As another semester begins at Temple University, we’d like to remind you about the range of instruction services provided by Temple’s Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) and introduce a new tool for requesting a class instruction session with us.
A primary mission of the SCRC is to provide or support instruction for students at Temple University and other area institutions. We are always delighted to expose students to the rare books, archives, manuscripts, photographs, film and digital media that make up our holdings. In the past year the SCRC hosted 66 instruction sessions in a range of disciplines, including History, English, Geography and Urban Studies, Art, Architecture, Intellectual Heritage, Social Work, Education, Film and Media Arts, Journalism, and Criminal Justice.
SCRC staff offer instruction in a variety of formats, including research orientations and specialized sessions that incorporate course- or assignment-based resources and activities. These sessions are geared toward engaging with primary source materials and teaching students primary source and archival literacy, as well as enhancing research, critical thinking, and writing skills. Over the course of the semester, students often make return visits to the reading room to conduct their own research and put into practice what they learned during their instruction session.
If you’re a Temple Faculty member, or an instructor from any institution from middle school to college, and you are interested in arranging an instruction session at the SCRC please use our new Instruction Session/Visit Request Form. We’ll work with you to tailor the session to your course’s subject matter and learning objectives. You can direct any questions regarding class visits to Josué Hurtado, Coordinator of Public Services & Outreach, or to SCRC@temple.edu.
The task of acclimating to a new environment can be daunting for anyone relocating or settling in a new city or country. In addition to establishing a home, finding work, accessing health care and other services, and possibly learning a new language, developing friendships is an important part of feeling connected to a new community. In an increasingly technologically-dependent world, social networking tools and friend finder apps like Wiith, Hey! VINA, LykeMe, and Meetup can make easy work of connecting to like-minded individuals with similar interests. The challenges associated with establishing a social network in an unfamiliar place are certainly not new.
Recently, while processing and cataloging the records of the Philadelphia based social service agency Jewish Family Service held in the Special Collections Research Center, I discovered a card file containing profiles of WWII refugees. The profile cards were created by the Philadelphia Refugee Resettlement Committee, a committee established in February 1937 by the Jewish Welfare Society (later renamed the Jewish Family Service) to support the economic and social adjustment of individuals and families displaced by the war.
The Refugee Resettlement Committee saw one of the most basic social skills—the ability to make friends—as a necessity for the positive adjustment of refugees arriving in Philadelphia. To aid this process, the committee created a service staffed by volunteer “friendly visitors.” The committee would interview these “new Americans” after their arrival, creating a profile card summarizing the individual or family’s background and social preferences. Volunteers were then matched with refugees based on shared interests in the hopes of fostering a friendship.
Lauer family profile card, 1939
Max and Fridericka Lauer and their two sons were just one of the many families who were matched with Refugee Resettlement Committee volunteers between 1938 and 1941. The Lauers’ profile card indicates the eldest son, Lothar, immigrated to Philadelphia in September 1938 and enrolled as a student at Temple University prior to his family’s arrival in March the next year. Described as a cultured family, the following excerpt from the Lauers’ profile provides some insight into the challenges they faced in creating a social network on their own:
“Mr. and Mrs. Lauer have always been interested in music, the theatre, the opera–but have been unable to partake of these activities in this country because of a financial inability, and a lack of friends with whom to share these interests. Mrs. Lauer is also interested in bridge but states that the women she has met in her neighborhood are old Jewish women whose sole interest is the house, thus giving her very little in common with them. Mrs. Lauer does not speak English at all, Dr. Lauer speaks quite poorly. It would therefore be necessary to find a German-speaking volunteer for this family.”
From An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft…. London: Printed for R. Knaplock and D. Midwinter, 1718 This illustration is “Matthew Hopkins Witchfinder general,” a 1793 reproduction of a well-known 1647 woodcut. The image was inserted as a frontispiece in the book after its publication.
