It has only been a few months into my new position as Department Liaison, and one of my major job duties is to supervise the student employees. I did not anticipate that the hardest part of this new job would be watching wonderful students graduate and leave the department.
This Fall 2015 semester, two outstanding students graduated: Zoë Webb and Mallory Price. Both students will be sorely missed, and I think I can speak for the entire department when I say, they will be hard to replace!
Zoë and Mallory reading graduation cards from the Special Collections staff.
Zoë Webb graduated this semester from the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History with a degree in Art, and finalized her undergraduate career with a BFA show titled “Don’t Stray From the Path”. Zoë’s show featured a room not only filled with her original artwork, including some impressive metal works, but it also included artistically placed trees and leaves to give the viewer the sense of walking through an ethereal forest inhabited by faeries.
Zoë began her Special Collections journey in January 2012, where she has completed a wide variety of projects in the department. She’s made spine labels, processed books, including hundreds of science-fiction paperbacks, and helped with some major shifting projects in her many years here. I will definitely miss her shared love of fandom, expert artistic skills, and knack for finding amazing things on accident.
Zoë in front of her art show.
A piece from Zoë’s show.
Mallory began working in the Special Collections department in May 2014, and during her time here has been our primary front desk student. Along with assisting patrons with numerous questions, ranging from helping them to use the scanner, to detailed research questions, Mallory has proved herself to be a huge asset in all things reference! I will miss her expertise in helping others, her positive attitude, and friendly smile!Mallory Price graduated this semester from the University of Iowa School of Music with a Bachelor’s degree in Music, with a focus on Music Therapy. An outstanding violin player, Mallory finalized her undergraduate career with a Senior Recital, playing music from Beethoven, Fritz Kreisler, and Dvořák.
Mallory playing at her Violin recital.
Mallory excited to be finished!
On behalf of the entire Special Collections and University Archives Department, we wish Zoë and Mallory the best of luck in the future!
Preservation Projects Librarian, Vitalina Nova, wrote a blog post about the League of United Latino American Citizens Council 10, both their past records and their current projects for the Iowa Women’s Archives blog.
Image on the left from LULAC Council 10 Records, IWA0733
2016 Rose Bowl a chance to make new memories: UI archivist recalls Iowa’s five previous visits to Pasadena. This month’s Old Gold column by University Archivist David McCartney was posted this week.
This 1959 Rose Bowl decal was sold by Iowa Book and Supply and donated to the university by 1976 alumnus Vernon Lustick, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Notes from the Special Collections Classroom
This week’s news from Amy Chen, Instruction Librarian
Counting up some totals at the end of the semester, Special Collections (not including the Iowa Women’s Archives) taught 119 class sessions total in the Fall 2015 Semester:
4 in August
34 in September
39 in October
28 in November
14 in December
New Acquisitions
Arrival Notifications from Margaret Gamm,
Acquisitions & Collections Management Librarian
The Descent of Mount Gadam is a new acquisition for our Charlotte Smith miniature book collection. Amos Paul Kennedy published the book in 1993 under the imprint of his Jubilee Press, which was later renamed the Jubalee Press. The text is an adaptation of a folktale of the Mensa Bet-Abrehe people of northern Ethiopia.
This week’s news from Instruction Librarian Amy Chen.
Latin Classes
On Monday, four sections of Marcia Lindgren’s Latin I came to Special Collections to learn how Latin circulated in the early modern period with either Acquisition Librarian Margaret Gamm or Instruction Librarian Amy Chen. Students rotated among eight books (or, technically, seven books and one manuscript!) completing worksheets that directed them to find unique features in the texts such as bookplates, guide letters, and worm holes. This curricula is new and represents our shift toward student-centered classes. By all means, it was a success, and we look forward to continuing and refining these sessions in the future.
Student Exhibition
English Department Professor Adam Hooks has been working with the UI Libraries’ Special Collections and Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio for a project with his students creating a group exhibition utilizing the open source exhibition software Omeka. You can view the students’ online exhibition, “Renaissance Texts as Technology” here: http://rentexts2015.omeka.net/
Event Recap
Lunch with the Chefs
Acquisitions Librarian Margaret Gamm and University Archivist David McCartney created a pop up exhibition for this semester’s Caribbean-themed Lunch with the Chefs event.
