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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Art

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

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

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

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

The Artist

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

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

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

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

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

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

 ____________________________________________

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

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

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

Here are the categories for this year’s contest:

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

Recipes will be judged by these rankings:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broadside. Ca. 1817.

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

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

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

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

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

Letter from Lord Amherst, Bharatpur, 20 March 1826

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

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

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

Lady Amherst Diary vol. 1, 1823-24.

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

Lady Amherst Diary vol. 1, 1823-24.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broadside. Ca. 1817.

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

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

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

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

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

Letter from Lord Amherst, Bharatpur, 20 March 1826

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

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

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

Lady Amherst Diary vol. 1, 1823-24.

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

Lady Amherst Diary vol. 1, 1823-24.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DATE SEARCH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FILTER FOR TOP-LEVEL DESCRIPTIONS

In the past, selecting “Browse Archival descriptions”

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

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

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

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

produces 519 assorted results.

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

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

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

TERMS STAY IN SIMPLE SEARCH

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

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

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

LINK TO TOP-LEVEL DESCRIPTION IN SEARCH RESULTS

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

Security Upgrade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New projects for 2015-2016:

Tier 1:

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

Tier 2:

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

Additional projects:

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

2014-2015 project status:

Ongoing projects from 2013-2014:

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

New projects:

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

“Ad hoc” additional projects:

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

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

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

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

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

A recent researcher’s request led me to a small collection of rare 19^th Century American Spiritualist publications in our holdings.

Spiritualism, simply defined as talking with the dead or communicating with spirits, grew in popularity in the second half of the 19^th Century.  In contrast to popular congregational American religions of the day, Spiritualism emphasized the individual’s unique relationship to the divine, decentralizing spiritual communication and challenging religious authority.  This rejection of the spiritual hierarchy so common in mainstream religions, naturally fostered and appealed to an anti-authoritarian spirit in its practitioners.  With the emphasis on the individual spirit and the divinity of every human soul, the Spiritualist movement drew progressive political and social activists advocating for the rights of all humans, including the abolition of slavery and women’s rights.

Ann Braude, author of Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, writes about the impact the Spiritualist movement had on social change and 19th Century print culture:

“Spiritualists’ advocacy of unpopular causes as well as their individualism made them staunch advocates of a free press. They perpetuated the Garrisonian tradition of viewing the columns of newspapers as an open forum for discussion and free inquiry. The movement was determined to provide ‘a Free Platform…for all those who desire to give utterance to the burning thoughts that well up in their inmost souls as the highest conception of the truth’ (Banner of Light, 26 July 1862). This zeal to allow all human thoughts to be aired, no matter how unconventional, encouraged editors to accommodate a broad range of political positions. In addition to abolition and woman’s rights, various Spiritualist periodicals espoused free love, socialism, marriage reform, children’s rights, health reform, dress reform, and vegetarianism. The advocacy of so many ‘isms’ made editors feel a certain urgency about the need for their publications, and getting out a paper in itself assumed the status of a reform activity. S.S. Jones, the editor of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, viewed the press as a powerful instrument of reform. He told Spiritualists that ‘the most potent means in their power to accomplish…the elevation of human character and the alleviation of the downfallen and the oppressed everywhere…is found in the printing press’(Banner of Light, 3 March 1865, p.3).”  News from the Spirit World (PDF), 1990.

One article in The Kingdom of Heaven, published in Syracuse, NY January 1874, titled “Spiritualism and Revolution” expresses some of the radical ideals of the movement: “Revolution signifies change. And spiritualism, which is far more than the mere manifestations and raps of individualized spirits…has come to revolutionize all the unjust and unequal institutions of man—to equalize and harmonize all man’s relations with man.” This article calls for the revolution to “rid the world of religion, and human governments, and all institutions that are founded in force and monopoly.”

Due to the decentralized nature of 19^th Century Spiritualism and Spiritualist publications, it is difficult to find full runs of these often short-lived publications.  The Amherst College Archives & Special Collections holds single or multiple issues of The Wise-Man, Banner of Light, Positive Thinker, The Progressive Age, Spiritual Rostrum, The Sower, and more.  You can locate these publications in our online library catalog with the subject heading “Spiritualism — Periodicals.”

These pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers document a significant period in American religious history, as well as illustrate the expansion of American political thought. The publications in our collection provide insight into the dovetailing of Spiritualism and the growing advocacy for human rights in 19^th Century America.

A recent researcher’s request led me to a small collection of rare 19^th Century American Spiritualist publications in our holdings.

Spiritualism, simply defined as talking with the dead or communicating with spirits, grew in popularity in the second half of the 19^th Century.  In contrast to popular congregational American religions of the day, Spiritualism emphasized the individual’s unique relationship to the divine, decentralizing spiritual communication and challenging religious authority.  This rejection of the spiritual hierarchy so common in mainstream religions, naturally fostered and appealed to an anti-authoritarian spirit in its practitioners.  With the emphasis on the individual spirit and the divinity of every human soul, the Spiritualist movement drew progressive political and social activists advocating for the rights of all humans, including the abolition of slavery and women’s rights.

Ann Braude, author of Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, writes about the impact the Spiritualist movement had on social change and 19th Century print culture:

“Spiritualists’ advocacy of unpopular causes as well as their individualism made them staunch advocates of a free press. They perpetuated the Garrisonian tradition of viewing the columns of newspapers as an open forum for discussion and free inquiry. The movement was determined to provide ‘a Free Platform…for all those who desire to give utterance to the burning thoughts that well up in their inmost souls as the highest conception of the truth’ (Banner of Light, 26 July 1862). This zeal to allow all human thoughts to be aired, no matter how unconventional, encouraged editors to accommodate a broad range of political positions. In addition to abolition and woman’s rights, various Spiritualist periodicals espoused free love, socialism, marriage reform, children’s rights, health reform, dress reform, and vegetarianism. The advocacy of so many ‘isms’ made editors feel a certain urgency about the need for their publications, and getting out a paper in itself assumed the status of a reform activity. S.S. Jones, the editor of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, viewed the press as a powerful instrument of reform. He told Spiritualists that ‘the most potent means in their power to accomplish…the elevation of human character and the alleviation of the downfallen and the oppressed everywhere…is found in the printing press’(Banner of Light, 3 March 1865, p.3).”  News from the Spirit World (PDF), 1990.

One article in The Kingdom of Heaven, published in Syracuse, NY January 1874, titled “Spiritualism and Revolution” expresses some of the radical ideals of the movement: “Revolution signifies change. And spiritualism, which is far more than the mere manifestations and raps of individualized spirits…has come to revolutionize all the unjust and unequal institutions of man—to equalize and harmonize all man’s relations with man.” This article calls for the revolution to “rid the world of religion, and human governments, and all institutions that are founded in force and monopoly.”

Due to the decentralized nature of 19^th Century Spiritualism and Spiritualist publications, it is difficult to find full runs of these often short-lived publications.  The Amherst College Archives & Special Collections holds single or multiple issues of The Wise-Man, Banner of Light, Positive Thinker, The Progressive Age, Spiritual Rostrum, The Sower, and more.  You can locate these publications in our online library catalog with the subject heading “Spiritualism — Periodicals.”

These pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers document a significant period in American religious history, as well as illustrate the expansion of American political thought. The publications in our collection provide insight into the dovetailing of Spiritualism and the growing advocacy for human rights in 19^th Century America.

So, what are rare books exactly? Your first thought might be something like this:

Handsome, leather bound volumes that look old and valuable. To be sure, we’ve got a lot of books that look like this in Special Collections & Archives. Our rare books collections cover the spectrum, starting with the origins: fragments of papyrus and cuneiform tablets that represent the beginning of written history. There are medieval manuscripts written by hand on vellum, ranging in size from a tiny fragment from a hand-held Book of Hours to massive antiphonals used by monks for chanting prayers. Following the advent of printing in the Western world in the mid-15th century, we have a page from the Gutenberg Bible and several incunabula (books printed in the first half-century after the invention of movable type). Our holdings from sixteenth through early-nineteenth centuries offer researchers countless examples of books from the hand-press era, when every book was essentially an individual work of craftsmanship.

