The following information on recent archival processing work at Manuscripts and Archives (MSSA) was written by Alison Clemens, Head of Processing.

As I mentioned in my posts for October and July 2020, I usually share quarterly updates about collections and additions to collections for which MSSA has recently acquired and completed processing. Since October, MSSA processing staff have had occasional access to the Sterling Memorial Library (SML) building and have therefore processed both traditional and born-digital archival materials (i.e., materials that were created in computer environments) over the past several months.

Since my last post in October, MSSA staff have made available the following collections and additions to existing collections, which we look forward to making available for research when our reading room reopens:

Noriaki Tsuchimoto Papers (MS 2115)

The collection, totaling 43.67 linear feet, comprises the papers of Noriaki Tsuchimoto, a Japanese documentary film director, who directed films on various topics, including environmental issues, nuclear power, corporate history, and Afghanistan. The collection includes manuscripts and documents about his films, including annotated scripts, production notes, shot, and budget sheets; research materials of various topics, including documents on the science of mercury poisoning; location and on-the-set photos; publicity materials; and film stills. It also contains Tsuchimoto’s correspondence with colleagues, as well as decades worth of his datebooks. The topics in his papers vary and include items ranging from labor union newsletters to court documents on cases involving colleagues.

Technoserve Records (MS 2083)

The collection, totaling 38.78 linear feet, includes administrative files, records from Technoserve presidents Edward P. Bullard and Peter Reiling, files and grant information related to Technoserve’s work in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, and newsletters. Administrative files contain business records, meeting and committee files and notes, financial records, and correspondence. Records from the Office of the President include administrative files, correspondence, and writings and speeches by Edward P. Bullard and Peter Reiling. Country files and files relating to grant agreements contain business records and correspondence regarding Technoserve’s work in countries of the developing world. The collection also includes Technoserve’s newsletters documenting the organization’s outreach.

Jean M. Conklin Papers (MS 2057)

The Jean M. Conklin papers, totaling 30.33 linear feet, document the life of a Japanese American family that settled initially in San Francisco, California and later in Sharon, Pennsylvania. Included in the collection are materials created and collected by Jean Conklin about the Morisuye (Jean’s father’s line) and Hasegawa (Jean’s mother’s line) families, of which Jean was among the first generation born in the United States. Also included among the material is documentation about Jean’s father, Masanobu Moriuye, and his efforts to establish the first Japanese American Boy Scout troop in San Francisco, as well as materials documenting Jean’s childhood, college years, and life as the wife of Yale anthropology professor Harold C. Conklin. Also included are pieces of Jean’s artwork, Jean’s public school and college papers, family correspondence, family scrapbooks, 8mm-film footage of family travel between the 1930s and 1960s, VHS tapes, photographs, slides, and research materials related to her family’s genealogy.

Cuban Slavery Collection (MS 2116)

Official documents, totaling 0.42 linear feet and dated 1848-1889, pertaining to slavery in Cuba, mostly from Matanzas, Cuba. Documents include death certificates for enslaved people, petitions for freedom from slavery, documentation of disputes, prisoner correspondence, and arrest warrants. Some death certificates specify the cause of death, the plantation or enslaver, and the enslaved person’s origin in Africa.

Chinese Indentured Laborers in Cuba Collection (MS 2117)

Official documents, totaling 0.42 linear feet, regarding Chinese indentured laborers, often referred to as “asiático” (Asian), in Cuba in the nineteenth century. The documents include death certificates, new contracts, official petitions to the court, documents outlining the movement of workers, documents concerning fugitive people and imprisoned laborers, arrest warrants, and identification documents.

Josephine and Antonio Bouzas Papers (MS 2112)

The Josephine and Antonio Bouzas papers, totaling 1.63 linear feet, contain photographs, legal documents, and correspondence documenting the history of the Josephine and Antonio Bouzas family and their experiences during the Spanish Civil War.

Image credit: User Black and White, Wikimedia Commons

The following information on recent archival processing work at Manuscripts and Archives (MSSA) was written by Alison Clemens, Head of Processing.

