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 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.

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

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!

Kansas Collection

Emanuel Haldeman-Julius letter, January 12, 1921 (RH MS P1006)

World War II era V-Mail form envelopes, circa 1942-1945 (RH MS P1007)

Nate Foster papers, 1977-1981 (RH MS 1601)

Barbara Burghart-Perreault collection, 1886-2020, bulk 1950-2010 (RH MS 1604 + other call numbers)

Quivira Lakes collection, 1981-2003 (RH MS 1605)

Vote for liquor-by-the-drink mug collection, 1986 (RH MS 1607)

Alvamar Estates collection, June 1, 1966-December 21, 1968 (RH MS 1608)

Floyd Schultz history, 1922-2011 (RH MS 1609)

Victoria Shinn collection, 1952-2000 (RH MS 1610 + other call numbers)

O’Sullivan family history, 1955-2018 (RH MS 1611)

Lawrence Free State High School calendars, 1997-1999 (RH MS S89)

Special Collections

Central American textile maps, approximately 1745-1897 (MS S16)

Real Sociedad Económica de Amanetes de la Patria de Guatemala collection, 1830-1883 (MS 110)

Hong Kong return to China newspaper collection, July 1997 (MS Qa51)

Political ephemera from national elections in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama, 2001-2010 (MS 384 + other call numbers)

Orsetti family papers, 1180-1874, bulk 1450-1820 (MS 131 + other call numbers)

River City Reunion audiovisual recordings, 1987, 1993, and February 1995 (SC AV 56 + other call numbers)

University Archives

Albert Bloch slides, 1906-1959 (PP 657)

Personal papers of Charles E. Skidmore Jr., 1949-1944 (PP 658)

Personal papers of Angela V. Woodhull, 1984 (PP 659)

Walter J. and Virginia H. Meserve family photographs, 1951-1953 (PP 660)

Personal papers of Arthur Davidson, 1927-1971 (PP 661)

Personal papers of Edward R. Canda, 1968-2023 (PP 662 + other call numbers)

Charissa Pincock
Archives and Manuscripts 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 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

The Rare Materials Cataloging Unit at Spencer Research Library describes primary source material across all of the Library’s collecting areas and makes them accessible via the KU Libraries online catalog. We work on a variety of materials from incunabula (books printed in Europe before 1501) to recently produced zines, and a whole lot in between! 

The Rare Materials Cataloging Unit documents work in a variety of ways. One way is through the measurement of linear feet, which is one foot or twelve inches. This measurement is used because books – and boxes of archival material – vary in size. Calculating linear feet often means measuring the width of the materials (in inches) as they take up physical space on shelves and then dividing by twelve. We use the “Guidelines for Standardized Holdings Counts and Measures for Archival Repositories and Special Collections Libraries” (PDF) – a professional standard from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association and the Society of American Archivists – as guidance for managing these counts.

Below are the linear feet equivalents of materials we have completed working on for each Spencer Research Library collecting area from roughly January 1, 2024 through June 30, 2024.

We’ve handled 2428 items during that time, amounting to a little over 176 linear feet (2112.65/12). You can picture this as a line of books stretching almost sixty yards down a football field. See the breakdown below:

Collecting Area	Number of Items	Size (inches)
University Archives	62	98.6
Kansas Collection	614	446.3
Special Collections	1198	1355.85
Wilcox Collection	554	211.9
TOTALS	2428	2112.65

Of the backlogged materials (anything arriving prior to June 2022) cataloged in the first six months of 2024, the two longest-waiting items were El Hallazgo, purchased from Otero Muñoz in 1972 (Call Number: Griffith Q116), and Blätter der Rilke-Gesellschaft, no.1, 1972, purchased from the Schweizerisches Rilke-Archiv in 1973 (Call Number: Rilke Y1113).

The heaviest item we’ve cataloged since June 2022 is the fine press photo book Antarctica, which was created by Pat and Rosemarie Keough to save the albatross (Call Number: H480).

Highlights for each collecting area include the following:

• For Special Collections: Carta executoria de hidalguía de Lazaro de Adarve, 1570 (Call Number: MS E289), an early modern manuscript that arrived with a detached lead seal.
• For University Archives: The Jayhawk: The Story of the University of Kansas’s Beloved Mascot, the 2023 book publication by our much-loved prior University Archivist, Becky Schulte (Call Number: GV691.U542 S35 2023).
• For the Kansas Collection: American Winds: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky (2024) by Sherri L. Smith, Spencer Research Library’s 2020 Alyce Hunley Wayne travel awardee (Call Number: RH C12791), and Head Jobs, Vol 1-5 (2022-2024), a serial zine publication by a local Lawrence, Kansas, zine-maker (Call Number: RH Ser C1591).
• For the Wilcox collection: Wonders of Nature (2023), an experimental sound recording (Call Number: WL AV10).

Jaime Groetsema Saifi
Special Collections Cataloging Coordinator