But sometimes, rare books look like this:

Some books are mass-produced works of popular culture. And these books are important too! For the savvy researcher, any of the rare books in our collections can tell a story about the time period and culture in which they were created. These books are important for the works of literature, history, art, philosophy, and science that they contain and also for their value as cultural objects. Our mission here at Special Collections & Archives is to preserve these books and to provide access to them, whether through our digital library or in-person at our research center on the first floor of Strozier Library. Some collection highlights include:

• Works on Napoleon & the French Revolution
• The John M. Shaw Collection of Childhood in Poetry
• The Carothers Memorial Rare Bibles Collection
• A complete run of the Kelmscott Press
• The Gontarski Grove Press Collection
• Artists’ Books
• The McGregor Collection on the Discovery and Exploration of the Americas
• The Louise Richardson Herbals Collection
• Fore-edge paintings
• Florida history

The materials in our rare books collections can be found by searching the online catalog and limiting the location to “Strozier, Special Collections”. If you are interested in using our rare books collections for your next research project but aren’t sure where to start, or if you are a faculty member interested in having an instruction session with rare books, please contact me, Katherine Hoarn, Visiting Rare Book and Instruction Librarian, at khoarn@fsu.edu for more information.

Heritage Protocol & University Archives (HPUA), housed in Special Collections & Archives at Florida State University Libraries, maintains the official repository of university historical records. The archive holds publications, records, photographs, audio-visual, and other material in physical or digital form created by or about Florida State University. We also archive the student experience through the acquisition and preservation of materials created or acquired by alumni while they were students at the university.

Our staff consists of Heritage Protocol & University Archivist Sandra Varry and Archives Assistant Hannah Davis. We are also fortunate to have Graduate Assistant Britt Boler with us for the fall.

Our mission is to preserve and share the history of FSU with everyone – our FSU community and the public at large. We have a great time posting photos and interesting tidbits on our Facebook page and interacting with our fans as well as attending events on and off campus to promote HPUA. We provide images and information to news and media outlets as well as to researchers. On campus an important job we have is to provide not only historical records preservation for official records, but to provide that material to the university for everything from reports or events, or to help staff do research for projects. Factual data for administrative purposes is important, but we also get to do things like help celebrate the 100th birthday of an alumnus and participate in campus events.

We receive photographs, scrapbooks, and everything you can imagine from loyal fans, alumni, and their families from all over the world. The actual items come from all periods of time across our 164 year history. The combined knowledge base of student and university created records plus our professional archival staff makes us the place to come for Florida State History! All HPUA digital collections can be seen in the FSU Digital Library.

HPUA also oversees the Heritage Museum in Dodd Hall. The museum is open Monday – Thursday, 11AM – 4PM during the fall semester for both quiet study and museum visitors. Please visit our site for more information and to plan a visit.

Did you know that September is National Guide Dog Month? Neither did we!

In honor of guide dogs across this fine land, we’ll be featuring historical canines during tomorrow’s September 1st Art//Archives open hours.

Stop by Special Collections between 10:30 and 1:00 for a look at these sweet pooches.

Greetings from the Digital Library Center!

Want to get a head start on your upcoming research papers? Looking to learn more about the history of the university and life on campus? Maybe you just want to view some of Special Collections and Archives‘ notable rare books and historical collections from the comfort of your own room. Check out FSU’s Digital Library (FSUDL) to view digital reproductions of the fascinating items held right here on campus. Visitors to the site can access primary and secondary source material or just go to see some really cool images without having to pay a visit to Strozier Library.

The Digital Library Center (DLC) staff is diligently working behind the scenes to digitize and share their fascinating collections with the FSU community and the rest of the world. Their expert staff consists of the Production Studio team, Metadata Librarian and Digital Archivist. Together they work closely with library staff as well as with faculty to create high quality digital collections. By regularly uploading quality content to the FSUDL, the DLC is helping connect users to material needed for their research.

