Welcome to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library blog! As the special collections and archives library at the University of Kansas, Spencer is home to remarkable and diverse collections of rare and unique items. Explore the blog to learn about the work we do and the materials we collect.
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!
A photograph of Kansas-based powerlifter Nate Foster in a competition. Foster was active from the late 1970s into the mid-1980s, and he also coached the U. S. Women’s Powerlifting Team at the World Championships in Hawaii in 1981. Nate Foster Papers. Call Number: RH MS 1601. Click image to enlarge.
Pastel sketch of houses on the San Francisco hills by Kansas native Barbara Burghart-Perreault, 1967. Barbara Burghart-Perreault Collection. Call Number: RH MS R544. Click image to enlarge.
A mug listing local Lawrence businesses supporting liquor-by-the-drink legislation, 1986. The proposed legislation removed a food purchase requirement at restaurants to buy alcohol. Vote for Liquor-By-The-Drink Mug Collection. Call Number: RH MS 1607. Click image to enlarge.
A political candidate’s policy plan from a national election in Costa Rica, 2010. Political Ephemera from National Elections in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama. Call Number: MS 384. Click image to enlarge.
Character notes and a performance booklet for The Last of the True Scholars by Angela V. Woodhull. The University of the Kansas Theatre Department performed the play on October 26-31, 1984. Personal Papers of Angela V. Woodhull. Call Number: PP 659. Click image to enlarge.
Henceforth, it’s 2024, and we’re back at it again! Over the past year, the manuscripts processing team has been hard at work describing and housing one-of-a-kind collections. As a processor, you never quite know what you’ll find when you first open a box of dusty old records, but it’s always sure to delight! (most of the time…) Last year, the processing team worked through collections across Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s four collecting areas: the Kansas Collection, the Wilcox Collection, University Archives, and Special Collections. We even had an opportunity to further showcase a few of our favorite collections, including a Reuter Organ Company exhibit, a remembrance of a former colleague, and an in-depth look at the 1970 police shooting of KU student Nick Rice. This year we’re all excited to continue the process of processing new collections and additions, but first, here’s a list of new finding aids the manuscripts processing team published in the last six months of 2023:
Production notes for a Reading Rainbow episode featuring Math Curse, a children’s book written by Joe Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith. The book was featured in the first episode of season 17 and originally aired on October 5, 1998. Take Ten, Inc. Records, Call Number: RH MS Q512. Click image to enlarge.
A 1923 watercolor painting created by M.H.A. Staring (1897-1929), a Dutch artist and ornithologist. The painting depicts the courtship display of three male ruffs, or calidris pugnax, towards one female ruff. Call Number: MS Q107. Click image to enlarge.
A photograph of a 1973 production of the popular kabuki play Kanjinchōby Namiki Gohei III. Kanjinchō was adapted from Ataka, a play in the noh theater style, and would later serve as the inspiration for Akira Kurosawa’s film The Men who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail. Personal Papers of Andrew Tsubaki. Call Number: PP 650. Click image to enlarge.
A print of the We All Live in Harrisburg collage created by R. Cenedella in 1979 as a response to the Three Mile Island accident that happened outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979. The collage used Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World with permission from the artist. Paul Schaefer Poster Collection. Call Number: RH WL MS R19. Click image to enlarge.
Folios from a 1150 A.H./1737 C.E. treatise containing two texts teaching and promoting the sport of archery. The texts are written in Persian in the Nasta’liq script, and the above folios feature a hand-drawn illustration of two bows with the names of various parts of the bows listed off to the side. Call Number: MS C33. Click image to enlarge.
Using a finding aid might not always be the most intuitive process. I know when I started working at Spencer, the finding aids were quite confusing to navigate. Even today, I am still learning new ways to utilize them in my research. Preliminarily, I would just say to dive right in. Things are not always going to make the most sense, but you won’t learn unless you try!
While this post isn’t meant to be a be-all, tell-all to using Spencer’s finding aids, I hope it can help provide some insights to make things easier. We want our collections to be easily and readily available to all our patrons.
So, first, you might ask: What is a finding aid? Well, it’s a document created by archivists that consolidates information about and describes the contents and context of an archival collection. Some information in a finding aid can also be found in the catalog record for an archival collection. A finding aid is typically longer than a catalog record because it includes additional information about a collection.
You might also be wondering: What materials are described in – and can be found by searching – Spencer’s finding aids? It tends to be things like manuscripts, scrapbooks, diaries, etc. Mostly, it is the things we house that are not printed books. However, just as some books are not cataloged, not all materials have a finding aid. Additionally, things can get tricky because no two finding aids are the same. Some collections are processed in greater detail than others, which can make searches easier yet also more complicated.
For the purpose of this blog post I am using the Diaries of Anna Johnson (Call Number: RH MS 1421) as my example collection. The collection is a standard, processed small collection. And, as I said, processing happens on many levels, and collections come in all sizes. This post is a small example of how to navigate the finding aids. So, let’s dive in!
