Special Collections recently added the early issues of the Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine , 1817-1899. It is a British magazine of literary publications and miscellany which was originally founded by publisher William Blackwood. The magazine is also referred to as Maga.
I have been updating the records in Blais for Special Collections' Nordic Collection, making the information more accurate and also ensuring that the links from Blais to our online requesting system, Aeon, are working. While I have been working on this project, I have learned a little about this unique collection and its history. Special Collections has more than thirty thousand volumes on Nordic history, literature, religion, education, politics, and economics. Most of the materials are in Danish, Swedish, or German. The collection began with a donation from Waldemar Westergaard, who was a professor at Pomona and UCLA, and Special Collections has added significantly to this collection with the acquisition of the personal libraries of David Bjork and other scholars.
You can read more about the highlights of the Nordic Collection here.
And for some information on the background of the Westergaard donation, there is an interesting article by Franklin Scott in Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Nov. 1969). If you have access to JSTOR, you can check it out here.
Students, teachers, historians, and local history enthusiasts will find a treasure trove of L.A. history at the 7th Annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar. Presented by L.A. as Subject, a research collective hosted by the USC Libraries, the Bazaar offers numerous resources for exploring the rich histories of L.A.'s diverse neighborhoods and communities and virtually any subject related to the Los Angeles region.
Held at the Doheny Memorial Library on the USC campus, the Bazaar will feature exhibits over 70 local historical collections, museums, libraries and archives. Attendees can browse collections, schedule research visits, and consult with experts. Throughout the day, educational programming will cover a range of topics.
Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library and the Ella Strong Denison Library will share an exhibitor table - be sure to stop by and see us!
Admission is FREE!
Date: Saturday, October 27, 2012
Time: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Doheny Memorial Library
USC University Park Campus
For more information visit http://www.laassubject.org/index.php/archives_bazaar.
Now through December 22, come "tour" Yosemite through books, photographs, drawings, ephemera and other, mostly 19th century, primary source materials.See how visitors traveled to Yosemite. See where they stayed and what they did and saw. See how they reflected upon their experiences after leaving this wondrous place!
You can visit the exhibit anytime during Honnold/Mudd Library hours. Exhibit space is located 2nd floor, Honnold side, just inside the North entrance and just outside Special Collections. Exhibit was co-curated by Char Miller, W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis, Pomona College and Lisa Crane, Western Americana Librarian, Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library.
Many items are on loan for this exhibit. However, some items from Special Collections, Honnold/Muud Library are also included; such as a 1904 diary and photo album from Pomona College, Class of 1900 alum Robert P. and Alice B. Jennings documenting their trip from Los Angeles to Yosemite via wagon and stereoview photographs from the Martin Mason Hazeltine collection.
There will be two related programs: On Saturday, October 13th there will be a reception, talk and gallery tour by Denny Kruska, Los Angeles author and bibliographer, who loaned many of the materials on display. More details to follow. On Wednesday, October 31st, Char Miller will give a Claremont Discourse Lecture on "Public Lands, Public Debates: A Century of Controversy", his latest publication. So save the dates! More information coming!
Special Collections library staff are happy to see all of the students back on campus this week and particularly welcome those new to Claremont! Stop by and see us sometime-- we are located on the 2nd floor of the Honnold/Mudd Library, near the North Entrance.
One of our current projects in Special Collections is going through all of the photographs we have from the Claremont Colleges, ensuring that they are properly labeled and preserved. It is fascinating to see how the buildings, faculty, and students have changed over the years. We hope you are more excited for the Fall semester than this Pomona College Dormitory Group from 1889!
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Pomona College Commencement Program, June 5,1966
One talented (anonymous) attendee found a way to pass the time!
Front of program
Back of program
Aviation pioneer Elizabeth Lippincott (Mrs. Ulysses Grant) McQueen with her parrot, Dick, in 1937. Caption on the back, in Mrs. McQueen's hand, "My favorite with Dick--He has an intelligent eye." Dick was known to say "Hello girls! Can you fly? I can fly!"
Among the several collections of aviation materials held by Special Collections are the papers of Elizabeth Lippincott McQueen (1878-1958), a tireless proponent for women in aviation, and founder of the Women's International Association of Aeronautics (WIAA).
Elizabeth Lippincott was born in New Jersey in 1878, and in 1900 married Ulysses Grant McQueen (1864-1937), a wealthy inventor and manufacturer in New York City. The couple lived in New York City until 1928, when they moved to Beverly Hills, California. During World War I, Mrs. McQueen served in war relief work in Palestine under Field Marshal Allenby. In 1919 she founded the Jerusalem News, the first English-language newspaper in Jerusalem.
Mrs. McQueen became interested in aviation when in 1920 she witnessed seven airplanes "take the place of two British regiments of soldiers" in routing a large number of rebel Arab cavalry in the desert near Aden.
A vision, mental and spiritual, came to me of millions of women with the hands upraised acclaiming: 'Save my son from war, save my son from war, save my son from war!' I mentally saw these women's faces and hands upraised far into space and heard their voices entreating me. This vision has never left me. Then and there I dedicated my life to aeronautics as an instrument for World Peace.
In September 1928, Mrs. McQueen organized the Women's Aeronautic Association of California, which was soon followed by similar organizations in New York, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Canada, England, France, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. In May 1929, these various groups coalesced into the Women's International Association of Aeronautics (WIAA), which became the principal focus of her activities for the rest of her life. Mrs. McQueen served as "founder and honorary president" of the WIAA; presidents of the association were, in turn, prominent British aviator Lady Mary Heath (1929-1932), British reporter Lady Grace Hay Drummond-Hay (1932-1940), educator Dr. Mary Sinclair Crawford (1940-1947), actress Mary Pickford (1947-1949), airplane manufacturing executive Olive Ann Beech (1949-1954), and pioneer aviator Matilde Moisant (1954-). A junior division of the WIAA was organized in 1931; members under 7 years old were called "tailwinds", those from 7 through 20 years old "zoomers".
