Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University

The other day, I discovered a mystery in Special Collections: an extremely skimpy catalog record for a book in our collection.  All it said about this book was:

Bible.  N.T. [for New Testament].  French
[Nouveau testament]
[S.l. : S.n., not after 1762.]
665 p. ; 19 cm.
Title page missing.

Where there should have been a title page, we just have the first page of text.

What does all that mean? Essentially, because the book had been missing its title page for a very long time, we had no idea where or when it was published, by whom, or even what its real title was!  It was time to do some detective work…

I started with what we did know about the book.  The title probably would contain the words “Nouveau Testament,” since that was what most French New Testament Bibles were titled.  I knew it was 665 p. in length.  And I knew that it had been published in or before 1762, since one of the book’s former owners had signed and dated the book in that year.

Signed by a former owner, Frederic Smythe, in 1762.

My first tactic was to look in WorldCat for every “Nouveau Testament” published between 1700 and 1762, looking at each record to see if the pagination matched.  But there were hundreds of French New Testament Bibles printed in that time period!  It was like the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

On a whim, I typed the phrase  “Nouveau Testament” and “665″ (the pagination of our mystery Bible) into Google, to see what it would find.

Google search results

The first hit was from Google Books – an excerpt from a 1994 scholarly bibliography of seventeenth-century French Bibles, by Bettye Thomas Chambers.*  And one of the Bible entries in her bibliography was exactly 665 pages long.  Like so many scholarly bibliographies, this one was extremely detailed.  I compared each detail about this particular Bible to the one I had in hand:

The pagination matched.

The signature statement (all those letter-number combinations that printers used to know what order to put the pages in) matched.

The caption and first sentence of the preface matched, and was on the correct pages.

The caption and first sentence of the “Argument sur les quatres [sic] Evangiles” matched, and it too was on the correct pages.

Even where the blank pages fell matched Bettye Thomas Chambers’s detailed description.  The mystery was solved!

We now know that our mystery “Nouveau Testament” is in fact Le Nouveau Testament, c’est à dire, la Nouvelle Alliance de Nostre Seigneur Iesus-Christ, published in Montauban for Pierre Braconnier, in 1685.  And to make matters even more interesting, according to the Chambers bibliography, this particular publication was “the last Protestant N[ew] T[estament] published in France in the Ancien Regime; the revocation of the Edict of Nantes took effect 18 October 1685.”  Our mystery Bible is also historically significant.

Is there a moral to the story?  Well, maybe not a moral, but an interesting observation… This mystery could not have been solved without both new technology and old-fashioned scholarship.  Without the phenomenal capabilities of Google Books, searching the full text of unfathomable numbers of scanned books, I never would have found this particular reference to a “Nouveau Testament” 665 pages in length.  But if Bettye Thomas Chambers had not put in years of painstaking research and attention to detail and published her bibliography, Google Books would not have had anything to find.  When people argue between new-fangled technology and old-fashioned scholarship, I say we need both.

* Chambers, Bettye Thomas. Bibliography of French Bibles : seventeenth century French-language editions of the scriptures. II.  (Genève : Libraire Droz S.A., 1994).

Tags: Cataloging, Detective work, French Bibles, Rare books

Archivists review the historic materials to put them into a level of order and to describe the content so others may use them.  Occasionally, we’ll see something that gives one pause.

I have been working on family papers that include nineteenth and twentieth century correspondence. Various family members made contributions to their fields such as the grandfather who developed the respiration calorimeter, an aunt was honored for her work by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Interesting, and no pause there.

Other family members led what appeared to be solid, middle-class lives in middle America.  In the letters to and from family members were the ordinary topics of family letter writers: weather, work, military service, travel, aging relatives and children’s activities. Again, no pause.  But I did not anticipate reading “diagnosis…schizophrenia”−that gave me pause. The illness emerged in one son after his WWII service, when he was enrolled in his graduate studies.  From a careful reading of family members’ letters one can piece together a picture of his treatment, and continuing life before the advent of modern pharmacological treatments.

The archivists’ role requires a careful balancing to provide access to historical resources−such as family papers−and protect third party privacy, should any concerns arise, as well as awareness of sensitivities. While the third party in this instance is deceased and the legal issues of privacy have faded, there are still sensitivities to consider.  When contacted, the family determined they did not have sensitivities around a diagnosis given more than 50 years ago.  When the arrangement and description of the papers is completed in the next few months, the family papers will be available to researchers.

What will researchers examine when they have access?  There are lots of possibilities in these family papers:  perhaps a “career woman” in wartime; perhaps the sister’s role in social Washington during the Kennedy administration; perhaps a family’s response to mental illness in the mid-twentieth century.  Researchers can be grateful to this family for opening their papers for research use at Wesleyan University.

