Hoover Archivists' Musings

Digitizing Mieczysław Jałowiecki's Illustrations

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Jarvis) — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:33:00 +0000

Church of the Ascension, Wilno (Vilnius)

The Hoover Institution Library and Archives is home to art with enduring historic value that is both diverse in content and style. One such collection, the illustrations of Mieczyslaw Jałowiecki, were recently photographed by the Digital Imaging Lab so we could provide digital copies to our partner institutions in Lithuania and Poland and eliminate handling the originals during on-site research. Unlike other collections of art at Hoover, scenes of war, revolution, and destruction are absent in these illustrations. Rather, Jałowiecki depicts his culture, his history, his motherland--before it was nearly obliterated by war and totalitarianism.

Jałowiecki (1886–1962) had numerous occupations through his long life: landowning noble, agronomist, civil servant, diplomat, businessman, writer, and artist, to a name a few. Yet his versatility did not spare him from the social, economic, and political upheaval of his times. Jałowiecki was twice forced to abandon his land and country, once in Lithuania following World War I, and again with the Soviet/German invasion of Poland in 1939. Despite the vicissitudes of revolution and war, Jałowiecki applied his knowledge and experience to serve his people, history, and culture. He ensured that food from the American Relief Administration passed unimpeded through the port of Gdańsk during 1919–1920; later in his life he was an activist for the Polish government in exile, a publisher of pamphlets and books about agronomy and Poland, and the author of a sixteen-volume memoir.

In all, Jałowiecki created over a thousand illustrations, each with an accompanying title and, often, a geographic and historic summary of the topic. Using watercolor and pencil as his mediums, Jałowiecki depicted manors, farms, and cities he saw during his extensive travels throughout western Russia, the Baltic region, and Poland. He also relied on photograph collections of fellow émigrés in England, along with resources from the British Museum, to create visions of sacred icons and shrines, medieval rulers, pivotal battles, archeological sites, and the flora and fauna of the region.

Producing the digital images from the materials could not be done with a flat bed scanner, for it requires an unacceptable amount of contact with the illustrations; we thus made each photograph with our medium-format digital camera. In consultation with the Book and Paper Preservation Lab, a workflow was designed to minimize handling and to quickly capture each illustration in sequential order. In planning the workflow, however, it became apparent that each illustration would need to be interleaved at some point to improve their state of preservation. This procedure, a considerable undertaking, became one of timing: Should interleaving occur before, after, or during the photography phase? The answer is a salient example of why planning a digitization project cannot be arbitrarily reduced to its most basic elements of scanning a document or snapping a photograph. A process that appears simple can actually be complex or a component of a larger and more intricate process. For our purposes, when planning a digitization project, the decisions we make--be they standards, methods, or the order in which they are implemented--are treated as though each will reverberate across the entire project.

A critical decision was to have the illustrations interleaved after the photography phase. Interleaving the illustrations with acid-free nonabrasive paper is critical to their long- term survival. But interleaving requires a great deal of time, as each illustration must be individually enclosed in a leaf of paper. The additional bulk of that paper would require the entire collection be redistributed among their folders and boxes to prevent overfilling, another important component of long-term preservation. Because the location of each illustration is described in the finding aid, that redistribution would also require that the finding aid be revised, another critical but time-intensive task. Finally, handling each illustration after interleaving requires each to be removed from its individual leaf and then returned after being photographed, thus incurring more time and cost on the project. All these factors led us to conclude that interleaving after the photography phase was the most efficient use of project resources.

Another example of the complexity entailed in planning a digitization project arose when it came to creating filing names of digital images to correspond with the original filing names created by Jałowiecki. Variants and errors are not uncommon in large collections. As a collection grows, the probability of a variant or error occurring grows as well. We encountered duplicate catalog numbers that described entirely different images. We also encountered descriptions of an illustration on the reverse that did not match the image on the front and unused catalog numbers that created errors in the sequential numbering of each digital image. Finding a mislabeled file is not only difficult, the error of each mislabeled file will also cascade over the files that follow it when named en masse, creating new errors and compounding the problem.

