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This article discusses in detail the content of the collection The Zygmunt Haupt Papers, 1907–1976, held in Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries. In particular, it describes the Voi...

The author shares the circumstances that led to his encounter with the personal archives of Victor Haim Perera (1934–2003), an award-winning Sephardic-American writer, journalist, environmental and political activist, and academic born in Guatemala City. Perera published six books on topics as varied as Sephardic history, the Maya Indians, and the Loch Ness monster, and contributed dozens of articles, short stories, and essays to newspapers, trade journals, magazines, and literary anthologies. This paper also provides an overview of Perera’s life and work and shares information about the Victor Perera Papers collection at the University of Michigan Library. It presents a case study illustrating that library catalogers can improve discoverability of and access to library special collections by expanding beyond their core duties and investigating the contexts behind the materials that cross their desks. The article ends with a preliminary bibliography of Perera’s works.

Collecting political papers related to women requires archivists to adopt a broader perspective than does collecting political papers in general. Special Collections at the University of Maryland, College Park, has collected the papers of women state legislators and other political materials related to women and women's issues for almost forty years and serves as one institutional example of documenting women in politics, more specifically women state legislators. This article identifies the unique challenges related to collecting the papers of women state legislators and provides general recommendations for developing basic collecting and selection criteria that incorporate critical thinking about women in elected office. A brief discussion about research use of the papers of women state legislators follows to illustrate how researchers utilize or neglect these collections for various reasons. Finally, this article demonstrates that even though women appear to be entering the political mainstream, archiv...

In October 2014, more than two hundred archivists, book collectors, donors, and librarians from the United States and Canada convened at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, to discuss the state of Special Collections in North American libraries. The conference, “Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future,” was hailed as “a milestone event in assessing the past and projecting the future of special collections.” The edited collection Forging the Future of Special Collections is a product of the sessions and “expands and enriches the ideas presented at the colloquium by including significant additional material from the contributors” (xv). The featured volume of essays is composed of three sections with 17 total chapters. Each chapter summarizes the revised remarks of event commentators and includes an introduction by Robert H. Jackson. Jackson points to the importance of the collection of essays, noting, “The implication is that the future of the book is in our hands. We will control it. We will shape it. The decisions we make as readers, collectors, and special librarians today will determine what happens to our fields tomorrow. This is a hopeful message, and this book presents a hopeful future as well” (xv).

The University of Houston (UH) Libraries' Special Collections possesses several groups of papers and other items related to theatre and the performing arts, one of which is the Nina Vance Alley Theatre Papers. These items were donated to Special Collections in 2000. What follows is a brief biography of Nina Vance and history of the Alley as well as some highlights of items contained within this collection. Nina Vance was the Alley's first artistic director, from 1947 until her death in 1980. Along with Margo Jones and Zelda Fichandler, she helped shape the American regional-theatre movement in the later twentieth century. During her tenure at the Alley she directed 102 plays, produced 245 shows, and was awarded major grants, including significant funding from the Ford Foundation. Despite Vance's achievements in these areas, as well as in establishing the Alley as a respected theatre in the United States and across the world, few works of scholarship exist on her career. This could be partially due to the fact that many primary sources on the Alley Theatre and its founder, such as those found at the UH Libraries' Special Collections, have not been well publicized.