Iowa Bibliophiles
Arthur Bonfield spoke about 17th century voyage and travel books from the publisher John Ogilby, and brought stunning examples from his own collection including one of the earliest images of New Amsterdam (New York City) and the first English road atlas. Iowa Bibliophiles is on hiatus through the winter break and will return February 10th.
Join our email list to get meeting reminders: https://t.co/SkUsH1jiIB
By Jacque Roethler, Manuscripts Processing Coordinator
In the firestorm that was the desegregation movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties, the experiences of two women of color makes a nuanced statement about race and its implications. Dora Lee Martin attended the University of Iowa and sixty years ago on December 10, 1955, the seventeen year old freshman from Texas was elected “Miss SUI”. Arthurine Lucy was admitted to the University of Alabama but was denied entry in March of 1956 and suffered many abuses. The two experiences are a telling contrast that was remarked upon in several news clippings from the time.
Dora Lee was raised by her grandmother as only child of a partially paralyzed mother. She had an aunt who had no children, so she was surrounded by relatives as the only child of the entire family. She lived in Loving Canadan, a black enclave in the Third Ward of Houston, where the whole area functioned as an extended family. She rarely left this enclave until she went to Jack Yates High School. There she had a hard time at first because she was coming from a two room schoolhouse to a school that served about a thousand students. Also, she says in her oral history recording that she was fat and they called her “doughbelly”. Between the second and third years, however, she lost weight and in the fall of her third year, she became very active in school. In her senior year she was elected “Miss Jack Yates.”
She came to the University of Iowa on a scholarship and within months she had been elected by her dormitory mates to participate in the Miss State University of Iowa 1955 contest. In an oral history she emphasizes that this was not a beauty pageant, but rather a contest involving performance, poise and popularity. She and her dorm mates and her campaign team worked hard, creating a unified presentation (what would be called a brand today) around “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” She was a singer who sang with a band at parties in Iowa City so, as part of her campaign she went to boys’ dormitories and fraternity houses and sang this song for them. They made paper roses to hand out as favors. Martin said that none of the gowns were hers, but her dorm mates would lend her theirs. She had overwhelming support from the Black community. She has said of this experience:
Never before had I been a part of anything where there was such single-mindedness and such dedication – it really felt special to have all these people working together for the same goal. And there was such harmony and unity. It made me appreciate what it meant to be a proud Black American in 1955. What we could accomplish if we all . . . put our efforts together and work for something.” (IWA0331 Oral history transcription, page 19)
She won the contest by fifty votes. Her election made international news. The University of Iowa Archives has clippings in the vertical files from various towns in Iowa (Oelwein, Humboldt, Mason City, Storm Lake, Sioux City, to mention a few), Kansas City, Des Moines, London, New Delhi. One clipping from Cedar Rapids even states that a woman from Cedar Rapids living in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo reported, “The natives were flocking into the office asking all sorts of questions. Could she speak French, did they think she would adopt them to be a godmother and would she be able to come over here on a trip?” Special Collections even has one publication in Arabic, possibly from Libya.
Contrast this to Authurine Lucy’s experience just a few months later. She was born one of ten children born to farmers in Shiloh, Alabama. She graduate from high school in 1947 and attended Selma University, a school for blacks, and then transferred to Miles College, another all black institution. She wanted to be a technical librarian so she applied to, and was accepted, by the University of Alabama in 1952. That is, she was accepted until school administrators discovered she was black. They then told her state law did not allow her to attend. She sued and it took three years for the case to make its way through the courts, but in 1955 the US Supreme Court ruled that she could attend the University of Alabama. However, she was told that she could not stay in the dormitories or eat in the dining hall. She would have to live in Birmingham and make the 51 mile commute each day to Tuscaloosa and faced expulsion and egg peltings. (See Washington Post article below).
