Category Archives: archives and special collections

Vassar’s prized Einstein papers to be digitized for public online access with grant from alumna Dr. Georgette Bennett

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Posted on behalf of the Office of Communications

Einstein at the tiller

Einstein at the tiller, 1936,
inscribed to Otto Nathan

For the past ten years, they’ve been a major pride point of the Special Collections at the Vassar Libraries: a collection of letters, manuscripts and photographs relating to Albert Einstein, notably including 130 letters exchanged between Einstein and his friend Otto Nathan, executor of the great scientist’s estate and a member of the college’s economics faculty in the early 1940s.  Researchers from around the world have traveled to campus to study the collection.  But now, thanks to a grant from Vassar alumna Dr. Georgette Bennett in honor of her husband, Dr. Leonard Polonsky, Vassar’s Einstein papers are being digitized, and will become available to a much wider audience.

“My husband and I are deeply committed to the democratization of knowledge through digitization of rare documents.  Digitization of Vassar’s Einstein papers dovetails with our digitization of his collection at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  We’re delighted to make Vassar’s valuable materials accessible to a worldwide audience,” said Dr. Bennett, a graduate of Vassar’s Class of 1967.  The generosity of Dr. Bennett and Dr. Polonsky builds in turn on the original gift of the papers, more properly known as the Morris and Adele Bergreen Albert Einstein Collection, from Adele Gabel Bergreen of the Class of 1944.  “To receive this grant was extraordinary,” said Sabrina Pape, Director of the Vassar Libraries.  “We are so grateful to Dr. Bennett and Dr. Polonsky for allowing us to bring the collection to a worldwide community.”

While the Bergreen Einstein Collection includes other materials, Ronald Patkus, head of the Libraries’ Special Collections, said the grant from Dr. Bennett and Dr. Polonsky has allowed the digitization project to concentrate specifically on the papers and manuscripts.  “The bulk of it is letters between Einstein and Otto Nathan about Einstein’s social and political concerns, especially those relating to Jewish-American organizations and individuals,” he said, adding that they shed light on “Einstein the humanitarian, which is a nice complement to the scientific Einstein.”

Einstein and Otto Nathan © Philippe Halsman Studio

Einstein and Otto Nathan
© Philippe Halsman Studio

Read more online about the Morris and Adele Bergreen Albert Einstein Collection at Vassar College

According to Joanna DiPasquale, Digital Projects Librarian, the process itself involves placing the papers on flat-bed scanners and using high-resolution special equipment that “zooms down to photograph these incredibly fragile materials in a non-invasive way.”

“As an undergraduate institution, Vassar has many unique needs, “ DiPasquale said.  “It’s my job to design a system to meet those needs.”  The result in this instance is a new viewer that will enable a person looking at scanned Einstein materials to see the original German transcription side by side with its English translation – and there will be a full-text searchable database, in both English and German.  Through a consortium that provides third-party backup storage of electronic documents, the digitization will also ensure the future integrity of the files by archiving them.

Einstein Letter

Einstein to Otto Nathan,
September 5, 1939

 

In addition, Vassar is partnering with such institutions as the California Institute of Technology, which has top experts at reading and translating Einstein’s papers, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is the official repository of the Albert Einstein Archives and home to the world’s largest collection of Einstein materials.  “The result of the Vassar effort will be a standalone project that targets undergraduates,” said DiPasquale, “but it will also contribute to a larger digital collection of Einstein materials that will include both Vassar and Hebrew University materials.”

The digitization work has begun in earnest, with open online access to the documents expected to begin in early 2014.  But as Pape stressed, that marks just the beginning of the effects of Dr. Bennett and Dr. Polonsky’s generosity, which also will include stipends for Vassar faculty members to explore ways of incorporating materials from the Bergreen Einstein Collection into their teaching.  Faculty from such diverse disciplines as History, German Studies, Philosophy, Earth Science and Physics already have expressed interest.

“Opening up the collection for greater use across the curriculum is completely in keeping with our intent, and in keeping with a Vassar education,” said Dr. Bennett.  “We are happy to make this possible.”

Mitchell Kennerley and Vassar College

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Posted on behalf of Ron Patkus, Director of Archives and Special Collections

Mitchell Kennerley in his library

Mitchell Kennerley in his library

Mitchell Kennerley (1878-1950), whose birthday is August 14, was one of the greatest figures in the worlds of publishing, book collecting, and art in the early twentieth century.

Born in England, as a young man he worked for the London office of the publisher John Lane.  He came to New York to establish offices here, but did not stay with the company for long.  He briefly held other positions before starting his own publishing firm in 1906, still in his twenties.  He made many contacts and over his lifetime published the work of key authors, among them Oscar Wilde, D.H. Lawrence, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.  He was called “the first modern publisher,” and was known for holding high standards in book production.  From 1910 to 1916 he published in New York and London The Forum, a literary periodical which often featured his books.