As I mentioned in my most recent processing post, I usually share quarterly updates about collections and additions to collections for which MSSA has recently acquired and completed processing. Since the Sterling Memorial Library (SML) building was closed from mid-March until this fall, our processing staff shifted their attention to processing born-digital material at MSSA. Processing staff have recently begun entering the building on a part time basis, so we’ll soon be balancing our born-digital processing work with processing materials stored in the SML building.

As a reminder, born-digital material is material that was created in a computer environment. Since March, MSSA processing staff have been consulting the recently-created Yale University Born Digital Archival Description Guidelines in order to describe our born-digital materials in a standardized and consistent manner to facilitate user access.

Since my last post in July, MSSA staff have begun or completed description and processing for born-digital materials from the Edward Grant Oral History Project Records, the William Silver Papers, and several other collections. For my next quarterly update, I expect and look forward to sharing more news about both our physical and digital processing work.

For more information about Yale’s work with born-digital material, see the Saving Digital Stuff blog.

Image credit: avaragado from Cambridge, Wikimedia Commons

In these quarterly blog posts, I usually share an update about collections and additions to collections for which MSSA has recently acquired and completed processing. However, since the Sterling Memorial Library building has been closed since mid-March, our processing staff have shifted their attention to processing born-digital material at MSSA.

Born-digital material is material that was created in a computer environment. Born-digital material comes to MSSA in a variety of ways, including on floppy disks (and other fun old school formats!) or CDs; on flash drives; or as direct network transfers. At MSSA, we have a wide variety of different types of born-digital content, including personal computer files from individuals whose papers we hold; email correspondence and websites from organizations whose records we steward; and institutional electronic records created by Yale University offices.

Archival processing for all our materials, including those born-digital, entails preparing materials for use by making sense of and describing them. This allows researchers and other users to discover and access Yale’s rich collections. Processing born-digital materials is a developing area of practice for archives staff across the United States. To accomplish this work, MSSA is consulting the recently-created Yale University Born Digital Archival Description Guidelines. These guidelines allow us to describe our born-digital materials in a standardized and consistent manner to enable user access.

During the past few months, MSSA staff have begun and completed processing for born-digital materials from the Dorrit Hoffleit papers, the Brian Kiss photographs of stained glass in the Sterling Memorial Library Nave, the Arnold Rosin papers, the C. Vann Woodward papers, the Teacher Preparation and Placement Program, Yale College, records, and several other collections.

For more information about Yale’s work with born-digital material, see the Saving Digital Stuff blog.

The following post was authored by Genevieve Coyle, public services assistant in Manuscripts and Archives.

We often turn to the past for answers to problems we are facing in the present. While science does not move backwards, it can still be interesting, perhaps even useful to look back and remember the lessons we have learned before. With that in mind, the John Franklin Enders Papers (MS 1478) seem more relevant now than ever. Today, Enders is known to many as the “Father of Modern Vaccines” due to his integral role in developing both the polio and measles vaccines.

John F. Enders on the cover of Time magazine, November 17, 1961. Leonard C. Norkin blog post dated August 4, 2016. https://rb.gy/ixi3mn

John Franklin Enders was a Yale graduate whose life work was in bacteriology and immunology, although it took time to find this ultimate vocation.  He received an Bachelor of Arts in English from Yale in 1919, after spending several years away from his studies to be a flight instructor in the U. S. Naval Reserve Flying Corps during World War I. While pursuing a PhD in literature at Harvard University, Enders was introduced to Hans Zinsser, the head of the department of bacteriology and immunology at Harvard. Shortly thereafter, in 1927, he transitioned to studying bacteriology and immunology, and received his PhD from Harvard Medical School in 1930.

During Enders’ lengthy career, he was a very active author, publishing countless articles and papers for over 40 years. Specifically, his work on measles can be tracked through the numerous publications he contributed to during the 1940s and 1950s, before a vaccine was successfully developed in the early 1960s. These writings include Etiology of Measles published in 1940, Recent Advances in Knowledge of the Measles Virus published in 1958, and Vaccination Against Measles published in 1961. Of course, he wrote papers on dozens of other research subjects including mumps, polio, and influenza, all of which can be found in Series II of the Enders papers.

Measles lab notebook entry for January 25, 1954. John Franklin Enders Papers (MS 1478), Series III, Box 102, Folder 5.