On the third day of classes — time enough for word to get out that a black student was taking classes — upon arriving on campus she was met with an angry crowd of about 500 people. She was whisked into an auditorium. Meanwhile the crowd had grown to some 3000 people, some of them not connected with the University. She was pelted with rotten produce and eggs. At the end of the day she was suspended, supposedly for her own safety. The student body protested the suspension, and she sued the University again. Sometime during the intervening time, her lawyers accused the administration of colluding with the anti-desegregation protesters, which would have dire consequences later. The courts decided in Lucy’s favor and ordered the school to accept her again. They used the accusation of collusion to say that Lucy had slandered the school and thus she could not be accepted. Exhausted from all the court battles, Lucy decided not to sue again.
The two women’s experiences were often compared in the news at the time. Below are three clippings from The Washington Post, The London Daily Mail, and from Mason City, Iowa that make the comparison:
Washington Post
Mason City, IA
London Daily Mail
But that’s not the end of these stories. Martin says she never heard anything positive from the administration of the University. This letter from President Hancher may explain some of this silence but Martin says that the events in which previous campus queens had participated were simply silently cancelled. The rules of the pageant were changed so that there was faculty oversight.
Letter from Virgil Hancher
Martin has said in her oral history interview,
“. . . my experience had demonstrated that while laws may be different, people are still the same. The only difference being in the South we knew where things stood. We knew what to expect, while in the North people say one thing, but behave in a very different way. And so we were constantly finding ourselves having to figure out where we were wanted and where we weren’t. . . On the campus at the University it was very, very clear in 1955 that institutional racism was still very prevalent at that University.” (Oral History, page 21)
She got on with her education, but left Iowa before she graduated. She married and followed her husband to Chicago, where she attended Roosevelt University, and finally Rutgers, where she received a Master’s in Social Work in 1969. She worked as a social worker in schools.
Lucy also taught as a profession. In 1988, the University of Alabama reversed her suspension and she returned to the University, and in 1992, she finally received a Master’s degree in Education. The University also named an endowed fellowship after her and unveiled a portrait of her in the student union.
These two scenarios played out during roughly the same time period. They look like different ends of the spectrum. But were they really? A closer look at the situation reveals that there’s more to each one than meets the eye.
References come from these collections in Special Collections:
Clippings from Dora Lee Martin Berry’s file in Alumni and Former Students Vertical File in the University of Iowa Archives, RG01.15.01.
Cover of the New Challenge is in the Progressive Party Papers, 2015 Addendum – The Progressive Party of Massachusetts. MSC0160.
Oral history recording with Dora Lee Martin is part of the Giving Voice to their Memories: Oral Histories of African American Women in Iowa project. IWA0331.
Special Collections Reading Room — 3rd Floor Main Library
Travel back in time to see portions of the world as documented in richly-illustrated, large books published by John Ogilby between 1649 and 1675. The books include explorations of China, Asia, Japan, Africa, America, and Britain.
Arthur Bonfield will share his extensive knowledge about the books, John Ogliby, the printer, and the cultural context in which the books were produced and used. A description of Ogilby’s methods of publishing, selling, illustrating, and distributing these expensive publications and their contents will be the focus of this talk.
This is a rare opportunity to view and closely examine these volumes, which are English translations of books published in Amsterdam by Jacob von Meurs. Ogilby’s books appear to have been produced using plates from the original Dutch books—an interesting detail about which you’ll want to hear more!
Please join us for coffee and light refreshments at 6:30 PM before the lecture at 7PM in the Reading Room of Special Collections on the 3rd Floor of the UI Main Library.
All are welcome and the lecture is free.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the sponsoring department or contact person listed in advance of the event.
Arthur Bonfield is a Professor at the Iowa Law School and has been collecting books published between 1490 and 1800 for 60 years. He has collected about 1,000 books printed during that period and focuses his collecting on voyages, travels, and geography; English and European history; encyclopedias and dictionaries of the arts and sciences; political philosophy; and herbals.
A profile of the Lastra collection, especially correspondence between Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa – letters among friends and acquaintances who were writers.
Head of Special Collections Greg Prickman is featured in this article about the project to digitize data from space from the University of Iowa Foundation.
An oral history project from UI History Corps capturing the history of the Iowa Women’s Archives.
Notes from the Special Collections Classroom
This week’s news from Instruction Librarian Amy Chen.
