From the Chair:
New Orleans, Here We Come! Cynthia Pease Miller
It is that time of year again to plan for the SAA annual meeting, to peruse our programs and decide on the sessions we want to attend. The Manuscript Repositories Section is a chance to meet old friends and make new ones, to rejoice in recent successes and commiserate about continuing challenges. Our meeting is a wonderful opportunity to get to know your colleagues in order to build a network and support group for ideas and advice.
Our section meeting this year is at our usual time of 8:00-10:00 am, but on Friday August 19 instead of the Thursday time slot that we have had in past years.
The theme of our meeting program is a pro-active one: the collaboration between large and small repositories. Rob Spindler and Richard Pearce-Moses will report on the Arizona Convocation model of statewide outreach to various institutions and constituencies. Following this presentation we will break into discussion groups on the topics of diversity issues as reported in A*Census, hidden collections and backlog remediation, the role the SHRABs in fostering collaboration, and a follow-up on the speakers' presentations. Summaries of the group discussion will be published in the next newsletter and will help the steering committee develop programs and activities for the section.
The Manuscript Repositories Steering Committee developed two session proposals, both of which were accepted by the Program Committee. They are:
#109. Balancing Competing Interests: Donor, Researchers, and Third Party Rights
# 702. Latino Archives: Documenting a Community on the Rise.
The Steering Committee also endorsed four sessions:
#207. Controlling Human Reproduction: The Challenge of Documenting the Post World War II Revolution.
#303. Governors' Records and Public Policy: Is Competition or Cooperation Best for the Records and Researchers.
#401. “More Product, Less Process”: New Processing Guidelines to Reduce Backlog.
# 602. Making “Us vs. Them” into “We”: Resolving Conflicts between Institutions and Minority Groups.
This is your section. If you have ideas for program sessions that you would like to see at the 2006 meeting in Washington, DC, contact any member of the steering committee for assistance in developing a session proposal.
Our Past Chair, Pam Hackbart-Dean, and the Nominating Committee, Maria Estorino, Fernanda Perrone, and Jill Severn, have worked hard to provide an excellent slate of candidates for Vice-Chair and Steering Committee. Please take time to review the candidate biographies that are included in this newsletter and come to our meeting ready to cast your ballot.
I look forward to seeing you at SAA!
2005 Slate of Candidates Announced Submitted by the Nominating and Elections Committee
Nominating and Elections Committee Chair Pam Hackbart-Dean, and committee members Maria Estorino, Fernanda Perrone, and Jill Severn have brought together the 2005 slate of candidates for Manuscript Repositories Section Leadership.
The Section membership will be asked to vote on the following candidates at the upcoming Manuscript Repositories Section Meeting, to take place at the New Orleans meeting on Friday, August 19 from 8 AM – 10 AM. You must be present at the Section meeting to vote.
Vice-Chair/Chair Elect (choose one)
Beth Bensman
Education: Certified Archivist by exam 1996, recertified by petition; MA, History and Archival Administration, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida; 1993, BA, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1984.
Professional Experience: Manager of Public Services and Outreach, Presbyterian Historical Society, 2001-current; University Archivist, Thomas Jefferson University, 1998-2001; Technical Archivist, Richard B. Russell Library, University of Georgia, 1997-1998, Assistant Project Archivist for the Georgia Archives and Manuscripts Automated Access (GAMMA) Project at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University, 1995-1997
Activities in Other Professional Organizations: Academy of Certified Archivists, Regent for Outreach, 2002-2004; Delaware Valley Archivists Group, Past Chair, current, Chair, 2003-2004, Vice-chair/Chair-elect, 2000-2002; Member, Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, Member, Education Committee, 2002-2004, Local Arrangements Committee, 2001 Philadelphia meeting, 1999- 2001; Member, Society of Georgia Archivists, Administrative Assistant, 1998, Membership Committee, 1997-1998, Newsletter section editor, 1996-1999.
