Special Collections Research Center

New Web Exhibit! The Darwin Centennial Celebration

The Darwin Centennial Celebration of 1959 is the subject of a new web exhibit.

The Celebration, commemorating the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, was held at the University of Chicago from November 24 through November 28, 1959. Sol Tax, Professor of Anthropology, served as the chairman of the Centennial Committee.

The Celebration featured some of the most prominent evolutionary scientists in the world, as well as intellectuals such as Sir Charles Darwin and Julian Huxley. 

This Web exhibit was planned in conjunction with the Darwin/Chicago 2009 conference held at the University of Chicago, October 29-31, 2009 and compliments the exhibit Chicago Celebrates Darwin held at the John Crerar Library, October 19, 2009-March 26, 2010.

The present Web exhibit and the John Crerar Library exhibits draw heavily on the Darwin Centennial Celebration Records, which are held in the Special Collections Research Center. T

Visit the Darwin Centennial Celebration exhibit to read more, view documents and film footage, and listen to archival audio recordings.

Some Collections Unavailable November 16, 2009 - January 18, 2010

The Special Collections Research Center will be closed for three weeks in December 2009 to allow for construction work in both our public and collections storage spaces.  As we have previously posted, we will be closed beginning December 14, 2009 and re-open on January 4, 2010. In preparing for this construction we will need to move more than 5000 archival boxes, rendering them temporarily inaccessible.

During this time, some collections and parts of collections will not be available for the period November 16, 2009 - January 18, 2010. Please see our list of Inaccessible Collections for more information.  

Please contact us at any time with questions.

Image: Archival Photographic Files, showing archival boxes in Special Collections, ca. 1987.

Chicago's Archaic Mark:
A Report on the Results of Chemical, Codicological and Textual Analysis

Presented by the Early Christian Studies Workshop and the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago

Speakers:

Joseph Barabe,
The McCrone Group, Westmont, IL

Abigail Quandt,
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
 
Margaret M. Mitchell,
The University of Chicago Divinity School

Monday October 26 from 6-8 pm
Special Collections Research Center
Joseph Regenstein Library 1100 E. 57th Street

At a special session of the Divinity School's Early Christian Studies Workshop, the final results of a multi-year commitment by the University to solve a decades-long enigma — is this miniature codex a genuine Byzantine manuscript preserving a very early text-type of the Gospel of Mark or a modern forgery? — will be announced.

The manuscript will be available for viewing, and Barabe, Quandt and Mitchell will document their findings and their implications in advance of their forthcoming article in the journal Novum Testamentum.

All interested parties are welcome to attend. A light reception will follow. (Please note special evening time.)

SCRC to close for three weeks in December

The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at the University of Chicago Library will close for a three-week period in December 2009 to allow for construction work in both our public and collections storage spaces.

SCRC will be closed beginning Monday, December 14, 2009 and will re-open on Monday, January 4, 2010.

During these weeks, construction of the new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library will move into Regenstein Library as the contractor creates a new entrance route to Mansueto Library across the first floor of Regenstein. This construction project within Regenstein Library will extend to November 2010.

We encourage you to contact the Special Collections Research Center with questions: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/ask/SCRC.html

For more information about the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library project, please visit the Mansueto Library’s website: http://mansueto.lib.uchicago.edu/

For up-to-date information from the Special Collections Research Center’s, consult our Construction Information website:  http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/scrcconstruction.html

[Click image to enlarge]

Chicago Jazz Archive and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival

The Special Collections Research Center is proud to be a part of the University of Chicago and a member of the Hyde Park Alliance for Arts and Culture, two of the three producers of the  Hyde Park Jazz Festival, coming up this Saturday, September 26. 

The festival will offer 15 hours of live jazz performances from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m at venues across Hyde Park.  As part of the festivities, our Chicago Jazz Archive will have a booth on the Midway, near the James W. Wagner Mainstage.  It will be open from 11 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.  Stop by for information about the Chicago Jazz Archive and the Special Collections Research Center, or visit our CJA page for a description of the Archive’s collections.

Library archives student Will Faber directed a short video, “Hyde Park Jazz Fest: An Interview with Willie Pickens,” for the University’s multimedia Jazz Fest news feature.  It includes photographs from the Wilbur and Valarie Campbell Collection (part of the Chicago Jazz Archive).

SCRC in the news!

The Special Collections Research Center makes two special appearances this week in UChiBlogo, the University of Chicago Magazine blog.

>> Elizabeth Station explores the digitization of the Edgar J. Goodspeed Collection of New Testament Manuscripts by paying a visit to preservation photographer Michael Kenny and conservator Ann Lindsey. 

>> Luke Fiedler reports on SCRC's copy of John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, heavily annotated by legendary Chicago economist Frank Knight.

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Archive

SCRC's largest manuscript collection is the corporate archive of RR Donnelley, a Chicago-based provider of printing and print-related services founded in 1864.  Between 2005 and 2007, SCRC received over 1600 linear feet of archival material as a generous gift from RR Donnelley.

Processing of the R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Archive was completed in June 2009, and an online finding aid describing the entire collection is now available. The archive spans over 140 years of the company's history, and contains business records, product samples, promotional material, personal papers, historical writings, oral histories, films and videos, artifacts, and thousands of documentary photographs. The R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Archive now supports research in the history of printing and publishing, advertising and media studies, labor history, and urban studies.

The exhibition Printing for the Modern Age: Commerce, Craft, and Culture in the RR Donnelley Archive was held in SCRC in 2006-2007. The exhibit publication authored by curatorial consultant Kim Coventry is available from SCRC.

Marjorie Whitney Prass Collection

Marjorie Whitney Prass earned a degree from the University of Chicago in Medieval, Modern European and American History in 1941, but her first love was dance.

The alumna was heavily involved in University Theater as well as Hyde Park area theater. During her time at the university, she was a member of the Mirror Revue, a group of women who put on a yearly a revue made up of a series of skits interspersed with songs and dances representing a reflection or “mirror” of campus life.  In the 1939 production, she performed a solo tap routine and was a feature of the show.

In 2008, over two hundred pieces of costume clothing created for Marjorie’s dance performances at the University of Chicago and other locations in Hyde Park were donated to the University’s Special Collections Research Center. Approximately twenty-five pieces were pre-made, but the majority of the pieces were handmade by Mathilde Muller Whitney, Marjorie’s mother.

The collection includes children's costumes, head pieces, gowns, folk costumes, oriental costumes, cropped jackets, skirts, scarves, spanky pants, shoes, blouses, programs, accessories, sewing materials, unfinished projects, wings, and paper fans.

Friends of SCRC in the blogs!

Two of our colleagues make appearances in campus blogs this week!

>> Drew Dir, writing on the Court Theater Blog, bumps into Debbie Gillaspie, the Curator of the Chicago Jazz Archive, and talks about the Warner Brothers cartoon "The Three Bops."

>> The University of Chicago Magazine's UChiBlogO features a story on Ann Lindsey, the University of Chicago Library's head of conservation. "It’s a conservation joke," quips Lindsey, "that you know you’ve become a conservator when you get shocked the day somebody points out that there are words in the books."

Construction deadline revised!

Hurray for a construction-free autumn!

In a previous announcement, we said that construction in SCRC would begin in September, 2009. The construction schedule has been revised, and we now anticipate work to begin in early January, 2010.

Remember to check our construction updates for more detailed information, and please feel free to write to us with questions about accessing our collections.

In the meantime, you can watch the progress on the Mansueto Library's construction by watching the MansuetoCam. Or you can visit SCRC and simply look out the windows!