Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Happy Halloween all you screechers, screamers, and hollerers! We’ve also been celebrating over here at Kenneth Spencer Research Library in the best we know how: combing the KU Libraries online catalog and finding what cursed history we can find. We asked our student workers to recommend their picks for items that best represent the spirit of Halloween. They went beyond the safety of the Reading Room and braved the stacks to bring us these unsettling tomes and relics, but not everything is what it seems. Here are a few of our favorites!

Our very first recommendation comes from the Centron Corporation, a film production company founded right here in Lawrence, Kansas. Perhaps best known for their work in educational films, the company also had a hand in the cult classic horror film Carnival of Souls. Elly Masteller found this lovely portrait in the Centron Corporation records collection. This cheerful gentleman was used in a film to help encourage literacy and creative writing among children. Remember kids, he can’t get you if your nose is in a book!

Kathryn Sauder sent in our next recommendation, another artifact, but this time from the Thomas Woodson Poor papers. Poor was an Olympic high jumper who competed for the University of Kansas from 1921 to 1925 and placed fourth in the high jump at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Poor is also known for his lifelong crusade in helping children receive the polio vaccine after the tragic death of his daughter, Melinda Sue, from polio. One of the toys he used to do so was this monkey puppet, and while the puppet may look demonic, it helped save lives! Absolutely heartwarming, not chilling, but perhaps maybe do not look into its eyes for too long.

Literary giant Samuel Taylor Coleridge brings us our next spooky item, recommended by Nile Russo: a copy of The Devil’s Walk, or alternatively titled The Devil’s Thoughts. The Devil cuts a dapper shape as he gets himself dressed in his Sunday’s best for a walk around the town. In this poem, the Devil offers commentary about passersby, questioning perhaps if mankind might be the scariest creature of all.

Molly Leonard recommended perhaps the most soul-wrenching item among our recommendations this year: a copy of Historie des diables de Loudun. This is a book about the Loudun possessions, a piece of history about an Ursuline convent being taken over by unusual behavior and visions attributed to demonic possession. In the end, through the intervention of Cardinal Richelieu, a local priest and decrier of Richelieu’s policies named Urbain Grandier was tried and executed for witchcraft in connection with the possessions. Again, and we can’t reiterate this enough, mankind might just be the scariest monster of all.

And finally, Ian Strasma reminds us that Halloween isn’t only about creepy clowns, puppets and possessions, and dashingly dressed demons with this recommendation: a black cat found lurking in the Ronald Johnson collection (literary estate papers). The cat may be cute, but be careful that you do not cross him!

Best of luck out there as you begin finishing up semester and don’t be afraid to check out the many – completely safe, we promise – collections here at Kenneth Spencer Research Library!

Charissa Pincock
Processing Archivist

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 Claire Cox, who answered a few questions about the projects she works on at Spencer.

Please provide some brief biographical information about yourself.

I am an Accelerated M.A. student in the history department. This is my third year at KU, but my first year as a graduate student. As an undergraduate, I spent my first two years at Johnson County Community College before transferring to KU and earning my B.A. in May 2023. I majored in history with a minor in global and international studies. I started working at Spencer Research Library in August 2022.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I am a public services employee. My job tasks include retrieving and re-shelving materials from the stacks, sitting at the reception and reference desks, and assisting researchers in the Reading Room. Occasionally I work on a shifting project in the stacks. I also get the opportunity to curate temporary exhibits located in our North Gallery.

What part of your job do you like best?

I really enjoy working in the stacks. Whether retrieving or re-shelving materials, I am usually handling new items that I have never seen before. Not only does this help me get to know the collections better, but it is also really fun and interesting. The Kansas Collection is my favorite part of Spencer. I am constantly looking at old books related to the Kansas environment from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I also like working with the patrons that come into the Reading Room, and I love hearing about their research interests/projects.

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

I study environmental history of the Great Plains in the twentieth century. I look forward to continuing my research on the relationship between Indigenous peoples, rural communities, and the environment by further examining the process of artificial lake-building in the region. As an undergraduate, I studied the construction of Clinton Lake near Lawrence. I plan to build upon this research throughout the upcoming year. As an employee at Spencer Research Library, I have learned a lot about how a special collections library works from behind the scenes. This knowledge informs how I conduct my own research, and I feel more confident when visiting other research institutions or archives. I have also found a lot of very useful material in the Kansas Collection about Clinton Lake, which I used for my undergraduate thesis project.

