Special Collections Department Research Articles

More Than Just Boxes and Lines on a Page: Stories from a Special Collections Department Reorganization

Interested in leveraging a reorganization to bring about sustained and meaningful organizational and cultural change, the author developed a multi-step process anchored by three decision-making drivers that guided the work. These drivers helped the author articulate to herself and the department the “why” behind the reorganization and to keep focused on those drivers during even the messiest parts of the process. The case study presented here describes the author’s process and lessons learned.

Carolingian Bible Fragments in Dublin

Fragments from an early-ninth century Carolingian Old Testament are used as sewing guards in two incunabula currently held in the Special Collections Department of the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin. The host volumes are part of the four-volume 1481–1482 Nuremberg printing of Alexander of Hales’ Summa. The provenance of the UCD incunabula establishes that the two volumes bearing the Carolingian fragments were in the Bavarian abbey of Benediktbeuern in the fifteenth century. The fragments in these books can be associated with similar material in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich and in the Sir George Grey Collection in Auckland Central Library.

Literary Critical Understanding of Šantić’s “Mythical” Fame With a Contribution to the Review of the Archive Collection of Aleksa Šantić in the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The paper consists of two, methodological and analytical, separate parts, which share the character and work of Aleksa Šantić. The first part tries, through an overview of critical valorisation, to literary critically understand the entire poetic creation of Aleksa Šantić, posing the fundamental research question of why Šantić is considered a great poet, even though his poetry, taken as a whole, viewed from an aesthetic perspective, cannot be qualified as “great”. Above all, based on the insight of criticism into the consideration of the aesthetic value of Šantić’s poetry and the conclusions derived from the comparison of already existing and own reflections, the above question is answered with the hypothesis that Šantić’s “mythical” greatness is the result of the “ordinariness” of his poetry and the ability to give that “ordinariness” a sublime sense of the “topos” of spiritual preoccupation, on the semantic level, and on the syntactic level, expressed in a simple style and phrases close to the cognitive needs of the peoples’ consciousness.
 The second part of the paper presents a documentary-historical and archival-library contribution to the research of the character and works of Aleksa Šantić, and appears as a separate review of the legacy of manuscript material kept by the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Department of Special Collections. The legacy consists of letters, correspondence, photographs, letter cards, and postcards. These biographical and historical documents serve as a source for a factual introduction to a part of Šantić’s life and activities.
 The work is the result of research conducted on the basis of the project “Unification of materials on the cultural and historical heritage of Aleksa Šantić” financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science.

An Accidental Historian

An Accidental Historian

Rzymski proces cywilny i rzymski proces karny Rzymian w ujęciu ks. prof. Stanisława Płodzienia (uwagi na marginesie maszynopisu BU KUL 1443A)

The Special Collections Department of the University Library of the Catholic University of Lublin preserves the legacy of the Podlasie-born Romanist Rev. Prof. Stanisław Płodzień. The author taught Roman and Canon Law at the Catholic University of Lublin in the 1950s and early 1960s. However, his promising career was interrupted by his sudden death in 1962. Among the unpublished materials he left behind is a script prepared for first-year students of canon law, entitled „The Roman Civil Trial”. This is a valuable find, since in the 19th and 20th centuries only two monographs on the Roman civil procedure were published in Polish. An analysis of the script shows that its author drew mostly on Leopold Wenger’s monograph „Institutionen des römischen Zivilprozessrechts”. It is from him that he took the idea of devoting a separate discussion to the differences between Roman civil trials and their criminal and administrative proceedings. The text included a subsection entitled “The Relationship between the Roman Civil Trial and Criminal and Administrative proceedings”. The author presented the peculiarities of all three types of proceedings in a factual manner, emphasizing that certain contemporary categories had already been contemplated by the Romans. Particularly noteworthy is the departure from the concept of dividing law into public and private based on the so-called criterion of benefit (utilitas). Rev. Płodzień emphasizes that the concept of state interest in Roman times was as vague as it is today. The narrative makes subtle use of modern civilist terminology.

