William S. Monroe, Head,
Collection Development Dept. and others, as named below.)
American
Civilization | Center
for the Study of Race & Ethnicity | Special
Collections
General:
Library support for the study of American culture is extensive, coming from many directions, and aimed at many different departments and programs within the University. Although the Library provides support specifically for only two of the programs under review here, American Civilization and the Center for the Study of Race & Ethnicity in America, we cannot adequately address the issue without taking account of other programs not under review at this time. The interests of both American Civilization and Race & Ethnicity overlap completely with the program in Afro-American Studies, and also very much with the Americanists in the History Department. In fact, the Libraryâs support for the John Nicholas Brown Center is actually made through its support of the History Department. Nor can we completely separate other departments and programs whose interests also include a great deal of American culture. Through its support of the programs in Modern Culture and Media, Ethnomusicology, English and American Literature, Anthropology, the History of Art & Architecture, Environmental Studies, Urban Studies, Sociology and others, the Library also answers the needs of the all the programs in the American culture cluster. Moreover, in addition to our own resources, we have access to the unique collections of the John Carter Brown Library (also under review). While our missions are very different, our collections are often very complementary, and we try to cooperate as much as possible to meet the needs of all of our users.
The Library has long allocated its funds for resources by departments, programs, and centers within the University, and we also assign to each a librarian to work with the faculty and students to build and manage the collections. The Collection Development Librarian (CDL) assigned to both American Civilization and Race & Ethnicity is Stephen L. Thompson, who also happens to be responsible for Afro-American Studies, Modern Culture & Media, and English & American Literature. Support for the History Department has now been divided for the past several years, and Mary-Jo Kline handles American History, both for the general and special collections. Since her arrival, we have split the funds for History so that we are able to track expenditures for American history. We have other librarians responsible for the other programs mentioned above (Ethnomusicology, Anthropology, etc.). We are currently in the process of changing our organizational structure, and we have organized all the CDLâs into what we have named "discipline groups", and we have placed all the programs under review here into the History & Area Studies Group. We are even fortunate to have Rick Ring, Reference Librarian at the John Carter Brown Library, as a member of this group. With Steve L. Thompson, Mary-Jo Kline, and Rick Ring all members of the same group, there is much opportunity for cooperation in managing collections and services to serve those interested in American Culture.
Another advantage of the new organizational structure is that it brings together those librarians who are responsible for the general collections with those who are in Special Collections. Mary-Jo Kline had already combined these roles, but much of the responsibility for the information on Special Collections in this report belongs to Rosemary Cullen, who is Curator of many of the literary collections in the John Hay Library, including the Harris Collection of North American Poetry and Plays. Again, this organizational structure provides much more opportunity for cooperation in the provision of resources and services, even when some of the librarians involved may be in other discipline groups (e.g., Humanities or Social Sciences).
While it is impossible even to estimate how many titles or volumes we have that support the study of American culture, we can isolate some of our major expenditures. We have included expenditures for Afro-American Studies, and for American History because they do fall completely within the realm of American culture. We have not included such programs as Ethnomusicology or Modern Culture & Media, because those would include expenditures for non-American interests as well. The table excludes expenditures for Special Collections, which are tracked separately. Some of those expenditures are reported further below.
DISCIPLINE
1994/95
1995/96
1996/97
1997/98
1998/99
1999/2000
5-Year Change
American Civilization
$ 8,224
$ 11,947
$ 9,922
$ 11,784
$ 12,834
$ 10,964
33%
Afro-American Studies
$ 9,391
$ 8,572
$ 11,561
$ 9,282
$ 11,875
$ 10,892
16%
Race & Ethnicity
$ 3,919
$ 5,804
$ 11,686
$ 11,546
$ 4,903
$ 14,733
276%
SUB-TOTAL
$ 21,534
$ 26,323
$ 33,169
$ 32,612
$ 29,612
$ 36,589
70%
American History
*
*
*
$ 27,913
$ 38,689
$ 48,549
N/A
ALL AMERICAN CULTURE
$ 60,525
$ 68,301
$ 85,138
*We did not begin tracking expenditures for American history separately from all other history until 1997/98, and we did not add serials to that number until the following year.
The great increase in expenditures for Race & Ethnicity is due to a grant of some special funds by former President Vartan Gregorian to purchase material in this area. Although it was a one-time grant of funds, it was much larger than the regular expenditure and still carries over from year to year.
