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.
Last month, the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction hosted the fourth annual Sturgeon Symposium, “Expanding Speculative Horizons,” to showcase contemporary speculative fiction scholarship and writing and to present the Theodore Sturgeon Award. I was able to attend the first day of the Symposium and began thinking about the relationship between the Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the speculative fiction community.
KSRL holds a variety of speculative fiction collections in Special Collections, and my colleagues in the manuscripts processing department have had the joy of working on these collections. I’ve chosen a small slice of this material—four of Spencer’s collections—to spotlight here to the variety that exits in speculative fiction.
Theodore Sturgeon (MS 303, MS 254), the namesake of the Symposium and Award, was a speculative writer who wrote ten novels, including More than Human (1953), but is perhaps best remembered for his many short stories. Sturgeon’s speculative fiction often explored social issues and pushed back on societal norms; his 1953 short story “The World Well Lost” won the Gaylactic Spectrum “Hall of Fame” award in 2000, for example. Sturgeon’s writings covered a variety of genres, and several other speculative fiction creatives can be found in this collection, including Octavia Butler; Ray Bradbury; Judith Merril; Roy Thomas, a Marvel Comics editor and author; and Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, to name a few.
Theodore Sturgeon’s typewriter. Papers of Theodore Sturgeon. Call #: MS 359, box 2
Mary Rosenblum (MS 362) was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon award in 1998 with “The Good Juror,” a story she co-authored with James Sarafin, and was also a finalist for the Nebula Award in 2008 for her novelette “Night Wind.”[1] But what interested me about the Rosenblum collection was how Rosenblum explored speculative fiction horizons through an environmental lens. In her novel Drylands, Rosenblum wrote about the dangers of climate change and the exploitation of resources in a post-apocalyptic setting. While speculative fiction is no stranger to exploring alternate histories and cautionary futures, Rosenblum’s Drylands was one I had never heard of before. It had been a Locus First Novel Award nominee, and I was pleasantly surprised to find her collection while researching KSRL’s speculative fiction holdings.
Opening page of “Second Chance” by Mary Rosenblum, annotated with editorial and copyediting marks. Mary Rosenblum papers, Call #: MS 362, Box 2, Folder 19.
Spencer Library doesn’t just have speculative fiction writers; much of Terry Lee’s original speculative fiction artwork can also be found here (MS 391). Lee is a KU graduate and a former font designer for Hallmark. He won a Chesley Award in 1988 for his cover artwork for the January 1987 issue of Amazing Stories.
Acrylic painting by Terry Lee for “Aymara” by Lucius Shepard, which served as the cover illustration for the August 1986 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Terry Lee papers. Call #: MS Qa 56, Box 1, Folder 5.
Finally, Spencer holds the papers of William F. Wu (MS 367). Wu is a speculative fiction writer whose works have been published in Amazing Stories, Analog, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, amongst others, and has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Hugo awards. Wu’s academic interest in Asian American representation in popular culture led to him writing The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction, 1850-1940 (1982), which had its origins as his doctoral dissertation. From convention materials to correspondence to comic books, William Wu’s collection provides researchers with a wealth of speculative fiction materials.
Outline (left) and draft for Perihelion (right) by William F. Wu, the sixth book in the Isaac Asimov’s Robot City (1988). Asimov’s introduction for the volume appears at the top of the draft. William F. Wu papers. Call # MS 367, Box 13, Folders 12 and 13.
Speculative fiction continues to be an ever-evolving field of literature, with new and exciting visions and interpretations of reality arriving each year. I’m already excited for next year’s Sturgeon Symposium and Theodore Sturgeon Award presentation. But in the meantime, there’s still other speculative fiction horizons to explore at Spencer Research Library!
Want to explore further? Check out these other speculative fiction collections:
Kij Johnson papers, MS 377, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.
John Kessel papers, MS 358, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.
Round Robin collection, MS P769, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.
A. E. van Vogt Collection, MS 322, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.
Molly Bauer Manuscripts Processor
[1] The winner of the 2008 Nebula Award in the novelette category was another writer whose papers reside at Spencer Research Library, John Kessel. He won for his novelette “Pride and Prometheus.”