On Monday and Wednesday of this week, we had students from Roy J. Carver Professor of English Ed Folsom’s Whitman and Dickinson class visit Special Collections.
Stephanie Blalock, the Digital Humanities Librarian and Associate Editor of the Whitman Archive, spoke to students about the publishing history of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as well as his lesser-known foray into short fiction. A first edition of Leaves of Grass as well as a later signed anniversary edition of Whitman’s poetry were among the many items students viewed.
New Acquisitions
New Arrival Notifications from Acquisitions Librarian Margaret Gamm.
WAAC Scrapbook Arrives for the Iowa Women’s Archives
This photo album contains images of the American Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) at Fort Knox in 1943, and of one woman’s training period at Fort Des Moines. The WAAC was created in 1942 and converted to the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) the following year. The first contingent of 800 members of the WAAC began basic training at Fort Des Moines Provisional Army Officer Training School, Iowa. These were the first women, other than nurses, to serve with the Army.
https://vine.co/v/izTjpHIA1hL
Want to stay connected? Follow us on social media:
As we announced in our Friday news post last week, our Olson Graduate Assistant, John Fifield was awarded a Caxton Club grant to continue his research. John’s grant will fund his return to the Biblioteca de la Recoleta in Arequipa, Peru, in January. He will be continuing research on Colonial Spanish monastic libraries and the Transatlantic Book Trade. You can view photos from the projects at the Recoleta at recoleta2015.tumblr.com.
Here is the official press release about the grant:
CHICAGO–The Caxton Club is pleased to announce that it will award $12,000 in grants to seven book artists and researchers.
The grants of up to $2,500 each will be given to graduate and undergraduate students in the Midwest, to help them pursue projects in the fields of book arts, bibliography, the history of the book, library studies, print culture studies and zines.
The 2015-2016 winning projects included: an artist’s book based on historical events in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood in the late 1960s and early 1970s; an artist’s book about the life of the recipient’s grandfather, who obsessively collected exotic artifacts and curiosities, and was swept out to sea, along with his collection, in 2004; and a research project to study rare early European books in the library of a Peruvian convent.
The book projects will all be printed in small editions, and they will be created from a range of materials, from cyanotype and linoleum cuts to handmade paper (made by the artist), paper sculpture, letterpress, and even a tin can.
The Caxton Club received 17 grant proposals from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Columbia College, University of Iowa, Dominican University, and Miami of Ohio.
The grantees are: Hannah Batsel, an MFA candidate at Columbia; Mary Clare Butler, an MFA candidate at Columbia; John Creighton Fifield, an MA and Graduate Certificate Book Studies candidate at the University of Iowa; Ian Huebert, MFA candidate at University of Iowa; Jose Resendiz, MFA candidate SAIC; Amy Richard, MFA candidate at University of Iowa; Cathy Batliner, BFA candidate SAIC.
Since 2002, the club has given out more than $50,000 to support the book arts and help create the next generation of book artists.
The Caxton Club is placing greater emphasis on the work of emerging book artists and the process of recognizing and encouraging them. George Leonard III, expressing the feelings of the Grant Committee said, “I was very impressed with the large number of submissions to the grants committee and with their exceptional quality.” The Committee will continue to explore ways to create greater awareness of the Grants.
Two additional grants will be awarded this year. Established for the first time this year is a scholarship for a Midwesterner to attend a course at Rare Book School. The recipient will be chosen by a RBS committee and will be announced in mid-December.
Also for the first time this year, a grant was awarded to an undergraduate at the School of the Art.
Congratulations to John Fifield, Caxton Club Grant Recipient
On Wednesday, November 18, University of Iowa Center for the Book students Ian Huebert, Amy Richard, and Special Collections’ Olson Graduate Assistant John Fifield all accepted grants from the Caxton Club at the Union League in Chicago. John’s grant will fund his return to the Biblioteca de la Recoleta in Arequipa, Peru, in January. He will be continuing research on Colonial Spanish monastic libraries and the Transatlantic Book Trade. You can view photos from the projects at the Recoleta at recoleta2015.tumblr.com.
Join us in congratulating John!
