Greetings from Philadelphia! This month Philly is doing its best lion-lamb imitation with rain, snow, and temperatures in the 70s. During one newscast the local weatherman stated he’d never predicted rain, hail, sleet, and snow all in one day! Well, if you can’t depend on the weather, you can always count on the Manuscript Repositories Section. We’ve got a great team of individuals working to keep you updated on trends and activities in the manuscripts arena.
As Paul Atwood describes in an article below, we’ve made some changes to our website including the addition of an Annual Meeting page. For new archivists, I suggest you also check our resources section at http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/mss/resources_gateway.asp. Functioning as a gateway, this section contains links to various websites providing information on core archival activities.
You may already have marked your calendar with the dates for the 2007 annual meeting in Chicago. But make another notation for the Manuscript Repositories Section meeting on Friday, August 31 from 8:00 to 10:00 am. Our two speakers, Catherine Stollar Peters and Kevin Glick, will discuss their work with electronic manuscripts and we anticipate a lively discussion to follow.
So just remember, whether you are facing rain or snow, spring will arrive one day. And also don’t forget that the Steering Committee welcomes your ideas for the Section. If you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to contact me directly at
or 215-928-3884. We welcome your input!
Enhancements to Section Website
Paul Atwood, Web Liaison
In response to issues raised by the Web Liaisons and ensuing discussion at the 2006 meeting of the Manuscript Repositories Section Steering Committee, a number of improvements have been performed on the Section website for the benefit of current and future members. The enhancements include maintenance of past newsletters and the creation of an Annual Meeting page.
Section website navigation was repaired in newsletters previously formatted in HTML (Fall 1999 - Spring 2004). Users will no longer be sent to "orphaned" pages when utilizing the navigation menu from these newsletters. It is worth noting that it was determined that the original HTML coding and external links should remain, as would be the case in print, as part of the historic record of the newsletter.
A more dynamic development is the creation of an Annual Meeting page. The page was produced as a method of reaching out to Section members who are unable to attend meetings. The Annual Meeting page will provide information about topics covered at the meeting and will include the agenda, minutes of the meeting, the annual report, and, when possible, the text or electronic presentation of our speakers.
Section leadership hopes you find these developments useful and informative. Feedback is welcomed and should be directed to the Web Liaison.
Acquisition and Appraisal Section Undertakes Abandoned Property Law Project
Tara Lavar, Steering Committee
Does this sound familiar? The second cousin once removed of someone who thirty years ago loaned your institution a collection of family letters shows up and wants them returned. An electronic publisher wants to include a collection that’s been on loan for fifty years in a digital project, but since you do not own it, you decide not to participate. You want to apply for a grant to process a collection that’s been on loan since the earliest days of your repository, but a stipulation of the grant is that the repository owns it. As the long-term custodian of these materials, what are repositories’ rights to such collection? How can they obtain clear title to them?
The Acquisition and Appraisal Section has undertaken a project 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. Mark Greene has generously shared research he conducted to identify states with such laws when he was working to have one passed in Minnesota. Section members Michelle Sweetser, Brenda McClurkin, and Tara Laver will use the list to verify that the states he identified at that time as having this type of abandoned property laws still do, to identify states that have since passed such laws, and to provide links to the text of the laws and model wording so archivists in states without them can work to have such legislation passed. Typically, the laws require the following: 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 group plans to have the information available on the Acquisition and Appraisal Section’s website by the 2007 annual meeting.
The idea for the project came out of a session on problems with long-held loans and deposits during the section’s meeting at the 2005 annual meeting in New Orleans. If you have questions about the project or would be interested in participating, contact Tara Laver at
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Jim Harrison Papers, Grand Valley State University
Nancy Richard, Grand Valley State University
Jim Harrison
The Grand Valley State University (GVSU) Special Collections & University Archives is pleased to announce that the Jim Harrison Papers are now available to researchers. Thanks to a grant from Meijer Foundation, GVSU acquired the papers of Michigan writer Jim Harrison in 2005. Harrison’s poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature has been published since the early 1960s. His critically acclaimed trilogy, Legends of the Fall, reinvigorated the novella form in America. The collection contains extensive correspondence to Harrison from friends, family, fans, and fellow writers including Tom McGuane, Ted Kooser, Dan Gerber, Gary Snyder, Denise Levertov, Rick Bass, Terry Tempest Williams, Louise Erdrich, Peter Matthiessen, artist and writer Russell Chatham, French gourmand Gérard Oberlé, and chef Mario Batali.