Review: In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression, by Errol Wayne Stevens

Historians of Los Angeles and Southern California have long observed that the region was an extraordinary place during the 1920s and 1930s. The region’s population and economy grew at a phenomenal rate. Evangelists called new arrivals to megachurches created by Hollywood set designers. Hundreds of thousands of Iowans flocked to annual picnics in Long Beach to celebrate their midwestern roots. Hucksters sold stocks for sham companies on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. As the Depression took hold and regional economic prospects spiraled downward, seemingly equally strange proposals and movements to solve the economic crisis and its corollary human suffering emerged and gained popularity, from the Ham and Eggs pension movement to Upton Sinclair’s gubernatorial campaign.In this carefully researched and thoughtfully written book, Errol Stevens asks the familiar question of why Los Angeles saw so many radical movements take hold in the 1930s. Over ten readable chapters, he rejects the common argument that Angelenos, many of them new migrants from the Midwest, naively fell for the impractical schemes of radicals and con artists. Instead, Stevens argues that Southern Californians, many of them desperate for feasible solutions to their abysmal economic situations, were willing to consider creative, even unusual, social and economic proposals to address personal and regional economic woes.As Stevens narrates, these programs and proposals varied widely. They included widespread agricultural self-help cooperatives that grew and distributed foodstuffs to thousands of members and those in need from Compton to El Monte. The Communist Party built a dedicated membership from its headquarters in Boyle Heights and in defiance of the Los Angeles Police Department’s “Red Squad.” Members of the newly formed Utopian Society advocated for a radical rethinking of the nation’s economic structure, a transformation that they believed could come about without revolution and would restore a solid middle class. Physician Francis E. Townsend proposed a wildly popular program of universal lifetime pensions of $150 a month for those over sixty or unemployed with the one stipulation that the money be spent in its entirety by the end of each month in order to stimulate the economy and end the Depression. At the urging of some prominent California Democrats, Sinclair, a longtime socialist, changed his party affiliation and announced his campaign for governor. His campaign, known as End Poverty in California (EPIC), organized over two thousand clubs across the state and helped add 350,000 new registered Democrats to the state’s voter rolls. Sinclair enjoyed tremendous popularity but state conservatives waged “one of the dirtiest campaigns in California history” against him and his Republican opponent won (p. 168).Ultimately, In Pursuit of Utopia explores why California’s “aging, churchgoing, largely conservative, midwestern” population flocked to “movements that advocated programs that would change the very nature of the capitalist system” (p. 197). Stevens finds that the region’s older midwestern transplant population turned to long-established midwestern agricultural traditions of communalism to make ends meet. They also responded to the real threats of homelessness and starvation, a complete absence of a federal social safety net, and the refusal of local officials to provide adequate relief by supporting novel and innovative proposals. As Stevens observes, “thousands of Southern Californians rushed to support these movements because there were no alternatives…in retrospect, it is clear that they were not pursuing utopia, just trying to survive” (p. 200).A historian and an archivist, Stevens spent the final two decades of his career as the director of the Department of Archives and Special Collections at Loyola Marymount University. While there, he also administered the Center for the Study of Los Angeles Research Collection. His training as an archivist is evident in this deeply researched and carefully sourced book. Sadly, the community of Los Angeles archivists and historians lost Stevens in 2020, but his contributions to the field live on in this finely researched and written book and in his stewardship of regional archival materials.

#Archives: Centering the Profession in Critical Conversations and Popular Discourse

#Archives: Centering the Profession in Critical Conversations and Popular Discourse

Ewangelia BJ 941 w kolekcji rękopisów Biblioteki Jagiellońskiej: społeczna historia kodeksu