Philip Gardiner Nordell (1894-1976), graduated from Dartmouth College in 1916, where he was an All-American in the running broad jump. He claimed to have invented the predecessor to boxed cake mixes in the 1920s—founding a business that combined the dry ingredients for muffins, allowing the baker to simply add water. Nordell’s primary research interest was early American lotteries, which he studied for over thirty years. His personal collection of early lottery tickets and related newspaper announcements, brochures, and broadsides, is now at Princeton University.
Nordell also assembled an extraordinary collection of books documenting religion, politics, and science in Britain and New England in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Temple Special Collections acquired this collection from Nordell in 1965. It contains more than 250 books, including a significant number of rare British and American imprints on religion from the 17th and 18th centuries. The collection documents the predominant and often conflicting ideas during this period, particularly related to religion, religious liberty, and rationalism in England and the New England colonies. Included in the collection are many books on “fringe” groups, such as Anabaptists, Levellers, Ranters, and atheists, as well as many works on witchcraft. Authors represented include Francis Bacon, John Cotton, Thomas Edwards, Joseph Glanvill, Thomas Hobbes, John Lilburne, Cotton Mather, and William Prynne.
Of particular interest are the books on witchcraft which represent a very comprehensive view of the topic. Originating on both sides of the Atlantic, they document the conversation that old and new worlds were having about sources, causes, and cures for witchcraft–and the eventual repudiation of the belief that witches exist.
In a 1965 letter, Nordell said: “My central aim in gathering the collection has been to furnish important source material helpful in appraising the comparative mental patterns in old and New England.… In different words, the collection furnishes much of the basic source material to form a sound judgment as to the truth of an observation made in the 1640′s, that while New England was becoming old, old England was becoming new.”
–Margery Sly, Director of Special Collections, and Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, Special Collections Research Center
The class visited SCRC several times for introductions to using special collections materials and various collections, students returned individually to conduct research on their own. They each selected two zines from the collection and wrote an essay on themes found within them, and completed a timeline and report on an event in Philadelphia LGBTQ history using LGBTQ resources available in the SCRC and the John J. Wilcox, Jr. LGBT Archives.
Worksheet used by students for the metadata assignment.
During one visit, the students were given an introduction to metadata by SCRC staff, and completed an assignment to create their own metadata for a zine in the SCRC collection. The class included an explanation of what metadata is and does, both generally and in a library; what makes metadata important; and some issues related to creating metadata.
The issues discussed were directly relevant to the purpose of the course, including how metadata is inherently about the problematic act of applying labels to things; standardized metadata requires the use of terms determined by someone with their own biases; and applying labels to information resources puts the metadata creator in a position of power and authority. Issues related specifically to zines were also discussed, including how they’re often about sensitive, personal topics; they are frequently created by people from underrepresented groups; and they are occasionally written by people who do not want to be identified.
Class handout on metadata.
The students then completed an assignment to create their own metadata. They selected one zine from the collection, and completed a metadata form based on the ZineCore elements. SCRC staff and Dr. Shaw answered questions about how to describe a zine with, for example, no author or title; what to do if a zine listed no author but the student knew the name of the author; and how to come up with subject descriptions for sensitive topics.
In the Broadway musical Hamilton, George Washington tells Alexander Hamilton, “You have no control … who tells your story.” In archives and special collections, stories are preserved and told every day, whether they are the stories of presidents and politicians or those of everyday people. While the Special Collections Research Center is better known for its collections documenting modern day people and events, we do hold some materials related to our founding fathers, including those represented in Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton. Order on First Bank of United States, May 16, 1794. Cochran History of Business Collection
Alexander Hamilton’s own handwriting can be seen in the original 1794 document “Order on First Bank of United States,” which shows Hamilton in his capacity as Secretary of the Treasury authorizing the Secretary of State, Edmund Randolph, to be paid $900 for “certain expenses which have occurred in the West Indies in relation to public service.” His work is also represented by his publication The Soundness of the Policy of Protecting Domestic Manufactures (Philadelphia: printed by J. R. A. Skerrett, 1817).
Eighteenth century printed materials in SCRC demonstrate that the personal attacks shown in the musical were just as vindictive in real life: the pamphlet Letters to Alexander Hamilton, King of the Feds (New York: orinted by Richard Reynolds, 1802), attributed to expert scandalmonger James Thomson Callender (the man credited with revealing Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds), attacks Hamilton for 64 pages.
