Cool@Hoole

Interview with Katie Howard, Part II

Posted on March 10, 2015 by | Posted in: Katie Howard, Paul R. Jones Gallery, SLIS | Leave a comment

By: Katie Howard, Director of the Paul R. Jones Gallery and The University Gallery, University of Alabama MLIS student

This post concludes our interview with W.S. Hoole Library volunteer Katie Howard. Be sure to read the first portion of our interview with her from Monday if you haven’t already! 

Screen Shot 2015-03-06 at 3.41.47 PMWhat role do you have at the W.S. Hoole Library now?

I am currently volunteering and assisting Kevin Ray with outside reference requests. I began volunteering last summer and after a brief hiatus over the fall semester, I was able to return in January. I am so happy to be back! Kevin and I assist patrons who have sent in reference requests over email or phone, and sometimes snail mail. These requests can be anything from research to genealogical and are always fascinating. I love the thrill of the search and the satisfaction I get from being able to find exactly what a patron needs.

We know we’re not your main job; what else do you do?

I am currently the Director for the Paul R. Jones Gallery and The University Gallery, both of which are part of the College of Arts and Science here at UA.

The Paul R. Jones Gallery hosts year-round exhibitions from the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art, which was donated by Paul R. Jones to the College of Arts and Sciences in 2008. It contains over 2000 works, most of which were done by African American artists and is one of the largest collections of its kind in the world.

JonesGallery

I work with our collections manager and education outreach coordinator to curate thematic exhibitions and help to develop programing around those exhibitions. I also work with guest curators, faculty campus and students to plan exhibitions, lectures and programs all revolving around the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art and the gallery space. Follow us on Facebook!

Continue reading →

Campus Pinups?

Posted on March 9, 2015 by kgmatheny | Posted in: Cool Collections, Periodicals | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Rammer Jammer, UA’s campus magazine from the 1920s to the 1950s, often featured cover art that was surprisingly risqué for the time. Or was it?

I think we tend to see 1920s-1940s through the lens of the 1950s, with its heavily censored films (see “The Hays Code” at TV Tropes) and horribly wholesome television shows like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. We forget how much the early days of movies and television could be a bit like the wild west.

For example, a lot of people could tell you that, during the 1951-1957 run of I Love Lucy, Ricky and Lucy couldn’t sleep in the same bed or use the word “pregnant.” The fact that she was actually shown to be “expecting” was pretty daring. But I bet you didn’t know that the first show to depict a pregnancy, not to mention a couple that shared a bed, was before that — on Mary Kay and Johnny, in the late 1940s, a show now lost to history.

The 1940s are a confusing period to talk about. Sure, Hollywood movies weren’t allowed to show too much skin or bad guys getting away with their crimes, but it was also the period of bombshells like Mae West, Jean Harlow, and Veronica Lake. Perhaps it had to do with the uncertainty of WWII (1939-1945) or the end of the Great Depression. Or perhaps there was nothing odd about it at all; it just looks that way in hindsight, after the 1950s. Of course, it’s also possible we’re stereotyping the 1950s, too.

What’s certain: Rammer Jammer cover art usually echoes the trends of the era, especially in the depiction of the female form.

1920s

Before WWI, there was the Gibson Girl, created by Charles Dana Gibson.

Gibson Girls

She was a species of the New Woman, and she was a bit controversial (see “The Gibson Girls: The Kardashians of the Early 1900s” at mental_floss), but pop culture hadn’t seen anything yet.

The 1920s flapper was a new breed. Jazz Age illustrators like Russell Patterson and John Held Jr. immortalized these more daring women of the Roaring Twenties, often in an Art Deco kind of style. Their kin can be found on the 1920s covers of Rammer Jammer, beginning at its inception in 1925. Click on any image below to see a larger version.

1930s

If you’ve ever seen calendars that feature stylized illustrations of scantily clad pinups girls, like those of Alberto Vargas or Gil Elvgren, you maybe won’t be too shocked by the Rammer Jammer covers of the 1930s. Early in the decade, they seem to ride the line between being provocative and being realistic, depicting students in anything from modest long skirts to clinging gowns and underclothes. Later, they point to the movement toward head shots.