This article is dedicated to the study of the history of the Cyrillic Four Gospels BJ 941 from the manuscript section of the Department of Special Collections of the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow. The study defines that the Gospels were rewritten on a paper variety, the identification of its watermarks implies that the book was created in the last third of the 16th century. The analysis of the manuscript margins indicates that the manuscript was rewritten and purchased in Stryi, in the former Przemyśl region. The study of four gift records of the 16th and 17th centuries draws an understanding of how the manuscript has functioned and migrated at the appointed time. First, after the purchase, the codex was donated to the church of Paraskeva Piatnytsa in the Pietniczany village in the Lviv region. In 1641 the codex was gifted over to the Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist in Rozhysche, Sataniv povit. Between 1649 and 1678 the Gospels were presented to the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin in Vinnytsia. In 1678 the book appeared in the Church of the Intercession in the village of Nekhaiky in the Cherkasy region. In the 19th century, the Gospels belonged to the private library of Stanisław Krzyżanowski, who in 1870 donated the manuscript to the Jagiellonian Library.

‘With deepest respect and gratitude…’. On the early years of Myroslaw Antonowycz’s musicological path, from his letters to Adolf Chybiński

Myroslaw Antonowycz (1917–2006) was a musicologist, conductor and composer, a Ukrainian whose entire career in musicology was associated with his work at Utrecht University. He is well known primarily among musicologists studying the music of Josquin des Prez, and more generally – of Franko-Flemish composers, as well as among Byzantinists. He was an alumnus of the Faculty of Musicology at Lviv’s (then Lwów’s) Jan Kazimierz University, where he studied for three years in the last period of Adolf Chybiński’s (1880–1952) academic work in Lviv. Chybiński was the founder and head of the chair, as well as one of the founding fathers of Polish musicology. The history of Lviv musicology and the representation of the Ukrainian minority in this milieu has already been studied by such Polish and Ukrainian musicologists as Ulyana Hrab, Vasyl Vitvitskyi, Luba Kijanowska, Leszek and Teresa Mazepa, Yuri Yasinovskyi, Michał Piekarski, and Małgorzata Sieradz. Since unfortunately most of their works have been published in either Polish or Ukrainian, that is, languages less common in international research, the present paper is an attempt to present the figure of this eminent scholar to a wider audience. This biographical sketch concerning Antonowycz’s early years as a musicologist was directly inspired by a set of forty-one letters and nine postcards sent by this researcher to Adolf Chybiński in 1939–52. This correspondence is now kept at the Poznań University Library, the Adolf Chybiński Archive at the Music Collections Studio, Special Collections Department, shelf mark 803 III/1, c. 4–58). These sources in this publication they have been printed in full and with commentary (see the Appendix). Their presentation is complementary to Yuri Yasinovskyi’s edition of Chybiński’s letters to Antonowycz (Musica Humana [Lviv] I 2003 pp. 67–110). Antonowycz spent World War II in Vienna, Linz, and Łódź, where he focused first and foremost on his singing skills (appearing in opera houses, on concert stages, and in radio broadcasts). He also continued his musicological studies at the University of Vienna. Having settled in the Netherlands after the war, he started work under Professor Albertus Smijers, founder and long-time head (from 1930 till his death in 1957) of the chair of musicology at De Universiteit Utrecht, who is universally recognised at the founder of the Dutch school of musicology. Having obtained his doctorate, he became Smijers’s assistant and co-editor of the Werken van Josquin des Prez, initiated and edited from 1922 by Smijers. After Smijers’s death Antonowycz undertook to complete work on the successive volumes in this series, first on his own and later with Willem Elders. In this way he made a name for himself in history of the world musicology. The surviving letters by Myroslaw Antynowycz offer direct proof of his strong attachment to the Lviv university circles and his first mentor, Professor Adolf Chybiński. Though Antynowycz was associated from the late 1940s and throughout his professional career with Utrecht University, where he obtained his PhD, it needs to be emphatically stated that his scholarly attitude had been shaped during his studies at the Faculty of Musicology of Lviv’s Jan Kazimierz University, and he frequently declared that Chybiński, a founding father of the Polish musicology and its Lviv centre, was his model as a scholar.

