Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Although the nation’s color line continued to systematically exclude African Americans from equal access to employment, education, and housing, this segment of the Greatest Generation refused to give up on pushing for a double victory (“Double V”):  for democracy at home and abroad.

How did African American members of the Greatest Generation experience life on the domestic front and in the military during World War II?  

The University of Kansas Libraries is seeking to provide answers to this question by recording stories from the Kansas region’s African American men and women. These memories of family, community and/or military experiences during World War II are an integral part of the legacy of the Greatest Generation.

Top: Charles S. Scott, Sr. with a group of soldiers, circa 1940s. Charles S. Scott Papers. Call Number: MS P-1145, Box 1, Folder 9. Bottom: Sgt. Thaddeus A. Whayne, circa 1943. Whayne Family Papers. Call number: RH MS-P 905, Box 1, Folder 1; Anna Woods, June 1942. Afro-American Clubwomen Project Collection. Call number: RH MS-P 705, Box 2, Folder 5. Click images to enlarge.

Sponsored in part by the Sandra Gautt KU Endowment Fund, which Professor Gautt established to honor her father, Sgt. Thaddeus A. Whayne (a member of the Tuskegee Airmen unit), this World War II oral history project is part of the ongoing effort of the African American Experience Collections to document life in the Kansas region.

If you would like to have your story recorded for future generations to know and better understand the past, please contact:

Deborah Dandridge

ddandrid@ku.edu

Phone: 785.864.2028

Top: Tuskegee Airmen, Motion Field. Ross Merrill Photograph Collection. Call Number: RH MS-P P588, Box 1, Folders 3-4. Bottom: Frederick C. Temple sitting for his Oral History Interview, October 3, 2010.

Deborah Dandridge
Field Archivist, African American Collections, Kansas Collection

Each June 16th, fans of James Joyce’s Ulysses celebrate “Bloomsday” in commemoration of the day on which the novel is set.  The annual fête (often marked by marathon readings) takes its name from the modernist classic’s central character, Leopold Bloom.

Though the novel belongs primarily to Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, or (in the last episode) Molly Bloom, it is another character who graces its famous first sentence: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”

First page of the first episode of Ulysses by James Joyce. Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922.
Call Number: Joyce Y116. Click image to enlarge.

Buck Mulligan, the flippant friend of Stephen Dedalus, was in part modeled after a friend from Joyce’s younger days, Oliver St. John Gogarty.  According to Joyce’s biographer, Richard Ellmann, the two young men met at the National Library of Ireland when Joyce was approximately twenty.  Both had medical aspirations and wrote poetry, though only Gogarty would go on to become a doctor.   While Gogarty admired Joyce’s writing, Joyce was less enthusiastic about his new friend’s, which he felt lacked weight and depth.  Joyce did, however, appreciate the satire and bawdiness of Gogarty’s more humorous poems, and he incorporated this into Mulligan’s verse in Ulysses.

Perhaps somewhat to his chagrin, Joyce found himself in Gogarty’s company in his first book appearance. Both men had poems titled “Two Songs” published in the annual anthology The Venture (1905). By this time, Joyce and Gogarty had already fallen out.  Ellmann notes that from the outset the friendship between the two would-be writers was also a rivalry. The character of Buck Mulligan in Ulysses is entertaining in his wit and pleasure-seeking, but he is also depicted as insensitive and disloyal.

Which young writer’s poems are more to your taste?: “Two Songs” by James Joyce and “Two Songs” by Oliver
St. John Gogarty from The Venture; An Annual of Art and Literature. London: John Baillie, 1905, p. 92, p. 138.
Call Number: Joyce Y243. Click images to enlarge and read poems.

Readers curious to investigate Gogarty through his own words will find plenty to peruse in Spencer’s collections. Gogarty published verse, plays, novels, and memoirs. His book, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street: A Phantasy in Fact (1937), offers depictions of writers he knew, including Joyce, Yeats, and George Moore, as well as the politicians with whom he associated, such as Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins (Gogarty performed the autopsies on both of these men and subsequently served as a Free State senator).

For those eager to delve into Gogarty’s more obscure writings, Spencer Research Library holds a copy of his play Blight the Tragedy of Dublin: An Exposition in 3 Acts (1917), published under the pseudonym “Alpha and Omega.” Even scarcer is Gogarty’s eight-page pamphlet, “A Suggested Operation for Turbinal Catarrh” (1921), which provides insight into his work as a doctor.

“A Suggested Operation for Turbinal Catarrh” by Oliver St. John Gogarty. Dublin: pr. for the author, 1921.
Call Number: C3118. Click image to enlarge.

Since this medical pamphlet is indeed rare (the only other copy recorded in WorldCat is housed at the National Library of Ireland) we’ve scanned it and posted it in its entirety here.  So this is what “Buck Mulligan” was up to when he wasn’t composing ribald rhymes!

Signature of Oliver St. John Gogarty, taken from a letter to P. S. O’Hegarty,
17 September, 1924. Call Number: MS P415:1a.

Searching for more Bloomsday fun?  For a list of Ulysses “firsts,” check out last year’s Bloomsday post.

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

Finding aids are inventories that help researchers navigate collections of manuscripts, organizational records, personal papers, and photographs. Please scroll down for a list of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s newest finding aids and then visit the library and explore!

