screenings generate. We are aware that due to sellouts, the theatre must turn away many hopeful theatre goers. To accommodate as many people as possible, each year we will continue to hold multiple screenings, and rerun previous years’ screenings. You can also view all past shows on our YouTube channel, including this year’s Vancouver – A Distant Mirror and Reflecting the City (Redux). Please note that online content will not include pre-screening projected snipes and presentations, or any commentary or music accompaniment. For more information about the most recent screenings, please visit our previous post.

We hope to see you at our 2016 show!

Listed below are the four sections of Vancouver – A Distant Mirror, and the individual archival films featured.

Filming Friends and Family
Hamber family films (1920s to 1930s)
excerpts
AM1036-S10-: MI-137, MI-150 and MI-151

George Thompson family films (1920s to 1930s)
excerpts
AM1590-: 2011-016.3

W.J. Lloyd family films (1930s)
excerpt
AM1487-: 2013-062.1

Noel B. Daniels family films (1964)
excerpt
AM1487-: 2013-062.3

Out with a Camera
We Drivers (part 1) (c. 1936-39)
excerpts
AM1487-: 2013-020.10

Old Vancouver 1948 #1 (1948)
excerpts
AM1601-S1-: 2012-010.01

Here’s the Score for ’64 (1964)
excerpt
AM1487-: 2013-062.3

Old False Creek
The new Granville Bridge (1954)
excerpts
COV-S361-: 2013-020.08

Sweeney Cooperage films
From Log To Barrel (1962)
excerpt
AM1033-: 2013-015.5

Drop In – CBC (1972) [NOT part of YouTube video due to copyright]
excerpt
AM1033-: 2013-015.4

Page 12 Cameras visit Sweeney Cooperage – KVOS Bellingham (c. 1972)
AM1033-: 2013-015.1

A Distant Mirror
Scenes of Vancouver (1942)
excerpts
AM1611-: 2012-033.04

Our Hit Parade (1955)
excerpts
Item No. 2013-020.19

Listed below are the five sections of Reflecting the City (Redux) and the individual archival films featured.

Peacetime
We drivers (part 2) (c. 1936-39)
excerpts
AM1487-: 2013-020.11

Wartime Summer
Our Outdoor Heritage (1940)
excerpts
VPK-S652-: MI-105

Not Quite Haight-Ashbury
Denman family films (1960s)
excerpts
AM1487-: MI-590, MI-591 and MI-595

V.R.B. Dead or Alive? (1977)
excerpts
AM1323-: LEG181.3

Neighbourhood Improvement Program (1976) excerpt
AM1323-: LEG181.4

Getting Around
New Westminster: Bridges (c. 1936)
excerpt
AM1591-: 2011-089.032

Vancouver Low Cost Street Program (1971)
PUB-: MI-27

Urban Transportation (1971)
excerpt
AM1487-: 2010-028.2

Bicycle Ride (1974)
AM1487-: 2012-029.001

Free Wheelin’: show #6 (1992)
excerpt
AM1651-: 2010-025.45

Cycle!: show #3 (1995)
excerpt
AM1651-: 2010-025.14

Almost Yesterday
Trading Post (1967) [NOT part of YouTube video due to copyright]
excerpt
AM1487-: LEG188.7

Rogers’ Golden Syrup Ad: Bob Lenarduzzi 1980)
AM1592-: 2011-092.0553

Province Reports – “That’s the BC Spirit” (1982)
AM1553-8-S10-: MI-357

Stadium (1983)
AM1553-8-S11-: MI-251

NPA Spot (Bill Vander Zalm) (1984)
AM1553-: MI-348 

Expo ’86 North American Consumer Television Campaign (1985)
AM1487-: 2006-105.1

It’s citrus season in the Northeast, and to celebrate, the archives offers this 1949 recipe for honey baked grapefruit. This clip – an interview with then Florida Governor Fuller Warren – is from a WNYC program we’ve yet to identify.