We continue to collect substantially in all aspects of American culture. Most of the current output of American academic and trade presses come to us through our approval plan with a major book vendor. Once indication of our effectiveness is a regular check of books reviewed in the American Historical Review. Of the 356 books reviewed in the section on "United States and Canada" for the year 1999, we found we had 316 (89%). After such a check, of course, we purchase any important books we have missed, so one can probably assume that we have about 95% of the books in the end. Sections below address our support of specific programs, as well as our extraordinary special collections. We recently prepared a report concerning Afro-American/Africana Studies, and we will attach that to this report, because parts of it may be relevant.
(Prepared by Stephen L. Thompson, Box A, x33581,
American Civilizationâs interest in virtually every aspect of American culture, coupled with its "rigorous interdisciplinary approach," determines the type and scope of collections that are developed by the Library on their behalf. Such a range of teaching and research interests means that the Library provides at least representative examples, and in many cases, extensive collections, of material the popular genres and subjects, as well as the canonical and the scholarly. Specifically, collecting endeavors have focused on acquiring resources for the study and understanding of class, gender, sexuality, identity, and the diverse groups and experiences within our society. There is particular interest in Asian-Americans and Latinos, but immigration, diaspora, and the ethnic/minority experience in general are also important subjects. Other areas of interest include folklore, popular culture and media, the history of technology and material culture, museum studies, medical history, womenâs history, social and intellectual history, religion, and urban life. Interest is not confined to the geographic United States. The effects of globalization and the impact on, and interaction with, other cultures also fall within the Departmentâs purview. There are obvious connections and overlap with courses in a variety of other disciplines, including Afro-American, Anthropology, Modern Culture and Media, English, Biology, Political Science, and Music. And the Department benefits from material acquired by the Library for these subject areas too. The Library seeks to respond to the variety of needs by systematic development of collections in the appropriate areas, as well as through timely response to individually expressed requirements for particular resources. We hope to be as flexible as the Department in accommodating the freedom of choice allowed their faculty and students, undergraduates and graduates, in their academic pursuits.
Recent acquisitions have included a specifically requested microfilm run of a post-war Japanese newspaper to various electronic databases and journals. So, in addition to providing access to the resources of the World Wide Web, the Library has licensed and subscribed to such online indexes as America History and Life, PoolesPlus (19th century periodicals), and the MLA Bibliography, and full-text resources like Accessible Archives (19th century newspapers), JSTOR (backruns of major journals, Literature Resource Center, and the LION databases (poetry, drama). Current e-journals include African American Review, American Historical Review, Feminist Review, Journal of Asian American Studies, Public Culture, and Technology and Culture. The Department also draws on the collections of the John Hay Library, as detailed elsewhere), the Art Slide Library, Orwig Music Library, and the John Carter Brown Library.
As we wrote in the American Civilization graduate review, "while a Department with such diverse and non-traditional interests·might potentially place a great strain on the Library to support it, that has not been the case." Due, as we said, to the fact that American culture is a strength of our collections and that they share interests with so many other departments. We will continue to attempt to close gaps in the collections, for example, retrospective Asian American material, a problem pointed out by recent graduate students, and meet the challenges of new teaching and research areas through the acquisition of traditional material and maximizing accessibility to electronic and Internet resources.
The Center for the Study of Race & Ethnicity:
(Prepared by Stephen L. Thompson, Box A, x33581,
The Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (CSREA), like a number of other departments, programs, and centers, is designed to encourage interdisciplinary teaching, study, and research, to cross academic lines, and to provide support to, and draw support from, many other disciplines. As their statements of mission and purpose make explicit, the CSREA seeks to understand race as an historical and sociological reality, to see race and ethnicity as "social constructions, " and to investigate the implications. This involves a primary focus on Afro-Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. As well as biracials and multiracials. Study and teaching seek to foster analysis of the meanings of race, ethnicity, gender, and class in our culture and in comparison to other cultures. They endeavor to coordinate and develop the resources necessary for these studies on minorities and minority issues. During and since its inception, the Center has drawn on the faculty and students of many departments, including Philosophy, History, Afro-American, Sociology, American Civilization, Anthropology, Psychology, English, Education, Bio-Med, and Portuguese Brazilian. In the mid-1990âs, an undergraduate concentration in Ethnic Studies was devised and implemented. At about the same time, then President Gregorian designated extra funds for the acquisition of race and ethnicity resources to bolster and build the existing collections.