Enders’ lab notebooks provide a more granular depiction of his research on measles, as well as many other experiments. As shown in this image, the very first page in volume 1 of his measles laboratory notebooks, dated January 25, 1954, details an attempt to isolate measles using four types of tissues. In total, four measles notebooks span nearly two decades of Enders’ lab work on the virus, from 1954 to 1970.

The picture of Enders’ work is rounded out by the extensive correspondence held in the 88 boxes of Series I from MS 1478. There are more than four boxes of materials completely dedicated to the subject of measles, including correspondence with the Communicable Disease Center (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and correspondence about a measles vaccine study in New Haven, Connecticut.

Letter from John F. Enders to Hans Zinsser, December 12, 1938. John Franklin Enders Papers (MS 1478), Series I, Box 88, Folder 2072.

On a more personal side, letters exchanged with friends and colleagues offer a slightly more intimate portrait of Enders. Although there are only a small handful of letters between him and his colleague and mentor, Hans Zinsser, the notes serve to humanize Enders. In this December 12, 1938, letter to Zinsser, Enders wrote “I have been flattened out myself with what you would probably call grippe…”. Enders seems to get no amusement from the irony that his work in infectious diseases does not stop him from suffering a case of the flu.

 Through his hard work in the field, Enders received many honors, most notably the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954. In addition to the research detailed above, Enders also studied cancer, AIDS, and countless other diseases during his illustrious career. The John Franklin Enders papers are housed at Manuscripts and Archives, and they are a scientific treasure trove waiting to be explored.

The following information on recently acquired and processed collections was assembled by Alison Clemens, Head of Processing.

Manuscripts and Archives has recently acquired and completed processing for several collections and additions to existing collections. We look forward to making these materials available for research when our reading room reopens:

New collections

Kingman Brewster Personal Papers (MS 572)

The Kingman Brewster Personal Papers (totaling 123.33 linear feet) primarily document the personal and professional life of Brewster as a Harvard faculty member (1950-1960) and Ambassador to Great Britain (1977-1981). The papers also include informative (but limited) material from 1940 to 1950. The most substantive material in the collection is that created by Brewster himself. Correspondence, unpublished writings, speeches, and interviews, provide extensive documentation of his interests and expertise, including in the areas of the role of government; maintaining a viable center in the political opinion spectrum; American anti-trust laws; American companies doing business abroad; the role of a liberal arts higher education; Anglo-American relations; and the United States in world affairs. The documentation on Brewster as ambassador reflects the public side of his work. Internal Embassy discussions on issues or policies, planning for incident responses, and interactions with the US State Department, are not documented in the papers.

Records, including correspondence and speeches, documenting Brewster’s tenures as Provost and President can be found in the Yale University Archives: Kingman Brewster, Jr., President of Yale University, Records (RU 11); and Provost’s Office, Yale University, Records (RU 92).

See our recent blog post on the Brewster papers for more information: Kingman Brewster Personal Papers Are Now Available for Research

Proof of the Pudding, Yale University, Records (RU 1170)

The records (totaling 7.76 linear feet and spanning 1984-2019) consist of performance and event ephemera, scrapbooks, photographs and musical recordings from Proof of the Pudding, the second women’s a cappella group at Yale University.

Additions to existing collections

Accessions 2016-M-0056 and 2020-M-0004 of the Silliman Family Papers (MS 450)

These accessions include an 1805 autograph letter, signed, from Jeremiah Day to Benjamin Silliman, who was traveling in Europe (Accession 2016-M-0056) and a photograph, dated 1864, of Benjamin Silliman’s library (Accession 2020-M-0004).

Accession 2019-M-0013 of the Society of Clinical Surgery Records (MS 1267)

This accession (totaling 6.26 linear feet) contains administrative files of the Society of Clinical Surgery, material concerning the Society’s annual meetings, membership and admissions files concerning individual members of the Society, photographs of its members, and unidentified computer files.

Accession 2019-M-0021 of the Arthur L. Liman Papers (MS 1762)

This accession comprises a courtroom sketch of Arthur L. Liman in an unidentified court case, sketched by Dale Dyer, February 1989.

