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Section Newsletter
The Acquisition and Appraisal Section Newsletter is published periodically. If you have content for the next issue of the newsletter, please e-mail it to section vice-chair, Tara Laver.
Winter/Spring 2008 Newsletter
Quick Links
Section Activities and Projects
Call for Nominations
If you are interested in serving as a member of the steering committee or vice chair/chair elect, or would like to nominate someone for one of these posts, please contact Section Chair Julie Herrada.
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Acquisition and Appraisal at the 2008 Meeting
Join us in San Francisco for the 2008 SAA Annual Meeting. The Acquisition and Appraisal Section will meet Friday, August 29, from 12:00-2:00. Following the business meeting, Jim Jacobs, Data Services Librarian Emeritus, University of California San Diego and a co-creators of FreeGovInfo.info, will discuss the extreme challenges for preservation of government information in the digital age and offer some surprisingly simple and familiar strategies.
The meeting has much to offer section members. Two section-proposed sessions, “Digital Donors: Agreements, Rights, and Donor Relations in the Electronic Environment” and “Ethnic Archives” were also accepted. Whereas most previous presentations have concentrated on the technical perspective of how to preserve, present, and describe born digital materials, “Digital Donors” will focus on donor-relations and agreements and how they are affected by the collections’ being digital. Participants include presenters Pat Galloway, University of Texas School of Information, and Menzi Behrnd-Klodt, archivist, attorney, and consultant, and chair Rob Spindler, University of Arizona. Participants in “Ethnic Archives” will discuss the challenges of and strategies for collecting manuscript and archival material from traditionally underrepresented groups and establishing repositories that offer a balanced collection that truly reflect these communities. Presenters include Sal Güereña, Director of the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives at the University of California, Santa Barbara and David George-Shongo, the first archivist of the Seneca Nation in New York. Brad Bauer, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, will serve as chair.
In addition, section leadership endorsed its maximum of two sessions, and both were accepted: "We're Ignoring That: Collection Development and What Not To Collect" and “Trash or Treasure? Experiences with Deaccessioning and the Implications of Digitization.” We hope to see you there!
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Abandoned Property in Cultural Institutions Law Project Completed
The A&A Section’s Abandoned Property in Cultural Institutions Law Project is an effort to identify states that have laws which allow cultural institutions such as museums and archives to obtain ownership of abandoned or orphan collections, that is, loaned property in the possession of a repository for which the repository has no reasonable means of contacting its owner. Starting with information Mark Greene compiled when he was working to have such a law passed in Minnesota, section members searched the codes and statutes of each state. The resulting list, details which states have abandoned property laws specific to property held by cultural institutions, a citation to the law, links to the statute online, and any pertinent notes.
Typically, the laws are named some variation of “Museum Property Act” and include a definition of what is considered to be a museum. Some laws specifically include archives in that definition and others are not as clear. Another variation is for only state museums to be covered by the law. As a rule, the general provisions are as follows:
- the property has been held by the repository a specified number of years;
- the repository sends notice by certified mail, return receipt requested, to the last known address of the lender (if the collection is undocumented, that is, if the name of the original owner is unknown, the repository instead must publish a notice in the local newspaper where it is located.);
- if no response is received after a specified time period, the collection is considered abandoned and becomes property of the repository.
The information is a resource to make archivists in states with the laws aware of the options available to them, and archivists in states without these laws are encouraged to use this resource to formulate similar legislation for their state and advocate for its passage.
Members of the Abandoned Property Project Committee include Tara Laver, Special Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries; Brenda S. McClurkin, Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Library; and Michelle Sweetster, John P. Raynor, S.J. Library, Marquette University. The committee thanks Mark Greene for generously sharing his research, which was the germ of the idea for this project.
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Report from 2007 Annual Meeting
- Number of attendees: 50
- Election results: Section leaders for the 2007-2008 year are as follows:
- Julie Herrada, Chair
- Tara Laver, Vice-Chair
- Brad Bauer, Steering Committee
- Deborah Richards, Steering Committee
- Amy Scott, Steering Committee
- Michelle Sweetser, Immediate Past Chair and Webmaster
- Summary of meeting activities:
The majority of our time at the 2007 section meeting was devoted to a panel presentation, “Acquisition and Appraisal in the Digital Era,” featuring Daniel Hartwig, a Record Services Archivist at Yale University and Tim Pyatt, University Archivist at Duke University.
