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!

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.