Kenneth Spencer Research Library

From Student Senate buttons and sports memorabilia to a vial of uranium connected to the Manhattan Project, the unexpected breadth of objects preserved by the University Archives reveals lesser-known aspects of the University of Kansas’s history. The University Archives is the official repository for all materials related to the University of Kansas. Its holdings include official records, publications, correspondence, research papers, and more. However, the University Archives contains more than just documents; it has a robust Artifact Collection that uses objects to tell the KU story.

I began my Graduate Assistant position with Conservation Services in August 2025, and I quickly became familiar with the Artifact Collection and its unique challenges. The University Archives has been collecting objects for decades, but documentation and housing efforts have been largely inconsistent. When I began this project, there was no item-level inventory of the collection, and many objects were stacked precariously in mismatched or overfilled boxes (See Figure 2). Inconsistent storage practices increase the risk of physical damage, and a lack of intellectual control over the collection makes items difficult to access.

This project consisted of several key phases. First, I conducted a full item-level inventory of the Artifact Collection to gain a complete understanding of its contents. For each object, I assigned a unique sequential Artifact ID number (e.g. ARFT.1, ARFT.2, etc.) and recorded any label information from the exterior of the box, including associated Record Group numbers. I then created a brief title and a full description noting color, material type, and any identifiable features on the object, along with any dates indicated on the item or its housing. I documented the object’s exact measurements in centimeters, assessed and recorded its condition, and noted its current location, housing method, and any outstanding questions or comments.

Following the written documentation, I photographed each object using a temporary photo setup consisting of a white paper background and a light-diffusing shade made from corrugated plastic. I used my iPhone to take the photographs, which were intended to provide visual documentation of the objects rather than high-quality, exhibit-ready images. Their purpose was to capture essential physical details that cannot be conveyed through text alone. In each image, I included a small dry-erase board displaying the Artifact ID number in each image to ensure consistent identification (See Figure 3).

Finally, I attached a small, hand-cut white paper tag to each object using simple white thread and labeled it with its corresponding Artifact ID number. Instead of ordering object tags from an archival supply company, I created the tags in-house using scrap paper to conserve resources. I inventoried as many objects as possible every day, and I reserved the final half-hour of my shift to upload photos, downloading them to a shared networked drive and organizing them into folders based on the objects’ current room locations. This consistent workflow not only ensured thorough documentation but also allows future users to track the overall timeline and progress of the inventory for similar projects.

After the inventory phase, I developed a comprehensive rehousing plan for the University Archives’ Artifact Collection that focused on standardizing storage materials in order to improve the long-term safety and accessibility of the collection. Developing this rehousing plan required balancing preventive conservation best practices, archival theory, spatial limitations, and institutional realities. Organizing by size improves efficiency and reduces handling risks, while material-based grouping mitigates chemical and environmental threats. On the other hand, contextual organization preserves provenance and research value, and standardized documentation ensures continued intellectual control. Balancing all of these concepts, the rehousing plan details first steps and priorities, lists existing storage solutions to follow, and models potential storage solutions for objects whose current housings need improvement. It also provides a list of standard box sizes so that storage solutions stay consistent moving forward. Designed with flexibility in mind, the plan is meant to support future growth, ensuring the collection can evolve without compromising curatorial integrity. Following this plan, I have now begun rehousing objects.

While rehousing Record Group 0/25: Jayhawks, I encountered an oversized box filled with plastic objects that were visibly deteriorating (see Figure 4). Several items exhibited yellowing and surface changes that suggested they were being affected by surrounding materials. In response, I removed all non-plastic objects from the box and rehoused them separately. The remaining plastics, particularly those showing signs of degradation, were wrapped individually in tissue and placed in a standard banker’s box designed to function as a containment unit rather than a highly customized enclosure. Photographs of each object were affixed to the lid, and labeled tags were tied to the exterior of each wrapped item to improve retrievability (see Figure 5). Because these objects possess relatively low research value, constructing individualized custom enclosures was not an efficient use of limited resources. Instead, I prioritized risk mitigation and containment. This solution reflects a central methodological principle of this project: rehousing does not aim for perfection, but for measurable improvement and increased standardization.

