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The University Archives is a rich resource of information about the activities, events, interests and programs of UConn’s faculty, students, staff since the establishment of the University in 1881. Here are some of the materials that have been recently added to the collections:
Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Records
Documents, reports, studies and correspondence pertaining to the finances of the institution from 1999 to the present. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/vpcfo/MSS20100001.html
Asian American Studies Institute Records
Materials associated with the “Day of Rememberance” program that were collected, produced and/or distributed by the Institute. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/aasi/MSS20100045.html
Bruce Bellingham Papers
Notes, photocopies, transparencies, research, scores, correspondence and publications pertaining to Professor Bellingham’s scholarly research in the history of music. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/bellingham/MSS20100055.html
Carl W. Rettenmeyer Papers
Professional correspondence with the National Science Foundation, colleagues and both personal and professional trip notes, i.e. – some from leading groups on trips (Galapogos) and some regarding collecting field trips (Panama). (Inventory not yet available.)
Richard D. Brown Papers
Documentation of the professional and administrative career of historian, Richard D. Brown. (Inventory not yet available.)
Cell Stress Society International Records
Publications, administrative records, legal and financial records, ephemera, posters, and correspondence documenting the establishment, management, development and growth of the Cell Stress Society International and its associated journal publication on the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut from 1995 to the present under the direction of Lawrence Hightower and Helen Neumann. (Inventory not yet available.)
School of Nursing War Veteran Oral History Collection
Oral history video interviews with graduates of the UConn School of Nursing who are (or were) nurses in the military. (Inventory not yet available.)
Donald W. Cameron Papers
Bound manuscript written by UConn alum. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/cameron/MSS20100103.html
Eduard Mark Papers
Materials used by Mark (UConn alum) in his research as a historian of the Cold War era in U.S. history. A majority of the collection spans the years 1945-1960, with some materials falling before and after this timeline. The collection includes correspondence, notes, administrative records, transcripts, legal documents, manuscripts, photographs, clippings and books. These sources, which contain military and government correspondence, military reports, declassified documents and other materials, shed light on a myriad of topics relating to the Cold War, including military strategies and positioning, negotiations, intelligence and national security, territorial problems, military propaganda, international relations and European affairs. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/mark/MSS20100120.html
Waterbury Campus Records
Administrative records, awards, clippings, ephemera, notes, and publications about the programs, activities and history of the Waterbury campus since its establishment in 1946. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/waterbury/MSS20100121.html
Collins-Levine Family Papers
Correspondence, school papers, memorabilia, photographs and ephemera associated with two generations of the Collins and Levine families who attended the University of Connecticut between 1922 and 1948. The materials in the collection are useful in providing a perspective of college life and experiences from the student’s point of view. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/collinslevine/MSS20110024.html
Albert F. Blakeslee Papers
The collection contains reprints of scholarly articles published by Albert F. Blakeslee. Also included are several journals with articles about Blakeslee, correspondence, calendars, travel diaries, as well as photographs and negatives associated with or documenting the career of noted scientist A. F. Blakeslee, professor at UConn 1907-1915. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/blakeslee/MSS20110046.html
University of Connecticut Educational Properties, Inc. Records
Administrative, financial and legal records pertaining to the development of property adjacent to the north side of campus for a Technology Park. Of particular note is the documentation of the communication and documention between the parties involved in the development of the Park, the range of programs and properties and the complexity of the overall project. (Inventory not yet available.)
Eric W. Carlson Papers
Notes, correspondence, reports, studies and similar materials pertaining to Dr. Carlson’s tenure as a professor of English at the University of Connecticut from 1942-1979. (Inventory not yet available.)
Greater Hartford Campus Records
Course syllabi and schedules of classes for the Greater Hartford campus of the University of Connecticut. (Inventory not yet available.)