Stephen C. Sturgeon
Education: Ph.D. in History, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1998; MLIS with concentration in Archival Administration, University of California, Berkeley, 1993; MA in History, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1992; BA in History, Grinnell College, 1990.
Professional Experience: Manuscript Curator, Special Collections & Archives, Utah State University (Assistant Librarian 1999-2005, Associate Librarian 2005- ).
SAA Activities: Member of Manuscript Repositories Section (Steering Committee 2003-2005); Reference, Access, and Outreach Section; Congressional Papers Roundtable; and Architectural Records Roundtable.
Activities in Other Archival and Related Organizations: Utah Manuscript Association: Chair, 2005; Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists: Past President, 2003-2004; President, 2002-2003; Vice President, 2001-2002. Utah Library Association: Archives, Manuscript and Special Collections Roundtable Steering Committee, 2000-2001. Member of Western History Association Ad-Hoc Curators/Librarians/Archivists Group. Author of: The Politics of Western Water: The Congressional Career of Wayne Aspinall , University of Arizona Press, 2002; "A Different Shade of Green: Documenting Environmental Racism and Justice," Archival Issues , vol. 21, #1, 1996.
Steering Committee (Choose three)
Matthew Darby
Education: M.L.I.S., The University of Texas at Austin (2000); B.A., English, University of Delaware (1997).
Professional Experience: Archivist, ExxonMobil Historical Collection, Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, 2004-present; Processing and Audiovisual Archivist, Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia, 2001-2004; Archivist, Lower Colorado River Authority, Austin, Texas, 2001; Project Archivist, Hardy-Heck-Moore, Inc. [cultural resource management firm], Austin, Texas, 2000-2001.
SAA Activities: none at this time
Activities in Other Archival Organizations: Society of Georgia Archivists: Member, Scholarship Committee, 2002-2004; MIC (Moving Image Collections): Education & Outreach Committee, General Public Portal Task Force, 2003
Professional Experience: Enviro-design Concepts Archaeology & Heritage Research Design, 2002-present; Graduate Research, 2001-present; Owner- Architectural/Auto Glazing Firms, 1986-2000. CA Contr. Lic. heritage architectural glass; Medical Products Packaging, W.L. Gore Inc. 1979-1983. Art Director, 1976-1979, Assoc. Art Director, 1974-1976; Consultant Patent/ IP Law, 1983-present; Planning Consultant, 1983-present.
Activities in other Organizations: Registered Professional Archaeologist; Western Archives Institute Certificate in Tribal Archives, 2003; AICMC Wahhogah-Indian Cultural Center Committee Yosemite; California Indian Heritage Center, Ethnobotany Consultant, Sacramento, CA; Society of American Archaeology; SCA, SAA, SCA (archaeology); Upper Merced River Watershed Council, Exec. Com.; Tribal Archives Team AICMC, Inc.; GIS Spatial Analyst Certificate; NHPRC-grants reviewer, 2004-2005; Research Fellow, UWM John. S. Best Am. Geographical Soc., 2004.
Morna Gerrard
Education: M.A. History, Edinburgh University (1989); MLIS Clark Atlanta University (2003)
Professional Experience: Archivist, Women's Collections (2005- ); Archivist, Women's Collections/Processing (2003-2004); Archival Associate 2002-2003; Library Associate/Library Technical Assistant, Government Documents (1997-2002) – Georgia State University. Curator 1992-1996; Curator/ Assistant Plans Officer 1996-1997, National Archives of Scotland.
Activities in Other Archival Organizations: Society of Georgia Archivists: Chair, Education Committee, 2005; SGA Conference November 2004, session presenter, “ Archives to the People: Publishing Finding Aids in the Electronic Age (Parts 1 and 2)” . Winner, Society of Georgia Archivists' Larry Gulley Scholarship (2003) and Edward Weldon Scholarship (2004); GIL User's Group Special Collections Committee: Member, 2002-, Chair 2004.