Every storage decision reflects institutional realities, professional standards, and long-term stewardship commitments. By integrating collections management strategies with conservation principles, this project provides a flexible and sustainable framework for not only the continued care of the Artifact Collection but an example for any archive drawing on museological best practices to deal with 3D objects.

While I was able to complete an item-level inventory of the Artifact Collection, the rehousing stage of the project will likely extend beyond my time at KU. As a result, the rehousing plan developed here will serve as a guide for future staff, supporting consistent and standardized decision-making. In addition, I have outlined detailed workflows for the continued care of the collection. This project would not have been possible without the collaboration of the University Archives, Conservation Services, and Spencer’s Archival Processing Team.

A very special thanks to Letha Johnson for warmly welcoming me into the University Archives and for placing her trust in me as I engaged critically with the Artifact Collection. Her trust and collaboration were essential to the success of this project.

Brenna Hobbs, M.A. Museum Studies 2026, Graduate Assistant in Conservation Services

As I work to develop the Spencer’s new Latina/o Collections*, I wanted to take a moment and look back at the interesting materials that are already sitting within our library stacks and viewable in our Reading Room today! All the materials presented allow us to briefly see how Latina/os have gathered and built community within different places across Kansas.

Take a look at some of those materials below.

Aztlán de Leavenworth, volume 1

First published May 5, 1970, Aztlán de Leavenworth was a bilingual Chicano prisoner newspaper edited and published at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas. It features poet and activist raúlrsalinas’ famous poem “A Trip Through the Mind Jail.” Other members of the publication team included Albert Mares, Ruben Estrella, Alfredo Arellanes, Ricardo Mena, and Beto Palomino. Inspired by Aztec history and iconography, the newspaper is named after Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztecs, and features images of Tizoc and designs inspired by Aztec art.

Left: The front cover of Aztlán de Leavenworth, 1970. Right: The page of Aztlán de Leavenworth featuring “A Trip Through the Mind Jail,” 1970. Call Number: RH H79, volume 1. Click images to enlarge.

KACMAA Special Report, 1981

This 1981 special report was created by Kansas’ Advisory Committee in Mexican American Affairs (KACMAA). As explained in the report’s introduction, it “optimistically highlights important accomplishments and measurable in Hispanic’s social, economic, and political life” but also “clarifies the work that remains to be done.” While the KACMAA originally concentrated on projects to promote people of Mexican heritage, the organization evolved to include all Hispanics and Latinos across the state and is now known as the Kansas Hispanic and Latino American Affairs Commission.

Music groups in Emporia

Taken some time in 1932, these photographic prints from the Oral History Project Regarding the Hispanic Community of Emporia, Kansas (Call Number: RH PH 182) allow us to see some of Emporia’s early musical groups. The first photo shows members of the Mexican band Orquesta de Leora posing with their instruments, while the second features the women who made up the Coro de Santa Catalina, or St. Catherine’s Choir. St. Catherine’s Catholic Church still exists to this day and continues to offer Catholic services to Spanish speakers in Emporia.

Left: Photograph of Orquesta de Leora, 1932. Right: Photograph of St. Catherine’s Choir, 1932. Oral History Project Regarding the Hispanic Community of Emporia, Kansas. Call Number: RH PH 182, Box 1, Folders 11 and 19. Click images to enlarge.

MEChA & HALO Pamphlets

Records of a Latina/o focused group at the University of Kansas have existed since the 1970s. However, before it was LASU (Latin American Student Union), KU’s Latino student group went by many names. It first went by the name AMAS (Association of Mexican American Students), and then it was MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán). The group took the name HALO (Hispanic American Leadership Organization) when it was re-established in the 1980s, and it finally became LASU to further expand its inclusion of all students of Latin American heritage or background.  

Rebekah Ramos
Curator of Latina/o Collections

Sources

“A Trip Through the Mind Jail: A Textual History of raúlrsalinas’ Magnum Opus” by Santiago Vidales Martínez in Textual Cultures 14.1 (2021): 208–229. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14434/tc.v14i1.32858

Kansas Hispanic & Latino American Affairs Commission website, “Our Mission and Our Origins from KACMAA to KHLAAC.”

