Acquisitions Augment the Archives

By Claire C. Galloway

The UT Arlington Library Special Collections has acquired some exciting collections! Over the summer, two important additions to the Texas Labor Archives arrived. First, Donald Goodman, a long time labor relations educator and arbitrator, donated four boxes containing tape cassettes and LP records of labor songs, beta tapes of labor films, and arbitration case records dating from 1987 to 2004. The latter are opinions and awards for every case he has arbitrated, the majority of which were never published. Second, the president of the Central Texas Labor Council, AFL-CIO donated two boxes of records from the Waco Central Texas Labor Council. These records, composed of correspondence, financial reports, ledgers, news clippings, programs, publications, and memos, date from 1936 to 2007. Among them are also records from the Waco Labor Temple Association. These records will complement nicely the collection from the Waco Central Texas Labor Council that was donated to the Texas Labor Archives and processed years ago.

In the area of university archives, there have been several transfers of university records and donations of university-related material. Dr. James Callicutt, a UT Arlington faculty member since 1968, made two donations in 2008. The first was a set of 59 oral history interviews relating to the School of Social Work. More recently, he donated a box of material used in research for his current book , Commemorating 40 Years of Advancing Social Work Education. Dr. Callicutt, Professor of Social Work, has served the university in other capacities, including as Assistant and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, in 1970 and 1972, respectively.

Dr. Dennis Reinhartz, Professor of History and member of the UT Arlington faculty from 1973 to 2008, donated papers relating to his service as a member of both the Faculty Advisory Council of The University of Texas System Board of Regents and of the UT Arlington Faculty Senate. These documents, which span the years 1999 to 2007, include correspondence, reports, e-mail messages, memoranda, agenda books, notes, proposals, and minutes. They will serve as a rich resource for historians of the university.

Mr. William G. Roberts recently donated the personal papers of his parents, Cecil and Norma Roberts, both alumni of the university. After graduating in 1938 and 1940 respectively, they traveled overseas, where Cecil served as an assistant army attaché. During this time, Norma wrote many letters back home to her parents in Texas. These letters, mainly dating from the WWII era, were written while the Roberts lived in Greece, Bolivia, and Guatemala. The collection also includes photographs of the Roberts and their family, an oral history transcription of an interview with Cecil, and a movie transcript from the 1969 film The Bridge at Remagen, for which Cecil was the military advisor.

In October, the Office of University Publications transferred 16 boxes of university records to the University Archives. The records include negatives, slides, prints, and digital scans of headshots and photographs of campus events from 1970 to 2008. This collection is a wonderful resource of university history, and it will be an excellent addition to the already-existing UT Arlington Photograph Collection.

These new acquisitions enhance the holdings of the Texas Labor Archives and the University Archives by providing welcome new sources for research. Please come visit Special Collections to access this material. For more information about the collections described in this article, contact Claire Galloway at galloway@uta.edu or 817-272-7511.

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