Helice Koffler
Education: M.L.S. Palmer School of Library & Information Science, Long Island University (1997); M.A. English Literature, Hunter College, City University of New York (1989); B.A. Art History and English Literature, Hunter College, City University of New York (1984).
Professional Experience: Archivist, Wilson Processing Project, The New York Public Library, 2004- present; Assistant Archivist, King County Archives, 1999-2004; Adjunct Assistant Curator, Fales Library, New York University, 1997-1998.
SAA Activities: Member since 2000 (Manuscript Repositories Section and Reference, Access and Outreach Section); Newsletter contributor, Performing Arts Roundtable, 2002.
Activities in Other Archival Organizations: Seattle Area Archivists: Chair, Steering Committee, 2003-2004; Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL): Member, Security Committee, 2001-present; Member, Membership Committee, 1998-2000; Arts Section, ACRL: Newsletter editor, 2000-2001; Member, Dance Librarians Committee, 1998-2002.
Linda Long
Education: M.L.S., Brigham Young University, 1987; M.A., Archives Administration/History, Case Western Reserve University, 1979; B.A., History, Seattle University, 1978.
Professional experience: Manuscripts Librarian, University of Oregon, 1996-present; Head of Public Services, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University, 1987-1996; Assistant Archivist, Stanford University, 1981-1987; Assistant Archivist, Consumers Union of U.S., 1979-1981.
SAA Activities: RAO Newsletter editor, 1989-1990.
Activities in other archival organizations : Northwest Archivists: Oregon Representative; Program committee, Annual meeting, April 2002; Program committee, Annual Meeting, May 2000; Chair, Task Force on creating a directory of Manuscript and Archival Repositories in the Pacific Northwest, May 1999- present; Society of California Archivists: Program committee, Annual Meeting, Pasadena, California; 1992; Program Committee, Annual Meeting, Napa, California, 1989.
Sammie L. Morris
Education: M.L.I.S. University of Texas at Austin, concentration in Archival Enterprise (1998); B.A. Humanities and English Literature, Louisiana Scholars' College, Northwestern University (1996).
Professional Experience: Archivist and Assistant Professor of Library Science (Archives, Manuscripts, Special Collections), Archives and Special Collections Unit, Purdue University Libraries, 2003-present; Managing Archivist (Archives and Manuscripts), Dallas Museum of Art, 2000-2003; Archivist (Ann Richards Papers), The Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, 1998-2000.
SAA Activities: Editorial Board, College and University Archives Thesaurus, College and University Archives Section, 2004-present; Newsletter Editor, Museum Archivist , Museum Archives Section, 2000-2003; Guidelines Committee, Museum Archives Section, 2000-2003.
Activities in Other Archival Organizations: Moderator and Presenter, “If I Could Turn Back Time: Dealing with Disasters in Archival Repositories,” Midwest Archives Conference (Spring 2005 Meeting); Vice President/President Elect, Society of Indiana Archivists (2005-present); Examination Item-Writing Workshop Participant, Academy of Certified Archivists (2003).
