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The Printed Image: Fay King

This installment of ‘The Printed Image’ highlights a scrapbook compiled by Fay King, a cartoonist and journalist who contributed to a number of newspapers in the early 20th century, including The Denver Post, The San Francisco Examiner, and The New York Evening Journal. The scrapbook, compiled between 1916 to 1919, includes numerous articles about King and her visits to various cities, clippings of her own newspaper columns, photographs, and a complete copy of The Cartoon Book, which was distributed for the Third Liberty Loan drive during World War I, and which included a contribution by King.

“A Woman’s Bit” by Fay King, from The Cartoon Book.

Photograph of Fay King, from page 48 of the scrapbook.

Newspaper clipping from page 24 of the scrapbook.

The scrapbook includes a key feature of King’s style, single-panel cartoons that would accompany her articles and columns for newspapers. King would include herself in these cartoons, portraying herself with long, lanky limbs and wide eyes. This cartoon persona earned her a certain celebrity, and can be seen as an early forerunner of autobiographical comics that would flourish later in the century by the likes of Lynda Barry, Art Spiegelman, and Aline Kominsky-Crumb.

A Fay King column and cartoon, from page 85 of the scrapbook.

But as cartoonist and historian Trina Robbins observes in her book Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century, the norms of the time limited the subjects that King was able to address, both in her cartoons and columns. Robbins writes, “Although they (Fay King and Nell Brinkley) avoided the mother and child ghetto that most other women cartoonists and illustrators seemed to have inhabited, both artists were still ghettoized simply by drawing for women” [1].

One aspect of King’s cartoon persona that is widely noted is its similarity to another famous comic character: Olive Oyl, from E.C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre and Popeye comic strips. However, this comparison is somewhat inexact. A similarity can be detected, but King’s cartoon avatar predates the creation of Olive Oyl, whose first appearance was in 1919. While there is no definitive record that Segar was inspired by King, if an influence does exist, King would be the influence on Olive Oyl, and not the other way around.

 

Fay King, 1916

Fay King, 1917

Olive Oyl in Thimble Theatre, 1919.

Olive Oyl in Thimble Theatre, 1926

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fay King’s scrapbook can be read in its entirety in the Digital Library, and is available to be viewed in the Rare Book Room during walk-in hours or by appointment. Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century can be borrowed from Falvey Library’s circulating collection.


[1] Robbins, Trina. Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2001. p. 37.


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TBT: Preserving Memories

photo from digital exhibit "Scraps for Keeps" and the "A Family History in Watercolors and Prints: Life in Victorian Era Hull, England" collectionWe’re just about to kick off the spring semester, which also means a time to make more memories and reminisce on the old. One great way of looking back on and preserving memories is to make a scrapbook! Falvey has a digitally archived collection called “Scraps for Keeps” that looks at the classic way of storing information – through albums and scrapbooks.

The picture above shows a page of a scrapbook depicting the life of Edith Good of Kingston upon Hull, East Yorkshire. Being from a family of artists, the scrapbook contains many watercolor photos of her, her family, as well as some landscape pictures. Falvey’s “Scraps for Keeps” collection shows more pages from Edith Good’s scrapbook, as well as many others.

The last time I made a scrapbook was my senior year of high school for a Psychology project, what about you?


Jenna Newman is a graduate assistant in Falvey Memorial Library and a graduate student in the Communication Department. Current mood: Not ready to virtually travel to work today.

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Let’s Take a Trip! Primary Sources on the History of Travel and Tourism

By Susan Turkel

Stuck at home and feeling antsy? You’re not alone! Humans have experienced the travel bug for a long, long time. If you’d like to experience some armchair tourism, read on to learn about digitized collections that let us travel the world—and back into history—through the magic of library and archival collections!

Travel and tourism blossomed for Americans and Europeans during the 19th century, thanks to developments in technology and increasing prosperity for many people. The Villanova community now has access to an amazing set of primary resources that document this growth in tourism: the online collection Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism, produced by Adam Matthew Digital. This resource is linked from the Library’s Databases A-Z list.

