SAM visits JMM

This past Sunday I hosted a group of University of Maryland students from Master of Library Science program. All of the students also belong to the Student Archvists at Maryland (SAM) group -- including former BHU intern Kristin Davidson (you won't see her as she's the one taking the pictures).

Archivists in training listen to my introduction to the museum

I've never given a tour to future archivists before. This was new and exciting because it gave me the opportunity to talk about all those things that fascinate me (organization, finding aids, and pH neutral folders), but don't generally fascinate other people. We started with a look at the photo archives.

Photos, of course, are the domain of our Photo Archivist, but they are part of any talk on archives. I would guess that most of the collections we receive have both paper documents and photographs together. The photographs also gave me the opportunity to talk about various preservation techniques and our digitization plans. We are far away from being able to digitize our entire archive collection, but we have been working on scanning our photographs. Preservation and digitizing are two of 'those things' that archivists get excited about, but not everyone else does.

Me showing the photographs in their archival sleeves

From photos we next visited paper -- my collections. Besides showing off some of the items in our collection I was able to talk about the quirks of working in an archive. As with all careers, what we learn in the classroom is neat and precise, but doesn't always transfer neatly and precisely to the real world. Each archive or museum is unique and has had many unique archivists bringing their own views to the care of the collections over the years. After fifty years of collecting the JMM archives has been managed in a variety of ways that reflect the nature of the materials and the evolution of the Archives field itself.

Me (again) displaying the smallest size of our manuscript collections

Our last stop was object storage. Though most of our collections are either paper and photographs or objects we often receive collections that involve all three. Objects and historic documents work together to give each other context and to not only tell but also show history to researchers and visitors. Not only are the objects interesting to look at (and the JMM has some amazing and quirky objects including department store hangers and a shelf full of spittoons) but archivists do need to understand the basics of their care and preservation. Just because someone ends up working in an archive doesn't mean they only have to deal with paper -- objects tend to sneek into collections.

SAM members look at some of our wood-based objects

After the collections tour I took the group through our exhibition Voices of Lombard Street and left them to view the other exhibitions on their own. From my side it was a success, and I hope they felt the same way.

After the Interns

A blog post by archivist and curatorial assistant Jennifer Vess.

This summer we had, I think, the most archives interns we’ve ever had at one time. Three (Kristin, Brittney, and Melina) and all of them dedicated to processing the Baltimore Hebrew University archives. They’re all gone now, back to their normal lives, but the work her at the JMM does not stop.



Processing the Baltimore Hebrew University Archives is a long-term project. It is the largest single collection in the JMM archives. But we have made a lot of progress.

About fourteen months ago the collections staff and interns were arranging boxes and weeding materials at campus of Baltimore Hebrew University.

Jobi and Kim weeding on-site at BHU.

Rachel and Jobi in the moving van.

Since then, with the help of volunteers and our three BHU interns we have completed over a third of the BHU archives processing. 68 boxes of materials have been rehoused, organized, and added to a growing finding aid.

Kristen’s tidy workspace

Melina hard at work on the “Office Files”

After the summer interns left it seemed like a good time to take stock of the collection and make an tweaks necessary to the processing plan. The first step was the Great Box Shift. A year pulling boxes and organizing files left holes in our shelves.

Before the Great Box Shift

So Melina (the last remaining intern) and I closed all of the gaps and consolidated all of the yet to be processed boxes, and all of the all ready processed boxes.

This is what happens when you’re the last intern – you have to move boxes. Thanks Melina!

After the Great Box Shift

After that I concentrated on the 68 boxes of processed materials. Each of the intern focused on their own small portion of the larger BHU collection. They learned a lot about their own project, about the information and people involved in those thousands of pieces of paper. But I need to connect those individual projects together into a single manuscript collection. Which led to more box shifting as I physically and intellectually began piecing together the whole.

Neatly processed and organized BHU archives.