Multiple steps were required to eliminate variants and errors in the filing names. First, we separated out those files with duplicate catalog numbers and put one group in a separate folder. Free of duplicates, we then separated the remaining files into two groups: front and back. In this way, both groups could be renamed separately, thus preventing the back of each watercolor being renamed as though it were the following illustration. Second, we created targets for each catalog number without an associated image so they could be inserted in each group. These targets prevented our program from naming an illustration with the “empty” catalog number that preceded it. With these steps in place, both groups were quickly processed. After renaming, every file with a duplicated catalog number was given a suffix to distinguish each from its counterpart.

Creating and arranging the digital component of the Jałowiecki illustrations was both a privilege and a challenge. But paramount to the Digital Imaging Lab was the legacy we would impart. The decisions we made would not only reverberate across the span of the project but across the Atlantic Ocean and, possibly, across generations of students and researchers in Lithuania and Poland. The Jałowiecki illustrations will continue to inform research here at the Hoover Institution, but now they will also enrich historical research and cultural memory in Lithuania and Poland.

.- -... --- ..- - ..- ...

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Sam) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:06:00 +0000

.- - - .... . -.-. --- .-. . --- ..-. - .... . ..-. --- ..- -. -.. .. -. --. --- ..-. - .... . .... --- --- ...- . .-. .. -. ... - .. - ..- - .. --- -. .. -. .---- ----. .---- ----. --..-- - .... . .... --- --- ...- . .-. .. -. ... - .. - ..- - .. --- -. .-.. .. -... .-. .- .-. -.-- .- -. -.. .- .-. -.-. .... .. ...- . ... .- .-. . .- -.-. . -. - .-. .- .-.. .--. .- .-. - --- ..-. - .... . --- ...- . .-. .- .-.. .-.. -- .. ... ... .. --- -. --- ..-. - .... . .. -. ... - .. - ..- - .. --- -. .-.-.- -... -.-- -.-. --- .-.. .-.. . -.-. - .. -. --. .-. .- .-. . .- -. -.. ..- -. .. --.- ..- . -- .- - . .-. .. .- .-.. --- -. .--. --- .-.. .. - .. -.-. .- .-.. --..-- . -.-. --- -. --- -- .. -.-. --..-- .- -. -.. ... --- -.-. .. .- .-.. -.-. .... .- -. --. . .. -. - .... . -- --- -.. . .-. -. . .-. .- .--. .-. . ... . .-. ...- .. -. --. .. - .- -. -.. .--. .-. --- ...- .. -.. .. -. --. .. - - --- .-. . ... . .- .-. -.-. .... . .-. ... --..-- - .... . .-.. .. -... .-. .- .-. -.-- .- -. -.. .- .-. -.-. .... .. ...- . ... .--. .-. --- ...- .. -.. . .- .-. .. -.-. .... .- -. -.. --. .-. --- .-- .. -. --. -.- -. --- .-- .-.. . -.. --. . -... .- ... . .- -. -.. .--. .-. --- -- --- - . .- -. -.. . -. -.-. --- ..- .-. .- --. . ... -.-. .... --- .-.. .- .-. ... .... .. .--. .- -. -.. .-. . ... . .- .-. -.-. .... .-.-.- .- .-. -.-. .... .. ...- .- .-.. .... --- .-.. -.. .. -. --. .- -- --- ..- -. - - --- -. . .- .-. .-.. -.-- -.... --..-- ----- ----- ----- ... . .--. .- .-. .- - . -.-. --- .-.. .-.. . -.-. - .. --- -. ... - .... .- - . -. -.-. --- -- .--. .- ... ... .- -. . ... - .. -- .- - . -.. ..... ----- -- .. .-.. .-.. .. --- -. --- .-. .. --. .. -. .- .-.. -.. --- -.-. ..- -- . -. - ... .---- ..... -- .. .-.. .-.. .. --- -. -.. --- -.-. ..- -- . -. - ... --- -. -- .. -.-. .-. --- ..-. .. .-.. -- ..- .--. .-- .- .-. -.. --- ..-. .---- ..... -- .. .-.. .-.. .. --- -. -.. .. --. .. - .. --.. . -.. .. -- .- --. . ... -- --- .-. . - .... .- -. .---- ----- ----- --..-- ----- ----- ----- ... .--. . . -.-. .... . ... --..-- -... .-. --- .- -.. -.-. .- ... - ... --..-- .- -. -.. .... .. ... - --- .-. .. -.-. .- .-.. .-. . -.-. --- .-. -.. ... --- -. .- ..- -.. .. --- - .- .--. . .- -. -.. ...- .. -.. . --- ... .- -. -.. ... --- -- . .---- ..--- ----- --..-- ----- ----- ----- .--. --- .-.. .. - .. -.-. .- .-.. .--. --- ... - . .-. ... .-.-.- - .... . .-.. .. -... .-. .- .-. -.-- .... --- .-.. -.. ... ----. ----- ----- --..-- ----- ----- ----- .-. .- .-. . -... --- --- -.- ... --..-- ... .--. . -.-. .. .- .-.. -.-. --- .-.. .-.. . -.-. - .. --- -. ... --..-- .- -. -.. ... . .-. .. .- .-.. ... .-.-.- -.-. --- .-.. .-.. . -.-. - .. -. --. .- .-. . .- ... --- ..-. ... .--. . -.-. .. .- .-.. .. -. - . .-. . ... - .. -. -.-. .-.. ..- -.. . -. .- - .. --- -. .- .-.. .. ... - -.-. .... .. -. .- --..-- .. -- .--. . .-. .. .- .-.. .-. ..- ... ... .. .- --..-- - .... . ..- ... ... .-. .- -. -.. .--. --- ... - -....- ... --- ...- .. . - .-. ..- ... ... .. .- .- -. -.. -.-. . -. - .-. .- .-.. .- -. -.. . .- ... - . ..- .-. --- .--. . --..-- .--. --- .-.. .. - .. -.-. .- .-.. .. -.. . --- .-.. --- --. .. . ... .- -. -.. -- --- ...- . -- . -. - ... .. -. - .... . ..- -. .. - . -.. ... - .- - . ... .- -. -.. - .... . .-- . ... - --..-- .- -. -.. - .... . -... .-. --- .- -.. -.-. .- ... - -.-. --- .-.. .-.. . -.-. - .. --- -. ... --- ..-. .-. .- -.. .. --- ..-. .-. . . . ..- .-. --- .--. . -..-. .-. .- -.. .. --- .-.. .. -... . .-. - -.-- .- -. -.. ..-. .. .-. .. -. --. .-.. .. -. . .-.-.-