What raises your privacy antennae?  Money? Sex? Mental health? Something else? How much time passes before the “that’s private!” response dissipates and a “there’s something to learn from this” kicks in?  It’s something that can give one pause, eh?

Anne Ostendarp

Interim Assistant University Archivist

Tags: Family Papers, Privacy, Research

In our last post, I started to describe the task known as “Shelf Prep,” and how we protect our fragile rare  books.  In this post, I go on to describe the three types of housing we create for the books.

Class album

As the blue e-flute box specialist, I have been working mainly with old class albums. These leather-bound volumes from the latter half of the nineteenth century are something like prototypical yearbooks from the dawn of photography, filled with portraits of past Wesleyan students and professors. These are clearly finely crafted and expensive books. Besides giving us a window into a far-off, mutton-chop-studded past, they also stand out as lovely volumes made with worked leather, gilded edges, metal clasps, and high-quality paper.

Because they are so heavy and easily damaged, Ms. McCallum taught me how to use special blue e-flute cardboard to build special boxes for each of the class albums. First, I carefully measure the dimensions of each volume, and then cut out a form from the blue e-flute cardboard. I then use a special type of glue that I get from Michaelle Biddle, head of the Preservation department, to fasten the box together. Finally, while the glue is drying, I print up labels and glue those on the side of the box that will be facing the aisle. The entire process takes me about forty minutes per box. (Click on any of the following images to enlarge.)

I apply glue to each wing of each flap...

...and glue them together like so!

The album fits snugly in its box

The blue e-flute box is our heavy duty Shelf Prep project. Only those objects that really need special protection and support, such as our class albums, require this type of box. For most other objects, the tag board box is our go-to preservation technique. With most volumes that are beginning to show signs of decay, as well as with unusually-shaped artist books, the tag board box is sturdy enough to keep these objects protected, yet simple enough to execute several boxes per hour. In the following pictures, Jessica Levin ’11 demonstrates how she makes a tag board box.

Making tag board boxes

This volume is safe in its tagboard box

This tag board box is finished!

Finally, Anna Katten ’11 demonstrates our third Shef Prep skill: making mylar dust jacket covers. Some books are in good condition, but they come with a dust jacket. Dust jackets easily snag on things and tend to tear around the edges, so to protect them we encase each one in a mylar cover. The following pictures illustrate how Anna Katten ’11 makes mylar covers for dust jackets.

Making mylar covers for dust jackets

Making mylar dust jacket covers

A selection of volumes with mylar dust jacket covers

As we work we keep a tally of how many objects we processed each month. In the past year, the three of us have produced an average of 8.88 blue e-flute boxes, 13.83 tag board boxes, and 97.14 mylar dust jacket covers per month. But in a collection that includes over 30,000 rare books with many more accessioned every year, our work may still take several more generations of student workers to complete!

Tags: Box making, Class albums, Preservation, Shelf prep

This class album needs protection!

Through our work at Special Collections & Archives, we student workers have become sensitive to the cause of preserving historical objects.  All of us handle fragile objects nearly every shift, and through handling these objects we see firsthand the effects of afflictions such as “red rot” (where the leather binding of a book begins to rot and leave chestnut smudges everywhere), which can damage our collection and undermine our work.

These volumes will be safe from harm as long as we continue to treat them well

Our library already has a department that specializes in restoring damaged books, namely the Preservation department.  At Special Collections & Archives however, we focus on enclosing and protecting books in their current state.  Each year, a small team of student workers attempts to protect as many objects as possible.  This past year, three seniors—Anna Katten ’11, Jessica Levin ’11, and myself, Julius Berman ’11—have been charged with this task.

We call ourselves “Shelf Prep” and we take our work very seriously.  After the jump, follow me down the hidden spiral staircase into the basement workroom where I will show you how this important Special Collections work gets done. Continue Reading »

Tags: Box making, Class albums, Preservation, Shelf prep

Harry W. Laidler

Recently, I have been sorting through a collection of socialist pamphlets and texts donated by the family of Harry Wellington Laidler, class of 1907. The collection is mostly made up of League for Industrial Democracy (LID) pamphlets printed during the first half of the twentieth century and an assortment of texts on socialism abroad and at home. The collection most certainly provides the Wesleyan community with a first hand opportunity to explore socialist thought at its height in the United States.

