Special Collections Research Center

Highlights of Special Collections

Soaring Flight. . . Edward Chalmers Huffaker

E. C. Huffaker was an engineer and aeronautical experimenter. He built gliders or early flying machines based on his observations of bird flight. Huffaker worked at one time under Samuel P. Langley at the Smithsonian as part of their aeronautical staff, and later for famed aviation pioneer Octave Chanute.

   

Crerar Manuscript 294 contains a manuscript and drawings
of Huffakers Soaring Flight. The drawings of a glider are
depicted from several angles, and contain considerable
description of the glider and its parts. The manuscript
appears to be handwritten observations of the machine
in flight, along with some general principles of flight.

Digitizing Archives and Manuscript Collections

 

The University of Chicago's Special Collections Research Center has started a program to digitize selected archives and manuscript collections. The digital images are being made available via the online finding aid for each collection. This will recreate for the online user the experience of a researcher encountering the original materials in the SCRC Reading Room, with documents displayed as they are housed in each folder, and with description of the contents in the form of folder headings.

Individual, high-resolution images of each page will be permanently preserved in the Library's digital repository, and can be made available for publication or other research needs. Digitization efforts are currently focused on materials in the public domain, or those for which the University of Chicago holds copyright.

Collections with digitized content now available online include:

 

 

• The Ida B. Wells Papers: The collection contains diaries, correspondence, manuscripts and photographs documenting the life of the teacher, journalist,
and anti-lynching activist.
 

 

• The Dr. Harry Bakwin and Dr. Ruth Morris Bakwin Soviet Posters Collection:
Nineteen Soviet political posters produced in the early 1930s, collected by the American physicians Dr. Harry Bakwin and Dr. Ruth Morris Bakwin during two trips to the Soviet Union.

• The Fielding Lewis Papers: Business, personal, and legal records documenting life on a plantation on the
James River in Virginia, both before and after the Civil War.

 

 

• The University of Chicago Laboratory
School Work Reports:
These reports are about the
Elementary and Secondary division
of the Laboratory School, and
document classroom activities in
the School's first decade.

 

This initiative is a collaborative effort between University of Chicago Library Special Collections, Preservation, and the Digital Library Development Center. Many thanks to Eileen Ielmini, Kathleen Feeney, Daniel Meyer, Kathy Arthur, Karen Dirr, Charles Blair, and the student scanners in Preservation.

Happy 200th Birthday Chopin!

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Polish-born composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), which is being celebrated with events worldwide. The actual date of his birthday is either February 22 or March 1, and a 171-hour marathon concert in Warsaw is spanning these dates.

The University of Chicago has been celebrating Chopin for decades, building one of the strongest collections of first and early printed editions of his works in the world.

The Chopin Collection at the University of Chicago Library consists of over 400 first and early printed editions of Chopin's musical compositions. The Collection, maintained in the Special Collections Research Center, forms the basis for Chopin Early Editions, which consists of high-resolution digitized images of all scores in the University of Chicago Library's Chopin collection. The digital collection is used by musicians, scholars and collectors who contribute to Chopin's legacy by performing and studying his works. 

We hope these resources encourage you to join the celebration.

Manuscript Mystery Solved

 
Joseph G. Barabe of McCrone Associates examining Archaic Mark

A collaboration between University of Chicago Library special collections and conservation staff, a University of Chicago Divinity School faculty member, the Walters Art Museum's head conservator, and a firm specializing in micro-chemical analysis has resolved a decades-long debate by concluding that the manuscript known as 'Archaic Mark" is a late 19th- or early 20th- century forgery, not a 14th-century witness to the Gospel of Mark:http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1801

Jeffrey Kallberg's Chopin Seminar

[Photos by Dan Dry]

The University of Chicago Magazine has published a report on a seminar recently held in the Special Collections Research Center.

You can read the entire story on the Magazine's website.

From the piece:

Sixteen graduate students stand over two musical scores in a seminar room at the Regenstein Library’s Special Collections Research Center. “Go ahead and turn the pages—don’t be shy,” says their guide, Jeffrey Kallberg, AM’78, PhD’82, an expert on the composer Frédéric Chopin. “I want you to get a feel for these things as material objects.”

Jeffrey Kallberg, Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, visited campus as part of the University's 500th Convocation Celebration. 

The graduate seminar made of use the SCRC's extensive collection of the works of Chopin. The Chopin Early Editions collection can also be used online.

A New Face for the Archival Photographic Files!

[A lucky squirrel, two happy students, and a lovely autumn day. Undated photo, circa 1940s/1960s]

The University of Chicago Library is pleased to announce additions and enhancements to the Archival Photographic Files database!

As you’ll see, the website has a fresh new interface, and it features a more comprehensive search capability. The database also includes many more photos from our collections, including images of campus events and student activities.

The Archival Photographic Files digital collection presents digital facsimiles of original documentary images in the University of Chicago Archives.

Nota bene: For photos of individuals (like professors and students) and groups (like committees and departments) researchers should still consult the original collection list and contact SCRC with questions. We’re happy to help!

Archival Photo Files: The University's principal photographic archive

Early in the twentieth century, alumni of the University of Chicago began contributing their personal caches of cyanotypes, tintypes, photogravures, and cartes-de-visite to the Library. Many of the photographs depict student life on campus, but as this collection continued to grow through donations of other material made by faculty, trustees, and research and administrative departments, the scope of its content broadened. Known today as the Archival Photographic Files, the first portion of this historic resource of more than 60,000 images to be mounted on the Web focuses on the University's architectural record, its buildings, landscaping, and artistic features such as monumental sculptural works. Visit the site at http://photofiles.lib.uchicago.edu/.

On display are the earliest photographic examples, which recount the University's origins, the campus of the Old University of Chicago (1857–1886), which stood at 35th and Cottage Grove, and the Henry Ives Cobb plan for the newly incorporated University (1890). The pictures also preserve temporary structures such as the first gymnasium and library; student housing after World War II; and longer lasting constructs like Stagg Athletic Field, on which the present-day Regenstein Library stands.

In the near future, the online collection will provide access to the photographic record of University events and activities, one of elaborate ceremonies, intriguing dramas, and exciting sporting events. These are the convocations, concerts, and plays, and panoply of games (fencing, track, tennis, football, baseball, archery, and polo) in which members of the University community actively participated.