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From: leonardsma at aol.com <leonardsma>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:59:59 -0400
What to do with archival material is a big question. There have been many scenarios. Putnam lost a lot of its papers in a warehouse flood. When Western moved from one office to another, many files were tossed in the trash. When Knopf sent its papers to the great Harry Ransom Library at the U of Texas at Austin, the company (or the library) chose not to include the papers of the children's book division. On the brighter side, the U of Oregon has Greenwillow's papers; and I found a lot of information about Golden Books there too, in the papers of one of the founding editors, Lucille Ogle, who had chosen to send her papers there. The Ogle papers were accessible, and well organized; I had a very good experience working with them. As was mentioned, Columbia U has some Harper papers (as does Princeton U), plus Random House and Simon and Schuster papers, among others. Columbia has in fact made a specialty of collecting publishers' archives. But as Fern mentioned, university librari
es don't always have the facilities to protect things properly. And some publishers hold on to their papers, sometimes because the files are still in use to some extent, sometimes maybe because they haven't really thought the situation through, or aren't focused on the needs of scholars because that isn't a major concern for theirs.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Fern Kory <fkory at eiu.edu>
To: Ruth I. Gordon <druthgo at sonic.net>
Cc: CCBC Net <ccbc-net at ccbc.ad.education.wisc.edu>; leonardsma at aol.com
Sent: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 7:52 pm
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Archives
I am, coincidentally, doing research at HarperCollins right now (at least I was until 5:00 p.m.) and while I was there I had a brief conversation with the librarian in charge of the archives. She said several interesting and relevant things. One is that the archives are only about 10% of her job as corporate librarian. Another is that they have literally thousands of boxes of stuff (could she have said 13,000?) stored off-site, many of these boxes described in an electronic list only in the most general terms ("Authors J"). And, finally, they are not archiving e-mails, though lots of things (contracts, for example) are now being stored electronically. This is all from an informal, conversation, not an interview, and I didn't take notes (and am not good at remembering numbers), so the details here are useful only for purposes of this discussion. But it might be worth coming back to one point. She mentioned that some of the older stuff went t
o Columbia at one point and that it might be best if more of these documents could be deposited in appropriate research collections, where they could be tended by staff dedicated to sharing this wealth. Off the top of my head, I suggested that scholars (or scholar librarians) might be willing to provide some of the labor necessary to identify and place sub-sets of this collection. ?
Ruth I. Gordon wrote:?
> About archives: Some time ago I asked Sharon MacQueen about the > status and condition of archives. She told some horror stories to > which I can relate?
> because of my own research. I also know that several major publishers > rid themselves of their archives--lack of space, they claimed--and no > archivist.?
-- Fern Kory?
Professor of English?
Eastern Illinois University?
?
Received on Wed 23 Jul 2008 08:59:59 AM CDT
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:59:59 -0400
What to do with archival material is a big question. There have been many scenarios. Putnam lost a lot of its papers in a warehouse flood. When Western moved from one office to another, many files were tossed in the trash. When Knopf sent its papers to the great Harry Ransom Library at the U of Texas at Austin, the company (or the library) chose not to include the papers of the children's book division. On the brighter side, the U of Oregon has Greenwillow's papers; and I found a lot of information about Golden Books there too, in the papers of one of the founding editors, Lucille Ogle, who had chosen to send her papers there. The Ogle papers were accessible, and well organized; I had a very good experience working with them. As was mentioned, Columbia U has some Harper papers (as does Princeton U), plus Random House and Simon and Schuster papers, among others. Columbia has in fact made a specialty of collecting publishers' archives. But as Fern mentioned, university librari
es don't always have the facilities to protect things properly. And some publishers hold on to their papers, sometimes because the files are still in use to some extent, sometimes maybe because they haven't really thought the situation through, or aren't focused on the needs of scholars because that isn't a major concern for theirs.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Fern Kory <fkory at eiu.edu>
To: Ruth I. Gordon <druthgo at sonic.net>
Cc: CCBC Net <ccbc-net at ccbc.ad.education.wisc.edu>; leonardsma at aol.com
Sent: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 7:52 pm
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Archives
I am, coincidentally, doing research at HarperCollins right now (at least I was until 5:00 p.m.) and while I was there I had a brief conversation with the librarian in charge of the archives. She said several interesting and relevant things. One is that the archives are only about 10% of her job as corporate librarian. Another is that they have literally thousands of boxes of stuff (could she have said 13,000?) stored off-site, many of these boxes described in an electronic list only in the most general terms ("Authors J"). And, finally, they are not archiving e-mails, though lots of things (contracts, for example) are now being stored electronically. This is all from an informal, conversation, not an interview, and I didn't take notes (and am not good at remembering numbers), so the details here are useful only for purposes of this discussion. But it might be worth coming back to one point. She mentioned that some of the older stuff went t
o Columbia at one point and that it might be best if more of these documents could be deposited in appropriate research collections, where they could be tended by staff dedicated to sharing this wealth. Off the top of my head, I suggested that scholars (or scholar librarians) might be willing to provide some of the labor necessary to identify and place sub-sets of this collection. ?
Ruth I. Gordon wrote:?
> About archives: Some time ago I asked Sharon MacQueen about the > status and condition of archives. She told some horror stories to > which I can relate?
> because of my own research. I also know that several major publishers > rid themselves of their archives--lack of space, they claimed--and no > archivist.?
-- Fern Kory?
Professor of English?
Eastern Illinois University?
?
Received on Wed 23 Jul 2008 08:59:59 AM CDT
