Kenneth Spencer Research Library

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of World AIDS Day (on December 1, 2013), we speak with KU Libraries staff member Rich Crank, who recently donated about 175 posters and related materials about AIDS awareness to the Kansas Collection.

When, why and how did you start this collection?

I started actively collecting materials in the mid-1990s. Being gay, I’d learned about what we now know as HIV/AIDS when the first stories about a “gay cancer” started to circulate.

I knew better than to believe that cancer could distinguish people by sexual orientation and quickly found out it was an already-known cancer that had previously been found in older men whose immune systems had weakened as they aged. But these clusters of Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) were among young gay men who had been healthy until the onset of KS. I also learned that Pneumocystis pneumonia was suddenly appearing in the gay community that also was a sign of a compromised immune-system.

In January of 1993, I learned that a very dear friend, Benet Hanlon, had died of AIDS months earlier. Benet had been a Catholic priest I met at KU. He left Lawrence and moved to Baltimore where he founded a soup kitchen named Beans and Bread that still exists. Though a priest, Benet knew and accepted that he was gay. He finally left the priesthood while in Baltimore. I decided to do something in his memory that would increase awareness of HIV and AIDS. My poster collection is the result and I exhibited them locally multiple times over the years. All the exhibitions, as well as the donation of the posters to Spencer Library, were in Benet’s memory.

Commemorative AIDS awareness U.S. Stamp sheet. Kansas Collection, Call number RH Q247. Click image to enlarge.

How many posters and other items are there in it?

There are about 175 posters in the collection. I’ve used the internet to search some digitized collections and some of my posters seem to be pretty rare among U.S. libraries. There’s at least one from every continent except Antarctica. Along with the posters, I donated a number of books, magazines, and other material about HIV/AIDS.

What do you find most interesting about them?

The range of presentation seems amazing to me. Obviously some target gay men but most don’t. Some use only words, others include both text and images. Many are black and white. Among my favorites are three from Boston’s AIDS Action Committee that are titled “Best time to talk with your partner about condoms is …”; they use text and typography alone to convey their messages in a novel – and humorous – way. “Condoman,” from Australia, and the Canadian “Look who can get AIDS” posters are also especially memorable.

Left: “The best time to talk with your partner about condoms is . . .” Kansas Collection, Call number RH R307.
Right: “Condoman . . .” Kansas Collection, Call number RH R247. Click images to enlarge.

How can they be used in research and/or teaching?

I thought a lot about that as I considered whether to try to sell them as a collection or donate them so they could be freely available to anyone interested in them. Donating the collection to Spencer Research Library makes the latter possible. It occurred to me that they could be of value for students and researchers in visual arts and design, sociology, cultural anthropology, probably a number of other fields as well.

Left: “Remembering NAMES” poster, designed by Kansas artist Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton.
Kansas Collection, Call number RH R230.
Right: “Keep it under wraps.” Kansas Collection, Call number RH R320. Click images to enlarge.

Rich Crank
Donor of AIDS Poster Collection and KU Libraries staff member

Donald A. Wollheim (1914-1990) is now celebrated for his role as a ground-breaking science fiction editor and publisher. At Ace Books, he launched the Ace Doubles series, and in 1972 he founded his own firm DAW Books, which took its name from his initials.  Wollheim also wrote books of his own, including several under the nom-de-plume David Grinnell.  However, like most writers, he also faced his fair share of rejection.  These form rejection letters from the periodical Wonder Stories offer a fascinating glimpse not only of the young Wollheim’s persistence, but of Science Fiction in the age of pulps.

“Insufficient Science!”: Form rejection letters from the managing editor of Wonder Stories, Charles D. Hornig, to
Donald A. Wollheim, circa 1933, for “The Second Moon,” “The Discovery of the Martians,” “Saknarth,” and
“The Land of Black Flames.” Donald A. Wollheim Papers. Call Number: MS 250, Box 4, Folder 8.
Click images to enlarge and read.

Wonder Stories‘  managing editor, Charles D. Hornig, had only to circle or underline one or more of a set list of common faults to reject a submission.  Stories might be dismissed for the following flaws:

• No Scientific Background
• Insufficient Science
• Science is Illogical and Incorrect
• Too Much Science (you should eliminate all but the general scientific ideas)
• Not Enough Story
• Not Enough Action and Adventure
• Story Moves Too Slowly
• Too Long, Story Must Be Cut
• Not Enough Strangeness and Mystery (The scenes are too commonplace)
• Characters Are Not Lifelike or Human
• Idea Too Hackneyed–Not Original Enough
• Too Much Love Interest
• Manuscript Incorrectly Prepared
• Other

In the four form rejection letters in Wollheim’s papers, the young writer was regularly dinged for failures of science, as in the rejection for his story “Saknarth,” dated exactly 80 years ago today (November 28, 1933). Interestingly, the rejection for Wollheim’s “The Second Moon” required a hand-alteration of the form–the story suffering from being “too short” rather than the more common flaw of being “too long” (see below).

