Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Archival collections do not always have a great deal of visual appeal—correspondence, diaries, reports, completed forms, memos, and other related record types may or may not include sketches, images, and other detritus that catches the eye when first opening a volume or folder.

But archival collections frequently contain photographs, ephemera, objects, and other items that do have visual appeal. In the last six months of 2019, Spencer Research Library staff completed processing a wide variety of archival collections, many of which have something to catch the eye as well as a great deal to research.

For example, Robert S. Lemon’s collection of photographs includes some lovely snapshots of Helen Spencer—funder of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library among many other projects on KU and elsewhere—and her husband Kenneth.

The United Farm Workers collection, part of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, includes this wooden pickers’ crate proudly displaying the Farm Workers’ stamp:

Edith Krull, a freelance art critic and journalist, reviewed and saw a wide variety of art exhibits in East Germany during the latter half of the twentieth century, presumably including this showing of Budapest-born artist Gabriella Billege:

Harold Orel’s 1941 “Books I Have Read” journal may not at first glance appear visually appealing, but his witty writing style makes for entertaining reading.

Please feel free to perform research in any of the newly processed collections listed below and see what catches your eye!

Banks family papers, 1921-2017 (RH MS 1488, RH MS-P 1488, RH MS R453)

Clyde Bysom collection, 1925-2015 (RH MS 1493, RH MS-P 1493, RH MS Q459)

Brent Campney research on racist violence against African Americans, 1863-2001 (bulk 1863-1920s) (RH MS 1492, RH MS Q458)

James B. English letters, 1968-1969 (RH MS 664)

Gilbert H. Finlay Order of Eastern Star scrapbook material, 1966-1989 (RH MS 1491)

Gerladine Mowbray-Arnett collection, 1908-2000 (RH MS 1489)

Hiat-Hett family genealogy collection, 1879 (RH MS P966)

Emmanuel Jones scrapbook, 1891-1947 (RH MS E210)

Henry C. Kollings photographs, 1906-1968 (RH PH 546, RH PH 546(f))

Robert S. Lemon photographs, 1920s-approximately 1944 (RH PH P2837)

Margaret Verhage collection, 1892-1951 (RH MS P967)

Mike Kautsch collection of William Allen White materials, majority of material found within 1929-1986 (RH MS 1494)

Ernesto Alvarado Garcia, 1939-1966 (MS 64, MS Qa26)

Jack E. Lorts collection of Larry Eigner correspondence and manuscripts, January 1960-February 26, 1962 (MS 352)

Bolton Company letters, 1695-1711 (MS 84)

Edith Krull collection, 1952-1990 (MS 345, MS Q77, MS Qa24, MS R20, MS S8)

Personal papers of Richard F. Johnston, 1962-1986 (PP 612)

Personal papers of Kala Stroup, 1959-2018 (PP 613)

Personal papers of Alton Thomas, 1948-1987 (PP 614)

Personal papers of John Walter Pozdro, 1940s-2000s (PP 616)

Personal papers of Harold Orel, 1941-2012 (PP 615)

Backus family newspapers collection, 1795-1870, 1889 (MS R24, MS Q85, MS Qa30, MS S12, MS P748)

A. Doyle Moore collection, 1967-1988 (MS 357, MS Q87)

Linda Kay Davis collection of Ed Sanders materials, 1967-2011 (MS 356, MS Q86)

Records of the Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity, 1966-2019 (RG 76/3, several CT call numbers)

John Coelln papers, 1961-1975 (RH WL MS 54)

United Farm Workers collection, 1966-1979 (RH WL MS 53, RH WL MS Q8)

Michael Zweig papers, 1964-1971 and undated (RH WL MS 55, RH WL MS Q9)

Sharon Feldman papers, 1963-1993 (RH WL MS 56, RH WL MS Q10)

George Cruse autograph album, 1901 (RH MS P968)

