Dear Friends of SCU Archives & Special Collections,
Welcome back! We are looking forward to a busy new academic year in the Archives & Special Collections department. As we gear up for classes, we would like to share our department news, as there have been a lot of changes in the past few months with new staff, new students and new acquisitions.
Extended Reading Room Hours for 2023/24!
As we approach full staffing, we are adding more reading room hours for Fall Quarter: Monday through Thursday, 10 am to 5 pm, and Friday 10 am to 3 pm! We still ask that researchers make an appointment so we can retrieve materials from the vault, so please reach out in advance if possible.
We are looking forward to teaching with our materials this fall, so if you haven’t yet booked a time for your class, please reach out! We are happy to work with instructors to teach students about using primary sources, archives, rare books and other special collections materials with a visit to the reading room.
Meet the New A&SC Staff & Students!
Monica Keane, Archives & Special Collections Librarian
Some of you may have already met Monica Keane, our new Archives & Special Collections Librarian, who focuses on public services. She started working at Santa Clara in March 2023, answering reference questions about our collections, working with researchers in the reading room, and supporting SCU classes with rare and unique materials. Monica especially enjoys delving into the collections to support arts and humanities research. She received her MLIS at SJSU in 2020, and also has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Davis. She has lived in San Jose for the past 9 years with her husband and two daughters.
Mansi Sharma, Student Assistant
Welcome to Mansi Sharma, our newest A&SC student worker! Mansi is working on her Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology here at Santa Clara University. She is an international student originally from Bengaluru, India.
Collection Spotlights
Faculty Publications
A&SC continues to collect new faculty publications! Faculty are invited to deposit their new research publications with the department, either online with ScholarCommons or physically with the archives. For deposits of digital publications, faculty can contact Ray Scroggin. For physical copies, we collect faculty books in their first edition and inquiries can be sent to A&SC director Nadia Nasr. Click here to view a list of faculty titles added to the A&SC in 2022/23. Also, if you would like to view a selection of these recent additions, there is a book display with faculty publications that is regularly updated next to the 3rd floor elevator in LLC!
Dante Additions
Did you know that A&SC has over two dozen editions of Dante’s Divina Comedia? We have miniature and oversized editions; copies in Italian, English and French; scholarly critical works, fine press editions and facsimiles of particularly distinctive copies. We have recently added two more to the collection, George Cochrane’s La Divina Commedia–The New Manuscript, a contemporary handwritten and illustrated edition of Dante Alighieri’s 14th century poem in English translation. Cochrane uses a contemporary graphic novel style while also engaging with the long tradition of art inspired by the Divine Comedy. A&SC has the Collector Edition in a Boldoni binding, autographed by the book designer, the artist and the publisher. We also have recently acquired a facsimile by Salerno Editrice of a richly illustrated Venetian incunable from 1491, Comedia di Dante con figure dipinte, which is held by the Casa di Dante in Rome.
Blog Posts
Campus Rumors: What About those Palm Trees
Have you ever heard the rumor that SCU was paid to change its name with palm trees? This blog post debunks the rumor and gives some campus history about the university in the process.
New Acquisitions: 18th Century Black Authors
This post discusses A&SC’s acquisition of several works to support the teaching of 18th century Black authors, including Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) and Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780). A distinctive feature of these works that is particularly apparent in 18th century publications is their repeated insistence on the authenticity of the writer’s voices and their authority over their own writing–both a defense against racist conceptions of Black people and an argument for the abolition of slavery.
Department News & Projects
Behind the Scenes
Student assistant Ukeme-Abasi Bassey has completed a major project to rearrange materials and correct their identistrips in the flats section of the vault! This has led to us rediscovering exceptional features of many of our largest format rare books. Our cataloger, Billie Knepper, also used the opportunity to give many books enhanced records to improve access and descriptions. Several books were identified for preservation, getting new custom boxes made by student assistant Danish Hussain.
Digital Humanities Fellows
A&SC is excited to continue working with the Santa Clara University Center for the Arts & Humanities Fellows program for Digital Humanities and highlight our collections! Working with A&SC and our faculty partner in the English Department, Dr. Kirstyn Leuner, the CAH Student Fellow will continue the project, “Digital Finding Tools for the Tenacious Box Set of Zines.” This project catalogs, indexes and increases the digital accessibility of the Tenacious Zine, which is held by A&SC as a boxed set with a complete run of the 44 zine issues. The zines consist of essays, images, poems and letters by incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women that were published and edited by Victoria Law between 2002 to 2020. The initial research findings and index created by last year’s fellow, Maddie Moran ‘23, is available as an A&SC LibGuide, Tenacious Zine Box Set Catalog. This work will be continued by this year’s fellow, Natalia Cantu. We are looking forward to working with Natalia!
Current Exhibitions
A&SC librarian Monica Keane curated a small exhibit on Fr. Hubbard in the gallery cases facing the main library that will continue to be displayed in the fall. The exhibition was an extension of an outreach session with director Nadia Nasr for the Alumni Center staff, who were organizing a summer travel tour of Alaska. Father Bernard Hubbard, S.J., was a Santa Clara University lecturer and Alaska explorer in the early 20th century. The display includes photographs, letters and artifacts from the Hubbard Collection, as well as special collections books using Hubbard photographs. It also has a QR code that links to Hubbard’s documentary, Alaska’s Silver Millions. The exhibit will remain up through September, so see it while you can!
We are also celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month from September through October with an exhibition on Mexico that features rare books and facsimiles containing Nahuatl, as well as early Mexican imprints. The exhibit will be in one of the display cases on the third floor of the library near the elevator. More information is coming soon!