03.19.09
An Update, Finally!
It’s been a long time since my last post. My sabbatical seemed to go by so fast and the next thing I knew I was launched back into the busy world of fall term preparations. I’ve been slowly making progress on my own with cataloguing the digital images and have mastered CONTENTdm so that I now am able to upload single and multiple objects with no problems.
A few weeks ago I found out my most recent application to the Acadia Research Fund was successful which has allowed me to hire back Cecilia Jacobs part-time while she finishes up her teachables and waits to start her BEd at Acadia in the Fall. Cecilia will be a big help in preparing for interviews, digitizing, general metadata entry, and othe odd jobs. I’m very grateful that she has agreed to help! Pat Townsend and Patty Williams (Wolfville Historical Society) and me will be speaking with Enid Davison next Friday to start the second phase of oral histories. A large portion of my recent funding will go to Cecilia for transcription purposes.
Some exciting new things have been discovered in the last few months. Pat found a letter down in one of the storage rooms that seems to indicate there was a Wolfville Book Club, in addition to the Wolfville English Club, that MKI headed up. According to the letter, dated January 4, 1940, a “group of book lovers” was formed in 1938 to “consider ways and means of securing the best books of the years at the least possible cost to each”. The letter describes a room in the Acadia Library (Emmerson at the time) which was home to the club’s collection and provided borrowing services to members. Very interesting…Also, a tip from Pat who copied a list of medals and prizes from a 1914 Acadia Bulletin led me two more essays and a poem by MKI she wrote during her Acadia school days that I had never seen before! Also ran into a lovely reference letter that MKI wrote Isobel (Mader) Horton in 1936 for a job in St. John. I’m not sure if she went there or not, but it was nice to find the letter. More updates coming soon, with Cecilia’s help and the term winding down I hope to work much more on the MKI and Acadia Library digital collections as well as the library history website.
06.18.08
Good Idea at U of M
I just returned home from Winnipeg to accept the CAUBO honourable mention award (for more information about the visit see my other project blog). 
The University of Manitoba is a beautiful campus with real, live, elm trees and lovely historical buildings. In fact, there is a real historical feel to the campus and no matter where you go this is apparent. For instance, Sunday’s reception after the award ceremony was held in the opening between the old and new engineering building. Hanging along the walls of the space were archival photos of the building and student engineering classes of yesteryear. There is a memorial plaque outside of University Centre which explains that the beautiful old elm trees that line the streets and walkways were planted in honour of the U of M students who died in the first and second world wars.
I also noted several interior building plaques, like this one in the residence I stayed in, which was apparently the initiative of an archivist that is no longer at the university. 
I suppose it would cost some money, but I think it’s a great idea and what a wonderful way to promote history on campus. Jim Blanchard, head of the Elizabeth Dafoe library (Social Sciences and Humanities) is also an historian. He wrote at least one book I saw in the campus store called Winnipeg 1912, and probably others. He said he had presented at the CLA LHIG sessions in the past too. I was impressed as he knew Marion Gilroy! I had a short but exciting trip and everyone was so friendly and helpful. This final trip was a great way to wrap up my sabbatical travels, I will remember it for a long time to come.
06.01.08
Back from CLA
I returned home from CLA on Tuesday, had a wonderful time in BC. The weather was warm and the sun shined all week! The conference was also very good and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting some of the members of the library history interest group. I think my presentation went well and I greatly enjoyed the other two during the LHIG session. The first was Lorne Bruce from University of Guelph with his talk on his work surrounding the impact of radio broadcasting on public libraries between 1920 and 1945. Deborah Hicks from the University of Alberta spoke on library history methodology. They both did an excellent job. I enjoyed most of the programme, and especially the closing keynote with Alberto Manguel. I loved his book “The Library at Night” when it came out and I lined up for two signed copies. One for me and one for Ms. Coombs, I think she’ll really like it.
An interesting thing related to my research happened after the conference was over. Shane and I travelled to Nanaimo to visit friends. We visited Milner Gardens during our stay which is owned by Malaspina University and was once the home of Veronica and Ray Milner. When I heard the name I immediately thought of W. C. Milner and connections, turns out Ray was his son! Ralph gave me a signed copy of the book In Veronica’s Garden which contains a chapter on Ray’s life. Our Milner retired to Edmonton before passing away in 1939, Ray was already on Vancouver Island by that time. I must look into this further.
