College and Research Libraries Text and Context: Special Collections and Scholarship Anne Lundin Changes in scholarly disciplines create new relationships for special collections. The increasing openness of scholarly disciplines in the humanities and social sciences inspires a search for manuscripts and the study of text in a broad context. Literary theories of New Criticism and New Historicism place new prominence on manuscripts and historical works, long the prove- nance of special collections. This fuller historical perspective elevates populist concerns and popular culture materials. Children's literature is an example of a field being explored by liter- ary scholars and social historians in new understandings of text and context. The changing patterns of academic scholarship make the special collection ''a museum without walls.'' II lizabeth Eisenstein's landmark study, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, illuminates the far-reaching implications of the printing inventions of the fifteenth cen- tury. Some of these change-producing ef- fects were the widening of scholarship, a collaborative approach to the collection of data, an ability to improve and correct texts once published, and an interchange between disciplines. She suggests that these cultural transformations are an on- going process, "still responsible for our museum-without-walls" .1 Our contemporary world of scholarship reveals this continuing evolution. A quiet, yet profound, change has been taking place in the humanities and the social sci- ences during the last decade. The increas- ing openness of scholarly disciplines has created a new relationship for special col- lections, where text and context interact in the spirit of E.N. Forster's celebrated plea, "Only Connect!"2 The connection between libraries and scholarship has traditionally created a synergy. Elmer Johnson and Michael Harris in their history of libraries attribute the genesis of modem librarianship to the invention of printing, in the sense that ex- panding library collections made possible by the printing press stimulated the emer- gence of a profession charged with its care.3 The beginning of humanism coin- cided with the revival of libraries as depos- itories of books to be read and not just to be stored. The renewed appreciation of classical literature and the interest in an enhanced knowledge of what ancient writers had actually written impelled the search for manuscripts and their place- ment in libraries where scholars could find them and read them. 4 • A similar renaissance in the late twenti- eth century has inspired the scholarly search for manuscripts and the study of text in a broad context. The tradition of formal, structural, text-centered literary studies, known as the New Criticism, is now competing with an emphasis on his- torical bibliography and social history, known as the New Historicism. This tug- of-war among literary scholars places new prominence on manuscripts and historical works, long the provenance of special col- lections. For years the text was supreme in liter- ary criticism. The New Critics espoused Anne Lundin is Assistant Curator, de Grummond Collection, University of Southern Mississippi, Hatties- burg, Mississippi 39406-5148. 553 554 College & Research Libraries the isolation of the text as the sole determi- nant of meaning; biography and sociology were beyond the domain. A challenge to this self-enclosed construct is contained in the criticism of the New Historicists, whose interpretation . is historically grounded in the referential aspects of liter- ary works. Jerome McGann, a leading his- toricist, defines the new emphasis: "Criti- cism moves in constant pursuit of the text's lost and unrealized points of refer- ence, all the verbal and eventual matters of fact which constitute the work's sym- bolic networks." 5 This approach con- siders the entire socio-history of a literary work, from its origins through its subse- quent textual adventures. This fuller historical perspective in- cludes an interest beyond the celebrities of the past to the daily concerns of everyday people. To that end, cultural, political, economic, ideological, and social issues are studied for the way they shape a text. The French philosopher Michael Foucault, a guiding force, argues that everything, even social institutions, can be read as "texts," and that cultural val- ues and concepts are products of a given time, not absolutes. 6 Instead of viewing culture as a seamless whole, embodying a hierarchy of values, the historicists see it as decentralized and divided. 11This focus on cultural diversity is reflected in a boom of interest in pop- ulism.'' This focus on cultural diversity is re- flected in a boom of interest in populism. English departments heatedly debate the inclusion of popular literature into the sa- cred canon of traditional texts. Burgeon- ing social concerns lead scholars to ques- tion traditional works for their ideology. A decade ago, in his study of academic scholarship, Charles Osborn viewed this sociological approach as the most signifi- cant trend for the future. 