In tersely worded sentences written in a hasty scrawl, the author’s agony is almost audible: “Father + Brother gone + this is the most severe trial I’ve had since enlistment, to part with friends. Almost wish they had not come. May God bless my father!”

Terri Goldich, a special collections curator, retrieves an item from one of the archives at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

So begins Winchester native Harlan Rugg’s service as a captain in the Union Army’s 5th Connecticut Infantry unit in the summer of 1861. Rugg’s diary, which records his skirmishes with, capture by, and escape from the “Rebs,” is part of the Connecticut Soldiers Collection, which is included in the Archives & Special Collections housed at UConn’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Tragic, historic, artistic, amusing, esoteric, irreplaceable. There may well be something in the Dodd Research Center to fit every adjective, from the single piece of paper dated Feb. 21, 1878, that is the first telephone directory issued by the company that would become Southern New England Telephone, to the collection of historic maps documenting the network of Connecticut railroad routes that is matched only by the National Archives and the 44-page first edition of Slave Songs of the United States from 1867, which contains interviews and comments from former slaves.

Each of these pieces contributes to the kaleidoscope of major collections in the Dodd Research Center, where railroad history, Connecticut business, labor and industry, ethnic heritage, immigration, poetry, literature, and politics all have a place. “We’ve tried to focus on things that weren’t being collected elsewhere,” notes Tom Wilsted, who heads the Dodd Research Center. “All of our collections are valuable, and many have national significance.”

One thing that sets the UConn collection apart is its substantial ephemera—the fliers, broadsides, tickets, advertisements, and other materials that were meant for one-time use and then to be thrown away.

The collections are a resource to UConn faculty as well as national scholars and researchers, says Laura Katz Smith, a Dodd Research Center curator. The more than 3,000 linear feet of railroad history, for example, have provided fodder for transportation historians, local historical societies, and railroad enthusiasts, as well as lawyers settling property disputes and liability lawsuits.

Here is a sampling from some of the offerings held in the Archives & Special Collections:

Propaganda Extravaganza:
The Alternative Press Collection

Ranked as one of the top collections of its kind in the nation, the Alternative Press Collection’s holdings include newspapers, magazines, books, pamphlets, buttons and other items relating to a variety of activist movements. Curator Terri Goldich says the collection is a gold mine for students and researchers in political science, history, sociology, and women’s studies. “In these publications we have a record of the beginnings of a lot of social movements, including Black Power, women’s liberation, and gay and lesbian issues,” she says.

There are also materials from groups most might not have heard of, such as the Fat Liberation Front, a 1970s New Haven organization that promoted education about the nature of obesity.

A mortarboard covered in political buttons was owned by activist Abbie Hoffman and is part of the Alternative Press Collection.

Opinions in the collection range from the far left to the far right to the far out. In addition to such familiar names as the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan, homegrown radical publications such as Hartford’s The Psychic Reporter, Oakville’s Mosquito Bite and Hebron’s The Resounding Scream: The Revolutionary Anarchist Newspaper can be found. Some titles might make you scratch your head: The Insurgent Sociologist, The Unabashed Librarian and Snake Power.

Correspondence and papers of individual activists are also part of the collection. It was international news when the brother of Abbie Hoffman donated memorabilia connected to the 1960s activist including surveillance files from the FBI and CIA and a T-shirt bearing the message, “My Country Invaded Nicaragua, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”

Not Just for Kids: The Northeast
Children’s Literature Collection

The children’s book collection began in the mid-1980s, when the wife of a faculty member — Billie M. Levy, whose husband was UConn law professor Nathan Levy — donated a significant portion of her book collection to UConn—some 8,500 volumes.

Today the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection includes nearly 25,000 books and serials, and it continues to grow by adding the best children’s books available, including each new batch of Caldecott and Newbury award winners. The collection is distinctive and nationally known for its emphasis on authors who live in or write about the Northeast, such as Connecticut’s Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are; James Marshall, best known for George and Martha and the Miss Nelson series; and Tomie de Paola, who wrote Strega Nona. The collection also contains 19 books by Jean Marzollo ’64 (CLAS), including 12 of her heralded I Spy educational series.

Book dummies, which are the illustrator’s first attempts to pair drawings with text, are included in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. Pictured above is Barbara Cooney’s dummy for Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree.

The collection contains original manuscripts and artwork from 70 authors and illustrators, as well as book dummies, which are the illustrator’s first attempts to pair drawings with text. Often the dummies contain sticky notes and scribbled messages detailing the interplay among the author, book designer, illustrator, and editor. UConn art professor Cora Lynn Deibler has often used this material as a teaching tool in her illustration classes, describing it as “invaluable” in demonstrating to students the process by which professional artists create their books.

In a completely different academic application, UConn psychologist Letitia Naigles has her developmental psychology students use the collection to compare how children are portrayed in fiction with what is known about children’s behavior from scientific research.

A World of Human Rights Resources

The Dodd Research Center’s rich collection of human rights materials offers factual information and insight into human rights issues in virtually every nation in the world. The collection includes personal papers of human rights activists, manuscripts, photographs and newsletters from human rights organizations, among other items.

There is particular depth with materials about the South African struggle against apartheid, which features microfilm copies of the papers of such anti-apartheid activists as Oliver Tambo and A. B. Xuma and a collection of photographs from Impact Visuals, a cooperative agency dedicated to social documentary photography. More striking, perhaps, than the images of such well-known figures as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela are the photographs of nameless children in school uniforms fleeing a teargas attack in a “colored” township or of the white family walking through a squatters’ camp of black residents to reach their voting station.

The collection continues to grow as earlier this year, some 1,200 boxes of documents were acquired from Human Rights Internet, a human rights monitoring organization in Canada. Through an agreement between UConn and the African National Congress, the Dodd Research Center has been designated as the sole repository for ANC materials in North America.

But Are They Really Books?: The Artists’
Books Collection

Most often a book is opened and read from front to back, top to bottom, and left to right. That is, unless the book is part of the Artists’ Books Collection. At first glance, Vishnu Crew Stews Vindaloo Anew by M. Arpad Bartalos appears to be an ordinary film reel canister. But inside, bolted to an aluminum disk, are four slender aluminum silhouettes of strange, cartoon-like faces. Loosen the nuts to discover that the faces are actually the covers of removable booklets with accordion pages featuring poems and illustrations.

The Artist’s Books Collection includes Vishnu Crew Stews Vindaloo Anew, by M. Arpad Bartalos.

Try Do Not Enter by Marlene MacCallum. A tunnel book, it extends in telescopic fashion by way of a number of accordion folds. Pull up on the rectangular cover, and the first set of folds falls away to reveal a murky photogravure image and then another folded barrier (“Caution” and later “Keep Out”) until, at the bottom, you find yourself peering down a mysterious alley.

Operating like Jacob’s ladder toys, packaged like boxes of chocolates, constructed like Venetian blinds, these publications explode the usual book conventions—and have fun doing it, demonstrating a variety of printing, photography, and illustration techniques as well as design concepts and binding styles. The collection is an “irreplaceable” resource, says Janet Pritchard, assistant professor of art and art history, because in a gallery or museum students would not be able to touch and discover the books in the way they can at the Dodd Research Center. “It’s not a simple experience,” she says of the interaction with the artists’ books.

The Charters Archives of Blues and African American Vernacular Music

In the way that the Grand Canyon beautifully exposes layers of geologic history, the Samuel and Ann Charters Archives reveal America’s textured musical history, starting with the African tribal music and slave songs that would later influence modern genres, including blues, rock ’n’ roll and hip-hop.

The extensive Charters collection is a working archive that is enriched by the direct, insider knowledge of Samuel Charters, a Grammy-winning, Blues Hall of Fame producer and author and his wife, Ann, who is a professor of English at UConn and the author of books related to African American culture. Blues pioneers such as B. B. King, John Lee Hooker, Jelly Roll Morton, and others are represented in the Charters collection, but so are many other obscure, but influential, musicians. The collection contains sheet music, recordings from all over the African Diaspora, album covers, posters, musicians’ contracts and correspondence, and field notes and historic photographs from recording sessions.

Inside Out: Connecticut Politics
and History Online

Although there are many treasures buried deep within the Dodd Research Center, increasingly the Internet is providing access to these treasures for middle school and high school students throughout Connecticut.

The papers of U.S. Senator Thomas J. Dodd are housed in the Research Center that bears his name.

The Dodd Research Center’s Web site features a number of curriculum guides that provides access to primary sources and historic photographs for young scholars. One example is “Issues of the Holocaust,” a curriculum guide developed in conjunction with the Neag School of Education, which draws upon the papers of the Center’s namesake, Thomas J. Dodd, the former U.S. senator and executive legal counsel to the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal after World War II.

Similar classroom activities are also part of the Connecticut History Online (CHO) initiative, a collaborative database with 15,000 historic photos and drawings. Lesson plans provide teachers with ways to explore such topics as the roles of men and women in American society. Students themselves can take a “journey” through a variety of themes from Connecticut history, such as maritime trades and natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes.

By 2005, a second phase of CHO will add maps, oral histories, broadsides, and diaries to the database. Says Tom Wilsted, “While we’re excited to have such wonderful resources, the real value is in making them accessible to a wide variety of users.”

For more information on the Dodd Research Center collections, go to www.lib.uconn.edu/ and look under Special Libraries.