Welcome to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library blog! As the special collections and archives library at the University of Kansas, Spencer is home to remarkable and diverse collections of rare and unique items. Explore the blog to learn about the work we do and the materials we collect.
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.
Spencer student assistant Oliver Grotegut in University Archives. Click image to enlarge.
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
Kenneth and Helen Spencer with their dog Topper in the garden of their home in Mission Hills, Kansas, spring 1959. Helen Foresman Spencer Papers. Call Number: RH MS-P 542. Click image to enlarge.
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.
“One way to beat the heat. Little Georgeann Levon of Pottstown PA and her dog, Mike, wrap in wet towels and drink,” June 1957. Lawrence Journal-World Photograph Collection. Call number: RH PH LJW. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
Portrait of H. G. Davis and his dog, 1911. Joseph Judd Pennell Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH Pennell. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
Portrait of Mrs. Dot Kline and her dog, 1909. Joseph Judd Pennell Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH PH Pennell. Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).
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
One of the most fascinating things about medieval manuscripts is that every copy is unique and individual. Because scribes wrote manuscripts by hand, no two copies are identical. On March 8th, Kenneth Spencer Research Library opened Marvelous Medieval Marginalia, an exhibit that celebrates the unique and the individual, the best parts of medieval manuscripts, and the scribes, readers, and owners who had a hand in transforming texts over time. It’s dedicated to the voices of not necessarily the great and influential authors and artists of old but to a quieter subset who aren’t always given the attention they deserve – the readers, the imaginers, and doodlers across centuries.
Exhibit case of medieval manuscripts currently on display as part of the Marvelous Medieval Marginalia exhibit. Click image to enlarge.
The exhibit focuses on marginalia. From the Latin for literally just “things in the margins,” marginalia can encompass many things, from formally executed illustrations meant to enhance the manuscript into a work of art to notes and annotations. We tend to think of books as static or frozen in time, but through marginalia and readers, they were often amorphous and ever-changing, shaped and reshaped by their owners over decades and centuries. Medieval readers were not merely passive consumers of manuscripts; they thought about and engaged with their texts, argued and agreed, and added their thoughts. And their relics are preserved in the notes they left behind, capturing their fleeting thoughts in amber for us to enjoy centuries later.
With annotations, we can see what people actually thought about the texts they read. They let us see where readers denied or disagreed with the original manuscript – as with this manuscript copy of Lactantius’ Divine Institutes, a defense of Christianity and a refutation of Greek and Roman polytheism.
Lactantius’ Divinae Institutiones [The Divine Institutes], Italy, circa 1400-1500 CE. Call Number: MS C61. Click image to enlarge.
An early reader has added the note “falsum” or “false” while striking lines through parts of the text – potentially either disagreeing with the text itself or perhaps claiming it was spurious and misattributed. Where readers’ notes give us insight into the sometimes-critical thoughts of medieval readers, their doodles provide glimpses into the universal experience of boredom and the creativity it can allow to blossom. With doodles, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” We doodle just as much today as people did 800 years ago, but what we doodle changes, reflecting the nuances of human culture and identity. It’s a time-honored tradition across the centuries; you’ve likely stuck at least a few notes in the margins of your class assignments or books over the years. Idle doodles encapsulate the wandering thoughts of people from the past as they were when they took quill pen to page.
Sometimes, it was the scribes themselves, the people writing and copying the manuscripts for later audiences, who added flares of fun into the margins. Copying manuscripts by hand was often a long and tedious process, taking anywhere from days to months. A certain playfulness to these marginalia emerged when the scribe’s mind and hand wandered. You wind up with texts like MS B15, a collection of Divine Offices, hymns, prayers, and devotional poetry, where the scribe has very diligently copied the text for over 700 pages, all written in the same hand so that you know this is one person scribbling page after page after page. But they’ve broken the tedium by dappling the tops and bottoms of letters with -Picasso-esque caricatures, skewed profile faces wearing silly hats, and the occasional peacock.
