Hard to Find Resources II: Third Party Presidential Nominating Conventions: Proceedings, Records, etc.

Last fall I offered a blog post describing two microfilm sets that contain proceedings from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. This post looks at a third set that focuses on third parties in U.S. presidential campaigns.

Titled Third Party Presidential Nominating Conventions, Proceedings, Records, etc., and published by Micro 8 Publications in 1973, this 7 reel set contains proceedings, party platforms, addresses, pamphlets and other records of a variety of American third parties, ranging from the Anti-Masonic Party of 1830 to the Socialist Party of 1968.

Arrangement of the material on film from Reel 1 through most of Reel 6 is alphabetical by party name and chronological under each, from the Anti-Masonic Party to the International Workingmen's Association; then follows on Reel 6 the Communist Party (1948-1952, 1968) and the Union Party (1936). The last reel contains miscellaneous pamphlets from a number of parties. The sequence of parties on this reel seems haphazard, but the pamphlets under each generally are arranged alphabetically by author.

The invaluable printed guide (shelved in the IC) lists all items in the sequence in which they appear on the film, and provides for each item the reel number location, date, title, and number of pages. N.B.: None of the items in this collection is individually cataloged. However, the library (and/or the Hoover Library and Archives) may have acquired some of these materials separately in printed editions, and cataloged them for either stacks or Special Collections.

Hard to Find Resources I: Columbia University Oral History Microfiche Collection

Green Library has many rich resources which are still only found in microform formats, whether on microfilm reels or microfiche cards. This is the first in a series of blog posts designed to highlight and hopefully expose some of these resources, many of which can be difficult to locate via SOCRATES.

The Columbia University Oral History Research Office is "the oldest and largest organized oral history program in the world." Founded in 1948, the collection contains over 8,000 taped interviews comprising nearly 1,000,000 pages of transcripts.

While many of the interviews (tapes and transcripts) are available only in the Oral History Collection at Columbia, a microfiche project in the 1970s and 1980s transferred over 1,100 interview typescripts to microfiche cards. Stanford purchased Parts I-V; it is cataloged as Microfiche 58 in SOCRATES. A guide, titled Columbia University Oral History Microfiche Collection: A Cumulative Index to Memoirs in Parts I-V is available on the reference shelves in Media-Microtext; Columbia's Oral History Research Office also has a version (including individuals in Part VI) online.

Importantly, most (with the exception of many interviews in Part IV) of the interviews are not cataloged separately in SOCRATES. Fortunately, the microfiche cards are arranged in alphabetical order (regardless of Series #), making it a bit easier to find a given individual.

For Series I of the collection there is a detailed name and subject index for every page of each memoir. Each citation has an abbreviated name of the memoirist and the page on which the item being discussed appears in the memoir. Unfortunately, such a detailed index was only produced for Part I.

James M. McPherson: Presidential Lecture, April 13, 2009

Princeton historian James M. McPherson will be on campus to deliver a Presidential Lecture on April 13 (@ 7:00 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium). The title of McPherson's lecture is "But There was No Peace: The Aftermath of the Civil War," and more details are available on the Stanford Humanities Center's website.

Additionally, the library has created a webpage containing an essay, excerpts, and a bibliography that describe McPherson's work.

Journal of Transnational American Studies; inaugural issue

A new peer-reviewed online journal of American Studies, The Journal of Transnational American Studies, has recently been launched. Edited by Stanford English Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin and sponsored by the American Studies Program at Stanford and the American Cultures and Global Contexts Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the journal is available free online. More about its launch can be found in this article from the Stanford Report.

The inaugural issue features an essay by Stanford historian Gordon Chang, titled "Emerging from the Shadows: The Visual Arts and Asian American History", excerpted from Chang, Gordon H., Mark Johnson, and Paul Karlstrom, eds. Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008.

The Mike Wallace Interview--Harry Ransom Center

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has digitized 65 interviews from The Mike Wallace Interview, a pioneering interview program of the late 1950s. The Ransom Center's site provides video (several are in audio/transcript format only) along with transcripts of interviews conducted in 1957 and 1958. Featuring a wide range of guests from politics, entertainment and the media, the digitized interviews include discussions with Henry Kissinger, Earl Browder, Governor Orval Faubus, Kirk Douglas, Malcolm Muggeridge, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. According to the Ransom Center's website:

"Mike Wallace rose to prominence in 1956 with the New York City television interview program, Night-Beat, which soon developed into the nationally televised prime-time program, The Mike Wallace Interview. Well prepared with extensive research, Wallace asked probing questions of guests framed in tight close-ups. The result was a series of compelling and revealing interviews with some of the most interesting and important people of the day.

The Mike Wallace Interview ran from 1957 to 1960, but the Ransom Center collection includes interviews from only 1957 and 1958. In the early 1960s, Mr. Wallace donated to the Ransom Center kinescopes of these programs and related materials, including his prepared questions, research material, and correspondence."

In addition, the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin hosts a companion site, which features "a searchable, annotatable, rich-media version of The Mike Wallace Interview Collection."

Americana; recent acquisitions--antiquarian & ephemera

The library consistently acquires antiquarian, ephemeral and out of print publications in all areas of U.S. history. The following list is a sampling of recently added titles:

Ye A.E.F. Hymnal; a collection of the doughboy lyrics that smoothed the road from Hoboken to the Rhine. Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1918. Drawings by Henry Mayers.

Cumming, John P. More Yank talk: a review of A.E.F. humor: trench and billet. Paris: Lafayette Pub. Co., 1919.

Bailey, Seth Thomas. Henry's pal to Henry; a book of letters to Henry.[Paris] The Stars and stripes, 1919.

Brine, Mary Dow. Bessie, the Cash Girl. New York: Hunt & Eaton; Cincinnati: Cranston & Curtis, 1878.

Breed, David Riddle. The Locust-Scourge in Minnesota. New York: American Tract Society, 1878.

Maryland General Assembly. Correspondence relating to the Insurrection at Harper's Ferry, 17 October, 1859. Annapolis: B.H. Richardson, 1860.

Feval, Paul. The Golden Daggers: A romance of California. Translated from the French...By a Gentleman of Louisiana. Columbia, S.C.: Evans and Cogswell, 1864.

Bradley, Lawson. Official Guide to the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, Portland, Oregon, June 1 to October 15, 1905. Portland, OR: Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair, 1905.

Georgia Writers' Project. Atlanta, a city of the modern South. Compiled by workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Georgia. Sponsored by the Board of Education of the City of Atlanta. New York, Smith & Durrell [1942]

Georgia Writers' Project.Augusta; compiled and written by Augusta Unit, Federal Writers' Project in Georgia, Works Progress Administration. Sponsored by City Council of Augusta. Augusta, Ga., Tidwell Printing Supply Co., 1938.

Mountain View (Calif.). Board of Trade. A region of health and prosperity, Mountain View, issued by Board of Trade, Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California. San Francisco,Printed by the Stanley-Taylor Co.,under the direction of "The Register" [1903?]

International Christian Endeavor Convention. "California '97." Sacramento City and County Christian Endeavor Union. [Sacramento: The Union,[1897]

Campbell, Helen. Life story of Helen Campbell, the child evangelist, nine years of age, started preaching July 1924 in San Francisco. Long Beach, CA : [n.s.], 1924.

Cotton Valley, Alabama: a school in the Black Belt. Boston: Woman's Home Missionary Association, [1901?]

Gardner, John Endicott. American-Chinese calendar for 65 years, 1849-1914. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904.

U.S. Sanitary Commission. Information for Army meetings: January 1865. Philadelphia: James Rogers, 1865].