New & Noteworthy Collections

Not too much is known about the life of Verena Ruegg. The things we know can be counted in one hand, perhaps two, but definitely no more than three: She was born in San Francisco, CA. She attended Chouinard Art institute, and then Otis Art Institute. She participated in the 1932 Summer Olympics, competing in the Art Competitions for the United States. Her house was destroyed in a fire in 1939, but her husband, Fred Robinson, made every effort to save her paintings. The next year, her husband was killed by a car while out walking the family dog, Rags. She died in 1973.

Those are the few facts we have on her life. However, this collection contains 139 boxes (83.8 linear feet!) filled with a trove of Ruegg’s work. These items consist of sketches, paintings, etchings, lithographs, as well as programs and newspaper clippings, the majority relating to the ballet performances she attended.

Here are just a few of the treasures Ruegg has created. Definitely more than three handfuls:

(Click on each image to enlarge.)

- Christine

This Friday marks the start of the 65th annual Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race, the world’s largest international yacht race. Organized in 1947 by the Newport Ocean Sailing Association as a “just-for-fun” race for sailors returning from World War II, the Race to Ensenada has since attracted “thousands of well-known racers, fun-seeking novices and celebrities from around the world.”

With all the excitement around this year’s Ensenada, we here in Special Collections & Archives thought it would be appropriate to share a few highlights from the records of the Newport Ocean Sailing Association, which are currently being processed and described by our intern Luke Williams, a library science graduate student from San Jose State University.

In 1949, NOSA began to plan and publicize the Ensenada race in earnest, creating a formal entry form and getting a feature story in the June 1948 issue of Yachting magazine.

(Click on each image to enlarge.)

Newport Harbor to Ensenada International Yacht Race entry form, front cover, 1949. From the Newport Ocean Sailing Association records, MS-R152.

"Entry fee: $22.50." Newport Harbor to Ensenada International Yacht Race entry form, 1949. From the Newport Ocean Sailing Association records, MS-R152.

"As a result of their efforts, the first Annual Governors' Race from Newport Harbor, Cal., to Ensenada, Mexico (130 miles) was an outstanding success." From Yachting magazine, June 1948, page 81. From the Newport Ocean Sailing Association records, MS-R152.

The public service staff of Special Collections and Archives work closely with researchers daily. As a new feature of this blog, we will be sharing stories about research in Special Collections and Archives that yielded successful outcomes. We hope to further expose the wide variety of research that our collections support and to encourage others to ask us for assistance. You can reach us at spcoll@uci.edu or 949-824-3947.

SUCCESS STORY 7

WHO:  Rex W. Douglass, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Politics, Princeton University

THE CHALLENGE:  Mr. Douglass describes his research topic in this way: “With the dominant form of political violence on the planet becoming civil wars, particularly irregular civil wars, it is important to understand how government offers of amnesty and rewards to rebel defectors might promote conflict resolution.”  He was interested in the United States/Republic of Vietnam defector program during the Vietnam War. In particular he was interested in the “Joseph M. Carrier collection on the Chieu Hoi Program and Vietnamese Conflict, 1958-1992” (MS-SEA001).

Dr. Joseph Carrier with Christina Woo (Southeast Asian Archive Librarian).

ASSISTANCE PROVIDED: When Mr. Douglass inquired about the collection, we sent him the location of the full finding aid, pointing out areas where there might be relevant materials for his research. We also sent him to our “Visitor Information” guide, which includes information about local airports, transportation, housing options, and local interest information. We pulled material of relevance to Mr. Douglass and had that material ready for him upon arrival. His research interests were broader than we anticipated, and he determined that he wanted to look at the full collection of 67 boxes.  We arranged for him to spend additional hours in the Reading Room to

complete this task. His work with the collection revealed invaluable materials for his research. We offered to facilitate a meeting with Joseph Carrier, who lives in the area.

POSITIVE RESOLUTION:  Rex Douglass told us that he had visited numerous archives in his research, and that our assistance had been unique in comparison to others he had received. When he completed his research here, he wrote to us to share the following:

“I am writing in regards to a recent trip to the UCI Special Collections and Archives. In the course of my research, I was expertly assisted by Stephen MacLeod, Andrew Jones, Michelle Light, and Christina Woo. They went above and beyond the call of duty. Selected examples include: helpful advice and research in communications prior to my visit, having materials pulled and ready at my arrival, a thorough introduction to the SEA collection, making extra research time available for my brief trip, and actually arranging for me to interview the creator of the collection I used. I greatly appreciated the assistance and having been made to feel at home at UCI. Mr. Carrier performed extensive research on the United States/Republic of Vietnam defector program during the Vietnam War. His files are a unique window into the background of that program, what led some of civilians and Viet Cong fighters to make the often dangerous decision to switch to the government side, and what it was like to be a social scientist working in wartime environment when the field was still in its infancy.”

