University of Virginia Library

'Soundings'

Alderman Library Manuscript Division
Discussed By Assistant Curator,Berkeley

By John Casteen

In his office on the second floor
of the Alderman Building, we
found Assistant Curator of
Manuscripts Edmund Berkeley, Jr.,
who told us about the business of
the Manuscripts Division. "We are
responsible for collecting and
maintaining manuscripts and
certain other items that are not
printed books. Our collections
contain letters, business papers,
literary manuscripts, historical
documents, prints, paintings, and
other types of art objects. Some of
our holdings might seem at first
glance to be pretty far afield from
manuscripts - we have, for
example, a stocking that belonged
to King George II, a German Luger
pistol, a collection of Chinese
document seals, and even some
closely guarded locks of Mr.
Jefferson's hair - but all of these
things fall into our custody because
there are presently no other
University agencies to keep them."

We asked Mr. Berkeley to
explain how the Library goes about
collecting manuscripts. "It's a
complicated business, because there
is no single procedure. Our budget
is quite small, so we do less buying
than some libraries. But we are able
to draw on certain special funds for
certain types of purchases. We have
a group of honorary Consultants
who work without pay,
approaching public figures, literary
people, and business people about
placing their papers in the Library.
The Manuscripts staff does quite a
lot of collecting from right here.
And we frequently receive
collections as gifts from alumni or
friends of the University, as
restricted deposits, or as open
deposits. The donor retains strict
control over access to a restricted
deposits. We watch the manuscript
market and sometimes seek out
funds to buy particularly important
items."

Who are our competitors in the
manuscript collecting business?
"Private collectors, obviously -
persons who collect manuscripts for
their own pleasure or for
investment purposes. And we
compete with other archives in
collecting various types of material.
We try to compete and cooperate
with our neighbors at Duke or
William and Mary. We compete
with them in that all of us want to
enlarge our holdings in certain areas
that happen to be of interest to
researchers and we cooperate by
avoiding collecting in areas that are
properly the bailiwick of some
other archive. If Duke were offered
a collection of manuscripts
pertaining to the founding of the
University of Virginia, the people
there might well refer them to us,
and we would try to do the same
for them in a similar situation."

Mr. Berkeley offered to show us
around the Manuscripts Division, so
we followed him from his office
back into the second floor stack
area, which the Manuscripts
Division shares with the Rare Books
Division. "We can just about
equally divide our holdings between
literary manuscripts and historical
manuscripts," explained Mr.
Berkeley. "Our holdings of
scientific and other papers are
rather small. Historical manuscripts,
such as those stored in this area
happen to be, commonly include
papers of important families, such
as the Randolphs, or Carters, or
Baylors of Virginia, public records,
legal papers, and business papers.
We are frequently able to secure
intact sets of papers from Virginia
political figures, thereby providing
scholars the complete physical
record of a man's career." He
showed us a long row of gray
storage boxes, stacked in tiers from
floor to ceiling. "These are the
papers of the late Senator Carter
Glass of Lynchburg, who was
influential in the establishment of
the Federal Reserve System. The
collection contains virtually every
scrap of Senator Glass' records, so
it is indispensable to scholars
working on national financial
policy during the Senator's career."

Following Mr. Berkeley through
a maze of corridors that led from
the stacks to the Clifton Ware
Barrett Library of American
Literature, we heard him describe
the Library's literary manuscripts.
"The Barrett Library, which is the
gift of a University alumnus, is one
of our prize holdings. It contains
both rare books and manuscripts -
many collections like this - so we
share the administration with the
Rare Books Division. It combines
literary manuscripts, like Stephen
Crane's "Red Badge of Courage"
and one version of Walt Whitman's
"Leaves of Grass," with letters and
documents pertaining to the lives
and families of American writers. A
scholar working on Samuel
Langhorne Clemens, for example,
might come to the Barrett Library
to consult the holograph of Mark
Twain short story, and stay to read
through Clemens' correspondence
with his publishers or with his
daughters. We even have a letter
from Clems to a Hartford,
Connecticut, watch repairman,
instructing him to replace the
defective workings of Mrs. Clemens'
watch with "more orthodox" parts.

"The McGregor Library," as we
followed Mr. Berkeley through a
foyer and into an adjacent room,
"covers both American history and
American literature. It really sums
up the University's collecting
interests by concentrating on all
types of books and manuscripts
that bear on American life, with
special emphasis on earlier periods.
One can come here to study
Jefferson, or Madison, or
Washington, or perhaps some
obscure Indian tribe."