Hutchinson, KS Cyrus Cauldron souvenir photo book, approximately 1920s (RH PH P2838)

Dwight Eisenhower speaking at Abilene, June 22, 1945 (KC AV 90)

R.H. Gandiven and R. Hugoboom photographs, 1883-1884 (RH PH 547(f))

Barbara Hays Duke papers, 1909-2006, 2016 (RH MS 1495, RH MS-P 1495(f), RH MS Q462)

Peace Mennonite Church records, 1978-2018 (RH MS 1496)

Fred Six papers, 1929-2011 (RH MS 1506, RH MS Q467)

John Kessel papers, 1969-2019 (MS 358, MS Q88, MS Qa31, SC AV 25)

Personal papers of David Frayer, 1972-2012 (PP 619)

Marcella Huggard
Archives and Manuscripts Processing Coordinator

In case the summer heat and humidity is getting to you, here are the finding aids newly published to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library website in the last six months. Come do some research in the cool air conditioning!

1970 political campaigns collection, 1970 (RH MS 1453, RH MS R433)

Governor Mike Hayden’s family on Harvest Day slides, July 1983 (RH PH 534)

Lawrence Chamber of Commerce records, 1948-1986 (bulk 1968-1975) (RH MS 1454)

Lawrence Friends of Music records, 1967-2006 (RH MS 1463)

Cora Parker collection, approximately 1860-1940 (RH MS 1464, RH MS-P 1464(f))

GRIST records, 1963-1968 (MS 53)

Hill family papers, 1900-2005 (RH MS 1461, RH MS Q443, RH MS R438, RH MS-P 1461, RH MS-P 1461(f))

William A. Smith papers, 1931-1938 (RH MS 1465)

Fannie Dixon photograph album, 1923-1928 (RH PH 538)

Stephen Kellison family collection, 1893-1983 (RH MS 1471, RH MS G87, RH MS E208, RH MS EK7, RH MS Q456)

William Tuttle’s research and teaching in African American history and the history of racial violence in 20th century America, 1899-2016 (RH MS 1472, RH MF 193, KC AV 59, RH MS R442)

Bessie Wilson photographs, approximately 1920s-1960s (RH PH P2832, RH PH P2832(f))

Artificial Kansas-based photographs collection, approximately 1875-1984 (bulk 1900s-1910s) (RH PH 535, RH PH 535(f), RH PH 535(ff))

Andrew J. Haynes papers, 1866-1907 (RH MS E209)

Illustrated Cold War current events calendars, 1981-1991 (RH MS R441)

KU Athletic Director’s records, 1919-1943 (bulk 1920s-1930s) (RG 66/11/4)

Personal papers of Edward L. Meyen, 1962-2018 (PP 608, UA AV 7)

Personal papers of Elizabeth A. Schultz, 1897-2018 (bulk 1944-2018) (PP 606, UA AV 8)

Artificial portraits collection, approximately 1868-1986 (bulk 1900s-1960s)

Artificial non-Kansas based photographs collection, approximately 1867-1954 (bulk 1900s-1920s) (RH PH 539, RH PH 539(f), RH PH 539(ff))

William Maria Boedefeld architectural renderings, 1940s (RH AD 15)

Leonard Hollmann photograph collection, bulk 1850s-1920s, 1930-2015 (RH PH 536, RH PH 536(f), RH PH  536 glass negatives)

Old Windmill of West Lawrence, Kansas, drawing, January 21, 1904 (RH MS R445)

Letters of Orvis Hull, 1918 (RH MS P962)

Lawrence Woodwind Quintet records, 1970-2018 (RH MS 1475)

Trans World Airlines’ Hostess School photographs, 1938-1973 (RH PH 541, RH PH 541(f))

Ruth Bloom collection of Larry Eigner materials, 1953-1996 (MS 349, MS Q81)

Scrapbook concerning the assumption of Presidency of Paraguay by Andres Rodriguez, 1989 (MS Q79, MS R22)