Leisure, Travel, & Mass Culture: The History of Tourism (Adam Matthew Digital) splash page

This online collection is comprised of digitized guidebooks, brochures, leaflets, travel journals, maps, and promotional films sourced from a variety of libraries and archives in the US and UK. Key themes covered include accommodation, hospitality, and entertainment; the great outdoors; health and medical travel; historical, cultural, or religious travel; package tours, cruises, and organized travel; road, rail, and air travel; urban tours and city breaks; and women and tourism.

Inspired to dip a toe into this rich collection? Start with this online tour, and then read the essay Travel Chronicles: Tourism, Memory, and the Emergence of Modern America by Anthony Stanonis, PhD, lecturer in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast, written specifically to provide context for this resource.

The collection includes online exhibitions focusing on eyewitness travels (detailed, illustrated accounts of travel by seven different adventurers); a comparison between two iconic seaside resorts, Coney Island, N.Y., and Blackpool, England; and a detailed listing of tourism businesses and organizations that are mentioned throughout the resource.

You might also want to visit the image gallery which allows browsing and searching of photographs, illustrations, and maps, indexed by key themes. Another useful feature is the interactive world map, which allows you to find documents by clicking through locations on a spinning globe.

~ >|< ~

Can’t get enough of these historical travel materials? Falvey Memorial Library’s Special Collections holds a wide array of materials documenting travel and tourism, including hundreds of items that have been scanned and made available to the public via our Digital Library! Here are three online exhibits that feature such treasures.

Are We There Yet? exhibit sign

Are We There Yet? Travel, Tourism and Exploration is a digital exhibit that highlights many interesting items. This exhibit was co-curated by Kayla Van Osten (Digital Library Intern, Spring 2016) and Laura Bang (Distinctive Collections Librarian), with graphics by Joanne Quinn (Director of Communication and Marketing). It features narrative essays, images, and links to scanned documents on such diverse themes as modes of travel, guidebooks & travel narratives, around the world, religious travel, and imaginary travel.

Exhibit sign featuring a decorative scrapbook cover with the title.

Scraps for Keeps exhibit sign

You’ll also find travel memorabilia in our recent scrapbook exhibition, Scraps for Keeps: Scrapbooks and Photo Albums from Distinctive Collections, which was also curated by Laura Bang with graphics by Joanne Quinn. This exhibit includes scrapbooks and photo albums produced during the 19th and 20th centuries by people in the US and western Europe. The section on Travel & Tourism includes images of scrapbook pages highlighting postcards, photos, and colorful receipts collected during memorable trips. To find more scrapbooks that have been digitized by Falvey’s Special Collections team, try a keyword search in the Digital Library for scrapbook or album.

Finally, our digital exhibition Rambles, Sketches, Tours: Travellers & Tourism in Ireland, again curated by Laura Bang with graphics by Joanne Quinn, “highlights Irish travel narratives and related materials, primarily from the Joseph McGarrity Collection, in Falvey Memorial Library’s Special Collections. The site is broken into sections that highlight the methods of travel to and within Ireland, the motives of some of the most influential and popular writers, and the development of the tourism industry. In addition, there are five sections that look at some of the most popular travel destinations.”

In addition to these online exhibitions, you may wish to browse all of our Digital Library offerings with the subject label “Description and travel.” Highlights include a recently transcribed manuscript, Tour of Spain, 1896, in which the traveler provides a firsthand description of political unrest in Spain as well as observations about Spanish customs, architecture, and ancient Moorish ruins. This travel journal also includes hand-drawn route maps and ink sketches.

Enjoy your trip!


Susan Turkel is a Social Sciences Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library. When this is all over, she hopes to travel to Italy.

 

 


 

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New Exhibit — “Scraps for Keeps”: Scrapbooks and Photo Albums from Distinctive Collections

Exhibit sign featuring a decorative scrapbook cover with the title.

Our latest exhibit, “Scraps for Keeps”: Scrapbooks and Photo Albums from Distinctive Collections, is now on display on the 1st floor of Falvey Library. Scrapbooks have been a popular way of saving and organizing information and memories since the 19th century. This exhibit presents a selection of some of the many types of scrapbooks and photo albums from Falvey’s Distinctive Collections. There are seven sections organized around different themes: Making of a Scrapbook, Mark Twain’s Patented Scrap Book System, Cultural Memory, Family & Friends, Travel & Tourism, On the Job, and School Days.

Photo of an upright exhibit case with two shelves filled with materials.