I also made some new connections with the unprocessed materials. As Melina, Brittney, and Kristin learned more about their own collections we were able to see connections that we hadn’t before. Each of them encountered boxes in the financial, office, and people files related specifically to the Freedman files. This meant moving and re-labeling.

Re-labeled box.

With a better sense of what has been done and what needs to be done, we can keep moving forward.

MS 2 The Jacob H. Hollander Papers

After having seen an excerpt from one of our most recent manuscript collections I thought is was appropriate to look back at one of our earliest manuscript collections – MS 2: The Jacob H. Holland (1871-1940) Papers.

















Aside from the manuscript collection the JMM also has this book written by Jacob Hollander -- a Baltimore City Guide Book complete with Map. 1994.150.007

Jacob H. Hollander (1871-1940)
Papers, n.d., 1900-1935

MS 2

ACCESS AND PROVENANCE

The Jacob H. Hollander Papers were donated by Rosamund Hutzler (Mrs. Siegfried Weisberger), Bertha Hollander, and David Hollander in May 1966 as accession 1966.6. Anne Turkos processed this collection in September 1982. Erin Titter updated and edited the finding aid and revised the box list in July 2004.

Access to the collection is unrestricted and is available to researchers at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. Researchers must obtain the written permission of the Jewish Museum of Maryland before publishing quotations from materials in the collection. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Jacob Harry Hollander was born in Baltimore on July 23, 1871 to Meyer and Rosa (Meyer) Hollander. He attended local public and private schools, except for one year spent at the Pennsylvania Military Academy. He received an A.B. from Johns Hopkins University in 1891 and a Ph.D. in 1894. In 1904 he became a full professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins and assumed the Abram G. Hutzler Chair in 1925. On January 22, 1906 he married Theresa Gutman Hutzler of Baltimore and they had three children, Rosamund (Mrs. Siegfried Weisberger), David, and Bertha Hutzler Hollander.

In addition to his academic pursuits, Hollander was also active in government service beginning with an 1897 appointment by President McKinley as the secretary of the American Bimetallic Commission. In 1900 he was the chairman of Baltimore’s Municipal Lighting Commission. The same year he served as financial advisor to Puerto Rico and was appointed treasurer of Puerto Rico in 1901 where he revised the tax laws and implemented a new revenue system referred to as “Hollander’s Law.” In 1904 he became a special agent of the Department of the Interior in Indian Territory, where he aided fiscal transition and investigated special needs. From 1905-1910 he was dispatched by President Theodore Roosevelt to the Dominican Republic to serve as an advisor to their financial reorganization and to investigate the public debt of San Domingo. During this same five-year period, he also chaired the Mayor’s Committee on Taxation and Revenue in Baltimore. Hollander also served as umpire for the Maryland and Upper Potomac coalfields for the Federal Fuel Administration from, 1918-1920, and he served as chairman of the Maryland State Tax Survey Commission, 1931-1932.

Jacob Hollander was active in several local and national organizations including the American Economic Association, the American Liberty League, the Baltimore Reform League, the Executive Committee of the Charity Organization Society of Baltimore, the Jewish Publication Society of America, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the United Hebrew Charities. He enjoyed writing about various government, economic, and religious topics.

Jacob Harry Hollander died on July 9, 1940 in Baltimore. He is buried in Har Sinai Cemetery.

SCOPE AND CONTENT

The Jacob H. Hollander (1871-1940) Papers, n.d., 1900-1935, consist primarily of personal and professional correspondence, telegrams, invitations, speeches, and newspaper clippings. The correspondence, which comprises the bulk of this collection, includes both incoming letters and carbon copies of outgoing letters. The papers in this collection pertain to Hollander's work with Jewish philanthropic and literary agencies including the Federated Jewish Charities, the Baron de Hirsch Fund, the City-Wide Congress, the Joseph Fels Fund, the National Farm School, and the National Conference of Jewish Social Services. Correspondents include Cyrus Adler, Harry Friedenwald, Herbert Friedenwald, Max J. Kohler, Morris S. Lazaron, Julius Levy, Isidore Rayner, Samuel Oppenheimer, David Philipson, Jacob H. Schiff, and Paul M. Warburg.