The homepage for the Spencer finding aid website. Here you can perform searches, and you will also see (in the ribbon across the top of the screen) browsable lists of all processed collections; subjects and names you can search with; and a list of some of our digitized items. Click image to enlarge.
Searches
To begin your search, you need to identify some search terms. You can start out as vague or specific as you like, depending on your topic. For some collections, you might have to get a little creative. To find my example collection I typed “diaries” into the search bar. As you can see in the screenshot below, that search returned 1024 results, and my collection is not one of the top few choices. A short scroll later and the Diaries of Anna Johnson are listed.
The main search screen, with top results for the search term “diaries,” on the Spencer finding aid website. Click image to enlarge.
Example aside, looking at the search screen, you can see that in the top right, you can sort the search results by title and year if desired. You can also filter results by an assortment of criteria to the right. Additionally, you can do a further search by using more search terms (and sometimes a year) in the box to the right. This is kind of like a search within a search. You can see in the following screenshot that I searched “Anna” within my original search for “diaries.”
An example of a search within a search on the Spencer finding aid website. Click image to enlarge.
Collection Pages
Now looking at the main or home page for a collection’s finding aid (see below), there is a lot of information given. The most notable information is the collection’s title, call number, and container inventories. How in-depth the collection has been processed determines the amount of other information provided. Some examples of information given on the collection’s main screen include an overview of the collection – a brief description of what the collection contains – as well the date range of the collection, information about the collection’s creator (including a biography, if available), and conditions governing access and use of the collection, which will note any restrictions. Keep in mind, this is not a complete list of all the information that may be provided on a collection page.
The main or home page for a Spencer collection’s finding aid. Click image to enlarge.
If you look to the right on the collection’s main page, you will once again see that you can search within the collection by search term or year. You will also see the collection organization sidebar, which gives general information on what materials are in the collection. Items of interest can be clicked on and will link you to that item’s page. Depending on the level of processing, there will be different information available. For my example, I clicked “1922-1923,” which took me to that diary’s own page. This is where researchers can find what box within the collection the item is housed, as well as which folder within the box. You can see that the diary from 1922-1923 is housed in Box 1, Folder 3. This information is crucial when researchers are creating Aeon requests for specific materials.
Page for the 1922-1923 diary in the Anna Johnson collection. Click image to enlarge.
It is worth noting that – while it can be important for researchers to know what folder number they are looking for – when items are pulled from the stacks, they are pulled at the box level. This means that the researcher will receive the entire box when visiting the Reading Room, even if they just want to view one folder within that box.
Container Inventories
If we go back to the collections main page, there is a tab at the top titled “Container Inventory.” This is another way to see what is within each box in the collection. If a collection has multiple call numbers, this page is also useful in determining which box and call number a researcher truly wants. For this example, I selected Box 3. At the top of the screen in the second image below, you will see the call number and box number. Then below, you will see what materials are included in that box and what folders they are in. I find this screen especially helpful with the more complex collections that house many different types of materials.
The container inventory for the Anna Johnson collection. Click image to enlarge.
The inventory for Box 3 in the Anna Johnson collection. Click image to enlarge.
As I said previously, these tips and tricks are not an in-depth look on how to use Spencer’s finding aids; they are simply to help you get started. Using finding aids for the first time can be a bit overwhelming, but the more you interact with them, the more neat features you will find. If you have any questions on navigating the finding aids, you are welcome to visit us in person or reach out to us at ksrlref@ku.edu. You can also check out our 2014 blog post “Finding Aids 101,” although it shows Spencer’s previous finding aid interface. Happy researching!
Have you figured out how call numbers at the Spencer Research Library work yet?
Here are a couple of clues for manuscript collections; see if you can apply them when you review this listing of the front half of 2023’s new finding aids!
PP = Personal Papers, which are typically collected by the University Archives
MS = manuscript (can be found in call numbers for textual materials in both the Kansas Collection and Special Collections)
PH = photograph (you will only see this call number designation in the Kansas Collection)
WL = Wilcox (historically, the Wilcox Collection has been associated with the Kansas Collection, so you’ll typically see “RH WL” together)
It’s a bit like a mathematical formula, if you combine parts of these call numbers. For example, “RH WL MS” means it’s a Wilcox manuscript collection.
Spencer Research Library also typically houses material by size, most often by height for volume call numbers. “A” volumes will be some of the smallest (typically measuring between ten and 15 cm tall), while “H” volumes are frequently stored flat because they are so large (usually over 45 cm tall).
Spencer also uses letters to designate other sizes of materials. A “P” in a call number means that it’s so thin and/or such a small amount of material it’s stored in a single folder or small number of folders, not enough to fill a box or stand upright on a shelf by itself.
So, for another call number formula example: “MS P” means it’s a Special Collections manuscript collection in a single or small number of folders.
