Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Well-loved children’s books spark the magic from the thrill of adventure to imagination of far-off, enchanted places. Beloved by generations, children’s classic stories remain with us throughout life, whether it’s re-reading childhood favorites or sharing our most loved stories with young people in our lives. These classics ignite imaginations and impart timeless lessons. They become some of our most cherished friends that stay with us throughout our lives.

Spencer Research Library has a vast children’s book collection to be explored. Some works have multiple editions published throughout the years. Different editions often have different illustrations, annotations, and even adaptations. This is the first post in a series highlighting various children’s book titles in Spencer’s holdings. First up, we bring you Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Spencer Research Library has seven holdings of Treasure Island. The publisher, publication date, and call number of each volume are listed below:

• Cassell & Company, Limited: London, Paris, New York & Melbourne, 1886 (O’Hegarty B2959).
• Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1913 (SC Annex 326).
• Rand McNally: New York and Chicago, copyrighted 1916, published 1928 (Children C623).
• Grosset & Dunlap: New York, 1934? (Children 5948).
• Limited Editions Club: New York, 1941 (D7309).
• Award Books: New York, 195-? (Children B2846).
• Franklin Watts: New York, 1964 (C18419).

This introduction appears in most editions of the book:

To the Hesitating Purchaser

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of to-day:

–So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!

The first edition of Treasure Island – published by Cassell & Company in 1883 – featured no illustrations. Three years later, the publisher released a new edition with 18 pages of illustrations and 26 leaves of plates.

Maps of the island do not appear in every edition. Those that are included vary in detail, from topography and landmark descriptions.

The 1941 edition of Treasure Island, published by the Limited Editions Club, was limited to 1,500 copies.  Spencer Library’s edition is numbered 1,426. Colored Illustrations signed by Edward A. Wilson – which includes a signed lithograph of Long John Silver – and the unique binding of dark blue sailcloth and gold-stamped red leather spine label makes this edition a highly sought collectible.

Rand McNally published several editions of Treasure Island over the years. Kenneth Spencer Research Library holdings include a 1928 edition copyrighted in 1916. This edition features a durable hardback binding with full-page color illustrations along with black and white drawings. 

Details are scarce for many cover images. Several editions from this period featured Jim Hawkins or Long John Silver, given their key roles in the story. 

Meredith Phares
Operations Manager

This is the latest installment in a recurring series of posts introducing readers to the staff of Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Today’s profile features Grace Brazell, who joined Spencer Research Library in January 2025 as an Administrative Associate in the Public Services unit. 

Where are you from?

I was born in Roswell, New Mexico, during the 50th anniversary of the alleged alien crash, but we moved to Lawrence when I was just turning two. I’ve lived in and just outside of town for most of my life, aside from the years I spent in Chicago doing my undergraduate degree.

How did you come to work at Spencer Research Library?

I applied to library school in a fit of pique after a particularly frustrating week at the bakery I worked in while finishing my bachelor’s degree. I have always loved rare materials, but didn’t think I’d have an opportunity to work with or near them. I loved the public library and my team there, but when I spotted the job at the Spencer it checked several boxes for me. I’m excited to learn the collection and see what sparks my interest moving forward, and I love getting to talk with our different curators about the parts of the collection they find particularly special.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I primarily work with our team of student employees to support our Public Services department. Our students are responsible for paging, shelving, and general maintenance around the building, and I work with them to make sure our patrons and reference staff have the support and materials they need to do their jobs. I also assist Operations Manager Meredith Phares with some building management tasks like facilities requests and room organization.

What part of your job do you like best?

In every job I’ve worked, I’ve loved the tasks themselves to a certain degree. I love being able to solve a problem or find the right tool for the job. My favorite thing in the world is being able to eliminate a small point of friction. That being said, my favorite thing about my job is and has always been the people I get to work with. I love getting to see someone’s eyes light up when you ask about their favorite part of the collection, and I’m always interested to hear what captures someone’s attention.

What is one of the most interesting items you’ve come across in Spencer’s collections?

I have a strange fascination with the modernists, and in particular I find Ezra Pound to be one of the most interesting. He’s such an influential figure in the creation of some of the most iconic modernist works, it seemed like he had a hand in pretty much everything produced during that time. Copies of some letters to Pound from James Joyce (Call Number: MS 134) are here at the Spencer as well as a copies of the BLAST! manifesto (Call Number: D138) and a scattering of The Cantos (Call Numbers: C6331, C6332, and C6341). BLAST! is probably my favorite, if I’m being honest.

What are some of your favorite pastimes outside of work?

I spend a lot of time working on my yard and house, both of which are true fixer uppers and require a lot of labor as well as, shall we say, creative problem solving. I run and play in a few Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, which are a source of never-ending entertainment. When not dealing with the baffling construction choices of my home’s previous owner or wrangling adults through a sea of kobolds, I spend a lot of time over-engineering costumes for my kindergartener and waffling over patterns in the Symington fashion collection.

Grace Grazell
Administrative Associate

This is the latest installment in a recurring series of posts introducing readers to the staff of Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Today’s profile features Warren Lambert, who joined Spencer Research Library in September 2024 as a Digitization Specialist.  

Where are you from? 

I am new to living in Lawrence. I grew up in Illinois around the Metro East area of greater St. Louis. I first went to college around the greater St. Louis area. I graduated from the Master of Science in Library and Information Science (MSLIS) program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in August 2019.

How did you come to work at Spencer Research Library? 

I started digitizing archival and rare book collections as a graduate student in St. Louis. I worked as a Digital Imaging Technician at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for many years, and then at the Penn State University Libraries for fifteen months before returning to the Midwest at the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) in July 2023. I worked with genealogical records for the Choctaw Indian Nation at NARA; publications documenting the LGBTQ+ community in the Mid-Atlantic region during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s at the Penn State University Libraries; and civil rights collections at WHS. This position combines my passion for history alongside my desire to enhance access to historical materials for future generations to discover.  