Section officers reported on the completion of the abandoned property law project and reminded members of the continuing availability of the online appraisers list. Candidates for office were presented and elections were held.
The remainder of our time was devoted to an open forum discussion about projects and program proposals that would be of interest to section membership. A number of high quality ideas emerged from this discussion that the section leadership subsequently worked to shepherd as proposals for the 2008 Annual Meeting.
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Announcements
Ethics and Acquisitions: Call for Your Stories
SAA Member Elena Danielson is researching the kinds of ethical issues that come up in the acquisitions process, and would be delighted to hear from section members about ethical questions that need more discussion in the profession. For instance, what do you do when a competing archival institution starts contacting one of your prospects? What do you do if you are suspicious about the provenance of an offered collection? Please use hypothetical details rather than real names. She is collecting these abstracted case studies to analyze as part of a research project. She will not provide prepackaged answers. The cases can be e-mailed to the section list or to Elena directly. Thank you in advance for your input.
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"Interdisciplinary Perspective on Archives and the Ethics of Memory Construction" Conference to be held at University of Michigan
(From news release)
On May 2-3, 2008 the School of Information and the University Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor are co-hosting a conference on "Interdisciplinary Perspective on Archives and the Ethics of Memory Construction."
Participants will explore interdisciplinary perspectives on the relationships between archives, professional ethics and responsibilities, power relationships, social justice, and contemporary and historical accountability. Building upon an emerging body of scholarship and praxis, invited speakers will offer theoretical and concrete examples of the roles archives play in shaping the present and the past.
Despite claims to impartiality, archival responsibilities are increasingly being seen as having broader social significances beyond records curation and management of the institutions where they are kept. This is especially true in the context of the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of memory studies and the recognition that archives play a critical memory construction role, as well as within the context of wide-ranging social and legal systems where archives are highlighted in connection with human rights and social justice imperatives. An exploration of the ethical responsibilities and dilemmas of archivists and the archives, as active shapers of societal memory, demands concentrated examination. This conference will facilitate a cross-disciplinary and international dialogue on the ethics of memory construction, and explore ways in which key challenges, lessons, and critical knowledge will continue to be identified, assembled, and shared.
We have assembled an impressive array of archival and other voices to examine these issues:
- Fatma Müge Göçek (Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and the Program in Women's Studies, University of Michigan)
- Verne Harris (Project Manager, Centre of Memory and Dialogue, Nelson Mandela Foundation)
- Margaret Hedstrom (School of Information, University of Michigan)
- Barbara Madison (Michigan-based Native American research and genealogy consultant)
- Noel Solani (Heritage Resources Manager, Nelson Mandela National Museum. Formerly Research Coordinator, Robben Island Museum)
- James Steward (Director, University of Michigan Museum of Art)
- Gudmund Valderhaug (Project Manager, Hordaland Regional Archives; Associate Professor, Faculty of Journalism, Library and Information Science, Oslo University College, Norway)
- David A. Wallace (School of Information, University of Michigan,)
- Frank H. Wu (Dean and Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School)
Ample time for discussion and reflection has been scheduled to ensure dialogue, debate, and consensus building.
Registration is $50, $35 for students. For more information, see the conference website.
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Artists, Museums Would Benefit From Leahy-Bennett Bill
(from news release)
Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Robert Bennett (R-Utah) have reintroduced their Artist-Museum Partnership Act Tuesday. The bipartisan bill would allow artists, writers and composers who donate works to museums and libraries to take a tax deduction equal to the fair market value of their work. It would enable the United States to keep cherished works of art within the country and to preserve them in U.S. public institutions, while erasing an inequity in the tax code that currently serves as a disincentive for artists to donate their works to museums and libraries.
Under current law, artists who donate self-created works are only able to deduct the cost of supplies such as canvas, pen, paper and ink, which does not equal their true value.
“If we as a nation want to ensure that art works created by living artists are available to the public in the future, for study or for pleasure, artists should be allowed to donate their works without paying an unfair price,” said Leahy.
“The current tax law is imbalanced. It not only hurts artists, but it hurts museums and libraries – large and small – that are dedicated to preserving works for posterity,” Leahy continued. “I would like to see more art works, not fewer, preserved in Vermont and across the country.”