MORAL:  Public Services staff in Special Collections and Archives make a strong effort to understand the researcher’s needs at the beginning of the research process and throughout the research process. The work we did with Rex Douglas is a good example of how this philosophy can support positive results.

The Southeast Asian Archive of the University of California, Irvine Libraries documents experiences of the refugees and immigrants from the former Indochina – Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam – who have resettled in the United States since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. To learn more about the collection, see a tour of the archive, communicate with others about the archive, learn about upcoming exhibits and events, we recommend that you follow the Southeast Asian Archive on Facebook.

On April 24, the Spring exhibit in the Langson Library will open. Hope of Freedom: Project Ngoc’s Decade of Dedication chronicles the history and wide-reaching impact of Project Ngoc (Project Pearl), a UCI student-led humanitarian organization whose decade of activism raised awareness and support for the plight of Vietnamese refugees detained in camps in Asia after the Vietnam War. The exhibit highlights materials from the Project Ngoc Records (MS-SEA016). The opening will begin at 5:30pm and will feature a talk by Manuel N. Gómez, Ph.D, Vice Chancellor Emeritus, Student Affairs, titled Student Activism and Social Justice: A History of Social Change. The program will include introductions by Interim University Librarian Lorelei Tanji and Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Thomas Parham, Ph.D.

Since the end of the Vietnam Conflict in 1975 a large number of refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam have come to the United States, and especially to California. In order to document their experiences in a new culture, the UC Irvine Libraries established the Southeast Asian Archive in 1987. The Archive’s collection strengths include materials relating to the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees and immigrants in the United States, refugee camp and other experiences of the “boat people” and land refugees, and the development and progress of new ethnic communities. There is a special focus on materials pertaining to Southeast Asians in Orange County and California. Holdings are in English and in Southeast Asian languages (primarily Vietnamese), and include books, periodicals, refugee orientation materials, government documents, reports and surveys, newspaper clippings, video and audio recordings, personal and institutional papers, posters, photographs, ephemera, paintings, and dissertations and theses

More about the Southeast Asian Archive

As today is opening day (not counting the games played in Japan) for the 2012 Major League Baseball season, we here in the UCI Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives wanted to pay tribute to America’s national pastime. Now, talking baseball with your colleagues can soon run foul, as team loyalty runs deep for some of us.  One way to see the game from a different perspective than die hard team loyalty is to score it. It is not uncommon to hear from those who are not baseball fans about how long the baseball season is or how boring a game can be. Not so–especially when every pitch, every at bat, every caught or missed ball, every wild throw matters. When you score a game, you watch everything and every game counts. Best of all, you get to judge for yourself if a missed catch or a wild throw was an error or not. Each scorer documents a game in his or her own way and the intricacies of each game is recorded for history.

The McPherson family papers and photographs (MS-R006) is a rich archival collection that documents an Orange County, CA family from 1853 to 1964. William McPherson (1885-1964) was born in Orange County and attended Santa Ana High School from 1900 until his graduation in June 1904. A 1903 baseball score book from the collection documents some the games for Santa Ana High School for that year, as William McPherson played for the team (left fielder). It is not known who scored the games but my guess it was either his brother, Vincent, or his father, Stephen. [Note: the McPherson family papers and photographs (MS-R006) is currently being processed and a revised finding aid will be available in May 2012]

This is a Spalding’s Pocket Score Book, published by A. G. Spalding & Brothers. Below you’ll see McPherson’s name in the line up for Santa Ana. Throughout the score book, you also may recognize some other Orange County names such as Meats and Spurgeon, which most of us today just think of as streets. The game that is shown below took place on March 28, 1903 between Santa Ana High School and Long Beach High School. By the way, Albert Goodwill Spalding (1850-1915) was a pitcher who began playing baseball in 1866 and played Major League Baseball from 1871-1878. He founded the now well-known sporting goods company in 1876 and was inducted posthumously into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.

(Click on each image to enlarge)

Spalding's Pocket Score Book, 1903. From the McPherson family papers and photographs (MS-R006).

Loose endpaper from the Spalding's Pocket Score Book, 1903. Note how someone changed the lettering. From the McPherson family papers and photographs (MS-R006).

Pastedown endpaper from the Spalding's Pocket Score Book, 1903. From the McPherson family papers and photographs (MS-R006).

McPherson is listed second. From the McPherson family papers and photographs (MS-R006).