1940s

The 1940s see a transition to using photographs of real women rather than illustrations. Though the Vargas Girls and Elvgren Girls still held some sway, the Rammer Jammer staff still seems a bit torn between the modest co-ed (1940-1046) and the more provocative “Sweater Girl” (1947-1949).

1950s

Rammer Jammer ended its run in 1956. Before it did, it put out lots of pinup-style photos. On the October 1951 cover (below), the photograph is actually being tacked up onto the wall by an illustrated male student. There were girls as sweet as Betty Grable or as saucy as Bettie Page, whether in photos or drawings. Certainly changes my opinion of the supposedly bland, conservative 1950s!

Interview with volunteer Katie Howard, Part I

Posted on March 9, 2015 by | Posted in: Joyce Haguewood Lamont, Katie Howard, Publishers' Bindings, SLIS, UA History | Leave a comment

By: Katie Howard, Director of the Paul R. Jones Gallery and The University Gallery, University of Alabama MLIS student

IMG_3982Hi, Katie! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Can you tell us a little about your history at the W.S. Hoole Library?

I grew up in libraries. More specifically, elementary and academic libraries.

My mother, Penny McAllister, was an elementary school librarian for 30 years. My grandmother, Joyce Lamont, had a 40-year career at the University of Alabama as an archivist and preservationist and eventually ended up as the Associate Dean of Special Collections. While my mother passed on to me her love of reading, my grandmother is the one who instilled in me the importance of preserving history for future generations.

I have been in and out of the halls and stacks of Hoole (Gorgas and current location) for the past 20 years. It wasn’t until 2003, when I began working as a student assistant under Jessica Lacher-Feldman that I actually began to understand and appreciate special collections for the sheer volume of rare materials it holds and the endless opportunities there were to share this information. For the longest time (and I hate to admit this) but I always thought special collections were only filled with dusty old books. It wasn’t until I came to Hoole as a student and employee that my eyes were opened to the treasure trove of cultural history that Hoole holds in the form of manuscripts, ledgers, maps, photographs and yes, even the dusty old books.

Continue reading →

Hashtag Project: First Three Months

Posted on March 2, 2015 by | Posted in: Amy Hildreth Chen, Ashley Bond | Leave a comment

By: Amy Hildreth Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

Back in December 2014, Cool@Hoole discussed its newly-launched initiative: the hashtag project. The hashtag project, managed by SLIS student Ashley Bond (@LibraryAshB), brings subscribers to either our Facebook page or our Twitter feed a new item from our collections Monday through Friday.

Some of our most popular posts, perhaps not surprisingly, feature notable events and people from the history of Alabama’s football team. But other well-received posts include those showing a Jane Austin book and one of Ashley #twinning at work!

2015-12-18 2015-01-21 2015-01-23 2015-02-08

If you’d like to catch up on what we’ve featured on specific days, we created Storify feeds for some of our most frequently-used hashtags. #ThrowbackThursday is our most commonly-used hashtag.

ThrowbackThursdayBut we also have used #marbledMonday, #TuscaloosaTuesday, #WaybackWednesday, #WorkdayWednesday, #foodieFriday, and #flashbackFriday.

We hope to see you on Twitter or Facebook soon!

Hoole-Twitter Hoole-Facebook

 

The Acquisition History of the papers of Confederate Brigadier General Johnston

Posted on February 20, 2015 by | Posted in: Amy Hildreth Chen, Civil War, Manuscript Collections, Mary Bess Paluzzi, Tuscaloosa, UA Buildings, UA History | Leave a comment

By: Amy Chen and Mary Bess Paluzzi

Did you read our earlier post on Confederate Brigadier General Johnston’s career? If you haven’t yet, be sure to check it out to learn more about the history this collection represents. 

The George Doherty Johnston Collection was donated to the University Libraries Division of Special Collections at the University of Alabama in 2014 by the family of Netta Holley, the great-great-granddaughter of Brigadier General George Johnston and the great-great-niece of Julia Tutweiler.

As these papers are a recent acquisition, Cool@Hoole thought it would be helpful to discuss some of the behind-the-scenes work it takes to add to our holdings. After all, the Division of Special Collections at the University of Alabama is a “living library.” Our Associate Dean, Mary Bess Paluzzi, is in continual contact with donors and prospective donors who are interested in depositing their records with us.

