Kenneth Spencer Research Library

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 recurring series of posts introducing readers to the staff of Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Today’s profile features Ruby Rhodd, who joined Spencer Research Library in October 2022 as a Special Collections Serials Cataloger.

Where are you from?

I’ve lived in Kansas since I was 3 years old. I was raised in White Cloud, located in northeast Kansas near my tribal reservation, the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. I currently reside in Leavenworth, Kansas and commute to Lawrence daily for work.

How did you come to work at Spencer Research Library?

During the covid-19 shutdown, I realized I wasn’t happy where I was at and decided to pursue jobs in the library field. During my undergrad at KU, I had a small library job at the Murphy Art & Architecture Library on the KU campus, and thoroughly enjoyed it as it was one of the main reasons why I pursued employment with KU Libraries. I was hired in October of 2022 with the choice of three different positions. I chose Spencer because I wanted to work somewhere with the most challenges, but also their “rare materials” sounded like they would be cool to work with.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I am the Special Collections Serials Cataloger. I catalog anything that is a periodical, journal, newspaper, zine, etc., and anything that has the intention of being published forever and ever. I create new records for these materials, or I enhance and update the records we already have. These records are what our users see when searching our catalog. I also house most of the items before they are put in the stacks. As part of my duties, I supervise students and teach them to label our collections, and I create projects for them that help with collection maintenance.

What part of your job do you like best?

I love the tediousness that it entails; busy work and paying attention to tiny details is satisfying. I have also enjoyed my path to realizing that I want to expand my knowledge and background to further my career in the library world and use this experience to one day become an archivist for my tribe and enhance their efforts of preserving our tribal history. I owe credit to Spencer, as an institution, and to everyone I work with who have inspired me to pursue my master’s degree in library science. Coming to work everyday at a place that values the preservation of materials to educate future generations is rewarding.

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

Overall, there’s a lot of interesting items. I really enjoy the format of Index (Ser C294). It’s all loose-leaf and artistically put together. The Wilcox collection has a lot of very interesting and extreme materials that make me question why humans are so odd. The Spencer Library’s fanzine collection is weird, but in a good way. Also, I have come across a local Kansas newspaper that had a member of my family on the front page. It was fun learning more about them.

What are some of your favorite pastimes outside of work?

Well, my time outside of work used to consist of creating native inspired beadwork/regalia for myself, but now it mostly consists of schoolwork. I just started my master’s degree with Emporia State University in Library and Information Management. Any time left after that, I spend with my family, friends, and my dog Bella.

Ruby Rhodd
Special Collections Serials Cataloger

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 Adrienne Sanders, who joined Spencer Research Library in September 2023 as a Rare Materials Cataloging Librarian.

Where are you from?

I’ve lived in Lawrence for over 25 years, so I think I’m from here now. I grew up in various places around the greater Kansas City area and went to college in Southern California, then came to Lawrence after getting my undergraduate degree in linguistics. I like it here so I stayed.

How did you come to work at Spencer Research Library?

I didn’t set out to specifically work with rare materials. I worked in Watson Library at KU as a cataloging staff member for many years, and then at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library for several years. Both positions had me working with rare materials some of the time. I worked with Latin American materials from Spencer’s Griffith collection at KU and with local history materials in Topeka. This position combines my cataloging and rare materials experience, although I’m still learning more all the time.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

Cataloging, in a nutshell, is creating the description of library materials that goes into an online catalog or database, so users can find out what we have. I describe the item physically, and I also assign subject headings that say what the work is about and call numbers that tell where the item is located in the stacks. There are multiple sets of rules that tell me how to compose and structure a bibliographic record, as well as conservation guidelines we follow to physically protect the materials. All of this is so when people search our catalog, they get results that (hopefully) show them what they want and how to access it through the library.

What part of your job do you like best?

I love learning a little bit about lots of things, and this job is perfect for that. Most materials come to me in batches of similar things that were donated or purchased together and are similar in topic or genre. I have to quickly learn what they’re about in order to describe them. It could be anything from 100 books about flying saucers to a dozen zines about political protests in Hong Kong. It keeps me from ever getting bored!

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

One of the most interesting items I’ve worked with is also one of the oldest items. It’s a document created in Spain in 1570, called a carta executiva de hidalguía (or ejecutiva in modern spelling). These cartas were created to commemorate successfully petitioning the king to become nobility. (One of the benefits of being nobility was not having to pay taxes.) It’s written in gothic script and has a couple of pages of fantastic painted illustration. It turned out to be harder to read than I’d predicted, as I quickly learned that particular type of gothic script didn’t use punctuation marks or spaces between the words. The majority of materials I work with are from the 20th century, so this was both a challenge and a treat to catalog.

What are some of your favorite pastimes outside of work?

I’ve been knitting for many years, and it’s my favorite, but I will dabble in just about any craft involving yarn, fiber, or fabric. I’ve done a little crochet, embroidery, cross stitch, spinning (making yarn on a spindle), yarn dyeing, quilting, sewing, macrame, and probably more I’m forgetting. In stereotypical librarian fashion, I read a lot/listen to audiobooks, mostly literary fiction and science fiction. I also enjoy going to museums and historical sites, especially when traveling to places that are new to me.

Adrienne Sanders
Rare Materials Cataloging Librarian

This is the latest installment in a recurring series of posts introducing readers to the staff of Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Today’s post features Kaitlin McGrath, KU Libraries’ new General Collections Conservator/Preservation Coordinator. Welcome, Kaitlin!

Where are you from?

