ILLUMINATION KNOWLEDGE for the 2Ist CENTURY at the UNIVERSITY of MARYLAND LIBRARIES
IN THIS ISSUE
Fall 2017
For Liberty, Justice and Equality Hornbake Library exhibit showcases the labor movement’s contribution to American progress
Please join us for the
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Worms in McKeldin?
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University archivist retires
SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES and their intersection with America’s labor movement will be the focus of an exhibit opening October 6 in Hornbake Library. The exhibit explores the labor movement’s involvement with issues of economic equality, including the struggle for the eight-hour day and a living wage; reveals its deep roots with the civil rights’ and women’s movements; and documents lesser-known connections with the movements for LGBTQ equality, immigrant rights, religious freedom, environmental justice and international workers’ solidarity. “We’ve been planning to create an exhibit showcasing our labor collections since the donation of the AFL-CIO archives four years ago,” says Labor Archivist, Ben Blake. “The AFL-CIO’s gift and ongoing support has helped make this possible and elevated Maryland’s status to one of the top labor archives in the world, and we’re forever grateful.” (continues on page 6)
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Documenting women’s lives
Filipino American Community Archives
Opening Reception Friday
October 6, 2017 5:00 - 7:00 pm
Hornbake Library University of Maryland College Park RSVP: 301-314-5674 or go.umd.edu/libevents
Textile workers striking against low wages and the gendered irony of their employer’s “Nude Look” advertising brand of hosiery, Textile Workers Union of America, Hanes Corporation, Toronto, 1969. AFL-CIO STILL IMAGES, PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS COLLECTION
Dear Friend, For the first time in about a decade, the UMD Libraries measured library satisfaction in a wide-ranging campuswide survey. Although we frequently seek input as we develop and refine services, we also value and rely on quantitative data. More than 5,000 faculty, students and staff responded. The results were positive and reaffirming. Average satisfaction rates from all groups were consistently high: satisfaction with overall quality of service; satisfaction with support for learning, research and teaching needs; and satisfaction with the way respondents were treated in personal interactions. As a group, we’re caring, willing and helpful. “The best thing about UMD,” commented one respondent, “is McKeldin Library.” Of course, in some areas we have room to improve. Undergraduates, for example, seek environments that better inspire study and learning. Faculty and graduate students seek tools that allow them to find electronic resources more easily on their own. Such expectations help define our work, just as your continued support helps advance our progress. As libraries evolve we will inevitably change. We will continue to respond to the needs and expectations of the campus community, guided not only by their input but by our desire to be the best. What will never change is our appreciation for your support. Thank you for being part of our success. Sincerely,
Babak Hamidzadeh Interim Dean, University Libraries 2
WITH HELP from students from UMD’s Institute for Applied Agriculture, Stephanie Ritchie, Agriculture and Natural Resources Librarian, installed a vermicomposting exhibit in McKeldin Library to demonstrate how worms turn organic material into nutrientrich castings. A small amount of compostable materials collected from McKeldin Library and Footnotes Café will be fed to the worms, and the castings will eventually be used in campus gardens. “We wanted to educate people
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about composting,” says Ritchie, “as collection bins are added to more locations across campus.” The exhibit complements a campuswide push to compost paper towels, food scraps and other compostable materials. Every year UMD aims to divert from landfills at least 75 percent of the solid waste it generates.
Stephanie Ritchie at the exhibit, which shows how composting using worms works on a scale suitable for indoors.
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The Severn Gang IN JANUARY 2017, the staff and students at Severn Library accomplished a major feat: they transferred the university’s post2000 theses and dissertations from a rented facility to the high-density storage area within Severn Library. With technician Charlotte Johnson, the students inventoried, vacuumed, and assigned locations to each of the 11,457 books they handled. “The students worked well together and helped staff solve problems and establish workflows in a pilot project for bringing
materials to Severn,” says Margaret Loebe, Collection Maintenance Coordinator. “They did a great job, and six months later we’re still benefiting from their work.” Severn Library is a universityowned facility on the edge of campus that houses unique, rare and important research collections. SEVERN STUDENTS From left, undergraduates Eleazar Wong, Mike Lanuzo, Cooper Kidd, and Priscilla Hudson. Graduate student Taylor Vaughn is not pictured.
PHOTO: CHARLOTTE JOHNSON
MIKE MORGAN
Worms, But Not Bookworms
IN SIDE T H E VAU LT
Reflections on my years as University Archivist “It has been an honor and a privilege” By Anne Turkos
THE ILLUMINATION EDITORS
asked me to do something a little different this time for “Inside the Vault”—to reflect on my 32-year career there at UMD. By the time you are reading this, I will have stepped down as University Archivist, although I will still be on campus working on fundraising initiatives for the Libraries and projects in the Archives that I have longed to do for years. It’s been a great run, filled with many memorable moments, terrific treasures, and special people. I’ve often been asked what my favorite things in the Archives are. No. 1 on my list is always the real Testudo— the taxidermied terrapin that was the model for the statue that stands in front of McKeldin Library—followed closely by the 1858 letter we have from Charles Benedict Calvert, the founder of the Maryland Agricultural College, that outlines his vision for the institution that has become the University of Maryland we know today. There are so many other amazing resources here in the Archives, however, that it’s really hard to pick. Favorite time on campus—I’d have to say Commencement and Maryland Day. Both are such happy and exciting events, days on which the entire university community is filled with a sense of pride in our achievements and can’t wait to share it with the rest of the world. Most memorable moments—now that was really a tough one. Having
the opportunity to meet the first African American female under graduate student to receive a degree from UMD, participating in the ceremony marking the transfer of Pyon Su’s diploma to the University Archives, and setting a Launch UMD record for fundraising to digitize The Diamondback are hard to beat. I will never forget, though, the magical night in 2007 when we premiered the documentary commemorating the golden anniversary of the Queen’s Game in Hornbake Library and brought back so many members of the 1957 Terrapin football team who hadn’t seen each other in 50 years, or the day one of the students in our UMD history course walked up to me at the end of the semester and told me this class helped her choose her career path. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the University of Maryland as University Archivist and to get to know and work with so many students, faculty, staff, alumni, and Libraries’ friends and donors. I am very proud of what
we have been able to achieve in the Archives during my tenure, and I wish the staff of UMD Special Collections and University Archives continuing success.