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 Jason W. Dean, who joined Spencer Research Library in June 2025 as a Rare Materials Cataloging Librarian.
Rare Materials Cataloging Librarian Jason W. Dean. Click image to enlarge.
Where are you from?
I was born in Lubbock, Texas, and raised in Midland – both in what I call far West Texas. I went to college in Abilene at a small liberal arts university there, where much of my family went to college. I then taught and lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a few years before starting my library career. My work has taken me several places: Arkansas, central Texas, Kansas City, and now Lawrence. I appreciate Lawrence and how it feels like it’s just in The West, which reminds me of the big skies of my youth.
How did you come to work at Spencer Research Library?
I’ve had the good fortune to know Spencer Director Beth Whitaker and Special Collections Curator Elspeth Healey for a while. Maybe I met them at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) conference in Las Vegas in 2014? I learned about Spencer through Beth and Elspeth, but really got to know Spencer when I visited several years ago on a day trip from the Linda Hall Library. Of course, the outstanding collection and staff were well-known to me. I wanted to return to focus on the material, and the faculty position here was the right fit at the right time with the right people.
What does your job at Spencer entail?
I am responsible (along with my colleagues in processing) for the description of printed items acquired by or added to the Spencer collections. In my time here already, I’ve cataloged a number of modern paperback science fiction books from the collection of William F. Wu, some bound manuscripts, and some new acquisitions. My bread and butter are early modern books that I catalog with Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) – or DCRM(B) – but I am branching out (and dusting off my Resource Description and Access (RDA) cobwebs) with the help of my colleagues.
How did you come to work in libraries/archives/special collections?
I started my post-college working life teaching history to high school students in north Dallas, which I discovered was not for me. I really wanted a career that would allow me to learn and be curious as a part of my work, and librarianship really seemed the best fit. My introduction to rare books began at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and was cemented at Crystal Bridges, where I worked to catalog Bill Reese’s American color plate book collection. I came to bibliography later in my career, when my former colleague Jamie Cumby taught me the fundamentals of collation.
What part of your job do you like best?
Conceptually I like the professional norms we have around access, privacy, and our broad commitment to, well, sharing. Special collections libraries take things that are expensive and precious and make them accessible and (almost) free.
On the micro level, using bibliographical and other tools to help folks learn more about the physical aspects of the items in Spencer’s collections and either use those descriptions in their own work or decide to come and use the item in person.
I also really enjoy writing. There’s some great stuff in the works for publication, and I am so pleased that I can do that as a normal part of my job.
What do you have on your desk?
There are some things I keep at my desk I feel like are worthy of sharing here. First, this broadside printed at Firefly Press – an adaptation of Beatrice Warde’s famous lines about a printing office.
Jason’s office broadside. Click image to enlarge.
I also have this retablo of St. Jerome at my desk. A retablo is a two dimensional image of a saint painted by a santero, a maker of this uniquely New Mexican form of folk art. My friend Dr. Charles M. Carrillo made this image of Saint Jerome (a patron saint of librarians and archivists) to watch over me while I work, which he does!
Jason’s retablo of St. Jerome. Click image to enlarge.
I also keep a book snake on my desk that’s been with me for 15 years. One of my colleagues at the Carter, Maryjane Harbison, made this book snake for me. It’s here with mementos from other workplaces and such: a piece of the Kimbell’s travertine, the box “original staff” at Crystal Bridges were given at opening, and medallions from the Linda Hall Library and Southwestern University.
Items from Jason’s desk. Click image to enlarge.
What is one of the most interesting items you’ve come across in Spencer’s collections?
Below is the title page of the Spencer copy of Newton’s Principia Mathematica, which was a focus of some of my scholarship a few years ago. When I look closely at the book, two things are interesting to me: it has the “two line” imprint statement on the title page, not mentioning a distributor, which is the first state of the title page, and uncancelled.
