Kenneth Spencer Research Library

All Creeping Things: A History of Herpetological Illustration, Spencer Library’s newest exhibit, opened on May 14, 2015. Guided by Special Collections Librarian Karen Cook, students Megan Sims, Sydney Goldstein, and Ryan Ridder created and installed the exhibit for an exhibit planning and design course (MUSE 703). Whitney Baker, Head of Conservation Services at KU Libraries, Special Collections Librarian Sally Haines, and Caitlin Donnelly, Head of Public Services at Spencer, also assisted the students with their project.

The exhibit was developed in conjunction with the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles conference being held at the University of Kansas in July and features herpetological illustrations from seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century books in Spencer Library’s Special Collections. Spencer has put on a few iterations of a similar exhibit for previous conferences. Each student had a unique perspective on their experience creating the exhibit.

Ryan Ridder

“One of our goals was to be distinct from Slithy Toves [a previous exhibit, by Sally Haines] and to present images that viewers familiar with that exhibition, and associated book, might not see as often. We ended up repeating a few irresistible images – the giant salamander, Agassiz’s turtles, and the famous frontispiece to Rössel von Rosenhof’s frog volume – but everything else you see is different. We thought touching on embryological illustrations would give our exhibit another unique slant.”

Megan Sims and Ryan Ridder installing books in the cases. Click image to enlarge.

Sydney Goldstein

“I found this class to be both an overwhelming and an incredibly eye-opening experience. Coming from a graphic design background I’ve never gone through the steps of curating an exhibition or working off the computer. It was fun to rummage through a variety of books to select illustrations, figuring out how they will fit in the cases, selecting wall graphics, and working in a group. The most rewarding part was applying our vinyl title graphic ourselves. Overall, a great experience!”

Megan, Sydney, and Ryan hanging the vinyl title graphic.

Megan Sims

“I have installed many exhibits according to specific designs from clients, but this was my first experience selecting objects, designing signs and labels, and fabricating book mounts and wall graphics for an exhibit. Both the physical process and communication were challenging at times, but seeing the finished product was very rewarding. I’m excited for the conference members and the Lawrence community to see this exhibit!”

Ryan Ridder, Sydney Goldstein, Megan Sims, and curator Karen Cook. Click image to enlarge.

All Creeping Things is free and open to the public through August 2015.

Megan Sims
Museum Studies Graduate Student

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 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Monday is Memorial Day, so this week we’re sharing selected pages from the 1919 Jayhawker yearbook. The volume, the first published after the end of World War I, was called The Peace Edition and dedicated to “the memory of the Men of the University of Kansas who willingly served their government in its great crisis, even to the supreme sacrifice of life itself.” The yearbook included tributes to twenty-seven of the approximately 130 KU students and alumni who died in World War I. (This number included two female students, Lucy McLinden and Fay Friedberg, who died from influenza.) KU’s stadium and student union memorialize these men and women.

Selected pages from the 1919 Jayhawker yearbook.
William T. Fitzsimons was also the first United States Army officer killed in World War I.
More information about him is also available at the KU History website.
University Archives. Call Number: LD 2697 .J3 1919. Click images to enlarge.

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 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Congratulations to the Class of 2015! We wish each of you all the best in your future endeavors.

KU graduates walking down Mount Oread to Memorial Stadium, 1950s.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/17 1950s Negatives:
University General: Commencement (Photos). Click images to enlarge.

Author and former KU chemistry professor Robert Taft provides a wonderful description of the KU graduation tradition shown in these pictures in Across the Years on Mount Oread (1941):

For the graduate of recent years and for many spectators, no Commencement sight has been more impressive than the long line of graduates marching down over Mount Oread from Strong Hall to the Stadium in the glory of a June evening [or, now, a May afternoon] for the Baccalaureate and the Commencement exercises. This striking feature was initiated in the Commencement of 1924, and has – weather permitting – been carried out annually since that day. Many and bitter have been the tears of the girl graduates who have been denied this privilege by the vagaries of the weather, and even the prosaic and matter-of-fact males must have felt some twinge of regret, when the same favor was withheld (104).

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 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Good luck to all Jayhawks on their final projects and exams!

The student reading room in Old Fraser Hall, 1886. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 32/0 1886 Negatives: University of Kansas Libraries (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Students studying in Spooner Library, 1895. You can still see –
and sit at – some of those tables in Spencer’s North Gallery!
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 32/0 1895 Prints:
University of Kansas Libraries (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Studying at Watson Library, 1939. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 32/0 1939 Negatives: University of Kansas Libraries (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

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 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Since ancient times, the first day of May (May Day) has been marked in the northern hemisphere with spring festivals and celebrations. However, if you were a male underclassman at KU between 1891 and 1904, chances are you would have marked the day by participating in a large public brawl – the May Day or Maypole Scrap – with your fellow classmates.

Group gathered for the May Day Scrap, 1903.
Old Fraser Hall is seen on the right, with Old Blake in the background on the left.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/10 1903: Student Activities: May Day (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

The last May Day Scrap, 1904. Note the maypole in the background.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/10 1904: Student Activities: May Day (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Students – some seated and bound – at the May Day Scrap, 1904. Taking prisoners was a
feature of the event: “captives were tied and bound with whatever materials happened to be at hand:
rope, wire, even chains. Sometimes the prisoners were thrown into a hedge or rolled down a hill;
once they were even padlocked in a room in a Lawrence house.”
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 71/10 1904: Student Activities: May Day (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Spectators at the May Day Scrap, 1904. Although female students generally
kept to the sidelines during the skirmish, they also sometimes
aided their classmates. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/10 1904: Student Activities: May Day (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Scholar Henry J. Fortunato from KU’s Department of History describes the event this way in his article “Mayday Mayhem”:

In its early days, the Maypole Scrap regularly pitted alliances of sophomores and seniors or law students against a force of juniors and freshmen. Over time as it evolved into a KU tradition, the fighting was usually limited to freshmen and sophomores.

Typically, preparations for a confrontation began shortly after midnight on May 1 when a group of freshmen would assemble in the vicinity of present-day Fraser Hall and erect a tall maypole flying their class flag. They anchored the pole securely and often coated it with concoctions that might include such ingredients as tar, turpentine, lamp black, molasses, axle grease and barbed wire.

By morning, a mob of freshmen milling around the pole would taunt all passersby – students as well as professors – into tipping their hats as a sign of respect. Those who refused had to outrun their tormentors. If captured, these recalcitrant individuals were threatened with having their faces pressed into the grimy mixture on the maypole unless they made the appropriate obeisance. It was an offer that most chose not to refuse.

The real action began when the sophomores launched their attack. Their goal was to scatter the defending freshmen and pull down the maypole, generally within a set period of time. The resulting fray was usually a matter of pushing, shoving, tackling, and charging, but over the years, sophomore classes experimented with other more novel tactics.

More pictures of the May Day Scrap are available via Spencer’s digital collections.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

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