KU Latin American Student Union website, “LASU History.”

*While many terms exist to identify people in the United States of Latin American origin and/or ancestry (i.e. Hispanic, Chicano, Latino, Latina/o, Latinx, Latine) at Spencer Research Library we chose to use “Latina/o” for the collection’s title. As the collection grows and evolves, the term used might change.

The International Transgender Day of Visibility was started in 2009 by transgender activist Rachel Crandall Crocker. When she came out as trans in 1997, she was fired. Over ten years later, she realized that the transgender community needed a day of advocacy and celebration beyond Transgender Day of Remembrance that would be “a day to focus on the living.” Every year, it is celebrated on March 31st with events and social media campaigns to highlight the courage of transgender people and provide support for the community. 

Spencer Research Library has acquired a diverse array of material that documents the lives of transgender people – especially in Kansas and the Midwest – and their creative works. For example, Bruce McKinney was an LGBTQ activist in Wichita, and his large collection of personal papers (Call Number: RH MS 1164) in the Kansas Collection documents many organizations, including the Wichita Transgender Alliance. Other collections that include material on local organizations include Les-Bi-Gay-Trans collected material (Call Number: RH MS 900), the papers of Kristi Parker (Call Number: RH MS 1348), and the papers of Arla Jones and Kimberly Kreicker (Call Number: RH MS 1452). 

In the Wilcox Collection, zines from the Solidarity Revolutionary Center and Radical Library make up the majority of material by and about the transgender community. The following sample is illustrative of the art and writing produced by transgender zine-makers, many of them from the Midwest. 

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If you’d like to explore more unique collections and items by and about transgender people – or if you have suggestions for acquisitions or items to donate – get in touch with the Curator of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, Kate Stewart, at kate.stewart@ku.edu. 

Kate Stewart
Curator of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Movements

During Fall of 2025, my Dean in KU’s School of Social Welfare forwarded an announcement to our faculty from Kenneth Spencer Research Library, calling for submissions to the newly established Bergeron-Souza Exhibit Program. At the time, I had only visited the library once for a special event and had come away with some mild curiosity about what other archival materials one might access there.

I immediately had an idea about using this guest curation opportunity to showcase artwork from a digital archive I had been managing for several years, the Untold Stories of Aging exhibition of aging-focused artwork from intergenerational creators. I was intrigued by the possibility of showing the work in a display setting that would focus not only on the pieces’ artistic merit, but also on their commentary on aging as a universal human experience. By putting contemporary artwork into conversation with archival materials, I envisioned bringing to life a deeper and richer narrative about the ways in which artistic representations of aging motivate us to envision our own futures in more expansive ways and inspire us to action – individual and collective – to realize those futures.

What followed was a loosely guided and ever evolving process of uncovering what the research library had to offer. I, along with my PhD Graduate Research Assistant Zhiqi Yi, perused over 100 boxes worth of material as well as dozens of individual artifacts sourced from various collections. There were the 20 or so boxes documenting the extensive efforts of long-time activist Mildred Harkness, who seemed to have her hands in all things aging within Kansas over the span of several decades. There were the seemingly endless boxes from the Jayhawk Area Agency on Aging. There were dozens of memoirs, artistic works, books, and essays penned and created by older adults that we requested, never really sure where they would lead.  

Some discoveries were more impactful than others. Having viewed the artistic drawings of Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton over the past decade, it was a tremendous joy to find that the library had archived over a dozen boxes of her personal documents, photographs, news clippings, exhibition flyers, and reprinted artwork. I read her memoir alongside her personal documentation, interweaving a rich storyline between the individual artifacts. Having begun drawing at the age of 68, Layton’s drawings document her struggles with and victory over mental illness. She often credited her discovery of blind contour drawing with having healed her life-long depression, illustrating the rich potential of artistic exploration and creation in the lives of older adults.  

Photos of Elizabeth Layton, blind contour drawing in process, undated. Don Lambert Collection of Elizabeth Layton Papers. Call Number: RH MS 1538, Box 12, Folder 6. Click images to enlarge.