The title page of Spencer’s copy of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, 1687. Call Number: Pryce D4. Click image to enlarge.
There’s another item which tells us more about this copy: the diagram on page 112 is printed upside down. Other copies of the book have this corrected with a cancel leaf. We can surmise that the Spencer copy is perhaps an early state of the S issue of the book, especially given the rarity of the uncancelled page 112, as noted by Henry Macomber in his census!
Page 112 in Spencer’s copy of Newton’s Principia, 1687. Note the upside down diagram. Call Number: Pryce D4. Click image to enlarge.
What are some of your favorite pastimes outside of work?
As I mentioned above, I collect art (and books, but isn’t that cliché?) – specifically the santero art I talked about, but also katsinasand photography. Photography is my hobby; my grandfather taught me photography as a teenager and it’s a passion we share with my youngest brother.
My reading interests are varied, but there are three mystery series I adore: Tony and Anne Hillerman’s Chee and Leaphorn novels, the Inspector Montalbano books by Andrea Camilleri, and the Bernie Gunter books by Philip Kerr.
I adore classical music, specifically of Bach and Philip Glass. I also serve on the board of Summerfest, so classical music is one of my favorite things.
I also do some very informal bookish writing with my good friend Rhiannon Knol. We write a bibliography and books focused newsletter called Half Sheets to the Wind.
Tadalafilo – principio activo
El medicamento original es “Cialis” (Eli Lilly).
Fue desarrollado por los estadounidenses, y lo inventaron en primer lugar para competir con el único rival existente en ese momento: el sildenafilo, la conocida Viagra de la compañía Pfizer.
Sí, el tadalafilo nació en una lucha competitiva por el mercado. Su principal diferencia para el paciente común respecto al sildenafilo consiste en que el tadalafilo tiene una duración de acción más prolongada —de veinticuatro a cuarenta horas— y además comienza a actuar más rápido, ya a los quince minutos después de la toma. A diferencia del sildenafilo, que empieza a actuar, en el mejor de los casos, a la media hora.
¿Por qué entonces no pasarse todos al tadalafilo y dejar al sildenafilo fuera del mercado, si “no es tan bueno”? Pues porque, en igualdad de condiciones, el tadalafilo resulta bastante más caro. Así que haga su elección según las posibilidades de su bolsillo y las tareas que quiera resolver: una acción romántica puntual o un tratamiento prolongado.
Eficacia del tadalafilo
El tadalafilo es uno de los medicamentos más eficaces para el tratamiento de los trastornos de la erección, es decir, la incapacidad repetida o persistente de lograr y mantener una erección suficiente para una relación sexual satisfactoria.
Así que, si una sola vez “no funcionó” o “se perdió”, no es motivo para correr a la farmacia a comprar tadalafilo, sino más bien para descansar o tomarse unas vacaciones.
Causas de la disfunción eréctil
Las causas de la disfunción eréctil pueden ser variadas:
Problemas vasculares u hormonales
Efectos de medicamentos
Traumatismos (incluso deportivos)
Factores psicológicos
Pero sepa que todo esto se puede superar y tratar.
En cualquier caso, recuerde: los eficaces son los medicamentos, no los complementos alimenticios. Los suplementos (BAA) no se recomiendan para tratar la disfunción eréctil. Aunque el tadalafilo sea un medicamento de prescripción, en la práctica casi nunca se exige receta. Esto fomenta la automedicación y, debido a su alto precio, la venta del medicamento genera buenas ganancias a las farmacias. Por eso, como alternativa más económica, muchos compran el genérico del Cialis
Tadalafilo con comida y alcohol
Si su objetivo no es el tratamiento de la disfunción eréctil, sino simplemente una velada romántica, tome tadalafilo no más tarde de 15 minutos antes del acto sexual en dosis de 5 mg, o 20 mg si planea toda la noche.
El tadalafilo se toma por vía oral independientemente de las comidas, con medio vaso de agua a temperatura ambiente. La comida grasa no reduce su eficacia. En cambio, el zumo de pomelo aumenta la concentración del fármaco en la sangre, así que un vaso de zumo recién exprimido viene muy bien.