Detail from Wonder Stories‘ form rejection letter for Wollheim’s “The Second Moon.” Donald A. Wollheim Papers. Call Number: MS 250, Box 4, Folder 8.

Would it have discouraged or further inspired the nineteen-year-old Wollheim to learn that these rejections came from an editor two years his junior? Hornig of Wonder Stories was indeed himself a “Wunderkind” — just seventeen in 1933 when he began editing the magazine that SF pioneer Hugo Gernsback had founded. In addition to the form rejections, Wollheim also earned several more personalized “no”s. In October of 1933, Hornig hailed Wollheim’s “Trans-Uranus” as “very interesting and unique in its theme,” but rejected it for its scientific failings. “The ship, traveling through the planet at the speed in the story,” the precocious Hornig explained, “would be volatilized instantly, and as the Moon-men had a bodily temperature of almost absolute zero, they would melt even sooner. As this is the redeeming factor in the story, and is incorrect, it ruins the tale entirely.”

Wollheim’s efforts did, ultimately, pay off as he succeeded in publishing his first story, “The Man From Ariel,” in the January 1934 issue of the magazine (though perhaps “pay off” is the wrong phrase since Gernsback, Wonder Stories‘ owner, failed to pay him until Wollheim and several fellow writers threatened to sue).

By 1940, Wollheim was himself an editor–of Stirring Science Stories–and aspiring writers were turning to him. He never did quite escape that criticism of scientific error, as his papers show. When a twenty-year-old Isaac Asimov wrote to Wollheim on December 18, 1940, to congratulate him on the first issue of Stirring Science Stories, he also couldn’t resist pointing out “a few flaws in science” in two of the issue’s tales, “Bones” and “Strange Return.” Asimov playfully concedes that such nitpicking from fans must be an editor’s pet peeve, but quips “That’s all right. Right now, I feel sore at editors (yes, you guessed it, I got me a rejection today).”

It does offer some solace to the rest of us that “The Greats” must survive rejection too!

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

“The President is Dead” was the oversize headline on the front page of the University Daily Kansan on Friday, November 22, 1963. As the nation and world commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, here is a glimpse at how the KU campus community reacted to news of the event.

Single-page Special Edition of the University Daily Kansan, published on November 23, 1963.
University Archives. Call Number: UA Ser 69/2/1. Click image to enlarge.

 Two speeches given at the convocation for President Kennedy – those by John Stuckey,
Chairman of the All-Student Council, and Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe – were reprinted in the
Winter 1964 volume of the Jayhawker Magazine Yearbook. University Archives.
Call Number: LD 2697 .J3 1964. Click images to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

The Guild of Book Workers (GBW) is a national organization whose members are bookbinders, book artists, book conservators, calligraphers, and other book enthusiasts. The Midwest Chapter of GBW recently hosted a jurying of design bindings for a traveling exhibition, which opened at Spencer Library on Monday, November 11. Entrants were required to bind a copy of Julia Miller’s Books Will Speak Plain: A Handbook for Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings (Legacy Press, 2010).

What follows is a description of how I bound my copy of Books Will Speak Plain. I gained inspiration for my binding by examining historic bookbindings from Special Collections at Spencer Library. Because Miller’s book covers the history of bookbinding, it seemed logical to create a book that touched on book history in some fashion. In my role as conservator, I am fortunate to have the chance to closely examine books and have long been interested in evidence of past repair. I found various examples in Spencer’s stacks of books that had been repaired by sewing on loose parts, such as a detaching spine or cover board. I decided to use this concept as the driving force in the design of my book.

Detail of sewing repair on Sunderland, La Roy. Pathetism; with practical instructions. New York, 1843. Call number B6443. Click image to enlarge.

The 500-page book arrived in folded sheets of paper. The textblock paper was dense, which ruled out certain styles of bookbinding that could not support the weight of such heavy paper. The book was sewn on three sewing supports made out of the fiber ramie. The book was sewn on a sewing frame, using a link stitch.

Left: Book in sheets. Right: Sewing book on a sewing frame. Click images to enlarge.

