Stuff is just, like, cool… ya know?

So it’s been a hot sec! We’re entering the last few weeks of the semester, so I’m just chugging along on long term projects like the LP collection inventory (I’m at number 238!) and the Tennessee Williams research guide. I’m still getting intermittent patron requests — like right now I’m trying to figure out how to summarize the contents of the 27ish boxes of David Mamet journals so they can decide whether it’s worth it to fly to Austin and look themselves. Since none of my projects are super urgent, I can help out other interns on days like today, when someone was pulling materials for a class discussing themes of charity in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Because I was in several performances of King Lear with the Shakespeare at Winedale program and conducted research on textual differences in Lear in a class before that, I offered a few leads on materials to pull for the class. We looked at Donald Wolfit’s promptbook from World War II, which had staging, lighting, and director’s notes, as well as Tom Stoppard’s early draft of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear.

Today was a day of a bit of distraction, admittedly… BUT! I found something on my way to the room with the LP collection that seriously blew my mind. I saw a box shaped like the ones that hold hats in the costume collection, but in the Woody Allen collection. Obviously I had to open it up to peek inside. What did I find, but a Woody Allen mask??? At first glance when I lifted the lid, it looked like there was a human head in there, and I almost screamed. Now that box will stare at me every time I walk down the hallway…

I try not to be too hard on myself for spending a little time exploring, because the serendipitous magic of the archives continues to fuel my love for research. I know there will never come a day when I am no longer surprised by something I find in the Ransom Center. It’s an incredible space to work, and I’m so so so lucky to be here.

“Time travels in divers paces with divers persons”

The LP inventory is coming along! I’m at a little over 150 titles catalogued so far. Most of the LPs are kept in protective casings, so taking them out to find the information I need for the spreadsheet is a lot slower than if they all just sat on the shelf. It’s a mystery every time I pull one off the shelf because the tag with the catalog number on it only has the (sometimes incorrect) title of the LP and maybe the artist. I’m able to listen to music or a podcast while I create the inventory, and having the privilege to almost zone out makes coming to the internship such a gift. With classes starting to wrap up, everything is due all of the sudden, and the freedom to listen to something that’s just for myself while also getting the satisfaction of completing a task has been so important to me this week.

Yesterday I attended a workshop for the BDP reflection essay about my internship that I’ll need to write at the end of the semester. The workshop leader guided us through the prompt and encouraged us to begin creating an outline with our ideas as we broke down the ideas. She asked us to consider all the disciplines we come in contact with during our internships and how they work in tandem to teach us new ways of thinking about things. At first I felt reluctant to engage extensively, since it had taken valuable homework time away from me. Then, as I consulted the list of common disciplines that internships in the Museum Studies field engage with, I realized just how many different access points to research the Ransom Center has given me. I’m learning so much about information science, from completing the research guide to answering patron questions to creating an inventory of the LP collection. I’ve become familiar with the finding aids, card catalog, and preliminary inventory lists at the Ransom Center, and I’ll carry that knowledge with me for as long as I continue conducting research.

This internship is teaching me how much I enjoy having diverse tasks to complete. I love having the choice to do research or deep digging in the archives or teaching or calming, almost mindless inventorying. I have so much agency to work on what will feel/be the most productive that day, and that freedom allows me to work hard and not get burned out. I love doing work here because you know what? It hardly ever feels like work.

Endings and Beginnings

Apologies for missing a week! A lot has been happening, and I have some wonderful updates to share! Last week I finished revamping the Oscar Wilde Research Guide! It now contains a list and description of other collections that contain material related to Wilde, as well as a list of the art, photography, visual materials, and library holdings that could be of use to researchers of Wilde. I learned so much information about Wilde and the people he surrounded himself with. So much information, in fact, that the research I’ve done for the guide influenced my choice in topics for a final paper for a class! Lord Alfred Douglas, here I come!

This week I got to teach (my first!) group about Carson McCullers material regarding her play adaptation of her novel, Member of the Wedding. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been pulling materials that seem relevant like letters to her husband, biographies of McCullers, heavily edited drafts of the script, and a letter about censoring the word “pee-pee.” The group is putting on a production of The Member of the Wedding at the Vortex: http://vortexrep.org/productions/ The group was delightful, and we were all able to have a conversation about the materials, using knowledge from many different access points.

Since I finished my long term Oscar Wilde project, my new task is to do the same thing for Tennessee Williams AND to create an inventory of the Theatre Arts LP collection! I’ve gotten through a little over fifty of the LP’s in the collection, and there are definitely some gems. My favorite so far has got to be a live recording of Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall in 1961. So that’s what I’m doing now! I’ll be making my way through the collection and keeping this blog updated!

