There are untold treasures “hidden in plain sight” at colleges and universities. Academic archives and special collections offer vast troves of documents and artifacts available for use not only by serious scholars and researchers but also in many cases by the public as well.
Some people may not see the academic libraries’ riches simply because they’re not looking for them, said Russell Maylone, curator of special collections at the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern University. Those who are interested enough to explore can find treasures that range from a 550-year-old copy of the Gutenberg Bible on display at the University of Texas in Austin to J.R.R. Tolkien’s handwritten drafts of “The Lord of the Rings” at Marquette University in Milwaukee or the very first computer mouse at Stanford University in California.
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At Northwestern, whether they are fragments of medieval manuscripts, records from the 1924 Leopold and Loeb homicide trial or stacks of Marvel comic books, the special collections have their greatest value when people are using them, Maylone said. Donors who give their collections to universities usually do so because they want people to use them, he said.
For example, John James Audubon’s “The Birds of America,” which contains 435 hand-colored engraved plates sits right by the McCormick Library’s front door for easy reference.
“We’re part of the Midwest flyway so it’s very valuable for seeing what lands on campus,” Maylone said. “The man who gave it to us, Charles Deering, was for many years on our board of trustees, but he also lived near the campus and he had 150 bird feeders on his property.”
The Audubon set provides a clue as to why academic libraries usually will not put a dollar value on the treasures in their collections, said Gene Rinkel, curator of special collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Illinois, which has the fourth-largest research library in the nation, also has one of the original 200 Audubon sets that were published in London from 1827 to 1838.
“A copy of it has been on the market in the past year for close to $8 million,” Rinkel said.
Eclectic offerings
Also among the special collections at the University of Illinois are a French Coronation manuscript (a 1326 document on vellum prepared before the coronation of Charles IV and Jeanne d’Evreux of France), more than 1,000 examples of incunabula (books published between 1455 and 1500), 16th and 17th Century emblem books (literature that combined moral sayings, symbolic illustrations that reinforced the saying and a motto or title), a Spanish Civil War collection, an H.G. Wells collection and a Carl Sandburg collection.
The public is welcome to use the collections, although the school’s first objective is “to provide research material for faculty, undergraduates and the international community of scholars,” Rinkel said.
The University of Illinois is using its John Philip Sousa Archive not only to facilitate research but also to reach out to the public and provide “an opportunity for people to discover American music,” said Scott Schwartz, archivist for music and fine arts at the university. The university is reorganizing the collection as the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, Schwartz said.
Among the collection’s treasures are Sousa’s original scores, handwritten manuscripts, news clippings and photographs, as well as instruments, band uniforms, batons, his white kid gloves and even the steamer trunk lid on which he stood to conduct. The artifacts provide important context for the documents, he said.
“Archives and archival papers play a symbiotic role with one another,” Schwartz said. “You can’t look at one without looking at the other.”
The center is planning to promote its offerings along with a series of events in November to mark the sesquicentennial of Sousa’s birth. Sousa wrote 137 marches, including “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” as well as other forms of music, and was an honorary conductor of the University of Illinois band.
The papers and artifacts that relate to contemporary culture are like magnets that draw the public and undergraduate students in “for more thoughtful looking,” said Thomas Staley, director of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “That’s why we arrange exhibitions that interpret our collections.”
More space for exhibits
In May the Ransom Center unveiled a $14.5 million renovation that includes 40,000 square feet of new public space for exhibitions and public programs that focus on its collections.
“We felt that the cultural riches here deserved a wider audience,” Staley said. “We hope this gives access to a much larger group of people.”
Private colleges are reaching out to the public with their collections as well. In September 2001, Wheaton College opened a new facility for its Marion E. Wade Center to house a major collection that focuses on seven British authors who made major contributions to Christian thinking in the second half of the 20th Century. Included are Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, George McDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams.
The center is open to the public and there is no charge to use the facility’s reading room or visit displays.
“We’re trying to encourage that you don’t have to be a scholar or a researcher to use this material,” said center director Chris Mitchell. About 10,000 people have visited the center each year since its opening. It is one of three archives at the school that attract students and scholars from throughout the world, Mitchell said.
In the museum area of the center, one of the most popular artifacts is a more than 100-year-old wardrobe that was handmade by C.S. Lewis’ grandfather and probably was the inspiration for the entrance to the magical land of Narnia, as described in Lewis’ children’s book series “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Lewis and his brother used to play hide-and-seek in this wardrobe, just like the children in the book, Mitchell said.
The center is also home to the desk that J.R.R. Tolkien used to write “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
However, the real heart of the collection are the manuscripts, letters and articles that provide insights into the authors’ thoughts as well as the culture and issues of the time when the work was written, he said.
Another major collection of Tolkien’s work is nearby at Marquette University. The collection is housed on the third floor of the new $55 million John T. Raynor Library, which opened in August.
“Marquette University has the good fortune of owning the complete manuscripts for Tolkien’s best-known works, `The Hobbit,’ published in 1937, and `The Lord of the Rings,’ published in 1954 and 1955,” said Matt Blessing, university archivist.
“It’s a remarkable manuscript collection because there are some chapters of `The Lord of the Rings’ that have as many as 18 drafts.”
“There’s always a little sense of awe when the average visitor sees the writer’s original drafts,” Blessing added.
Weekly presentations
There has been so much public interest in the Tolkien collection that Blessing now offers weekly presentations at the library. Only a photo ID is required to participate in the discussions and use Marquette’s collections, Blessing said.