From top: Anne Turkos crocheting one of her legendary turtle bookmarks; the original testudo; Queen Elizabeth II at a Terp football game in 1957; the diploma of Pyon Su, the first Korean to receive a degree from any American college or university, who graduated from the Maryland Agricultural College in 1891.
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Women in the Archiv By Elizabeth A. Novara Curator, Historical Manuscripts
Above: Memorabilia from the Women’s March on Washington including a home-made sign and button and a hand-knitted pink “pussy hat.”
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DOCUMENTING WOMEN’S lives in Maryland and in the United States more broadly is one of the collecting priorities of the Historical M anuscripts unit in Special Collections at Hornbake Library. Collections that are national in scope include the archives of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), and the feminist newsjournal off our backs. This year Historical Manuscripts has been involved in several outreach activities to document women’s history. Beginning in January the unit took part of a national project to actively collect materials to document the Women’s March on Washington and became the collecting repository for such materials within the state of Maryland. To date, donations have included posters, signs, t-shirts, pussy hats, pins, photographs, and other forms of memorabilia from participants in the marches in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and New York. In March, the unit celebrated women’s history month with two mini-exhibits related to women’s suffrage in the Maryland Room in Hornbake Library. One exhibit was about women’s suffrage in the state of Maryland, while the other was entitled The Washington Home of the Philippine Suffrage Movement.
Rita M. Cacas Filipino American Community Archives
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This exhibit was created by the organization Philippines on the Potomac (POPDC) in collaboration with the newly established Rita M. Cacas Filipino Community Archives. The exhibit featured the stories of several extraordinary Philippine women who would go on to change Philippine history and rewrite the nation’s suffrage law. During the spring semester, Historical Manuscripts worked on promoting the new pilot crowdsourced transcription tool, Transcribe MD, to the campus community and the general public, with a focus on women’s history. Working with the English course, Women’s History in Material and Digital Worlds, students learned how to use Transcribe MD to digitally transcribe an original nineteenth century women’s diary and discussed issues relating to online recovery of women’s history collections. In addition, students organized a very successful transcribe-a-thon event, Decoding Diaries, where over 60 attendees participated in online transcription of women’s history documents from the UMD Libraries’ special collections. Please visit www.transcribe. lib.umd.edu to transcribe historical documents online. For more information or to volunteer for the project, contact enovara@umd.edu.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE to throw away your family mementos, consider these souvenirs found at the University of Maryland’s Hornbake Library: l A black and white print of Aurora Quezon, first lady of the Philippine Commonwealth, atten ding an event hosted by the Filipino Women’s Club in 1943. l A panoramic photograph of Carlos P. Romulo, future President of the United Nations General Assembly, with his fellow Filipinos at the Mayflower Hotel. l Remittance slips of a son sending money to his family in the Philippines. These are just a few of the fascinating items found in the Rita M. Cacas Filipino American Community Archives (FACA) in Special Collections. FACA was established in partnership with the Rita M. Cacas Foundation, Inc. (RMCF) whose goal is to preserve the collective history of Filipinos in the metro DC area. Special Collections archives donations of letters, photographs, books and other personal memorabilia, in order to preserve the stories of generations of Filipinos who made Washington, D.C. their home.
Documents from the Archives, from top: Naturalization certificate, diary of a first trip to the Philippines, and the First Lady of the Philippines speaks to the Filipino Women’s Club.
Left: More than 60 participants helped transcribe historical documents related to women in the “Decoding Diaries” event in McKeldin Library.
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Left: AFL-CIO poster promoting May Day 2017 and Labor Network for Sustainability poster promoting the People’s Climate March 2017. Below: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963.
(Labor exhibit, continued from page 1)
Hundreds of unique documents, photographs, artifacts and videos will be on display, selected from the Labor History Collections of the Special Collections and University Archives, which contains over 20,000 feet of archival documents and thousands of individual items, including the historical records of the AFL-CIO. Items on display range from an 1835 Philadelphia carpenters’ 6
banner calling for a 10-hour day to a recent poster from the People’s Climate March created by the Labor Network for Sustainability. The exhibit seeks to spark new questions and study the h istorical relationship between the labor movement and social justice. One of the most interesting aspects of this exploration is how the labor movement has evolved from discriminatory positions to progressive ones, fighting for equality for all people.
AFL-CIO STILL IMAGES, PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS COLLECTION
“For Liberty, Justice and Equality: Unions Making History in America” runs through July 2018. The exhibit was curated by Labor Archivist Ben Blake, along with Assistant Labor Archivist Jennifer Eidson, and Graduate Assistants Jennifer Wachtel and Erin Berry. Jennifer Paul designed the exhibit. Hornbake Library is open weekdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Wednesday til 8 p.m.); closed Saturdays; Sundays 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Left: International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union protest after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which cost 146 workers their lives, and led to new laws for better working conditions, New York, 1911. PHOTO: SAMUEL GOMPERS PAPERS
Right: Protester at U.S. Capitol, 2000.
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