Mexican recipes, early 19th century (MS 346)

Francisco Maria Nunez Monge papers, 1940, 1941 (MS 88)

Theodore Sturgeon’s A Way Home manuscript collection, 1946-1955 (MS 351, MS J37)

Katie Armitage papers, 1953-2017 (RH MS 1479, RH MS Q451, RH MS R447)

Ernst Ulmer collection, 1950 (RH MS R449)

Edith Falkenstien’s Menninger Bible Study course materials, 1941-1945 (RH MS 1483)

John C. Johnson papers, 1930s-1940s, 1975-2015 (bulk 1975-2015) (RH MS 1476)

Kansas Commission on Civil Rights film, approximately 1961 (KC AV 72)

John C. Morley architectural drawings, 1958-1985 (RH AD 14, RH MS Q447)

Rexford Scott Sorenson negatives collection, 1957-2009 (RH PH 537)

Norman York and The Invincibles: Interstate Troop of Corresponding Scouts letters, 1914-1916 (RH MS 1482)

Abraham Lincoln portrait, 1911 from an 1860 drawing (RH MS R446)

William E. Barnes collection, 1878-1910 (RH MS 1484)

Elmer and Viola McColm glass plate negative collection, 1900s-1920s? (RH PH 543)

Basketball team portraits, 1912-1917 (RH PH 542)

Personal papers of Shirley L. Patterson, 1950-2018 (PP 607)

Meade, Kansas, glass plate negatives, approximately 1920s (RH PH 544)

Film by Paul Hausman, approximately 1960s (KC AV 71)

Slides of Lawrence, Kansas, churches, approximately 1990s (RH PH P2833)

Lawrence, Kansas, photographs, 1909 (RH PH P2834)

William and Donna Mitchell family papers, 1945-1965 (RH MS 1487)

Dr. Wilda Smith collection of Peggy Hull biographical materials, 1914-1991 (RH MS 1485, RH MS-P 1485, RH MS Q453)

Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, eighth grade class snapshots, 1918 (RH PH P2836)

Katherine Goldsmith papers, 1825-1999 (RH MS 1093, RH MS 569, RH MS 1072, RH MS Q454, RH MS R452, RH MS R453, RH MS S62, KC AV 78)

Florence Harkrader Hastings photographs, 1915 (RH PH 545(f))

James H. Holmes letter, 1856 (RH MS P963)

Martha McCoy dental ledger, volume 1, 1899-1902 (RH MS P965)

Leo L. McKenzie Body Works photographs, approximately 1950s (RH PH P2835)

Papers of Gregory Corso, 1953-1979 (MS 138)

Papers of Jean Ingelow and Mackenzie Bell, 1870-1897 (MS 45, MS R8)

Photograph album of the funeral of Bernardo Soto Alfaro, 1931 (MS K35)

Personal papers of Chuck Berg, 1965-2016 (PP 609)

Personal papers of Ann Hyde, 1934-2008 (PP 610)

Personal papers of R. Keith Lawton, 1951-1982 (PP 611)

Marcella Huggard
Archives and Manuscripts Processing Coordinator

This is the fifteenth installment in a recurring series of posts introducing readers to the staff of Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Today’s profile features Vannis Jones, who joined Spencer’s processing unit in February as a manuscripts processor. Welcome, Vannis!

Where are you from?

I grew up in Kansas City, but I have spent my adult life in India, Scotland, and France until returning to the Kansas City area this January after graduating with my Master of Science (MSc) in Information Management and Preservation (a fancy way of saying archives and records management!) from the University of Glasgow this past November.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I play a crucial role in rendering collections both discoverable and accessible through physical and intellectual arrangement of materials, the identification of materials in need of preservation action, and the creation of finding aids, which are often a researcher’s first interaction with the Spencer and our collections.

What is one of the most interesting items you’ve come across in Spencer’s collections?

