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Special Collections in 2023: 4th Quarterly Review

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by Sara Pezzoni

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The purpose of The Compass Rose is to raise awareness of Special Collections' resources and to foster the use of these resources. The blog series also reports significant new programs, initiatives, and acquisitions of Special Collections. 

This is the newest in an ongoing series spotlighting new acquisitions and reproductions of our content. For more on our previous featured material, read our previously published Quarterly Review blogs.

Special Collections is continually acquiring new materials and image reproductions of items from our collections are regularly used in new publications and by media outlets. This post reviews where and how materials from our collections are being used around the world in October, November, and December of 2023.

Happy Retirement to Ben Huseman!

Portrait photograph of Ben Huseman

Ben Huseman pictured in the Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library in UTA Special Collections, December 2023.

We begin this quarterly review with the bittersweet announcement of Cartographic Archivist Ben Huseman's retirement. For nearly 18 years, Ben Huseman has curated and cared for the exceptional Virginia Garrett Cartographic Collection at UTA Libraries' Special Collections & Archives, and as 2023 comes to a close, he’s starting a new adventure into retirement! Ben’s caring personality and commitment to excellence will be greatly missed. His lasting impact can be seen in the evolution and expansion of the cartographic holdings in Special Collections throughout his time in the department, the nine gallery guides he researched and wrote in tandem with curating cartographic exhibitions, and countless other contributions to Special Collections. His work will continue to help UTA students, faculty, and staff. From everyone in Special Collections and UTA Libraries, thank you, Ben, and we wish you and your family all the best! 

Please share your well-wishes and favorite memories of Ben in the comment section below!

SPCO Class Visits

Students from a variety of classes and organizations visit Special Collections to engage in experiential learning activities using our unique materials. From October to December, we welcomed 31 classes from a variety of disciplines. Visits this quarter have included History, Spanish, Sociology, Biology, Anthropology, Art, Art History, Disability Studies, and Geography. We also welcomed over 120 AP students from Arlington's James Bowie High School! Pictured below are a few examples from class instruction over the past few months.

Students from Dr. Chris Conway's class completed a six-class residency in Special Collections earlier this semester. In each class, students worked with a different style of comic book from the newly acquired John and Magdalena Conway Mexican Comic Collection. Each part of the collection has a different focus, but helps demonstrate the types of material being read across the Spanish-speaking world as literacy rates skyrocketed in the twentieth century. At the end of their residency, the students reflected on their experience in Special Collections.

Prof. Allison Martin's Biology for non-science majors class focuses on "life on earth." Students visited Special Collections to work on their signature assignment for the semester: building a poster presentation about an organism from Texas. During their first visit, students engage with historical texts that contain descriptions of their organism written in the 1850s. Later, students research the modern understanding of that organism - including its phylogeny, range, and physical description - and build a poster presentation comparing the data from SPCO with modern data. Students presented their posters in the atrium of Central Library!

If you are interested in bringing a group or class to Special Collections, please contact Evan Spencer, Public Services Archivist at evan.spencer@uta.edu.

Digitized UTA Yearbooks

As part of a joint project with the library's Digital Services department, we have recently completed a project to digitize all of UTA's yearbooks spanning 1923-1982! This includes yearbooks from when the school was once known as North Texas Agricultural College (NTAC) and the yearbook was titled "Junior Aggie," which changed to "Reveille" in 1950 when the school was known as Arlington State College (ASC). Also included are two issues of UTA's Corps of Cadets yearbooks from 1983-1984 and 1985. The school annuals, covering as they do all aspects of campus life, were popular mementos of college life and today, of course, serve as historical sources for examining the college's history.

You may view the entire collection of digitized yearbooks here: https://rc.library.uta.edu/uta-ir/handle/10106/31805

Covers of two UTA yearbooks from 1923, left, and 1950, right.

North Texas Agricultural College's "Junior Aggie" yearbook from 1923, left, and Arlington State College's "Reveille" yearbook from 1950, right.