Archbishop Pecham and an Annotated Fragment of Peter Lombard’s Commentarius in Psalmos Davidicos at Tulane University

In 2015, the Special Collections Department of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University acquired from Bernard Quaritch a parchment bifolium, formerly used as a pastedown, from a thirteenth-century copy of Peter Lombard’s Commentarius in Psalmos Davidicos, written c.1148. The bifolium contains three annotations that shed new light on a momentous event in medieval Oxford—the 1286 condemnation by Archbishop John Pecham of several heresies, as he called them, related to the teaching of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Pecham’s condemnation restated an earlier one by his predecessor, Robert Kilwardby, in 1277. His rhetoric, however, was much stronger than Kilwardby’s and contributed to the hardening of opposition to Aquinas’s philosophy in England. Most of the documents associated with the condemnation have been known and published for some time: Pecham’s own register at Lambeth Palace; the annals of Oseney Abbey, where the archbishop convened a meeting with Oxford’s masters of theology before issuing his condemnation; and the annals of Dunstable Priory, which record the condemnation and its unfortunate sequel, the death by suicide of one of Pecham’s opponents. The Tulane bifolium is a new contribution to the archive that illustrates how an unprepossessing fragment can alter our knowledge of a major event in late medieval intellectual history. This article describes the bifolium, correcting significant errors in the Quaritch catalogue description, provides editions of the annotations, traces their sources, and discusses their wider intellectual context.

A Rare Find: a 19th Century Song about Cholera in Slovenia and Its Interpretation

The accidental discovery of an 1847 manuscript in the Local History and Special Collections Department at Maribor University Library in Slovenia (shelfmark: Kreps, 1847; UKM Ms 563), which contains, among other things, a song about cholera, was the basis for its contextual interpretation and comparison with related recorded songs. This new discovery is important because the song refers to the first wave of cholera on Slovene territory in 1836, whereas other songs describing the disease were written later. The text of the song resembles a collection of frightening news about the disease circulating among the people. The questions of whether the information in the song is real or fictional, genuine or exaggerated are discussed in light of the memory of cholera outbreaks found in other songs of the same genre and historical data.

How TRIO Sparked the Fire That Fuels the First-Generation Movement: An Interview With Arnold Mitchem and Maureen Hoyler

Dr. Arnold Mitchem speaks to students in the Education Opportunity Program in 1984. Photo courtesy of Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Raynor Memorial Libraries, Marquette...

Adapting to a remote life: Using a work environment at home to our advantage at University of North Florida Special Collections

You might think that there would not be enough to do at home for a staff working with archival materials—after all, most of the collection consists of rare items that never leave the building. When it began to look like the University of North Florida (UNF) would be closed in March 2020, our small team in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library Special Collections Department had to get creative.

Privacy in Public Archives: Managing Personally Identifiable Information in Special Collections

Archivists aim to make research and manuscripts accessible to the public. However, accessibility becomes tricky when donors or institutions enforce limitations. Sometimes limitations need to be enforced, especially when dealing with sensitive information such as personally identifiable information (PII), unpublished works, and student records. Redactions and restrictions may be necessary in these situations, but archives find this difficult to accomplish because of the size of the collections, results from previous accession practices, and the lack of staff and resources. The Special Collections department at Edith Garland Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette is addressing this problem and has put forward methods to confront its backlog of PII while staying true to its accessibility mission. This article examines the challenges of handling PII in physical archival materials, the impact of More Product, Less Process (MPLP) on sensitive information, and how the Special Collections department, while using some MPLP processing methods, adopted a slightly more meticulous and efficient approach to protect privacy while still providing access.

Anny Treiderowej „Kabaret pod zdechłym kornikiem”