Even more curious was the photo of Ray Milner hanging on a wall in the Milner home. Surrounded by honorary degrees and the like from place like Dalhousie and Mount Allison, it was signed William Inglis Morse. I’d know that signature anywhere from the many letters he wrote MKI. The picture is definitely of Ray though, so I can’t figure out why Morse would have signed it. In any case, there is certainly a connection and I’m excited to figure out the link. It was such a lovely trip all around and the Milner Garden adventure was a most interesting encounter…I hope to return someday soon.
05.17.08
? SPIES ?
A few weeks ago Pat made a discovery; she was working with the books from the Logan collection and out of one fell a programme for a play that was put on at UHall in 1919 by the Library Science Class! I was thrilled. It’s called “? SPIES ? Three Act Play of War.” At first I thought it might have been another play by MKI, but instead it was written by one of her students – Helen Starr. I went to the Athenaeum for that month – sure enough there was an article reviewing the play. It’s wonderful; all the students participated, whether they were actors or working behind the scenes (Helen Beals it was mentioned was working the lights and props). There was no mention of MKI, however, if the programme was centred around the class collective she may very well have been the Director! I sent the information on to Dr. Kym Bird at York as she asked me to keep an eye out for any early plays by women (her article on MKI’s Acadia has just been published in the 2005 Spring Fall issue of Theatre Research in Canada). I haven’t heard back from her, but I suspect even though I haven’t stumbled across the text of the play it may still exist. What a fun hunt that would be! I wish I could figure out a way to upload the image on here, I’ve always found this a challenge with WordPress. (update — WordPress has made it easier, success!)
04.22.08
What did Milner look like?
Beats me, but I’ve been searching to find out. I did come across a group photo in the Mount Allison archives but we don’t know which one he is! The National Archives have Topley Studio images; I just emailed Rhianna to see if they can get together and figure it out; alternately I’ll order from one of the other and send to one of the other to confirm.
All else is well; still writing and working on citations (which takes almost twice as long as writing the actual paper!) Nick transcribed all the Book Parlance poems and also scanned them in pdf. The quality is off on many because of the faded printing press so the OCR won’t work well on many but I’ll be indexing them anyway (someday!)
04.03.08
Writing and research continues…
It’s hard to believe that I missed March! I suppose there wasn’t much to report and I was busy trying to write and assimilate all the research I had accumulated. I did discover some interesting reasons for why things are the way they are in the history books. On the topic of Acadia library undergraduate courses, McNally cites Harris who only mentions courses in the early 1920s. Harris says they began in 1911 (or maybe that was 1910 , in any case something different than what I’ve got — I’ll check and add in later) and the 1931 Survey of Libraries in Canada cites it as being 1912. The first instance I see it is 1913, but I’m going to double check in on Monday. Oh yes! Thanks to Sue Adams I have Nora Bateson coming to Canada in 1920 rather than 1922 which is what is commonly cited. Sue had done some digging through ship manifests and found her on the SS Metagama. Also uncovered were border crossing cards that prove she arrived before 1922. I think I’ve proved well enough that the bookmobiles were indeed the first in Canada by two months and more sophisticated than the Fraser Valley book van by design. I’m still stuck in the early 1930s when the Ridington, Locke, and Black Commission report comes out. Trying to make a connection as Bak speculated; found a good quote at the end of the Maritime provinces section that would have definitely got MKI to her feet! Will briefly talk about Carnegie in PEI but also use this and Miss Bateson’s personality as an impetus for reorganizing the MLA BUT I think that there is a February letter that comes out just before the Commission report that shows the wheels are already turning for MKI (not that I think she ever really gave up on the association).