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

This week I’ve begun looking at the photography and visual materials related to Oscar Wilde. This involves searching the art collections for drawings and paintings done by and of Wilde as well as his family. The Ransom Center contains the only known portrait of Wilde’s mother, Lady Jane Francesca “Speranza” Wilde. From there, I moved to the Theatre Biography Collection. The HRC website will tell you which people they have files for, but there is no finding aid information about what those files contain. This meant I got to go find the Oscar Wilde files and search through to see what the heck was in there. The answer was: a bunch of photos (!!) of Wilde, as well as assorted news clippings and articles about Wilde’s work that his grandson, Merlin Holland, collected. Next I checked out the Fred Fehl and Bob Golby collections. Both were renowned theatre photographers during the 20th century, and the HRC has hundreds of production photos on file because of them. I may or may not have gotten distracted looking at various production photos of As You Like It, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Crucible… Sadly, there were no photos in either of those collections of Wilde plays, but THEN I looked in the Production Photography collection. This collection contained a bunch of pictures of Jane Baxter as Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest as well as a beautiful and giant photo taken during Salomé.

My next step was to check the Edith Evans collection. She actually has three collections containing her material, two of which were compiled by Henry Hurford James and Bryan Forbes. Evans played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest on stage in 1939 and on screen in 1952. All three collections have correspondence from those years of her life, along with a ton of fan letters telling her how amazing her Rosalind was on stage. One woman recounted how her delivery of the Epilogue in As You Like It brought her and her son closer because they could bond over it after the show. I totally didn’t get emotional… I promise…

I know I keep saying this, but I seriously cannot believe how much amazing stuff is here. I took a look at the files for John Wilkes Booth in the Theatre Biography Collection to research for a paper I’m writing, and there are straight up photographs of him while he was an actor. It still blows me away how many boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff the Ransom Center has from all kinds of super famous people! Peter O’Toole, Donald Wolfit, Stella Adler, Tom Stoppard (and his Tony award???), Tennesee Williams, Norman bel Geddes, and Robert De Niro???? Every shift I feel like I need to quote Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl… “this sh** is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.”

Temporal Pockets and Shimmery Trails

I have been trying to release a new post every Friday, but last week was particularly hectic. This week I will try to get back on track. I’ve learned that there are finding aid days, and there are card catalog days. These are not just based on the tasks I’m assigned for a particular day, but also a state of being. A finding aid day is efficient, but I sometimes need to think creatively to get the results I want. A card catalog day enters the realm of the peculiar. It’s that feeling of being at a gas station at 3am or a grocery store at 11pm or an airport at 5am. I enter a temporal pocket in which time no longer feels linear but instead moves in waves. Flipping through snippets of works and correspondence feels like I’m crafting a kaleidoscope of stories, mere fragments as fractals. Alone, each card represents a body of work, but together they carry an amalgamated meaning as well. Some cards can be read on their own as mini poems or short stories. On card catalog days, during which I somehow consistently forget my headphones, the task at hand requires minimal brain activity. This almost limbo creates a space to find creativity and magic in the mundane.

Today I looked in the stacks for the potentially relevant card catalog entries about Oscar Wilde. Because the cards give little information about the contents of letters and works, I have to think critically about who is writing to whom and consider how titles might be relevant to aspects of Wilde’s life. As it happens, none of the materials I checked on today had anything to do with Wilde. Though frustrating, the web of connections I’m weaving around Wilde is fascinating. I am continually surprised when I find two people in the research guide that I recognize talking to each other about a topic completely unrelated to Wilde. This research bias, while helpful in keeping me thorough, has broadened my perspective on what correspondence looks like in the archives. The collections are like a giant sidewalk, and my research guide is a shimmery snail trail tracking a particular route across the concrete. I can’t wait to see where my little snail goes next!

Time for the Spooky Season

Friday the 13th — how fitting. This week I spent a significant amount of time leafing through definitely-cursed photographs of clowns from the Circus Collection. Why, you may ask? A patron is asking about the Ransom Center’s holdings regarding tattoos, looking especially for “gems” related to sideshows. You know, I’m actually glad that I’m not permitted to post photos of what I find. Some of these are so creepy, I think I would curse myself if I attached the photos to my personal writing. I can, however, post a link to the digitized Circus collection, so you can peruse at your own risk: http://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15878coll6#nav_top

After the terrifying encounter with the clowns, I did in fact find a ton of pictures of people with tattoos who were featured in circus performances. Every shift I have, I find some new, amazing holding that I had no idea the Ransom Center owned! Some of it could/should be featured in a horror movie, and I’ve been spooked many a time. For example, there is an entire room dedicated to housing antique puppets. They hang in rows, covered in white, shroud-like material with small gaps in the covering through which someone can peek in (or something can peek out…). The walls are lined with shoebox sized containers of even older puppets. If one were to remove a box from the shelf, one could look inside, gingerly remove the fragile sheets, and almost drop the box in horror at the decrepit puppet staring back. I’m not speaking from experience or anything…

The collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s possessions contains many spooky items, including the socks he died in and his ouija board. The Hidden Room Theatre Company (http://hiddenroomtheatre.com/) did a production at the Ransom Center called Houdini Speaks to the Living, in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini argued on stage about whether spiritualism was a valid concept. The production used correspondence between Houdini and Doyle themselves, and they activated the materials in the archive in an innovative and amazing way.