Obviously, these goals and defined areas of interest govern and guide the collection development that the Library has provided over the last dozen years. While the Center certainly benefits from purchases made on behalf of the departments mentioned above, as well as others, funds have been used to acquire material to do specifically with the particular groups and broader issues related to race and ethnicity that they are focused on. As noted elsewhere, a substantial number of the collections at the John Hay Library serve as special resources in areas of interest to CSREA. Besides the monographs, journals, and microforms the Library has acquired on behalf of the Center, we also provide access to other library collections through Interlibrary Loan and consortial agreements like the Boston Library Consortium. In addition to providing access to the World Wide Web through the Library Research Center page, the Library has purchased and subscribed to a number of relevant electronic products÷indexes, full-text databases, and e-journals÷that directly benefit CSREA-sponsored teaching and research. These would include indexes like America History and Life, full-text sources like Ethnic Newswatch, Afro-American Newspapers of the 19th Century, and Afro-American Poetry (from the 17th to the 20th centuries), and e-journals like African American Review, Journal of Asian American Studies, Journal of Negro History, and Ethnohistory, as well as many other general and discipline-related electronic resources.
The Library expects to continue to support the Centerâs primary areas of focus, and perhaps expand acquisitions in new areas, such as locally produced ethnic material, with the help of the CSREAâs staff, as suggested by the current director.
(Prepared by Rosemary Cullen, Box A, x31514, Rosemary_Cullen@brown.edu)
Overview
Special Collections in the John Hay Library is one of the country's most distinguished repositories of rare books and special collections. Its collections of printed books, manuscripts and archives, and graphic materials, numbering well over 2,500,000 items, provide a wealth of resources in support of graduate and undergraduate instruction, faculty research, and the international community of scholars.
Notable collections of interest for this review include the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, at 250,000 volumes the largest of its kind in existence, the McLellan Lincoln Collection and the John Hay Collection, archives of modern American literary presses, and notable author collections including H. P. Lovecraft, and H. D. Thoreau, among many others.
Collections relating to modern American culture include holdings of sheet music, pulp fiction, comics, entertainment memorabilia, popular publishing, pageants, wit and humor, and film and television scripts. Gorham Archives document American style over a period of a century, and provide much information on the operation of a major local manufacturer over the same period.
Historical collections include materials on Afro-American soldiers in the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, the American whaling industry in the Morse Whaling Collection, Rhode Island history in the Rider Collection, the literature of American western exploration in the Ames collection.
Recent acquisitions include the archives of a number of important literary presses and publishers, including Burning Deck, Conjunctions, and Greenhouse. In addition, the acquisition of the St. Martin's Press archive is a landmark development in the documenting contemporary literary publishing. A particularly significant H. P. Lovecraft manuscript, The Shadow Out of Time, was given to the Collection in recent years.
The collections of gay and lesbian literature have been significantly enriched by the acquisition of the James Jackson Library, the John Preston Papers, and the collection of scarce and ephemeral gay pulp fiction. Contemporary culture collections acquired in recent years include the very extensive Michael J. Ciaraldi Collection of comics and graphic novels, one of the largest such collections in an American library, and by the Tierney collection of posters, tickets, programs, and other entertainment memorabilia. The Hall-Hoag Collection is a vast repository of information, much of it in ephemeral form, on extremist organizations of every political and cultural stripe over the past half century.
Other recently acquired collections of note include the Schirmer Collection on Anti-Imperialism, the Dupee Mexican History Collection, and the Kirk Collection of Alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous, the J. Saunders Redding Collection, and Barton St. Armand's papers relating to Emily Dickinson and H. P. Lovecraft.
In the past five years, Special Collections support for collections relating to American Civilization, Race and Ethnicity, and Afro-American Studies has exceeded $850,000. This includes outright purchases of entire collections, as well as ongoing support for key collections such as Harris, Lincoln, and Lovecraft.
The Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays. 250,000 volumes of American and Canadian poetry, plays, and vocal music dating 1609 to the present day, in all languages, and in all formats. Collected comprehensively; a national collection of record.
The African-American literature holdings of the Harris Collection range from rare 18th century works by Phillis Wheatley, through the abolitionist writings of William Wells Brown and the late 19th century dialect poetry and lyrics of Paul Laurence Dunbar, to extensive holdings of major 20th century figures such as Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Alain Locke, Arna Bontemps, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Robert Hayden, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry, among many others.
Contemporary authors held in strength include Ai, Gwendolyn Brooks, Michael Harper, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and many hundreds of others. Modern small press poetry is collected heavily. There are, in addition, holdings of African-American literary periodicals, including current subscriptions.
Another strength of the Collection of interest for this review is the collection of Yiddish-American literature. Consisting of nearly 1,300 titles and 3,000 pieces of sheet music, it documents the very lively Yiddish language culture, centered in New York City, from the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries.