Newly inventoried! A still from The Cheat (1915), part of a sizable collection of Movie Stills, 1895-1998, amassed by KU Professor of Film & Media Studies John C. Tibbetts. Call Number: MS 297, Box 1, Folder 72

• Aldiss, Brian Wilson, 1925-. Papers of Brian Wilson Aldiss, 1978-1984. (MS 214, MS Q15:5, MS R4, MS Gal 1-6)

• Antisell, Thomas, 1817-1893. Notes and Annotations in 1859 Edition of The Manufacture of Photogenic or Hydro-carbon Oils, [1860?]-1880.  (MS C79, MS 306)

• Clark, John Garretson, 1932-. Personal Papers of John G. Clark, 1900-2000. (PP 399)

• Coster, Henry J. de. Account Book of Henry J. de Coster, 1790-1802. (MS B8, MS MS P732)

• “Cousin Sallie.” Letter of “Cousin Sallie,” 1860. (RH MS P900)

• Milford (Geary), Davis County, KS. Milford, Davis County, Kansas Letters, 1880. (RH MS P910)

• Thatcher, Myrtle E. Green, 1910?-. Thatcher Family Papers, 1926-2006. (RH MS 1250, RH MS-P 1250, RH MS-P 1250 (f), RH MS-P 1250 (ff), RH MS Q349, RH MS R316)

• Heigham, Charles William. Notes and annotations relating to the history of elections in the county of Suffolk, circa 1865. (MS P727)

• Robert Mills Literary Agency. Corporate Papers of the Robert Mills Literary Agency, 1948-1989. (MS 307).

• Multiplication Table from the 16th century used as a binding fragment, 15–. (MS P731)

• Parkin, Thomas, b. 1845. Papers of Thomas Parkin, 1853, 1909. (MS P728)

• Poole, William, 1830?-. Papers of Reverend William Poole, circa. 1868. (MS P729)

• Sinclair, Upton, 1878-1968. Upton Sinclair Literary Manuscript and Correspondence, 1914-1975. (MS 299)

• Tibbetts, John C. Collection of Movie Stills, 1895-1998. (MS 297, MS Q53)

• Townley, Lucy Isabel Jones, 1885-1917. Papers and photographs of Lucy Jones Townley, 1903-1918, 1932, 1972, 1980. (RH MS 1270, RH MS-P P1270, RH MS Q83)
  

• Notes on the Treaty of Paris (1763), after February 1763. (MS P730)

• Willmann, Gustav. Diploma of Gustav Willmann, 1909. (RH MS R304)

To search across all of Spencer’s finding aids, please click here.

We receive many rolled posters, maps, photographs, and other paper items in the conservation lab. Oftentimes the cataloger or processor hasn’t been able to open the item to determine what it is. For most of these items, humidification and flattenting is the standard treatment.

Image of a rolled photograph before dehumidification.

High humidity environments can be deleterious to paper if not closely monitored. However, sometimes we use humidity to our advantage: to relax rolled paper in order to flatten it. I often use the sink in the conservation lab to create a humidity chamber. On the bottom is the water. We use rubber stoppers with a layer of plastic eggcrate sheeting to make a platform above the water level. On top of that is a blotter paper to protect the collection item from the grid of the eggrate. The rolled item is placed on the blotter and the lid is put on the chamber.

Humidity chamber created in a sink.

I closely watch the rolled item to determine when I might begin to gently unroll it or when it’s ready to come out of the chamber. Especially for photographs, this step has to be done with utmost care.

Unrolling a humidified photograph.

Once it is completely unrolled or very relaxed, I remove the item from the chamber and press it between blotters and a spun polyester cloth called Hollytex, with a Plexiglas sheet and weight on top.

Finished photograph after humidification treatment.

Sometimes items aren’t 100% flat after treatment. In this case, the photograph is flat enough for a patron to use it, without overstressing the layers comprising the photograph.

Whitney Baker
Head, Conservation Services

For the last two years, I’ve had the joy of leading a tour for a group of very energetic library users, a group that will not need to create Aeon accounts, but does need to be reminded to use their walking feet. I’m talking about the Lawrence Community Nursery School, a cooperative preschool that has existed since the 1940s. In addition to being the school where my children attend(ed) preschool, LCNS has another special relationship with the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Like many community and civic organizations, the co-op gives their historical archives to the Kansas Collection. In fact, during the school’s last parent work day, I picked up a new accession of records that will soon be added to our collection (RH MS 616).

Students from the Lawrence Community Nursery School examine historic
photograph albums from the Kansas Collection.

It’s always exciting, when giving a tour of the building, to see what holds a particular group’s attention. This is even more the case when the group in question has an average age of 4.5 years old. This year, fewer children wanted to touch the 4000 year old clay tablets than to page through the photo albums to see what the playground used to look like. The horn books, which generally elicit audible squeals once their purpose is understood, seemed strangely uninteresting this time around. And, of course, the 100 Years of Jayhawks: 1912-2012 exhibit, complete with cardboard Jayhawks, was hard to compete with.

I always remind our visitors that the collections we hold are theirs to use. And in some cases, such as the many community groups with which we work to document their essential work, the collections would not be possible without them in the first place. Looking at the faces of these eager children as they examine photographs of their beloved school from decades past, it’s hard not to feel excited about the future of our mission.

Beth M. Whittaker
Assistant Dean for Distinctive Collections and Director of Kenneth Spencer Research Library