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

I highly recommend working at Spencer. There are so many different opportunities for students to find a position that suits their own interests. Contrary to the stereotypical library job, working at Spencer never gets boring! Every day comes with new and exciting challenges.

Claire Cox
Public Services student assistant

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 Conservation Services student assistant Sarah Jane Dahms, who answered a few questions about the projects she works on at Spencer.

What is your role?

Here at the Spencer, I work in the Conservation Department. We work in a lab setting to stabilize and repair books and materials throughout the KU library system. As a student I work with materials that are in circulation. I do anything from stapling music pamphlets into pamphlet binders, securing dust jackets within archival plastic covers, and housing delicate books and materials in custom boxes to mending and rebinding books. It is a job full of conversation, collaboration, and problem solving. Each item has its own needs and desires, and it is our job to pay attention to the material and work with it, instead of overcorrecting or forcing a repair. No two days in the lab are the same.  

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

I recently graduated this Spring with degrees in both English and Visual Arts. Working in the Conservation Lab gives me a unique space to combine both aspects of my study. Here, I constantly work with books, but I have an opportunity to get to know the materials creatively. Over the course of a few minutes to several hours, I collect clues about the history of the material to create a repair that supports the overall environment of the material. If I do my job well, then my repair should exist within the same world as the original did. Working here has honed my creative hand skills. We work on multistep processes where a millimeter makes all the difference, but we have the chance to create things that are aesthetically pleasing. Because of my experience here, and my time studying for a book arts certificate at KU, I will continue combining English and Art in a Master of Fine Arts this fall. Through the University of Alabama, I will study book arts in their Library and Information Sciences Department. This path was entirely inspired and supported by my time at the Spencer over the last two years. Through repairing and rebinding books, I have completely fallen in love with book structures and creation. I am honored to continue creating books artistically and focusing on their quality and longevity.  

What part of your job do you like best? 

One of the most important factors of my job is flexibility. Yes, our schedules are largely flexible, but the position itself allows for each student to shape the role. Over the course of the first six months every Conservation Student learns around fifteen multi-step treatments. These treatments range on a scale of technical hand skill and creative potential. Every student who comes through the lab falls in love with one, if not several of these creative processes. We each do all treatments, but many of us specialize in one or two of these areas. Because of this flexibility, students from all areas of campus thrive in the work environment. It allows us all a space to shape our job, and to get to know other students with different backgrounds and skills from our own. Separately from this day-to-day flexibility, we often work on long-term projects as a group. Sometimes the projects last weeks or months, as we move collections around the library. These projects give us time to explore the library and walk amongst hundreds of unique books and materials.  

Sarah Jane Dahms
Conservation Services student assistant

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 student assistant Jenna Bellemere, who is the Cataloging and Archival Processing Department’s G. Baley Price Fellow this year. This is a student assistant position for undergraduate or graduate students interested in pursuing a career in archives and special collections or a career in which research in archives and special collections will play a prominent role. The fellowship is designed to give students hands-on experience organizing, cataloging, and preserving Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s materials and making them accessible to others. Jenna answered a few questions about the projects she works on at Spencer. Some editorial or clarifying comments from Spencer staff are [in brackets].

Please provide some brief biographical information about yourself.

I’m a junior at KU, majoring in Anthropology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. I started working at Spencer in February 2022.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I’m working on updating our inventory of the University Archives, which means I spend a lot of time going through the documents we have in storage here and making sure that they’re all accounted for in our database [ArchivesSpace, our collection management system]. It’s been several years since the last update, which means there are a lot of new records in the archives that haven’t been fully catalogued yet. It’s my job to go through those records and write down all the important information about them so that researchers and the public can come to the Spencer and access them. I also write parts of the historical notes and finding aids summarizing our collections’ history and their contents.

Why did you want to work at Spencer Research Library?

