Category Archives: New Accessions

New Accession: Atomic-bombed Roof Tiles from Hiroshima University

Posted on by
Reply

The Uni­ver­sity Archives was recently given the honor and respon­si­bil­ity of pro­vid­ing a home for seven roof tiles that sus­tained dam­age in the atomic bomb­ing of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.  The roof tiles were col­lected in a river bed near ground zero of the atomic bomb explosion.

3 of the 7 tiles.

3 of the 7 tiles.

Along with the roof tiles, the dona­tion includes pho­tographs of the loca­tion where the tiles were recov­ered; book­lets and pam­phlets on the bomb­ings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and doc­u­ments related to the artifacts.

Hiroshima Uni­ver­sity was dec­i­mated in the atomic bomb attack— most of its stu­dents and fac­ulty mem­bers per­ished and its build­ings were demol­ished.  In the post-war period, Hiroshima University’s pres­i­dent Tat­suo Morito reached out to uni­ver­si­ties world-wide to help to renew the insti­tu­tion by send­ing books for its library and saplings to bring its grounds back to life.

IMG_0012IMG_0011

Prince­ton was among the schools that responded in 1951 by pro­vid­ing both a book for the library’s col­lec­tion and a mon­e­tary dona­tion for the pur­chase of a native tree for the cam­pus; and now, in cel­e­bra­tion of its 80th anniver­sary, Hiroshima Uni­ver­sity is rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing by donat­ing these artifacts.

The roof tiles are dis­trib­uted by Hiroshima University’s Asso­ci­a­tion for Send­ing Atomic-bombed Roof Tiles in order to per­pet­u­ate aware­ness of the dev­as­tat­ing effects of the atomic bomb­ings in Japan, and to oppose the use and pro­lif­er­a­tion of nuclear weapons.  In a let­ter that accom­pa­nies the dona­tion, Toshi­masa Asa­hara, Pres­i­dent of Hiroshima Uni­ver­sity, explains:

The threat of nuclear weapons still exists in many areas of the world.  It is our earnest desire, how­ever, that the pain and sad­ness expe­ri­enced in Hiroshima not be re-created any­where else in the world.

This wish is not only the wish of those of us liv­ing today but rep­re­sents the silent voices of the 240,000 Hiroshima cit­i­zens who per­ished from the atomic bomb.  We believe it is also the will of oth­ers such as your­selves who will work together with us to build a peace­ful future for the world.

See the Atomic-bombed Roof Tiles from Hiroshima Uni­ver­sity Find­ing Aid

 

 

 

 

 

Fidel Castro visits Princeton University

Posted on by
Reply

Daily Prince­ton­ian photo of Cas­tro on Wash­ing­ton Street.

In 1959, not even three months after he came to power, Fidel Cas­tro was invited to speak to a small group of under­grad­u­ate stu­dents and fac­ulty mem­bers of the Woodrow Wil­son School. In a recent dona­tion to the Uni­ver­sity Archives, we received some key items related to Castro’s visit, includ­ing this let­ter of invitation.

Let­ter sent to Cas­tro. March 5, 1959

This telegram response to the ini­tial let­ter is also part of the dona­tion, which was added to the Amer­i­can Whig-Cliosophic Soci­ety Records.

Ulti­mately, Cas­tro did accept the invi­ta­tion and spoke for the Woodrow Wil­son School’s Spe­cial Pro­gram in Amer­i­can Civ­i­liza­tion. Admis­sion to the pro­gram was by invi­ta­tion only, and it was held in Wil­son Hall, now known as Cor­win Hall.

These mate­ri­als were donated by Ambas­sador Paul D. Tay­lor ’60 and include a car­bon copy of three pages of notes of excerpts from Castro’s speech taken by Taylor.

The rest of Castro’s visit included a tour of cam­pus with Pres­i­dent Goheen ’40 as well as being the guest of honor at the Present Day Club in town.

Dur­ing his visit, Cas­tro stayed in the home of Mr. & Mrs. Roland T. Ely ’46. Below is a piece of bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion that is included in the His­tor­i­cal Sub­ject Files: Box 309, Folder 20.

If you would like to learn more about Castro’s visit, please search the dig­i­tized archives of The Daily Prince­ton­ian.

