Special Collections and University Archives

Gaities Program, 1928.
Stanford Publications and Ephemera Collection (SC4000)
Stanford University Archives.

Since 1911, the Ram’s Head Theatrical Society has celebrated the annual Big Game contest between Stanford and Cal with an original musical program. To commemorate the 100th birthday of this campus tradition, staff in the University Archives have created an exhibit of programs, posters, and other memorabilia from Gaieties past. It’s on view from now through the end of Fall Quarter in the Bender Room, on the fifth floor of Green Library’s Bing Wing.

Today is the Day of Digital Archives and coincidentally the first in a series of four workshops created and run by Peter Chan, our resident Digital Archivist on accessioning and processing born-digital materials. This is the beginning of our digital life post-AIMS in Special Collections. Most of the attendees today are staff from Manuscripts and University Archives who will be engaged in actively capturing (part of the accessioning process) and processing born-digital content from our collections. One of these collections is the records of the Stop Aids Project discussed in a previous entry.

Carleen Maley Hutchins (1911-2009), born in Springfield, Massachusetts, was not your typical woman of the early 1900s. In school she chose woodworking over home economics, and trumpet over piano. After getting a degree in Biology, she taught science at the Brearley School in New York. There she was invited to participate in faculty chamber music gatherings, but as her colleagues considered her trumpet to be “too loud” they encouraged her to take up the viola. She purchased a cheap viola and was soon dissatisfied with the instrument’s limitations.

The Manuscripts Division is pleased to announce the completion of the physical processing of the Stephen Jay Gould papers. The first and largest accession of Gould's papers arrived at Stanford University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections in 2004, with 8 smaller accessions following through early 2011. The first phase of the processing project, which began in Fall of 2009, included a detailed processing of Gould's correspondence, manuscripts, and juvenilia. Upon completion of these three series, the processing team switched gears to complete basic arrangement and description of the remainder of Gould's papers. The Gould papers consist of 564.5 linear feet of material, which includes over 850 boxes of textual material, approximately 450 audiovisual items, and 1,180 computer media files (52 megabytes). A comprehensive finding aid is forthcoming, and will be published online in Fall 2011.