7 Scholars exam- ine texts for a mirror of their social world, which often leads to monumental revi- sions in interpretation. September 1989 The growth of studies in popular culture is evidence of populist concerns. In less than two decades, the Popular Culture Association has grown from a special col- lection to an international, interdiscipli- nary organization. Ray and Pat Browne, the founders, were convinced that the vast body of materials for mass consumption-in print, film, television, comics, advertising, graphics, and folk culture-was worthy of scholarly pursuit. In a rare phenomenon, a special collection inspired the growth of a body of scholar- ship, a press, and a professional associa- tion, as its mission not only reflected but created intellectual trends. These pursuits are cross-fertilizations of disciplines, reflective of new branches of learning. Disciplinary lines have become blurred through the increased presence of technology in all aspects of life, particu- larly in quantification and data analysis in methods of research. History and literary criticism now borrow heavily from psy- chology, sociology, and anthropology. Linguistics has divided into psycholin- guistics and sociolinguistics. In history, new areas of urban history, women's his- tory, economic history, and black history have come to the fore. Paul Boyer, profes- sor of history at the University of Wiscon- sin, is quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Ed- ucation as saying, "The best history is being done from a more integrated per- spective. Historians are broadening their definition of what you have to look at to do history within various specialties.''8 This new breadth reveals an evolving understanding of what constitutes a disci- pline. In field after field, scholars speak of boundaries extending or breaking down and of their looking beyond themselves and joining the general intellectual con- versation. 9 This transcendence of disci- pline limits creates a new legitimacy for the special collection as a literary witness to the universe of knowledge. Scholars are turning to special collec- tions for their unique manuscript holdings and rare book materials, which constitute text and context. Special collections have traditionally housed the fragile, scarce item in whatever format: old photographs and film, ephemera, maps, personal memorabilia, commercial and legal docu- ments, as well as original manuscripts and old books. These are the very sources now zealously sought by scholars. Literary re- searchers seek out original manuscript versions of a text instead of printed books, often replete with errors and omissions. Historians investigate archives for corre- spondence and records of political and so- cial activity. Older publications and peri- odicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth century become vital primary sources. This attention to primary source mate- rial creates new prominence for the special collection. Michael Keresztesi has elo- quently described the bibliographic cul- ture as "a condition in which genuine re- spect for the library prevails; its resources are creatively utilized for all educational, research, cultural, and recreational activi- ties; and librarians are accepted as equal partners in a joint educational enter- prise.''10 While Keresztesi's theories have been applied largely to the bibliographic instruction movement, there are parallels in the intimacy of curator and scholar that originates from imaginative collaborative actions: the acquisition of nontraditional sources, segments saved of a larger cul- tural, literary, and intellectual heritage; and the instruction in their use. Biblio- graphic instruction is as essential to spe- cial collections as it is to general reference in leading the scholar to the unknown. Curators become educators as they lead scholars through what Keresztesi calls the "topography of knowledge," to the ex- ploration of manuscripts and their textural mystery. Jerome McGann and other scholars appreciate their dependence on such a guide in their detailed research: ''Critics are now aware of the necessity of serious archival work. You have to get into original material. You have to trace through the history of texts, and you have to trace through the history of reception of texts. You can't do that by sitting in your office and producing a clever interpreta- tion.11 William Joyce connects the growing authority of the research collection and the library profession. In a symposium at the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, Joyce, a special collections cura- tor at Princeton University, traces the col- Text and Context 555 lection of manuscripts by librarians who recognized their value despite scholarly neglect. "Now testimony suggests," says Joyce, "that those librarians working with special collections have inverted the tradi- tional procedure and are training ·scholars in the use of primary sources." 