Anna Treider’s “Kabaret pod Zdechłym Kornikiem The presented text is the 1963 edition of the work by Anna Treider nee Ogrodzińska (1921–1982), an art historian who had been working in our Library for many years and was also a director of its Special Collections Department. After taking up the job in 1952, she shortly became one of the Polish most acclaimed experts in the field of European Graphics and also a lecturer at the Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, as well as the author of numerous graphic exhibitions. This forgotten text titled “Kabaret pod Zdechłym Kornikiem”, preserved among her personal documents, is currently included in our Library manuscripts (signature 13 066). It is a humorous piece written under the pen name Akwatinta Kolofon. The characters are both the author’s library colleagues and visitors as well as the principal, Zbigniew Jabłoński. The text contains some elements of the now forgotten work reality of that time, and records the atmosphere of an institution of culture in the times of the Polish People’s Republic. It is also an interesting testimony of the librarians’ intellectual formation, e.g. the passion for K. I. Gałczyński’s poetry or reading the “Przekrój” magazine. It not only proves the author’s learning and sense of humour but also demonstrates her literary skills: Anna Treider’s brother, Władysław Ogrodziński, was a respected essayist and writer. To recall the profile of Anna Treider at the centenary of her birthday, the text of “Kabaret…” has been excerpted from the manuscript, prepared for print, the biographic introduction written and the footnotes added by Karolina Grodziska.

Lively Roots: How the Grand Rapids Public Library Found Its Footing in the Early Years

Lively Roots:How the Grand Rapids Public Library Found Its Footing in the Early Years Colleen Alles A few days before Christmas, on December 21, 2021, the Grand Rapids Public Library will celebrate a big birthday: its sesquicentennial—150 years of providing a library free to all. Few things can last a century and a half without being open to change. This public library, established in a city that, in the 1870s, was in some ways a rival to Detroit, survived in part due to the inclusion of one key idea: a willingness to grow—changing and adjusting its operations to fit whatever the community needed at the time, and in how it could best serve its patrons in the face of logistical constraints and realities.1 Founded in 1871, the Grand Rapids Public Library (GRPL) has been a beacon in a west Michigan city with its own rich history and place as the second largest city in the state. The idea for the GRPL began several years after the end of the Civil War, when members of the Grand Rapids Board of Education agreed to combine their book holdings with those of two other organizations—the Ladies Literary Association (known then as the Ladies Library Association) and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).2 A library committee hired the first librarian, Miss Frances Holcomb, at an annual salary of $500, and the library was born.3 The history of the GRPL involves a number of evolutions—everything from introducing the Dewey Decimal System and eschewing traditional card catalogs for online platforms, to streaming audiobooks directly to patrons' devices. Julie Tabberer, the current head of the GRPL History & Special Collections department, notes how "the things that [End Page 127] Click for larger view View full resolution An entry from the 1872-73 Grand Rapids city directory shows the first appearance of the Grand Rapids Public Library, humbly listed among residents and businesses in the "L" section. Source: J. D. Dillenback, ed., Godfrey's Annual City Directory of Grand Rapids, Mich, 1872-3 (Grand Rapids: Daily Eagle Steam Printing House, 1872), 157. we've provided access to have changed over the years, but [access is] a constant."4 The story of the GRPL as told through its branches makes it clear that above all—and despite many types of circumstances—the library has demonstrated a commitment to growing and changing along with its city. What began above a dry goods store downtown evolved into a large institution that serves thousands of patrons annually. The library piloted branches early in the twentieth century when the idea of branches was new. It embraced traveling branches and bookmobiles when budget concerns made operating hours tricky in the 1950s. Through two world wars, the Great Depression, pandemics, economic hardships, and tumultuous social change—hallmarks of the twentieth century—the GRPL opened new branches, closed branches when circumstances dictated, and, overall, ensured its citizens access to a free library, guaranteeing a legacy of inclusion that the city hopes will endure for years to come. Impermanent Spaces In the early years, the GRPL called several downtown spaces home, changing locations every few years. Those spots included a room above a dry goods store, space in the prominent Ledyard Building, and several rooms inside city hall. [End Page 128] Click for larger view View full resolution This was the first home of the Grand Rapids Public Library. The library was on the second floor of H. Leonard and Sons dry goods store, seen here as the second building from the left. Source: Collection 18, George E. Fitch Collection, box 3, folder 3, image 248, Grand Rapids Public Library History & Special Collections, Grand Rapids Public Library (hereafter GRPL). The population of Grand Rapids when the library opened its doors in 1871 was approximately 16,000. "Like other cities across the nation, Grand Rapids had a hodgepodge of libraries and book collections, but the system stood in unconnected pieces, awaiting the glue that would fit them together," noted former city historian Gordon L. Olson.5 Print books were, of course, in addition to being more precious than perhaps they are today, available via school libraries and through the Grand...