Oh, and one more thing…GO SOX!

In an earlier post, we introduced our efforts to provide researchers with access to unprocessed collections. We will continue to share brief information about recently “exposed” collections here in the “New & Noteworthy Collections” blog. Below is information about a group of collections from the Southeast Asian Archive:

Wayne Wright Collection (MS-SEA018) is primarily comprised of Cambodian newspapers and magazines, and printed material documenting Cambodian-American student education. The collection also contains Wayne Wright’s Master of Arts thesis. 
Extent 1.0 linear feet.

Sucheng Chan Interviews and Clippings (MS-SEA037) consists of 82 audio tapes (71 mini-cassettes and 11 cassettes) containing interviews with Cambodian-Americans, conducted by Audrey U. Kim in 1995 and 1996 for the book Not Just Victims: Conversations with Cambodian Community Leaders in the United States published by the University of Illinois in 2003. Also included are approximately 170 newspaper clippings indexed by Sucheng Chan covering 1978-1980, regarding events in Vietnam and Cambodia as well the experiences of refugees from those countries.
Extent 1.2 linear feet (3 boxes).

John Jung Collection on Indochinese Refugee Resettlement Program (MS-SEA039) comprises materials collected by California State University, Long Beach Psychology Professor Emeritus John Jung that document Indochinese refugee resettlement efforts during the mid to late 1970s in California and includes minutes, agendas, handbooks, factsheets, correspondence, newsletters, directories, reports, and anthropological survey materials from the US government and other organizations that were supporting refugee settlement in Southern California.
Extent 0.4 Linear feet (1 box).

With support from the Raymond L. Watson Library Fund, I am now four months into my 15 month appointment processing regional history collections at UCI Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives. Fittingly, I started with the Raymond L. Watson papers (MS-R120), as Watson donated additional materials to his archive. Though I’m still finishing up the remaining processing of the digital component from the collection, an updated finding aid is available until the final version is complete in just a few weeks (estimated April 2012).

"What would you do with 120 square miles of California?" This is the question Watson was trying to answer when he went on the European Planned Community Tour in 1965. The poster, showing Watson in 1965, is from the Raymond L. Watson papers (MS-R120, Series 2. The Irvine Company files)

Watson, former president and CEO of The Irvine Company, began his career with the Company in September 1960 and, with the exception of the years 1977 to 1983, had been involved continuously with the Company in various capacities until his retirement in 2003. As an architect and planner, with both his BA and MA degrees in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley (1951 and 1953, respectively), Watson was enticed by The Irvine Company in 1960 to leave both a great job and a beautiful, newly purchased first home in the Bay area, for the architect’s and planner’s dream of a lifetime–to plan and build a new town, from scratch, right here in sunny Orange County. That “town” would eventually become Irvine, California (incorporated in 1971).

Between 1960 and 1965, Watson had quickly advanced within The Irvine Company, going from Architect Planner, to Manager of Planning, to Vice President of Planning. In autumn of 1965, Watson and Albert Trevino, Jr., then the Chief Planner for The Irvine Company, participated in a tour of planned communities in six European countries–a trip that would help inform and shape The Irvine Company’s  planning and development of it’s landholdings of 93, 000 acres. The European Planned Community Tour took place from September 21 to October 6, 1965. Leaving from Kennedy Airport, most of the attendees flew as a group via SAS to Glasgow, Scotland where they would begin their 15-day journey that would take them from Scotland, to England, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Germany.

Along with Watson and Trevino from The Irvine Company, attendees included Donald Bren (then the President of the Mission Viejo Company);  Ada Louise Huxtable, the newly appointed (in 1963) and first ever architecture critic for The New York Times; L. Garth Huxtable, Industrial Designer (and husband to Ada); writer and journalist Gurney Breckenfeld (and then a Contributing Editor for Time magazine) who went on to write Columbia and the new cities (1971); and writer/producer/filmmaker/preservation movement supporter Gordon Hyatt, then of CBS television. Architects, community planners, builders and developers, economists, writers, and financiers from across the United States, with many from Southern California, participated in the tour.

Official itinerary. From the Raymond L. Watson papers (MS-R120, Series 4. Subject files on city planning and planned communities)

Official itinerary. From the Raymond L. Watson papers (MS-R120, Series 4. Subject files on city planning and planned communities)

Tours of planned communities and new towns included Cumbernauld (14 miles from Glasgow), one of the first designated new towns that broke from Ebenezer Howard’s garden city model; new towns Welwyn Garden City (built in 1920 and one of the first new towns in the UK) and Stevenage (then regarded as one of the best of the Garden Cities by critics), both near London; the now notorious Brutalist structure Park Hill flats in Sheffield; tours of Vällingby, Farsta, Bredäng, and Satra near Stockholm; and a tour of the new town Tapiola Garden City in Helsinki, among others. For each of the tours, lectures and talks by city planners and architects either preceded or followed the tours. Discussions over cocktails in the evenings were also often scheduled, as the tour participants stayed at the same hotel.

Although the European Planned Community Tour materials in the Watson papers are just a fraction of the collection, they are rich with information as they include detailed itineraries, lists of participants and biographical information, informational brochures for some of the sites visited, biographical notes on tour speakers, and detailed writings on the sites visited. Here’s a few of the brochures for Cumbernauld in Scotland and Tapiola Garden City in Finland: (click on the images to enlarge)

Cumbernauld brochure, circa 1965. From the Raymond L. Watson papers (MS-R120, Series 4. Subject files on city planning and planned communities)

Cumbernauld brochure, circa 1965. Basic plan. From the Raymond L. Watson papers (MS-R120, Series 4. Subject files on city planning and planned communities)

Tapiola Garden City fold out brochure, circa 1965. From the Raymond L. Watson papers (MS-R120, Series 4. Subject files on city planning and planned communities)

The public service staff of Special Collections and Archives work closely with researchers daily. As a new feature of this blog, we will be sharing stories about research in Special Collections and Archives that yielded successful outcomes. We hope to further expose the wide variety of research that our collections support and to encourage others to ask us for assistance. You can reach us at spcoll@uci.edu or 949-824-3947.

SUCCESS STORY 4

WHO:  Christine Eubank, UCI Ph.D. Candidate in History

THE CHALLENGE:  Christine Eubank has been working with collections in Special Collections and Archives since 2005. Her research, exploring “suburban feminism and liberal women’s political activism in Orange County during the 1960s and 1970s,” started when Christine was a graduate student at CSU Fullerton writing her M.A. thesis on a similar topic. She was originally focused on the Vivian Hall papers, 1943-1995 (MS-R008) in our collection and came here from CSUF to use that collection. Several years ago Christine was accepted into the graduate program in History at UCI.

LIBRARY INTERVENTION:  Christine expanded her research into other areas of local activism when she began her dissertation work here at UCI. We suggested that she might also want to look at women who were involved in local environmental activism, as well as political action organizations in Orange County that had strong women in leadership roles. We suggested the League of Women Voters of Orange County records, 1957-2005 (MS-R088), the  Helen Lotos files on Orange County women’s organizations, 1968-1988 (MS-R074), the Mitsuye Yamada papers, 1940 – 2005 (MS-R071), the Women For: Orange County records, 1984 – 2003 (MS-R069), and the “Gay and Lesbian Community Servuces Center of Orange County Records (MS-R118).” We also suggested smaller collections of relevance that were unprocessed, but that might be useful to her, e.g. Lynn M. Osen papers, 1952-2000 (MS-R130), Joan Ariel files on women’s political activism. 1970 – 1992 (MS-R111), and a few others. “The collection at UCI is one of the richest archival sources for my research,” Christine notes, “and the entire staff has been so helpful all these years that it really feels like a collaborative project at this point.”

Handmade copper and enamel buttons made and sold in the early 1970s by Helen Thomas to raise funds for the Orange County chapter of the National Women's Political Caucus. Small buttons were $1.50 and $2.50 for large. Vivian Hall Papers (MS-R008).

POSITIVE RESOLUTION:  As Christine worked her way through these papers, we also facilitated several meetings between her and women represented in these collections, e.g. Helen Lotos, Mitsuye Yamada.  Christine has indicated that she would be very interested in giving us those interviews when she completes her dissertation. Christine’s research expanded beyond her first area of focus, to include other areas of activism that reflected strong leadership by women in the county during the 1960s and 1970s.  We also processed and facilitated access to several of the collections that were unprocessed when she first began using the collection. Her dissertation is now close to completion, and will reflect the exhaustive research she has done with many collections in our archive.

MORAL:  We strongly value the ability to facilitate connections between the researcher and our collections, This ongoing commitment can help researchers move forward in exciting new areas and helps facilitate connections toward expanding our archival collections.

The public service staff of Special Collections and Archives work closely with researchers daily. As a new feature of this blog, we will be sharing stories about research in Special Collections and Archives that yielded successful outcomes. We hope to further expose the wide variety of research that our collections support and to encourage others to ask us for assistance. You can reach us at spcoll@uci.edu or 949-824-3947.

SUCCESS STORY 3

WHO:  Martin McQuillan, Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Analysis and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University, London .