While every collection has its own unique surprises, three particular – and incredibly different – items in come to mind.

1. Among architectural drawings, specifications, and contracts in the collection of former state architect Charles Marshall is a series of typescript journals by Marshall that he titled “Quips and Observations.” They contain one- to five-line quips, quotes, and vignettes by Marshall that are generally witty in nature and that are drawn from his everyday activities – a trip to the movies, a visit to the bank, grocery shopping, a concert with his wife, etc. Given the generally serious nature of Marshall’s architectural materials, it was fun to get to know the man behind the drawings through these journals.
2. We hold a lot of scrapbooks at Spencer. Most scrapbooks are a jumble of largely undated and unlabeled newspaper clippings, photographs, ticket stubs, brief notes, and the like, that offer insight into an individual’s interests, but leave a lot up to a reader’s interpretation. An exceptionally unique scrapbook in a collection that I processed recently is one of KU Professor Emerita of English Elizabeth Schultz’s scrapbooks from her teenage years. Schultz’s scrapbook includes specific annotations for each individual object, including cigarette butts, extremely old flowers, a fake diamond ring, chocolate wrappers, a watch (yes, really, a whole wristwatch, glued to a scrapbook page), and more. Through these unconventional items and witty annotations, readers are able to understand Schultz’s thought process in compiling the scrapbook and gain a greater understanding of her playful and creative personality.
3. A Rosie O’Donnell Barbie doll, completely without context, among the papers of Kristi Parker, the late founder of The Liberty Press, Kansas’s first LGBTQ+ news magazine.

What part of your job do you like best?

I love the opportunity to collaborate and exchange ideas with people on my team working on other projects and with people in other departments like conservation. We really do get to learn something new every day!

What are some of your favorite pastimes outside of work?

I love traveling, exploring other cultures, eating new foods, cooking, weightlifting, and dancing. I also love a good walk and a snuggle with my two dogs, a cavalier King Charles spaniel and a westie, after a long day.

What piece of advice would you offer a researcher walking into Spencer Research Library for the first time?

Don’t be shy, tell us about your research! Our reference staff have excellent knowledge of our collections and can likely help you find materials that you may not come across by simply browsing our catalog, and that could greatly enhance your depth of understanding of your subject area. We’re here to help!

Vannis Jones
Manuscripts Processor

Sometimes archivists and special collections librarians “create” collections for their institutions by grouping together like items that came from different sources. We call these artificial collections, and we typically do this in order to make materials more physically manageable and/or more easily accessible to researchers.

From the 1980s through early 2000s, archivists in Spencer’s Kansas Collection , focusing on regional history, worked with dealers specializing in photography to purchase a wide variety of photographs of Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, and other surrounding states. These photographs display street scenes and aerial views of small towns; exterior (and sometimes interior) shots of churches, schools, courthouses, and other public buildings; interior and exterior shots of drugstores and other commercial buildings; residences; portraits of individuals and groups; rodeos, theatrical entertainments, and opera houses; and a wide variety of other subjects. Staff carefully chose these hundreds, even thousands, of images for their subject matter and content.

At that time, Kansas Collection staff had a practice of describing these images individually on paper worksheets, assigning each image its own call number, and placing the worksheets in notebooks for patrons and staff to access in the reading room. This practice became untenable over time, particularly as the library moved away from analog description to online finding aids, and hundreds of these images remained inaccessible in an unprocessed backlog.

In the past year, processing staff – in collaboration with curators and public services staff – developed a new workflow for managing these photographs through the creation of three artificial photographic collections: one for Kansas images, one for non-Kansas images, and one strictly for portraits (i.e. individuals typically formally posed in a photographic studio, rather than large groups at church or fraternal meetings, or athletic teams, or other images of people that could fit into a subject theme). These images are now described online in Spencer Research Library’s finding aid system and available for research.

The artificial Kansas collection of photographs includes images from across the state. It is organized by county and then by town or other political boundary within each county. These images are further categorized by subjects such as agriculture, education, recreation, social customs, etc.