This exhibit was curated by me, Laura Bang (Distinctive Collections Librarian). Scrapbooks and photo albums are some of my favorite types of materials in our collections because they tell the personal stories of ordinary people. I love to page through what people took the time to save in albums and see what traces of their lives remain in what they left behind.

To hear more about my love for scrapbooks, join me for a curator’s chat on Wednesday, October 2 at 11:00am in Speakers’ Corner.

The exhibit will be on view through February 2020, and a digital version is forthcoming as well.

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A Victorian family history in watercolors and prints

One of our recent acquisitions is a scrapbook compiled by Edith Isabella Good (1849-1922), accompanied by a few loose leaves from a scrapbook begun by her brother Frederick. Their father, Clements Good, served as the Consul General for Denmark in Hull, England for fifty years from 1846 to 1896, and was also the principal partner of a shipping firm.

Edith was a talented artist whose work was included in juried group exhibitions in England and Ireland. Her scrapbook includes some beautiful watercolors, pen & ink drawings, and silhouettes. The art primarily consists of portraits of women and children from her family, but there are also a few landscapes and floral studies.

Landscape showing a cabin near the top of a mountain with a dusting of snow, more mountains visible in the distance and an eagle flying overhead. Two profile portraits of women wearing hats.

Page [4] of Edith’s scrapbook, with a landscape and two portraits.

Among the portraits are three of young women dressed to play lawn tennis, which was just becoming popular at the time. The portraits are noteworthy for depicting the costumes worn for playing tennis, including early tennis shoes with India rubber soles and tennis rackets.

Young woman in a blue calf-length dress with small bustle, wearing a straw sunhat and early tennis shoes, holding a tennis racket in her left hand.

Page [20] of Edith’s scrapbook, with a portrait of a young woman in a tennis outfit.

Also of interest is a watercolor image depicting the family’s two Bengali nannies with a group of six white children.

Watercolor portraits of the heads of 2 white boys and a group portrait, also in watercolor, of 2 Bengali nannies with 6 white children.

Page [24] of Edith’s scrapbook, showing the family’s Bengali nannies.

Edith’s brother Frederick de Coninck Good (1852-1887) was a graphic artist in addition to joining his father in the family businesses. He enjoyed creating print illustrations for family and local occasions. Sadly, Frederick died by suicide at the age of 34. The loose leaves of his scrapbook include Frederick’s own works as well as contributions from his sister, Edith, and their father, Clements.

Line drawing of the Royal Royal Danish Warship Heimdal, with a Danish Navy escort, coming into port in Hull.

Page [8] of Frederick’s scrapbook leaves, with an illustrated printed menu in honor of the July 1884 visit of Prince Carl of Denmark to Hull.

You can browse through these scrapbooks in the Digital Library. Also included is a PDF containing further biographical notes compiled by the seller and included when they sent us the scrapbooks.

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“The Man Who Saved The Betsy Ross House”

Imagine you’ve come across a box or a forgotten drawer stuffed with photographs, old programs, or tickets from a time you do not want to forget. Maybe you go out to the store and buy an album with blank pages, colorful papers and embellishments, and then get to work with some scissors and glue. Today scrapbooking is a thriving hobby and industry with millions of products sold to help you preserve your memories. Scrapbooking is not a new phenomenon however, and before these modern conveniences were available it would not have been uncommon practice to reuse or repurpose an old unwanted book.[i]

One unique example from Villanova’s Distinctive Collections has just recently been scanned and is now available in our Digital Library. In this case, the book was not entirely unwanted – the compiler did save a good portion of the book, but cut out the middle section, inserted yet another book, and pasted over other pages to create an entirely new book “for keeps.” A handwritten “Note” on the front flyleaf explains the author’s discovery of forgotten documents and prints in a cupboard when preparing for a move.


“This book in store among forgotten lore, came to life once more.

It might have been consigned to the scrap heap – I chose to use it for my scraps for keeps.” (Front flyleaf 2, recto).

 

The book, a 1910 edition of the Register of Members of “one of Massachusetts honored societies – The Sons of the American Revolution” was probably chosen for its handsome blue binding with gold gilt (which the scrapbook author extra-embellished with a handmade clasp attachment), but also for its patriotic association.