Mellon Foundation Grant Helps Preserve and Catalog Ransom Center’s French Materials Stephen Mielke, The University of Texas at Austin
Carlton Lake with the first edition of Alfred Jarry's Léda, 1981. The original manuscript (1899-1900) of this one-act opérette-bouffe is in the Lake collection, but the book was not published until 1981. Lake was associated with the Ransom Center for almost 35 years before his retirement in 2003. Unidentified photographer.
With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin has completed work to preserve and catalog a large portion of the center's modern French literary manuscript and visual arts holdings.
The award made possible the arranging, housing and description of five sizable modern French collections, specifically the Ransom Center's Carlton Lake collection, widely recognized as one of the finest research collections of modern French materials outside of France; the Princess Marthe Bibesco papers; the William Bradley Literary Agency records; the Edouard Dujardin papers and the Artine Artinian collection.
The collections include diverse works in history, literature, music, philosophy, photography, religion and women's studies by such important literary and cultural figures as Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Jean Cocteau, Georges Hugnet, Valentine Hugo, James Joyce, Pierre Louÿs, Henry Miller, Henri-Pierre Roché, Maurice Saillet, Erik Satie, Gertrude Stein and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
"This grant improved access to important collections that constitute a major scholarly resource in French culture," said Thomas F. Staley, director of the Ransom Center. "The support of the Mellon Foundation not only provides students, researchers and the general public access to a wealth of research materials, but also ensures the preservation of these valued resources."
"The Mellon Foundation's support funded the Ransom Center's archival staff, computer equipment and preservation supplies for the two-year project," said Joan Sibley, head of the Ransom Center's department of archives and visual materials cataloging. "Their generosity provided us the tools to share these remarkable collections."
The department created archival finding aids for each collection, including biographical sketches, scope and content notes, series descriptions and detailed indices of manuscript titles, correspondents and photographic materials present in the collections.
Houghton Library Completes Conversion of Manuscript Catalog Leslie A. Morris, Harvard University
Houghton Library's cataloged manuscript collections are now fully web-accessible through HOLLIS, with the finding aids available in OASIS, Harvard's finding aids database, and RLG's ArchivesGrid. The five-year project to migrate the manuscript card catalog to an electronic format saw the conversion of some 1,519 typescript collection finding aids (43,618 pages) and the creation of 5,717 MARC records (916 new collection-level records and 4,801 new single-item manuscript records). Completed last month, the conversion project was funded by Harvard University's Library Digital Initiative, with matching funds from the
Harvard College Library.
"If researchers can't find a description of it online these days, it doesn't exist," commented Project Director Leslie A. Morris, Houghton's Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts. "This project was essential to bring the library into the modern digital research environment, and to
provide easy access to Houghton's unique manuscripts worldwide. Additionally, it gives us the bibliographic infrastructure on which to build digital content easily, further improving access to our collections."
Houghton's manuscript collection is diverse, with material in more than 40 languages, and ranging in date from ostraca ca. 300 BCE to the latest novel by John Updike. The retrospective conversion project focused on material in Western languages, for which at least minimal descriptive information existed. This included material in Breton, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Welsh; as well as Ethiopic, Hebrew, Oriya, Pali, and Sanskrit. For all materials, scope and content notes were added where needed; each single-item manuscript was examined and its physical description verified; old subject headings were standardized to conform to Library of Congress forms, and standard genre and form headings (such as diaries, galley proofs, seals, etc.) were added.
In addition to Morris, the project team included a Project Coordinator (first Jackie Dean, then Diane Booton) who created MARC records, performed quality control on finding aids returned from vendors, and coordinated the work of the 31 students employed by the project over the
years who did rekeying, markup enhancement, and who provided additional language expertise. Additionally, the grant funded a 15-month Project Cataloger (initially Diane Booton, later Susan Wyssen) to include the single-item manuscripts not part of collections.