Happy Friday the 13th! Feel free to comment if you have your own spooky archive stories, or if you want to hear more about the chilling encounters I’ve had while searching for items in the stacks!

Decisions, Decisions.

This week I’m realizing how many research questions and creative ideas I’m generating by creating this Wilde research guide. I don’t think I would ever want to/have the space to follow through on any of these ideas, so I almost want to make a list of the questions I come up with to put on the back of the guide. I think this would only be helpful for undergrads who are just getting started in the Ransom Center and aren’t familiar with the way correspondence can make or break an argument. This got me thinking about who I’m actually making this guide for. If it’s for Research Fellows, then it will look a little different/have a little less of the research leg work done on the page.

I have almost finished expanding on the collections mentioned in the original Oscar Wilde research guide from the seventies. I just need to turn archive code into full sentences, and then that stage of the guide will be finished. Next, I will have the opportunity to go through other avenues to document the Wilde holdings. For example, there is a function on the UT Libraries catalogue where you can search by previous owner. This is absolutely bananas to me, because I could theoretically look at any of the 1,834 books that belonged to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that the Harry Ransom Center owns. This tool will be useful because there are many books held by the Ransom Center that Oscar Wilde owned as well, and there’s a possibility that he annotated some of them. Even if he didn’t, they still have the magic, lasting, material energy of an item that witnessed history.

I haven’t only been working on the Wilde research guide this week. I have also begun answering research email queries about the holdings of the Ransom Center. For example, someone asked if we had the sheet music for Jule Styne’ “Ambition” from the broadway musical Do, Re, Mi. My priority tomorrow is to find that sheet music and to begin looking into another query: tattoos. Someone wants to know whether there are records of cool tattoos or tattoo artists in the archives, especially in the circus collections. How fun is that??? I also received possibly one of my favorite texts from my supervisor: “Would you be able to come down to the galleries and lend a hand with layouts?” Um, duh. The Ransom Center is revamping their Stories to Tell exhibit to rotate in relevant collections from people like Sam Shepard, Kazuo Ishiguro, Edgar Allen Poe, and more, as well as the newly acquired Mad Men archive!!. We set out the framed materials against the wall where we wanted them to be hung, but ran into trouble when the frames used were bigger than expected for the materials. I got to learn so much about designing a gallery layout and placing information cards. It’s been a busy week, but this internship is still easily one of my favorite things I do.

An Overzealous Start

I place my hand on the handle of the giant steel door — it feels like it’s twenty feet tall and five feet thick. As I hear the mechanism unlock to let me in, I gingerly creak the door open. The lights are off, so, unblinking, I feel my hand to the side of the wall for the light switch. Flipping it on, the basement lights up, rows upon rows of tall, cold, metal shelves wait on either side of me. As I step inside and shut the massive door behind me, I’ve never felt so cold. Each shelf holds boxes and boxes, and each box holds folder upon folder. Hundreds of thousands of pages sit carefully catalogued in pencil-labelled folders. People’s lives are in these boxes, and I swear I can feel them.

As an intern in the Performing Arts department of the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX, one of my long term tasks is to update the research guide for the Oscar Wilde collection. Since the last research guide was created in the seventies, much of the information is outdated and non-comprehensive. My job is to go through the list of related collections to discover: first, whether we still have the collection, second, what materials in the collection actually pertain to Oscar Wilde, and last, how do they relate to Wilde.

In my first two weeks, I’ve been training in the ins and outs of the Ransom Center, learning how to find things in the card catalogue, where to find the preliminary inventories of uncatalogued boxes, and how to read materials’ coordinates within the stacks. On my first day really working on my own, I headed down to the basement to look through the boxes from the Rupert Croft-Cooke collection. Rupert Croft-Cooke wrote Bosie, a biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, which includes chapters on his relationship with Oscar Wilde. Croft-Cooke also collected letters related to Lord Alfred Douglas’ correspondence.

I was maybe a little too overzealous in my inventorying, because I spent my entire five hour shift going through Croft-Cooke’s entire catalogued collection. I skimmed through his manuscripts of Bosie, looking at the handwritten changes he wanted to make. I read letters upon letters, discovering intimate information about how Croft-Cooke balanced modesty and professionalism in his correspondence. I found controversial letters in which Croft-Cooke (or should I call him Rupert now? I feel like I know him so well) writes to a relative of Robert Ross, Wilde’s first male lover, to see if she could give him information for the biography he was writing about Wilde’s other lover who was constantly in competition with Ross. Shonda Rhimes could do some research at the Ransom Center for her next television show!

Utterly fascinated and completely engrossed, I spent way too much time looking at Croft-Cooke’s materials. The notes I took rivaled Gargantuan compared to the information that would actually be useful in a research guide. I’m slowly learning where my background as a researcher can assist me in my internship rather than guide me. Much of the work I did was research that scholars coming to the Ransom Center would conduct for their projects. My role, I’m understanding better now, is to help researchers to know where to start.