African-American Literature URL:
Yiddish-American Literature URL:
Broadsides Collection. A comprehensive collection, over 40,000 items, of American poetry published in broadside format from colonial times to the present. Included in the collection are playbills, posters, postcards, Christmas and Valentine's day cards, song sheets and carrier's addresses. Holdings of African-American literature are significant, and similar in nature to those of the Harris Collection. Carrier's addresses, single-sheet poems published by newspapers and distributed by the carrier or newsboy on New Year's Day, a custom lasting from 1720 until the early 20th century are of particular interest for this review, in that they document events of local interest throughout an extensive period of American history.
H. D. Thoreau. Albert E. Lownes Thoreau Collection, consisting of over 1,000 items, and including books by Thoreau, later editions of his writing, biographical and critical works, and books from his personal library. There are also periodicals, engravings, photographs, a strikiing original sketch of Thoreau, maps, broadsides, museum objects, and other memorabilia. The Collection includes a number of Thoreau letters, college papers and journal excerpts. Noteworthy is an album entitled "Concordia", a collection of autograph letters, portraits, and original sketches of Concord personalities.
Tinker Collection.19th and 20th century American prose writers.
Dr. Arlene Pillar Collection of Children's Literature. Over 3,000 volumes of children's literature primarily form the 1970s and 1980s, including many illustrated works and fiction for young adults.
Asa Cushman Collection. Plays in manuscript parts and prompt copies, the working library of a mid-19th century actor-manager.
Richard G. Katzoff Collection. Gay and lesbian literature, with a small component of history and sociology. Includes scarce erotica and popular periodicals. The Collection is supplemented by the library, personal writings, and papers of John Preston, journalist, author and editor of gay literature.
Manuscript Collections:
H. P. Lovecraft Collection. Extensive holdings of manuscripts, letters, editions of Lovecraft's works in all languages, periodicals, biographical and critical works, and many supportive collections of manuscript and printed materials of Lovecraft friends and associates.
Henry Scholey Saunders, 1864-1951. Collection of Walt Whitman, 1877-1950. Papers, correspondence, photographs, drawings, and scrapbooks relating to Whitman and his disciples. Donation of Webster Knight in 1931, supplemented by Saunders, 1932-1951.
Harry Crosby, 1898-1929. American poet and, with Caresse Crosby,
founder of the Black Sun Press in Paris. Proofs of two books, typescripts of poems, ten diaries and notebooks for 1926-1929, biographical notes, and letters about Crosby and his press. Gift of Caresse Crosby in 1955.
John Brooks Wheelwright. Correspondence and manuscripts of a socially-prominent socialist poet in the 1920s and 1930s.
Martha Dickinson Bianchi Collection, consisting of the papers of the family of Emily Dickinson, along with the 3,000 volume family library from "The Evergreens," the Dickinson home in Amherst Massachusetts; supplement4ed by gifts from Barton St. Armand and George Monteiro, of additional items from the same source.
William Chauncey Langdon Collection of Pageants. Collection of pageants directed and organized by Langdon, founder and President of the American Pageant Association, and also includes scripts, correspondence, photographs, and memorabilia relating to other pageants of the early 20th century.
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection. The Collection includes over 13,000 prints, drawings, and watercolors, dating from the 16th century to the present; the most recent items include over 1000 paintings, drawings and water-colors depicting World War Two by artists who served in the United States armed forces.
Among the images in the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection are several representations of African-American soldiers. The oldest picture is a water-color of a soldier of the Second Rhode Island Regiment, circa 1779 painted by Antoine de Verger, an officer in the French Army under Rochambeau who served in the Yorktown campaign. A fine recruiting print dating from the Civil War entitled 'Come Join Us Brothers' portrays several black soldiers of the Union Army gathered around the flag with their white officer beside them; while a print of the Battle of Olustee, Florida, depicts the same regiment in battle again the Confederates. The 54th Massachusetts Regiment are represented in a Currier & Ives print of the storming of Fort Wagner in July 1863. From World War Two is a water-color showing African-American G.I.s dancing with Japanese girls shortly after the end of the war. A small collection of books chronicling the achievements of black soldiers in the armed forces complements these images.
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McLellan Lincoln Collection. Approximately 15,000 books and newspapers, 2,600 manuscripts (of which some 950 were written or signed by Lincoln), 5,200 broadsides, 6,900 prints and photographs, 250 phonograph records, 320 pieces of sheet music, and 1,560 museum objects affording research opportunities not only in relation to the career of Abraham Lincoln, but also for the entire middle period of American history and political culture.
Current collecting, in response to new faculty interest, added hundreds of titles of new monographs, childrenâs books, and historical novels each year as well as 19th century books, broadsides, and pamphlets missing from our holdings. And, in 1999, the Lincoln Collection became the first unit of the Brown Library system to purchase source materials in DVD format ö the "Lincoln Legal Papers."
