I am pleased to announce that the Muñoz Family’s Atari Collection (M2010) is processed and open for research. The collection is 11 linear feet and consists of an Atari 800XL home computer, color monitor and complete set of peripherals. The collection also includes 127 consumer software titles published between 1980 and 1987.
Social Justice at Stanford, an exhibit showing in the Bender Room of Green Library beginning September 30, explores the theme of social justice as revealed through a selection of materials from the Stanford University Archives documenting 20th century civil rights and social protest movements.
Walking around campus, one can readily see the impact of Stanford’s Arts Initiative. Joining the existing Cantor Arts Center are several new buildings, including the Bing Concert Hall, which opened in 2013, the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, which opened on September 21st, and the growing structure that will be the McMurtry Building, slated to open in 2015.
In parallel with this new focus on the arts, the MSS division in Special Collections has worked over the last year with Peter Blank and Anna Fishaut at the Art & Architecture Library, in identifying and funding the preservation and processing of four recently acquired art collections. Some of the projects will include selected reformatting of audio-visual elements, processing of digital files, additional digitization efforts, and collaboration with the libraries’ Department of Conservation and the Art Library’s Visual Resources Center.
The Manuscripts Division is thrilled to announce that the Benoit Mandelbrot Papers are now open for research. A finding aid to the collection is available on the Online Archive of California and materials are pageable through the catalog record in Searchworks.
The papers document the life and work of Benoit Mandelbrot, maverick mathematician and pioneer of fractal geometry. The collection contains biographical material, personal and professional correspondence, drafts and typescripts for books and articles, subject files, and reprints. The collection also contains a significant amount of research data, including notes, plots, graphs, and computer-generated visualizations of fractals. Also included are teaching materials, administrative records, awards, and materials related to publicity events, such as posters and flyers announcing conferences and lectures focusing on fractals or related topics. Other formats present in the collection include photographs, audiovisual material, and computer media, as well as an extensive amount of fractal and fractal-related artwork.
The Archives is pleased to announce that it has acquired the papers of two noted scholars of women's studies: Marilyn Boxer and Karen Offen.
Marilyn Boxer (Ph.D, UC Riverside) is emeritus professor of history at San Francisco State University and former lecturer and scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford. She has held administrative appointments at San Diego State University, including Chair of the Department of Women's Studies (1974-1980) and Dean of College of Arts and Letters (1985-1989); as well as at San Francisco State University where she served as Vice-president for Academic Affairs (1989-1996). Boxer is the author of When women ask the questions: creating women's studies in America (1998). She has also co-edited three books: Socialist women: European socialist feminism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1978); Connecting spheres: European women in a globalizing world, 1500 to the present (1987); and Clara Zetkin: National and International Contexts (2012). In 2004, Boxer received the Helen Hawkins Feminist Activist Award for Betterment of Women's Lives.
In 1985, Steve Jobs gave Meneuz complete access to NeXT and he spent the next decade photographing over seventy companies, innovators, and investors in Silicon Valley. The Computer History Museum has a current exhibit up in their lobby of Meneuz’s photographs that runs through September 7th - Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985–2000. The images in this exhibit are part of
We are happy to announce that Lucy Waldrop will join Special Collections in September as the project archivist on the Helen and Newton Harrison papers project. This is an NEH-funded project and will conclude in February 2016. Lucy comes to us from Wichita State University, where as a project archivist, she processed several large collections including that of photographer and film director Gordon Parks. The Harrison collection is a significant acquisition and this preservation and processing project is one of several art projects being undertaken by Special Collections in collaboration with the Art Library in the coming year.
The University Archives is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Keith Johnstone papers. Johnstone, a British and Canadian pioneer of improvisational theatre, is best known for inventing the Impro System and Theatresports, the latter of which has become a staple of modern improvisational comedy and is the inspiration for the television shows such as "Whose Line Is It Anyway?." As an educator, playwright, actor and theatre director Johnstone's ideas about improvisation, behaviour and performance appeal to a wide variety of groups. From actors to psychotherapists, improvisation companies to theatre schools and companies, business and management training specialists and humanities research institutes, universities and film production companies have invited him to come to teach them about his ideas, and how they might apply them.