The author of this scrapbook is Charles William Smith (1843 – 1934). We know from the many newspaper clippings he compiled here, that he was born in New Haven, CT, came to Philadelphia as a coal merchant, and was a member of the Union League, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Masonic Lodge, many other patriotic societies, and evidently how he most wished to be remembered – “the man who saved the Betsy Ross House.” A clipping near the end of the book suggests Smith’s motive in this scrapbook’s creation. A poem written by Smith, published in The Frankford Gazette, April 11, 1924, begins:

 

My dear Patriotic friend

Way back in the year 1892

I would not now mention my act

That happened then—not even to you,

I am prompted to do so however—I am told

There is some person this late day,

trying to rob me of my just dues[ii]

 

Indeed, the person most credited for saving the Betsy Ross House is Charles W. Weisgerber. You won’t find much about Charles William Smith.[iii] This is not for a lack of trying on his part. It seems that for several years on Smith’s birthday, or even Flag Day, the Philadelphia newspapers would reprint Smith’s story.[iv] In one case, Smith published a thank you to the Editor the next day.[v] As he tells it, Smith heard in 1892 that the house was to be torn down to build a factory. He then “awakened the interest of patriotic men and women,” raising money to eventually buy the house in 1905 by selling ten cent subscriptions to 1,040,270 persons. These certificates were sold through the American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association, of which both Smith and Weisgerber were founding members. But who had the initial idea to save the house? Did Betsy Ross even live at 239 Arch Street? Did she really sew the first flag? The legitimacy of Betsy’s story and the house has long been questioned. And this scrapbook is Charles William Smith’s personal attempt to stamp out any doubt of the answers to all three questions.

 

[Parry Scrapbook, 8-9]

 

Smith has gathered various publications in the form of newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and books. They are joined with signed letters, sworn statements and endorsements by historians, Betsy’s descendants, President Warren G. Harding, and even notarized documents.[vi] Some of the items may seem disparate, but to Smith they may all share a patriotic meaning, and an intent to authenticate his claims.

The assemblage of the scrapbook begins with the SAR Register book, which remains intact up until the List of Members. This is where Smith’s scrapbook begins. After eleven pages, a second book is inserted, Betsy Ross and the United States Flag, A Paper Read Before the Bucks County Historical Society, 1909, by Oliver Randolph Parry. This portion of the scrapbook is scanned open as two-page spreads, with page numbers identifying the published book as “Parry, #”, and the scrapbook pages within as [Parry Scrapbook, #]. When the Parry book ends, the Scrapbook pages of the outer book resume, and then we have the remainder of the SAR Register book preserved. The final pages contain some inserts of personal documents: Smith’s membership to The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (January 24, 1898); his acceptance degree as a Master Mason of St. Alban Lodge #529 (May 6, 1886); and membership to the Athletic Club of the Schuylkill Navy (November 12, 1892). Within these pages are also bits of wood from Valley Forge National Historic Park and Independence Hall; with mention of a gavel made of wood from the floorboards of the Betsy Ross House. There is correspondence with O.H. Oldroyd, collector and historian of Abraham Lincoln memorabilia. And there is of course the use of red, white, and blue colors throughout, and the lyrics and music sheet for The Star-Spangled Banner.

 

[Parry Scrapbook, 16-17]

 

By making this scrapbook, Smith has attempted to give permanence to these items by pasting them down and preserving them for posterity. The scrapbook has been in Villanova’s collection since 1956, when it was donated by an alum, Dr. Edward A. Mallon. The connection between Smith and Mallon (if there is one) is unclear, and how it came to be in Mallon’s possession is a current mystery.

I have missed Smith’s February 7th birthday by more than a week with this blog post, but he probably wouldn’t mind seeing his name in print once more anyway: Today, Charles William Smith, “the man who saved the Betsy Ross House,” would have been 176 years old.

 


[i] “As one scrapbook maker whose family was busy cutting and pasting papers in 1873 explained, they were not ‘using up good printed books’… rather “there is nothing in them that we want, and so we propose putting in something, rather than have them stand idle…. Some of them are old school-books, not much worn, but out of date. Almost every library has some useless books.” See “Writing and recording with scrapbooks,” Ellen Gruber Garvey, OUPblog, https://blog.oup.com/2012/05/writing-recording-with-scrapbooks-history/.