Jeffrey S. Suchanek
Education: M.A. History Youngstown State Univ. (1983); B.A. History Youngstown State Univ. (1981)
Professional Experience : Director, Oral History Program, Univ. of Kentucky 2005 – present; Public Policy Archives Archivist, Univ. of Kentucky 1994-2004, Assistant Director, Oral History Program, Univ. of Kentucky 1988-2004
SAA Activities: Chair, Congressional Papers Roundtable 2002-2003; Chair, Oral History Section 2000-2001; Congressional Papers Roundtable Steering Committee 1998-2000; Oral History Section Steering Committee 1998-2000, Chair Preservation Task Force of the Congressional Papers Roundtable 2000-2002
Activities in Other Archival Organizations: Board of Directors Kentucky Council on Archives 2000-2001; Local Arrangements Committee for Annual Meeting (Birmingham, Ala.) of Oral History Association 1993; Local Arrangements Committee for Annual Meeting (Cleveland, Oh.) of Oral History Association 1992
Publications: Co-editor with William Marshall of Time On Target: the World War Two Memoir of William R. Buster (Kentucky Historical Society, 1999)
Obituary: Manuscript Repositories Section Honors Mary Wolfskill, Library of Congress Cynthia Pease Miller
Mary Wolfskill, head of the reference and reader service section of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, passed away May 23, 2005, in Arlington, Virginia. She had battled cancer for five years. A long time Washington resident, Mary had worked at the Library of Congress for 36 years and was the Library's specialist on Margaret Mead. She also was the author of several collection guides. An active member of a number of professional organizations, Mary was a frequent and popular conference speaker and panelist and a much loved and professionally generous and sharing colleague. She served on the Society of American Archivists' Manuscript Repositories Section steering committee and was section chair in 1998-1999.
In recognition of her long and active commitment to SAA's Manuscript Repositories Section and to the archives profession, the Manuscript Repositories Section is establishing a grant to the Library of Congress Professional Association's Continuing Education Fund (CEF) in Mary's memory. The grant will be used for archives- or manuscripts-related professional development for LOC staff members. Mary was active with this endeavor for many years, and it seems a fitting tribute to her.
For those who wish to contribute, checks should be written to LCPA CEF, with the name “Mary Wolfskill” in the memo line. Checks should be mailed to Continuing Education Fund, PO Box 15500, Washington, DC 20003-0500. The Continuing Education Fund is a non-profit 301 (c) organization. Contributions are tax deductible and will be acknowledged. The Manuscript Repositories Section steering committee will work with the Library on the details of the grant.
If you have questions about the grant, please contact Manuscript Repositories Section Chair Cynthia Pease Miller at
Processing Grants for Physics, Astronomy and Geophysics Collections Joe Anderson, Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics
The Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, is pleased to announce its 2005 Grants to Archives. The deadline for applications is August 1, 2005. The grants are intended to make accessible records, papers, and other primary sources which document the history of modern physics and allied fields (such as astronomy, geophysics, and optics). Grants may be up to $7,500 each and can be used to cover direct expenses connected with preserving, inventorying, arranging, describing, or cataloging appropriate collections. Expenses can include staff salaries/benefits and archival storage materials but not overhead or equipment.
The AIP History Center's mission is to help preserve and make known the history of modern physics, astronomy, and allied sciences, and the grant program is intended to help support significant work to make original sources in these fields accessible to researchers. Preference will accordingly be given to medium size or larger projects for which the grant will be matched by the parent organization or other funding sources. For grant guidelines check the Center's Web site at http://www.aip.org/history/grntgde.htm or call 301 209-3165. Inquiries are welcome, and sample proposals are available on request. A list of previous recipients is on our Web site.
Harry Golden Visiting Scholars Program, UNC Charlotte Robin Brabham, University of North Carolina Charlotte
The Special Collections Department of the Atkins Library at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte announces the establishment of the Harry Golden Visiting Scholars Program. The program was established with a bequest by Mrs. Anita Stewart Brown to honor the memory of Harry Golden, author of the best selling book Only in America and publisher of The Carolina Israelite . Two grants of $500 - $1000 will be awarded each year to researchers using materials that are held by the Special Collections Department. Preference will be given to projects focused on the history and culture of the twentieth century South. For further information on resources available in the department, follow the link to Special Collections at http://library.uncc.edu .