Non-Kansas images are organized alphabetically by state and then simply by town or other political boundary. 

Portraits are organized either alphabetically by family name, if provided, or grouped by babies, children, men, women, and groups of people when individuals are unidentified.

Many of the images in these artificial collections are real photographic postcards, typically sent between 1900 and 1920; many of these same postcards have messages on the back. The artificial collections also include mounted prints, glass plate negatives, cabinet cards, cartes de visite, and other photographic formats and processes.

When a photographic collection comes from a singular donor, such as a photographic studio or collector of photographs or a local family, these images will continue to be handled as separate and unique collections. The Kansas Collection has a rich and varied set of photographic collections; these artificial collections both supplement and complement what is available in other collections at Spencer Research Library and at other collecting institutions in Kansas and the surrounding states.

Please feel free to explore these newly processed collections!

Marcella Huggard
Archives and Manuscripts Processing Coordinator

There is a hashtag – #todayinthelab – that conservation and preservation professionals on social media attach to posts that allow followers to look over the conservator’s shoulder at what they are working on at the moment. My post today is in this vein, taking a look at and around my workbench to see the materials from Spencer’s collections that are currently awaiting or undergoing treatment. I hope to make this a semi-regular feature, since the supply of wonderful Spencer materials crossing my bench is constantly changing.

A few times a week, I will make the rounds of Spencer to collect items that have been identified as needing conservation treatment or assessment. Spencer staff will deposit fragile or damaged materials in a designated area, along with a slip on which they will note each item’s condition issue. Sometimes staff will email conservators with information about materials that need attention, or they will hand-deliver them to the lab. In any case, I record basic information about all items that come to my bench on a paper log. We have a number of spreadsheets and databases where we document our treatments, but for my day-to-day purposes, I love my low-tech list!

Behind my workbench I keep my brand-new but already-beloved green truck. It is rarely empty! Today its top shelf holds recently treated materials, beautifully boxed and labeled by our student employees, that I need to check off my log and return to either Processing or the stacks, as the case may be. Below are some materials I am preparing for a small but delicate rehousing project – I am making flat, safe enclosures for a group of medieval parchment documents with large seals. After working out some logistics with the curators and manuscripts processing coordinator, I have begun to pre-cut and stage as many of the components as can be prepared ahead of time in order to streamline assembly of the enclosures.

There is so much to love about our new lab space, but I am especially fond of our big workbench cabinets. These feature shelves on the top half, and an assortment of shallow and deep drawers below. Most of the drawers in my cabinet hold supplies, but I keep two in reserve for materials that I am treating. I am in the midst of a months-long project to mitigate (old, not active!) mold on a large archival collection. As I treat each box, I am replacing the old boxes and folders, so I keep a stock of fresh folders available. The folders are sharing the drawer with a scrapbook (made by a KU student prior to her time at KU) that awaits treatment.

Next to my workbench I have a beautiful press table, with two spacious shelves below. These currently hold six boxes of material from the recently acquired John C. Tibbetts Portraits Collection. The gouache paintings in this collection had been matted and framed, and I have been working to remove the mats prior to processing. I have just about completed the work on this third phase of the acquisition and look forward to having clear shelves again, if only until the next treatment comes along.

Finally, here are the upper shelves of my cabinet. Among the materials currently under my care, there are items from Special Collections (rare books, artists’ books, parchment manuscript documents), Kansas Collection (a Socialist newspaper from the Wilcox collection, a rolled and torn certificate), and University Archives (so many student scrapbooks!). There are also a few enclosure models that I’ve been working on (I’m in the process of writing up instructions for an enclosure I’ve modified, so that I can share it with other conservators), as well as diagrams and notes on other enclosures that I haven’t made often enough to have memorized yet.

Thank you for visiting my workbench!

Angela M. Andres
Assistant Conservator for Special Collections