I sewed silk endbands in cream and orange. The silk bands were sewn around a core of linen thread. Next the book’s spine was lined to provide some rigidity and set the round spine shape. I first applied a layer of Japanese paper with wheat starch paste, then a layer of Western paper, and finally airplane linen.

Left: Sewing endbands with orange and cream thread. Right: Spine linings of paper and airplane linen. Click images to enlarge.

Next the ramie bands, around which book was sewn, were frayed out and adhered to the book boards.

Boards attached to textblock via frayed-out ramieband sewing supports. Click image to enlarge.

Once the boards were on, it was time to cover the book. I decided to use two contrasting colors of morocco (goatskin) leather, sewed together with coarse thread.

First I cut out templates for the leather pieces. The edges of the leather were pared to a thin edge, especially where the two pieces overlapped in the middle of the book.

Left: Cut leather pieces with templates. Right: Joined leather pieces wrapped around textblock. Click images to enlarge.

The leather was attached with wheat starch paste.  Here you see the headcap tied up with thread in a finishing press to help give the leather a good shape where the boards and spine meet.

Book covered with leather, with headcap tied up with thread. Click image to enlarge.

Once the leather was applied to the book, next came labeling. I used individual brass letter tools, heated on a hotplate. (A stove designed for the purpose is preferable, but I didn’t have one at my disposal.) Each letter is “branded” individually in the leather. When it is left like that, with no gold leaf or foil applied over it, it is called “blind” tooling.

Left: Tools resting on hot plate. Right: Detail of finished book with blind tooling. Click images to enlarge.

This book was accepted into the blind juried show. You can see it and other fine bindings in the Plainly Spoken exhibit at Spencer Library through January 6, 2014. If you are near Lawrence, please come to the Gallery Talk on November 21, from 3-4 PM. The Spencer exhibit features both the design bindings as well as historical examples from Special Collection that complement them.

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services

Setting type may not be as easy as it looks, but it is good fun! Throughout October intrepid students in the History of the Book (English 520 / History 500) made several trips to the press room in Spencer’s basement to execute a printing project using the library’s historic presses. Reading about printing during the hand press era offers some insight, but it is easy for the process to remain shrouded in mystery until you try it out yourself. As you stand in front of a case of type, the logistical considerations involved in producing a book–such as format, imposition, line length, and style and size of type–quickly take on a new reality.

Students from The History of the Book  (ENGL 520 / HIST 500) operate the press with
the assistance of printer Tim O’Brien (in the blue apron and striped shirt).

Since Spencer houses wonderful Irish Collections, we elected to print W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Wild Swans at Coole,” which has an appropriately autumnal theme. Each student set two lines of the poem, picking type, letter by letter, from the case and depositing it in a composing stick held in the opposite hand. (If you are right-handed, you would hold the composing stick in your left hand and pick with the right.) The set lines were then transferred to a tray called a “galley” for assembly as a page.  Wooden furniture and metal quoins were used to lock the composed pages into a metal chase, which was then positioned in the press.

As an early proof of the poem quickly revealed, setting type is a skill that requires practice and concentration.  Some speculate that the caution to “mind one’s p’s and q’s” originates in printing, since these two pieces of type are easily confused.  In examining our proof, it seems it was our b’s and d’s that needed minding.  Though excessive errors could lead to docked wages in an eighteenth-century print shop, for us, making (and correcting) mistakes was an instructive part of the process.

“If at first you don’t succeed…”:  proofing and correcting our mistakes.

The project was printed in “folio” format, each printed sheet folded once to create two leaves (or four pages). First, the class printed the “outer forme” (containing the title page and the colophon). Then, after some drying time, we “perfected” the sheets by printing the “inner forme” (containing the poem’s text) on the verso.

Outer Forme: the title page and colophon locked in the chase.  Wooden “furniture” and
metal “quoins” provide the pressure needed to keep everything wedged tightly in place.

In the early days, printing usually involved two pressmen–one to insert the paper and work the press, and the second to ink the type. Under the guidance of printer Tim O’Brien, the students each took a turn at both roles.  As the class discovered, there is definitely a genuine satisfaction that comes from operating a hand press.  Of course, the best part is that it produces such wonderfully tangible mementos!

Ta-dah! The finished product. To read the full text of “The Wild Swans at Coole” click the image on the right to enlarge.

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

If you still have yet to carve a pumpkin – or you want to have an especially snazzy jack-o’-lantern this year – consider taking a cue from the KU students pictured below. These photos were taken for the University Daily Kansan on or around Halloween in 1968, which was incidentally just over a week before the brand-new Kenneth Spencer Research Library was dedicated on November 8.

