Annual Report 2011: Major Activities in Public Services

As a con­tin­u­a­tion of our series on our 2011 Annual Report, please see a descrip­tion of our major activ­i­ties in pub­lic services:

In the past year, the staff of the Mudd Man­u­script Library served 1,934 patrons, 212 of whom had vis­ited Mudd prior to FY11 and 777 who were new researchers. We cir­cu­lated 9,586 items (3,141 Uni­ver­sity Archives boxes/items, 6,350 Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers boxes/items, 93 Gest rare books and 2 other items). Staff also filled 398 pho­to­copy orders total­ing 45,253 pages, of which 232 orders were deliv­ered as PDF files total­ing 28,128 pages and 166 orders were ful­filled on paper, total­ing 17,125 pages. This was our first full year offer­ing PDFs in lieu of paper and it is not sur­pris­ing that it is the pre­ferred method for the major­ity of our users. Scan­ning con­tin­ues to be the default method by which we pro­vide images for patrons and last year we filled 105 orders for 383 scans.
We responded to over 1,795 pieces of cor­re­spon­dence (includ­ing 1,214 per­tain­ing to the Uni­ver­sity Archives and 550 to the Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers; 28 requests for per­mis­sion to quote) which arrived as fol­lows: 1,452 e-mail; 298 tele­phone; 37 sur­face mail; 4 via fax, and 4 oral inquiries.
The staff also responded to more than 640 brief tele­phone calls.
Col­lec­tively, the staff worked with 14 dif­fer­ent classes relat­ing to junior papers and other research/writing projects with a total of 198 attendees.
In addi­tion, quite a num­ber of vis­i­tors took advan­tage of Mudd’s dig­i­tal cam­era pro­gram as 262 patrons pho­tographed 5,582 items from our col­lec­tions, total­ing approx­i­mately 117,800 images.
It should be noted that while these num­bers are on par with other years, the pub­lic ser­vices oper­a­tion under­went sig­nif­i­cant stresses dur­ing the year. Amanda Hawk, who, like her last name implies, was fast and keen-eyed in deal­ing with her ref­er­ence duties, left us in August to attend grad­u­ate school, just before Christie Lutz took an unplanned med­ical leave. For­tu­nately, Hawk’s replace­ment, Amanda Pike, started at just about that time. We were happy with both Pike’s tim­ing as well as the fact that she brought her own thor­ough and pro­fes­sional nature to the posi­tion. Until Christie’s return in Jan­u­ary, Amanda ably over­saw the Mudd email account, a siz­able task for any­one, but espe­cially for some­one new to Mudd’s oper­a­tions. Through­out the year, we received acco­lades from patrons for the qual­ity of the ref­er­ence ser­vices we provided.
Stay tuned for fur­ther dis­cus­sion of our 2011 work involv­ing tech­ni­cal ser­vices, pro­cess­ing, acces­sion­ing, dig­i­tal projects, records man­age­ment, col­lec­tion devel­op­ment, exhi­bi­tions, and more.

Annual Report 2011: Introduction and Summary

As part of our ongo­ing effort to improve access to our col­lec­tions and pro­mote aware­ness of the Mudd Man­u­script Library, we are pleased share a series of blog posts drawn from our annual report for fis­cal year 2011 (which ran from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011). We share our accom­plish­ments with the hope that this will encour­age a bet­ter under­stand­ing of Mudd’s work, as well as fos­ter an envi­ron­ment of trans­parency in the archival field. We begin this series with a sum­mary of our activ­i­ties in 2011.

The staff at Mudd Library had a very suc­cess­ful year in 2011 with notable high­lights that include:
  • Hired one project archivist for the Uni­ver­sity Archives project and another for the Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers
  • Uni­ver­sity Records Man­ager hired in Jan­u­ary and among many things, with other staff, began plan­ning for an elec­tronic records man­age­ment program
  • Hired an SCAV for pub­lic ser­vices to replace the depart­ing SCAV
  • ACLU project com­mences and addresses more than 1,100 lin­ear feet of records as part of NHPRC-funded pro­cess­ing project
  • Fundrais­ing for The Daily Prince­ton­ian dig­i­ti­za­tion com­pleted and the project winds down with 18 of 19 batches scanned and almost all years from 1876–2002 now online
  • Uni­ver­sity Archives audio­vi­sual mate­ri­als made avail­able via the web on a new blog, The Reel Mudd
  • More than 1,000 lin­ear feet processed and described with online records and find­ing aids
  • A record 202 acces­sions of over 400 lin­ear feet received, includ­ing the long awaited Mar­garet Tutwiler journals
  • Con­tin­ued high level of use of col­lec­tions, both in-house and remote, with great degree of patron sat­is­fac­tion, with PDF requests sur­pass­ing paper copies.
Stay tuned for fur­ther dis­cus­sion of our 2011 work involv­ing pub­lic ser­vices, tech­ni­cal ser­vices, pro­cess­ing, acces­sion­ing, dig­i­tal projects, records man­age­ment, exhi­bi­tions, and more.
You may also read the FY2011 Annual Report in its entirety here.