While the DLC mainly focuses on uploading content to the FSUDL, their work serves several purposes, including preservation. By digitizing rare, fragile collections and uploading the images, they are safeguarding items from over-handling while making them accessible to more users. The DLC also provides community members with expertise in the digitization of materials, digital project management and metadata creation.

Our Metadata Librarian, Matthew Miguez provides expertise on the description of materials for long-term access and preservation. Without his meticulous organization of information backstage, finding content in the Digital Library would be frustrating and nearly impossible.

Krystal Thomas, our Digital Archivist provides essential project management expertise to the DLC and ultimately decides which materials are chosen to be digitized and uploaded to the FSUDL. From each project’s initiation to completion, her comprehensive work helps ensure that relevant, quality content is consistently being added to our growing digital collection.

Stuart Rochford, Giesele Towels, and Willa Patterson make up the DLC’s production studio team. They are tasked with photographing and scanning Special Collections material for their images to be uploaded to the Digital Library. Their extensive knowledge of state-of-the-art photographic equipment and imaging standards allows for high quality, high resolution images to be shared.

This week the DLC is starting production on its next exciting project: Cookbooks and Herbals dating all the way back to the 1400s. New collections are always being added to the FSUDL and are often promoted right here on our blog, so check back for more updates on our digital collections!

As we’ve mentioned in passing, we’re hard at work preparing for our upcoming 2016 exhibition and event series, Portals: History of the Future.

While combing through our collections, we’ve come across a few futuristic gems that aren’t a great fit for the exhibition, but are just too good to pass by. For instance, this excellent and patriotic book cover:

Forecast 2000 was written in 1984, mind you, so the predictions aren’t terribly far-fetched.

The only-slightly-older, also-patriotic-looking Seven Tomorrows (from 1982) provides “seven scenarios for the eighties and nineties”. (Is one allowed to predict life in the eighties when one is already living in the eighties? That seems like cheating.)

Seven Tomorrows has lots of fun charts and imaginary statistics, and its scenarios provide a surprisingly good read.

(Apparently if we experience “apocalyptic transformation”, there will be a rise in demand for mediators, and a decreasing demand for astronauts.)

The oldest book of this stellar batch is the 1977 Future File, a slightly sci-fi compendium of information for the forward-looking thinker.

One section of this book has predictions by year, culled from all kinds of past official publications.

2000: year of nuclear electric spacecraft. 2015: replacement organs harvested from farmed animals. 2024: lunar colony and extraterrestrial farming. Isn’t the future grand?

The Florida State University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives Division and Professor Davis W. Houck are delighted to announce the establishment of what will become the foremost research collection on the life and death of Emmett Till, an African-American teenager whose murder in Mississippi in 1955 sparked protest in the South.

Till’s death helped galvanize the civil rights movement in America, and Friday, August 28, 2015 marks the 60th anniversary of his murder. Till, 14, was kidnapped, beaten and shot after he allegedly flirted with a white woman.

We are truly humbled and honored to be working with scholars and researchers such as Davis Houck, Devery Anderson, and Keith Beauchamp are donating their research materials to FSU and are willing to share their important work with generations to come.

“We’re very excited for this project because there is just simply nothing like it,” said Houck, a faculty member in the College of Communication and Information who authored Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press. “We’ve spent 20 years accumulating this material, most of which involved travel to Mississippi and archives around the South. It’s long past due that we had a ‘one-stop-archive’ for all things Emmett Till, and with this collection, we’ll finally have that.”

The collection will feature newspaper coverage from the Till murder trial and court proceedings by domestic and international press, and materials from FBI investigations, court records and interview transcripts.

Author Devery Anderson will contribute a comprehensive collection of newspaper articles, genealogical work, interview transcriptions and obscure magazine articles used to write his recently released book, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement. Anderson’s research not only tells the story of the Till case as it unfolded in 1955, but follows the case to the present day, incorporating the FBI’s investigation and source materials, including a complete trial transcript.