We’re not sure how popular baked grapefruit was in the 1940s, and we were only able to find one instance of it on a contemporary restaurant menu: Thanksgiving dinner at the Hotel New Yorker in 1937.

This audio is part of a longer eight minute interview with Warren, which you can listen to in its entirety below. The Governor had been up to New York on official business and dropped by the studios to talk about a wide range of topics, like removing livestock from the Florida highways and the proper way of pronouncing Florida town names.

Many thanks to Rebecca Sims for the photo.  You can find her version of baked grapefruit here. The original airdate for the audio was December 2nd, 1949. Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

So, the title is more akin to Halloween than the newly arrived holiday season but this new digital collection fits the saying.

70 herbals and cookbooks have been added to the FSU Digital Library over the last month.

Herbals, which describe the appearance of medicinal plants, tell how to gather, prepare, preserve and store them. These books contribute to the work of physicians, pharmacists and botanists by providing data about the indication and dosage of these plants. Elizabethan literature is filled with references to herbal lore, herbs and their uses, herb gardens, and manners and customs associated with herbs and their use. Thus herbals can provide a vivid background of life in times past.

An interest in cookbooks and household management is a legacy from FSU’s earliest years as a women’s college. Cookbooks are held in our Rare Book, Florida and Scottish collections. The oldest in our cookbook collection is from 1622 Venice.

These books are pulled from various collections housed in Special Collections & Archives but are presented as a single collection in the FSUDL as they often would have been used in tandem by the women of the household to feed and keep healthy their families.

Please explore the collection – maybe you’ll find a recipe for a holiday meal to remember (or the secret recipe for treating warts from the 16^th century).

For 30-plus years, Tony Schwartz produced WNYC programs that uncannily captured the diversity and vitality of the people that lived and worked in and around New York City. In this clip from 1964’s Adventures in Sound, straphangers speak about their joys and frustrations, most of which will sound familiar to today’s riders. Original Air date January 7, 1964

After capturing sounds familiar an unfamiliar to 21st century riders (token turnstiles; the roaring of the cars pulling into the station; the drone of the train, in which “you can hear a beauty” when it is heard in isolation), Schwartz focuses on the riders themselves. The 1964 straphangers speak about their joys and frustrations, most of which will sound familiar to today’s riders.

For 30-plus years, Tony Schwartz produced WNYC programs that uncannily captured the diversity and vitality of the people that lived and worked in and around New York City.After capturing sounds familiar an unfamiliar to 21st century riders (token turnstiles; the roaring of the cars pulling into the station; the drone of the train, in which “you can hear a beauty” when it is heard in isolation), Schwartz focuses on the riders themselves. The 1964 straphangers speak about their joys and frustrations, most of which will sound familiar to today’s riders.

For 30-plus years, Tony Schwartz produced WNYC programs that uncannily captured the diversity and vitality of the people that lived and worked in and around New York City.After capturing sounds familiar an unfamiliar to 21st century riders (token turnstiles; the roaring of the cars pulling into the station; the drone of the train, in which “you can hear a beauty” when it is heard in isolation), Schwartz focuses on the riders themselves. The 1964 straphangers speak about their joys and frustrations, most of which will sound familiar to today’s riders.

For 30-plus years, Tony Schwartz produced WNYC programs that uncannily captured the diversity and vitality of the people that lived and worked in and around New York Cit

All of us here at Special Collections & Archives wish you and your families a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We will close at 4:30pm on Wednesday, November 25th and reopen to our normal hours on Monday, November 30th.

In case you are still working on your Thanksgiving menu, here is a menu from an 1845 cookbook in a new collection we’ve been working on bringing into our digital library. Best get cooking!

One of the most common questions I get from undergraduate students during instruction sessions is some variation of “How do materials end up in Special Collections?” There are many answers to this question, of course, but one of the most important ways we receive materials is through donations. With our rare book collections, we are particularly fortunate when collectors decide to donate their personal collections. Book collectors often spend a lifetime amassing carefully curated collections that reflect deep personal interests and expertise. This is certainly the case with FSU Special Collections & Archives’ newest rare book collection: The Marsha Gontarski Children’s Literature Collection.