–Betsy Pittman, University Archivist
Archives & Special Collections acquires new collections and additions to existing collections throughout the year. Periodically, I will be posting information about collections that have been acquired or are newly available for your researching enjoyment. First up are those documenting Connecticut businesses:
John Francis O’Brien Papers
Potographs, correspondence and certificates, most involving Mr. O’Brien’s service as an employee of the Southern New England Telephone Company. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/obrien/MSS20100030.html
Southern New England Telephone (SNET) Collection
Memorabilia and realia from the collections of people who were employed by the company. The collection includes antique telephones and telephone equipment, include a climbing belt and lanyard of a lineman, an employee service pin and memorabilia of the Telephone Pioneers, a volunteer organization and service club made up of U.S. and Canadian telecommunications industry employees and retirees, a commemorative telephone directory, the cellphone used to make the first cellphone call in Connecticut, and a dress and a shirt made of pages from the SNET Yellow Pages. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/snetcoll/MSS20100118.html
Thomas Dublin Collection of the Jewett City Cotton Manufacturing Company
Research notes and datasets compiled by Thomas Dublin while he conducted research in the 1980s about workers at the Jewett City Cotton Manufacturing Company in Jewett City, Connecticut. (Finding aid not yet available)
–Betsy Pittman, University Archivist
Michael Rumaker was born in South Philadelphia in 1932. The fourth of nine children, he grew up in National Park, New Jersey, a small town on the Delaware River, and later attended the school of journalism at Rider College in Trenton on a half-scholarship. After hearing artist Ben Shahn speak enthusiastically of Black Mountain College during a lecture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he applied to the college and was granted a work scholarship. In September 1952 he transferred to Black Mountain–washing dishes seven days a week, managing dishwashing crews–and studied in the writing classes of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley.
His breakthrough was “The Truck,” written for Olson’s writing class in October 1954: “after two years of confused false starts and superficial scratchings, I wrote my first real short story, although, in what was to become usual for me, I didn’t know it till after the fact.” He had “reached back,” by his own account, into his adolescence in the mid-1940s and a street gang he knew in the northern section of Camden, New Jersey, “to get it.” Olson’s response was enthusiastic, and he suggested that Rumaker send the story to Robert Creeley for the Black Mountain Review.
Since 1955, Rumaker has published works of fiction, poetry and non-fiction in literary periodicals, novels including A Day and a Night at the Baths (1979), My First Satyrnalia (1981), and To Kill a Cardinal (1992), a collection of short stories, and the memoirs Robert Duncan in San Francisco (1996) and Black Mountain Days (2003).
According to George Butterick, who began collecting Michael Rumaker’s literary papers at the University of Connecticut in 1975, where they reside today, “Rumaker has proceeded from writing about disengaged youth in a generation willing to declare its difference, to being a celebrant of total life and human joy. Actively participating in his own destiny, he has left a glowing trail of work to document the struggle toward identity. He represents, in his later writings, one extension of the Beat revolution: the embracing of sexual diversity. Governing all his work is an indefatigable spirit that gives the creative life reward.”
Join Archives and Special Collections and special guest — novelist, poet, short-story writer, and Black Mountain College alumnus Michael Rumaker — as we celebrate the much-anticipated opening of the Michael Rumaker Papers. The event will feature an interview with and readings by Michael Rumaker, an exhibition of the author’s manuscripts, letters and photographs, ribbon-cutting ceremony, and reception with students and special guests. All are welcome. This event is free and open to the public
April 10, 2012
4:00 to 6:00pm
McDonald Reading Room
Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut
- Melissa Watterworth Batt, Curator of Literary Collections
To drink or not to drink? This is a question most Americans rarely address, regarding the safety of their drinking water. Indeed, water contamination often appears irrelevant to us—a far-off issue confined to developing countries. However, as Jonathan King argues in his book Troubled Water: The Poisoning of America’s Drinking Water, instances of environmental contamination are far from isolated.
Written in 1985 by the Center for Investigative Reporting, one of the nation’s oldest nonprofit agencies covering crucial yet often neglected issues, Troubled Water raises awareness about contaminated groundwater. Burying toxic wastes is particularly harmful to groundwater –and, by association, drinking water—because chemicals “don’t readily disperse, settle out, or degrade” (King xi) at this level. Land disposal is a cheap, common, and sometimes significantly harmful waste management technique, as there is no way to fully ensure that the toxins will be kept from leaking into groundwater. In fact, “a leak of a single gallon of gasoline per day is enough to render the groundwater supply for a town of 50,000 people unfit to drink” (King xi).