Interviews and oral histories gathered by filmmaker Keith Beauchamp for his Emmy-nominated documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, will also comprise part of the archive. Beauchamp’s research was pivotal in convincing the FBI to re-open the case in 2004 — an investigation that resulted in more than 8,000 pages of important material.

These materials from some of the nation’s foremost Emmett Till researchers will be a great addition to our archives and an outstanding resource for students, researchers and civil rights historians worldwide.

Welcome back students, staff and faculty to another Fall Semester here at FSU! Here on campus and around town, there are some really great locations and spaces for learning and engaging with the past. One space in particular is the Claude Pepper Library at FSU. The Claude Pepper Library was established in 1985 as the official repository for the Claude Pepper Papers, a unique and multi-faceted collection of manuscripts, photographs, audio/video recordings, and memorabilia documenting the life and career of U.S. Senator and Congressman Claude Denson Pepper (1900-1989).

Since the library’s opening over 30 years ago, the holdings at the Claude Pepper Library, located on West Call Street on the FSU Campus, have grown in size and scope. The Pepper is currently home to 17 collections with varying focuses including the Tallahassee National Organization for Women Chapter Records, The Reubin Askew Papers, and The Thomas LeRoy Collins Papers among others.

Our staff currently consists of Claude Pepper archivist Robert Rubero and archives assistant Mallary Rawls. The mission of the Claude Pepper Library is to support and advance research, teaching and engagement by acquiring, preserving and providing access to collections dealing with the political history of the State of Florida on national and local levels for use by students, faculty and researchers worldwide. The focus of our current major project is the digitization of the Claude Pepper diaries, which chronicle over 40 years of political involvement through the late Senator’s eyes.

At the Pepper Library we also enjoy posting to our Facebook page and enjoy updating our followers through our “Today in Pepper History” posts. More importantly, we offer patrons a firsthand experience with primary source materials from a variety of creators, all giving a glimpse into the political landscape in the State of Florida with a range of over 75 years. The Pepper Library has regularly hosted archives training sessions, class tours and guest lecturers and plans to continue these events in the future. There is also a museum component located in the Pepper Center which chronicles the life of Senator Pepper and is based on his book, Eyewitness to a Century.

Stay tuned for future blog posts as we bring you more great examples from our collections here at the Pepper Library!

Geography: England: Oxfordshire: Oxford: “Floods Nov. 1894”. HEIR resource 51932, GEOGbx82im003.tif.

Although the HEIR Project archive now has more than 15,000 images, only a tiny fraction of this number arrived with specific dates in their caption. When we come across a picture with a caption such as this one of Oxford, we thank our lucky stars, as we know the where and the when, providing the beginning of many a great story.

Harris Manchester College: England: Oxford: “Oxford, Univ Coll” “S. Mary the Virgin-bit of Queens College” “WHP”. HEIR resource 41553, HMCbx1im012.tif.

Most often, image dating comes from research, either our own or work done by the many people who have been assisting us via the HEIRtagger website (www.heirtagger.ox.ac.uk). For example, while preparing for a lecture, we were reviewing images of Oxford and took a good look at this view of University College on the High Street. Although the front of the University College still looks much the same today, the cobblestone street paving, horse droppings and the clothing on the girl standing in the street suggest that this is a 19^th century image. The dating breakthrough, however, came when we noticed that in the centre background of the image the Brasenose College Tower was surrounded with scaffolding. As this structure dates to the 1887-1889 period when the High Street frontage of this college was rebuilt, we can now estimate that this picture was taken in either 1888 or 1889, as the tower was nearly complete.

Many of our images hold clues, such as merchant signs, clothing styles, streetlights or even automobiles that can provide all the information needed to date the picture. Your support of HEIRtagger can make all of the difference when you take the time to look at all of the information in our images.

Or welcome back as the case may be!

We here at Special Collections & Archives are wishing all new and returning students a safe and successful fall semester!

Our Research Center Reading Room and Norwood Reading Room have returned to their normal semester hours in Strozier Library. We’re open Monday-Thursday, 10AM to 6PM and on Fridays from 10AM to 5:30PM.