Harry Laidler is probably best known as one of the founders of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS), which developed into the LID, the group he spearheaded from 1914 to 1956, and was a forerunner to the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), one of the most popularly recognized student activist groups. When the ISS was founded in 1905 Laidler was the only college student on the executive committee, which included renowned socialists such as Jack London and Upton Sinclair. He also led Wesleyan’s ISS chapter, the second university chapter in the nation. Within its first decade seventy chapters were formed across the US.  The purpose of the ISS was education, not inciting unrest. Sinclair was once quoted as saying, “I decided that since the professors would not educate the students, it was up to the students to educate the professors.” Additionally, in more than one New York Times article Laidler denied the league’s promotion of the Marxist movement. “We conceived of the Socialist society as one with a mixed economy, an economy with public, cooperative and private ownership, the ultimate objective of which was real equality of opportunity for every man and woman so he or she could achieve the fulfillment of his or her potentialities.”

Laidler (right) with Upton Sinclair (left)

During Laidler’s life he wrote or edited over 50 books or pamphlets on socialism and economic issues. He penned “Boycotts and the Labor Struggle” (1913),  “History of Socialism” (1943), and was working on a history of the LID at the time of his death. He was also a founding member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and its first board director.

Even at a young age Laidler’s penchant for exploring matters of economic thought developed into a tangible expression of this interest. Prior to Wesleyan, he attended a progressive college in Missouri, which required both study and work as part of its curriculum. From there he went on the American Socialist College, a labor college in Kansas, before his desire for a more vigorous education led him to Wesleyan.

Laidler often honored Wesleyan by sending copies of his personal texts and NBER publications to be added to Olin’s collections.  Similarly, Wesleyan often honored him through alumnus profiles, an honorary degree of Master of Arts in 1933, and the like. President Butterfield’s letter, read at Laidler’s 80th birthday celebration, fondly recalled Laidler’s college nickname “Debs” (after Eugene V. Debs) and his speech at the 1906 Junior Exhibition entitled “the American Social Problem” for which he won an award.

One of Laidler's many publications

Laidler’s 80th birthday was a large event coordinated by the LID, and profiled by the New York Times. The article celebrated his service to education; “Instead of making a career in law or economics he has devoted himself full time since 1914 to various causes, the chief among them the promotion of democratic liberalism on college campuses.” Laidler’s devotion is exhibited in the many publications found in his donated collection. In the end, his desire to educate has greatly benefited the institution that educated him. I sincerely suggest that any student interested in the study of socialist thought take the time to peruse Laidler’s collection.

Tags: Intercollegiate Socialist Society, Laidler, League for Industrial Democracy, Pamphlets, Socialism

For the past semester I have been slowly working my way through Special Collections and Archives’s collection of Sheila Tobias’s papers. The collection of Women’s Studies ephemera – newspaper articles, women’s conference programs, academic papers, and magazines, all filed and organized by author or theme by Tobias – fills twelve boxes. They operate as a veritable time capsule of 1970s feminist thought, documenting the challenges and obstacles women faced in education and academia as well as the efforts made by second wave feminists such as Tobias.

Sisters Rising - Syracuse University

Sheila  Tobias is a scholar, author, and feminist, best known for her work exploring gender issues in education,  science, and militarism and as an educational consultant. She co-founded one of the first major women’s studies programs and organized a women’s conference during her time at Cornell. During the 1970′s, she served as Wesleyan’s first female provost,  supervising women students and the hiring of female faculty.

Part of the reason processing this collection has taken so long is the sheer volume of materials but mostly it’s because every few folders, I find something so interesting or evocative I have to stop and read it. . .

Some personal highlights: A 1950′s sociological survey of Yale students’ attitudes towards dating and women. Correspondence between Tobias and Betty Friedan, the famous second wave feminist and founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). An essay entitled, “The Politics of Prostitution.” Student papers from the first American Studies courses taught at Wesleyan. “Politics of  Male Liberation,” the 1973 Berkeley Men’s Center Manifesto – a touching and idealistic declaration by an early pro-feminist men’s movement group, positing that in the same way women are socialized for certain feminine traits and behaviors, men are socialized to conform to expectation of masculinity and that men too need to liberate themselves from the constraints imposed by a patriarchal society. A grim report called “Structural and Internalized Barriers to Women in High Education” – did you know the number of women granted master’s degrees and doctorates actually went down between 1930 and 1970?

As you can see, the collection contains materials ranging from the academic to the radical, but all of it’s fascinating. The collection is still being processed but I foresee students interested in American studies and Women’s Studies/FGSS issues clamoring to get at these compelling primary sources documenting the rebirth of a movement.

First image: cover art from a journal published by Sisters Rising, a women’s group at Syracuse University.

Second image: the cover of The Political Economy of Women, a review of radical political economics put out by the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE).

We have a new feature in our online repository, WesScholar, that allows visitors to browse theses by department. Just visit WesScholar and take a look at the “Theses and Dissertations,” or link directly to the list of majors here. We added this feature after hearing from students and faculty that they wanted to be able to sample the theses written by other students in their majors. Seeing the range of scholarship by Wesleyan students is very impressive! Special Collections & Archives will continue to save paper copies of theses, but their availability online has increased access and use of this unique Wesleyan collection.