Such contamination has had dire results in the past: the 1978 Love Canal scandal being one example. Despite warnings from Hooker Chemicals Co., schools and residential areas were built on and near a buried chemical waste site in Niagara Falls, NY. Wastes and toxins such as dioxin eventually spread as the water table rose—leaking into basements, sewers, and eventually area creeks. This contamination was also associated with an unprecedented number of health concerns among residents including miscarriages, birth defects, and the development of rare diseases.
Federal initiatives such as the 1980 Superfund program were established in the wake of these environmental scandals in order to hold polluters accountable after the fact. However, King suggests that the best way to seek environmental justice is for citizens to be proactive, so that environmental injustice never becomes an issue. He argues that “contamination has to be prevented before it happens” (173). He quotes Lois Gibbs, a prominent environmentalist and local leader in the call for action at Love Canal: “ ‘I’m really very optimistic. I see people moving, and I see things [i.e. citizen involvement] happening’ ” (180). If not, then, as Joel Hirschhorm—a 1980s Capitol Hill expert on toxic waste management—put it: “We will end up paying that [environmental] debt either with our money [in having to treat polluted areas] or our health” (qtd. in King xiv-xv).
Krisela Karaja, Student Intern
Resources:
“About CIR.” Center for Investigative Reporting. Center for Investigative Reporting, n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. Center for Investigative Reporting
DePalma, Anthony. “Love Canal Declared Clean, Ending Toxic Horror.” New York Times 18 Mar. 2004. Web Archives. 26 Sept. 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/nyregion/love-canal-declared-clean-ending-toxic-horror.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
King, Jonathan. Troubled Water: The Poisoning of America’s Drinking Water—how government and industry allowed it to happen, and what you can do to ensure a safe supply in the home. Emmaus Pennsylvania, Rodale Press: 1985. Print. Alternative Press Collections. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. Call number: APC Bk 389.
“Love Canal New York. EPA ID# NYD000606947.” EPA. United States Environmental Protection Agency, 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. <www.epa.gov/region2/superfund/npl/0201290c.pdf>.
Grace Blakeman, circa 1899
Grace Blakeman graduated from the Storrs Agricultural College, now the University of Connecticut, in 1896. After college, Miss Blakeman married fellow classmate Sherman W. Eddy in 1899. Active in the Congregational Church, a correspondent for the Hartford Courant, and a farm census taker, Grace died on March 26, 1919, of influenza. The portrait of Grace Blakeman (above) was painted by her cousin Fannie C. Burr of Monroe, Connecticut, and is presumed to have been painted in honor of Ms. Blakeman’s engagement to Mr. Eddy. The portrait was recently donated to the University Archives in recognition of Ms. Blakeman’s status as one of the first women to graduate from UConn.
Although UConn alums are always welcome to visit the University Archives, it is always a special treat when some of them (or their memorabilia) come to “stay” in the Archives and share their story with others interested in the history of the institution.
–Betsy Pittman, University Archivist
l-r:Terri J. Goldich, Curator; Billie M. Levy, Donor; Kena Sosa, Researcher. Seated: Mrs. Eva Greenwood, Interviewee
Ms. Kena Sosa of Grand Prairie, Texas, was the 4th recipient of a Billie M. Levy Travel and Research Grant awarded by the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. Ms. Sosa is a school librarian and teacher, with a BA in English and an MA in bilingual education with emphasis on teaching the gifted and talented. Her topic of research is the experience of Jewish children who escaped Nazi persecution to England and other countries by means of the Kindertransport program. The Northeast Children’s Literature Collection holds works on this topic which Ms. Sosa used to gather information on the experiences of the children faced with new sights, sounds, language, and in some cases, new families. Ms. Sosa also interviewed two women who were transported to England as part of Kindertransport to create oral histories documenting their experiences. (NOTE: Mrs. Greenwood’s interview begins in the middle of a sentence.)