Congratulations to Kelly Grogg, Ella Von Holtom, and Heather Wacha for Being Accepted Into the Obermann Graduate Institute
Olson Graduate Assistant Kelly Grogg, and department employees Ella Von Holtom, and Heather Wacha were all accepted as Graduate Fellows for the seventh annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. Join us in congratulating Kelly, Ella, and Heather!
Marie Mattingly Meloney, the creator of this album, gifted it to Laird C. Addis in 1926. It contains many autographs and small mementos from famous figures of the early 20th century, collected during Meloney’s time as an award-winning reporter and editor. She was close friends with Marie Curie, and was responsible for a nationwide campaign to purchase radium for Curie and her laboratory. More information about the album is available here. Donated by Laird Addis Jr.
Medieval Quill Cutting & More: If Books Could Talk Video Series Returns
How does a Medieval manuscript tell its story? If you look closely enough the marginalia, bookplates, library stamps, dirt marks, and page numbers tell a story of how a manuscript was made, who used it, and where it has been. If Books Could Talk is a video series exploring the questions to ask to investigate a manuscript by examining the physical traces that tell its story. If Books Could Talk is a collaboration between the UI Libraries and History Corps.
Delve in and you will be surprised with what you can learn when you listen to an artifact closely.
From the University Archives
Civil rights activist donates rare material to UI: UI archivist cultivates friendship with key player in 1964 voter registration effort
Civil rights activist Eric Morton’s story is the feature in this month’s Old Gold column from University Archivist David McCartney.
On the left you see Eric Morton in 1951, one year after enlisting in the U.S. Armed Forces. (Eric Morton Civil Rights Papers MsC 0999).
Iowa Women’s Archives Curator Kären Mason shared her memories of former Department Head Bob McCown on what would have been his 76th birthday this week. Read more on the Iowa Women’s Archives blog.
Staff Profile: Meet Annie Tunnicliff
Annie Tunnicliff joined the Iowa Women’s archives this semester as the Dorothy Wirtz Graduate Research Assistant. When this versatile performer is not working, she wears many faces. Stop by the IWA Tumblr to read the whole feature.
Want to stay connected? Follow us on social media:
By Jacque Roethler, Manuscripts Processing Coordinator
On the 50th anniversary of his death, we remember Henry Agard Wallace, the 33rd Vice-President of the United States, who was a man well ahead of his times. An idealist who experimented to the point of dilettantism, these avocations destroyed his political career, but he would not back down from them. An example of this is his quest for religious fulfillment, which led him to Native American spiritualism, Theosophy, and an odd spiritualism espoused by Nicholas Roerich. This last arguably cost him the Vice-Presidency. Another example is his early stand on racial integration, for which he had rotten tomatoes and eggs thrown on him on a tour of the south during his run for President in 1948. He would also, during this campaign tour, not stay at any hotel which would not accommodate blacks. He proposed making ethanol in the 1930s. He openly criticized the House Committee on Un-American Activities. And he was an advocate for peace. He thought we should share our atomic secrets with the Soviet Union. Since he narrowly missed being nominated for Vice-President in 1944 and succeeding to the Presidency eighty-two days later, who knows what might have happened? Maybe we could have side-stepped the Cold War internationally and the Red Scare at home. Or maybe we would be a Soviet Republic now.
Wallace also spoke Spanish and wanted a closer relationship between the Americas. While he was Vice-President, he travelled to Latin America and endeared himself to audiences by speaking to them in their native tongue.
This combination of peace promoter and advocate for Latin American ties comes together in an extraordinary document held by the Special Collections Department at the University of Iowa. This is a letter signed by many luminaries in the Latin American World, including Pablo Neruda and Diego Rivera.
Apparently there was a conference for peace in Mexico City September 5-10, 1949, Congresso Continental Americano por la Paz, to which Wallace was invited. This would have been in the wake of the loss of his presidential run in the 1948 election. Unfortunately, this date coincided with a meeting of the Progressive Party, which was honoring Wallace, so he could not attend the peace conference in Mexico. He conveys only regrets and a statement about world peace in a cablegram sent on September 7. Characteristically, he does not tell them that he is being honored on the third anniversary of his speech at Madison Square Garden, “The Way to Peace.” (CT: We have a copy of this speech and the cablegram sending his regrets.) A search of the internet uncovered two items. One is an image from the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, Oregon State University Libraries, which looks like the cover of a book of bylaws for the congress. The other item is a linocut poster announcing the conference.