The fol­low­ing links are just two of the arti­cles related to Castro’s visit.

Cas­tro Vio­lates Secu­rity Regulations

The Story Behind Castro’s Visit

Mudd Manuscript Library Annual Report: Fiscal Year 2012

Posted on by
Reply

Mudd Man­u­script Library Annual Report, FY2012

 

Sum­mary

The staff at Mudd Library had a very suc­cess­ful year in 2012 with notable high­lights that include:

  • Pre­pared for the launch of Aeon on July 1, 2012.  This required sig­nif­i­cant work from both pub­lic and tech­ni­cal ser­vices staff.
  • Sig­nif­i­cant work done to upgrade access tools, in par­tic­u­lar a new find­ing aids site launched in beta, and other work done to pre­pare for inte­gra­tion of EAD data into Primo.
  • ACLU project com­pleted, with almost 2,500 lin­ear feet of records described as part of NHPRC-funded pro­cess­ing project.
  • In addi­tion to ACLU, 1,800 lin­ear feet of other pol­icy and archives mate­ri­als described, includ­ing the Harold Med­ina Papers.
  • The Daily Prince­ton­ian dig­i­ti­za­tion com­pleted, with the years 1876–2002 now online.
  • Dis­ser­ta­tion sub­mis­sion pro­ce­dure altered to pro­vide full-text, online access via OIT’s DataSpace.
  • Hosted IMLS intern Brenda Tindal
  • Con­tin­ued high level of use of col­lec­tions, both in-house and remote, with great degree of patron sat­is­fac­tion, with PDF requests sur­pass­ing paper copies.

Major Activ­i­ties

Pub­lic Services

In the past year, the staff of the Mudd Man­u­script Library served 1,686 patrons, 211 of whom had vis­ited Mudd prior to FY12 and 678 who were new researchers. We cir­cu­lated 8,531 items (2,761 Uni­ver­sity Archives boxes/items, 5,812 Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers boxes/items, 34 Gest rare books and 14 other items). For more on par­tic­u­lar col­lec­tions used, see Appen­dix A: Most used Archives and Pol­icy col­lec­tions in FY2012.

Staff also filled 354 pho­to­copy orders total­ing 39,431 pages, of which 265 orders were deliv­ered as PDF files total­ing 27,338 pages and 89 orders were ful­filled on paper, total­ing 12,093 pages, so a PDF con­tin­ues to be the pre­ferred method for the major­ity of our users.  Scan­ning con­tin­ues to be the default method by which we pro­vide images for patrons and last year we filled 90 orders for 266 scans.

We responded to over 1,900 pieces of cor­re­spon­dence (includ­ing 882 per­tain­ing to the Uni­ver­sity Archives and 403 to the Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers; 16 requests for per­mis­sion to quote) which arrived as follows: 1,317 e-mail; 111 tele­phone; 23 sur­face mail and 1 via fax.  Indi­vid­ual cor­re­spon­dence totals:  Mau­reen Calla­han, 64; Christa Clee­ton, 7; John DeLooper, 15; Kate Dun­don, 20; Lynn Dur­gin, 108; Dave Gille­spie, 9; Adri­ane Han­son, 81; Dan Linke, 207; Christie Lutz, 184; Christie  Peter­son, 88; Amanda Pike, 340; Dan San­ta­maria, 27; Brenda Tin­dal, 18; Kris­ten Turner, 35; Helene van Rossum, 5; Ros­alba Rec­chia, 82.   The staff also responded to more than 500 brief tele­phone calls.

Col­lec­tively, the staff worked with 9 dif­fer­ent classes relat­ing to junior papers and other research/writing projects with a total of approx­i­mately 115 attendees.

In addi­tion, a large num­ber of vis­i­tors took advan­tage of Mudd’s dig­i­tal cam­era pro­gram as 279 patrons pho­tographed 6,419 items from our col­lec­tions, total­ing 73,338 images.