Marsha Gontarski (Ph.D, FSU, 1993) has a background in Education with a research focus on visual literacy in children’s literature. Her children’s literature collection contains over 1,000 titles, ranging from classic fairy-tales to contemporary pieces featuring modern art. The wide variety of authors, illustrators, styles, sizes, shapes, and languages in the collection will be of interest to those studying Education, Literature, Illustration, History of Text Technologies, and Book Arts – not to mention those who want to feel nostalgic about their favorite childhood books! Every member of our staff who has seen the collection coming out of bins and being put on shelves has found something that strikes a cord – “I remember that book!” – which is surely a testament to the lasting impression left by our earliest memories of reading.

After a couple of trips to the Gontarski’s residence, Special Collections’ staff transported the books in about twenty bins, which were then unloaded in our stacks. The next step in the process will be to create an inventory of the donation before they are sent to cataloging and given records and call numbers. Since the books were donated with notes from the collector about significant illustrators, authors, and groupings of texts, it will be important for us to transfer these notes to the collection inventory and preserve information that could be useful to future researchers. In the next post in this series, I will share with you the progress being made in the accession process as well as a few highlights from the Marsha Gontarski Children’s Literature Collection.

In anticipation of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday (or, as Abraham Lincoln declared it in 1863, a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens”), we pulled two November issues of American Cookery Magazine, one from 1914 and one from 1944.

The 1914 edition has several sample menus for Thanksgiving dinners, including the familiar–“individual pumpkin pies”–and the historically mysterious–“Kornlet, Mexican style, in ramekins”. (For the record, I learned today that Kornlet was a canned green corn pulp that was widely available at the time.)

If you decide to skip the “hot ham mousse” and instead opt for the “roasted chicken, sausage cakes”, you can follow this seasonally-appropriate recipe from the same issue:

I’m not 100% sure which part is the sausage and which parts are the fritters, but I am sure that those chickens seem to be awkwardly swan-diving into the surface of their elegant tray.

Fast-forwarding 30 years to the 1944 issue, we have a recipe for these holiday favorites, porcupine puddings, suggested as an accompaniment to a Thanksgiving “porkchop with peanut stuffing”:

The 1944 advertisements may prove helpful for the Thanksgiving cook, as well. For instance, they guide you toward a possible solution for your Pie Problems:

And finally, apropos of nothing besides that it’s in the same magazine, look at this delicious recipe for pea soup with floating frankfurter slices:

Don’t miss the caption: “Split pea soup warms the cockles of your heart.”

Ameen Rihani  (1876 – 1940), was a Lebanese Arab-American writer, intellectual and political activist. He was also a major figure in the mahjar (Arab diaspora) literary movement developed by Arab emigrants in North America, and an early theorist of Arab nationalism. He became a U.S. citizen in 1901. His June 5, 1937, talk at Town Hall on West 43rd Street where he was a guest of honor was broadcast by WNYC.Known as the ‘founding father of Arab-American literature’ Rihani, spoke out against Zionism and said the only “possible and practical solution [in Palestine] would involve a decision that the Jewish National Home was now complete, and henceforth to be developed from within and not from without. Jewish immigration and land buying would be stopped at once, and a national representative government would take the place of the [British] Mandate.”The broadcast prompted a charge of anti-Semitism against WNYC from City Alderman Samson Inselbuch of Brooklyn. WNYC’s leadership defended the station’s broadcast noting that plans for airing the Jewish side of the issue had been planned before the Rihani broadcast. Leading rabbis and Jewish representatives backed the station, as they had indeed presented their views on Palestine during a broadcast round-table discussion. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise wrote that the charge against WNYC might be upheld only if the station had denied Jews the same right to speak. Jewish leaders were granted equal time.