Ordinatio totius officii divini secundum usum monasterii Beatae Mariae de Belgentiaco [A Complete Order of the Divine Offices According to the Use of the Monastery of the Blessed Mary of Beaugency], France, 1400-1500. Call Number: MS B15. Click image to enlarge.
Marginalia can help reveal the silent reader’s voice and how they understood or analyzed texts – but even in the case of drawings and doodles, these weren’t all the product of an idle mind. Often, the doodles in the margins directly responded to and sometimes commented upon the text itself, creating visual commentary that shows how a scribe or reader responded to the work. These are called deliberate or communicative doodles.
Marginalia didn’t end with the advent of print, but they were unquestionably changed by it. In many ways, printing is more rigid than writing a manuscript. You work with a metal frame that limits where letters can fit, the shape of the page and its structure, and all the letters are predetermined shapes carved into small metal pieces that you then reorganize into different words. That rigidity, of course, meant that it was much easier to make literal copies of the text, nearly identical to one another.
While print stole some of the freedom and flexibility of the page and written word, readers continued to imbue their books with their agency and interpretations, even with the radical technological shift. One reader of Agostino Nifo’s A Small Commentary on the Most Accurate Signs of Weather has bestowed nearly every page with minute illustrations connected to the text, highlighting the vibrancy of weather with sketches of animals associated with certain types of weather alongside copious notes, including a doodle of a bat next to Nifo’s claim that when bats fly in a great flock in the evening, it promises a calm, serene night.
Detail of manuscript marginalia in De verissimis temporum signis commentariolus [A Small Commentary on the Most Accurate Signs of Weather/Seasons] by Agostino Nifo. Venice: H. Scotus, 1540. Call Number: MS B75. Click image to enlarge.
Manuscripts reflect the medieval mind. Through marginalia, we can see how they organized their thoughts and how they reacted and responded to text and information. In the same way, when you visit an exhibit, you bring your thoughts, experiences, and analyses to the books. As you go through it, you may pick and choose different parts of the exhibit that catch your eye and interest; you may find the exhibit text insightful (or boring!). My exhibit text will tell you what I think is important about materials, but those won’t be the same things that you find interesting or important. With this exhibit, open through July, I invite you to bring your own doodles to our margins – including the exhibit wall text! You’ll see the manuscripts mentioned above, with many more, that all embody the agency and choices of their readers over the centuries. We welcome you to read, think, and doodle about the exhibit (albeit preferably not in our manuscripts). Thank you for being a reader of our exhibits here at Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
Nola Ayers’s senior picture and a description of her KU life in the 1909 Jayhawker yearbook. University Archives. Call Number: LD 2697 .J3. Click image to enlarge.
Nola Mary Ayers was born in Horton, Kansas, in 1886. She arrived in Lawrence in the fall of 1905 to enter the University of Kansas and graduated from KU with a bachelor’s degree in 1909. Nola documented her college years by creating a scrapbook, as did many other university students at the time.
Typically, students purchased a large scrapbook from one of the bookstores near the university. Nola broke with tradition by using a blank “Specimens” science notebook to paste in mementos of her life at KU.
The front cover of Nola Ayers’s scrapbook, 1905-1909. Call Number: SB 71/99/8. Click image to enlarge.
Nola’s scrapbook was also unique because she was an artist and decorated her album with original pen and ink drawings. One of the first drawings in the scrapbook is a self-portrait where she describes herself as a “poor home sick freshman” whose “college home for the year 1905-06 was 1305 Vermont St. Lawrence, Kansas with Mother Dow to call us eight girls down.” This house on Vermont is still standing in the Oread neighborhood. In the years before dormitories, many students lived in boarding houses near campus; many of these large multi-story houses still exist.
Nola Ayers’s scrapbook entry about being “a poor home-sick freshman,” 1905. Call Number: SB 71/99/8. Click image to enlarge.