Prior to 1969, artists and collectors alike were able to take a deduction equivalent to the fair market value of a work, but Congress changed the law for artists in the Tax Reform Act of 1969. Since then, fewer and fewer artists have donated their works to museums and cultural institutions.
Until 1969, the Library of Congress received 15 to 20 large gifts of manuscripts from authors each year. In the four years after the elimination of the deduction, the library received only one such gift. Instead, many of these works have been sold to private collectors and are no longer available to the general public.
This is the same bill Leahy introduced the past two Congresses. It was included in the Senate-passed version of the President’s 2001 tax cut bill and in the Finance Committee’s version of S. 272, the Charity Aid, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act.
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Contact House Members Now to Sign on to “Preserving the American Historical Record” Legislation
(Kathleen Roe, Chair, Joint Task Force on PAHR)
The Partnership for the American Historical Record Task Force is seeking calls and letters to members of the House of Representatives to urge them to sign on to the “Preserving the American Historical Record” legislation, which will be introduced soon by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY, 22nd district). The Congressman would like to have as many co-sponsors as possible before introducing the bill. Current sponsors are: Jerrold Nadler (D-NY 8th), John McHugh (R- NY 23rd), Sanford Bishop (D-GA 2nd), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY 14th), and Edolphus Towns (D-NY 10th).
It is critical that we work now to enlist as many Members of Congress as possible to sign on to the bill – and that the co-sponsors represent a diversity of states and both parties. (The current list of sponsors is heavily weighted to the East Coast and the Democratic party.) As several Members of Congress have said to me, PAHR clearly represents a non-partisan issue. I would add that it is also a nationwide issue – and we need representation “from sea to shining sea.”
Act now – as Congress reconvenes from its winter break.
In the next few days Congressmen Hinchey will send a “Dear Colleague” letter to invite his House colleagues to join him as sponsors. Although some Members will wait to see the letter before signing on, others will do so sooner. Notwithstanding their personal preferences on timing, it is essential that House members know that this bill is of concern to their constituents so that they WILL sign on. Your efforts will ensure that your Congressperson has this bill on his or her “radar.”
Here’s how you can help:
Contact the members of Congress who represent your region and tell them how important this bill will be to your state. Please encourage others to do so as well. Genealogists, local government officials, researchers of all kinds, teachers, veterans, and even your favorite aunt can make the case.
To facilitate this, we have posted a number of items on the PAHR website, including the following:
- A draft letter* that you can customize and then fax (preferred), email, or send.
- A draft resolution if you have an organization that is willing to support PAHR.
- The PAHR fact sheet.
- A generic version of a brochure entitled ”Then, Now, Always” that you can tailor to your own state.
- An Excel file (PAHR-FormulaCalculations-11-2007.xls) in which you can find the specific amount of funding that would come to your state if the bill is authorized and appropriated at the proposed level of $50 million.
It is particularly important that you also call or visit the Member’s office. A visit to the regional office or the Washington office will have considerable impact. If you contact the regional office, ask for the regional director (the name should be on the website, but if not, ask for the person in that position.) If you contact the Washington office, ask for the Legislative director.
I cannot stress how important it is to have a strong set of co-sponsors for this bill. The level of support we get at this point will demonstrate to Congress whether the bill is viable or just one of those bills introduced to please a constituent….
If you have any questions about how to proceed, I’m happy to talk you through the steps. Feel free to contact me! If you’re a bit hazy about PAHR and what it would do for your state or organization, I’m happy to walk you through that as well.
Please take a few minutes in the coming week to make a call, pay a visit, or send a fax/email/letter to your Members of Congress. I’d be grateful if you’d let me know what you’ve done; sometimes we can encourage another person to follow up with the same Representative, and it’s always helpful for us to understand how much “traffic” there is.
It’s time to tell Congress that what we do matters a great deal to this country and its inhabitants. Americans need and deserve the resources to ensure access to our heritage. We can do this—with your help!
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Database of Literary Copyright Information Available to Researchers
(Steve Mielke, The University of Texas at Austin)
The University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and the Reading University Library have created Firms Out of Business (FOB), an online database containing the names and addresses of copyright holders or contact persons for out-of-business printing and publishing firms, magazines, literary agencies and similar organizations that have archives housed in libraries and archives in North America and the United Kingdom.
FOB is a companion project to the Writers, Artists and Their Copyright Holders (WATCH), an online database containing the names and addresses of copyright holders or contact persons for authors and artists.