Drawings titled “Fear” (left) and “Nike, Winged Victory” (right) in Elizabeth Layton’s memoir Signs Along the Way, 2013. Call Number: RH C12442. Click images to enlarge.

Similarly, I was delighted to stumble across several emeritus faculty who had contributed to KU’s aging-focused curricula over the years. This includes Shirley Patterson, who had her social work students interview older adults in the local community and create poems and brief essays based on their experiences. Additionally, Janet Hamburg of KU’s Department of Theatre and Dance taught “Dance for Seniors” and developed movement-based interventions for individuals living with Parkinson’s disease. These rich discoveries had to somehow be narrowed down to what could fit into a handful of display cases, and choosing amongst artifacts turned into a tall order, indeed. We will have to return to explore new topics another day!

Selected pages from “Aging, Strength, and Creativity Revisited” by Shirley Patterson, 1978. Personal Papers of Shirley L. Patterson. Call Number: PP 607, Box 2, Folder 26. Click images to enlarge.

From this year-long process, the resulting exhibition opened on February 23, 2026, and is organized into six sequential display cases of archival materials. The exhibit also includes 15 contemporary art works, both in display cases and along the exhibition walls, through which the exhibition themes are interwoven and illustrated in vibrant and moving detail.

The overarching narrative of the exhibition explores societal discourses around aging, illustrating that the ways in which we talk about a thing, person, or experience come to shape our ability to imagine and engage with the object of conversation. In this case, audience members are asked to grapple with societal conversations around aging and later life, considering the impact of how we construct and envision this universal, life-long experience and how those constructions shape our hopes and plans for our own aging present and futures. Historical discourses are captured in artifacts dating back to 1780, representing older citizens as making up a vulnerable and needy population. Documents from aging activists, creative essays, portraits, poetry, and much more provide contrasting and nuanced constructions of aging, balancing more varied images of later life based on agency, growing or evolving self-knowledge, hardships and joys brought by new phases of life, and more.

A special event next Tuesday, March 31, 2026 (5:30-7:00pm) will feature a mini-presentation on the making of the exhibition and will be attended by several of the exhibit’s contributing artists, who will mingle with attendees and informally share the meaning of their work. Come and join us to explore your own hopes for the future!

Sarah Jen
Associate Professor and PhD Program Director
KU School of Social Welfare

In 1984, the Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) made the decision to abandon its Union Pacific Depot in Lawrence and announced that they would demolish the building due to potential liabilities. The Depot had once been a shining gateway to Lawrence, with a tall steeple and busy railway line, but in the years prior, the passenger service had been discontinued, and the Depot building itself had fallen into disrepair. 

Lawrence residents swiftly jumped into action to campaign for the preservation of the building. Citizens from the recently formed Lawrence Preservation Alliance, fresh of the success of their first project to save a historic home at 947 Louisiana St, jumped into action to preserve this Lawrence landmark. Members from the Lawrence Preservation Alliance, University of Kansas Rowing Club, and other concerned citizens banded together to form the “Save the Depot Task Force.” With the original plan to use the Depot as a headquarters for the rowing team, they were able to negotiate with the UPR to stall the demolition and began coordinating and raising funds for potential restoration. 

There was one sticking point: the UPR was unwilling to permit the Depot to stay in its current location due to the building’s proximity to the railway line. With no other options, the Save the Depot Task Force began its “Move It or Lose It” campaign. The group hired a contractor to conduct a study to see if it would be possible to move the entire building in either one or two pieces on a hydraulic lift to a nearby lot. 

After years of negotiation and much back and forth, in 1990 the UPR agreed to let the Depot stay where it was, with the provision that the City of Lawrence would provide a protective iron fence protecting the building from the railway tracks. In the end, the UPR sold the Depot to the city for $1. 

Renovations began under architect John Lee officially in 1991, with construction happening in three phases & ongoing fundraising assistance from the “Save the Depot” task force. The Union Pacific Depot was officially rededicated as a community center in 1996. 

Learn more about the restoration of Lawrence’s Union Pacific Depot at our short-term exhibit in Spencer’s North Gallery! The exhibit is free and open to the public in the North Gallery through March 31, 2026. 

Centi Newby
Public Services Associate