Cover of An American Colonel: A Story of Thrilling Times During the Revolution and the Great Rivalry of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, by Jeremiah Clemens (Akron, Ohio: Wolfe Pub. Co., 1900)
Multiple books in SCRC detail the life and death of Hamilton, including Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton’s The Conqueror: Being the True and Romantic Story of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Macmillan, 1902) and William Coleman’s 1804 publication A Collection of the Facts and Documents, Relative to the Death of Major-General Alexander Hamilton (Boston: Reprinted by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904).
Aaron Burr’s troubles did not end after he killed Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel. In 1807 he was arrested for treason at the behest of President Jefferson. The trial is extensively detailed in the two volumes of Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr (Philadelphia: published by Hopkins and Earle. Fry and Kammerer, printers, 1808). For Burr apologists, the book An American Colonel: A Story of Thrilling Times During the Revolution and the Great Rivalry of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, by Jeremiah Clemens (Akron, Ohio: Wolfe Pub. Co., 1900) tells the story of Hamilton and Burr’s rivalry in pro-Burr fashion.
Marquis de Lafayette letter to “My dear sir,” December 19, 1784. Jay Edwin Sturgis Nagle Papers.
Marquis de Lafayette is represented in SCRC collections by a handwritten 1784 letter from the Jay Edwin Sturgis Nagle Collection, as well as multiple printed eulogies given upon his death in 1834. An unusual take on the Marquis is given in Walt Whitman’s short publication, Lafayette in Brooklyn (New York: George D. Smith, 1905), in which he describes being picked up and kissed by Lafayette as a small child.
Thomas Jefferson, of course, is well documented in many resources, including two letters from the Alexander James and George Mifflin Dallas Papers. SCRC also holds an early edition of Jefferson’s only full-length book, Notes on the State of Virginia(Philadelphia: R.T. Rawle, publisher, John Thompson, printer, June, 1801). The Dallas Papers also contain one letter by James Madison.
Letter, James Madison to George Mifflin Dallas, June 23, 1821. Alexander James and George Mifflin Dallas Papers
George Washington, like Jefferson, is extensively documented. One particularly beautiful Washington-related book is an 1858 publication of his farewell address upon his retirement from the presidency–the basis for the song “One Last Time” (Washington’s Farewell Address to the People of the United States: Embellished with Arabesque Designs & Illuminations. Philadelphia: Devereux & Company, 1858).
–Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, SCRC
One of the ongoing missions of the Special Collections Research Center is to use our collections to enhance the teaching, learning, and research activities in the undergraduate curriculum at Temple. Over the course of spring semester 2016, the SCRC has hosted over twenty five classes representing a variety of departments and programs on campus.
A recent visit by Professor John Dern’s Intellectual Heritage Honors Mosaic Humanities Seminar, a required general education course in the College of Liberal Arts, gave us the opportunity to highlight some treasures from our rare book collections and gave the students an opportunity to see and turn the pages of first editions of Galileo and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Mosaic seminar
The goal of the Seminar is to “introduce students to philosophical, political and scientific texts that are challenging in at least one of several ways: rhetorically, historically or culturally.” In Professor Dern’s section, students read Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and Thucydides’ On Justice, Power and Human Nature, among other assigned texts. When the students visited in early April, we pulled Temple’s first editions of Galileo’s final work, Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno à due nuoue scienze, printed in 1638 in Leiden, and the first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s seminal proto-feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, printed in London in 1792. Connecting their class reading of Galileo’s most famous work to how his later works appeared in the European marketplace in the early 17th century provides an invaluable lesson in early modern scientific discovery, censorship, and the dissemination of information across the European continent.