University of Kansas students carving a “KU” jack-o’-lantern, 1968.
Call Number: RG 71/0/1968-1969 Prints: Student Activities (Photos).
Click images to enlarge.

For additional information about the history of Halloween, check out this Library of Congress article, “Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows.”

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

On August 17, 1904, Thomas K. Whitthorne applied for an land allotment patent. In this document he was recognized as Chickasaw by intermarriage, and was therefore eligible to obtain 150 acres of land, “more or less, as the case may be,” within the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, Indian Territory. The document bears red seals of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations.

 Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, Land Allotment to Thomas K Whitthorne, 1904.
Call number RH MS P 243, Kansas Collection. Click image to enlarge.

Allotment Patent No. 10533 was approved and signed by the secretary and clerk of the United States Department of the Interior on February 26, 1906.  Then on November 29, 1905, the allotment patent was signed and sealed by the Principal Chief of the Choctaw Nation, the Governor of the Chickasaw Nation, approving Thomas K. Whitthorne’s application.

Detail of Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, Land Allotment to Thomas K Whitthorne, 1904.
Call number RH MS P 243, Kansas Collection. Click image to enlarge.

The Chickasaw Nation is a federally recognized Native American nation, located in Oklahoma. They are one of the members of the Five Civilized Tribes. The Chickasaw Nation was created after the Chickasaw people were forcibly removed by the U.S. federal government to Indian Territory in the 1830s. Their removal was part of a larger effort by the federal government to relocate peoples from the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations. The removals became known as the “Trail of Tears”.

Meredith Huff
Operations and Stacks Manager, Public Services

Kansas Territory was opened for settlement in 1854, and women accompanied or joined their husbands and families and helped build new communities. These women’s stories survive through the letters and diaries they left behind, some of which have been preserved – and can be discovered – in Spencer’s Kansas Collection.

“Friendship” needlepoint fabric bookmark, originally between blank unnumbered leaves 218-219,
Thankful Sophia Mayo Journal, Call Number: RH MS P875. Click image to enlarge.

In November 1854, Elizabeth Mallory and her sister Jennie Crittenden left Wethersfield, Connecticut, and headed west to Kansas. They came as part of the sixth contingent of the Emigrant Aid Company, an organization dedicated to sending citizens with anti-slavery sentiments to the new Kansas Territory to ensure that it would not be admitted as a slave state. Elizabeth’s husband Anson H. Mallory had left with the first Company party in July and was waiting for the sisters in Lawrence.

Elizabeth and Jennie wrote to their mother and siblings from 1859 to the mid-1860s, and these letters give us a glimpse into their lives during Kansas’ earliest years. For example, the excerpt below is from a letter Elizabeth wrote to her mother on June 28, 1863, reassuring her that all was well. Abandoned by her husband Anson, Elizabeth had recently been granted a divorce. She resumed using her maiden name and signed her letters “ESC.” In 1857, sister Jennie had married George F. Earl, who came to Lawrence as a member of the Emigrant Aid Company and served as a Captain in Kansas Company A during the Civil War.

Second page of a letter, Elizabeth Crittenden to her mother, June 28, 1863,
Jennie Earl and Elizabeth S. C. Correspondence,
Call Number: RH MS P285. Click image to enlarge.

My health is good and I am enjoying life and health better than I have for many months and I can say years that have past, I have all the dressmaking that I can do, and am getting alonge as regards the worlds goods better then thousands [illegible] me, I have a good family in my House and I am boarding with them which makes it very pleasant for me. I was with Jennie when she was sick [giving birth] she has a nice large Girl. It weighed 12 pounds when it was born she had not named it when I saw her last which was a week ago, she has gone down to Paolia where her Husband is stationed.

Elizabeth survived Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence on August 21, 1863, and wrote to her brother about her experiences the next month.

Letter, Elizabeth Crittenden to her brother, September 22, 1863,
Jennie Earl and Elizabeth S. C. Correspondence,
Call Number: RH MS P285. Click image to enlarge.

My dear Brother you know nothing of the Horrors of this war, nor neather did I, untill the 21st day of August, our town was surprised about day light, by 300 men headed by Quandrel who murdered every man that came in their way, most of our people were in bed, and the Rebels would knock at the door and when the men opened the door, they would shoot them down, and then rush in, and set fire to the house, threatening death to the women, if they stird, and by that way the House would get to burning so fast, that it would be impossable to get the bodys of their Husbands out, so that they would have to burn up.

