Archives Month

October is Illinois Archives Month, celebrated as part of American Archives Month. Each October, archival institutions set aside some time to celebrate the vast array of historical materials they hold and to invite the public to become more aware of their local archives. The Illinois State Archives produces a poster that is distributed free to the nearly 400 archival repositories in the state, including college and university, library, corporate, and non-profit archives. Augustana College’s Special Collections is proud to have a photo from our collection featured in the poster again this year. Our contributed photo is of a steamboat on the Mississippi River at Rock Island, taken in 1941 by John Henry Hauberg.

 

Visit our web site (http://www.augustana.edu/library/SpecialCollections/home.html) to learn more about our archival collections, or stop in and see for yourself, Monday-Friday, 1-5 pm.

Candy Jar Contest Results

Congratulations to student Laura Valentine for guesstimating a nearly perfect count of the pieces in our Special Collections candy jar.   Laura’s guess was 728, and there are actually 731 pieces of candy in the jar.    The candies represent the number of questions Special Collections staff assisted researchers with between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009.

The actual count:

• Jellybeans = Augustana students, with 594 questions
• Saltwater taffy = Augustana faculty, staff and administration, with 70 questions
• Chocolate caramels = community members, with 67 questions

We are pleased to have assisted a record number of researchers this past year, and are especially happy that so many students have been able to use Special Collections materials.

New Items in Special Collections

Below are a few examples of new materials purchased by Special Collections in the past year. If you’re interested in looking at these items or any others in our collection, please feel free to stop by between 1 and 5pm, M-F.

Charles Bryant.  A History of the Great Massacre by the Sioux Indians, In Minnesota, Including the Personal Narratives of Many Who Escaped. Cincinnati: Ricky & Carroll, 1864.
This scarce account of a massacre of settlers in Minnesota by the Sioux in 1862, which led to the Sioux Uprising, contains lengthy statements by survivors of the massacre.  Special Collections has numerous books about this event, including the internment of some of the Sioux participants at Camp McClellan in present-day Davenport.

Walter Crane.  The Romance of the Three R’s. London: Marcus Ward, 1886.
Crane wrote and illustrated these three sections (Slateandpencilvania, Little Queen Anne, and Pothooks and Perseverance) to help children with reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Special Collections has a strong collection of children’s illustrated books by Crane and other illustrators from the same period.

Greenaway, Kate.  Almanack for 1888. George Routledge & Sons, 1888.
With this purchase, Special Collections now owns an almost complete set of the Kate Greenaway Almanacs, lacking only the extremely scarce Kate Greenaway’s Almanack & Diary for 1897. These charming miniature books show scenes of children throughout the year.

Celebrate 1809! Special Collections Reception

Special Collections will host a reception on Thursday, September 3rd, at 4:00pm.  The reception is in honor of our new exhibition: “200 Years Ago: A Celebration of 1809 (Beyond Lincoln and Darwin).” The exhibition includes an early story by Edgar Allen Poe, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and a 1776 edition of Common Sense. (Do you know how all of these are related to 1809?) Highlights from our collection will also be on display.

Special Collections is located on the first floor of the library. Please stop by anytime between 4 and 5 as your schedule permits. Birthday cake (in honor of all those celebrating 200th birthdays), coffee, tea, and lemonade will be served. Bring your party hats!

The exhibition itself will be on display until December, and is available for walk-in viewing during Special Collections open hours (M-F, 1-5pm).

100 online finding aids

Special Collections reached a milestone today.  We now have finding aids for 100 of our manuscript collections online. Special Collections currently holds 339 manuscript collections which comprise a little over 2,000 linear feet.  Special (no pun intended!) thanks to all those whose work has gone into processing these collections.

To view the available online finding aids, go to http://www.augustana.edu/library/special/resources/catalog.html and click on any linked collection name. Collections without online finding aids may have paper finding aids available in Special Collections.

Octave Thanet: Local Author

Alice French (1850–1934), who wrote under the pseudonym Octave Thanet, was born in Andover, Massachusetts but grew up in Davenport, Iowa.  French did not begin writing seriously until she was in her late 20s, and adopted the pen name “Octave Thanet” to help disguise that she was a woman.

French published 17 books, including seven novels, one book of photography, and nine short story collections; her short stories also appeared in prominant magazines such as Century Magazine, Harper’s Monthly, Scribner’s Magazine and Atlantic Monthly. French was a “local colorist” and attempted to bring to life the lives  of the people she observed around her in Iowa and on her Arkansas plantation. Much of her early work deals with regional themes and includes dialect.

First editions of many of French’s books are available in Special Collections.