"All projects throw off additional work to regular staff," acknowledged Morris, "and we could not have made such rapid progress without being able to offload difficult finding aid conversion problems onto Senior Manuscript Cataloger Bonnie Salt, whose years of experience with Houghton manuscript cataloging made easy what, to temporary project staff, was difficult." Morris Levy, Music Cataloger, contributed records for manuscript music, and James F. Coakley, Manuscript Cataloger, created records for Syriac and Department of Printing and Graphic Arts manuscripts, adding close to 1,000 records to the above totals.
Collaborative Electronic Records Project
Nancy Adgent, Rockefeller Archive Center
The Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) and the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) are collaborating to develop and implement methods and the technology necessary for preserving and ensuring future researchers’ access to information archived in electronic form. Launched in August 2005 and managed by Riccardo Ferrante, SIA Information Technology Archivist, the Collaborative Electronic Records Project (CERP) resulted from discussions between Dr. Darwin H. Stapleton, RAC Executive Director, and Dr. Edie Hedlin, former director of the SIA and a past president of the Society of American Archivists. RAC and SIA are parallel repositories in that both collect information with educational, scientific, and cultural subject matter; however, they differ in their relationship to donors as well as in the scale of their operations.
As archives and their depositors face space limitations, rising costs, and governmental regulations, business practices will dictate that materials, particularly those "born digital," be archived in electronic form. E-mail records are the primary focus of the project because of the key role e-mail plays in today’s organizations and because e-mail is especially susceptible to being lost from the historical record. During Phase One, CERP archivists, Nancy Adgent at RAC and Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig at SIA, conducted interviews with selected staff members at participating depositors’ offices about their use of e-mail in documenting policy and program decisions and activities. Each archive selected three donor units for pilot tests consisting of e-mail capture, preservation, and analysis. Phase One’s primary documentary product, e-mail "best practices" guidelines, is available on the RAC website, http://archive.rockefeller.edu/CERP/.
Currently, in Phase Two, CERP archivists are testing captured e-mail, making use copies, and drafting technical guidelines for transferring born digital records from depositors to archives. IT consultant Steve Burbeck is developing system requirements for a model digital archive to handle records assessment, transfer, classification, preservation, storage, and accessibility. The team recently reviewed its findings and summarized the issues in a presentation to the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, accessible on the CERP website: http://siarchives.si.edu/cerp/cerpteam.htm.
During Phase Three, the technological infrastructure will be constructed and tested. The team will also propose solutions to any system problems encountered, prepare finding aids for records that are permanently transferred during the testing process, and refine a model business case including a cost-benefit analysis of various ways to manage electronic records. Throughout the project, team members are presenting their findings at conferences, on the project website, and via an e-newsletter. To be added to the "Friends of CERP" newsletter e-mail list, please contact Nancy Adgent at nadgent@rockefeller.edu. More information about the collaborating institutions is available from their websites: http://archive.rockefeller.edu and http://siarchives.si.edu.
The RAC holds manuscript collections of Rockefeller family members, Rockefeller-related institutions, and some staff members of the depositing organizations as well as a few other non-profit groups. The RAC was established in 1974 to assemble, process, and make available for scholarly research the papers of the Rockefeller family and the records of various philanthropic and educational institutions founded by the family, including The Rockefeller University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 1984 the Center began to collect non-Rockefeller philanthropic records. These holdings presently include the archives of the Commonwealth Fund, the Culpeper Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the John and Mary Markle Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. The most recent addition is the Near East Foundation collection. Major subjects covered in the records include agriculture, the arts, African-American history, education, international relations and economic development, labor, medicine, philanthropy, politics, population, religion, the social sciences, social welfare, and women's history. To receive the printed version of the RAC newsletter, please e-mail
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Additional "Treasure Chest" Acquired
Jordan Patty, The Catholic University of America
Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact, v. 16, no. 19, May 25, 1961
On May 10, 2006, the processing archivist, Mr. Jordan Patty, and education archivist, Dr. Maria Mazzenga, drove to Newville, Pennsylvania, to retrieve a donation of the Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact, a Catholic comic book published from 1946 until 1972. The Archives received an
initial deposit of eight bound volumes of the Treasure Chest in 1970 from W. Wingate Snell along with other records related to the Commission on American Citizenship, an organization affiliated with CUA. In 2003, the archives received an additional accession of seventeen bound volumes of the Treasure Chest from CUA's Mullen Library. However, the archives did not have a complete collection, so the prospect of collecting a complete run of the comic book existed with this journey to Pennsylvania.