The inaugural grant has been awarded to Kimberly Marlowe Harnett, a journalist in Portland, Oregon, who is writing a full length biography of Harry Golden. For grants beginning in 2006/07, the deadline for applications is January 15, 2006. Candidates will be notified by March 30. To apply, researchers should send a letter to Mr. Robin Brabham, Associate University Librarian for Special Collections, Atkins Library, UNC Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC 28223 or email him at
. The letter must include a vita; a description of the research proposal and the extent of research already completed; an estimate of the research remaining; a summary of how the project will benefit by using resources in the UNC Charlotte Special Collections; and a projected budget. The grants will be given primarily to cover travel expenses, but other appropriate expenses will be considered on a case by case basis.
WAAND – Women Artists Archives National Directory: Call for Participation Nicole Plett, Rutgers University Libraries
All archival repositories holding primary source material about women visual artists active in the U.S. since 1945, are invited to be included in WAAND – the Women Artists Archives National Directory – an innovative Web directory under development by Rutgers University Libraries and on the Web at http://waand.rutgers.edu Please sign up now to receive our survey form, due to be released in August.
WAAND is designed as a research tool for scholars, artists, curators, students, and collecting institutions around the world, as well as researchers in cultural and intellectual history, American studies, material culture, and women's and gender studies. It will direct users to primary source materials of and about contemporary women visual artists active in the U.S.
Participating repositories will be asked to complete an online repository survey form for each artist in their collections, describing the nature of the primary source materials they hold. The WAAND repository survey form will be ready for release by summer 2005. WAAND users will be able to access data through artist name, archival repository, or collection title. The directory will also be structured for fielded searching on such access points as art genre, style and movement, and the geographic regions of the artist's activity. WAAND has been funded by the Getty Foundation.
WAAND's principal investigators are Dr. Ferris Olin, head of the Margery Somers Foster Center, Rutgers University Libraries, and long-time curator of the Mary H. Dana Women Artist Series at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library, and Judith K. Brodsky, Rutgers distinguished professor emerita in the Department of Visual Arts, Mason Gross School of the Arts, and founding director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (RCIPP). Members of the WAAND Advisory Council include Mary Garrard, a rt historian and author on women artists and gender studies ; Camille Billops, artist, filmmaker, and founder of the Hatch-Billops Archives, New York; and Janis Ekdahl, retired chief librarian, Museum of Modern Art Library, New York.
For further information or to partner with WAAND, please contact:
Nicole Plett, WAAND Project Manager
Mabel Smith Douglass Library
Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey
8 Chapel Drive
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8527
Phone: 732-932-9407, ext. 27
Fax: 732-932-6777
E-mail:
Web: http://waand.rutgers.edu
Western Round Up in Las Vegas Stephen C. Sturgeon, Utah State University Special Collections & Archives
The arrival of spring typically kicks off a round of annual meetings for the four western regional archival organizations (Conference of Inter-mountain Archivists, Northwest Archivists, Society of California Archivists, and Society or Rocky Mountain Archivists).This year, however, the four groups held a joint meeting in Las Vegas on April 14-16. This was the first time that all four groups met together, and over 300 people attended the conference, far exceeding initial estimates.
Thursday, a series of pre-conference tours and workshops were offered. Tour destinations included a “behind the scenes” tour of the Jubilee! revue; a trip to the Neon Boneyard, which houses retired Las Vegas neon signs; and a tour of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site (next door to the infamous Area 51). Workshop topics included Historic Photographs, Film Preservation, and Disaster Recovery Training. The opening reception took place that evening at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History at UNLV.
The conference formally began with Friday's outstanding plenary address by UNLV Professor Wole Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature. Dr. Soyinka, who was a political prisoner during the Nigerian Civil War, gave a thought-provoking talk on the importance of libraries and archives in helping to preserve the memory of marginalized people and cultures. SAA President Rand Jimerson introduced the speaker, and made a plea for public support of the NHPRC. Friday's luncheon speaker was Dr. Hal Rothman, Chair of the History Department at UNLV, who gave an energetic and humorous whirlwind history of the rise of Las Vegas as a truly unique and bizarre metropolis. On Saturday, SCA and NWA had a joint awards luncheon that featured a talk by Dr Larry Burgess, the Director of the A.K. Smiley Library in Redlands, CA, who spoke about the legal perils of historical research.