Carl A. Fields papers now available for research

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Paul C. Williams, Dr. Carl A. Fields, and A. Deane Buchanan at the first din­ner ban­quet of Princeton’s Asso­ci­a­tion of Black Col­le­gians (May 22, 1968)

The papers of edu­ca­tor and advo­cate of minor­ity edu­ca­tion Dr. Carl A. Fields are now avail­able for research at Prince­ton University’s See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library. Carl Fields became the first African Amer­i­can to hold a high-ranking posi­tion at an Ivy League school when he was appointed the Assis­tant Direc­tor of Stu­dent Aid and then later the Assis­tant Dean of the Col­lege at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity. Through­out his tenure Fields began and directed sev­eral inno­v­a­tive pro­grams aimed at the reten­tion of African Amer­i­can and other stu­dents of color, includ­ing the Fam­ily Spon­sors pro­gram that intro­duced stu­dents to an African Amer­i­can fam­ily within the Prince­ton com­mu­nity. In 1967 Fields helped coor­di­nate the first Negro Under­grad­u­ate Con­fer­ence with the new Asso­ci­a­tion of Black Col­le­gians orga­ni­za­tion on cam­pus, which brought together black stu­dents from forty-one predominately-white uni­ver­si­ties. Fields also estab­lished the Fred­er­ick Dou­glass Award after attend­ing the 1968 Prince­ton com­mence­ment exer­cises, which had the largest num­ber of black stu­dents receiv­ing a diploma in the his­tory of the University.

Con­tinue read­ing

McGovern Processing Project Completed

The See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library has recently com­pleted an 18-month project to process the papers of for­mer Sen­a­tor George S. McGov­ern. The col­lec­tion is espe­cially note­wor­thy for its com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion of George McGovern’s life­long work on food and nutri­tion issues.
Bumper Sticker Bumper Sticker from George
McGovern’s 1974 re-election
cam­paign to the U.S. Senate.

McGov­ern served as the United States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the First Dis­trict of South Dakota from 1956–1960 and was a mem­ber of the House Com­mit­tee on Agri­cul­ture, where he advo­cated strongly for issues that would char­ac­ter­ize his entire polit­i­cal career, includ­ing rural devel­op­ment, food stamp leg­is­la­tion, and for­eign food aid.

Con­tinue read­ing

Exhibition reveals the Tiger inside John F. Kennedy

Mem­o­ra­bilia from John F. Kennedy’s brief stint as a Prince­ton stu­dent and items from his polit­i­cal career– includ­ing a 1935 Christ­mas card depict­ing Kennedy with his Prince­ton room­mates dressed in top hats and suits in homage to Fred Astaire from the motion pic­ture Top Hat (which opened ear­lier that year), and pho­tographs and doc­u­ments from the War­ren Commission’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion– are part of a new exhi­bi­tion in the Wiess Lounge at the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library. Run­ning through Sep­tem­ber 2, 2011, John F. Kennedy: From Old Nas­sau to the New Fron­tier com­mem­o­rates the 50th anniver­sary of the elec­tion of our 35th Pres­i­dent and his Prince­ton connections.

ChristmasCardBLOG

This exhi­bi­tion show­cases the rarely-seen Prince­ton­ian side of Kennedy, who attended the Uni­ver­sity late in the fall semes­ter of 1935 despite his father’s desire that he attend Har­vard Uni­ver­sity. Unaware of his future in pol­i­tics, Kennedy had declared his intended pro­fes­sion to be “bank­ing” on his appli­ca­tion and stated that the cam­pus envi­ron­ment of Old Nas­sau was “sec­ond to none.” Kennedy was admit­ted to the enter­ing fresh­men class in 1935 and shared a dor­mi­tory with his for­mer Choate high school class­mates Kirk LeMoyne Billings and Ralph Hor­ton, Jr. in #9 Reunion Hall South. How­ever, after a brief few weeks as a mem­ber of the Class of 1939 he left Prince­ton due to health rea­sons and later grad­u­ated from Har­vard with the Class of 1940. The other pres­i­dents to have attended Prince­ton were James Madi­son and Woodrow Wilson.

