A ‘cabinet of wonders’ deep inside the library

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Author: Vivien Reece

No one doubts that the diary of a young girl can be powerful, but out of all the historic items located in the library’s Special Collections department—medieval works of art, autographs of famous figures, first editions of classic books—it is perhaps surprising that one of the most popular is the adolescent scrapbook of Susan Young ‘23.

Young, daughter of Occidental founder and early president Rev. William Stewart Young, left behind evidence of her existence in a scrapbook with thick pages, photos, ticket stubs and trinkets that are viewable, along with more than 30,000 other items, in the Special Collections department on the third floor of the Academic Commons. Looking through the crisp pages of her scrapbook, hand-made almost a hundred years ago, I marveled at Young’s regard for the future, as well as the respect she felt for her present time. But flipping through the pages may sparked another, more poignant feeling as well. I paused in silence with a feeling of awe at the passage of time and the fleetingness of life. The scrapbook seemed to stir a passion in me, making me ponder my contribution to posterity.

The Special Collections department is home to relics of history, hard work and intellectual and artistic achievement from the Middle Ages to the present day. But it also houses daunting amounts of ‘Occidentalia,’ including photos, blueprints, letters and plans from the college’s founding years and personal artifacts from its earliest students, such as Young’s scrapbook.

A full list of the collections can be found online, but some of the most interesting items in the department are campaign ephemera from Lincoln’s election, campaign buttons from presidential elections, presidential souvenirs from Washington to Eisenhower, pamphlets and documents from the Nixon-McGovern election, a page from the Gutenberg Bible, a rare collection of the letters of William Jennings Bryan, Robinson Jeffers’ early drafts of poems and the Guymon collection of mystery and detective fiction, with more than 16,000 volumes.

Farther back on the shelves is half-century-old footage of Occidental football games on film reels and more than 100 audio tapes with Occidental presidents giving convocation speeches, Robert Frost reading his poetry and Martin Luther King delivering an address at Occidental in 1967. The department recently started collecting materials from the Obama campaign.

Most of the items in the collections are gifts. College archivist and Special Collections librarian Dale Stieber said the most important factor the school weighs when considering gifts from donors is how the gifts might add to Occidental’s ‘academic venture.’ According to the special collections website, the goals of the department are to advance Occidental’s teaching mission and to recognize its role in the preservation of cultural heritage.

While the Special Collections Department may seem like a miniature museum, Stieber and her colleagues see it as a collection of research archives.

Making a distinction between the two, Stieber said, “These gifts are given to be used in research and reference. We are not like the Huntington Library and Getty Museum, where we have the resources to conserve items. We can only preserve, not conserve.” That means that if a gift arrives damaged, they cannot repair it; they can only maintain it in the state it came in.

A further distinction is that Special Collections is not open publicly for students and community members to browse. Most items are kept protected in boxes or on shelves in the back, away from the view of passing library patrons.

But even if the items are locked away, nothing is out of reach for inquisitive students. “You can make appointments,” college fine printing specialist Helena de Lemos said. “We also set up exhibitions around the library.” When students make appointments to see, for example, the maps of John Speed or the miniature book “Bible History,” a “thumb Bible” made in 1814, the librarians withdraw the item from its storage location temporarily for students to view.

Finally, Special Collections differs from a museum in that the point of its existence is, above all, research. “It’s not just show and tell,” assistant archivist Anne Mar said.

All three colleagues said that when students work with primary sources, it adds a different, more exciting dimension to their research. “It brings context to things. Students come here to this cabinet of wonders, and something catches their eye. You get a different kick out of it,” de Lemos said. “You know, his hand—the artist’s hand—was here.”

The archivists hope more students will use Special Collections as a resource for their academic assignments, especially for their senior comps and summer research projects. With all the conveniences of the Internet, students often miss out on opportunities to come into direct contact with history. There’s something special about seeing original copies that online scans can’t recreate, they noted.

There are other drawbacks to relying heavily on the Internet for academic research. “What students don’t realize is that by getting it all online, there’s a lot of stuff you’ll never find. You have to really get down and dirty,” said Alana Lemon ‘11, who is working in the department this year to assist with Founders Day preparations.

While the Internet has become an indispensable tool for modern research, not every possible source is online, Stieber explained. It takes time for institutions to upload documents. And at places like Special Collections, the rarest documents and artifacts may not be scanned because of their size or fragility.

Although the archivists stress the value of hands-on primary research, they remain practical about uploading as much as they can to the Internet. Last year the department began storing electronically the contents of Oxy.edu so that future researchers may consult the archives as a digital time capsule to understand the college’s day-to-day operations.

“We’re part of a newer generation of archivists and librarians looking at new ways of organizing reference tools themselves. We’re trying to live up to the same standard,” Stieber said. As more material gets transferred online to sites such as Archive-It, the future safety of knowledge will be secure as older objects like books eventually wear out.  

One major constraint on Special Collections is its size, which limits how many items the department can continue to preserve and accept from donors. “There are two factors in deciding whether something is worthy of preserving. One is that the individuals represented are interesting,” Lemon said, citing the personal collection of journalist Bessie Beatty, an Occidental alumna who wrote about the Russian Revolution. “The second one is the social aspect, the social importance of something.” As a well-known figure, Beatty meets this criterion as well.

Referencing the department’s budding collection of information on Occupy Wall Street as an example, Lemon said, “That’s the sort of thing we know researchers come looking for now about the past, so they will probably also do so in the future.”

In this era of social networking, when people can create, edit and delete information constantly, history is easily made and remade. The difference between the scrapbooks of early O
ccidental students and the Facebook pages of current students is striking. The scrapbook has the simple beauty of careful consideration and a touch of glue; Facebook erupts in an infinite stream of new photos and comments. The scrapbook has a beginning and an end in thick book covers; Facebook is continuously changing and changeable. Sometimes I wonder if we clutter up the present so much that the future will not be able to analyze its past.

“The more I learn about Oxy, the prouder I am,” Lemon said. This may hold true when thinking about the history of the world too.  The more you learn about history, the prouder you may become.  After all, the history of the world has led up to you.

Visiting Special Collections is an exercise in remembering the importance of the present as much as the past. Perhaps while leafing through pages of centuries-old books or looking into the fading eyes of a president’s portrait, students will vow to think before they publish and to honor their education more. Perhaps they will heed Stieber’s command, “Put dates on your papers!” Perhaps they will adjust their habits in a way that will both impress future historians and allow them to bear the weight of history with a sense of responsibility.

The Special Collections department plants one question in all visitors’ minds, one irresistible challenge: “What will you leave behind?”

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