Nola documented her studies in her scrapbook. As seen in the image below, she took “Hygiene” and “Gymnasium” during her freshman year – courses that all KU students in the early twentieth century were required to enroll in. Nola also studied rhetoric, German, geology, solid geometry, and botany. Her scrapbook reflects her love of drawing, and her coursework included drawing, ornament design, and Greek art.
Nola Ayers’s freshman-year courses listed in her student scrapbook, circa 1906. Call Number: SB 71/99/8. Click image to enlarge.
Besides coursework, friendships with other students are well represented in the pages of Nola’s scrapbook. She documented slumber parties with other girls, popcorn making, a Halloween party where she dressed as the “Western Girl,” and events at her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. Nola celebrated Valentine’s Day with a party and red hearts pasted into her scrapbook.
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Selected pages from Nola Ayers’s scrapbook showing her hanging out and celebrating holidays with friends, 1905-1909. Call Number: SB 71/99/8. Click images to enlarge.
As evidenced by her scrapbook, Nola partook many of the outdoor activities KU students enjoyed in the early twentieth century: walking, boating on the Kaw River, picnicking in the countryside, and attending sporting events. According to the 1908 Jayhawker yearbook, Nola was an “authority on baseball” and an “enthusiastic fan.” Indeed, she pasted photos of the KU baseball team into her scrapbook. Nola also included items related to the KU debate team. Debate was almost as popular as athletic sports during the early twentieth century, and students would travel to other cities like Topeka to support the KU team.
A two-page spread in Nola Ayers’s scrapbook, circa 1906. Call Number: SB 71/99/8. Click image to enlarge.
According to a newspaper article, Nola was crowned Queen of the May at the second annual May Fete in 1909. She was a member of Allemania (German Club) and attended their events. She appeared to have attended many dances, plays, and concerts while a student, as documented by the many programs decorating her scrapbook. Plays and concerts were held on campus and in downtown Lawrence at the Bowersock Opera House.
A page of invitations and dance cards in Nola Ayers’s KU student scrapbook, circa 1907-1908. Call Number: SB 71/99/8. Click image to enlarge.
The bottom photo on this page might show Nola Ayers with her housemates, circa 1909. During her junior and senior years at KU, Nola lived at 1400 Tennessee Street in Lawrence. Call Number: SB 71/99/8. Click image to enlarge.
Nola Ayers married KU alumus Benjamin P. Young in 1910. According to a newspaper article announcing their wedding, the couple settled in Halstead, Kansas, where Ben was a high school principal. Ben and Nola relocated to Ithaca, New York, by 1923 and appear to have lived there for the rest of their lives. They had two children. Ben died in 1958; Nola passed away in 1973 at age 86.
Becky Schulte Retired University Archivist and Curator of the Wilcox Collection
I began working as the Ringle Conservation Intern during the fall of 2024, drawn to the position as an art history graduate student with a budding interest in art conservation and passion for collecting antique photographs. Throughout the course of the semester, and the beginning of the spring 2025 semester, I was able to rehouse 2,400 glass plate negatives and contribute to the online database that will be used towards the creation of a future finding aid. Under the guidance of the incredibly kind and knowledgeable conservation staff, such as Whitney Baker, Charissa Pincock, and Kaitlin McGrath, I was able to take my first steps into the world of conservation and archival work, and will look back at this time fondly.
Throughout my time at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library Conservation Lab, I was privileged with the ability of looking into the past through the eyes of Hannah Scott, the Independence, Kansas based photographer and studio owner who operated from the 1910’s into the 1940’s. Each glass plate negative that I carefully removed from their aged and yellowed envelopes showed me a moment frozen in time; a bride on her wedding day with her bouquet cascading to the floor, a baby with a wide, toothless, grin clutching a doll, or an elderly couple still donning the out-of-fashion garb of decades past. I became an undetected observer from a distant time, one who was able to watch children and families grow over the years as they returned time and time again to Hannah’s studio.
