ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries Ja n u a ry 1994 / 9 2 5 years a t the Kenneth Spencer Research Library By A lexandra M ason Special Collections a t the University o f Kansas T he collecting of rare books and manuscripts at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, b e­ gan w ithin tw enty years of the university’s founding with the purchase by J.S. Crew & Co. in June 1881 of Raleigh’s History o f the World in 5 Books (London, 1687)—for $3.87—along with Jo h n so n ’s The Lives o f the Most E m inent English Poets (London, 1781)— 4 volumes at 63 cents each—and 30 other 18th-century English imprints. By August 1886, donations of rare books had begun with the gift of Pliny’s N at­ urae historiarum libri x x x v ii (Hagenoae, 1518) from William A. Phillips, a Scottish expatriate w ho had come to Kansas in 1855 as a special correspondent for the New York Tribune and stayed to found the city o f Salina. T h e s e e a r ly a c q u i s i ­ tions— all o f them except one of the 18th-century titles are still in the library despite having been in the general stacks for nearly 80 years— e v e n tu a lly b e c a m e th e nucleus of a rare books col­ lection with natural history and the English 18th century as two o f its strongest spe­ cialties. Growth of the rare books collection proceeded slowly over the next three-quarters of a century. Im petus for the appointm ent of specialized staff and the provision o f separate This is part o f a d o cu m en t sig n e d in 1559 b y Elizabeth I an d c o n ta in ed in th e S p en cer Library’s c o llectio n s. quarters finally came in 1945 with the bequest by Ralph N. Ellis o f his extraordinary collec­ tion o f ornithological books and manuscripts. In 1953 the D epartm ent of Special Collections w as established and its first curator, Joseph Rubinstein, was appointed to develop and care for the University’s rare books and manuscripts. O ver the next 15 years the departm ent far outgrew its first minimal quarters (a walled-off area of the stacks shared by collections, staff, and readers) and two other locations to which it m oved in the main university library. Its staff increased from one to four, one of w hom suc­ ceeded Rubinstein as head o f the departm ent in 1963. The collections grew to nearly 90,000 volumes. Through generous support from the university and donations of books, manuscripts, and funds from friends, the departm ent contin­ u ed to develop its special strengths while ex­ panding into other areas. The Ellis Collection (or­ nithology, other zoological history, exploration, and sci­ en tific e x p e d itio n s ) w as jo in ed by th e Fitzpatrick botanical collection and a s p e c ia lty in m e d ic in a l botany was established. A prem ier Linnaeus collection w as fo rm e d from stro n g holdings in the Ellis and Fitzpatrick collections. With th e e sta b lish m e n t o f th e Summerfield Collection of e a rly m o d e rn E u ro p e a n printing (15th-17th centu­ ries), the departm ent was able to pursue collecting in the natural history of b o th the O ld and New Worlds; develop A lexandra Mason is hea d o f special collections a t the K enneth Spencer Research Library, University o f Kansas, Lawrence; e-mail: am ason@ ukanvm 10 / C&RL News Ja n u a ry 1 9 9 4 /1 1 T his illu stration is fro m th e b o o k F lo ra d a n ic a b y S im on P a u lli(l6 4 8 ). strengths in political and economic history, law, ecclesiastical history, and Italian and Spanish literature; and build very strong holdings in the history o f the b o o k , particu larly from the Stirling-Maxwell collection of H ispanic and Low Countries publications. Eighteenth-century English imprints w ere joined by asso­ ciated m aterials from o th e r countries; for exam ple, a sub­ stantial collection o f French Revolutionary publications was added. Interest in Anglo-Irish literature and culture was d e­ veloped by the acquisition of the Spoerri Collection of James Joyce, the P.S. O ’Hegarty Yeats C o lle c tio n , a n d la te r th e O ’Hegarty Collection of Irish history and culture. Researchers from many d e ­ partm ents in our university and from others across the United States began to seek the d e­ partm ent out for its strengths and it began its long history of service to classroom teachers and individual students. O ne o f the earliest stu­ dent book collecting contests in the nation was established (and is still supported) by a gener­ ous donor. By the mid-1960s the basic needs of space for collections and readers could no longer be m et in the main library and the need for better physical protection against environ­ mental hazards and theft becam e pressing. The g ift o f a lib ra ry At this time, Helen F. Spencer, a w om an of vision and a philanthropist already distinguished for her support o f the arts and humanities in the Kansas City area, decided to build a library at the University o f Kansas as a memorial to her late husband Kenneth Spencer. The Ken­ n eth S pencer R esearch Library—-a 100,100- square-foot library designed specifically to meet the needs of rare books, manuscripts, archives, and their users—was dedicated in November 1968 and o p en ed to readers a m onth later. Mrs. Spencer rem ained a good friend to the Spen­ cer Library until her death in 1982, visiting it frequently and dem onstrating lively interest in its developm ent. Since the move to the Spencer Library, the researchers and students w e serve have come to include the international scholarly com m u­ nity as well as the faculty, students, and resi­ dents of Kansas. The collections of the three Spencer departm ents— Special Collections, the Kansas Col­ le c tio n , a n d U n iversity Ar­ c h iv e s— h av e c o n tin u e d to grow, developing their first in­ terests and entering u p o n new ones. Special Collections The Department of Special Col­ lections is now 200,000 vol­ um es strong, with the focus of uncom m on materials in 18th- century British studies, esp e­ cially periodicals and new spa­ pers; the history o f science, especially ornithology, m edi­ eval and early m odern medici­ nal