Related Collections:

MS 59 Hollander (Jacob Harry) 1871-1940 Papers (1895-1940) at The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Special Collections, Johns Hopkins University

Manuscript Collection 184

Our 184th Manuscript Collection is complete!

Our archives (paper documents and books) are a rich source of information about the life and history of Jewish Maryland. Our collections come from individuals, businesses, and synagogues. While we use these archives ourselves on a fairly regular basis for exhibitions, articles and books we also have frequent visits from researchers – people looking to learn more about their family history, students researching papers, academics writing books, etc.

Researchers at work in the library

Our manuscript collections are our larger collections, which range in size from a single 2.5 inch wide box to enough boxes to fill 25 shelves. For each collection we preserve the documents (by removing damaging fasteners like staples, paperclips, and rubber bands and placing the papers in protective folders and boxes) then write a finding aid. Finding aids are documents that help researchers find exactly what information they want without having to leaf through every single piece of paper. Each finding aid has the same basic elements – a biography or history of the person or organization that created the collection, a scope and content note that describes what kinds of information can be found in the collection, and a list of the titles of all of the folders.

Completed Manuscript Collections

Intern Brittney Baltimore processing a manuscript collection

Below is an excerpt from one of our most recent finding aids. We’ll be posting such excerpts for each new finding aid as we write them as well has highlighting some older parts of our collection!

Hebrew School Books

Bachman Family Hebrew School Book Collection
1953-1992

MS 184

ACCESS AND PROVENANCE

The Bachman Family Hebrew School Book Collection was donated to the Jewish Museum of Maryland in 2009 as accession 2009.086 by Harriet Bachman. The collection was processed by Jennifer Vess in June 2010.

Access to the collection is unrestricted and is available to researchers at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. Researchers must obtain the written permission of the Jewish Museum of Maryland before publishing quotations from materials in the collection. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library’s usual procedures.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL NOTE

Harriet Katz Bachman was born in Washington, DC to Ernestine Amelia Bernheim Katz (1915-2006) and Moses Joseph Katz (1913-1957). She moved to Maryland in 1969 and has lived in various neighborhoods around Baltimore and Columbia. Harriet married Lawrence Robert Bachman in 1969 and they have three children: Seth, Peter, and Eleanor. All three of the Bachman children attended the Howard County Jewish Community School in Columbia, MD until approximately the age of 13. Their final two years of Hebrew school (after Bar/Bat Mitzvah) were provided through Temple Isaiah.

The Howard County Jewish Community School was founded in 1971 as a joint venture of the Columbia Jewish Congregation, Temple Isaiah, and Congregation Beth Shalom. In 1993 the school came under the sole direction of the Columbia Jewish Congregation, a reconstructionist-affiliated synagogue, and the school eventually changed its name to the Columbia Jewish Community School. By that time the other two synagogues had founded their own schools. [Information from www.columbiajewish.org]


SCOPE AND CONTENT

The Bachman Family Hebrew School Book Collection consists of school books used by Seth, Peter, and Nora though at least one was also used by Harriet Bachman in her youth. The books have been organized according to their Library of Congress classification. Library of Congress numbers could not be found for the last twelve books. Of these twelve the first eight are language texts and follow directly after the other language texts. The remaining four books are texts that appear to have been printed specifically for the local Hebrew schools and come at the end of the collection.

I Love the Archives

This one time, long long ago (in Canada), the Discovery Channel released a commercial that went viral.

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Then, XKCD (the awesome site of awesome) made this comic:

In their honor (because the internet loves XKCD) this video was made:

Later, the archives webcomic, Derangement and Description, written by Rebecca Goldman, made this comic about how she loves the archives:

The JMM, inspired by the whole process (and the love of archives), could only do one thing: make an awesome video.

I Love the Archives from Jewish Museum of Maryland on Vimeo.