Fifteen sessions were offered on a wide variety of topics, including Developing Collections Documenting Minority Groups, Confidentiality and Access in Religious Archives, Audio Digitizing, Archival Education in the West, Archivists as Historians, and Exhibits as Outreach. In addition to the sessions, each of the participating organizations held individual council and business meetings. While attendance at the events and sessions was extremely high, the siren call of the Strip was quite strong and most conference goers ended up staying out late into the night. Quite a few people made treks to see the Monet show at the Bellagio or to attend one of the four different local Cirque du Soleil productions. (No official tally was kept as to who went home with the highest casino wins or losses.)
A standing ovation is due to Su Kim Chung, Manuscript Curator at UNLV, for the superb job that she did in organizing this event, along with help and support from her colleagues in UNLV's Special Collections department and participating organizations. Hopefully this will not be the last Western Round Up, although it will be hard to top this event in the future.
The Joshua Lederberg Papers Exhibit Gets a Facelift and a Finding Aid on the National Library of Medicine's Profiles in Science Website Gregory Pike and K. Walter Hickel, History Associates Incorporated
[Joshua Lederberg]. National Library of Medicine's Profiles in Science, Joshua Lederberg Papers Exhibit http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/B/A/C/N/ (accessed May 26, 2005)
“I would like to be a scientisttist [ sic ] of mathemmatics [ sic ] like Einstein. I would study science and discover a few theories in science.” (Joshua Lederberg, age 7, as written while attending public school in New York City in 1932)
This simple, if slightly misspelled, statement serves as a perfect expression of Joshua Lederberg's precocious drive, ambition, and confidence—characteristics that, along with his prodigious scientific intelligence, would lead him into the world of molecular biology and, at a mere 33 years of age, garner him a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his discoveries about the molecular mechanism of gene action in bacteria.
In 1998, a team of contractors from History Associates Incorporated (HAI) first took on the challenge of digitizing the large and content-rich collection of Dr. Lederberg's personal and scientific papers. In this innovative endeavor, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) contracted with HAI for professional archivists to arrange, describe, and assign metadata to a large number of documents; and for a historian to select and annotate these documents for inclusion in the Library's Profiles in Science website.
The initial exhibit, launched in 1999, afforded insight into Lederberg's life, interests, and achievements, and included a rich sample of material from his papers. The latest, significantly updated version of the exhibit is available online at http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/ This update is the most ambitious yet, complete with over 300 newly released documents, a more detailed historical exhibit text, and an EAD-encoded finding aid that provides folder level access to the collection. The over 11,000 records on the site include a complete correspondence series covering over fifty years, original laboratory notebooks, published articles, photographs, and video recordings.
“This was truly a project seven years in the making,” says Christie Moffatt, Manager of NLM's Digital Manuscripts Program. “The credit goes to Gregory Pike, long-term digital archivist for the Lederberg Papers, to Caris Brown and her predecessor, Kim Dixon, who together processed the bulk of the papers, and to Dr. K. Walter Hickel, who appraised and selected thousands of documents, and wrote the narrative historical introduction to the site.” For more information about the project, please see the press release at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/lederberg_more05.html .
One of the interesting challenges of this project is that while the finding aid described records at the traditional folder level, archivists also assigned highly detailed metadata to individual digitized documents within the collection. This process provides invaluable context to each scanned item, including information on provenance and copyright, and on why a document was selected in the first place. Another unusual element in the project came from the active involvement of the donor himself, now a professor emeritus at Rockefeller University. Lederberg, who in the 1970's participated in the earliest efforts to use the Internet for scientific projects and biomedical communication, took a keen interest in the website's development, provided many useful suggestions, and wrote personal annotations to many of his digitized documents.