Kennerley’s interest in books as objects led him to the world of book collecting.  He joined the Book Collectors Club of America and started the Lexington Avenue Bookshop.  From 1916-1929 and 1937-1939 he was also president of Andersen Galleries, overseeing many important auctions of books, manuscripts, and works of art.  In the late 1930s he co-founded Parke-Bernet Galleries, which would eventually become the largest auctioneer of fine art in the United States.

Kennerley’s personality was larger than life.  Matthew Bruccoli, in The Fortunes of Mitchell Kennerley, Bookman described it as a combination of “cool egotism, arrogance, audacity, ruthlessness, relentlessness and charm.” He thus faced many problems, including financial difficulties, and eventually committed suicide (the exact cause is unknown).

Kennerley printers mark

Kennerley printers mark

Vassar’s Special Collections Library holds significant collections relating to Kennerley.  Of special note is a complete run of his imprint, dating from 1906 to 1929.  Given to the library in 1930, this archive reveals both the range of Kennerley as publisher, and the care with which individual books and periodicals were made.  For those interested in these books, Daniel Boice’s The Mitchell Kennerley Imprint: A Descriptive Bibliography will be of great interest.

Over the course of many years Kennerley generously donated a number of interesting and rare books to the Vassar library.  He had become friends with the librarian, Fanny Borden, and often corresponded with her and sent Vassar interesting titles for its collection.  These include, for example, a collection of first editions of Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as a complete collection of publications of Frederic Goudy’s Village Press.

In addition, Vassar holds a collection of Kennerley’s personal papers, which date from 1898 to 1934.  Among the papers is correspondence with people like Bliss Carmen, D.H. Lawrence, and Joseph Hergesheimer, as well as photographs, publications by and about Kennerley, and other miscellaneous items.  There are also Kennerley letters in other Vassar collections, such as the Frederic Goudy Papers.

Other collections of Kennerley papers are held by a variety of institutions, including the New York Public Library, the Archives of American Art, the University of Virginia, and the University of Pennsylvania.  The NYPL collection in particular holds a significant number of letters written to Kennerley by various writers, artists, and others.

 

Maria Mitchell and her Students

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August 1st marks the 195th anniversary of the birth of Maria Mitchell, famed astronomer and educator. Much has been written about Mitchell’s public life and career, so we won’t take up more space here recounting that. And much has been written about how Mitchell nurtured her students and served as an inspiration for successful careers in the sciences for several Vassar graduates, so that is not new information. What is new is our expanded access to how students felt on a very personal level about Maria Mitchell – made possible by the digitization of a large section of the diaries and letters housed in Vassar’s Archives and Special Collections. Below are excerpts from some of those materials.

Miss Mitchell I admire more than I do any woman here, she is tall, has grey hair which she wears done up in two little knobs on each side of her head, that look as if they would be curls sometime, the rest is in a black chenile net drawn up on top of her head just as Emma’s is. She being a Quakeress always wears black and grey, and her whole appearance never alters a particle. She is a noble woman.
– Martha S. Warner to her mother, October 1865

Maria Mitchell portrait, n.d.

Maria Mitchell portrait, n.d.

Miss [Mitchell], I do love so much, it will always be one of my happy memories that she kissed me good bye – when I had reached home at last – of course it was a very ordinary thing – but then I did not expect it from her. She would have done it to any of her class of course as she did to me.
– Sarah L. Blatchley to Isabel Treadwell, 28 December 1865

Maria Mitchell and her Father, n.d.

Maria Mitchell and her father, n.d.

Maria Mitchell came up to our room the evening, she is very pleasant, her father enquired particularly about all our family and asked if you Father did not teach once, and after I told him that you had not, would hardly give up the idea but what you had, it seems quite like home, to go over there, they are so pleasant and social.
– Abigail and Caroline Slade to their parents, 21 January 1866

Mariah Mitchell and her first astronomy class, 1866

Mariah Mitchell and her first astronomy class, 1866

I think everything of Miss Mitchell. She is just as good as she can be, so very smart and yet perfectly simple in her manners. I went over to the observatory the day after I got here and rec’d a very warm welcome from Mr. Mitchell, a very cordial one from Miss Maria. He said he had inquired ever since college began of any one that might know when I was expected. I staid an hour or more and shall go again in a day or two.
– Mary Woodworth to her mother, September 1868

Vassar Observatory, 1879

Vassar Observatory, 1879

Almost every night some of us go out star gazing. Passers by would think us crazy from the frantic manner in which we rush about shouting “I know what that is.” “Oh! what is that name?” and the constant repetition of some names as, “Capella, Capella.” Last night we learned three new names, and fortunately have remembered them. We find Prof. Mitchell perfectly charming, as she has always been reported to be. One night we went over to ask her some question and were treated to fine large pears. Think we shall go again.
Julia M. Pease to “Carrie,” October 1873