Based on the comic by Derangement and Description (based on the concept by the Discovery Channel), the Jewish Museum of Maryland's staff and interns (from archives, collections, and education) bring you this short video. An ode to the archives, if you will.

Secret Lives of Interns: The Fourth of July!

4th of July Celebrations from an Aspiring Archivist’s Perspective!

A blog post by Brittney Baltimore

The 4th of July is always a time for celebration in my family, not only the celebration of our nation’s independence, but also birthday celebrations for my Dad. My Dad is without a doubt a history buff, and I am inclined to think that I inherited my love of history from him.

4th of July fireworks display! c. Chris Thompson

He recently brought to my attention a very interesting article about the Declaration of Independence. Using spectral imaging technology, the Library of Congress has recently discovered that Thomas Jefferson originally wrote the word “subjects” in the Declaration of Independence and later smudged it out to write the word “citizens” instead. I find this a very interesting discovery because it reveals the mindset of the early colonists. They no longer wanted to identify themselves as subjects of the crown but had difficulty finding the words to identify themselves because they were forming a country and government that had never been achieved before, a government based on the ideals of freedom and democracy.

Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia: John Dunlap, July 4, 1776.
Broadside. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (36.01.00)

Library of Congress preservation director Dianne van der Reyden ended the article by stating that the recent research and discovery illustrates why it is so important to keep and protect original documents because the discovery could have only been detected by Jefferson’s original draft. I think this is a very important discovery, not only because we have enriched and gained a better understanding of our history during the founding days of our country, but a large scale discovery such as this gained a lot of media attention. Those who know very little about archives, collections or history can gain some understanding and appreciation as to the role that archivists and conservators have in preserving and teaching United States history. Personally, a discovery such as this provides me validation that my aspiring career path is one that I am very interested and passionate about; it also highlights archivists’ importance in preserving our countries past and teaching and providing access to our history in hopes of gaining understanding of our country’s present and future.

Teaching American History

Teaching American History

Think back to 5th grade US history. Did you get to read 18th century letters that talked about the formation of the United States? Did you get to see photographs of immigrants arriving in New York? Did you get to listen to a grown women recalling what it had been like to be a child during the Great Depression? Probably you learned history from your teacher and from the textbooks, and not from primary resources (AKA the actual old stuff). But this summer a group of teachers came to the JMM to burry themselves in the actual old stuff and use it for their own lessons. This happens every year as part of the Teaching American History summer institute – the program matches museums throughout Baltimore to teachers researching specific historical topics, with the aim of using primary resources to teach their students. Each museum provides digital copies of materials so that students can see and not just hear about what their teachers have seen. This year the JMM brought out archives related to: “Ethnic Relations in East Baltimore from the late 1800s to the early 1900s,” “Childhood in Baltimore’s Immigrant Neighborhoods,” “Discrimination,” and “Occupations of Immigrants in East Baltimore.” A lot of topics and a lot of researchers. I don’t often have five researchers in at one time – they kept me very busy for two days. More than two days actually.

Teaching American History researchers at work

Many of the teachers who take part in the program have not worked with archives before. As anyone who’s done research knows, it can get overwhelming very quickly, so we try and pull a selection of materials for the teachers – photos, traditional paper archives, maps, oral histories, etc. They can also search through our database to find something just right for their topic. Still it requires a lot of work on the part of the staff and interns (thank you Lindsay and Julia!!!!!!! They actually did most of the prep work.)

Lindsay and Julia

While the Teaching American History days do make a little extra work for me (and the interns), I also get really excited about it. I love primary sources (AKA the actual old stuff). To me that’s what makes history exciting. For me, a class about discrimination has more impact when the teacher can show how communities excluded others.

JMM 1995.201.001

A class about childhood in the 19th century can connect with kids better when they read or hear the words of the people who lived through it. The actual old stuff does make a difference.

Spotlight on: Archives!

