Kenneth Spencer Research Library

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

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 series of posts introducing readers to student employees who make important contributions to the work of Spencer Research Library. Today’s profile features Public Services student assistant Kaitlynn McIntosh, who answered a few questions about her work at Spencer.

Please provide some brief biographical information about yourself.

My name is Kaitlynn and I am a second-year undergraduate art history major and education minor. I am on the track to be a part of the Accelerated Masters Program in hopes of graduating with my Bachelors in 2026 and my Masters in 2027. After completing my program I hope to work in a museum – possibly as a curator – or go on to be a college art history professor.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I am a student assistant in the Public Services area, meaning I interact with most of the people that come into the library. I check people into our Reading Room and gather materials for patrons that come in. I also gather materials for professors who would like to hold class inside the library. In my job I handle a lot of old materials and I find myself very lucky to do so. Whenever I am paging items I always find new things that I am interested in or would have never thought I would come across. That is my favorite part of my job at Spencer.

Why did you want to work at Spencer Research Library?

I wanted to work at Spencer because I believed it would give me some good practice for working in a museum one day. Though we are a library, we do have a gallery and exhibition space. I am also handling a lot of old and fragile materials, so this job has given me good practice in how certain items need to be handled and cared for.

What are you studying, and what do you hope to do in your future career? Has your work at Spencer changed how you look at your studies or your future career plans in any way?

I am studying art history in hopes of working in a museum setting. Since starting at Spencer I have opened up to more possible careers after graduating. I have my mind on the possibility of working in a library as a curator like some of the staff here at Spencer. I am intrigued by a lot of the work that they do, mainly that they are able to work with professors who hold class sessions here. Working at a library or museum on a college campus has never crossed my mind but by working here that new possibility has opened up to me. I love working with the public and I would love to continue that into my future career plans.

What piece of advice would you offer other students thinking about working at Spencer Research Library?

If you are wanting to work at Spencer I would say apply. There are other positions for student employees that aren’t just in Public Services. This includes University Archives and Conservation Services. It is a very fun environment and is a great job to have as a student because they are very flexible with your class schedule and are very willing to help you with anything at all.

Kaitlynn McIntosh
Public Services student assistant