Rihani is considered by some scholars as a major figure in the intellectual development of Arab nationalism. His writings emphasize the importance of a secular state and a secular education pointing that there must be no minorities or majorities but only equals. He also published books in Arabic and delivered numerous speeches throughout the Arab world, the United States, and in Canada. These talks ranged from calls for social reform to Pan-Arabism, East-West cohesion, poetry, and philosophy. Rihani also participated in the Arab American movement championing the Arab Palestinian cause. Much of this activity focused on countering the rising influence of the American Zionist lobby, supporting a separate Jewish homeland in Palestine. He met with various U.S. officials in this regard and, during the 1920s and 1930s, was active on behalf of the Arab-American, Palestine Anti-Zionism Society (later renamed the Arab National League). 

Newspaper clipping from June 16, 1937 about the Ameen Rihani WNYC broadcast.
(Seymour N. Siegel scrapbook/WNYC Archive Collections)

 ______________________________________

Special thanks to The Ameen Rihani Organization for providing us with the 1937 WNYC broadcast.

The Refugee Act of 1980 is now on temporary display in the West Gallery of the National Archives Building. Photo by National Archives Photographer Jeffrey Reed.

At the end of the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians fled political chaos and physical danger in their homelands. Between 1975 and 1979, some 300,000 of these refugees were admitted to the United States through Presidential action. The law at the time restricted refugee admissions, and many members of Congress wanted to establish a more regular system of immigration and resettlement.

In the South China Sea, crewmen of the amphibious cargo ship USS Durham (LKA-114) take Vietnamese refugees aboard a small craft. The refugees will be transferred later by mechanized landing craft (LCM) to the freighter Transcolorado., 4/3/1975. General Records of the Department of the Navy, National Archives Identifier 558518

The Refugee Act of 1980 raised the annual ceiling for refugees to 50,000, created a process for reviewing and adjusting the refugee ceiling to meet emergencies, and required annual consultation between Congress and the President. The law changed the definition of “refugee” to a person with a “well-founded fear of persecution,” a standard established by United Nations conventions and protocols. It also funded a new Office of U.S. Coordinator for Refugee Affairs and an Office of Refugee Resettlement and built on already existing public-private partnerships that helped refugees settle and adjust to life in their new country.

A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to revise the procedures for the admission of refugees, to amend the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 to establish a more uniform basis for the provision of assistance to refugees, and for other purposes, page one (Public Law 96-212—The Refugee Act of 1980), approved March 17, 1980
National Archives, General Records of the U.S. Government

Signature page of The Refugee Act of 1980, approved March 17, 1980
National Archives, General Records of the U.S. Government.

View all pages of the Refugee Act of 1980 on the National Archives’ Flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/sets/72157661462319371

Did you know that:

• UNCG Digital Collections currently has approximately half a million page and photo images online? This total includes:

• 8500 newspapers
• 8086 photographs
• 1914 pamphlets
• 897 oral history interviews
• 864 magazines and periodicals
• 857 books
• 487 scrapbooks

It’s that time of year again, the season of giving. Stuck for holiday gift ideas? Why not give the gift of local history? How about creating your own artwork using historical photographs of Vancouver? Sound intriguing? Then read on for a step-by-step guide to downloading hi-res photos from our online database.

The City of Vancouver Archives has approximately 80,000 high-resolution photographs that are available for download from our online database. They are either Public Domain or City of Vancouver copyrighted images, which means that you are free to download and use them for anything your heart desires. The creative possibilities are endless, so let’s get started.

1. First, navigate to the City of Vancouver online database – searcharchives.vancouver.ca

1. Search Archives main page. Select “Advanced search” at top of page.

2. Click on “Advanced Search” at the top of the page to open the advanced search screen (see below). On the left side of the screen are the “Search Filters” which allow you to narrow your search parameters.

Let’s say you were interested in downloading a photograph of Granville Street. To search for an exact phrase, use quotation marks, in this case “Granville Street”.