Archive inventory isn’t always the most stimulating activity. Very important of course, but let’s face it – sitting at the computer typing in today’s date and my name over and over and over and over and…. But on the plus side I do get to see everything we have in our collection. I’ve been working on the manuscript collections 75 collections (many are only .25 or .5 linear feet of material, i.e. little boxes). I’m in museums, I work in collections, I’m the archivist so I get pretty excited about all things old, but I have found a couple things that anyone could get excited about.

James Cox and a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, c. 1920

We’ve got a letter from FDR from before he was president – but then who doesn’t have some president’s signature lying around in their collections. Still he’s one of the big ones, one of the presidents most people remember after they finish grade school.

But we’ve also got a letter written by Roger B. Taney. Here is where my history-geekiness truly comes out. I got very excited about this, but many of you are probably asking – WHO? Because you don’t remember all those names and dates from high school history. But this guy is a big deal in 19th century American history. He was a US Attorney General, a Secretary of the Treasury – both pretty important.

He’s even had ships named after him (there’s one in the Baltimore Harbor right now – the Coast Guard Cutter Taney, which is the last ship still floating that also happened to be at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941 – it’s maintained by the Baltimore Maritime Museum). But if anyone knows him, they know him as the Chief Justice of the United States who delivered the opinion in the Dred Scott case. The decision in this case served to perpetuate the status of slaves as property and African Americans as non-citizens in the United States. Our letter is not about that case – Taney is agreeing to consult with a Mr. Nelson on the “question of jurisdiction upon appeals from the Court of Claims.” Fascinating.

And the next great find….well, you’ll just have to stay tuned.

The Secret Lives of Interns: Spotlight on Archives

So...lately I've been working on processing and creating a finding aid for a collection, specifically the Brandeis University National Women's Committee - Baltimore Chapter. One of my tasks, to familiarize myself with the collection, is to read the 8-9 scrapbooks kept by the committee to document every newspaper and every event the committee ever was a part of.

“Founded in 1948, the same year as Brandeis University, the National Committee provides financial support for Brandeis and its Libraries. The National Committee is the largest friends-of-a-library group in the world with 30,000 members nationwide. A volunteer fundraising organization, BNC has contributed over $117 million to Brandeis University, while utilizing the resources of the university to provide unique education programs for its members.” (http://www.brandeis.edu/bnc/about/facts.html) Check out this great article highlighting the BNC: http://www.brandeis.edu/magazine/0803/pdf/bunwc.pdf !

The Baltimore Chapter was set up in 1950, two years after the BUNWC was begun, and it is still active today (they have a website: http://www.bncbaltimore.com/)!

The Baltimore Chapter really did a lot of good things for BU. On June 17th, 1951, Brandeis built an athletic field dedicated to Abraham Marcus, a Baltimore business man and philanthropist. Furthermore, in 1955, the Baltimore Chapter established the Richard Marcus Memorial Fund, in honor of the same family.

The Baltimore Chapter was also the first to start a study group, to promote higher education and further learning among its members. This study group later inspired The Brandeis Study Group, a national series, which began in 1959.

Some of the interesting things I've come across thus far:


In 1954, Eleanor Roosevelt (aka the widow of a pretty famous president) spoke at the fourth annual meeting of the Baltimore Chapter. Who wouldn't like a little one-on-one time with that lady?




In 1955, Brandeis University built three chapels on their campus, to accommodate ALL students, even though BU is a predominantly Jewish crowd. The three chapels were Catholic, Protestant and Jewish. I found this idea really progressive, especially in the 1950s. The university got a lot of criticism from the community because of their decision to build these chapels, from what I read in the news articles. However, they stood by their decision and really embraced the idea that all should be welcome at an academic institution, no matter what your faith. I even read in an article that if we believe that we all come from "One Father", why shouldn't BU embrace and make all religions feel welcome? Awesome idea and kudos to Brandeis for being so progressive. (photos by Mike Lovett/Brandeis University)



Lastly, although this has nothing to do with the National Women's Committee, I came across an article today that a Brandeis University professor in 1963 crystallized a cancer virus and determined its chemical components - the FIRST to do so! I believe the professor's name was Dr. William T. Murakami...kudos to him as well!