In fall of 2021, I knew I wanted to get a job somewhere on campus, but I wasn’t sure where. I was looking for a job in one of the libraries on campus because I love to read and I wanted to work around books, and I stumbled across the posting from the Spencer. It wasn’t exactly what I had started out looking for, but I thought it looked interesting, so I applied. I’m interested in history, and the idea of getting to work directly with primary sources was interesting to me, so I felt confident it would be a good fit if I got the job.

What has been most interesting to you about your work?

When I have to explain to my friends why I think my job is so interesting, there’s one story I always tell them. It might be a little morbid, but it’s also a great demonstration of why I find archival work rewarding.

I was sorting through a fairly big series of faculty records [probably a series in the Faculty and Staff record group] and looking at some of the documents in more detail to get a better idea of what types of records researchers might expect to find there. Because I hadn’t been working at the archives for very long at that point, I was taking it pretty slow, and I remember pulling out one folder of records that had been kept by a professor during her time at KU. The first document was a typewritten rough draft of a speech she was planning to give, with revisions in notes scribbled in the margins in pencil. The second document was a handwritten note from her friends thanking her for helping them move into their new house. The third document was her obituary. Each paper was presented the same way: loose in the folder, with no extraneous labels or documentation. Completely matter of fact.

I think this memory epitomizes why I love places like the Spencer. The documents I found that day originated years apart from each other – decades of someone’s life, captured in the notes and paper scraps that she may have completely forgotten she had. We tend to talk about history on the biggest scale possible, focusing on the rousing speeches and the achievements of great leaders, but getting to see those stories in such a personal way, through the insignificant, interstitial moments of a subject’s life – worrying over their word choice in a speech, helping friends move into their new home – is a much rarer and more special experience. It may seem banal, but I don’t think I have ever experienced history in a way more unadulteratedly human than that moment.

What part of your job do you like best?

See my answer to the above question. Also, sometimes they have free snacks in the break room.

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

Go for it! I wasn’t really thinking about the Spencer when I started applying for jobs at KU, but I’m so glad I applied here. I really only work in one small part of the archives – there’s so much more here, like the Kansas Collection [as well as Special Collections and the Wilcox Collection], that I haven’t even touched on. If you’re at all interested in history or museum studies – or if anything you’ve seen here just seems cool to you – I definitely recommend looking for a chance to work here.

Jenna Bellemere
Cataloging and Archival Processing student assistant and G. Baley Price Fellow

This is the second 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 student assistant Alex Williams, who started working in Spencer’s Public Services unit in Spring 2019. Alex is an undergraduate majoring in creative writing with a minor in women, gender, and sexuality studies; she is graduating from KU in Spring 2023.

What does your job at Spencer entail?

I am a Public Services student employee, so my job consists of retrieving materials from our stacks to bring to patrons using the Reading Room, manning the reception desk, and returning or shifting materials in the stacks.

Why did you want to work at Spencer Research Library?

A few years ago, my first-year seminar class took a tour of Spencer Research Library. The curator leading our tour, Elspeth Healey, mentioned the library would be hiring soon and I left my name and contact information. I worked as a library aid in high school and was intrigued by the variety of materials held at Spencer. 

What has been most interesting to you about your work?

The variety of patrons that come into the library and hearing about their research projects. We get people who are local to Lawrence looking at regional history and then we’ll have someone from another country looking for Special Collections materials. There is always a chance to learn something new about Spencer when new patrons come in.

What part of your job do you like best?

I love working in the stacks. It’s fun the browse through the stacks and look at the different materials we have. Whether it’s putting back items or moving in newly processed materials, I just find it really fun to see everything. Occasionally, after I have completed all my work, I’ll make a little scavenger hunt game for myself and see how many different editions of Moby Dick or Sherlock Holmes I can find in Special Collections. The science fiction collection is another area I frequently investigate. I may even be doing my own research project with the sci-fi materials in the future.

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

This seems like a very basic piece of advice: ASK QUESTIONS. I don’t mean just to the supervisors. Ask the patrons about they’re research projects. Ask the curators about classes, exhibits, or collection areas. Not only does it help you engage with the collections, but it creates community. I think that’s why I enjoy Public Services so much because I get to interact not only with the Spencer’s materials but the individuals who utilize them.

Alex Williams
Public Services Student Assistant