Con­tinue read­ing

Mudd in the News

Since the start of the year, the Mudd Man­u­script Library has been fea­tured in a num­ber of cam­pus news sto­ries, and here is a list­ing, link, and descrip­tion for each of them:

Mudd Man­u­script Library Online Exhibits

(Link to Mudd’s Online Exhibitions)

There Are Roses Too

(Daily Prince­ton­ian col­umn advises read­ers of what makes Prince­ton unique)

Robert F. Goheen, 16th Pres­i­dent Of Prince­ton, Dies At Age 88; Ser­vice Set For April 27

(Men­tions inter­views with Pres­i­dent Goheen held at Mudd)

U. Releases Obama ’85’s Senior Thesis

(Notes that Mudd is the repos­i­tory for all the­ses sub­mit­ted by seniors grad­u­at­ing from Prince­ton University.)

Archives Exhi­bi­tion Doc­u­ments Princeton’s Transformation

(Details Mudd’s cur­rent Reunions-themed exhibit: “The Times They Are a Changin’”. The exhibit cap­tures the changes Prince­ton under­went from 1958–1983.)

Princeton’s Chang­ing Times

(More about Mudd’s cur­rent exhibit: “The Times They Are a Changin’”)

Illu­mi­nat­ing Lives: Berg Researches Wil­son Biog­ra­phy While Teach­ing ‘Life Writing’

(Fea­ture about Pulitzer Prize win­ning biog­ra­pher A. Scott Berg ‘1971, who con­ducted research at Mudd for his upcom­ing biog­ra­phy on Woodrow Wilson)

By The Numbers

(Infor­ma­tion about Mudd’s com­pleted Eco­nom­ics Papers pro­cess­ing project.)

CIA Releases Clas­si­fied Files Of For­mer Director

(Notes that 8,000 pages of doc­u­ments relat­ing to Allen Dulles, Class of 1914, are now avail­able on the Mudd web site.)

Prince­ton Life Lists

(Scott Berg empha­sizes the value of hold­ing an orig­i­nal man­u­script like those at Mudd)

Com­piled by John DeLooper

May 2008

Kennan and Forrestal papers processing funded

The See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library is pleased to announce that the National His­tor­i­cal Pub­li­ca­tions and Records Com­mis­sion (NHPRC) has awarded the library fund­ing to process the George F. Ken­nan Papers and the James V. For­re­stal Papers accord­ing to the best mod­ern stan­dards, mak­ing these impor­tant mate­ri­als more acces­si­ble to researchers. This year the NHPRC awarded only four grants for detailed pro­cess­ing projects such as this one. Work on this project will com­mence in July, with com­ple­tion set for June 30, 2009. Adri­ane Han­son, who last Octo­ber com­pleted pro­cess­ing of Mudd’s eco­nom­ics col­lec­tions, will man­age the project.

kennanBoth Ken­nan and For­re­stal were impor­tant fig­ures in shap­ing United States pol­icy at the incep­tion of the Cold War. Ken­nan, a diplo­mat and his­to­rian (pic­tured at left), is best known for his author­ing of the “Long Telegram” and the sub­se­quent “X” arti­cle in For­eign Affairs in which he advo­cated for a new course in U.S.-Soviet rela­tions that became known as “con­tain­ment.” Ken­nan was involved in diplo­matic rela­tions with the Soviet Union through­out most of his dis­tin­guished career in the U.S. For­eign Ser­vice and as a his­to­rian ana­lyzed the Soviet Union’s his­tory and pol­i­tics. For­re­stal was the first Sec­re­tary of Defense for the United States, over­see­ing the merger of the War Depart­ment with the Navy Depart­ment in 1947. For­re­stal worked to re-structure America’s defenses to con­front the threat he per­ceived from the Soviet Union and through these efforts pro­moted the career of George Kennan.

Researchers should note that only a small part of the George F. Ken­nan Papers are cur­rently open. How­ever, all of his papers will open on March 17, 2009. The James V. For­re­stal Papers are open for research use now, though the collection’s dis­or­der hin­ders effi­cient access. Dur­ing the course of the project, researchers should inquire about either collection’s avail­abil­ity before trav­el­ing to the Mudd Library.
http://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/author/mudd-manuscript-library/page/3/
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