In addition to the first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s landmark text advocating equal education opportunities and related 18th century texts, the students also engaged with a 15th century manuscript on the lives of the ancient philosophers, a 16th century edition in Greek of the Roman historian Appian, and an 1804 illustrated volume depicting the punishment of criminals in China according to the Qing penal code. Students were encouraged to turn the pages of these texts, ask questions, and even snap pictures with their always-handy smartphones. Exposure to the physical artifacts of the texts they’re studying in class brings the students closer to an understanding of how the texts entered the cultural marketplace, the historical record, and our collective, intellectual heritage.
Another of our late semester class visits provided a different kind of connection to the physical book format for the students. In mid-April, Professor Marianne Dages brought her Tyler School of Art Foundation program class in 2D Foundation Principles to the SCRC to view a selection from our large artists’ books collection. For their own final book-making projects in the class, students were asked to incorporate both a strong use of color and interesting book structures. The selections pulled from the collection provided both examples of strong color technique and unique structures, as well as inspiration for the students’ own work. Just as in the Humanities Seminar, the smartphones were put to good use documenting what they saw for future reference!
Tyler students with artists’ books
Whether a class visit to see the SCRC’s print collection enhances the contextual understanding of class readings or directly influences student work, it does prove that the physical book form is still an integral part of undergraduate teaching and learning at Temple.
Monument at 16th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, April 27, 1964
As we enter the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust and Yom Hashoah, the Special Collections Research Center asked Natasha Goldman, Research Associate and Adjunct Lecturer in Art History at Bowdoin College, to share her recent experiences at the SCRC and the connections she made that led to Temple’s acquisition of a previously “hidden collection.”
Goldman writes: “In 2011, I started research on Nathan Rapoport’s Monument to the Six Million Martyrs (1964), arguably the first public Holocaust memorial in the US, located in Philadelphia at the corner of 16th St., Arch St. and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Designed by artist Nathan Rapoport, famous for his Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument (1948), the sculpture has largely been ignored in the literature of Holocaust memory in the US.
Abram Shnaper, a Holocaust survivor, had initiated the monument’s commission on the behalf of the Association of Jewish New Americans, a Philadelphia survivor organization that he had founded in 1954. Together with the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, the groups raised $47,000 for the monument. Shnaper painstakingly documented the entire process, from raising funds, to writing letters to the artist, to sending telegrams to Israel to invite Israeli officials to the dedication ceremony. When I visited him in his home in 2011, Shnaper conveyed to me his wish that the documents stay in Philadelphia, close to the monument.
After Shnaper’s passing, I visited his collection once again, this time at the offices of his son-in-law. I also visited the Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center, where I found the documents of the Jewish Community Relations Council—including files relating to the committee responsible for the monument in the decade after its installation. When Shaper’s son-in-law asked me where he should donate Abe’s papers, I immediately knew that Temple University would be the best home for his collection. It was Shnaper’s greatest wish that young people learn about the Holocaust so as to pass on the legacy of the six million and of the survivors. Finally, students at Temple University and scholars from near and far have direct access to these rich primary documents. They demonstrate the dedication of diverse Jewish communities to create one of the earliest US Holocaust monuments in public space.”
Selections from the Shnaper papers
Acquired by the SCRC in 2014, the Abram Shnaper Papers on the Monument to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs are open and available for research. View the online finding aid or catalog record for a description of the collection’s contents and to request access to the materials in the SCRC reading room.
Natasha Goldman’s article on Rapaport’s memorial, “Never bow your head, be helpful, and fight for justice and righteousness: Nathan Rapoport and Philadelphia’s Holocaust Memorial (1964),” will be published in the Summer 2016 in the Journal of Jewish Identities, issue 9, number 2. The article will also appear in her forthcoming book, Holocaust Memorials in the United States and Germany: From Grass-Roots Movements to National Debates (under advance contract; Temple University Press, Spring 2017).
Stu Goldman, an award winning syndicated editorial cartoonist, produced illustrations for the Philadelphia newspaper, The Jewish Exponent, from 1981 until his retirement in 2009. For many years, Goldman also served as a regular and feature cartoonist for a variety of periodicals: Centre Democrat (Bellefonte, PA), Prince George’s Sentinel (Hyattsville, MD), and the predecessor to the alternative press publication, Philadelphia Weekly, previously known as Welcomat, which featured “Eavesdrawing,” a cartoon illustrating eavesdropped true-life conversations heard throughout the city.