Wonder what Special Collections & Archives can do for you? Over the next two weeks, we’ll be highlighting our collections and services here on our blog to introduce you to what we do and have here in our division.

Happy Fall everyone!

Most of my research into our Native American literature collection has focused on the very earliest publications from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but the majority of our  recent acquisitions have been of newer books. When we state that our goal is to document as comprehensively as possible the full range of publications by Indigenous writers of North America, that includes everything from obscure pamphlets of the nineteenth century to books for children published in the last decade. I was just about to head to the stacks to shelve a handful of freshly cataloged books when I thought I ought to share a handful of these items with the world.

This copy of Rabbit’s Snow Dance by James & Joseph Bruchac was a gift to the collection from Professor Lisa Brooks. It was published in 2012 and the copy in our collection will remain as crisp and clean as new for generations to come. I like to imagine a student or researcher coming to examine our copy many years from now and recalling their own copy of this book that they loved so much they read it to pieces. One reason books for children are often very rare and collectible is that children tend to be very hard on their books.

Stories about “the Little People” can be found throughout the collection, such as Charles Eastman’s “The Dance of the Little People” in Red Hunters and the Animal People (1904). Here is a more recent story of the Little People — a collaboration between Joseph Bruchac and Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel: Makiawisug: The Gift of the Little People (1997).

In addition to retellings of traditional tales, some of our books for children contain lessons about traditional crafts, such as Kunu’s Basket (2012):

Others aim to preserve and pass on Indigenous languages. Thanks to the Animals (2005) is written in English, but the publisher’s web site includes an audio file of Allen Sockabasin reading the story in the Passamaquoddy language.

And then there are stories that are drawn from contemporary life, such as Robert Peters’ Da Goodie Monsta (2009). He says of the story’s origin “Da Goodie Monsta was written when my son, Robert Jr. was only three. He woke up from a nap and told me of a dream he had about a monster. ‘Did he scare you?’ I asked. ‘No’ replied Robert Jr. ‘He was a good monster.’”

These five titles are just a small sample of the growing number of books for children included in our collection of books by Native American writers. They will now take their place on the shelves alongside works by Charles Eastman, Zitkala-Sa, and (my personal favorite) Acee Blue Eagle’s Echogee: The Little Blue Deer (1971).

Most of my research into our Native American literature collection has focused on the very earliest publications from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but the majority of our  recent acquisitions have been of newer books. When we state that our goal is to document as comprehensively as possible the full range of publications by Indigenous writers of North America, that includes everything from obscure pamphlets of the nineteenth century to books for children published in the last decade. I was just about to head to the stacks to shelve a handful of freshly cataloged books when I thought I ought to share a handful of these items with the world.

This copy of Rabbit’s Snow Dance by James & Joseph Bruchac was a gift to the collection from Professor Lisa Brooks. It was published in 2012 and the copy in our collection will remain as crisp and clean as new for generations to come. I like to imagine a student or researcher coming to examine our copy many years from now and recalling their own copy of this book that they loved so much they read it to pieces. One reason books for children are often very rare and collectible is that children tend to be very hard on their books.

Stories about “the Little People” can be found throughout the collection, such as Charles Eastman’s “The Dance of the Little People” in Red Hunters and the Animal People (1904). Here is a more recent story of the Little People — a collaboration between Joseph Bruchac and Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel: Makiawisug: The Gift of the Little People (1997).

In addition to retellings of traditional tales, some of our books for children contain lessons about traditional crafts, such as Kunu’s Basket (2012):

Others aim to preserve and pass on Indigenous languages. Thanks to the Animals (2005) is written in English, but the publisher’s web site includes an audio file of Allen Sockabasin reading the story in the Passamaquoddy language.

And then there are stories that are drawn from contemporary life, such as Robert Peters’ Da Goodie Monsta (2009). He says of the story’s origin “Da Goodie Monsta was written when my son, Robert Jr. was only three. He woke up from a nap and told me of a dream he had about a monster. ‘Did he scare you?’ I asked. ‘No’ replied Robert Jr. ‘He was a good monster.’”