[ii] Page 229.

[iii] See newspaper columnist, James Smart’s history of the Betsy Ross House: http://www.jamessmartsphiladelphia.com/betsy-s-house.html.

[iv] Clippings in this scrapbook date from 1922-1924.

[v] Scrapbook, 2.

[vi] The Harding letter is a copy only, [Parry Scrapbook, 12-13].

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The Dog Days of Summer

The sunny, sultry days of July and August are often referred to as the “dog days” of summer. Ancient civilizations noticed what they thought was a correlation between the hottest days of summer and the heliacal (or, at sunrise) rising of the star Sirius in the constellation known as Canis Major (the “Big Dog”). Although Sirius does not actually have an effect on the temperature, its heliacal rising does coincide with some of the hottest days of summer in many parts of the northern hemisphere. “Canicular days” (from the Latin word for dog) made their first appearance in print in English in 1398. The Old Farmer’s Almanac puts the timing of the Dog Days as July 3 through August 11.

As we sweat our way through the dog days of summer, here is a selection of dog images from our collections!

From the Photo Album of Laird C. Robinson of Philadelphia, 1904:

Photo: Man with hunting rifle and dog Photo: The Whole Family and the Dog

(more…)

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How we spent our summer vacations

At the beginning of the summer, we acquired and digitized a scrapbook documenting a road trip across America in 1924. It’s a fascinating glimpse of cross-country motor vehicle travel in its early days as well as providing photographic peeks into average American towns. I love recreating old photos when the opportunity presents itself (as previously demonstrated by my Paris sojourn), so I was eager to recreate the scrapbook’s California photos when I headed out to the Golden State for a conference and vacation trip. When I learned that two of my colleagues would also be traveling to states featured in the scrapbook, I enlisted their help as well. Here are the photos we took along with the originals from the scrapbook. A lot of the photos were of generic landscapes or portraits, but we had fun finding similar perspectives, even if not always from the exact same place.

(Click the images to enlarge.)

Demian Katz, South Dakota:

A family portrait, 1924 and 2015:

A family in South Dakota, 1924 A family in South Dakota, 2015

“Some Boy,” 1924 and 2015:

"Some boy" in South Dakota, 1924 "Some boy" (South Dakota), 2015

The Badlands, 1924 and 2015:

Badlands (South Dakota), 1924 Badlands (South Dakota), 2015

“Some of the Road in S.D.,” 1924 and 2015:

Some of the road in South Dakota, 1924 Some of the road in South Dakota, 2015

 

Laura Bang, California:

Redwoods, 1924 and 2015:

CA redwoods, 1924

CA redwoods, 2015 CA redwoods, 2015

Bridge in the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, 1924 and 2015:

Japanese Tea Garden Bridge (San Francisco, CA), 1924 Japanese Tea Garden Bridge (San Francisco, CA), 2015

Atascadero Community House, 1924, and Atascadero City Hall, 2015:

Community House (Atascadero, CA), 1924 City Hall (Atascadero, CA), 2015

 

Laura Hutelmyer, Arizona:

The Grand Canyon, 1924 and 2015:

The Grand Canyon, 1924 The Grand Canyon, 2015

The Grand Canyon, 1924 The Grand Canyon, 2015

Bright Angel Trail (Grand Canyon), 1924 and 2015:

Bright Angel Trail, 1924 Bright Angel Trail, 2015

Bright Angel Trail, 1924 Bright Angel Trail, 2015

Fortunately none of us drove into in a ditch, like our 1924 predecessors!

"Our first hard luck," 1924

Take a look through the scrapbook to view all the adventures of Paul Haines, Warren Bridegam, and George Spang across 1924 America.