Image Reproduction Highlights

Exhibitions and Displays

  • Traveling exhibit, “Black Cowboys: An American Story,” curated by the Witte Museum, on display at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (September 2023-January 2024); images used from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection and Jenkins Garrett Texas Postcard Collection 
  • Permanent commemorative plaque created by the Lucretia Council Cochran Chapter of the Texas Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, commemorating the Stagecoach Inn at Johnson Station Cemetery, located at 1129 W Mayfield Rd, Arlington, TX; image used from the J. W. Dunlop Photograph Collection
  • Temporary exhibit, "Opportunity on the Land," in the Third Floor Gallery at the Bullock Museum in Austin, TX (October 2023-October 2024); artifacts used from the Migrant Farm Workers' Organizing Committee Records
  • Permanent exhibit display in The National WWII Museum's new Liberation Pavilion exhibit space in New Orleans, LA; image used from the UTA News Service Photograph Collection
  • Temporary exhibit display, "Two Days in Texas," at the Sixth Floor Museum (November 8, 2023-June 16, 2024); image used from the general map collection
  • Permanent public mural on building window at 125 E Front St, Arlington, TX 76011 (Wondrous Works Gift Shop); image used from the J. W. Dunlop Photograph Collection

Local News

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram collection, which came in increments to UTA Libraries from 1984 to 2022, is often used in a variety of news articles and columns published by the original donor, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. This quarter, the Star-Telegram used photographs from the collection for 13 stories:

Photographs from the collection were also used in 7 photo features:

Other local news outlets published the following stories using our collection materials: 

Printed Materials

  • Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbably Resurrection of the American Buffalo, by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, published by Alfred A. Knopf, October 10, 2023; images used from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection
  • Dallas Love Field, by Bruce A. Bleakley, published by Arcadia Publishing, October 23, 2023; images used from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection and the Squire Haskins Photography, Inc. Collection
  • Forging America [Vol. 2], by Steven Hahn, published by Oxford University Press, October 27, 2023; images used from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection
  • UFO, by Garrett Graff, published by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, November 14, 2023; images used from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection

Film/Television

  • PBS documentary series, "The American Buffalo," directed by Ken Burns, aired October 2023; images used from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection and the general book collection
  • Episode of The UnXplained titled "Strange Stories of the Presidents" (Season 6, Episode 5) on The History Channel, aired November 10, 2023; images used from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection
  • Meta Quest virtual reality documentary, "JFK Memento," produced by TARGO, aired November 22, 2023; images used from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection

Events

UTA Student Leader Alumni Reception

The Division of Student Affairs and Alumni Relations hosted the Student Leader Alumni Reception on November 10, which invited former student leaders back to campus during Homecoming to reconnect with fellow student leader alumni. Special Collections was invited to showcase university history at the event, and our team filled four tables with artifacts, newsletters, photographs, yearbooks, pins, and other UTA-related memorabilia!

AIDS Memorial Quilt Display

UTA Special Collections partnered with the National AIDS Memorial to bring the AIDS Memorial Quilt to campus again this year for World AIDS Day, which was on display in Central Library's atrium from November 28-December 2. Cleve Jones, a gay rights activist from San Francisco, came up with the idea for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1985 to honor loved ones and create more awareness of the impact of AIDS. Created in the height of the AIDS epidemic, the Quilt helped to educate people about the disease as well as memorialize the people who lost their lives to AIDS. The Quilt’s nearly 50,000 panels include at least one from every U.S. state in addition to panels from a few dozen countries. In conjunction with the weeklong display, UTA Special Collections hosted an event on November 28 featuring a commemorative craft activity, refreshments, and resources from several of our campus and community partners. 

Mini-Exhibits

This quarter, UTA Special Collections staff curated four mini-exhibits, which are designed to highlight a specific topic or commemorate an event in history utilizing materials from our collections.