Accession 2016-M-0024 of the Humphreys-Marvin-Olmstead Collection (MS 857)

This accession includes an autograph letter, signed, from Elihu Marvin (Yale 1773) to his future wife, Elizabeth “Betsey” Rogers, while he was serving with the Continental Army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1778 March 18.

Accessions 2019-M-0027, 2019-M-0028, 2019-M-0029, 2019-M-0030, and 2019-M-0035 of the Natural Resources Defense Council Records (MS 1965)

These accessions (totaling 92.33 linear feet in all) document programs and projects of David Hawkins, director of the climate policy, climate, and clean energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, from 1950 to 2007 (Accessions 2019-M-0027 and 2019-M-0038); papers of David Schoenbrod and Ross Sandler, lawyers and members of NRDC (Accession 2019-M-0030); and projects and program files on legal enforcement (Accessions 2019-M-0029 and 2019-M-0035). Topics addressed include climate policy, clean energy, acid rain, the ozone layer, mercury, sulfur the Clean Air Act, transportation, and mass transit. Specific legal cases documented include the Natural Resources Defense Council v. Arco Alaska, in which Arco was sued to cease the pollution of Prudhoe Bay and the Kuparuk River, and Natural Resources Defense Council v. Upjohn Company, pertaining to clean water and the Upjohn Company polluting the Quinnipiac River in Connecticut with runoff. Some materials are restricted or require permission from the NRDC for access. Restriction information is noted in the finding aid.

Accession 2019-M-0051 of the Charles Gould Morris Family Papers (MS 622)

This accession comprises letters between Luzon (Luke) B. Morris and his wife Eugenia Morris, 1855-1856. It includes six letters from Luzon to Eugenia and four letters from Eugenia to Luke. Letters pertain to Luzon’s activities in Seymour, Connecticut, as well as the personal and religious matters. The bulk of the letters are accompanied by transcripts, and the accession also includes accompanying research material apparently created by the bookseller.

Accession 2019-M-0055 of the Bingham Family Papers (MS 81)

This accession contains a photocopy, in two volumes, of an annotated typescript, 1982, of Woodbridge Bingham’s Hiram Bingham: A Personal History.

Accession 2019-M-0061 of the Beecher Family Papers (MS 71)

This accession includes an autograph letter, signed, from Henry Ward Beecher to United States president Ulysses S. Grant, 1871 March 2. The letter introduces Grant to Frank D. Moulton, a Brooklyn, New York merchant.

Accession 2019-M-0062 of the Ogden Rogers Reid Papers (MS 755)

This accession (totaling 0.25 linear feet) contains biographical, speech, and interview materials documenting the life and work of Ogden Rogers Reid. Biographical material includes Reid’s 2019 obituary from the Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam Journal News and an undated biographical outline for Reid. Interviews include 2003 and 2015 interviews of Reid by William O’Shaughnessy. Speeches include a 2003 speech by Reid at the Broadcasters Foundation Dinner at the American Yacht Club in Rye, New York, and a 1971 statement Reid made before the United States Congress concerning the first amendment, CBS, and Harley O. Staggers.

Accession 2020-M-0013 of the Edward Mandell House Papers (MS 466)

This accession contains a typed recommendation letter, signed, by Edward Mandell House for Charles H. Marlow, June 9, 1920.

Accession 2020-M-0015 of the Dean Gooderham Acheson Papers (MS 1087)

This accession contains an October 29, 1969 letter from Dean Acheson to the architect Edward H. Bennett, Jr. In the letter, Acheson thanks Bennett for sharing a review by Sidney Ham of Acheson’s book, presumably Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. Acheson writes that he hopes “[his] words about Mr. Truman should lead you to revise favorably your views about him — an [sic] not only in comparison with his successors in office but with some of his more illustrious predecessors.”

Accession 2020-M-0020 of the Woolsey Family Papers (MS 562)

This accession contains a photograph of Theodore Dwight Woolsey, Theodore Salisbury Woolsey, and Theodore Salisbury Woolsey, Jr., circa 1882. The photograph is mounted on board, which attributes it to F. A. Bowen, a New Haven, Connecticut photographer operating from 480 Chapel Street.