Continue reading →

Confederate Brigadier General Johnston: A newly acquired and digitized collection

Posted on February 20, 2015 by | Posted in: Ashley Bond, Civil War, Manuscript Collections, Tuscaloosa | Leave a comment

By: Ashley Bond, SLIS graduate student

General Johnston was born in Hillsboro, North Carolina, on May 30, 1832. After studying at Cumberland University’s School of Law in Lebanon, Tennessee, he began his own practice in Marion, Alabama, the town where he was raised. There he was elected mayor in 1856 and afterward served in state legislature from 1857 to 1858.  Johnston enlisted as a Second Lieutenant of Company G in the 4th Alabama Infantry in the Confederate Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. With this unit, he fought at the first Battle of Bull Run and was later commissioned as Major of the 25th Alabama Infantry in early 1862. In September 1863, he was promoted to Colonel, and by July of the following year, he rose to the rank of Brigadier General. Two days after his promotion, he received a bullet wound to the leg and continued to lead his brigade on crutches. After the Battle of Franklin, he took command of Brigadier General William Andrew Quarles’ Brigade through the Battle of Bentonville in March 1865. Afterward, he led General E. C. Walthall’s division until reorganization at Goldsboro. He eventually headed westward to join Lieutenant General Richard Taylor in Alabama up until the Confederate Army’s surrender.

Continue reading →

African-American Soldier Portraits

Posted on February 16, 2015 by kgmatheny | Posted in: Cool Collections, Digitization, Newly Online, Photographs, Small Collections, World War I, World War II | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Right now, in the Pearce Foyer of Gorgas Library (2nd floor, Quad side), you’ll find a pretty cool exhibit:

Highlighting the collections of Rev. Wylheme Ragland of Decatur, Alabama,  A North Alabama Clergyman’s Passion for History: Preserving Black History through Words and Images features cookbooks, scrapbooks, diaries, funeral worship bulletins, letters, and photographs from the Schaudies, Banks, and Ragland families. Their generous gift illustrates the everyday lives of African Americans living and working in the post-Civil War South through a wide variety of materials that will provide unique research opportunities for students and faculty. (source)

Recently, we were able to digitize some amazing portraits from this collection — most of them featuring African-American soldiers from the WWI and WWII eras —  frames and all. They were a bit of a challenge, but it was well worth it!

Challenges

If you go see the pictures on exhibit at Gorgas, you’ll find that many of them have curved glass. Our usual capture process involves lights that shine down on an item, but for these portraits, that would’ve meant a lot of light reflection.

To compensate, Jeremiah, camera guru, reconfigured the capture station to allow us to hang the portraits on the wall and shoot them straight on, so that the lighting could hit them in a different way.

See, no reflection in the glass! (Click on this image or any in this post to see it up close in Acumen.)

portrait

 

Of course, there’s just one problem: the frame is also reflective. We decided shine-free portraits were more important than shine-free frames, but we tried to minimize all reflection as much as possible.

portrait

However, some of the bulkier frames gave us the added challenge of casting shadows across the portrait surface, as you’ve already seen. Jeremiah was able to counteract this through tweaking the lighting setup, but sometimes it was impossible to completely get rid of the shadows.

portrait

Rewards

Challenges aside, there were so many advantages to shooting these portraits — curved glass, difficult frames, and all. First of all, many of the frames added real character to the portraits they held:

portrait

portrait

The collection also provides an interesting window into photographic techniques of the day. Some of them don’t even look like photos — by design. According to Jeremiah, artists would often take a black and white photo and color it in by hand, so that it looked more like a painting.

portrait

portrait

Last but not least, these photos are a reminder that many African Americans served their country in the two World Wars, as evidenced by images like these:

portrait

portrait

To see more, visit the Schaudies-Banks-Ragland collection page online. There, you’ll find more images like this, as well as images of white servicemen and other African Americans.

And don’t forget to check out the exhibit at Gorgas Library!

Armed Services Editions: A quest for a complete collection

Posted on February 16, 2015 by | Posted in: Allyson Holliday, Armed Services Editions, World War II | 7 Comments

By: Allyson Holliday, complex copy-cataloger

As we approach the 75th Anniversary of the entry of the United States into World War II, Hoole Library actively seeking to complete its collection of Armed Services Editions.