The donor was Frank M. Borth, one of the illustrators that contributed to the Treasure Chest. Mr. Borth worked on the Treasure Chest almost from its inception after he completed service in the army during World War II. In addition to illustrating, Mr. Borth wrote his own stories, including
"Uncle Harry's Gold Mine" and "Uncle Harry's Monkey's Uncle." As a contributor, he wanted copies of his own work, but the publisher only mailed the issues in packages of ten for distribution to children at Catholic parochial schools. Since the price to mail ten issues would have been the same as one issue, Mr. Borth decided to receive ten. His daughter discovered that the Archives held a Treasure Chest collection and provided his contact information.
While not completing the run held by the Archives, the Treasure Chest donation filled multiple gaps in the collection. Perhaps just as important was the taped recorded oral history Mr. Borth agreed to provide. The Archives holds very little correspondence or other information concerning the creation of the Treasure Chest comic books, so his recollections on how the comic book functioned will assist future researchers. The Archives added his interview along with the additional issues to the Treasure Chest digital collection, which contains most of the issues up until 1963 before the copyright renewed. Associate Archivist John Shepherd has
continued to acquire missing issues to complete the collection. Please visit the Treasure Chest digital collection at http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/dl/. A finding aid for the entire collection
is available at http://libraries.cua.edu/achrcua/TreasureChest.html.
Women’s Law Fund Records
Laura E. Slezak, Western Reserve Historical Society
The Archives of the Western Reserve Historical Society of Cleveland, Ohio recently completed processing the Women’s Law Fund records. The Women’s Law Fund, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to eradicating gender discrimination through litigation and education, was founded in Cleveland in 1972. The fund was co-founded by attorneys Jane M. Picker and Lizabeth A. Moody, then colleagues at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. Primarily funded by the Ford Foundation, the Women’s Law Fund first supported precedent-setting litigation regarding gender discrimination in employment, education, government benefits, and housing. The Women’s Law Fund was not a law firm; rather, it was an organization securing attorneys and providing funding for litigation in its area of expertise. In fact, the Women’s Law Fund was the first non-profit organization in the United States to address gender discrimination cases. Although located in Cleveland, the fund was a national organization.
Notably, the first case supported by the fund, LaFleur, et al. v. Cleveland Board of Education, et al., reached the United States Supreme Court to result in a landmark ruling. In 1974, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Cleveland Board of Education’s policy of mandatory maternity leave penalized female teachers for deciding to bear children, thus violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
As the fund’s efforts produced change, the Women’s Law Fund shifted its focus in the 1990s to new areas of discrimination, namely that of American women employed overseas by American companies and female age discrimination. The organization disbanded at the end of its 2006 fiscal year, largely due to the achievement of its mission. This collection is particularly valuable to researchers of women’s history, the field of legal studies, and the evolution of civil liberties.
Laura Slezak was the manuscript processor for the Women’s Law Fund records. If you would like more information regarding the collection, please contact her at (216) 721-5722 x. 259 or
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The Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS) was founded in 1867, making it the oldest cultural institution in Northeast Ohio. With headquarters in University Circle, the renowned arts and culture district of Cleveland, the Society operates nine separate but related collections at five historic properties throughout the region. WRHS’s mission is to collect, preserve, and present the history of all the people of Northeast Ohio.
C.A. Earle Rinker Papers: Documenting a Mining Boomtown
Dana Miller, Project Archivist UNLV Special Collections
The papers of C.A. Earle Rinker -- which vividly document his life in early twentieth century Goldfield, a legendary mining boom town in central Nevada -- have been processed and are open to researchers in the Special Collections Division of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The materials include a richly descriptive correspondence series, comprised of letters the young Earle Rinker wrote almost daily from Goldfield to his family in Indiana between 1906 and 1908, the boom town’s peak years. Rinker’s mother, Isadora, diligently saved his many letters over the years, and they remained in the family until 2006.