botany, Linnaeus, and sci­ entific e x p e d itio n s; R enais­ sance and early m odern poli­ tics, economics, history, and travel; the histo­ ries o f cartography and law; 16th- and 17th- century Polonica; Irish 18th- to 20th-century literature and history; the French Revolution; Frank Lloyd Wright; medieval and early m od­ em grammar; m odem British and American liter­ ature (the pre-Raphaelites, Tennyson, Whitman, Yeats, Joyce, 20th-century American poetry); children's books and penny dreadfuls; 16th-cen­ tury Italian literature; 18th-century F rench drama; American and international science fic­ tion; and 19th-century Guatem alan imprints. Its m anuscripts (in nearly 2,000 collections) provide rich resources for research in Italian l6th- and 17th-century business and family ar­ chives; 16th-century reports of papal legates; political, economic, literary, and social history of 17th-century England and Ireland; 19th-cen­ tury English letters; authors’ archives in some minor genres o f 20th-century American litera­ ture; English econom ic and social history of the 12th to the early 19th centuries as show n in legal p ap ers of the periods; 19th-century natural history illustration. Over 1,000 bound volum es o f manuscripts provide source mate­ rial for research in medieval history and his­ tory o f science, travel, and w om en’s studies, in addition to the subjects previously m entioned. The Kansas Collection The Kansas Collection was begun in the 1890s by the university’s first librarian, Carrie Wat­ 12 / C&RL News son, to collect Kansas imprints and the history of Kansas. By the mid-1960s the Kansas Col­ lection w as a very strong local history collec­ tion, with such rarities as Jotham Meeker im­ prints and ephem eral publications from across the state. It had been nam ed an official Kansas state publications depository and was acting as an unofficial University Archives. The collec­ tion was heavily used by students and local residents, and shared all the housing problems of the Department of Special Collections. The Kansas Collection now contains regional history m aterials from roughly 1850 to the present, reflecting the economic, cultural, so­ cial, and political history of Kansas and the Kan­ sas region, including the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements begun as a collection of 1960s Kansas radical publication Anniversary celebrations The Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas (KU), Lawrence, will observe the 25th anniversary of its op en ­ ing with a triple exhibition. Each of the three departm ents of the library will m ount an ex­ hibition devoted to showing its ow n par­ ticular strengths and activities. The Univer­ sity Archives will display university records concerned with the establishment of the li­ brary itself. The Kansas Collection will show ­ case its activities in preserving, bo th by collection and by conservation, the heritage o f Kansas. The D epartm ent of Special Col­ lections exhibition, “Finders & Keepers,” will honor the donors, booksellers, collectors, scholars, librarians, and others w ho have built, supported, cared for, and used the collections. Each book or m anuscript show n will be related to the “finders” and “keep­ ers” in its history. An illustrated catalog will be published. The formal celebration will take place in the spring of 1994. The exhibitions will be o p en ed with a reception in the afternoon on April 15 and John T. Casteen, president o f the University of Virginia, will speak at a gala dinner hosted by the KU Friends of the Library that evening. In connection with the anniversary, a fund drive is being undertaken for the purpose of supporting future exhibitions and publi­ cations. but now expanded to docum ent left- and right- w ing activity nationw ide. The departm ental holdings include over 100,000 printed volumes, nearly 10,000 linear feet of manuscript materi­ als, a million and a half historical photographs, large num bers of maps, architectural drawings, and material in other media. U niversity Archives University Archives— originally part of the Kan­ sas Collection and officially established as a separate entity in 1969—houses official and un­ official records of the university, with another million photographs, including one of the larg­ est American archives of sports photographs. The building of collections is the basic re­ sponsibility of a library like ours but it is not the only one. Service to researchers, interna­ tionally famous scholars, or young students just beginning their intellectual lives takes prece­ dence over everything else in the day-to-day w ork o f our staff. The students and researchers are, after all, the reason the collections exist. Service to the lib ra ry 's patrons O ur subject specialists teach classes and give lectures in the same subject areas which they develop through our acquisitions program; they select books and manuscripts for faculty to use in their courses and provide assistance with research. Our curator of manuscripts helps re­ searchers with manuscripts and teaches students to read the handwriting of the past. Our con­ servator advises enquirers on the care of their ow n books and helps them deal with dam aged books. We teach a course in the history of the book and act as a m useum of the book, teach­ ing our students to understand the m eaning of books and, through our exhibition program, illustrating and publicizing our resources. To make our collections know n far outside our ow n campus, we contribute records of our cata­ loging to national and international biblio­ graphical databases. The developm ent of such a resource library here in Kansas has been made possible by the encouragem ent and gifts of the university and its friends. We are confident that, with the help of generous friends, the challenges o f the fu­ ture— new research interests, new m ethods, new forms of evidence—will be met as the Kenneth Spencer Research Library continues its mission of support to humanistic research and teaching an d the discovery and inter­ pretation of the past. ■ Ja n u a ry 1 9 9 4 /1 3