Metcalf Collection. A vast number of English and American pamphlets on a wide variety of subjects dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries
Morse Whaling Collection. Personal narratives and classics of whaling literature. The collection also includes manuscript log books.
Rider Collection. Primarily 19th century books, pamphlets, manuscripts, broadsides and newspapers on Rhode Island subjects amassed by the Providence bookseller and antiquarian, Sidney S. Rider.
Robert and Margaret Ames Collection of Travel Books. The Collection was assembled over a thirty year period and built around three distinct but related ideas; the history of illustration, particularly nineteenth century books illustrated with woodcuts, wood or steel engravings or by lithography; the literature of travel and exploration, with a preference given to the North American continent; and pictorial representations of areas in which the Ames family lived before their arrival in Providence in 1970.
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Eberstadt Collection. Approximately 300 19th century printed accounts of the development of the American West.
Manuscript Collections:
Collections in American history are strongest for the Nineteenth Century. The papers of Jonathan Russell (1771-1832) include records of the United States commission for the Treaty of Ghent. The McLellan Lincoln Collection includes over 900 items written or signed by Lincoln himself and many items relating to his associates. Also worthy of mention are the papers of the politician Samuel Sullivan Cox (1824-1889) and the papers of Eli Thayer (1819-1899), organizer of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. In addition, there are several dozen collections of letters and diaries written by Union soldiers during and after the Civil War.
John Hay Collection. More than 9,100 items covering the period 1829 to 1916 consisting of correspondence with his family and with literary, diplomatic, and political contemporaries; Civil War diaries and those kept by Hay as Secretary of the Legations in Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, 1866-1870; manuscript poems; corrected galley proofs for his 1890 book on Abraham Lincoln co-authored with John Nicolay. Subjects covered include the Civil War, Lincoln and his administration, Reconstruction, Japanese naval activity, British politics, Cuba, the Spanish-American War, European attitudes toward the United States, and political affairs under Presidents Hayes, McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. The Collection also includes Hay's personal library, including many literary works inscribed to Hay by literary and political contemporaries, and numerous works relating to Hay, his career and times.
Collections relating to church history include the records of several Baptist churches in Rhode Island and the papers of individual Baptist clergymen, including Roger Williams (1603?- 1683), Isaac Backus (1724-1806), Thomas Ustick (1753- 1803), and several presidents of Brown University. In addition to the papers of clergymen of other denominations, there are the papers of the seminarian and Transcendentalist Charles King Newcomb (1820- 1894) and the English Theosophist and spiritualist Mary Ann Atwood (1817-1910).
Modern collections include the papers of Rabbi Baruch Korff (1914-199 ), founder of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe and the Political Action Committee for Palestine. The Watergate era in American politics is illuminated by the files retained by Rabbi Korff as founder of the National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the Presidency and the United States Citizens Congress. A related collection consists of the papers of Elizabeth Anthony Dexter, which contains documentation and her writings on the rescue work carried out by her husband and herself in France and Portugal, under the auspices of the Unitarian Service Committee, during World War II.
Among the many collections relating to Rhode Island are the papers of the reformer Thomas Wilson Dorr (1805-1854), governors William Sprague (1830-1925) and Charles Warren Lippitt (1846- 1924), several volumes of the original manuscript minute-books of the Providence Town Council (1800- 1814), and an official manuscript copy of the Acts and Resolves of the Rhode Island General Assembly (1678-1747).
Rollo G. Silver Collection of Printing and Publishing History.Records the historical development of these two industries, particularly in the U.S.
The Michael J. Ciaraldi Collection of Comic Books and Comic Art. The Collection, estimated to contain 60,000 items, is a vast repository of the work of contemporary comic artists, and includes examples of the works of influential European and Japanese artists, and many small-press and alternative publications.
Sheet Music Collection. 500,000 items, of which 150,000 popular piano-vocal music. dating 1826-1950. Includes approximately 45,000 titles related to the American popular musical stage. Other notable sections include African-American related musi, music from the Yiddish language stage at the turn of the century, and silent film music. Illustrated covers are particularly notable as marketing tools for the music.
A recently completed project, the African American Sheet Music Digitizing Project, now mounted at the Library of Congress, includes digitized images of the covers and texts of 1,305 pieces of sheet music from the Library's collections.
