Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Since most of you are unable to attend the world premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens today in Los Angeles, I’ve selected a few Star Wars items from our Special Collections to hold you over until December 18^th. Thanks to the tireless efforts of University of Kansas Professor Emeritus James E. Gunn (former head of KU’s Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction) and others, Spencer Library houses an amazing collection of Science Fiction materials. So enjoy these images and come visit us to discover more treasures from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars Fan Club membership application form, one double-sided sheet. Papers of T.L. Sherred.
Call Number: MS 253. Click images to enlarge.

Movie still of Darth Vader and Boba Fett from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, 1980.
John Tibbetts Collection: Movie Stills. Call Number: MS 297. Click image to enlarge.

Star Wars Episode I: the Phantom Menace stills depicting Darth Maul and Queen Amidala, 1999.
John Tibbetts Collection: Hollywood Press Kits. Call Number: MS 292. Click image to enlarge.

Mindy Babarskis
Library Assistant

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 15,100 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Good luck to KU students as they wrap up the Fall 2015 semester today and take final exams next week!

Student asleep on a pile of journals in the Science Library, 1978. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 32/34 1978 Prints: University of Kansas Libraries: Anschutz (Science) Library (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 13,800 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Girls gym class, 1893. This is the only known photograph of the basement of
Old Snow Hall, where basketball was first played on campus. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 20/9 1893: School of Education: Health, Physical Education (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

This is the fifth installment in what will be a recurring series of posts introducing readers to the staff of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Joining us in October 2015, Marcella Huggard is Spencer’s newest team member; she’s the Manuscript Processing Coordinator.

Marcella Huggard working with materials in the beginning stages of being processed
in what is lovingly referred to as Smaug’s Cave.

Where are you from?

I grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana, which is what I like to call a suburb of a suburb of Chicago. Since then I’ve lived in Illinois, Colorado, and Kansas. My mom is from Topeka so I came to Kansas a lot as a kid for family reunions.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I’m in charge of coordinating the processing of the unpublished manuscript materials at Spencer. This includes personal papers, diaries, correspondence, business records, organizational records, and a wide variety of other materials that can be found in the personal papers of KU alumni and faculty, the Kansas Collection devoted to regional history mostly dating from 1854-onward, and the Special Collections.

Processing entails arranging and describing these collections of materials in order to make them more easily available to our researchers and to let our patrons know what we actually have. Often we receive collections in a fair amount of disarray, and we have to make order out of chaos—and describe that order—so that our patrons know what we have even before they come in our doors.

How did you come to work in special collections and archives?

I was in my junior year of college and trying to figure out what I wanted to do after college—I knew I didn’t want to teach, but I also wanted to use my history degree. My college’s career center helped me find an internship at a nearby historic house museum, and the following fall I got to do an internship at my college’s archives, among other duties transcribing the 1820s love letters of Eli Farnham, one of the college’s founders, and his future wife. After that kind of introduction to working with historical materials, I was hooked. I worked on my Masters at Colorado State University-Fort Collins, where I was able to concentrate both on museum studies and archives administration in order to broaden my career opportunities.

What is the strangest item you’ve come across in Spencer’s collections?

I haven’t yet gotten to dive too deeply into the collections here—I started working at Spencer in late October—but I did come across an accession document for an inkwell I have yet to track down. I was also just introduced to a mask worn by Moses Gunn in Titus Andronicus.

What part of your job do you like best?

I really enjoy solving problems, and processing archival materials is a series of problem-solving!

What are your favorite pastimes outside of work?

My husband and I love to ballroom dance (not that we’re any good, mind you). I also sing with the Lawrence Civic Choir and a small group of women called Heartland Harmony operating out of Topeka, and I really enjoy trying out new crockpot recipes.

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

The advice I offer to any researcher wherever I work that I think applies here at Spencer too is try to touch base with a Public Services staff member before you come—at least start looking at the catalog and finding aids so you have a good idea of what might be available for you to review. Letting our staff know you’re coming before you get here is always a great idea because they can give you lots of great information about what to expect when you arrive and can help you fill out your research requests, streamlining the process when you come to the library so you can dive right in!

Marcella Huggard
Archives and Manuscripts Processing Coordinator

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 11,400 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

The KU football team posing with turkeys, Wednesday, November 27, 1946.
The image was printed in the Kansas City Star.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 66/14 1946 Team Prints:
Athletic Department: Football (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

According to newspaper clippings in a University Archives Athletics Department scrapbook (volume 4, pages 36 and 42), the photograph shown above was taken when the Jayhawks stopped in Kansas City en route to play the University of Missouri in Columbia. The game was the final one of the season and a Thanksgiving Day showdown.

Players, coaches, and cheerleaders were guests of KU alumnus Bill Anthony, who was a member of the 1922 football squad. Anthony was inspired to host the event earlier in November when the Jayhawks defeated Oklahoma in dramatic fashion. According to one article,

Bill had for years taken the jibes of his employees, an astonishing number of them being Missourians, anent the impotencies of Jayhawker football teams.

The man had suffered in silence, waiting for that day when more encouraging reports would emanate from Mount Oread.

“I will do something nice for the first Kansas team that goes into this game against Missouri with at least an even chance,” he resolved.

And so to the home of each member of the squad he sent a turkey. But the stunt, if it had stopped there, would have lacked the flair Bill thought it needed and besides he wanted a picture of the boys holding his turkeys in front of his manufacturing company at 201 West Gregory.

It was arranged for the Jayhawkers to be taken from the Union Station this morning to the Anthony Manufacturing Company. Turkeys were unloaded and passed out one to a customer, the boys were lined up and a battery of cameramen loaded their instruments.

To make the scene even more realistic the Kansas cheerleaders, their cheeks made pink by the sharp wind, were brought into the picture.

The gridiron stalwarts seems to be a little out of their element as they stood first on one foot and then on the other while they clung desperately to the huge birds.

Quite a crowd of curious collected to witness the unveiling of Bill’s dream.

According to another article, “the live turkeys [were] only props for the photographers because the birds [that] grace[d] the tables of the footballers and their coaches [had] already been killed and oven-dressed; full-breasted turkeys, totaling 691 pounds of white and dark meat, [were] frozen and shipped to the boys at their Lawrence addresses.”

The event was deemed a “crowning success,” and all players and turkeys survived the ceremony without incident or injury. Moreover, KU won the game against Missouri the next day, 20-19, spoiling Homecoming for the Tigers and their fans. The Jayhawks finished the season 7-2-1.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants