Archives
Questions & Answers
KATHLEEN DELANEY
DAN DiLANDRO
Kathleen DeLaney and Dan DiLandro are assistant and visiting assistant librarians, respectively, in the University Archives.
Where and what is the University Archives?
KD: The University Archives is located in 420 Capen Hall on the North Campus. As we tell our patrons and guests, finding us may be the most challenging effort of your research. (Hint: take the elevators INSIDE the Undergraduate Library to the fourth floor. We're directly opposite the elevators. Find the room with the vintage orange rug, and you've arrived.) The sign on the wall outside the door indicates "Special Collections." We share the Reading Room and stacks area with Poetry/Rare Books, but we are two separate library units, each with distinct collection missions. Since its founding in 1846, the university has been a vital institution, not only to the academic community, but to this region and the rest of New York State. Very early on, we developed an international reputation because of the scholarship and research in which faculty and students were engaged. Because of that, we have a rich history of documentation from the original founding of the university, right up to yesterday when we accessioned the latest edition of The Spectrum. The Archives collects the history of the university; that is, the non-current documentation of its life. We are not a records retention center, meaning items such as student records and transcripts, personnel files and other "vital statistics" of the university are not here. We have administrative histories of every UB president (except President Greiner because he is still a seated president), departmental histories and faculty papers and campus publications. We have more than 12,000 linear feet of resources, 800,000 photographs, videos, films, ephemera and reference materials.
How does the Archives differ from other library units?
DL: Most other libraries will pride themselves on the topical nature of the information that they can present, bringing the most up-to-date data and information to their patrons. While historical research is, of course, highlighted within their collections, it's as if their holdings represent the culmination of knowledge on a given topic. At the Archives, the focus is on the continuum of information—tracing a subject from its inception to its end or to the present, whichever comes first.
What is the most frequently asked question you encounter?
DL: While specific dates and names always are in-demand reference questions, the most desirable document we have is, strangely, the university salary roster, a listing of employees' pay, made accessible under state mandate.
Tell me about the some of the major collections in the UB Archives.
KD: Our largest collection is, of course, the History of the University. That is composed of all of the administrative histories, departmental histories, publications, photographs and whatever it is that annotates the history of the university. Two of our "blue chip" special collections are the Frank Lloyd Wright/Darwin D. Martin Collection and The Papers of the Ecumenical Task Force of the Love Canal, or the Love Canal Collection. These are highly regarded worldwide. The FLW/DDM Collection contains detailed correspondence, construction drawings and notes, photographs and family papers, among others related to what most architectural experts would say is Wright's masterpiece—The Darwin D. Martin Complex on Jewett Parkway in Buffalo. For a while in the early 1970s, the Archives actually was housed in the Martin House. It originally had been purchased by the university as a home for President Martin Meyerson, but it eventually became more of a location for special events (all of this was prior to the building of the North Campus). Now, as the Darwin Martin House Restoration Corporation moves forward with the complete restoration to the 1907 historic design of the complex, we are busily engaged with architects, docents, New York State Parks officials and Buffalo/Niagara tourism boosters (oh, yes, and television, radio and print media) to focus on the research elements necessary to create what the City of Buffalo is hoping to be a beacon of regional heritage tourism. The Love Canal Collection has the distinction of being sought by more than six doctoral researchers from multiple disciplines in less than five years. It is composed of resources primarily from one organization, but there are also six distinct other collections that came to us as a result of this. The Love Canal toxic waste disaster will commemorate its 25th anniversary in 2003. Already, environmentalists, health professionals, public officials, grass roots community organizations and religious groups are contacting us to support their commemorative events by permitting them to research our collection. Last summer, the Open University in the United Kingdom asked us to provide information for development of an environmental curricula, and recently, the EPA contacted us for documents that no longer were in the agency's files.
What are some of the challenges faced by the Archives, including electronic access?
DL: Beyond the usual—and nearly universal—issues of staffing and funding, the biggest challenges relate to archives' and libraries' most obvious mission: to provide organization and access to materials. With such a bulk of materials, and more coming in every day, it is essential to correctly process any given collection (that is, arrange the material into a coherent whole) and then provide descriptive cues to our patrons and the public. To either arrange the material into a logical intellectual framework of series and chronologies or to provide a link in the University Catalog or other database is ultimately meaningless; it's essential to have a "good," usable collection as well as the markers that will lead patrons to it. Too, more and more, there are electronic formats that must be properly archived. Keep in mind that archives generally houses an original, unaltered document. With more and more information being created and housed electronically, it's essential that the Archives attempt to capture the information in a form that will remain stable and unalterable. We speak of "life expectancies" of different media and, frighteningly, electronic media—no matter how "cutting edge" they seem at this time—simply have not proven that they might last nearly as long as properly conserved paper or microfilm. With data migration and changes in software and hardware, it's conceivable that even the newest CD technology will not last, in a stable, unalterable form for more than 10 or 20 years.
What are some of the archives' more interesting contents?
KD: Darwin D. Martin's paper clip collection. He was an accountant by trade, and at the turn of the 20th century, paper clips were a new convention in business. He researched several styles for the Larkin Company, where he worked and we have them. A minature coffin—a replica of Abraham Lincoln's—collected by Fenton Parke, a Buffalonian whose regional history collection documents widely Buffalo real estate from the 1860s through 1963. A window from the Imperial Hotel in Japan, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was a gift to us. It is currently on a five-city tour throughout the United States, having been sent out in July 2001 and will return to us next summer. Ground-breaking shovels for the Amherst Campus. A manuscript written by Philosophy Professor Peter Hare that was rescued from the wreckage of TWA Flight 800. A UB flag carried by UB alum, Gregory Jarvis, on his ill-fated "Challenger" mission into space.