John Mustain (left) and Peter Whidden (right) show off a treasure from the Rare Books Collection
“Peter’s work is exceptional”
-- Memo from Linda Long in 1994
Visitors to the basement of Green Library could easily overlook a series of small, blue arrows on the floor. They once directed colleagues toward a service elevator during a major move of materials from Green Library to the Stanford Auxiliary Library. They are the subtle reminders of the often unseen work that happens in an institution like ours: the thinking, logistics, measuring, planning, and communication that keeps things humming along smoothly and of which patrons and colleagues might not even be aware. While our colleague, Peter Holt Whidden, Rare Book Specialist in Special Collections, was not responsible for those particular arrows, he has left many similar signposts throughout the library and Special Collections when he retires on Aug. 31, 2021 after 31 years of service to Stanford Libraries.
While Stanford audiences already know quite a bit about our wonderful rare book holdings through SearchWorks and a growing number of online Spotlight exhibits, an ongoing goal is to celebrate our collections more widely with a global audience.
The Department of Special Collections of Stanford Libraries has appointed Anna Lee as its Photography Curator. She will begin her new assignment September 13, 2021.
Image credit: Members of the Gay People’s Union (GPU) pose in front of the old firehouse with a sign that reads “gay freedom” during the GPU conference and gay pride week in June of 1974. See this image in SearchWorks.
Stanford Libraries’ Department of Special Collections is excited to announce that the email archive of Ted Nelson is now available to researchers. Theodor Holm "Ted" Nelson is an information technology pioneer and systems humanist who began his work in these areas in the 1960s. Nelson founded Project Xanadu, a global hypertext system designed to permanently connect different types of documents. He also coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia. The Ted Nelson email archive contains 236,779 messages related to Nelson’s life and work between 2001-2019, covering his more recent work.
The ePADD Project Team and the ePADD Discovery Consortium is excited to announce the launch of a new shared ePADD Discovery website! ePADD, the free and open source software for appraisal, processing, and providing access to email archives, developed by Stanford Libraries provides a stand alone email Discovery Module that can be hosted on a public web server.