I’m from Michigan and I grew up just outside Detroit. I went to school at Western Michigan University and here at the University of Kansas. Before I started this job in August, I was living in western Massachusetts.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I am the new General Collections Conservator/Preservation Coordinator for Conservation Services. I have a lot of different roles. If any book from one of the circulating libraries on campus is damaged, it comes to me, and I assess what treatment it needs. Some things will be sent out to a commercial bindery to be rebound, but many things will be treated in-house in our conservation lab. Some of the common treatments we do include tipping in loose pages, repairing torn paper, adding protective covers, and building new cases and boxes for books. I supervise the student workers who complete most of the treatments on general collections materials. I also order the archival supplies needed for Conservation Services and Spencer Research Library. As Preservation Coordinator, I work on preservation projects in Spencer such as object housings and long-term storage improvements.

How did you come to work at Spencer Research Library?

I was a student worker in the conservation lab from 2018-2020 while I was attending KU for my master’s in museum studies. I worked under Roberta Woodrick and learned the different treatments that are done in the lab. I really enjoyed working in the lab and the problem solving that came with determining different treatments and creating custom housings for objects. After I graduated, I moved away and worked in a couple of museums. I was just finishing up a two and a half year cataloging project at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Massachusetts when I heard that Roberta was retiring. I thought this was a great opportunity to come back to KU and work in the conservation lab in a new role.

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

KU’s collection of class banners from every graduating year are some of my favorites! I was able to work on a housing project for them when I was a student, and it was so interesting to see all of the different designs. Many of them were hand-made which gave them a creative and unique quality.

What part of your job do you like best?

I like the variety of what I do here. I don’t know what will come through the lab next. It makes work interesting!

What are some of your favorite pastimes outside of work?

I like to play tennis, bake, and knit. I also enjoy trivia and board game nights.

Kaitlin McGrath
General Collections Conservator/Preservation Coordinator

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 Eve Wolynes, who joined Spencer Research Library in June 2023 as an Assistant Librarian and a Special Collections Curator.

Eve Wolynes, Special Collections Curator, in Spencer Research Library’s reading room with MS E256. Click image to enlarge.

Where are you from?

I’ve hopped around a fair amount. I was born in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, and moved to San Diego when I was ten. As an adult, I’ve lived in Berkeley, Houston, South Bend (Indiana), and Dayton (Ohio) before finally making my way here.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I’m a Special Collections Curator. While other curators and archivists at Spencer tend to have specific subjects, regions or materials they work with, Elspeth Healey and I cover everything in the Special Collections, which includes a huge range of materials — from Roman funerary stones, to medieval manuscripts, to modern poetry, science fiction and artists books, and spans the entire globe, from Guatemala to Italy to Japan. My responsibilities include collection development – helping to build the collection through purchasing new items and coordinating donations – as well as instruction with undergraduates, answering reference questions and supporting use of the items by researchers and users, and engaging with outreach through things like exhibit design and public events.

How did you come to work in libraries/archives/special collections?

As with so many stories, it began with a very sickly dog. While I was in grad school, working on my Ph.D. in medieval history, my dog had a health emergency and needed surgery, but I couldn’t afford to pay the vet bill on my graduate student stipend. To pay off the debt, I took on a job at my university’s library, and eventually moved into their Special Collections department when a position opened. Eventually I paid off the vet bill but realized I still wanted to work at the library; I felt like I had found a sense of community, that the work was a fun series of puzzles, challenges and mysteries, something different to learn every day. I started considering it seriously as a potential career direction. After I defended my dissertation straight into the pandemic, I took the shutdowns as a moment of contemplation to evaluate what I wanted to do; I decided to get my MLIS and to commit to Special Collections – and the minute I got back into a library I knew it was the right choice; I was at home again.

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

Lately I’ve been enamored with MS E256, Hippiatria by Giordano Ruffo; it’s a veterinary text on medicine, anatomy and training for horses dating to the 13th century. The manuscript gives you a sense of the relationship people had with their animals over seven-hundred years ago, and how our relationships with horses have transformed over time. Plus, it has a very cute little sketch of a pony on the first page. Which is the best part, really.

I also just love all the medieval manuscripts; there’s a special kind of love, work and dedication that goes into producing an entire text by hand, visible in the meticulous (and sometimes not so meticulous) handwriting, in the very pages themselves. They’re so human, from the shape of their letters to the scratches and scribbles in the margins, as every word embodies the person who took pen to page.

A manuscript copy of Giordano Ruffo’s Hippiatria open to a leaf containing
a sketch of a pony. Italy, approximately 1290-1310. Call Number: MS E256. Click image to enlarge.

What part of your job do you like best?

I always love the strange and unique reference questions that lead me to fall down rabbit holes trying to hunt down an answer and make unexpected discoveries about materials in the collection; I love, too, when researchers and patrons can teach me something new in turn, or when I can help or watch them make a connection with the past – with their communities, cultures, experiences and memories, as embodied in the materials from our collections.

What are some of your favorite pastimes outside of work?

When I’m not living up the librarian life in the real world, I dabble in playing as a lore librarian in fantasy settings and video games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, along with smaller indie games like Scarlet Hollow, Pentiment (a game practically made for medievalists and librarians), and The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow.

What piece of advice would you offer a researcher walking into Spencer Research Library for the first time?

If you’re worried about looking like you don’t know what you’re doing, or what you’re talking about – we’ve all been there, even the librarians! My first time in a special collections library was terrifying and confusing, too. The only reason librarians make everything look old hat and obvious is because we’ve had years or even decades to learn the often-labyrinthine logic and secrets from behind the scenes. But because we know all the twists and turns of our library and collection, we’re the best people to help guide you through it!

Eve Wolynes
Special Collections Curator