In any case it’s slow going I am no writer of historical papers yet and the citations and endnotes take forever! I have been trying to slowly put together an image presentation. I’ve had a few more copyright clearances — I won’t be using a picture of Mr. Carnegie, Getty Images still hasn’t replied but Corbis quoted me something like $245 USD to show it for a week (they’re shortest unit). Good grief. UBC Archives wanted $75 for a picture of Ridington, so I scanned the cover of the report instead and a nice ‘compliments of’ slip that was in my copy. The CLA copyright working group chair said that was fair dealing which I thought too but because of the case I wanted to make sure I had it in writing! So far PEI records, Mt.A and Acadia of course have been most reasonable. No word yet from Archives Canada to see if they can track down a Milner photo – Mt.A has him in a group but doesn’t know what he looks like. I suppose I could pop up the photo and say one of these men is Milner – your guess is as good as mine. I am still waiting to hear back from the Saint John Free Public Library, talked to Keith today was wondering where he was working! He’s such a nice fellow, says he will be happy to check into my EMA Vaughan social status background query. I’d like to know so I can make a connection for her traveling to all the earlier ALA conferences when MKI did not. It’s just a hunch. I’ll check in near the end of the month with updates on everything, just will be writing away…
02.24.08
photo permissions
I’ve heard back from the Public Records Office and Archives in PEI, they are letting me use the photos of the PEI bookmobile and the one of Ms. Bateson et. al. at the Library Institute for a small fee. Rhianna at Mt. A has tracked down a photo of Milner in a class of 1864. Unfortunately, there are 5 students in the photo and only one has a name — so Milner could be any one of the four and I’ve never seen another photo that I can verify. She’s tracking down a potential ancestor she knows and will let me know. Carnegie Corporation of NY is letting me quote from the 3 letters between Dr. Patterson and Andrew via his secretary I found on Reel 69. I sent another request for use of the lovely photo of Mr. Carnegie on the CCNY website, but that might be pushing it. all of these charge a small fee, but it’s worth it.
box 5
Thar be treasure in this box! I hadn’t looked too closely at this one as it seemed to contain published and unpublished MKI writings that I had already seen elsewhere. But when I discovered there was a draft finding aid (did I mention this before? Wendy found it on the KR computer, Rhianna must have worked on it) the listings in the box looked a lot more interesting. So I dig through it on Thursday — what treasures! The only thing that was disappointing was the note about photographs that seem to be missing. They may have been moved to another collection and I will ask about this next time. In any case, I found some fabulous articles about the bookmobiles I had never seen before (of course with no date and no clue as to what paper they are from! One seems to be St. John NB…should be easy enough to track down based on the dates of the bookmobiles). The photo on the NB article has a shot of the Acadia bookmobiles I had never seen before! I thought only the one existed. Other treasures in this box include the missing schedule of stops of Bookmobile II (I only had that of I up to this point, and that surfaced in Mrs. Horton’s papers for some reason). MKI had some nice promotional material made for the bookmobiles, I’ve scanned a lot to use in the image presentation at CLA.
02.14.08
all history, all the time
With the other project research complete and CAUBO finished and out of my hands, I am looking forward to concentrating on the history projects again. Note to self — for next sabbatical please focus on one thing. In any case, I think it was a good experience overall. I taught myself many new research methods and am becoming a better application writer, or at least, getting used to writing them. I no longer have reservations about asking for money anymore either! After applying for ethics board approval three times, including supplemental instances like having to whip up a consent for Nick’s transcription work, has all been a great learning experience.
Cecilia is in tomorrow afternoon so I’ll be heading in too. I’d like to scan a few things and transfer various tiffs to jpgs for use as my visual backdrop while I read my paper. I sent the PEI Archives a message today asking for the use the demonstration bookmobile photo that Ms. Bateson ran from 1933 to 1936. It was printed in vol. III of the History of the Book in Canada, it’s also in the 2006 Herstory calendar.
I almost forgot. The Carnegie Corporation of New York sent me reel 69 — Grants to Colleges with Acadia the first of the lot. I thought I might find something from MKI, although I suspect any request she sent in 1918 was lost in the shuffle when Mr. Carnegie died in 1919. I’ve been reading Free to All and it also seems that the Trustees were already rethinking their funding structure as early as 1915 and may still have been upset at Dr. Cutten’s request in 1912 for a library endowment of $25,000. This, by the way, was news to me and I’ve never seen this come up except in the reel. I copied the letter but it seems there is a page missing. I hope that was just me and not the reel, I will look one more time tomorrow before sending it back. I have a letter ready to fax to CCNY tomorrow requesting permission to quote (yes, you have to get permission and then send the citation before it is published).
Since I’m back to library history again — both Acadia and Maritime — I have looked at what I have written so far and realized that I have to cut most of it out for CLA and put in an expanded history of the Libraries at Acadia. I suppose when I started writing I thought I had an entire session (1 1/2 hours) to fill rather than 30 mins! Once again it’s time to focus on the task at hand.