The objective of both projects is to provide information to scholars and researchers about whom to contact for permission to publish text and images that have copyright protection.
"The long-standing partnership between the Ransom Center and the University of Reading has already produced the WATCH Web site, which has become a worldwide standard reference tool," said co-creator David Sutton, of the University of Reading in Whiteknights, United Kingdom. "I hope that the FOB project will eventually achieve the same status. I am sure that FOB will be welcomed by researchers, biographers, historians of the book, librarians and editors on both sides of the Atlantic."
FOB aims to record information about printing and publishing firms, magazines, literary agencies and similar organizations that are no longer in existence. Where possible, the entries in FOB identify successor organizations that might own any surviving rights.
"It has always been particularly difficult for writers, editors and publishers to locate the rights holders for little magazines and book publishers that have vanished, leaving behind so-called orphaned works," said Ransom Center Librarian Richard Workman. "FOB will be a means of identifying the rightful copyright owners of these works, thus allowing them to be republished or adapted."
FOB entries are researched from standard reference books, university library and archival catalogs and discussions with library colleagues and other experts in the field. The entries are designed as factual summaries, not as short company histories.
Two categories are represented in FOB. The first category includes firms that went out of existence long ago and no longer hold publishing rights. The other category comprises firms that have gone out of business more recently, and directs inquirers who may have an interest in rights that could belong to that firm or its successor.
Compilers welcome submissions of additional information from users of the FOB and WATCH Web sites and from others with knowledge in literary and publishing history. To make additions or revisions, contact Sutton.
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Acquisitions and Collecting Initiatives
Virginia Tech Librarians Document Aftermath of Tragic Shootings With Archive
(From News Release)
Virginia Tech librarians are working to archive artifacts documenting the outpouring of grief and support in the aftermath of the tragic April, 16, 2007, shootings that left 32 people on campus dead. Working with consultants from the Library of Congress (LC), librarians and university staff have collected over 87,000 items expressing condolence, including 33,000 paper cranes received in one lot, said Tamara Kennelly, a university archivist and librarian who is leading the project.
"This does not count the 4000 goody bags a lady from Texas shipped up here," Kennelly told the LJ Academic Newswire, "and thousands more cranes, bracelets, cards, ornaments, teddy bears, wristbands, and other items made available to students and the community at Squires Student Center through the University Unions and Student Activities."
Amid grief and raw emotion, librarians began working to establish the archive within days of the shootings. A team of consultants from LC came to campus, Kennelly noted, and librarians and staff began to coordinate the preservation of artifacts, both analog and digital, of the various efforts made to cope with the shocking events. "We wanted to ensure that all of us were working together," Kennelly explained, citing the university's Center for Digital Discourse and Cultures' April 16 Archive and the "DLVT416: A Digital Library Test Bed for Research Related to 4/16/2007 at Virginia Tech" as just "two of the efforts concerned with the long-term preservation of the materials."
In addition, Virginia Tech librarians consulted with their peers at other universities who developed archives after tragic events including Syracuse University, after Pan Am 103 was destroyed by terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, and Texas A&M University, where 12 students were killed and 27 injured during the construction of a bonfire.
The archive, officials say, will provide "primary source materials on the grieving and consolation process after a major tragedy." Items selected for the permanent collection will be organized, preserved, and housed in a climate-controlled environment, Kennelly noted. They will also be described in a finding aid that will be made available through the University Libraries' Special Collections website and the Virginia Heritage Project. Once the collection has been processed, the physical collection will be available through the Special Collections Reading Room on the first floor of Newman Library. In addition to the permanent collection, Kennelly said, librarians are also planning a traveling collection.
Beyond the physical challenges, the project can be difficult work, Kennelly concedes. "It is heart wrenching every day I go to work," she told the LJ Academic Newswire. "But it's also heartening to receive such an outpouring of support, prayers, and good wishes from people of all ages around the world."
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The Center for American History at UT Austin Announces New Videogame Archive
(From News Release)
The Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with leaders in the video and computer game industry, has announced the formation of the UT Videogame Archive, the newest addition to the Center’s extensive media collection which documents and preserves contemporary and historical media for research and educational purposes.