2. Advanced search screen using search filters.

Next, use the search filters to search for digitized photographs only. Under “General Material Designation” select “Photograph” and under “Digital Object Available” select “Yes”, then click the “Search” button.

Tip: If you are not finding what you want, play around with different search phrases or terms (for example, just “Granville” or “Granville St”) . More search strategies are available on our website here.

3. Advanced search results screen.

3. Your results will appear as a list of image thumbnails and brief descriptions. Scroll through your results until you see an image that you like.

(You may notice a few images that have a notice that says “Digital copy not on web”. These are third-party copyrighted images. This means that the image has been scanned, but is still under copyright protection. It is not available for you to download from the internet. However, if you are interested in viewing the image and copying it for research purposes, you can do so in person at the Archives.)

Example of “Digital copy not on web” notice.

4. Click on the thumbnail of your desired image and the full Item level description will open. On this screen you will see all the information about the photograph.

4. Item level description screen for CVA 1184-3378.

5. Click on the image to view a higher resolution JPEG file (below).

5. Click on image to magnify.

6. Click a second time to view the JPEG in its original size. Most of our digital images measure 3000 pixels along the long edge of the image. This means you can easily make an enlargement up to 16×20 inches.

6. Saving  a high resolution JPEG.

7. To save a high resolution copy of the image, right click (Ctrl + click on a Mac) on the largest image. A menu will open; select “Save Image As…” and save the image to your computer.

7. Save image to your computer.

8. Once the image file is saved to your computer, you can use photo editing software to enhance or re-size the photograph. For our “Granville Street” image we adjusted the contrast and cropped it a little.

8. Using photo editing software to crop image.

Of course, you can always just leave it as it is, retaining the unique appearance of the original photograph.

The final image. The Esquire Cafe – 906 Granville Street, 1946. CVA 1184-3378.

9. The final step is to take your digital file to your favorite photo finishing store to get a photo enlargement made.

Find a nice picture frame and mat for your photo print and voila, you are done. You have just created the perfect gift for the local history buff on your gift list.

You can also try other projects with your digitized historical photograph(s). Some photo finishing companies provide custom photo gifts like photo books, mugs, calendars and t-shirts. Or, try it yourself. Purchase some iron-on transfer paper, and use it to print your image on your home printer and create your own T-shirt and fabric transfers (pillows, tote bags, etc.)

Here are some links to a few of our favorite images to help get you started:

http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/view-of-georgia-st-reet

http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/skaters-at-trout-lake-taken-for-star-publishing-co-3

http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/index.php/hotel-vancouver-6

http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/index.php/view-looking-north-along-yew-street-from-4th-avenue

http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/english-bay-scene-2

http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/view-of-vancouver-and-north-shore-mountains-taken-from-city-hall-2

http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/index.php/panoramic-view-of-city-of-vancouver-british-columbia-1898-2

http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/index.php/man-on-ships-gangplank

The only thing worse than a Bad Child of History is TWO Bad Children of History. Behold: Bobby and Dotty, the twin stars of Ellis Parker Butler’s “The Lady Across the Aisle”.

Butler’s story was published in the December 1905 issue of McClure’s Magazine, and the delightful illustrations are by Phillips Ward.

As for Bobby and Dotty, they were left in the care of their bachelor uncle while their parents were in Florida.

Uncle Jack said they were ‘peaches,’ and the older folks said they were ‘terrors.’ … In cases of necessity they were indivisible allies; in all other cases they were sworn enemies, even to having a code of warfare.

The story has an overarching narrative about Uncle Jack and a pretty single woman on the train, as well as the twins’ efforts to keep Uncle Jack from wanting to marry said “Lady Across the Aisle”, but really, it’s about the twins fighting.

The story’s 9 pages are littered with images of the twins quarreling, punching, teasing, pinching, and insulting each other. Bobby solemnly tells Dotty that her nose is “too uppish for anything”, Dotty accuses Bobby of being “all blue legs”, and Bobby retorts that Dotty is a monkey. You get the point.