Last summer, the University of Southern Mississippi’s Digital Collections, with support from the school’s Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA), embarked on a new initiative. Called “Digi Day”, the workshop offered current LIS graduate students the opportunity to receive hands-on training and experience in digitization using The Rey Papers, one the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection’s most prized collections. The first “Digi Day” workshop, which took place in June, is just the beginning of what will become a series of similar workshops tentatively planned for Spring and Summer 2015. Digi Day workshops last one full day and involve basic training in digitization techniques, from handling items and running scanners to introductory description and metadata skills. Guest speakers from the local archival community also participate by discussing current projects and emphasizing the importance of gaining digitization experience as early as possible. Choosing an appropriate collection for Digi Day workshops is no small feat. Organizers must take into account the experience level of volunteers as well as the subject matter and physical condition of the collections. An ideal choice for Digi Day use is a collection that is engaging to digitize and describe, as well as one that is physically appropriate for handling by volunteers with little or no archival experience. This article will report the success of the first “Digi Day” and will cover the selection of materials as well as workshop structure, recruitment, basic training topics and techniques, and volunteer recognition. The Primary Source, Vol. 33, Issue 2 6 Introduction Last summer, the University of Southern Mississippi’s Digital Collections, with support from the school’s Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA), embarked on a new initiative. Called Digi Day, the workshop offered current LIS graduate students the opportunity to receive hands-on training and experience in digitization using The Rey Papers, one of the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection’s most prized collections. The workshop was held at the McCain Library and Archives’ Digital Lab. Elizabeth La Beaud, the library’s Digital Lab Manager and MLIS Candidate, and Emilie Aplin, a circulation supervisor at Cook Library, MLIS Candidate, and 2013-2014 LISSA President, were the workshop’s two coordinators. Workshop participants received basic training in digitization techniques and metadata creation and gained handson experience scanning documents and creating image production records. During a Lunch and Learn session, guest speakers from Mississippi Digital Library and the Aquila Digital Community addressed volunteers and stressed the importance of digitization work and the skills necessary to work in the field. Due to the success of the pilot workshop, Digi Day is projected to become an ongoing opportunity for LIS students at the University of Southern Mississippi. This article will report the success of the first Digi Day workshop and will cover selection of materials, workshop structure, recruitment, training topics and techniques, volunteer recognition, and plans for similar, future workshops. Background Archives, primary source materials, and education have had a long relationship. Some archives routinely integrate archival instruction and the use of primary sources into undergraduate curricula, particularly in the humanities fields. Common to all archival education programs is a solid 1 Magia G. Krause, “Undergraduates in the Archives: Using an Assessment Rubric to Measure Learning,” American Archivist 73, no. 2 (2010): 507-534. Student participants learn to complete an image production record during Digi Day orientation at McCain Library and Archives on June 21 2014. The Primary Source, Vol. 33, Issue 2 7 grounding in theoretical principles, and many programs also include servicebased learning, usually as a practicum or internship, as a requirement for graduation. The Society of American Archivists (SAA) advocates the linking of theory and practice aspects of archival education, especially when learning the core principles of arrangement and description. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), with its own standards for special collections professionals at academic libraries, advises that professionals understand not just the relationship between theory and practice but also “the significance of original artifacts and the nature and value of primary materials for learning” as well as “the use of digital asset management systems and metadata for providing access to digitized primary source materials”. Therefore, the union of theory and practice during archival training is essential. A recent study by Donghee Sinn explored the benefits and drawbacks of hands-on training opportunities in archival education programs. Sinn, who polled both students and archivists experienced in such training opportunities, found that students valued not only the chance to link theory to practice but also to network and “test the waters” before actually entering the archival profession. The study also found that professional archivists value their involvement in such programs since they benefited from similar opportunities when they were beginning in the field. They also view these hands-on training opportunities as effective recruitment strategies for future employment. Both students and archivists agreed, however, that the biggest challenge of such programs is the increased time demand and workload for both groups. 7 2 Society of American Archivists, “Arrangement and Description,” Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archives, accessed September 29, 2014, http://www2.archivists.org/gpas/curriculum/arrangement-description. 3 Association of College and Research Libraries, “Competencies for Special Collections Professionals,” Guidelines and Standards, accessed September 29, 2014, http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/comp4specollect. 4 Donghee Sinn, “Collaborative Education Between Classroom and Workplace for Archival Arrangement and Description: Aiming for Sustainable Professional Education,” American Archivist 76, no. 1 (2013): 237-262.

The papers of Zygmunt Haupt, Polish emigre writer and painter, are now fully processed and open to researches in the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.

In light of numerous discussions about whether to follow Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner's suggestions to process lightly and broadly, valid reasons remain for continuing traditional practices for many literary correspondence collections. In this case study, the authors use the Kenneth Burke Papers in the Special Collections Library, Pennsylvania State University Libraries, as an example of when it is desirable to provide item-level indexing. Recognizing that the majority of archival records may not require such detailed description, the authors discuss when it is appropriate to examine and index literary correspondents, a practice used with many other literary collections in which name access to literary correspondents is a legitimate, valued interest.