“Several key individuals in videogame development and related enterprises who recognize the important of preserving the history of game development—and particularly the role that Texas has played in it—approached us last fall about establishing an archive dedicated to the evolution of the videogame industry,” said Dr. Don Carleton, director of the Center for American History. “After a series of conversations with Richard Garriott of NCsoft, Warren Spector of Junction Point Studios, George Sanger of The Fat Man and Team Fat, and Bill Bottorff of Austin Business Computers, we all agreed that the Center is an ideal home for the archive. We have an international reputation for the caliber and accessibility of our media collections, and we are situated at the heart of the videogame industry in Texas. We are extremely pleased to extend our holdings to include archival material from the industry that is literally driving the future of computer technology.”
The new archive will enhance the potential for collaboration among University departments with emerging videogame curricula,” added Brenda Gunn, assistant director for the Center’s Research and Collections Division. This is a natural opportunity for the study of popular culture, art, technology, business, and preservation of digital information to intersect on the UT campus. Classes are already developing in academic areas on campus such as the School of Information; Radio, Television, and Film; Computer Science; and the College of Liberal Arts.
“The UT Videogame Archive joins a number of existing U.S. and European initiatives already in the works to preserve material related to the industry’s history,” said Gunn. “The Center’s archive will enhance the global study of the videogame industry by highlighting the influence of Texas-based developers and entrepreneurs.”
In its efforts to build an archive of scholarly and cultural interest, the Center plans to gather materials from all sectors of the industry, including developers, publishers, artists, and manufacturers connected to the videogame industry. In addition to games and equipment, archival materials of interest include paper and digital documentation relating to the conception, development, planning, management, marketing, scripting, technology, design, and other aspects of developing videogames. Garriott, Spector, and Sanger have announced their plans to contribute their respective materials to the new archive.
“The fact is that the history of the videogame business is being written every day and, sadly, being lost just about as quickly,” said Spector. “We need to step up now and recognize the cultural and academic importance of videogames. Luckily, we’re still a young enough medium that nearly all of our serious practitioners are still alive and available to be interviewed and invited to contribute to this archive of research and reference materials.”
“Generating the financial support for the staff, equipment, supplies, and facilities that will be required to curate, maintain, and make the archive accessible is our primary focus right now,” said Carleton. “Dozens of developers right here in Austin are eager to place their material with us as soon as we have the infrastructure in place.”
As an organized research unit of The University of Texas at Austin, the Center for American History facilitates, sponsors, and supports teaching, research, and public education. In support of its mission, the Center acquires, preserves, and makes available for research archival, artifact, and rare book collections and sponsors exhibitions, conferences, Web sites, documentaries, oral history projects, grant-funded research, and publications.
For more information, contact Ramona Kelly, associate director for Communications and Development at the Center for American History. Information about the archive will be updated as available online. Go to this site’s press section to hear Brenda Gunn’s interview on NPR’s Marketplace.
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University of Michigan Special Collections Add Orson Welles Collections
(Julie Herrada, Curator of the Labadie Collection, University of Michigan)
The University of Michigan Special Collections Library has acquired two major collections of written, illustrated, recorded, and photographic materials pertaining to the artistic career of Orson Welles. Together, the collections total some 100 linear feet of archival material, and are scheduled to form a cornerstone of a new archival project, “Visionaries of the Stage, Radio, and Screen” that is being developed by the Library.
The first collection came from Ms. Oja Kodar, Welles’s companion during the last twenty years of his life (and for artistic purposes, his collaborator for much of that time). This collection spans his entire career from his first film, Hearts of Age (1931) onward. However, in terms of screenplays, business records, and correspondence, it is heavily concentrated around projects completed during the twenty-seven years following Touch of Evil (1958), as well as unfinished television and film projects from late in his life.
The second collection was acquired from the heir of Richard Wilson, an actor and business partner of Orson Welles in the 1940s, who went on to direct several of his own films. The Wilson collection includes correspondence, photographs, treatments, reviews, and scripts related to Welles and Wilson’s theatrical, radio, and film work produced between 1936 and 1947. Some of the more notable items include original drafts of unproduced films, such as Heart of Darkness as well as notable released films from the forties, such as The Stranger, The Lady from Shanghai, and The Magnificent Ambersons. There are also original documents pertaining to Citizen Kane and hundreds of letters from listeners following the historic “War of the Worlds” broadcast of 1938.