They’re so bad, and so historical. Look out for these two.

Mittan: A Retrospective is the photographic exhibit currently on display in the Special Collections and Archives gallery space in Strozier Library. The works of J. Barry Mittan candidly capture the student experience at Florida State University in the 1960s and 1970s. As a student and photographer for numerous campus publications, including the Tally-Ho yearbook and Florida Flambeau newspaper, Mittan often photographed students at official university-sponsored events and spontaneous student gatherings alike. Through his documentation of sporting events, Greek life, protests, concerts, study sessions, socials, and so on, he was able to construct a comprehensive view of FSU student life in which individuals banded together to share a common voice in an age of social change. Mittan’s unique perspective as a student informed his photographic purpose to see the individuals among the crowd.

For my first project as the Special Collections & Archives Graduate Assistant, I was tasked with designing and installing the Mittan exhibit. Faced with a daunting job of going through twenty-something boxes of unprocessed photographic materials, I was thrown head first into this new position. But having a background in art history and previous experience processing archival collections, I was up for the work. After an initial assessment, I determined that there was some order already established as slides, negatives, and prints were generally arranged by time period and subject. Because of this order, it was pretty easy determining what boxes would be useful for the exhibit knowing that we wanted to focus on Mittan’s work from when he was a student.

The most time consuming, yet entertaining, part of the design process was physically pulling negative strips out of sleeves and examining them through a magnifying glass over a light table. Although I’ve never worked with photography before, I eventually adapted to looking at the thousand or so tiny negative images. Having a pretty good eye for composition, my skills were tested when I digitally scanned the negative strips to determine the clarity and balance of the image. Having scanned about a hundred and fifty images, I eventually narrowed my choices down to thirty black and white images and twenty color images for the final exhibit.

The last tasks were just hard labor: printing, framing, and installing. I severely underestimated the stress of installing an exhibit seeing as this was my first experience. Using a large format professional printer was definitely a skill I acquired with a serious learning curve. I regret the loss of paper and ink that was sacrificed as we printed test strip after test strip trying to configure the color, size, and saturation of the first batch of prints. And I will never again underestimate the brutality of the small metal brackets holding the backboard of the frame as thirty sets of them pinched and bruised my fingers over the course of an afternoon.

After what seemed like a mad dash to the finish line, the exhibit actually opened fairly smoothly and nearly on time. Every day I’m proud of my hard work as I walk to Special Collections in the back of the library and am greeted by a poster that advertises the accomplishments and legacy of J. Barry Mittan. It makes me realize that what we do as college students has the potential to make a difference for the years to come. As a student in a time of social, cultural, and political change, Mittan captured the power of the individual to enact change. A sentiment college students still strongly hold on to today.

Mittan: A Retrospective, the photographic exhibit showcasing the work of J. Barry Mittan, is open in Strozier Library’s first floor exhibit space. The exhibit will be on display until mid-January and is open to the public Monday through Thursday, 10am to 6pm, and Friday, 10am to 5:30pm. An accompanying online exhibit is also available here which includes more images and descriptions not available in person.

Interesting: Phil Jay, NCOIC of the Airmen’s Service Club, Harlingen, TX Air Force Base, was also a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, according to this feature in The Linking Ring (Vol. 32, No. 12).

More interesting: Sgt. Phil Jay was, as of February 1953, training a skunk named Henry, hoping to include him as part of his magic act.

Most interesting: Henry the skunk apparently had had his mercaptan-emitting scent glands removed, and was purchased from an animal dealer in South Carolina. While still shy around humans, Henry was sufficiently domesticated to have developed “a taste for tidbits like sweet rolls and candy”.