In 1929, Mrs. McQueen and Lady Heath appealed to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale in Paris to have women's air records recognized, an appeal that was ultimately successful. At the same time, in order to arouse greater interest in women's flying, Mrs. McQueen conceived the idea and was one of the principal organizers of the first Women's Air Derby from Santa Monica, California, to the 1929 National Air Races in Cleveland. 19 female aviators took part in this forerunner to the Powder Puff Derby, the winners being Louise Thaden and, in the lighter aircraft category, Phoebe Omlie.
In 1932 and 1933, Mrs. McQueen published a column, "Happy Contacts", concerning women and aviation, in the monthly magazine Speed; she also published several articles in The Air Pilot in 1933. In July 1933, Mrs. McQueen, who in 1929 had been deputized as the first aerial policewoman in the world by Police Chief Charles Blair of Beverly Hills, organized the Women's Aerial Police Association, whose members were deputized to assist the civil authorities in times of emergency. From March 1940 to February 1941, she also undertook a Goodwill Tour to Mexico and Central and South America, on which she publicly read a letter from Eleanor Roosevelt and met with many pioneer female flyers.
Ulysses Grant McQueen died in 1937, and about 1955 Mrs. McQueen married Dr. Irving Reed Bancroft, a prominent retired Los Angeles physician. She died at her home in Hermosa Beach, California, on December 24, 1958, aged 80, after a long period of declining health. Her ashes are interred in the Portal of the Folded Wing in Pierce Brothers Valhalla Cemetery, in North Hollywood. Although she had devoted her life to furthering the role of women in aviation, she had never obtained a pilot's license.
The Elizabeth Lippincott McQueen Papers form a small collection, but it is particularly noteworthy for its materials relating to pioneer women aviators such as Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes, Alys McKey Bryant, and Evelyn "Bobbie" Trout. Additional photographs document an undated (but almost certainly 1934) gala luncheon, probably at the Del Mar Club in Santa Monica, attended by many of the leading pioneer women aviators of the day; the 1933 visit of the brothers Auguste and Jean Piccard to the University of Southern California; several breakfasts at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club, honoring, among others, Col. Roscoe Tanner, Clyde Pangborn, Thea Rasche, and Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith; the victory of Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes in the 1936 Bendix Trophy Race; a 1949 luncheon for Mrs. Amy Otis Earhart; and many events held at the Mission Inn, Riverside, where Mrs. McQueen resided for much of the 1940s, and whose Famous Fliers Wall held a special significance to aviators of her generation. A finding aid of the full collection is available at the Online Archive of California.
Special Collections received a limited edition portfolio of Occupy-themed materials from Occuprint, an organization dedicated to the visual culture of the Occupy movement. Our new materials include the poster issue of The Occupied Wall Street Journal (No. 4, November 2011); one signed copy of Dave Lowenstein's spray-paint and stencil painting, "Tip of the Iceberg"; one print of Alexandra Clotfelter's "The Beginning is Near" poster; and 31 hand silk-screened prints of posters selected from the designs displayed at occuprint.org. The Claremont Colleges Library was one of the sponsors of this project.
If you would like to come into Special Collections to see these posters, you can register as a reader and make your request online!
"Dollar Tower"
Artist: Jeanne Verdoux (Brooklyn, NY)
Jennifer and I have been working with two student staff--Jamella and Jessica--on a project to better protect and organize Special Collection's unbound newspapers. There are two goals for this newspaper project: creating a safer storage system that meets modern preservation standards and generating a finding aid for the Online Archive of California (OAC).
We are uncovering some interesting papers as we work on this project! Below is just a small selection of our newspaper collection. Special Collections also has a large collection of Mexican newspapers and a collection called the "radical newspapers", which is a selection of 20th century political newspapers and newsletters. We welcome enquiries by students, staff, and visitors who would like to use our newspapers!
A notice by George Washington offering pardon to deserters, from The Freeman's Journal: Or The North-American Intelligencer, Wednesday, February 27, 1782
A selection from an editorial trying to contextualize the actions of the "slaves of the despot at Washington", from The Charleston Daily Courier (of the Confederate States of America), Thursday, June 27, 1861
One of our more unusual titles, the distinguished, "oldest bee paper in America"
Honnold/Mudd Special Collections holds materials from all over the world. This map of the diamond regions of what is now Namibia is part of a report compiled in 1921 for Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa, Ltd. (since 1994 Namdeb Diamond Corporation), founded by Mr. (later Sir) Ernest Oppenheimer.
The report is part of the papers of William Lincoln Honnold (1866-1950), mining engineer and together with Oppenheimer co-founder of Anglo American Corporation. Born in Illinois, Honnold lived in South Africa from 1902 until 1915, when he moved to London to serve as London director of his friend Herbert Hoover's Committee for Relief of Belgium (in 1917, he returned to the United States to serve as New York director for the same organization). Upon retiring in the early 1920s, Honnold moved to California, where he and his wife, Caroline, became dedicated supporters of higher education, in particular Caltech and the Claremont Colleges. Honnold was a member of the first Board of Fellows of Claremont College, and also served as a member of the Pomona College Board of Trustees. He and his wife provided the funds to build Honnold Library. Honnold was also a close friend and colleague of the Mudd family, some of whose papers are also in Special Collections.
The Honnold papers contain a wealth of papers and photographs documenting mining in the United States and Southern Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, life in Southern California in the 1920s and 1930s, famous individuals such as Oppenheimer and Hoover, and the history of the Claremont Colleges. The collection is currently being processed, and a finding aid will be available shortly.