The occasion of the 20th anniversary of Thelma Gutsche's passing in November 1984 is an appropriate time for a commemorative article on this outstanding South African lady. An overview of the Thelma Gutsche Papers at the University of Cape Town Library was undertaken by the author at the encouragement of the organisers of the conference Our Place in African Theatre today (Biennial Conference of the South African Society for Theatre Research - SASTRA) in 2003. This conference was to have included a section for the presentation of special collections on the history of drama and plays in South African libraries. The aim of this short presentation was to inform the scientific community about the holdings and the value of this very special collection. Unfortunately, the conference was cancelled. Because of the importance of Thelma Gutsche's work as a scholar in the field of social and cultural history, as well as her work as a dedicated film and theatre critic, biographer and women's rights activist, it seems appropriate to combine a consideration of the Thelma Gutsche Papers with a short biographical overview about her life and work.

To celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) chose to highlight and describe a single collection from each of its member libraries. The association comprises “123 research libraries at comprehensive, research-extensive institutions in the US and Canada that share similar research missions, aspirations, and achievements . . . [and that] make up a large portion of the academic and research library marketplace” (http://www.arl.org/arl/). Some 118 member libraries contributed an entry to Celebrating Research and, as such, indicated that they have encouraged and supported academic research in those disciplines that look to the past to help us understand where we have been and how we define ourselves today. Each selection demonstrates this commitment clearly and often evocatively. Information about the single collections featured in the body of the book is supplemented at the end of

The Department of Special Collections and Archives housed in the library at Kent State University is the repository for the Jean-Claude van Itallie Papers. For years, van Itallie donated his correspondence, journals, diaries, and manuscripts to Alex Gildzen, former curator of the Special Collections. Now retired, Gildzen has relinquished his responsibilities to Jeanne Somers, whose staff has recently cataloged this vast collection of 1,001 items, as well as the additional material contributed since 1990 (described in detail in this article). Plans are underway to merge all of the entries into a single file that will be mounted on the World Wide Web; thus, the numerical notations currently used to catalogue the collection may change in the future. Van Itallie is one of the most versatile dramatists of the contemporary American stage. He has experimented with such diverse dramatic structures as monologue, satire, absurdist theater, ritualistic drama, epic theater, surrealism, expressionism, revue sketches, vignettes, musical theater, realism, and various hybrids of these forms. With a legacy of approximately thirty-three plays and eight adaptations that have been presented in experimental and repertory theaters worldwide, van Itallie has greatly expanded the range of dramatic structure. Van Itallie’s plays focus on several of the most poignant issues in contemporary America. Throughout his career, van Itallie has assumed the role of a seer gauging the pulse of modern society. Making us aware of the social malaise of humanity during the latter half of the twentieth century, van Itallie’s theater functions as a therapeutic cure to heal personal and global afflictions. Van Itallie challenges us to realize that we are not cut-off heads vulnerable to manipulation. The healing power of his theater invites us to become aware of how we separate mind from body, cutting off consciousness and thereby allowing ourselves to be commercially, politically, or psychologically manipulated by individuals or institutions. By acknowledging the “wild cut-off part of ourselves,” we take the first step in healing ourselves.