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Miller Collection of Wit and Humor. Approximately 35,000 titles. The Collection consists primarily of 20th-century American imprints, but also includes significant sections of19th-century joke books, British imprints, works in Russian, Hebrew, French, German, and Italian, and 19th-century editions of classic works of humor. There is topical humor of every conceivable kind, such as sex, medicine, the law, sex, politics, sports, sex, and plumbing. There are also sections of comic novels, familiar essays by humorists, political satire, light verse, theatrical memoirs of comedy performers, American and European folk humor, ethnic humor, vaudeville routines, collections of political cartoons, paperback joke and cartoon books, and playscripts; and a notable section of "Army joke books", pulp periodicals from the World War II era. Gift of Bernard, Saul, and George Miller.
Manuscript Collections:
Gorham Company Archives. Archival records of the company founded in 1831 by silversmith Jabez Gorham of Providence, Rhode Island. At various times the company was the largest manufacturer of silver products, producer and distributor of ecclesiastical goods, and art bronze foundry in the United States. The collection features many thousands of drawings and photographs of Gorham products, reflecting American taste from Victorian times to the 1980s. It also contains corporate, personnel, costing, sales, and advertising records, as well as blueprints, plaster casts, and copper printing plates. Included also are the records of fourteen companies acquired by Gorham.
Screenplays, 1938-1980. 90 dialogue and post-production scripts from a variety of major American studios. American Television Scripts. Over 1000 items representing 730 different programs.
Frances Herriott Sargent Papers. Memorabilia of the first stage production of Porgy and Bess, preserved by its assistant stage manager.
Recent Acquisitions:
James and Gertrude Laughlin Collection. Bequest of James Laughlin, poet and publisher of New Directions Press, and the gifts of his widow. It is composed of approximately 5,000 volumes from his personal library, largely concentrating on the works of the Moderns. Gifts And Bequest Of James And Gertrude Laughlin.
Library of "The Fells," John Hay's summer house in New Hampshire, consisting of books owned by Hay and his family that complement the John Hay Personal Library which has been at Brown for many years. Gift Of John Hay.
Archive of the Third and Elm Press, one of Rhode Island's leading private presses, complementing the Library's holdings in the Book Arts and an earlier gift from Alexander Nesbitt of type specimens. Gift of Ilse Nesbitt.
Manley Wade Wellman Papers, archive of H. P. Lovecraft's associate, screenwriter and author of science fiction and fantasy stories along with historical monographs and historical novels. Purchase.
St. Martin's Press Archive, the historical archive of one of the nation's most important trade publishing houses, 1952 to the present, to be augmented by additional company records and publications. Gift Of St. Martin's Press.
Conjunctions Archive, a leading contemporary literary journal and frequent publisher of Brown faculty authors. Purchase.
Unicorn Press Archive, the final installment of a multi-year purchase of the archive of an important literary journal that recently ceased publication after more than two decades' activity. The Unicorn Archive joins several similar publications purchased after 1987 including those of the December Press, the Vagabond Press and the New York Quarterly. Purchase.
Greenhouse Press Archives. Fine press, operated by Gary Young in California. Specializes in broadsides and illustrated fine printing of modern literature. Purchase.
Quentin Reynolds Papers. The extant remnant of Reynolds' papers was acquired by purchase.
Paula Vogel Papers. Gift of the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and Brown faculty member.
Burning Deck Archives. Over the past several years, the Library has been acquiring the archives of Burning Deck Press, a major modern small literary press operated by Brown University faculty member Keith Waldrop and his wife Rosemarie. Purchase
H. P. Lovecraft. The original manuscript of Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time." Lovecraft began writing "The Shadow Out of Time" on November 14, 1934. He destroyed his first attempt and finally on March 14,1935, announced that he was finished. "but doubt whether it is good enough to type." In June, 1935, Lovecraft took the manuscript with him when he went to visit Barlow in Florida. In mid-August, he wrote to DonaldWandrei (a friend and later publisher), "Bob has just copied my 'Shadow Out of Time,' so that I may show it to you." The story, poorlyedited in Lovecraft's opinion, was printed in Astounding Stories in 1936. Gift of Lucille Shreve in the name of June Evelyn Ripley.
Library of James Jackson. Gay literature, the personal library of a rare book dealer specializing in gay and lesbian literature. Bequest of James Jackson.
World War II Art. Acquired primarily by gift, for the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection. The work of servicemen artists, done in the field during World War II.
Gay Pulp Paperbacks. Extensive collection, with a fully searchable database. Supplements materials in the Katzoff Collection. Purchase.
Robert J. Tierney Collection of Entertainment Memorabilia. Posters, scripts, tickets, photographs, and other ephemera related to theatrical and entertainment events in the local area over the past fifty years. Gift of Mr. Tierney.