These five titles are just a small sample of the growing number of books for children included in our collection of books by Native American writers. They will now take their place on the shelves alongside works by Charles Eastman, Zitkala-Sa, and (my personal favorite) Acee Blue Eagle’s Echogee: The Little Blue Deer (1971).

Everyone was afraid of polio in the 1930s and 40s. In a matter of days or weeks, what seemed like a simple fever or headache could turn out to be a crippling disease with life-long after effects.

And the treatment was sort of part of the problem. For most of the 1930s, doctors would immobilize polio patients in splits and casts to keep them from injuring themselves and moving too much. But Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse, thought that these splints and casts were actually making the long-term muscle problems worse. Instead of keeping patients still, she worked with their muscles, “re-educating” them through physical therapy. 

Kenny brought this method to the United States in 1940. Doctors in New York and at the Mayo clinic weren’t quite sure what do do with her. She wasn’t even a licensed nurse, just an Australian “bush nurse,” or someone who learned nursing through apprenticeship and experience, but not accredited schooling. Eventually, though, she founded the Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis, trained technicians in her method, and spread it across the United States, in various forms and under various names.

The Kenny Institute created a number of media campaigns to raise money, including these radio plays. She also was featured in endless newspaper articles, as well as comic books (“Australian Bush Nurse,” Real Heroes, no. 5, “Sister Elizabeth Kenny,” Wonder Woman, no. 8, and “Sister Kenny,” It Really Happened, no. 8). Later, there were radio plays about her life– a 1942 radio play on Cavalcade of America, another on the WGN “America at the Ramparts” series, and one on WBBN’s Coronet Little Show in 1945.

There was even a Sister Kenny movie in 1946. 

In this episode of Backtrack, we take a closer look at all the media hype around Kenny, and put it into context.

Thanks to Dr. Naomi Rogers, author of Polio Wars: Sister Kenny and the Golden Age of American Medicine, for speaking to us for this episode. Thanks also to Renee Dunn, for her interview. 

In this piece, we drew brief snippets from this Cavalcade of America radioplay about Sister Kenny, as well as this March of Dimes promotional polio video. 

The list of comic books comes from one of the many sources we read for this—Bert Hansen’s Medical history for the Masses– How American Comic Books Celebrated Heroes of Medicine in the 1940s.  Naomi Roger’s ‘Silence has its own Stories’: Elizabeth Kenny, Polio and the Culture of Medicine’ and her book ‘Polio Wars’ were also particularly helpful.  

Special thanks to John Passmore, Andy Lanset and Hannah Sistrunk. 

The rest of the episodes of Backtrack can be found here.

Sister Elizabeth Kenny in 1946.
(PM News Photo/A. Lanset Collection)

This year, we received funding from the B.C. History Digitization Program to digitize more maps and plans from our holdings. The maps need conservation work done to them before they can be digitized. Here’s an example of a map that had an unusual old repair.

Back of map, close-up showing old repair. Item No. LEG1153.367

This is one sheet from a set of Point Grey sectional maps from the 1920s. The map is 2.8m long, printed on cloth and has several tears at one end. A very long time ago, probably in 1929 or soon after, someone repaired it with cheesecloth, paper and glue, and later with adhesive tape.

The repair paper caught my eye. Once it was removed, I took a closer look. It was made of blank ballots!

Patch material from back of map.

The questions on the ballot identified it as the second page of the money ballot from May 15, 1929, which we have as part of the City of Vancouver Record of Elections.

Second page of money ballot from May 15, 1929. Reference code COV-S37– Container 87-G-1 vol. 2.

Today’s equivalent of the money ballot is the capital plan borrowing questions section of the modern ballot.

Since the original map was created by the Municipality of Point Grey, and the repair pages are 1929 City of Vancouver ballot papers,  it seems likely that the maps were received during the process of amalgamating Point Grey and Vancouver (along with South Vancouver) in 1929. The repair was probably made by someone in the City of Vancouver who needed to use the map. Amalgamation included coordinating the street grid and street naming.

The map was repaired and the torn end now looks like this:

Front of map after treatment, detail of one end.