12 This training involves considerable intellectual content, gathered in the selection, pro- cessing, cataloging, and exhibiting of these original materials. 11}ust as the text contains a textual- ized frame of reference, so also does the background collection, the con- text, become primary in the text's comprehension.'' The training is also of the eye, of the abil- ity to see context as text. The librarian knows that no manuscript is autonomous and self-contained, that, in the words of Gerald Graff, "no text is an island, that every work of literature is a rejoinder in a conversation or dialogue that it presup- poses but may or may not mention explic- itly. ''13 This larger conversation to which works of literature refer is the cultural text. Just as the text contains a textualized frame of reference, so also does the back- ground collection-the context-become primary in the text's comprehension. This metaphorical leap is the philosoph- ical rationale to a special collection. Pa- trons come to a special library for a physi- cal object-a book, a periodical, a manuscript-and are introduced to the contextual framework of that object. Text becomes context in the discovery of differ- ences being related, of a larger world ex- trinsic and intrinsic in meaning. These discoveries, small epiphanies, oc- cur often in special collections like the de Grummond Children's Literature Re- search Collection. Researchers come for a particular source or obscure title and, in the process of interaction between patron and librarian, a mirror illuminates social values, family life, and cultural concepts. Children's literature is particularly rich in 556 College & Research Libraries its textural connection. This primary ma- terial, in which the skills, values, and pre- occupations of society are recorded and transmitted, whether deliberately or un- consciously, is a largely untapped source of information about morals, family, and social relationships, and the details of ev- eryday life. 14 · The humanities and social sciences are discovering children's books as compara- tive literature. Peter Neumeyer places children's books across a wide spectrum of cultures, in many historical eras, and in relation to other fields such as psychol- ogy, education, librarianship, and fine September 1989 arts. To Neumeyer, "Children's literature exists in diverse cultures, reflects them, travels from one to another, as may strik- ingly be seen in the folk-fairy tales chil- dren have appropriated as their own.'' 15 The transformations of a simple chil- dren's book into studies in textual history, in biography, in socio-history, in arche- type or myth are the stuff of dreams, the metaphors of special collections. In the changing patterns of academic scholar- ship, the special collection becomes the museum-without-walls, a world of text that becomes our inheritance. REFERENCES 1. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (New York: Cambridge, 1979), p. 704. 2. P.L. Travers, "Only Connect," in Sheila Egoff, Only Connect (New York: Oxford, 1980), p.184. 3. Elmer D. Johnson and Michael H. Harris, History of Libraries in the Western World (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1976), p.136. 4. Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago, ill.: Univ. of Chicago, 1981), p.146. 5. Jerome McGann, Historical Studies and Literary Criticism (Madison: Univ. ofWisc., 1985), p.15. 6. Angus Paul, "Literature's Romantic Era: Historicists Re-Interpret It and Generate Controversy Among Their Colleagues," Chronicle of Higher Education 34:A7 (13 April1988). 7. Charles Osburn, Academic Research and Library Resources: Changing Patterns in America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979), p.84. 8. Ellen K. Coughlin, ''Humanities and Social Sciences: The Sound of Barriers Falling,'' Chronicle of Higher Education 34:A6 (2 Sept. 1987). 9. Ibid., p.A6. 10. Michael Keresztesi, ''Bibliographic Instruction in the 1980s and Beyond,'' in Carolyn Kirkendall, Directions for the Decade: Library Instruction in the 1980s (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pierian, 1981), p.41. 11. Paul, "Literature's Romantic Era," p.AS. 12. Nancy E. Gwinn, ''Report from a Conference at the Library on Libraries and Scholarly Communi- cation in the United States," Library of Congress Information Bulletin 47:164 (18 April, 1988). 13. Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago, ill.: Univ. of Chicago, 1987), p.10. 14. See James Fraser, Society and Children's Literature (American Library Assn., 1978); R. Gordon Kelly, Mother Was a Lady (Greenwood, 1974); Anne Lundin, "Historical Children's Literature Collec- tions: Sources for Research," Social Education 51:524 (Nov./Dec. 1987). 15. Peter Neumeyer, "Children's Literature in the English Department," Children's Literature Associa- tion Quarterly 12:147 (Fall1987).