Adventures in Processing: The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University

2010-02-23T10:10:00.000-08:00

Rediscovering Collections

With the help of some fantastic students, I've been reprocessing the Lehman Collections, which consist of nearly 1,000 feet of material in twelve collections relating to New York Governor and Senator Herbert H. Lehman. Among these is the collection of Herbert Lehman's wife, Edith Altschul Lehman.

Earlier archivists, asked to provide a small paragraph as a collection description, focused on Edith Lehman's role as the wife of a political figure. Edith herself considered her marriage and the support of her husband to be the most important aspect of her life. However, in updating the finding aid to reflect our current practice of using scope and content notes, I found that much of the collection focuses on Edith's own work. A philanthropist, she was involved in many New York organizations and initiatives, including the Henry Street Settlement and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. She had a long association with the Mount Sinai Medical Center, which began when she organized a social service committee to care for the family needs of hospitalized patients.

One of the endeavors best represented in the collection is Edith Lehman's work with the Play Schools Association. A reflection of the larger play movement, the Association promoted the theory that plays is essential to the emotional, social, and physical development of children. It worked with schools and daycares to create opportunities for creative play and held conferences for teachers and psychologists. Edith Lehman was one of the organization's founders in 1917 and remained involved for over fifty years, serving as president and as Chairman of the Board from 1966 until her death in 1976. The collection contains correspondence and reports that illustrate the organization's place in the history of education and psychology.

In celebration of their 50^th wedding anniversary, Edith and Herbert Lehman built the Lehman Children's Zoo in Central Park, which featured an elaborate playground designed by architect Aymar Embury. The collection contains some of his original sketches, including the whale that was the zoo's centerpiece. Children entered the park through the whale's mouth:

The zoo was renovated in 1997 and renamed the Tisch Zoo, but the bronze Lehman gates still stand at the entrance, and the zoo continues to encourage interaction and play.

Reprocessing these large collections has been very rewarding, and I hope that the new finding aids will highlight the wide variety of material they contain.

Carolyn Smith
Archivist

Arsenic and Old Wallpaper

2009-02-25T12:07:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of working with the collection I am currently processing is the array of interesting and completely unanticipated material types that keep showing up. I am working on the papers of Charles F. Chandler-- a chemist, chemical educator, and early president of the New York Metropolitan Board of Health. Chandler kept extensive subject files related to different chemical and scientific topics of general interest to him or directly related to his work as a professor or public health reformer. These subject files contain the standard clippings, notes, and publications; but many also contain things like chemicals, swatches of dye samples, and- my favorite so far- a cache of wallpaper samples tinted with arsenic-based green dyes.

As I've learned doing some background research on these wallpaper samples, throughout the 19^th century two common green pigments-- Scheele's Green and Paris, or Emerald, Green-- used arsenical compounds to create their vibrant yellow and green hues. These arsenical pigments were in common use in paints and as dyes in many household goods including writing paper, clothing, and, most notoriously, wallpaper. In fact, it seems that many of William Morris's earliest and most famous wallpaper designs such as his "Trellis" contained the poison in varying degrees (unfortunately we don’t have any Morris samples in the Chandler collection).

Many of the wallpaper samples in the Chandler collection, collected and analyzed as part of a Board of Health study into the potential public health risks of arsenic in wallpapers, have the actual results of the chemical analysis written right on the sample itself so we can see exactly how much arsenic each sample contains. Though Chandler may have been thinking about these objects as lab samples, they are also works of art-- some are hand painted and many contain complex designs or interesting colors and patterns. Having this aesthetic object in the collection and then to have poison content recorded at the bottom of the sample is a great reminder about the use value of archives-- though these were originally lab samples and intended only to be tested for arsenic, now they can tell researchers interesting and complex stories not only about arsenic or public health, but also about the history of design, domestic furnishings, and Victorian tastes and aesthetics.

There is still some debate about how toxic arsenic in this form really is -- Chandler, for one, was unconvinced that arsenic in household goods was an actual public health concern (and the library's OSHA representative agrees that with proper storage and handling it is safe to keep these materials in the collection). However, there are plenty of anecdotes about the deleterious effects of the green dye-- arsenical greens are rumored to be responsible for nineteenth century women being poisoned by their dresses, Van Gogh's madness, Monet's blindness, and one theory even postulates that Napoleon may have died of wallpaper poisoning. While I am not a toxicologist, I do know that I wore gloves for weeks after being surprised by this file, and that I will never read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wallpaper" in quite the same way again!

2009-02-15T18:05:00.000-08:00

Behind-the-Scenes

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is home to some 14 miles of manuscripts, personal papers, and records. One can find literary manuscripts from the 14^th century to the papers of authors Herman Wouk and Erica Jong; archives as varied as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Random House, and NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and Amnesty International-USA; the archives of Columbia University and its esteemed faculty, such as Meyer Schapiro and Lionel Trilling. All are available for research, yet there is much more to make accessible.

We welcome you to explore the behind-the-scenes world of archives, personal papers, and manuscripts. Our staff of professional archivists will introduce you to the collections on which they are working, explore the processes and techniques used to make archival collections available to scholars, and bring to the fore collection highlights and interesting discoveries.

Susan Hamson
Curator of Manuscripts and University Archivist