In other WesScholar news, the items in the repository have now been downloaded over 100,000 times! We are always adding new materials and hope that WesScholar helps share the wealth of Wesleyan scholarship by faculty and students.

Throughout history, artists and writers have commented on, protested, or memorialized events current to their time, and today’s artists continue to do the same.  Special Collections & Archives recently acquired a set of broadsides (that is, printed large single sheets of  paper, like a poster) that are part of the “Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here” project.

On March 5, 2007, a bomb exploded in Baghdad, in the middle of Al-Mutanabbi Street, killing at least 30 people and wounding over 100 more.  Mutanabbi Street was the center of bookselling in Baghdad.  The winding street, named after the revered 10th Century classical Arab poet, Al- Mutanabbi, was full of booksellers and outdoor book stalls, and had been for centuries the historic heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.

In response to the bombing,the San Fransisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil and the printer and professor Kathleen Walkup, along with fellow poets and artists, formed the Mutanabbi Street Coalition, to, in their own words “commemorate not just the tragic loss of life, but also the idea of a targeted attack on a street where ideas have always been exchanged.”

Over forty letterpress printers responded to the tragedy with positive creativity: by printing a series of broadsides that have become known collectively as the Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition Project.  Most of the broadsides highlight the work of Iraqi poets as well as the artwork and design of the coalition members.  Wesleyan’s collection comprises 12 of the original 40 creations.

These broadsides offer an opportunity to study how current day artists, poets, and printers respond to and comment on events around them, and highlight a subject that is still relevant today.

A complete collection of all of the contributions to the project is held at The Arthur & Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University.  The fully digitized collection, as well as more background on each broadside, is available at http://www.library.fau.edu/depts/spc/JaffeCenter/collection/al-mutanabbi/index.php.

Tags: broadsides, printers, protest

As part of Andrea Benefiel’s work on the Collection on Legal Change (CLC) earlier this year, she created an online finding aid for the Arthur T. Vanderbilt Political, Profession, and Judicial Papers. The papers document the illustrious career of Vanderbilt, a Wesleyan alumnus from the class of 1910. Vanderbilt had a long career in private practice and taught in New York University’s law school for  many years, serving as dean from 1943 to 1948. Among other achievements, he was also president of the American Bar Association from 1937 to 1938. Vanderbilt’s correspondence from that time has already been consulted by several visiting scholars since the online finding aid appeared less than six months ago. One scholar recently mentioned the richness and depth of the papers on the Legal History Blog.

Arthur T. Vanderbilt

Using the Vanderbilt collection can be challenging, as many of the  papers are fragile–lots of onion skin correspondence!– and the description in the finding aid is not highly detailed. It is also one of our many archival collections housed in off-site storage, so boxes must be requested ahead of time and brought to our reading room. Despite these challenges, we encourage researchers at Wesleyan and beyond to explore the collection. The possibilities for research are endless!

In early October 1931, Wesleyan University celebrated its centennial. The event was highly publicized, and was attended by the university’s student body of approximately 600 as well as by guests, alumni and parents. My most recent archival project has been to explore documents associated with the centennial celebration, the Wesleyan Centennial Collection. Contained in a large scrapbook and also in several folders, the documents tell the story of a young university already proud of its place in the world of American higher education.

The event itself was elaborate, consisting of several days of banquets, concerts, a comic opera performance entitled “The Girl and the Graduate,” and a culminating academic procession on Andrus field. Items preserved in the scrapbook and collection include playbills, menus, schedules, memorabilia, and more. Badges and ribbons for guests and workers at the event have also been preserved. Guests of the university included Prime Minister Bennett of Canada, a conservative politician and well-known Wesleyan Methodist, who gave a speech at the ceremonies.

Wesleyan’s campus publications covered the events extensively, and the collection includes articles from the Argus, Olla Podrida and the Wesleyan University Alumnus. Regional newspapers including the Hartford Courant and the Hartford Times also covered the event, with the Courant giving its entire front page to articles about Wesleyan on September 27, 1931.

Some of the events of the centennial are of interest, including the Wesleyan football team’s 0-37 loss to Columbia University before the centennial crowd of hundreds. It is clear from the documents how much has changed at Wesleyan since 1931. For example, the university served no alcohol at any of its events, instead offering ginger ale. Other documents attest to the continuing role of the Methodist church at Wesleyan, including a letter from several faculty to a Methodist bishop extolling the virtue and abstinence of the student body. While much has changed, it is also clear that Wesleyan at 100 was a proud place coping well with the massive changes occurring around it. Remembering how Wesleyan celebrated its 100th year may help us to understand what Wesleyan meant to students, alumni and the world at large then and help us reflect on what it has come to mean for us now.