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DH in the Classroom: Aurelius Digital Humanities Launches Second Project

During the spring semester, the Aurelius Digital Humanities Initiative launched its second project, a digital edition of El Peru en sus tradiciones en su historia, en su arte. The project was commandeered by Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish Chad Leahy, PhD, who worked with his special-topics Spanish class to digitize and transcribe the text. Guidance was also provided by Laura Bang, digital and Special Collections curatorial assistant, and David Uspal, senior web specialist for library services and scholarly applications. Dr. Leahy explains that the materiality of text as object, the smell and feel of the item itself, has a story to tell us and digital humanities as a new technology has a way of opening this aspect of the text to the world.

chad-repl

  El Peru en sus tradiciones en su historia, en su arte is a 133 page multimedia scrapbook that contains postcards, newspaper clippings, drawings—more than 160 distinct visual objects in all. In many cases, these entries are copied without original sources, raising difficult questions regarding authorship, provenance and purpose. There is no way to prove authorship, but Dr. Leahy speculates that the text may have originated through the Augustinian missions in Peru and was probably a gift. The latest internal date, 1924, suggests that the scrapbook was produced in the latter half of the 1920s. In addition to studying the Peruvian text, Dr. Leahy’s class had the opportunity to develop hands-on digitizing skills while scanning the text Los dramas de la Guerra, a serialized account of the First World War published in Barcelona during the war years.

Phone

Participants loved the way the website reformatted for easy reading on hand held devices.

David Uspal wrapped up the event by explaining the development behind the website. Uspal said, “in addition to the transcription work by the undergraduate students, technical support for the project was provided by Falvey [Memorial] Library’s Technology Development Team, with a large contribution by technology graduate assistant Pragya Singhvi.  Pragya’s work on importing transcription documents and automatically producing TEI and HTML versions of these documents will both help reduce the work necessary on future translation projects (and thus, more likely to get more and varies projects approved) and allow these projects to adopt open standards which will allow for greater use in the academic community.”


Laura Hutelmyer is the photography coordinator for the Communication and Publications Team and special acquisitions coordinator in Resource Management

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Frank R. Steed in WWI Paris

We recently acquired a 2-volume set of scrapbooks created by Frank R. Steed, an Army Field Clerk in World War I. Both volumes have now been digitized and there are many interesting things to be found within the pages. The materials are not affixed to pages in chronological order, but dates noted range from May 1918 to November 1919. In addition, Steed was inconsistent with his labeling of materials, so there will be several pages with very detailed descriptions written in followed by a run of pages with no notes at all.

Steed's Certificate of Identity

Steed’s Certificate of Identity, issued in August 1918.

Frank R. Steed was discharged from the medical department at Camp Dix, New Jersey, and appointed as an Army Field Clerk in July 1918. A memo describes process for applying to become an Army field clerk: “A candidate to be eligible for appointment must … pass the required physical examination, be of good moral character and a citizen of the United States. Army field clerks have a military status, and as they are appointed to office by the Secretary of War, they are officers in the military service, although not commissioned officers.”

Steed was assigned to the Casualty Division of the American Expeditionary Forces in France. A letter from Steed’s superior, Lt. Col. Ernest G. Smith, details the work carried out by this division: “Our part in the Great Adventure concerned itself in large measure with the work of collecting and properly recording casualties of the A.E.F. This was one of the most trying as well as most important tasks of the war. How well it has been performed has been evinced from time to time by citations in orders as well as by favorable comment expressed by all who have investigated this work.” Smith goes on to thank Steed for his diligence and attitude: “Without these services so cheerfully, intelligently and dependably rendered, success would have been impossible.”

Steed posing as a statue

Steed posing as a statue on an empty pedestal in the Jardin des Tuileries.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the dismal nature of his job in the Casualties Division, Steed seems to have had a grand time in Paris and other French towns, as well as several other cities of Western Europe, including Brussels, London, and Dublin. The scrapbooks contain numerous photographs, postcards, programs, documents, menus, tickets, maps, tourist brochures, and even a few pen and pencil drawings. There is a lot to see and these bits of ephemera provide a fascinating glimpse back at Western European culture towards the end of and immediately after the Great War. There are also many postcards and notes from Steed’s friends and family and I am looking forward to looking at those more closely in the future.

Scrapbooks (and other types of hand-written/hand-made documents) are among the greatest pleasures of special collections and archives. Scrapbooks are especially challenging to digitize as there is no way to fully replicate the layers of paper and random objects (such as a bit of yarn or a toothpick) in digital form. Adding the metadata to these records was tedious, but I’m glad that we are able to share at least an approximation of these fascinating volumes. I hope that many more people will now have the pleasure of spending some time with Frank R. Steed in WWI Europe. It’s a bit like time travel, being able to share a personal perspective of life and events from almost 100 years ago.

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Last Modified: June 29, 2013

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