The newest treasure at Harvard College is the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who is well-known for his English dictionary, which defined many words for the first time. With 4,000 volumes, about 5,500 letters and manuscripts, and more than 5,000 prints, drawings and objects, the collection gives a detailed picture of the world of the 18th-Century writer. Among the documents are several drafts of Johnson’s “Plan for a Dictionary” and his correspondence with friends such as Hester Thrale Piozzi.
In addition to their important research value, original documents such as these connect students to the subject in unique ways, said William Stoneman, Florence Fearrington librarian of Houghton Library, the rare book library at Harvard University.
“When you actually page through a book and see Mrs. Piozzi making corrections to books that she then sent to Johnson, you get a real sense of what’s going on, and the subject comes to life,” Stoneman said.
World’s largest collection
Harvard College Library and the associated university libraries have the largest academic research collection in the world, including a large collection of medieval manuscripts and of early printed books. Harvard’s collections are set up primarily for use by scholars and researchers, although there are some tours and exhibitions for the public.
Stanford University’s wealth lies in modern works, such as the archives of R. Buckminster Fuller, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck and Apple Corp., said Andrew Herkovic, assistant director of University Libraries.
Stanford’s archive of innovator Douglas Engelbart includes the first computer mouse.
“It looks basically like a block of wood. It’s a little bigger and clunkier than what you have on your desk right now,” Herkovic said.
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In addition to encouraging its undergraduates to do original research with its collections, Stanford offers public exhibits.
“It’s not just eye candy. The idea is to engage people in the history of ideas and the very interesting ways that we represent the history of ideas,” Herkovic said. “This makes people more aware of the kinds of opportunities they can obtain by going into special collections and requesting things.”
Documents and artifacts that focus on the history of a university can be equally enticing. At the University of Notre Dame, some of the most requested items relate to the history of the school and its sports program, said Charles Lamb, assistant director of the Notre Dame University Archives.
“People ask to see a lot of sports things in general,” Lamb said. “We have all the Notre Dame sports. That includes programs from games, film from some games, audio, a lot of radio broadcasts. We have newsreel footage of [legendary football coach Knute] Rockne. We have a lot of publications, photos, negatives.”
To extend its reach to the public, Notre Dame’s staff maintains a permanent exhibit of papers, photographs, and artifacts in the Ernestine M. Raclin Gallery of Notre Dame History at the Northern Indiana Center for History in South Bend.
Among Notre Dame’s other collections are many items related to the history of the Catholic church in America, such as the prayer book belonging to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (founder of the Sisters of Charity), offering research value as well as inspiration, Lamb said.
Local history revealed
University collections reveal important aspects of local history as well, said Kathy Young, university archives coordinator at Loyola University in Chicago.
One of Loyola’s most valued collections is the memorabilia of Chicago public works magnate Samuel Insull, who established Commonwealth Edison. Loyola also is proud of its Chicago theater stagebill collection that dates back more than 100 years.
Even small libraries can offer rich resources to those who are willing to search their special collections.
“I would say almost wherever you live, the nearest college or library will have a special collection, and it may not have Dr. Johnson in it and it may not have medieval manuscripts, but it will have documents of local history, and artifacts of literature and culture which are well worth exploring,” Stoneman said.
Collections are at world’s fingertips
Although reviewing an ancient manuscript online may not provide the total sensory experience of studying the real thing, more and more colleges are digitizing their special collections to share them with the world.
The public is responding with enthusiasm, said Thomas Staley, director of Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
“When we digitized our Gutenberg Bible, 14 million people at least clicked on it. In the 20-some years that we’ve had the Gutenberg, we haven’t had any percentage of that many people see that book,” Staley said.
In March, the University of Texas took its collections a step farther into cyberspace by launching its new UTOPIA Web site (http://utopia.utexas.edu/), which is designed to present the university’s resources online for the lay audience, said Johnnie Ray, vice president of resource development at the University of Texas. The site is organized by topics, with supporting material to put the topic in context.
“It’s intended to be access to treasures, but built with the outside world in mind,” Ray said. “If they are interested in Renaissance and Baroque art, they can explore and not just see images of the art, but will also have the context built around it so they can understand the time in history when these things were occurring.”
There is no fee for use of the site.
Many college and university libraries offer online catalogs that allow users to review what is available in their special collections and order the items they want to study at the library. Some schools offer direct access to digitized versions of documents.
“We have fabulous, fabulous materials available electronically,” said Russell Maylone, curator of special collections at the McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern University. “Eventually you’ll have access to everything published in the English language up until about 1800, electronically, if you’re a member of the Northwestern community or you decide you want to walk into our library and sit down at one of our computers.”
Further information about the college and university special collections in this story is available at the following Web sites:
– McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library: www.library.northwestern.edu/spec/index.html.
– Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin: www.hrc.utexas.edu/home.html.
– Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library: http://hcl.harvard.edu/houghton.
– Loyola University Libraries: http://libraries.luc.edu.
– The Wade Center of Wheaton College: www.wheaton.edu/learnres/wade.
– Marquette University Special Collections and University Archives: www.marquette.edu/library/collections/archives/index.html
– Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives: www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/spc.html
– University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Special Collections: www.library.uiuc.edu/rbx/speccoll.htm
– University of Notre Dame Libraries: www.nd.edu/libraries.
–Ann R. Martin