Elizabeth also described the raid in a letter to her mother; this document is included in Spencer’s current exhibit about Quantrill’s Raid and can be accessed with a transcription as part of our accompanying online exhibit (see http://exhibits.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/show/quantrill/after/item/6144).

Another early Kansas woman, Sarah Goss Clark, left Pewaukee, Wisconsin, and moved to Kansas with her husband Lymon (Timothy Limon Clark) in 1864. Sarah’s brother Nathaniel was a noted ornithologist who helped found Neosho Falls in 1857. As is often the case regarding migrations, other family members eventually joined him in Kansas. The Sarah Goss Clark papers include her diaries from 1864 to 1874, correspondence with her mother and siblings, and other miscellaneous items. In her earliest diary, Sarah discusses many of her family members and the trials she faced during her first year in Kansas.

Entries in Sarah Goss Clark’s diary, July-December 1864, Sarah Goss Clark Papers,
Call Number: RH MS 839. Click image to enlarge.

Entries in Sarah Goss Clark’s diary, January 1865, Sarah Goss Clark Papers,
Call Number: RH MS 839. Click image to enlarge.

July 4. 1864. First spent in Kansas. Joseph & Alex. went to Leroy on horsback for the fourth. Doing my work with Little Lucy’s help.
Nov.24th Thanksgiving day. We are paying no attention to the day Lyman & Stickney [her husband and brother] gone to find and purchase some oxen.
Sunday. Christmas. Feel lonley today. I feel that many changes have taken place in our situation & family since last Christmas. It is just four monthes to day since our dear little Freddie died. The thoughts of it fills me with sadness.
Jan. 7^th my birthday forty seven to-day. Why have I been spared so many years, when so many promising young lives have been taken.

When we read these women’s original letters to their “Dear Mothers” and the diary entries they wrote, we can feel their joys and sorrows and gain a deeper understanding of the everyday challenges faced by Kansas’ earliest settlers.

Tina Nolan Shepperd
Student Technician, Conservation Services

Sir Joseph Fayrer’s account of the Thanatophidia is important as a classic, systematic account of the venomous snakes of India. This second edition (the first was in 1872) was improved with the addition of text, even though the 31 lithographs (including 28 chromolithos) are identical in both editions.

Fayrer conducted extensive studies of the poison apparatus in Indian snakes and was responsible for many advances in the treatment of snakebite, including the use of potassium permanganate, of which he was the originator.

Above:  Plate 8 (Ophiophagus Elaps) from Joseph Fayrer’s The Thanatophidia of India,  second edition. London: J. and A. Churchill, 1874. Call Number: H199. Click image to enlarge.

The venomous snakes, and by extension all snakes, get a bad rap for what is primarily an extremely efficient food-getting mechanism, only secondarily defensive.  Unless they are themselves attached, they kill other animals only for food.  How else to get supper without either arms or legs?  For a snake, there’s constriction or there’s fangs, although the spitting cobras of Africa send their poison by air-mail, blinding their victim.  There is some question among herpetologists about whether the black mamba (the largest venomous snake in Africa) or the cobra, shown here in a very striking pose, will actually attack a human.  Most snakes will try to escape a predator. In the United States, some species, such as the cottonmouth, will stand their ground and strike if the unwary come to close.

Sally Haines
Rare Books Cataloger
Adapted from her Spencer Research Library exhibit and catalog, Slithy Toves: Illustrated Classic Herpetological Books at the University of Kansas in Pictures and Conservations

The tradition of Homecoming, or welcoming back alumni to the University, conjures up images of crisp fall weather, football teams battling on the gridiron, dancing couples, and . . . floats! For many years KU groups have created floats from chicken wire, wood, crepe paper, and other materials to display in the Homecoming parade.

Students construct a Homecoming float in 1969.
Call number: 71/1 /1969/0347. University Archives. Click image to enlarge.

The theme of the floats most typically involves the Homecoming football game–Jayhawk victoriously represented and opponent mascot whimpering in defeat–but not always.

Homecoming floats from 1937 (left) and the 1950s (right).
Respective call numbers: 71/1/1937/005 and 71/1/1950s/0110, University Archives. Click images to enlarge.

Enjoy some pictures from the University Archives of Homecoming floats of the past. For more images see the University’s Archives digital collections.

A snowman float (?!) from 1946 (left) and a cowboy Jayhawk from 1980 (right).
Respective call numbers: 71/1/1946/0076 and 71/1/1980/0518. University Archives. Click images to enlarge.

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services