Hall-Hoag Collection. Over the past five years, additional installments of the vast Hall-Hoag Collection of Extremist and Dissenting Literature have been added. The Collection currently exceeding 168,000 items emanating from over 5,000 organizations, constitutes the country's largest research collection of right and left wing U.S. extremist groups, from 1950 to 1999. Purchase.
Barton St. Armand Papers relating to Emily Dickinson and H.P. Lovecraft. Professor Barton St. Armand of the American Civilization Department has donated, as two separate collections, extracts from his professional correspondence and other files. One collection pertains to Emily Dickinson and was donated in honor of Professor George Monteiro, Professor Emeritus of English. The other, pertaining to H.P. Lovecraft, was donated in honor of John Stanley, Senior Special Collections Bibliographer and longtime curator or Brown's Lovecraft Collection.
James J. Robinson Papers, relating to his role on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East during the Tokyo War Trials following World War II. Gift of the Andrew Carvely Corporation.
Sergei Khruschev Papers, including memorabilia of his father, Nikita Khruschev. Gift of Sergei Khruschev.
Mel Yoken Collection. Correspondence, including letters from numerous anglophone and francophone authors, politicians, and other celebrities. Purchase.
John Preston Papers. Personal and professional correspondence; includes letters from friends, other writers, and groups whose focus is gay life and rights; also includes his outgoing letters on computer disk. Original typescripts of his writings; photographs; magazines with articles he authored; clippings; books written by Preston and others; and proofs. Gift and bequest of John Preston.
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Anne Fausto-Sterling Papers. This collection consists of printed articles, pamphlets, drafts of articles, papers presented at professional conferences, syllabi, course descriptions, and some correspondence. A few articles and course material are by Fausto-Sterling; almost all are by other scholars. Fausto-Sterling used these papers to support her research and teaching on women and gender in science. Gift of Anne Fausto-Sterling.
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Jay Saunders Redding Collection. Collection includes his correspondence; manuscripts of his books, articles, lectures, and speeches; course notes; diaries; documents relating to his personal business; some writings by others; photographs; clippings; scrapbooks. Redding, a graduate of Brown University, was a poet and specialist in African-American literature.
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Schirmer Collection on Anti-Imperialism. Boone Schirmer, the donor of the Schirmer Collection on Anti-Imperialism, continues to add to his generous donation of 1994. The Schirmer Collection now numbers almost 950 titles dealing with the Anti-Imperialist movement of 1898 and its repercussions in United States, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Filipino history. The library has supplemented Dr. Schirmer's gifts with purchases for the John Hay Collection and Starred Books. In the past five years, approximately 75 books, broadsides, and pamphlets have been purchased in this area. The anti-imperialist movement that is the focus of these gifts and purchases provided a forum for debate of American views on race and ethnicity as well as a discussion of the basic goals of American civilization in terms of expansion and world power.
Bradford Swan Antarctic Collection. In 1996, the Bradford Swan Antarctic Collection was transferred from the John Carter Brown Library to the John Hay. The 225 titles in the original donation have now been catalogued, and in the four years that Antarctic exploration has been a collecting interest of the John Hay, 150 titles have been purchased to supplement Mr. Swanâs original collection and to provide reference materials for researchers using the Antarctic materials. Expansion of the collection focuses on resources for the study of Antarctic exploration 1885-1955. The significance of the international race to master that region for American science and society may be judged by the quick popularity of Richard Byrdâs nickname for that frozen subcontinent ö "Little America."
The Earl Selle Collection, donated to Brown by Mr. Selleâs former wife in 1998, contains about 1,000 books, photographs, manuscripts, etc., that document Selleâs career as an American journalist in China, 1929-1941 and in Hawaii during World War II. The Selle Collection complements materials in the Schirmer and John Hay Collections that touch upon the expansion of American political and cultural ties in the Pacific.
Dupee Mexican History Collection. The acquisition of the Dupee Mexican History Collection in 1998 was an important step toward the John Hay's goal of providing research materials in 19th and 20th century Latin American history, both for the study of those Western Hemisphere nations south of the Rio Grande and for the better understanding of the Hispanic heritage of the United States. Until the donation of the Dupee collection, the only substantial collection at the John Hay focusing on Latin America was the library of George Earl Church, largely eighteenth and early nineteenth century monographs on politics, history, and science with substantial attention to contemporary scholarship in anthropology and the native peoples of this hemisphere. They were studies of Latin America, not primary materials generated by Latin American politicians, generals, and authors.