What are the Library's best
manuscript collections? "You can't
really label collections that neatly,
because some are good for one
thing, and some for another. We
have a large collection of the papers
of Jefferson and smaller but
interesting collections of Madison,
and Monroe and other presidents.
We can cover virtually the whole of
Virginia's political history with our
holdings in Virginia politics. We
have a very complete set of papers
relating to the history of the
University, and to the history of
this area. The Barrett Library, and
several smaller collections, make us
unusually strong in American
literature. John Dos Passos, for
example, has placed his manuscripts
here, and they make a very fine
collection in themselves. And the
William Faulkner Collection, which
is carefully restricted, is amazingly
good, partly because Mr. Faulkner
kept good records, and partly
because Mr. Linton Massey, who
assembled much of the collection is
an uncommonly astute
bibliographer and collector. We
have quite a few other strong
collections, but these are typical."

We were interested in the cost
of collecting manuscripts, so we
asked Mr. Berkeley about that. "It
depends on what you are collecting.
I mentioned earlier that our
purchasing budget is small. Because
of that fact, we depend heavily on
donors who contribute items to our
collections. We do, however, have
certain special funds to purchase
particular materials, such as items
pertaining to Thomas Jefferson, or
John Randolph of Roanoke. A
good Jefferson letter, to give an
example of prices, might cost from
$600 to $800 on the open market,
and up to $2000 if it has political
importance. Items pertaining to
minor contemporary figures might
cost as little as $10 apiece. You
might say that there are no absolute
values in this kind of buying - each
item is unique. You can't shop
around because there is no
selection. We have to pay the asking
price, or decline a purchase. For
this reason, we have to but
primarily from catalogs, rather than
at auctions - we have too little
money to compete in most
auctions."

What about collections that
contain things other than
manuscripts? "There are several. I
mentioned before that we have a
good collection of Chinese
document seals, some of which are
very old. We have just finished
rearranging that collection, and we
are excited about it. The Walter
Reed-Yellow Fever Archive, which
was assembled by the late Dr.
Phillip Hench of the Mayo Clinic,
contains several items that are not
manuscripts but that are important
- slides, medical equipment, even a
stovepipe from a hospital shed in
Cuba. Dr. William Beam, the
Medical School's recent visiting
Professor of the History of
Medicine, is using these items in
preparing his definitive Walter Reed
biography. Many collections
contain war souvenirs or other
items that were important to
someone whose papers we hold.
These are not things that we collect
for themselves, but they are quite
worthy of preservation. One aspect
of manuscript collecting that we
have been surprised to find to be
important is our collection of
stamps. A Charlottesville stamp
collector has identified several
thousand rare stamps and
postmarks on letter covers and
envelopes in our collections."

"This is the reading room." We
had followed Mr. Berkeley into a
long, windowless room beneath the
front of the Library. "Its design is
interesting because we have to
control both temperature and
humidity in order to preserve old
papers." There was a very faint
hum of motors and compressors.
"Some other parts of the Division
have these atmospheric controls,
but only here is it possible, if one
listens hard, to hear the motors.
Most of our staff members (there
are in all nine professional and
part-time employees) work here, as
do most researchers who use our
facilities. We bring manuscripts here
from the vault or from the stacks,
and provide necessary equipment
for their use."

"Finally, we cooperate with
scholarly projects both within and
outside the University. The
University is a co-sponsor of the
monumental Papers of Thomas
Jefferson project which is in
progress here and at Princeton, and
the James Madison Papers. The
University has recently entered into
what may be the most important
and exciting historical publications
project of the next several years in
the complete edition of the papers
of George Washington. This project
will result eventually in a center
here for advanced bibliographical
and editorial work - areas in which
University scholars are already hard
at work - and the Manuscripts
Division will certainly want to
make its services available to this
project."

What about the future of the
Manuscripts Division? "There are
several possibilities. Right now we
are among the top ten university
archives in the country, with over
6,000,000 manuscript items. And
our holdings grow at a tremendous
rate. The new wing has enabled us
to increase our storage space, but
we will need before too long to
enlarge our reading area and
preparations rooms. The planned
Library expansion will, hopefully,
give us a larger staff. We are going
to need funds for enlarged
collecting and processing
operations, and eventually for a
field agent to intensify our effort to
secure gifts and deposits. The
nature of a manuscript archive is
rather different from that of a
conventional library, and it requires
a different sort of operation. Our
catalog is separate from the public
catalog, and more detailed, because
we have to catalog each item
separately and fully. We cannot
follow a Library of Congress
numbering system, because no
system will cover 6,000,000 unique
items.

"We are the University's official
archive, so we have over increasing
responsibilities to the University
community. And we are a major
research facility, so we have to
provide finding guides and other
services to constantly growing
numbers of scholars who want to
consult our collections. This last
function, the publication of finding
guides and other research tools is
getting to be a primary duty. Right
now two are in progress (a
supplement to an older Jefferson
calendar, and an index to the
letterbook of the New England
Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel), and more are under
consideration. We issue microfilm
publications based on our holdings.
An important one, the papers of
James Monroe in Virginia archives,
is now under way, and we have
already issued six others.