Special Collections and University Archives

Richard W. Lyman, who served as Stanford's seventh president from 1970-1980, died this past May at the age of 88. Educated at Swarthmore and Harvard, he came to Stanford in 1958 as an associate professor of history. He went on to become Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences and Provost before assuming the presidency in 1970.

At the beginning of this year, the papers of Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, were given to SUL’s Dept. of Special Collections. Funding for the first year has been set to begin processing this complex collection. We are happy to announce that Laura Williams has been hired as the project archivist and Christy Smith as the processing assistant. Laura, who has been with the Manuscript’s Division since 2009, is just wrapping up the processing of the Stop AIDS Project Records – another large processing and digitization project. Christy Smith has been in the department since 2000, staring as an assistant to the previous University Archivist, Maggie Kimball. In 2009 she moved to the manuscripts division as a processing assistant on the R. Stuart Hummel Family Papers processing and digitization project.

This week, Stanford University Libraries Director of Communication & Development Andrew Herkovic hosted a library tour for staff from the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities (JGC), based in the School of Education here at Stanford. As stated on its web site, the center “partners with communities to develop leadership, conduct research and effect change to improve the lives of youth.”

The University Archives, Conservation Department, Digital Production Group, and Digital Library Systems and Services are happy to announce the completion of a project to conserve and digitize Eadweard Muybride's "The attitudes of animals in motion: a series of photographs illustrating the consecutive positions assumed by animals in performing various movements; executed at Palo Alto, California, in 1878 and 1879" (1881).