The Dupee Collection is a step toward redressing this. With but one exception, the Dupee Collection's more than 340 books, broadsides, pamphlets, and periodicals were published after the Mexican republic secured its independence in 1821. Most are Spanish-language sources written by Mexican citizens and published in Mexico. The bulk of the materials falls into the period 1821-50, covering the first decades of Mexican independence and that nation's war with the United States.The collection's nearly 200 broadsides chronicle Mexican partisan politics, religious and anti-clerical debates, popular literature and drama, domestic revolutions and armed conflict with the United States. It contains basic records of the Mexican republic previously absent from Brown's holdings - statutes, executive decrees, the documentary framework necessary for the study of a nation's history and culture. The Dupee Collection helps us fill the gap in resources for Mexico's history and reminds us, as well, of the interdependence of Mexican-United States experience.
Together with the Schirmer Collection and a substantial portion of the monographic and pamphlet material in the John Hay Collection, the Dupee Collection provides students with important sources the study of American diplomacy at the turn of the twentieth century and broader and better balanced opportunities for studying the Western Hemisphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
With the donation of the Dupee Collection, that study at Brown can become what it always deserved to be, that of La Civilizaci—n Americana.
Chester H. Kirk Collection of Alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous, a nationally important collection on temperance, alcoholism, and the pioneering work of Alcoholics Anonymous was given to Brown in 1995. It contains over 15,000 items, ranging from a leaf from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle depicting a drunken Noah to movies and videos. The major strengths of the collection are in the history of the North American temperance movement, with emphasis on Alcoholics Anonymous, and aspects of the consumption of alcohol. The majority of works in the collection are American, although there are publications from England, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Featured titles include the first book published in the United States on alcoholism, The Mighty Destroyer Displayed (1774) by A Lover of Mankind (Anthony Benezet), runs of prohibition magazines and newspapers, like those of the Anti-Saloon League's political arm, The American Issue, which was the only "single issue" party in American history to amend the Constitution.
Mr. Kirk included in his gift, funds to maintain and catalog this vast collection, which has now been cataloged, with the books distributed among several of the University libraries according to subject or rarity.
The Kirk Collection complemented several existing collections at Brown such as the Harris Collection of American Poetryâs definitive holdings of temperance songsters and songbooks and the Harris American Drama Collectionâs hundreds of examples of temperance dramas of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Library has continued to add materials in this area on a regular basis. For Special Collections alone, purchase of "alcohol" related items since 1995 had added more than 100 titles in this area, most of them 19th century United States publications.
Brown also pursues an aggressive program of soliciting alcoholism-related gifts to complement the Kirk Collection: in 1999, the John Hay acquired the personal memorabilia, manuscripts, and books of "Dr. Bob," Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous; and approximately 30,000 foreign-language pamphlets and serials dealing with temperance and the treatment of alcohol abuse transferred by Rutgers University, 1999. The latter collection contains rich source materials for activities of temperance advocates and other public health reformers in the Western Hemisphere, documenting their work in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico as well as among United States ethnic such as French-speaking New England Catholics and Midwestern Scandinavian-Americans.
Gifts:: Supporting: H. P. Lovecraft. The Shadow Out of Time. AC James and Gertrude Laughlin Collection AC; AA Library of James Jackson AC Library of "The Fells" AC Michael J. Ciaraldi Collection AC Paula Vogel Papers AC Robert J. Tierney Collection of Entertainment Memorabilia AC St. Martin's Press Archive
AC Third and Elm Press Archive AC World War II Art AC Barton St. Armand Papers AC James Robinson Papers
AC; RE Sergei Khruschev Papers AC John Preston Papers AC Anne Fausto-Sterling Papers AC Jay Saunders Redding Collection AC; AA; RE Schirmer Collection on Anti-Imperialism
AC; AA; RE Bradford Swan Antarctica Collection AC Earle Selle Collection AC; RE Dupee Mexican History Collection AC; RE Chester H. Kirk Collection AC Key: AC: American Civilization; RE: Race and Ethnicity; AA: Afro-American Studies
Continuing Support for the Humanities in Special Collections:
The Harris Collection, one of Brown's internationally significant collections of record, is maintained at comprehensive strength by a combination of endowments and library appropriation. The Broadsides Collection is similarly supported. The McLellan Lincoln Collection, the Richard G. Katzoff Collection, the Anne S. K. Brown Collection have endowed support. The H. P. Lovecraft Collection is supported by a combination of endowed funds, gift funds, and library appropriation.
Major purchases, such as the Hall-Hoag Collection, and the Conjunctions Archive have been made in recent years as part of multi-year planning processes. There is, in addition, a commitment to continue and extend the Library's extensive holdings related to American culture, history, and society.
Gifts in support of the collections are actively sought by the Library; notable successes have occurred in recent years in World War II art, modern literature and popular culture, printing history, and temperance and alcoholism.
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