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New LSU Collection Offers Perspective on World War II and Race Relations
In late 2007, the Louisiana State University Libraries Special Collections acquired the World War II papers of Louisiana native and LSU graduate Hyman Samuelson from his niece, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, professor emerita of history at Rutgers University. Spanning 1940-1945 and comprised of diaries, over 500 letters, photographs, and engineering drawings created by Samuelson, a white officer of an African-American battalion, the collection offers a unique perspective on World War II and race relations.
Born to Jewish parents in Donaldsonville, La., Samuelson grew up in New Orleans, where his father operated a clothing store. He enrolled at LSU in the fall of 1936 and joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) as a freshman, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in civil engineering in June 1940 and receiving a commission in the U.S. Army Reserves. He was called into active service in September 1940 and reported to the 96th Engineer Battalion (Colored), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 1942, he and his battalion arrived in Townsville, New Guinea, where they were tasked with clearing and constructing by hand three 7000 feet air strips. Captain Samuelson was one of two officers in command of the first African American troops who came under enemy fire during World War II.
The bulk of the collection dates from the war years and documents the experience and attitudes of men in a segregated labor battalion. It provides insight into race relations within the military as well documenting the psychological, emotional, and physical demands of long-term service in the Pacific theater. Further, it reveals the morale problems of officers, noncommissioned officers, and troops faced with bombings and strafing, the imminent threat of invasion, tropical diseases, and psychiatric problems. Earlier letters and diaries relate to his time as a student at LSU and his engineering work before the war. The majority of letters are written to his fiancée and later wife, Dora Reiner, who died in 1944.
Much of the collection was published by Midlo-Hall as Love, War, and the 96th Engineers(Colored): The World War II New Guinea Diaries of Captain Hyman Samuelson (University of Illinois Press, 1995), but additional materials are included in this donation. These documents were added to the Hyman Samuelson Diaries, which he donated in 2005 and include diaries from his LSU years.
After the war, Samuelson left the engineering profession and opened a clothing store in Austin, Tex., where he still lives.
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Wisconsin Historical Society Acquires New Black History Manuscripts
(From News Release)
Wisconsin Historical Society archivists are busy this winter processing two important African-American history collections acquired late last year. The oldest one consists of two boxes of previously unknown correspondence with American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Staff in the Tamiment Library at New York University came across these and, knowing that the Historical Society possesses the nation’s richest archives about Gompers and the AFL, graciously arranged for the donation.
The letters document organized labor's efforts to grapple with the place of former African-American slaves in the U.S. workforce. A number of letters to Gompers discuss whether black workers should be allowed to join the same unions as white workers, especially in the South. For example, a union official in New Orleans wrote Gompers about attempts by the Knights of Labor to use white-only unions as a way to woo members away from the AFL. John M. Callaghan's 1892 letter from New Orleans acknowledges the importance of forming integrated unions: "Enclosed please find application of Journeymen Horse Shoers for certificate of affiliation. The Union is composed of white and black men. I am sure that in the course of a few months they will have by far the greater number of the men employed at that calling within the ranks of the Union." The new Gompers letters are quite fragile and require expert conservation before they can be made freely available to researchers later this year.
The second collection is the FBI's file on Martin Luther King Jr., totaling about 17,000 pages, obtained by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nick Kotz under the Freedom of Information Act. Kotz acquired the archive while researching his book Judgment Days, about Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the civil rights movement, and donated it to the Society with other valuable research materials. As is common with FOIA-obtained documents, many pages are significantly redacted (blacked-out), however the size and depth of the collection make it extraordinarily valuable to scholars despite this censorship.
A different copy of the FBI files on Martin Luther King was issued on 25 reels of microfilm in the 1980s by University Publications of America. The Society's set of the records in the Kotz Collection will allow scholars to compare the two versions for omitted or overlooked documents. Library-Archives staff are investigating the possibility of mounting the entire archive on its Web site, since the FBI has published only 221 of the 17,000 documents on the Web. Processing the papers and researching potential privacy and copyright constraints for a Web edition will require several months.
The Society has long been a leader in collecting, preserving and sharing African-American history. Its Library-Archives division holds nearly 400 collections of unpublished documents and nearly 10,000 publications on black history. The only comprehensive guide to the black press was compiled at the Society by James Danky, on the strength of the Society's century-old African-American newspapers and periodicals collection. Fifty primary sources about black history in Wisconsin have been mounted online at Turning Points in Wisconsin History as well as a short survey for Wisconsin students and lesson plans for teachers. Over the years, the Society has also published dozens of articles and books on Wisconsin's African-American heritage, most recently a biography of Caroline Quarlls for young readers and an article on J. Anthony Josey, "the first mayor of Black Milwaukee."