John DeLooper left Mudd in Sep­tem­ber to accept a ref­er­ence librar­ian posi­tion, and in early Decem­ber, Christa Clee­ton joined the Mudd staff as the new SCAIV for pub­lic ser­vices (front desk posi­tion). Christa, who had pre­vi­ously worked at Fire­stone, quickly and effi­ciently assumed the duties of the posi­tion, from greet­ing and reg­is­ter­ing patrons to over­see­ing stu­dent work­ers to car­ry­ing out spe­cial projects for Dan Linke. Sig­nif­i­cantly, Christa became the coor­di­na­tor for Mudd’s social media efforts, respon­si­ble for our blogs, Face­book page and Twit­ter feed, all of which she has ener­get­i­cally attended to. She has been attend­ing the University’s Social Media SPIN meet­ings, and work­ing directly with the University’s direc­tor of social media to imple­ment best prac­tices and draw more atten­tion to our social media out­put. Christa also assisted Lis­beth Den­nis in cre­at­ing a Face­book page for RBSC.

The biggest change in Mudd’s pub­lic ser­vices oper­a­tions this year was the imple­men­ta­tion of the Aeon cir­cu­la­tion man­age­ment sys­tem, done in con­junc­tion with the rest of RBSC. All Mudd staff attended train­ing ses­sions in Jan­u­ary, with Lutz, Pike and Clee­ton par­tic­i­pat­ing in extra train­ing and numer­ous meet­ings regard­ing imple­men­ta­tion, use, and work­flow issues. Full imple­men­ta­tion took sev­eral months, but in June we con­ducted pre­lim­i­nary tests of the sys­tem, and start­ing in July, began using the sys­tem.  Lutz, Pike and Clee­ton worked to alert cur­rent and future Mudd researchers to the changes through our web­site, social media out­lets, and in exchanges with patrons. Both expe­ri­enced and new Mudd users have been quite recep­tive to the new sys­tem and par­tic­u­larly appre­ci­ate that they can sub­mit requests for mate­ri­als prior to their arrival at Mudd. While there was some con­cern among staff that we must first send researchers to the Access Office in Fire­stone to obtain Spe­cial Col­lec­tions iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, we have not heard many patron com­plaints over the need to make this extra stop. How­ever, this stop is a tem­po­rary mea­sure until Mudd obtains the hard­ware and soft­ware nec­es­sary to cre­ate the ID cards here at Mudd.

Through­out the year, we received acco­lades from patrons for the qual­ity and effi­ciency of the ref­er­ence ser­vices we provided.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Annual Report 2011: Collection and Financial Development

Posted on by

As a con­tin­u­a­tion of our series on our 2011 Annual Report, please see a descrip­tion of our work in Col­lec­tion and Finan­cial Development:

  • See the entries on acces­sion­ing Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers and Uni­ver­sity Archives for col­lec­tions of note acquired in this fis­cal year. In addi­tion, dur­ing the past year gift agree­ments were signed with Edward Djere­jian (who served as Ambas­sador to both Syria and Israel) and James Hoge (the out­go­ing edi­tor of For­eign Affairs), though no doc­u­ments were deliv­ered dur­ing the fis­cal year.
  • Linke fin­ished rais­ing money for the dig­i­ti­za­tion of the Daily Prince­ton­ian, with over a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars accrued for this project.
  • The James Baker Oral His­tory Project com­pleted seven addi­tional inter­views with Susan Baker, Edward Djere­jian, Fran­coise Djer­jian, Mar­lin Fitzwa­ter, John Major, John Sununu, and Robert Zoellick.
Stay tuned for fur­ther dis­cus­sion of our 2011 work involv­ing exhi­bi­tions, pub­lic rela­tions, and goals for fis­cal year 2012.

Annual Report 2011: Major Activities in Accessioning of University Archives

Posted on by

As a con­tin­u­a­tion of our series on our 2011 Annual Report, please see a descrip­tion of major activ­i­ties in acces­sion­ing of Uni­ver­sity Archives:

In FY11, the Uni­ver­sity Archives acces­sioned 162 col­lec­tions or items, a total 185.11 lin­ear feet of records. High­lights include:
All acces­sions received in FY2011 have been for­mally acces­sioned, but descrip­tion of Uni­ver­sity Archives acces­sions fell sev­eral months behind in 2011 due to staffing lev­els. We have devel­oped a plan that will allow for the descrip­tion of all 2011 Uni­ver­sity Archives acces­sions by fall 2011.
Lynn Dur­gin also cre­ated a greatly expanded sec­tion on the Mudd web­site regard­ing trans­fers and dona­tions to the Uni­ver­sity Archives includ­ing new inven­tory templates.
Stay tuned for fur­ther dis­cus­sion of our 2011 work involv­ing other tech­ni­cal ser­vices activ­i­ties, dig­i­tal projects, records man­age­ment, col­lec­tion devel­op­ment, exhi­bi­tions, and more.