[Jewish Voter Roll] political cartoon, 1988At the height of syndication, Goldman’s editorial cartoons were featured in over 70 publications. Similar to the work of fellow Philadelphia newspaper cartoonist Samuel R. Joyner, also held by the Special Collections Research Center, Goldman’s cartoons used political satire to comment on issues that affected his own community as well as those of national and international importance. During the 1988 presidential campaign season, for example, Goldman drew a number of cartoons depicting the struggle between then Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis and then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush to attract the Jewish vote.
Dr. Who Convention, February 23, 1985
In addition to his editorial cartoons, Goldman’s papers also includes his sketchbooks, many of them produced during his travels in the United States and abroad. His sketchbooks contain images on a range of subjects from the 1984 annual meeting of the American Jewish Press Association in Washington D.C. to a 1985 Dr. Who Convention at the Valley Forge Convention Center.
To learn more about Stu Goldman’s Editorial Cartoon Collection, contact the Special Collections Research Center at scrc@temple.edu .
Please join us for an exhibit and discussion centered around Liber Mundi, a series of artists’ book and zine exhibitions featuring 13 international artists. For the Liber Mundi series, artists are creating original works that explore the contemporary book form.
Ángela Sánchez de Vera – Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico
Christopher Kardambikis – Brooklyn, New York, United States
Conor Crumley – Portland, Oregon, United States
J. Pascoe – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Janine Biunno – Brooklyn, New York, United States
Jessica Gatlin – Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
Juan Pascoe – Tacámbáro, Michoacán, Mexico
Katherine Pulido – San Francisco, California, United States
Katja Pál – Lendava, Mura, Slovenia
Lee Hunter – New York, New York, United States
Magda Wegrzyn – Mokotów, Warsaw, Poland
Oona Tikkaoja – Turku, Finland
Sarah Hulsey – Somerville, Massachusetts, United States
Located on a 187-acre field in the suburban Pennsylvania town of Ambler, The Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women was founded in 1911 by Jane Bowne Haines as one of the first horticultural schools for women in the United States. The school provided a unique opportunity for women not only to become educated generally but to enter a field dominated by men. After more than forty-five years as an independent institution, the school merged with Temple University in 1958, and became the Temple University Ambler Campus. A deeper history of the school can be found on the Ambler Campus website.
Class of 1913 students pruning
The Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women Records contain of a wealth of photographs and materials documenting the history of the school. The photographs trace the students’ lives on campus through images of activities, dances, clubs, and their work in the fields, gardens, greenhouses, and classrooms. Through these photographs, you see the changes in uniform, social dress codes, campus buildings, the variety of clubs, and even social expectations of women. One aspect that does not change is the labor requirement. From the very beginning, students were expected to climb trees, drive tractors, harvest the fields, and care for the animals, often in very impractical clothing.
PSHW’s 1932 Flower Show Exhibit
In addition to the photographs, which have all been digitized, the files contain administration records, printed materials, including several publications published by the school (Pen & Trowel and Wise Acres, along with a variety of alumni publications), ephemera relating to campus activities and festivals, correspondence, student records, and landscape design drawings. The archives also includes some photographs and other materials relating to the school’s participation in the Philadelphia Flower Show.
–Holly Wilson, Processing Archivist , Special Collections Research Center
As another semester begins at Temple University, we’d like to remind you about the range of instruction services provided by Temple’s Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) and introduce a new tool for requesting a class instruction session with us.
If you’re a Temple Faculty member, or an instructor from any institution from middle school to college, and you are interested in arranging an instruction session at the SCRC please use our new Instruction Session/Visit Request Form. We’ll work with you to tailor the session to your course’s subject matter and learning objectives. You can direct any questions regarding class visits to Josué Hurtado, Coordinator of Public Services & Outreach, or to SCRC@temple.edu.
![[Jewish Voter Roll]](https://sites.temple.edu/historynews/files/2016/04/JPJAPZ201603000036.jpg)