Rinker, a newly trained office stenographer, arrived fresh from the farm at the age of twenty-three to seek his fortune in the bustling mining town. His revealing letters describe the details of daily living conditions (including the unique housing conditions and water delivery system in Goldfield), the layout of the town and his exploration of the surrounding landscape. Other topics frequently related in the letters are contemporary frontier culture and customs, his experience with the unstable economic conditions of a boom town, his work for mining operations and stock brokerage offices, trips down into the mines, mining practices and stock market investments. Rinker’s thoughts on local figures, politics and events, and his personal tales such as homesickness and the tragic death of a friend are also featured in the correspondence.
Other items in the collection include hundreds of photographs that richly illustrate Rinker’s Goldfield experiences and visually highlight the history of the town; a series of mining business materials that includes annual business reports from several mining companies, stenographer’s notebooks, and mine stock investment promotional broadsides, posters and other advertisements; and finally a series of ephemera comprised of annotated Goldfield and Nevada maps and newspapers, expense ledgers, check registers, stock purchase certificates, fraternal organization membership records, and entertainment and travel souvenirs that document daily life in an early twentieth century mining boom town.
A detailed finding aid and correspondence appendix will be available online from the Special Collections web site at: http://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/ by the end of the spring 2007 semester.
Pauling Catalogue Available for Sale
Chris Petersen, Oregon State University
The Pauling Catalogue
The six-volume and nearly 1,800 page Pauling Catalogue is now available for sale. Purchase of this ground-breaking reference work may be made online through a secure credit card transaction at http://paulingcatalogue.org or through the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections offices at 541-737-2075 or
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The product of nearly twenty years of work, The Pauling Catalogue describes in great detail the approximately 500,000 items that comprise the OSU Libraries Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. Richly illustrated with over 1,200 images, The Pauling Catalogue also includes six introductions written by noted historians of science and members of the Pauling family. A forty-five page illustrated timeline provides ample background information on the extraordinary lives led by Linus Pauling and his wife of nearly sixty years, Ava Helen. Likewise, an extensive reproduction of Linus Pauling’s 1917 personal diary affords a revealing glimpse into the personality of a scientific genius as he begins his higher education.
The Pauling Catalogue retails for $125.00 plus $15.00 shipping and handling. Sample pages, ordering information and additional details are available at http://paulingcatalogue.org
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Launches New Digital Library
Arel Lucas, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Scanning at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
The Aviation Safety and Security Archives (ASASA) of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has launched its new "digital library" of both born-digital and scanned reports, photographs, correspondence, investigative files, and other materials in its physical facility on the Prescott, Arizona, campus.
The "library" of digital materials may be reached through the library link at ERAU, http://library.pr.erau.edu/, mousing over the "Archives" link under the eagle, and choosing the "Archives Home." This will take you to a brand-new set of pages for ASASA just created by the ERAU Prescott Library’s electronic services librarian, Joanne Evanoff, and the "digital library" link in the frame on the left.
The database for the digital library is ArchivalWare, a PTFS product (www.ptfs.com), populated by ASASA staff, including student employees, with quality checks and uploading done by full-time staff Denise Vickers (research specialist) and Arel Lucas (archivist). Full text of most documents is available, but descriptions of documents not scanned are also being provided. It is hoped that a scan-on-demand service being given a trial will help guide the staff’s selection of documents to be digitized. Contact
for further information, or call (928) 777-3949.
Jean Valentine Papers Open to Research
Cat Lea Holbrook, Harvard University
The papers of poet and author Jean Valentine (Radcliffe A.B. 1956) are newly processed and open to research at the Schlesinger Library. Documenting her personal and professional life, the papers consist mostly of correspondence, especially with other well-known poets. Also included among the 2.5 linear feet of documents are drafts and proofs of poems, examples of prose, reviews of her published books, and audiovisual material. Processing of the collection was made possible by a gift from the Radcliffe College Class of 1956. The finding aid can be found on Harvard University's OASIS website: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch00369.
Society of American Archivists
Manuscript Repositories Section
Chair |
Web Liaison |
Co-Web Liaison |
Created | 26 March 2006
Last Updated | 29 March 2007