As I made my way through the collection I was repeatedly met with glass plates that possessed faint scratches outlining the contours of a face where wrinkles tend to form, or scribbled dots speckling the skin. I continuously wondered what these etchings might be when I came across a plate that had two negatives of the same woman, but on one she was heavily freckled, and in the other, there was not a spot on her skin to be found. On the emulsion side of the plate, her freckles had been meticulously removed one-by-one with a pointed instrument of sorts to render her skin seemingly airbrushed. I instantly recognized that these “scratches” were an example of the pre-digital age method of “photoshopping” photographs, a technique that Hannah would employ to provide her customers with the option of having a perfect portrait to display.
Double portrait glass plate negative. Image on the left is the untouched image of a subject with freckles. Image on the right has been manually retouched. Hannah Scott Collection, Kansas Collection.
I had read about the act of manually retouching glass plate negatives in the Victorian era, where the outer edges of a woman’s mid-section were erased to achieve the desired “wasp-waist” look. However, I thought this was an outlying and rare occurrence, but the fact that almost every plate of Hannah’s bears some evidence of retouching shows how common and pervasive this practice was. Furthermore, there was not a specific demographic of Hannah’s client that received this treatment; men and women of all ages, from infants to seniors, were able to take home a photograph of themselves looking their absolute best. Excess stray hairs, deep set wrinkles from decades of emoting, blemishes, freckles, moles, or an accidental hand or prop in the image were all able to be removed by the dedicated photographer’s technique of building up hair-thin lines to erase the undesired.
Double portrait glass plate negative. Example of stray hair removal. Hannah Scott Collection, Kansas Collection.
After doing some research of my own, I discovered that the practice of manually retouching glass plate negatives had been in place since the 1840s, and involved the use of either a graphite pencil or knife to scratch out or cover up whatever it may be that was preventing the desired image. Such retouching appeared almost invisible, both in the glass plate negative and in the final positive. I was able to see evidence of the retouching only when I viewed the emulsion side of the negative from a certain angle where the light could reflect off the scratches. Such a trick-of-the trade exemplifies how not so different we are today from those who lived almost a hundred years ago, and how certain behaviors, such as the editing of photographed portraits, show a formidable continuity over time. I can almost imagine the scene appearing in front of me; Hannah in her studio hunched over a negative, surrounded by various tools and instruments, a soft, rhythmic, scratching noise permeates the air as she works on perfecting her customer’s portrait, the hours ticking by, a radio playing a vintage tune hums in the background, unknowingly creating the plate that would end up in my very hands all these years later.
Manual retouching on the emulsion side of a glass plate negative. Hannah Scott Collection, Kansas Collection.
Manual retouching on the emulsion side of a glass plate negative. Hannah Scott Collection, Kansas Collection.
![Image of a detail from a manuscript copy of Lactantius’ Divinae Institutiones [The Divine Institutes], Italy, ca. 1400-1500 CE., with manuscript notes in the margin.](https://blogs.lib.ku.edu/spencer/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Image-2-MS-C61.jpg)
![Image of doodles of faces in the margins of Spencer's manuscript copy of Ordinatio totius officii divini secundum usum monasterii Beatae Mariae de Belgentiaco. [A Complete Order of the Divine Offices According to the Use of the Monastery of the Blessed Mary of Beaugency.]. France, 1400-1500.](https://blogs.lib.ku.edu/spencer/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Image-3-MS-B15-1.jpg)
![Image of manuscript marginalia, including an image of a bat, in the margins of a 1540 printed copy of De verissimis temporum signis commentariolus [A Small Commentary on the Most Accurate Signs of Weather/Seasons], by Agostino Nifo.](https://blogs.lib.ku.edu/spencer/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Image-4-MS-B75-p45.jpg)