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WHS Archives Adds to Major Mass Communications Collections
(Jonathan Nelson, Collection Development Archivist, Wisconsin Historical Society Library-Archives)
This past fall, during a field trip to the Washington, DC area, the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Archives was able to acquire significant additions to two mass communications collections. First, is a large addition to the Roland Evans, Jr. and Robert B. Novak Papers that was donated to the Historical Society by Mr. Novak. This new addition documents the broad spectrum of activities of Mr. Evans, who died in 2001, and Mr. Novak, well-known Washington political writers and commentators, from the early 1960s through the publication of Mr. Novak’s 2007 memoir, The Prince of Darkness. When this addition is cataloged and available for public use, it will provide researchers a unique, inside look at Washington politics during the second half of the 20th century. Second, is an addition to the papers of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Nick Kotz. The addition consists of his research files for the book Judgment Days, about Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement. The addition features copies of the complete FBI files on Martin Luther King, Jr., over 150 audio cassettes with Lyndon Johnson telephone conversations obtained from the LBJ Presidential Library, primarily on topics relating to civil rights, along with many transcribed oral histories and Mr. Kotz’s own interview notes. In addition to documenting the work of a prize-winning journalist, this new material will complement the Society’s extensive civil rights holdings. The addition to the Nick Kotz Papers should be available for use in the late spring.
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Three-Step Collection Analysis Project Underway at UW's American Heritage Center
Once known for its indiscriminate collecting and paucity of processing, the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center, with support from an NHPRC grant, has for five years been undertaking three major, interrelated, projects. The first is a thorough analysis of its collections and creation of a formal collecting policy. The second is to create catalog records for every one of those collections deemed permanent under the new collecting policy. The third is to reappraise and deaccession the thousands of collections that do not fit the new collecting policy.
The first project is almost complete, and will be the subject of a future announcement in SAA’s Acquisition and Appraisal, Manuscript Repository, and Reference, Access, and Outreach section newsletters. The second project is fully complete (and is the subject of announcements in the immediate past issues of the newsletters of SAA’s Description, Manuscripts Repository, and Reference, Access, and Outreach sections). The third project is well underway, but because of its size, will not be completed for several years.
However, it is perhaps worth reporting on the progress for the first five years, and particularly for that part of the process assisted by NHPRC, for which we have been keeping more detailed statistics. Since the more focused collection evaluation and deaccession program began in 2002 the AHC has deaccessioned 416 collections for a total of 9270.30 cubic feet. Since the deaccessioning portion of the grant began in 2006, the Center has deaccessioned 312 collections totaling 4547.97 cubic feet.
Of those collections, 40% have been donated to new repositories, archives where the material will fit better and be more visible, it is hoped. Sixteen percent of the collections are still looking for a new repository. Ten percent have been or will be returned to the donors. Many of the collections that have been donated to new repositories were transferred with the donor’s permission; the others were collections the AHC owned free and clear. Some 17% of collections were reappraised but found to fit our new collecting policy and were thus cataloged; 5% were deferred for further research. Three percent were transferred to the University Libraries. And 9% have been or will be destroyed.
The AHC has donated collections to repositories throughout the US and even to foreign countries, from presidential libraries to state archives, from small historical societies to major university special collections. Shortly the Center will launch a survey asking the repositories that have received collections to tell us something about what has become of them, and whether our deaccessioning project has in any way influenced their perspectives on deaccessioning.
A few additional points should be noted. First, the reappraisal and deaccessioning has been done in accordance with a written collection management policy adopted (and vetted by the Vice President of Academic Affairs) in 2002. Second, while the total amount of deaccessioned material is large, so are the Center’s holdings, which now total approximately 75,000 cubic feet. Third, to date only two donors have expressed anger over the AHC’s decision to deaccession their papers; most are fine knowing that the collections can go to other repositories, and two even sent donations to the Center in gratitude for how the deaccession was handled. Fourth, additional information about the philosophy and process of the reappraisal and deaccessioning project will be found in Mark A. Greene, “I’ve Deaccessioned and Live to Tell About It: Confessions of an Unrepentant Reappraiser,” Archival Issues, forthcoming soon.
Page last updated March 11, 2008.
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