A rough translation of the letters is as follows:
We are told that the main reason you could not come to our Congress for peace in Mexico is that you are to attend on the 12th of September, a ceremony in which the Progressive Party of the United States in celebrating what you have accomplished in the last three years, which continue today with their best efforts.
We deeply regret your absence because your voice is among those of the greatest fighters for peace in this time. But the message that you send us comforts and encourages us to continue the struggles that this conference has started. Along with it we have other great voices of America with us. Supporters of peace multiply every day and will not rest until every person on the continent is a being determined not to go to any war or to support imperialist groups.
We want this message to reach your hands on the very day that the Progressive Party will express to you their affection. Our membership is strong and sincere. We have always believed that you belong to the great lineage of Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. Believe us that for us it is a very great feeling to be accompanied in our career for peace and to life by a man of moral and spiritual characters.
Receive, Mr. Wallace, the sincere greeting of your Latin American friends.
Anyone with more knowledge of this conference is encouraged to be in touch.
Jacque Roethler
jacque-roethler@uiowa.edu
The Henry A. Wallace Papers are housed in Special Collections, including digitized collections. Learn more here.
Two carts of 1930s-2000s science fiction books from the James L. “Rusty” Hevelin Science Fiction Collection have recently returned from the Cataloging-Metadata Department. Among these are hardcover and paperback books as well as magazines and periodicals. Included are works by Isaac Asimov, H.P. Lovecraft, Frank Herbert and more. Use the keyword “Hevelin” in the Infohawk Catalog to browse an up-to-date list of everything from the collection that has a catalog record to date, or check out the gallery below to browse some titles.
Wachel Collection of Early Photographs, MsC1040. Includes daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, ferreotypes or tintypes, and cyanotypes. It also contains a collection of union cases, mostly holding miniature photographs of the Civil War era. Of special note is an album titled “Canoe Trip 1915” which is the record of a canoe trip taken in Illinois by four men, presumably brothers of the name of Jehren. It is enhanced by the inclusion of rhyming couplets commenting on what is occurring in the photographs. http://aspace.lib.uiowa.edu/repositories/2/resources/2631
New Acquisitions
1.The Resounding Whistle Comes to the Archives
The recently-retired power plant whistle has arrived at the library! Many thanks to Kyle Smith, electronics instrumentation supervisor in the power plant and whistle historian, for making this possible.
The whistle is the third of a line first used at the plant in 1939; this particular one functioned from sometime between 1992 and 1994 until last Tuesday, when #4 was activated. More about the whistle and its history is at http://now.uiowa.edu/2015/11/whistle-work
You can see a photo of this whistle in action in 2011 here.
2. Marie Curie Dedication
Marie Curie inscribed this lovely edition of Pierre Curie to Laird Clark Addis, the father of the donor. Laird C. Addis donated the book earlier this year, along with another that will be featured next week. We are very excited to receive these pieces of scientific history.
From the Web and Social Media
Digital Transitions posted a featured video about the UI Libraries digitization equipment and NEH grant funded project to digitize Special Collections’ extremely brittle Vaudeville scrapbooks.
Event Recap
Three copies of Liber Chronicarum (The Nuremberg Chronicle) from 1493 were on hand for the Iowa Bibliophiles talk last Wednesday night. Greg Prickman, Head of Special Collections introduced the provenance of the copy from the Main Library, the copy from the John Martin Rare Book Room at the Hardin Medical Library, and a copy from the private collection of Arthur Bonfield.
Thanks to everyone who attended! Next month’s meeting is Wednesday, December 9th at 7pm where Arthur Bonfield will give a talk about his collections of 16-17th century travel literature.
Want to stay connected? Follow us on social media:
English Department Professor Adam Hooks has been working with the UI Libraries’ Special Collections and Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio for a project with his students creating a group exhibition utilizing the open source exhibition software Omeka. You can view the students’ online exhibition, “Renaissance Texts as Technology” here: 