Armed with this information, do you think you can figure out which collections belong to which collecting areas and what kind of housing they might have from our listing of newly processed collections?
The cover of (above) and two pages in (below) a Pinckney School Parent Teacher Association (PTA) scrapbook, 1947-1948. School librarian Janet Reeder re-compiled the scrapbook at a later point, adding to it with reminiscences and other documents sent in from students who had attended Pinckney that year. Pinckney School Scrapbooks. Call Number: RH MS Q500. Click images to enlarge.
One of several binding fragments removed from some of Spencer’s earliest published volumes, in this case Giovanni Sfortunati’s sixteenth-century Nuovo lume libro de arithmetica at Summerfield C990. Call Number: MS Q103. Click image to enlarge.
One of a small number of illustrations signed “Nicky Nichols.” They were presumably sketched and painted by Mary Evelyn Nichols Lee, a former University of Kansas student who later operated the Savoy Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. Personal Papers of Mary Evelyn Nichols Lee. Call Number: PP 645. Click image to enlarge.
Becoming the Ringle Conservation Intern has been an incredible learning experience both on its own and as an expansion of the work I have been fortunate enough to do during my two years as a student employee at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library Conservation Lab. Since September of 2022, I have assessed, lightly cleaned, and re-housed over 900 individual glass plate negatives, and at least 100 flexible negatives, taken by the George Cornish Studio (based in Arkansas City, Kansas) between 1890 and 1945. With the guidance of Marcella Huggard, Charissa Pincock, Whitney Baker, and Roberta Woodrick, I have contributed 833 entries to the ongoing finding aid that include the subject of the photo (if identifiable) and the condition of each plate. My hope is that, when the collection is complete with its partner collection (the Hannah Scott Collection), history and photo enthusiasts will be able to enjoy the wide range of portraiture, landscape, and urban life photography contained within the collection.
Creating a spreadsheet with information about the negatives in the Cornish Studio collection.
The Ringle project began with a massive shifting project. Roberta Woodrick, Grace Awbrey, Hannah Johnson, Rory Sweedler, Sarah Jane Dahms, and I moved the Cornish, Scott, and several other glass plate negative collections in advance of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) updates in the stacks. During this shifting, we saw how both age and the heat from the old furnace, located under the floor where the glass plates had been held, had affected the collections. There were clear indicators that re-housing these collections was necessary. On some glass plates there was flaking emulsion and discoloration, and some flexible negatives were experiencing “vinegar syndrome” (the strong smell of deteriorating acetate film) and leaving liquid residue on the shelves (from the chemical separation of the emulsion on the plastic).
Glass plate negatives from the Cornish Studio collection housed in boxes in the stacks.
Flaking emulsion on one glass plate negative in the Cornish Studio Collection.
The Cornish Studio was located in Arkansas City, Kansas, 8 miles north of Chilocco, Oklahoma, where the Chilocco Indian School operated, and about 200 miles southwest of Lawrence. The studio was opened by George Cornish in 1905 and was run jointly from 1912 onward by Cornish and his assistant Edith Berrouth (to whom he would leave the practice in 1946 after his death.) In 1993, attorney Otis Morrow, whose practice was in the building that had once been Cornish’s studio, donated the 8 boxes of glass plates, photo registrars, and even George Cornish’s autobiography of running the studio (called “My Life on Fifth Avenue”) to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. (More about the history of the collection can be found at the Collections Overview.)
Many of the glass plates in the Cornish collection have some degree of damage – they’ve existed through a wide range of temperature and humidity fluctuations – but at over 100 years old for many of them, they generally look remarkably good. The subjects in the photos are almost all visible, and the excitement on their faces in these century old photographs endures. It’s clear that the people who went to the Cornish Studio for their portraits, or for the portraits of their young children (babies make up a significant portion of the plates from the 1910s-20s), were happy to have the opportunity to have their photos taken. They couldn’t have known that their likeness would be preserved for longer than them, but I like to think it would make them happy to know their investment in a photograph might provide returns to scholars today.
Negative and reversed positive image of Letha Thomas and baby, circa 1919, Cornish Studio Collection.
Before me, several Ringle interns worked on an impressive collection of projects over timespans of six weeks to three months. So far, I have been working with the Cornish Collection for nine months and will continue to do so for another two. Having almost a full year has been immensely valuable – each plate must be placed individually into a four-fold wrapper before being re-housed in boxes, and many plates between 1917 and 1930 have subjects that could be researched (which I did, especially when there might be the opportunity to identify the women in couples’ portraits who were usually identified as Mrs. (Man’s Name.)). Having now completed the 5 x 7 plates, I continue to work on the 8 x 10 plates which represent a shift from traditional studio portraiture and into street scenes in Ark City and the surrounding area. These images, and this collection, offer a valuable slice-of-life view of Southwest Kansas across a period of American history with rapid changes.
Cornish Studio ledgers that record information about some of the subjects featured on the negatives in the collection.