Robert Service on the Estonian KGB Records

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Siekierski) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:47:00 +0000

This collection contains digitized copies of thousands of pages of Estonian KGB files relating to secret police and intelligence activities, dissident and anti-Soviet activities, and repatriation and nationalism issues in Estonia.

For more information on the Estonian KGB records in the Hoover Institution Archives, please visit:
www.hoover.org/library-and-archives/collections/east-europe/featured-collections/estonian-kgb

For more information about Dr. Robert Service, please visit: www.hoover.org/fellows/10470

Books by Robert Service

Unlocking Andrzej Pomian's London Archive

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Siekierski) — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:36:00 +0000

Last month I had the privilege of participating in a conference titled "Documents of the Polish Underground State 1939–1945" organized by the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw. My presentation was on the Andrzej Pomian papers, which I organized and which were recently added to the Hoover Archives. The conference was held in the historic PAST building which was captured in a fierce battle by the Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. I was somewhat nervous about giving my talk; it was in Polish and I'd never spoken before an audience such as this. As usual, my worries were unfounded and my presentation was well received. I met a number of interesting historians and archivists, nearly thirty of whom also spoke during the two-day conference. Below is the translation of my presentation. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

The PAST building (site of the conference) in downtown Warsaw

Andrzej Pomian, who died four years ago in Washington, DC, at the age of ninety-seven, was a Polish journalist and author who spent many years working for Radio Free Europe. During World War II, he was a member of the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Home Army the largest underground organization in Nazi-occupied Europe. Evacuated from Poland in April 1944 in one of the most spectacular flight operations of the war, Pomian worked in the Polish government in exile in London for the next ten years. He then moved to the United States, bringing with him a large metal trunk filled with notes, documents, underground publications, and reports on the Home Army’s activities. Those documents, untouched for more than fifty years in accordance with Pomian's wishes, were sent to the Hoover Institution Archives as a large addition to a small set of Pomian's papers donated earlier.