El tadalafilo se puede tomar junto con alcohol —esto no interfiere en su acción—, pero no se recomienda tragar la pastilla con alcohol, té o café.
El tadalafilo no causa dependencia
Ni en tratamientos cortos ni en tratamientos largos el tadalafilo provoca adicción.
Si se toma para tratar la disfunción eréctil con actividad sexual frecuente (2–3 veces por semana), se recomienda 5 mg una vez al día, siempre a la misma hora.
Si la actividad sexual es poco frecuente (menos de 2 veces por semana), se recomienda 20 mg unos 15 minutos antes del acto sexual.
No se debe tomar más de 20 mg, y la edad no influye —incluso después de los 65 años no se requiere ajustar la dosis.
Duración del tratamiento
La duración del tratamiento debe determinarla el médico. Puede ser de un mes o de varios años.
Interacciones con otros medicamentos
Con antibióticos (Claritromicina, Eritromicina), el tadalafilo no presenta conflicto, incluso aumenta la concentración del fármaco.
Con antiácidos (Rennie, Almagel, Maalox), la absorción es más lenta, y el efecto aparece más tarde (hasta una hora).
¡Con nitratos (Nitroglicerina y otros) está estrictamente prohibido! La combinación puede provocar una caída crítica de la presión arterial.
Con anticoagulantes (Warfarina, Xarelto, Aspirina) —se puede.
Con medicamentos para la próstata: con Tamsulosina —se puede; con Doxazosina —no (causa una caída brusca de la presión).
Conclusiones
¿Vale la pena tomar tadalafilo?
Sí, es un medicamento eficaz, que no provoca dependencia ni siquiera en tratamientos prolongados.
No afecta a la espermatogénesis y tiene un mínimo de efectos secundarios.
En mujeres no tiene utilidad: no potencia el orgasmo femenino, a pesar de los mitos publicitarios.
En hombres, el efecto aparece a los 15 minutos y dura hasta 40 horas.
Los especialistas recomiendan el tadalafilo en casos de prostatitis crónica: mejora la microcirculación y elimina la congestión de la próstata.
La principal ventaja es su acción prolongada, que permite mantener la espontaneidad y el romanticismo en las relaciones sexuales.
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
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.
Ah, the highs and lows of 2024. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster over the past year for the manuscripts processing team here at Spencer with changes in leadership, new digital workflows, and university-wide events like the Watson Library centennial celebrations. Last year we “got out of the basement” and worked more closely with faculty members and staff across campus on larger, multi-year processing projects and adding to existing collections. One of the most fulfilling parts of archival processing work is directly working with history to shape how we see the past long into the future. Entering 2025, the manuscripts processing team has many exciting collections in the works that we cannot wait to share with you all. In the meantime, here are the new finding aids published in 2024!
A photograph of Kansas-based powerlifter Nate Foster in a competition. Foster was active from the late 1970s into the mid-1980s, and he also coached the U. S. Women’s Powerlifting Team at the World Championships in Hawaii in 1981. Nate Foster Papers. Call Number: RH MS 1601. Click image to enlarge.
Pastel sketch of houses on the San Francisco hills by Kansas native Barbara Burghart-Perreault, 1967. Barbara Burghart-Perreault Collection. Call Number: RH MS R544. Click image to enlarge.
A mug listing local Lawrence businesses supporting liquor-by-the-drink legislation, 1986. The proposed legislation removed a food purchase requirement at restaurants to buy alcohol. Vote for Liquor-By-The-Drink Mug Collection. Call Number: RH MS 1607. Click image to enlarge.
A political candidate’s policy plan from a national election in Costa Rica, 2010. Political Ephemera from National Elections in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama. Call Number: MS 384. Click image to enlarge.
Character notes and a performance booklet for The Last of the True Scholars by Angela V. Woodhull. The University of the Kansas Theatre Department performed the play on October 26-31, 1984. Personal Papers of Angela V. Woodhull. Call Number: PP 659. Click image to enlarge.