The genesis of this article stems from the concern of the History of the Health Sciences Section of the Medical Library Association (MLA) over what we perceive to be erosion of an appreciation for and knowledge of history and medical humanities and the future of these historically based collections. This concern extends beyond university administrators to include the library profession itself. We are not alone in this concern. The American Association for the History of Medicine is similarly disquieted and has reacted recently to this unease by forming a committee to examine issues related to the future of medical history libraries [1]. Evidence to support the assertion that we have entered a period of professional amnesia can be found as close as our peer-reviewed journal itself, where there has been a steady retreat of historical articles since the 1970s, with the trend continuing to the present.† However, this is not to point fingers at editors. Editors cannot publish what they do not receive. Moreover, we believe the issue runs deeper and is rooted in professional amnesia over our own professional history, a profession that itself historically had included historical studies and historical collections management as an integral part of its interests and responsibilities. In this advocacy document, the authors will review the integral relationship between history and medical librarianship in the development of the profession, confirm the continuing relevance of this relationship as we continue to find new roles for medical librarians in the changing health curricula, and offer practical ways in which we can advocate for the history of the health sciences within our institutions and beyond. Starting with our own professional history, beyond our association's original founders such as Margaret Ridley Charlton and George Milbry Gould, the role of William Osler was key in making history and medical humanities part of the MLA's organizational charge. As historian Jennifer Connor has observed in her Guardians of Medical Knowledge: In general, where Gould—a self-consciously cultured man himself—had pushed scientific communications as the means to transform moribund collections into active workshops, medical leaders afterward reclaimed the notion of humanism in medicine [emphasis added] to breathe life into collections of classical books as well… . The objective of these later leaders was to use the association to elevate and cultivate the medical profession, in part through reading and celebrating their medical heritage. They were deeply influenced in this respect by the association's second president, William Osler. Key participants in the society formed an intricate network of the medical elite through their relationships with Osler, their connections to the Association of American Physicians, and their roles as directors of medical libraries. [2] Indeed, it was Osler who steered the newly formed association toward historical studies. The first periodical devoted to the history of medicine was also the official publication of the Association of Medical Librarians. The official journal of the association, The Medical Library and Historical Journal, begun in 1903, made the connection between medical libraries and history explicit. The early list of MLA officials reads like a who's who of American medical historians: Gould served on the board of the MLA and edited the Annals of Medical History (a journal established in 1917); later, Archibald Malloch, an MLA official, became the first editor of the Journal of the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences that was started in 1946; and other prominent MLA officials like Francis R. Packard, J. George Adami, Fielding H. Garrison, and Abraham Jacobi served in important positions in the history of medicine. Together, they helped create a culture of professionalism as well as scholarship in an emerging field that distinguished itself from other library specialties emerging contemporaneously from the work of Melvil Dewey, William Frederick Poole, and Justin Winsor. Along with this professionalism came a general elevation in the caliber of medical libraries from those who staffed them to the collection development resources that filled them. Thus it was from the very beginning that this organization of library professionals was intimately bound up with the history of medicine and health care and owes much of its success to the influence of medical humanities. And yet, as indicated in the introduction, the pages of the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association (now Journal of the Medical Library Association [JMLA]) show the steady shrinkage and virtual disappearance of this valuable and critical tool in our profession and along with it an alarming display of professional amnesia. This advocacy document is, therefore, a call for MLA to once again take the lead in recognizing the value and importance of history in the health care professions and of the historical collections so ably managed by specialists in this field. This call is more than a nostalgic plea: By doing so, MLA will advance the profession of health sciences librarians in the following ways: 1. It will move health sciences librarians into a leadership role in multidisciplinary fields to support not just medical center needs, but the curricular needs of humanities departments (e.g., history, sociology, education, etc.) in the institutions they serve. 2. It will enhance real and perceived proficiencies for librarians in the academy by emphasizing history as a legitimate specialty in our field (e.g., special collections management and promotion, application of appropriate methodologies to historical inquiry, and sound historical reference and consultation services). 3. It will assist health sciences librarians (with appropriate expertise and interests) in becoming true collaborators with teaching faculty. 4. It will restore a broader role for health sciences librarians by providing a focus beyond that of assisting clinicians to include direct curricular support for history and historical components in history, medical sociology, and other education programs. We assert that through our professional expertise and purpose as gatekeepers of knowledge, librarians of the history of health sciences are an integral component of the faculty, especially, and in some ways uniquely, well positioned to provide key interdisciplinary services in the sciences and humanities through preservation, access, consultation, instruction, and relevant programming.

The Lewis S. Feuer papers at Brandeis University include correspondence, manuscripts, Feuer’s collection of radical literature, and other personal and professional materials. The process by which these materials came to Brandeis and were organized into an archival collection reveals connections and lacunae inherent in the material record and illuminates the principles involved in “archiving a life.”

The DeGas-Musson Papers were formally placed on loan in the Special Collections of the Tulane University Library, New Orleans, in 1973, through the generosity of the late Mrs. Edmund B. Martin, n6e Dora Odile Musson, daughter of Gaston Edgar Achille Musson, who was, in turn, the son of Rene DeGas and Estelle Musson, the brother and cousin, respectively, of Edgar Degas (Fig. 1). The collection consists of six boxes divided into folders, containing some 435 letters and documents in French and English dating from 1834 to 1950. Selected excerpts of a few of the letters have been published, including some, but not all, of those that refer to Edgar Degas himself.1 These published excerpts have helped illuminate Degas's family relationships and the basic chronology of his biography. The remainder of the archive, virtually untapped by scholars, contains considerably more information of interest, not only to Degas scholars, but also to historians of the society, politics, and economics of the American South and of Franco-American relations.