Annual Report 2011: Major Activities in Accessioning of Public Policy Papers

Posted on by

As a con­tin­u­a­tion of our series on our 2011 Annual Report, please see a descrip­tion of major activ­i­ties in acces­sion­ing of Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers:

The Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers processed 40 acces­sions (227 lin­ear feet) in FY11. High­lights include:
Our revised acces­sion­ing pro­ce­dures, begun in 2008, con­tinue to be employed. This requires a base­line level of pro­cess­ing for every­thing received at the library and con­tin­ues to require a sub­stan­tial amount of work on acces­sion­ing new mate­r­ial. As such, we con­tinue to count the lin­ear footage total above as processed material.
Stay tuned for fur­ther dis­cus­sion of our 2011 work involv­ing acces­sion­ing of Uni­ver­sity Archives, dig­i­tal projects, records man­age­ment, col­lec­tion devel­op­ment, exhi­bi­tions, and more.

New Public Policy Accessions: May — June 2011

Posted on by

There’s a scene in a doc­u­men­tary about the French philoso­pher Jacques Der­rida where Der­rida vis­its UC Irvine (where he had donated his per­sonal papers). The philoso­pher, going through the rows of newly-processed col­lec­tions, com­ments that the gray archival boxes on the shelves look like lit­tle gravestones.

For some­one whose best-known axiom was that “there is noth­ing out­side the text,” and who was very con­cerned about who has “author­ity” over the archive, per­haps it was some­what dis­tress­ing for Der­rida to see his texts buried away in fold­ers, boxes, shelves and behind locked doors.

It’s easy to under­stand this con­cern. In some ways, archival records are by their nature “dead” — they have been given to the archives because they’re no longer used in the course of daily busi­ness. And it’s true that most insti­tu­tions keep these mate­ri­als tucked away in closed stacks.

On the other hand, from my point of view as some­one who processes new acces­sions as they come to Mudd, col­lec­tions are con­stantly grow­ing, re-interpreted by new con­text and new evi­dence, and given new life through the research and ref­er­ence process. We care for col­lec­tions so that they may find new life — all of our core activ­i­ties, as an insti­tu­tion, are to serve researcher needs in their syn­the­sis and analy­sis of the past.

In May and June of this year, most of our acces­sions were addi­tions to col­lec­tions we already hold — in some cases, this was an instance of a donor find­ing or hav­ing cre­ated addi­tional mate­r­ial that rounds out our col­lec­tions. In most cases, new addi­tions to an archival col­lec­tions are an oppor­tu­nity to re-examine the exist­ing col­lec­tion from a new point of view.

We hope that this will be the case with our newest addi­tions. Here is a list of what we received in May and June:

[ML.2011.015] Pho­to­copy of Dou­glas Lin­der Arti­cle
[ML.2011.016] Pho­tographs and cor­re­spon­dence to William H. Kel­len­berger from John Fos­ter Dulles
[ML.2011.017] Women’s World Bank­ing Records
[ML.2011.019] Chalmers Bene­dict Wood Papers
[ML.2011.021] George S. McGov­ern Pho­tographs and Let­ters
[ML.2011.022] Marten van Heuven Writ­ings and Cor­re­spon­dence
[ML.2011.023] Woodrow Wil­son Let­ter
[ML.2011.025] Ken­nett Love Papers

New Public Policy Accessions: April 2011

Posted on by

As orga­ni­za­tions grow and change through time, so do their archives.The Mudd Man­u­script Library col­lects the records of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union [ML.2011.011], the Asso­ci­a­tion on Amer­i­can Indian Affairs [ML.2011.005], and Amer­i­cans United for Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State [ML.2011.003], among many other orga­ni­za­tions. In the last few months, we’ve had the plea­sure of receiv­ing a new cache of mate­ri­als from each of these orga­ni­za­tions and adding them to exist­ing col­lec­tions. Although some mate­ri­als from both the ACLU and AAIA may be restricted for some time to com­ply with legal and pri­vacy con­cerns, the remain­der will be valu­able to researchers hop­ing to learn about the recent his­tory of these impor­tant organizations.