Click here for the transcript interview of Mrs. Eva Greenwood, or:
Here for the transcript of Mrs. Rita G. Kaplan.
Ms. Sosa has published on a wide variety of topics ranging from biracial children’s literature to netiquette for kids. She hopes
to use the results of her research to write a children’s book about the Kindertransport experience. Ms. Sosa presented the results of her research on April 21, 2011, at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.
–Terri J. Goldich
Many of our researchers have successfully accessed the online New Haven Railroad Valuation Maps, from the UConn Libraries’ Digital Mosaic site at http:/images.lib.uconn.edu/. Although we have heard from many how useful it is to have the maps accessible to off-site researchers, we’ve also heard that the vagaries of ContentDM, the database system where the maps sit, don’t help them follow the railroad line from point to point. The maps, which are each one mile footprints of the railroad tracks as they follow the complicated New Haven Railroad system as it was in 1915, have always been rather isolated from, and unlinked to, each other.
New Haven Railroad Valuation Map of Hartford, Connecticut, now accessible from a map index at http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/mash_up/nynhhrr_index.html
Happily, that glitch is now overcome, thanks to the the magnificent efforts of the Map and Geographic Information Center, better known as MAGIC, an important special library within the UConn Libraries system. MAGIC, headed by Geographic Information Systems Librarian Michael Howser, has created a map index that now allows researchers to follow the railroad lines on a map and click at any point to bring up the 1915 valuation map.
You will find the index at http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/mash_up/nynhhrr_index.html
Isn’t this great?! One could even say that this is truly, well, magical. Tools like this make viewing the maps so much easier. You will see, though, that as of this moment you can search only the Connecticut railroad valuation maps. MAGIC has plans to, in time, complete the index, to encompass all of the maps that are currently in the Digital Mosaic, which include Massachusetts, Rhode Island and eastern New York. Something else I want to point out is that the index makes it obvious that there are gaps in the system, that there are sections where, although the railroad ran between some points, there are no maps that covered these areas. The fault of this lies in the fact that our original set of valuation maps was never absolutely complete, and that is reflected in the online maps.
I want to extend my most sincere thanks to Michael Howser and his staff, particularly Geography PhD student Jie Lin, who made this index a reality. You’ve made a lot of railroad researchers VERY happy!
Laura Smith, Curator for Business, Railroad and Labor Collections
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The family of the late Coleen Salley have donated James Marshall’s book dummy for his “The Cut-ups cut loose” to the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. The charming, 32-page dummy is accompanied by a letter from Mr. Marshall to Ms. Salley with a note about “our little book.” The dummy is black and white with some color on the title page. The book was published in 1987 by Viking Kestrel and is dedicated to Ms. Salley. This piece is the only item in the Marshall Papers for this title. Thank you, Salley Family, for this important addition to the NCLC.–Terri J. Goldich, Curator
Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz (Chicago: Reilly & Lee, 1939). By Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill.
Neill wrote three Oz books after Thompson resigned from writing the series in 1939. This story contains the original characters, Dorothy Gale, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion and of course the Wizard of Oz. Jellia Jam (“Jamb” in the original Baum) is the Wizard’s “pretty little serving maid” who does not appear in the movie version. The Soldier with Green Whiskers and Nick Chopper join everyone for a dinner party at the Wizard’s home so the Wizard can show off his new inventions, two Ozoplanes named Ozpril and Oztober. The Soldier, Tin Woodman, and Jellia board the Oztober and through the Soldier’s bad luck, take off through the roof on a long adventure.
–Terri J. Goldich, Curator, Northeast Children’s Literature Collection
Amtrak's train 83 rounds curve as it kicks up the fresh snow at Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Photograph by Robert LaMay, January 2011.
For more inforamation about Amtrak’s 40th anniversary and National Train Day on May 7, visit http://www.nationaltrainday.com/turning-40/. For more information about the Railroad History Archive, visit http://railroads.uconn.edu/
Laura Smith, Curator for Business, Railroad and Labor Collections