Editions for the Armed Services, Inc., was a non-profit organization established in 1943 by the Council on Books in Wartime. Its purpose was to publish and supply American troops with easily portable, pocket-sized paperback books. Any reminder of the comforts of home and entertainment were welcome distractions for World War II servicemen. Over 120 million of these inexpensive, light-weight paperbacks were distributed to troops everywhere – from the beaches at Normandy, the trenches in the Argonne forest, to warships at sea, and to the island jungles of the Pacific. The diversity of the more than 1,200 original titles chosen for printing meant that there was surely something to satisfy the interests of any given serviceman. From classic literature, to history, mysteries, Westerns, popular fiction, and even romance – authors and the publishing industry provided them all. For more on the history of Armed Services Editions, see Molly Guptill Manning’s When Books Went to War: the stories that helped us win World War II.

In 1983, for the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the ASE program at the Library of Congress, our library was noted “as having a set, received as duplicates from the Library of Congress, which lacked only sixteen titles.” At the time, the set was displayed in the special collections reading room in Gorgas Library, and then-Curator Joyce H. Lamont “reported that the books always draw comments from World War II veterans, who point out titles they read. Furthermore, many tell me they have copies of especially meaningful books at home.”

Today, only 5 titles are missing to complete The University of Alabama Division of Special Collections ASE collection. So, in honor of our nearly-complete collection, I’ve put together a list of my favorite selections!

2foreveramber

Forever Amber, Hoole Library Armed Services Edition AC1 .A7 T-39

Forever Amber is a historical novel written by Kathleen Winsor. Her husband served as a First Lieutenant in the Fourth Marines, Pacific Theater. Described as “bawdy” and “romantic” on the back cover, Forever Amber was thought so indecent that the city of Boston had it banned (Manning, 123). Considered trashy for its racy descriptions of a young woman and her exploits in London society, the publishing council at first balked at the notion of printing it for the armed services. However, as Americans were fighting to preserve freedom, the decision was made to provide “access to a diverse set of titles – even trashy ones” (Manning, 124). It was a best-seller on the home front and a very popular title amongst the soldiers as well.

Continue reading →

Love Letters in Acumen

Posted on February 9, 2015 by | Posted in: Ashley Bond, Digital Services, Manuscript Collections, World War I | Leave a comment

By: Ashley Bond, SLIS graduate student

RobertaValentine1918

Roberta Dorsey Taylor to Herbert Taylor (February 1918)

Valentine’s Day is approaching, and in the spirit of romance, Cool at Hoole has taken a look at various love letters within Acumen. The Herbert J. Taylor, Jr. Letters, which includes written correspondence between Major Herbert J. Taylor, Jr. and his fiancée (and later wife) Roberta Dorsey, along with many of his other communications during World War I, is a particularly rich collection.

One very sweet correspondence is the Valentine’s Day card Roberta Dorsey Taylor sent from Columbus, Ohio, to husband Herbert while he was stationed at Camp Sheridan in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1918:

“To my darling Hubby—the only one on earth to me –whom I love. Your loving wife Roberta”

Here is another letter from April of the same year, this time from Herbert to his wife Roberta while they are still separated by war:

“4/27/18 Saturday

My dear darling little Precious Wifey:-

Well little sweet-heart, one more week gone & by. Old Father Time certainly is good to us, in the way he makes the time fly. Oh! I do hope he’ll be equally as good when I get back & we are to-gether again in our little Paradise, & make the hours[?] as slow as they are fast, because when I am with my little dear beloved, I want the time to drag & when I am separated from my little Princess, I want it to fly.

HerbertTaylorLetterTranscript 1

Letter from Herbert Taylor to Roberta Dorsey Taylor (April 1918)

Dear little Baby…”

Once the United States entered the war in April 1917, congressmen secured three training bases in Alabama. While the merchants in these base cities thrived from having new business customers from around the country, the troops themselves had to cope with being separated from their loved ones for a period of time. Although these letters were likely intended for private consumption originally, the Herbert J. Taylor, Jr. Collection gives readers insight to the passions and hardships endured by a young couple in love during the war. The language style and circumstances have changed, but the story of a long-distance relationship is still relatable today. It is fascinating how affectionately they speak to each other, but perhaps social media, e-mail, and texting have heavily shaped our modern-day ways of speaking.