In October, we celebrated LGBTQ+ History Month in our "Pride in the Archives Mini-Exhibit" by showcasing materials documenting queer history at UTA and in Tarrant County. This display featured materials about Canary Conn, a Trans performer from Texas; David Mack Henderson, who started UTA’s first LGBTQ+ organization on campus; and Ken Cyr, a pioneering activist for the Tarrant County queer community. Special Collections also hosted a small display on the 3rd floor of the library showcasing additional materials.

Surrounding the World Series games and the subsequent win of the World Series by the Texas Rangers baseball team, we featured various historical items from our collections relating to the team, which was on display from October 27-November 10. Beginning with photographs of their first home game on April 21, 1972, the displayed materials created a timeline for the team, ending with a media guide created after their 2010 and 2011 World Series runs. Also included was a 1976 Fort Worth Star-Telegram cartoon by Etta Hulme depicting Rangers fans even higher than cloud nine—cloud 10.

In November, we created a mini-exhibit in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, which displayed materials and photos taken during the President's visit to Fort Worth and the subsequent events following his assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Among the materials featured were newspapers published immediately following the assassination, photos taken surrounding Kennedy's visit and the aftermath of the assassination by Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper photographers, an invitation to the luncheon that was to be held at Trade Mart in Dallas in honor of The President and Mrs. Kennedy, which the Kennedys were en route to before the assassination, published conspiracy theories on the assassination, and letters sent to A.C. Greene, Editor of the editorial page of the Dallas Times Herald, from across the country expressing grief and opinions on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  

Ahead of the December 22 release of the movie "The Iron Claw," a biographical sports film based on the life of the Von Erich professional wrestling family from the Dallas area, we highlighted photos of the Von Erichs from UTA Special Collections alongside other wrestling-related materials found within the collections in a mini-exhibit on display in December (and on view until January 8, 2024). Among the materials featured were publicity photos and action shots of the Von Erichs, a biographical book titled “The Von Erichs: Tragedies and triumphs of America's first family of wrestling” by Kirk Dooley, an issue of a Fort Worth-produced wrestling newspaper from 1923, rules and regulations booklets detailing the boxing and wrestling Law of Texas from 1939-1957, and a lithograph of Japanese sumo wrestlers from Commodore Perry's book published in 1856.

 

New TARO Finding Aids

TARO (Texas Archival Resources Online) makes descriptions, or "finding aids," of the rich archival collections in repositories across the state available to the public. Finding aids assist users in locating information in our collections and serve as a descriptive guide to the unique materials only available here in Special Collections. Here are our most recent finding aid uploads to TARO:

Acquisitions of Printed Materials

Cellarius Celestial Charts

Andreas Cellarius' Orbium Planetarum Terram Complectentium Scenographia (below, left) and Sitvs Terræ Circvlis Coelestibvs Circvndatæ (below, right) from "Atlas Coelestis seu; Harmonia Macrocosmica" (Amsterdam: Schenk and Valk, 1708), hand-colored copperplate engraving. Gift of Donald Sheff.

These celestial charts were published in the Harmonia Macrocosmica, written by Andreas Cellarius and published in 1660 by Johannes Janssonius, and are considered by many to be the most beautiful celestial atlas ever published. Sitvs Terræ Circvlis Coelestibvs Circvndatæ (below, right) shows the (pre-Copernican) Ptolemaic universe, with the earth fixed at the center with the stars represented by a ribbon of zodiac rotating east to west.⁣⁣ Winged figures are depicted carrying astronomical and cartographical instruments⁣. ⁣⁣The first traces of Australia ("Nova Hollandia") are shown with the northwest coast emerging from the East Indies and joined to New Guinea at Cape York. This was the extent of the known world—celestial and terrestrial—in mid 17th Century. Orbium Planetarum Terram Complectentium Scenographia (below, left) is a celestial model of the Solar System with the Earth at the center, showing movements of the planets, moon, sun and stars of the zodiac.

Visit The Compass Rose in March for our next quarterly blog review!

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