THE CHALLENGE:  Martin began his research on the Paul de Man papers at UCI with a view to editing a collection of de Man’s teaching notebooks covering a 30 year pedagogical career.  From the outside, through the UCI finding aid to the Paul de Man Papers (MS-C004), this looked to be the most promising part of an already extensively explored archive.  The challenge was to locate promising, underutilized texts by de Man.

ASSISTANCE PROVIDED:  Providing access to both processed and unprocessed parts of the collection, we worked closely with Professor McQuillan, over several visits, to locate materials for his research.

POSITIVE RESOLUTION:  As Professor McQullian stated to us after this research was completed: “By working my way through the boxes of the collection I discovered a number of fascinating texts and archival problems that have led to a range of different publications and activities.  The most challenging was an unpublished monograph manuscript from 1972, ‘Textual Allegories’, which was later rewritten by de Man to be included in some of his most famous work.  Working with staff in Special Collections and a funded post-doctoral research assistant, Dr. Erin Obodiac, this manuscript was brought to publication on-line in both type-script and verso form.  A similarly imaginative solution was found, with the assistance of the UCI team, to publish on-line de Man’s edition of ‘The Portable Rousseau’ which became impossible to publish in his lifetime due to the size of the manuscript.  Working with the Special Collections team I have also produced a collection of unpublished texts by de Man, ‘The Post-Romantic Predicament’, as well as the original volume ‘The Notebooks of Paul de Man’, which will ultimately contained many fascinating items as well as some of the teaching material. This work also gave rise to an international conference at UCI on this research, the papers from which will be published in the volume ‘The Political Archive of Paul de Man’. My initial, limited project became a much larger one, funded by the British Academy and the the Arts and Humanities Research Council, with the support, guidance and creativity of the Special Collections team at UCI.”

MORAL:  Ongoing efforts to know our collections and the needs of our researchers were key to our support of the research of Professor McQuillan.

In an earlier post, we introduced our efforts to provide researchers with access to unprocessed collections. We will continue to share brief information about recently “exposed” collections here in the “New & Noteworthy Collections” blog. Below is information about a group of collections related to the Art History and the Performing Arts. For additional information contact Special Collections and Archives at spcoll@uci.edu, (949)824-3947.

Can-can dancers in Col. W. de Basil's Ballet Russe at the Philharmonic Auditorium

Verena Ruegg Collection (MS-P007)is a collection of sketches of dancers on paper from 1941-1994.

Many major dance companies and notable individual dancers around the world are portrayed. 
Extent 39.6 Linear feet (60 boxes)

June Wayne Exhibit Catalogs and Publications (MS-P051) comprises exhibit catalogs and exhibit related ephemera documenting the work of artist June Wayne from the 1950s through the late 1990s. Also included are journal articles on Wayne and her artwork, some articles by Wayne and her 1999 curriculum vitae. In 1960, June Wayne first gained notoriety as the founder and director of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Hollywood. She worked with artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Rufino Tamayo, and Louise Nevelson.  By the end of the 1960s, Tamarind had become an international force in the printmaking arts. June Wayne’s own lithographs are widely recognized as masterpieces of the medium. She was also involved in the design of tapestries, in the Feminist Art movement, and in arts education. She died in 2011 at her studio on Tamarind Avenue in Hollywood.
Extent 0.6 linear feet (1 box).

Claire Adams Photographs (MS-P008) consists primarily of fifty-four photographs of silent movie actress Claire Adams depicted in many of her forty six silent films. Production companies include Paramount, Universal, and Jesse G. Hampton Productions. The  collection also includes studio portrait photographs, a number of clippings, and two serial issues. Claire Adams’s best known film was The Big Parade (1926), the second largest grossing silent film in  cinematic history, after The Birth of a Nation. It was directed by King Vidor and Adams starred alongside John Gilbert. Perhaps her most memorable role came in 1920 as Barbara, the undercover detective who humanizes the crippled crime boss played by Lon Chaney in The Penalty.
Extent 0.3 linear feet (1 box and 1 oversize folder).

Kurt Bergel Collection of Viennese Dance, Theater, and Music Programs (MS-P010) consists of a small number of German-language programs from Vienna for dance, theatre, opera and music concerts, 1917-1935.
Extent 0.4 linear feet (1 box).

Jennifer Fisher Collection of Dance Ephemera and Promotional Materials (MS-P045) comprises dance ephemera and promotional materials collected by University of California, Irvine associate professor of dance Jennifer Fisher that documents dance performance and education in Southern California between 1985 and 2006. 
Extent 8.0 linear feet (8 boxes).