I, for one, could happily watch an act that consisted almost entirely of a skunk eating candy on stage. (As for the advisability of feeding candy to a skunk – may I recommend the “Diet” section of the Wikipedia article on “Skunks as pets”? Within a few short paragraphs it includes references to all manner of skunk-centric wonders, including a food mix called Skunkie Delight, a skunk rescue organization called Skunk Haven, and a group called Florida Skunks as Pets.)

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.

*Spoiler Alert*

Mrs. Bellanca did not win New York’s 8th district seat in the House of Representatives in the 1938 elections.

But she did gain the nomination of not only the American Labor Party, which she helped found, but also the City Fusion Party, the Progressive Party, and the Republican Party – strange bedfellows indeed. Mrs. Bellanca was one of the most significant female labor leaders of the 20th century, and her loss in the 1938 congressional election does nothing to lessen her achievements – she became a Vice President of one of America’s major trade unions, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, at the young age of 21, and twice served the federal government in the Department of Labor during times of great need, once during the depression and again during the war.

While history does not record her voice at this event, it does record the pitched, passionate voice of his honor Fiorello La Guardia, which may be heard again here. Aside from his effusive praise of the woman of honor and his endorsement of her fellow candidates, Salvatore DeMatteo, Edmund Palmieri, and Louis Walburn, we get to hear knowing laughter at the odd pejorative “Pinochle Politician” (we get it, sure, but it feels like there is a more specific reference here, a bon mot that landed a deeper blow then than now), as well as an example of La Guardia checking down a heckler, a boisterous supporter of Governor Lehman.

It is fortunate that this stump speech was captured, even if not in full – there is a brief gap between the two halves of La Guardia’s speech, and Mrs. Bellanca’s contribution is sadly missing. Still, the extant portions of the evening tell us a little more about a perhaps underconsidered figure in the history of the American labor movement.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

The National Archives’ Strategic Plan includes the ambitious initiative to digitize our analog records and make them available for online public access. With over 12 billion pages of records in our holdings, this is no small undertaking. As we work to make more of our holdings available online, it is also important to see how our researchers and customers interact with those records, invite them to contribute their unique knowledge and expertise, and ultimately make the records more searchable and accessible.

This third post in a series for American Archives Month explores our efforts to digitize the holdings of the National Archives, make them accessible online, and engage citizens.

Our recently updated digitization strategy outlines the various approaches we will use to achieve the goal of expanding public access through digitization, including continued collaboration with private and public organizations, citizen archivists, and other federal agencies to digitize records. We are developing clearer processes and improved technologies to support workflow from staff digitization efforts, as well as ensuring that records arriving at NARA are accompanied by standardized metadata, with the goal of making them available online in a shorter period of time. As a result of these efforts, the National Archives digitized and added more than 5 million digital objects to our online catalog in Fiscal Year 2015.  Highlights of these newly digitized images include color photographs from the Battle of the Bulge, as well as images from World War I and World War II:

Wreckage in St. Vith, Belgium. National Archives Identifier 16730732

A.S.C. Women at Work. National Archives Identifier 16577208

To better facilitate access of records, our online catalog has also recently been upgraded and now features more participatory elements, including new tagging and transcription tools to further engage citizen archivists and help make our holdings more discoverable to researchers. At the end of the fiscal year, citizen archivists had contributed over 91,000 tags and 35,000 transcriptions to the catalog, with the latter growing at over 5% each week.

To introduce these new catalog features, we kicked off Sunshine Week this spring with a transcription challenge for citizen archivists. During that week alone, citizens transcribed more than 2,500 pages of records and added 10,000 new tags to the catalog, making our records more searchable and accessible to everyone.

Our efforts in digitization and citizen engagement are an important piece in achieving the goal of making access happen in the spirit of a more open government. Inviting participation, transparency and collaboration in all aspects of our work helps us provide more democratic access to our holdings for the benefit of all.

See my previous posts in this series on maximizing our value through web and social media and connecting with customers. And stay tuned for my final post in this series reflecting on the opportunities and challenges we see as we continue our efforts to make access happen.