In addi­tion to these orga­ni­za­tion records, we have also received an accrual of papers from James A. Baker III, for­mer Chief of Staff to Pres­i­dent Rea­gan and Sec­re­tary of State to Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush [ML.2011.002]. These records, mostly from his post-Washington career, include research files cre­ated dur­ing the writ­ing of his mem­oir, cor­re­spon­dence, events files, and a small num­ber of finan­cial files. They also include his “desk drawer” files, let­ters and notes from impor­tant fig­ures in his career, includ­ing Pres­i­dents George H.W. and George W. Bush, Nancy Rea­gan, Henry Kissinger, and Karl Rove. Please con­sult the find­ing aid for this col­lec­tion for access restrictions.

Con­tinue read­ing →

New Public Policy Accessions: July 2010 — March 2011

Posted on by

One of Mudd’s newest acces­sions, the Kris­ten Tim­o­thy Papers, finds itself in good com­pany with other Mudd col­lec­tions doc­u­ment­ing indi­vid­u­als who have had pro­found influ­ence in the United Nations, includ­ing the papers of Mar­garet Sny­der, Regional Advi­sor of the

United Nations Eco­nomic Com­mis­sion for Africa; Henry R. Labouisse, Direc­tor of UNRWA and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of UNICEF; David A. Morse, Director-General of the ILO; and many other luminaries.

Tim­o­thy orga­nized the United Nations’ Fourth World Con­fer­ence on Women in Bei­jing in 1995. The con­fer­ence addressed endur­ing inequal­i­ties for women and girls across the world. Tim­o­thy was instru­men­tal in out­lin­ing the Bei­jing Dec­la­ra­tion and Plat­form for Action, which were adopted by con­sen­sus on 15 Sep­tem­ber 1995.

Timothy’s records include audio-visual mate­ri­als (much of which is avail­able online), records regard­ing the cre­ation of the plat­form for action, mate­ri­als cre­ated in prepa­ra­tion for and dur­ing the con­fer­ence, and a series of Timothy’s research records on the his­tory of the global women’s movement.

Con­tinue read­ing →

New Accessions: April-June 2010

Posted on by

The Mudd Man­u­script Library received 12 pub­lic pol­icy acces­sions and 30 Uni­ver­sity Archives acces­sions between April and June 2010.

The pub­lic pol­icy col­lec­tions received sig­nif­i­cant addi­tions to the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records and the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions Records. In addi­tion, a won­der­ful sur­prise was the receipt of Woodrow Wilson’s and Edith Bolling Galt’s mar­riage license, 1915. The item was donated by Mr. Barry C. Keenan of Granville, OH, who also con­fessed to hav­ing caused the green ink stain on the doc­u­ment as a ten-year-old.

Wilson marriage license

On the Uni­ver­sity Archives side, the Library received the papers of two impor­tant Prince­ton fig­ures– Dr. Carl. A. Fields and Dean Mathey.
Edu­ca­tor and advo­cate of minor­ity edu­ca­tion, Dr. Carl A. Fields was assis­tant dean of stu­dent aid at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity and later served in var­i­ous other lead­er­ship posi­tions out­side the Uni­ver­sity. The Carl A. Fields Papers con­sist of cor­re­spon­dence, reports, research mate­r­ial on race rela­tions and minor­ity edu­ca­tion, hand­writ­ten notes, project pro­pos­als, and other papers that doc­u­ment his life and active career. An online find­ing aid for this col­lec­tion is avail­able at: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/5138jd936.
Dean Mathey, Class of 1912, was a mem­ber of the Board of Trustees and an ardent sup­porter of the Uni­ver­sity. The col­lec­tion doc­u­ments Mathey’s famil­ial rela­tion­ships, his ser­vice to Prince­ton, his ten­nis career and other activ­i­ties from his under­grad­u­ate days to the end of his life. A find­ing aid is for this col­lec­tion is in process.
The fol­low­ing is a com­plete list of mate­ri­als that were acces­sioned between April and June of 2010. As always, if you would like addi­tional infor­ma­tion about these mate­ri­als, please con­tact us through our gen­eral email account at .

Con­tinue read­ing →