Special Collections & Archives Blog

We are happy to announce that the Wake Forest Catalogues and Bulletins are online! Thanks to the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center for doing the scanning and to Vicki Johnson for organizing and transporting the bulletins. Varying titles and binding made this project no easy feat, but the benefits far outweigh any challenges this project may have presented. As of now, you can access the titles through the Special Collections and Archives page by clicking on the Howler Yearbooks under Popular Resources.

Lindsey has been working in Special Collections for two years now and we couldn’t be luckier to have her. She is currently working on the tremendous “Bio File” project that includes creating a finding aid and digitizing thousands of biographical files. This is a highly used collection and will be a great online resource when it is completed. Lindsey is also one of two students working to transcribe and make available the finding aids for over a thousand church record microfilms (CRMF) that we have in our collection. This is a very important project and we couldn’t do it without Lindsey’s dedication and attention to detail. Thanks to Lindsey and all of the student assistants, we couldn’t do it without you!

Today’s “what are you working on?” post features another of our hard working and dedicated student assistants, Nate. In his second year of service in Special Collections and Archives, Nate can be found on any given day assisting Beth in rare books, digitizing manuscript collections, or generally being our “Jack of all trades.” Today he is working on helping relocate hundreds of linear feet of church and biographical files for our upcoming construction.We appreciate all of the hard work Nate and all of the student assistants do for us, we would not be a success without you. Thanks, Nate!

This post is also available on the Library Gazette.

The Max and Gertrude Hoffmann Music Manuscript Collection is finally complete and available for use. With 170 titles represented in various levels of completion, we anticipate this collection to be a delight to musicians, composers, and anyone interested in vaudeville orchestration. These music manuscripts are only a portion of the larger Max and Gertrude Hoffmann papers (MS608) that includes posters, scrapbooks, photographs, and correspondence.This was a very large processing and digitization project and we are thrilled to announce the completion.

Meet Chelsea Hosch. The face of the Special Collection and Archives reference desk on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, Chelsea has been doing excellent work! She is working on inputting Biographical Files into Archivists’ Toolkit and scanning all of the images in these files for a long term, highly anticipated digital project. Chelsea is a sophomore, but this is her first year working in Special Collections and we are so happy that she has joined our team. She has also helped tremendously by adding additional information to the Tribble Presidential Papers, allowing staff and researchers to find materials more quickly. Thanks to Chelsea and all of our student assistants for their fantastic work!

While accessioning materials into the University Archives today, I came across the Wake Forest University Civil Defense Manual from 1966. A small but very detailed document outlines the shelter locations, the supplies (food, sanitary, and medical), locations of telephones in the shelters, and locations of janitor’s closets with hoses for filling water drums.

The Wake Forest University Civil Defense Committee had their work cut out for them! I am so happy they didn’t have to use them, but was interested that the Library had on hand 26 cases of Nabisco crackers. (Accession #2011.0067)

We are so happy to have our students back for the semester and are eager to show the world what we are working on. Pictured is student assistant Palmer Holton holding pulp fiction from the Clarence Herbert New Collection (MS577). This collection contains a wide variety of materials including photographs, maps, manuscripts, and printed materials. Although it will be a while before this collection is processed and has a finding aid available, we are excited about the process. As you can see in the picture, sometimes working in Special Collections is dirty work. Palmer’s job is to scan these materials so that patrons can access the content without getting their hands too dirty! Included in the pulp fiction materials are “Blue Book Magazine”, “The Red Book Magazine”, “The Premier”, and “Adventure” from the 1900′s to the 1930′s. This is a visual and content rich collection and we can not wait to finish processing so that researchers can access these materials. Thanks to Palmer and all of the student assistants who work so hard to make the collections available to the public.

The Special Collections and Archives Department has four new finding aids available online!

• The Germaine Bree papers finding aid
• Maya Angelou Film and Theater Collection finding aid
• Gertrude and Max Hoffman papers finding aid
• Inventory of the Thomas F. and Louise Gossett Papers.

Many thanks to student assistants Kathleen Hill, Rachel Ernst, and Carolyn Jones for the tremendous amount of time and effort they put into making these finding aids complete. We anticipate having the digital collection of Max Hoffman’s music scores online soon to complement the Gertrude and Max Hoffman papers.

Big news from the partially processed collection of Allen Mandelbaum‘s papers. A MLIS graduate student and WFU Latin professor, Brian Warren, has been interning this summer in Special Collections and Archives, working specifically on processing the collection of Allen Mandelbaum’s papers, translations, and the large book collection that came with these materials. He made an interesting discovery in the papers relating to drafts of the book Ungaretti and Palinurus. After much investigation Brian found that there is only one record of WorldCat holdings for this title in Switzerland. He then began searching the hundreds of Allen Madelbaum books and found a copy, hand numbered #63 of 99. What a great find and an exciting addition to the unique and valuable collection of books that are housed on the sixth floor. We all look forward to Brian completing the finding aid for the Allen Mandelbaum papers and having these hidden treasures available for researchers and scholars. Great work, Brian!

Although it has been a while since the students from Mount Airy came on a tour of the Rare Books reading room, and the rest of the library, I have not forgotten about the video I made to record the occasion. Gretchen has been helpful in guiding me in my video editing, and hopefully my next attempt will be a little more polished than this first try.

I have posted the FlipVideo on the ZSR Vimeo Channel. Enjoy the jaunty music and the enthusiasm show by these young students:)

Here’s the original post I started on the Library Gazette:

Millenium Charter Academy Students in Special Collections