USC Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts: A second polymathic multimodal digital project

The University of Southern California (USC) Libraries’ collection of Illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Incunabula, and Rare Books includes 16 unique and invaluable illuminated medieval manuscripts, as well as 12 other medieval manuscripts (with pen-flourished initials or borders) originating in Europe. A substantial number of those manuscripts and rare books were acquired in the early to mid-20th century by Ralph Tyler Flewelling who joined USC in fall 1917. He became the first director of the School of Philosophy when it was established in 1929 with the completion of the Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Memorial Hall of Philosophy building. That growing collection of books, known as the James Harmon Hoose Library of Philosophy Collection, was cataloged according to the Dewey Decimal Classification. Hoose was the first head of the Philosophy Department, originally housed in the university’s administration building. In the latter part of the 20th century, this rare collection was relocated to the Special Collections Department in the Doheny Memorial Library.

Heritage of Hamdija Kapidžić in the funds of Special Collections of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Users of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina; for the purpose of various researches; often look for material that contains national; local heritage; history; material about politics and culture. In addition to the obligatory copy; NUBBIH replenishes its funds with exchanges and gifts. One such gift is the legacy of historian Prof. Dr. Hamdija Kapidžić. The Library got this gift in 2008. Part of this gift – correspondence; letters; postcards; old books; maps; etc.; are located in the Department of Special Collections. The material has been undocumented for a long time and we decided to present to the public the archives of this famous Bosnian cultural and scientific worker through this brief overview and list. We hope that this brief review of the legacy of the historian Hamdija Kapidžić will bring new views on his life and scientific work and serve as a source for new research.

History and Contents of the Dutch Theatre Production Database

Abstract The Dutch Theatre Production Database is a historical database with data on theatre and dance productions in the Netherlands by professional Dutch and foreign producers and companies. The database contains data on practically all productions from 1940 up to now: over one hundred thousand productions that can be freely searched using either the Webopac (http://theatercollectie.uva.nl/search/advanced) or the website Theaterencyclopedie (https://theaterencyclopedie.nl). Since 2013 the database is managed by the Department of Special Collections of the Library of the University of Amsterdam. It is the only source that offers an overview of the complete theatre programme in the Netherlands. The origins of its development lie in the card catalogue of the library of the Toneelmuseum of the 1960s. The database itself is now nearly three decades old and has grown much larger than the first compilers could ever have imagined. Until now a history of its development has been lacking. This paper offers a reconstruction of the history of the creation and development of the data and a description of the protocols and input system. This paper clarifies which sources have fed the database and which systems and productions have been fed by the database. With this paper, the verifiability and representativeness of the data can be assessed more effectively.

The Abteilung für Sondersammlungen of the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Tirol in Innsbruck: a brief introduction on history, status quaestionis and ongoing projects

This article outlines the history of the Universitats- und Landesbibliothek Tirol (University and Provincial Library of Tirol at Innsbruck, ULB Tirol) in Innsbruck from the initial idea for its establishment arising in 1731 through its actual foundation in 1745, as well as its connection, shaped by various interactions, with the Leopold-Franzens-University in Innsbruck founded in 1669. The text also provides general information on the modern-day ULB Tirol, including data on its general tasks and mission, its holdings and numbers of users, and the individual departments of the library. The main focus of the article lies on the Department of Special Collections and its manuscript holdings, however. It offers an overview of the cataloguing projects conducted over the past fifty years and the status quo of those projects, as well as discussing their boundaries and the possibilities they have opened up. Finally, three specific projects are presented that are either currently being implemented or will be undertaken in the coming years and will substantially expand existing knowledge on the department’s manuscript assets. A bibliography lists all modern manuscript catalogs published between 1987 and 2017 as well as the essential literature on the history of the library’s holdings from 1874 to 2019.