What does your job at Spencer entail? 

Digitization is the creation of digital surrogates for physical collection items to be accessed remotely, included in publications, or placed in physical or digital exhibits. The main purpose is to create a digital photograph of the item that reproduces a lifelike image. I determine the best image quality properties for the items that I digitize, and those selections become part of the image in its technical metadata. All this is to expand awareness of archival and rare collections to visitors who want to learn more about the past. 

What part of your job do you like best? 

I enjoy learning about new techniques and applying them to digitizing collections. I am currently digitizing nitrate negatives from the Jellison Collection that documents the lives of Kansans in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. There are over five hundred images in the collection, and they reveal the social relationships people forged with each other in their communities. I am also digitizing Japanese falconry manuscripts from the Edo Period (1603-1868) that provide insights into how the Japanese understood the natural world through illustrations of birds, seals, and bunny rabbits among many other animals. I always have something new to discover which keeps me from ever getting bored.  

What is one of the most interesting items you’ve come across in Spencer’s collections?

Oh gosh, I have come across many fascinating items through my work since I started at Spencer. When I helped digitize John Gould’s A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains from 1831, I discovered his vivid and detailed illustrations of birds that lived in the Himalayas. Each plate allows the viewer to get a sense of what the bird would look like in its natural habitat. The male Lophophorus Impeyanus (Himalayan monal, Impeyan monal, or Impeyan pheasant) has an amazing crest and a multicolored plumage designed to attract a mate. They are the national bird of Nepal. What made this project challenging was the size of the bound volume, but I succeeded in reproducing a faithful digital image of this print and the rest of the edition.  

What are some of your favorite pastimes outside of work? 

I’ve been passionate about traveling for most of my life due to the fact that I grew up in a military family. I have visited Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York City, where I explored many museums and historical sites. I love that I got to visit Galway, Derry, Belfast, Dublin, and the Ring of Kerry as part of a two-week tour of Ireland in 2011, learning more about its rich cultural and political history. I am always planning to travel to new places to explore historical sites and the wonders of natural landscapes. Not surprisingly as a library professional, I am passionate about reading and listening to books. My favorite genres are science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, and historical fiction. I love it when I discover a new author as it expands my literary horizons. 

Warren Lambert 
Digitization Specialist  

This is the latest installment in a series of posts introducing readers to student employees who make important contributions to the work of Spencer Research Library. Today’s profile features Oliver Grotegut, a Cataloging and Archival processing student assistant and a G. Baley Price Fellow.

Please provide some brief biographical information about yourself.

I am a senior at KU majoring in linguistics with a minor in sociology. I started working at Spencer in March 2024.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

My job is to inventory University Archives materials so that ArchivesSpace, our online collection database, can be updated. We gained quite a lot of material in the years since the last update, so this long-term inventory project ensures that anyone can easily find materials we have available in the University Archives.

Why did you want to work at Spencer Research Library?

I wanted to work at Spencer, or really in archives in general, because I was interested in a job optimizing materials for public use and finding relevant patterns and throughlines in large groups of information. I knew that library or archival work was the ideal field to find such a job. I feel my time at Spencer has provided me with an invaluable amount of knowledge from hands-on learning about archival work, information organization, and document care and preservation that I look forward to bringing with me into a career in archives.

What has been most interesting to you about your work?

There has been a lot I have found enjoyable about my work. It has been especially interesting to sort through decades worth of accepted and denied grant applications and project proposals, and seeing what research was considered novel and worthwhile over the years. By far my favorite record group to inventory so far has been the student housing records. So many of the materials in that group – scrapbooks, incident reports, event planning forms – exemplify what life was like for KU students at any given time.

One I think of the most often is a document from the 1950s where all the residents of Miller Hall explain why they would or would not be alright with having a African American resident move into their scholarship hall the following year. The residents provided in-depth, incredibly honest descriptions about their perspectives on the matter. Rightfully, much of the education and discussion of the civil rights movement focuses on the actions and experiences of African Americans at the time. Seeing the privately held opinions of white Americans at the time, especially those occupying all-white spaces, provides a great deal of further context to the realities of the climate at that moment in history. I also find it interesting sociologically that the matter of potentially having an African American resident in Miller Hall was considered worthy of being discussed and voted on, and the existence of the document says a great deal not just about the opinions of the residents but of the student housing administrators. For those interested, the majority of the opinions were in favor of racial integration, and Miller Hall gained at least one African American resident the following year.

On a lighter note, I also like getting to put new labels on the boxes.

Oliver Grotegut
Cataloging and Archival processing student assistant
G. Baley Price Fellow

After much deliberation, Kenneth Spencer Research Library (KSRL) will be changing its name to Topper’s Library for Dog Research (TLDR) in honor of the Kenneth and Helen Spencer’s dog Topper, pictured above. Here at KSRL, staff seek to tell the stories of the hidden figures of history, not just people of great renown. Behind every Alice Walker (RH PH P2851) or Langston Hughes (RH MS 127), there are communities who helped support these figures of history. And of course, what greater support could there be than the support of man’s best friend!

The TLDR, formerly known as the KSRL, already has many historical items featuring these good boys and girls of history, and we seek to collect and preserve even more. We’ve included some of our favorite photographs of TLDR’s canine companions below.

We here at TLDR encourage you to also take part in this important record-keeping process. Take and share a photo of a dog today. Be sure to include names and dates! Here’s hoping some doggy smiles brighten your April Fools’ Day.

Charissa Pincock
Archives and Manuscripts Coordinator