Profiles in Science, which features the personal and professional papers of fifteen leading biomedical scientists and public health officials, is a product of the digital library research program of the Library's Lister Hill National Center Biomedical Communications and is conducted in collaboration with the digital manuscripts program of the National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division. The Library is part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Its goal is to promote the use of the Internet for research and teaching in the history of biomedical science. It can be found at http://www.profiles.nlm.nih.gov .
Varsity Victory Volunteers Oral History Interviews at University of Hawaii James Cartwright, University of Hawaii
In January, 2005, the University of Hawaii Department of Archives & Manuscripts received a gift of oral history interviews with Varsity Victory Volunteers (VVV) veterans. The Varsity Victory Volunteers were Japanese-American students, primarily at the University of Hawaii, who had been reorganized out of the Territorial Guard some six weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Since they were no longer allowed to carry arms and perform the guard duties they had been doing, they decided to volunteer to do anything the military needed them to do. The United States Army used the VVV for approximately thirteen months, primarily on construction projects on Oahu.
Dr. Franklin Odo, Director of Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, and Dr. Christopher Conybeare of the Center for Labor Education And Research (CLEAR) at the University of Hawaii West Oahu, conducted the interviews. The donation consists of twenty-seven cassette tapes, a small number of transcripts in draft format, and nineteen edited transcripts in velo bindings plus copies of two issues of "Connections," the newsletter of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.
It is expected that these interviews will complement the holdings on Japanese American veterans experiences in the Hawaii War Records Depository, the University Archives and the AJA Veterans Collections in Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Several copies each of volume 3, issue 1 and issue 2, of "Connections," the Newsletter of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program are also in the collection.
Collection Activities at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin Jen Tisdale, The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
Norman Mailer Papers
In April, The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin acquired the papers of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer for $2.5 million. The archive contains materials associated with every one of Mailer's literary projects, whether completed or not, from the mid-1930s to the present, as well as a substantial number of first editions and foreign editions of Mailer's books, books used for research and some books given to Mailer by other authors. For more information about the acquisition, please see the press release at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/news/press/2005/mailer.html
Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers
The Center also opened the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers to researchers on February 4. The collection contains thousands of pages of interview notes, memos and other materials. According to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the materials show that even President Richard Nixon's closest aides and senior Republicans on Capitol Hill shared their doubts, worries and suspicions about the President-about both his involvement in the criminal Watergate cover-up and his psychological frailty toward the end of his presidency. For more information about the collection, please see the press release at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/news/press/2005/woodstein.html
Gutenberg Bible CD ROM
Finally, the Center commemorated the 550th anniversary of the printing of its rare copy of the Gutenberg Bible with the release in January of a CD-ROM edition of the book. Acknowledged as a landmark in the history of printing, the Gutenberg Bible is the first surviving book printed with movable type. Acquired by The University of Texas at Austin in 1978, the Bible is on permanent display in the Ransom Center lobby. The CD-ROM editionresulted from a recent re-scanning and incorporates high-definition and enlargeable "flattened" images of each of the Gutenberg Bible's 1,282 pages. The resolution allows easy viewing of such small details as the papermaker's hair embedded in the fibers of a page. For more information about the CD ROM, please see the press release at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/news/press/2005/gutenberg.html
Connecticut Historical Society Museum Completes Inventory Barbara Austen, The Connecticut Historical Society Museum
The Connecticut Historical Society Museum's library recently completed a physical inventory of its manuscript collections, a process that took about nine months. The information gathered in the inventory is being put into an Access database in order to generate reports of uncataloged items, items only cataloged online, items needing conservation, and items lacking accession numbers. The Historical Society Museum undertook the inventory in order to gather enough information to put a brief record into the online catalog for every collection that they hold. Says Barbara Austen, Archivist for the Society, "Access has become a primary goal in our long range planning."
![[Joshua Lederberg]. [ca. 1973].](summer2005_clip_image001.jpg)