However, due to the handwritten nature of many of these online documents, certain words and unfamiliar phrases in the letter may be difficult to read to our contemporary eyes. For this reason, University Libraries’ Digital Services allows users to read and transcribe handwritten documents online and submit it for the benefit of future users. Cool at Hoole invites you to take a look at some of the historical documents on Acumen today and even add a transcription or tags on materials you find useful or interesting! Just check out Acumen’s button to the right of each image that says “Transcript.” And, for more details about how to transcribe a written document on Acumen, check out Digital Outreach Coordinator Kate Matheny’s post on this subject the Digital Services blog.

Come transcribe our items!

Posted on February 9, 2015 by kgmatheny | Posted in: Delivery Methodology | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Recently, we talked about adding your own metadata to photos through our new Acumen tagging pane. Today, the focus is on something a bit more involved but maybe even more important: transcribing handwritten documents.

Why transcribe?

  • Did you know that many young people nowadays aren’t even taught to read and write in cursive? Handwritten archival materials are more and more in danger of being unintelligible to the average person, but often they represent the most unique materials out there: personal diaries, letters, and notes from the famous, the infamous, and the unknown, detailing everything from a typical day to a major event.
  • Did you know that handwritten items in a digital repository are usually not keyword searchable? Computers need data in a form they can understand. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology can attempt to read typewritten material and translate it to a computer-readable text file, but this technology doesn’t work on handwritten materials.

The solution to both these problems is simple: we need a human to read and transcribe handwritten documents, both for others to read and for the computer to use in searching. Acumen makes this easy by providing a place for transcription when viewing any image or listening to any audio file.

How does transcription work?

Acumen's transcription pane

  1. Click the transcription icon (looks like a sheet of paper), found to the right of the main viewer window
  2. Type a transcription of the displayed image into the entry box
  3. Click on the blue ‘Add Transcript’ button

You really want me to transcribe things?

John Poor letter, circa 1863Yes, you! We know transcribing documents can be a bit intimidating. Here’s some things to consider:

  • You don’t have to be an expert
    • Don’t know what a particular word is? Transcribe it letter by letter anyway; it might be a word or abbreviation we no longer use
    • Can’t make sense of a particular word at all? Use a question mark inside brackets to represent it [?]
  • You don’t always have to start from scratch
    • Some handwritten items have already been transcribed and just need someone to check the transcript over and help with harder to read words
    • Some typed items have computer-generated transcripts that you can correct; these will include a little orange box that says ‘OCR’
  • You don’t have to do an entire item at once
    • Transcription is done on the page level, so you can do as little as a page at a time
    • In fact, if you can only do part of a page, that’s better than having no transcription at all; others can add to your work later

Does it really add anything?

Absolutely! Consider the image above, a letter from a Confederate soldier to his niece. Right now, the metadata carries a pretty good general description: John H. Poor writes his little niece, Fanny, about sleeping and eating arrangements in the army. He drew a few sketches to illustrate.

A lot of the interest is in those sketches. However, there’s also text, so having a transcript gives the drawings a context:

John H. Poor letter transcription

How about a more weighty example. This diary written by a Confederate soldier at the siege of Port Hudson is 157 pages, but without a transcript, we only have a general description of the whole: This diary discusses Civil War battles fought in 1862 and 1863, especially the Siege of Port Hudson, a Confederate fortification on the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana.

Below is a transcription of page 9:

James A. Goble diary transcription, page 9

With a transcription, we can learn so much here about what it was actually like at this siege: James Goble is tired of the war and prays for peace; they were using mounted weapons to attack Union boats; they made African Americans do their hard labor; they used “cars,” probably railroad cars, for shipping things; they could still get sugar and molasses; and Port Hudson was a bit of a ghost town by this point in the war. And all this from just one page!

Next time you’re looking at a handwritten document in Acumen, consider providing a transcription, especially if you’re already trying to make sense of that item for your own research. The integrated transcription pane allows you to share your work with others using the resources, and to make those resources more findable during a search.

Looking for a fun place to start? Check out Ashley Bond’s post on a series of love letters, just in time for Valentines Day, at the Special Collections blog Cool at Hoole.