Farewell to Our Fellow...

The summer is quickly drawing to a close and our inaugural Jean Outland Chrysler Library Cataloging Fellow, Rachel Juris is on her way back to Chicago. Rachel spent the summer hard at work adding information about materials previously unavailable to Library patrons to the Library’s online catalog. Over the course of ten weeks, she added or corrected records for over 1,000 items! Rachel will go on to use her new skills as the Hedrich Blessing Photography Collection Project Archivist at the Chicago History Museum. Rachel created an impressive portfolio of the work that she completed for the Library this summer. It is available online at http://courseweb.lis.illinois.edu/~juris/chrysler/chryslerlibrary.html

Thank you Rachel for all of your hard work this summer!

Reading in Tongues

During the summer, we asked Interns Emma, Gabrielle, Brendan and Jessica to create a virtual collection by collecting digital images of some aspect of the library collection to be decided by them. For example, they could collect images of bookplates in the collection, of details on binding, books with funny titles, or books on a particular subject – the possibilities were endless. On July 31, at the Library Open House, each collection was presented. In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting each intern’s collection along with a few other posts they created during their time in the Library.

This week’s collection comes from Brendan Higgins who is a student at the College of William and Mary. Brendan described his collection “Reading in Tongues” as follows:

“During my first few weeks at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library, I came across a number of books in what I thought—with my narrow, naïve worldview—were exotic, obscure languages. Often I couldn’t even make an educated guess as to what I was looking at, let alone comprehend it. Something Scandinavian? Something Germanic? Something with a strange alphabet? That was about the best I could do. Despite my ignorance, however, I’m fascinated by linguistics, particularly by our planet’s rich variety of distinct though often interconnected languages. So when I began to consider my personal collection project, I thought I’d indulge my interest by seeing exactly how many and what languages I could find represented in the stacks. I started by listing as many as I could think of and entering each one as a general search in the online catalog. With trial and error, I refined my technique until I had a fairly efficient method of searching, jotting down several promising books (or only one, in some cases), and then finding the most photogenic and interesting of these on the shelf. Although it was still an imperfect method, it guided me in the right direction, and often I’d stumble upon a more suitable book along the way. In the end, I was blown away to have gathered a pile of 31 books in as many languages, certain also that I had left some uncovered—a testament to the depth and cosmopolitanism of the collections here. My selections spanned close to a century, with most areas of the world represented by at least one language, from Korean to Zulu to Catalan to Estonian. Some I chose for being topically significant to their places of origin—discussing something either deeply associated or unexpected and refreshing—while others I simply chose because they amused me (e.g. Radicalchip, a book in Welsh and English on contemporary Japanese art). In doing this project, I began to recognize more fully that each language is inseparable from the people and culture that claims it; as such, each foreign language book in the Chrysler’s collection has value beyond that of its content.”

A collage featuring the images Brendan gathered appears above. All of the images in Brendan’s collection can be found here.

Exploring The Archives

Over the course of the summer, I cataloged many exhibition and auction catalogs that originated from the Knoedler London Library collection. This week, I gained insight into the workings of M. Knoedler & Company gallery offices in the 1960s and 70s through an examination of a selection of papers and indices now in the Jean Outland Chrysler Library archive. One of the more unusual items I encountered, and which proved a challenge to describe, was a set of card catalog drawers filled with auction data. I created a finding aid that orders and describes the contents of the M. Knoedler & Company Papers.

-Rachel Juris, 2009 Jean Outland Chrysler Library Cataloging Fellow

Auction Catalogs

The Jean Outland Chrysler Library auction catalog collection includes rare or unique items, ranging in date from the early 19th century to today. Auction catalogs that belonged previously to the M. Knoedler & Co. Ltd. library (later acquired by Walter P. Chrysler Jr.) have been available to researchers via microfiche since the 1970s (the microfiche is held in the collections of many major research libraries). However, some of the print catalogs have not been cataloged individually. The physical catalogs are significant objects because they contain original handwritten annotations of sale prices, newspaper clippings, and notes made by Knoedler & Co. employees. The Jean Outland Chrysler Library auction catalog collection is extensive, too large to be cataloged in a single summer, however, this week I began the process of creating individual catalog records for items from the Knoedler auction catalog collection. The criteria for cataloging auction catalogs differ slightly from those for cataloging monographs (for example, date and place of sale, owner, and auctioneer are components of an auction catalog record), and I am learning a new skills through the process of completing this project.

-Rachel Juris, 2009 Jean Outland Chrysler Library Cataloging Fellow

A rare collection of Chinese drawings and other items unique to the library...

In previous blog posts, I have written about items that, in the process of cataloging, I discovered to be rare or unique to the Jean Outland Chrysler Library. This week, I have devoted my time to cataloging items exclusively from the library’s rare book and ephemera collections.

The first issue of the journal Lorelei: a journal of arts & letters, dated August 1924, provides a glimpse into the lives of artists living and working in Provincetown in the early 20th century. I have been unable to locate any other copies of Lorelei or any reference to how many issues of the journal were published. The copy of Lorelei in the Jean Outland Chrysler Library is a unique resource to scholars.

A sales catalog for the Dunbar Glass Corporation, located in Dunbar, West Virginia, 1913-1953. Based upon the styles of glass for sale, I was able to date the catalog to the late 1930s or early 1940s.

Most stunning of all, however, is a leather-bound book containing 75 original Chinese drawings. A handwritten note in the front of the volume explains that the drawings were “brought from China by Dr. Fleming, physician to the Princess Charlotte of Wales” and later sold in London. The drawings portray figures, flowers, and birds, and are vibrantly colored. Among the leaves of illustrated plates, I found a page of sketches by an unknown artist, influenced by the Chinese drawings.

-Rachel Juris, 2009 Jean Outland Chrysler Library Cataloging Fellow