Andrzej Pomian (the name he adopted during the war) was born in 1911 as Bohdan Sałaciński in the Polish village of Black Ostrów in Podolia, which became part of the Soviet Union after 1920. Escaping from the Soviets, the family moved to Warsaw, where Bohdan became a student, completing his legal studies at the University of Warsaw in 1932, where he remained as a lecturer. From the beginning of the German occupation, Pomian was involved in underground work. He taught law at the underground university and worked in various units of the resistance, ending up at the Bureau of Information and Propaganda, which coordinated the work of intelligence and underground newspapers, broadcast underground radio programs, and operated photographic and film units.

Operation N, an initiative of the bureau, published documents in German aimed at weakening the morale of German soldiers and colonists in Poland. Several of the magazines and proclamations created under Operation N are in Pomian's collection. The Home Army was involved in sabotage, self-defense, and retaliation against the Germans. It also provided the Allies with crucial information in the field of intelligence, monitoring the movement of troops in the east and the development of the secret German V-1 and V-2 rockets. The primary goal of the Home Army, however, was to prepare for the expected collapse of the Nazi occupation and the liberation of the country.

After the Allied landing in Italy and the encroachment of the Red Army into prewar Polish territory, a national uprising was planned, to be centered in Warsaw, for the second half of 1944. In connection with this plan, the Home Army and the underground civil authorities ordered several officers, including Pomian, to report to the Polish and British authorities in London to discuss the preparations’ progress. These contacts were usually carried out by encrypted radio transmissions or by individual couriers and emissaries, but this important mission required a different method.

At that time regular night flights from England and southern Italy, with parachute drops of weapons, documents, money, and agents, were made into occupied Poland. A new joint Polish-British operation, Wildhorn I (Operation Most [Bridge] I in Polish), intended to land a plane in occupied Poland, was carried out in the evening of April 15, 1944. A Douglas Dakota aircraft, unarmed but equipped with eight additional fuel tanks, left its base near Brindisi in southern Italy. Crossing the Balkans and the Carpathian mountains en route to Poland, it landed, under difficult conditions, in a beet field near Lublin, southeast of Warsaw. The so-called runway was marked by bonfires and protected by several forest units of the Home Army. Couriers and bags of dollars were unloaded, and Pomian and other passengers, including Brigadier General Stanisław Tatar came on board, barely avoiding an intense and bloody firefight between soldiers of the Home Army and Wehrmacht units. The return flight to Brindisi and then Gibraltar brought Pomian to England twenty-four hours later.

The PAST building during the Warsaw Uprising, August, 1944

Pomian followed the tragic epilogue of the war in Poland from distant London. The Warsaw Uprising, lasting sixty-three days, failed due to lack of support from the Soviet Union—the Red Army that came a few weeks after the uprising began stopped on the Vistula River, just across from burning Warsaw. Poland's allies, the British and the Americans, could not do much to help but didn't even protest the Soviets’ treacherous behavior. Among the tens of thousands killed were most of Pomian's colleagues and friends. Warsaw was virtually razed to the ground, and Poland became a Soviet dependency. Western powers not only failed to protest but, in the following year, withdrew recognition of their loyal wartime ally. The uprising, not surprisingly, dominated Pomian's thoughts; the majority of his collection consists of documents related to that tragic event (including typescripts, manuscripts, poetry, newspapers, and government documents).

During his ten years in London, Pomian continued working for the Polish government in exile, coordinating contacts and financial support for the anticommunist underground in the country and veterans of the Home Army. When, in 1955, he decided to move to the United States, he packed everything into a big trunk, apparently never opening it again. Shortly before his death, he decided to pass it on to the archives of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California.

The Andrzej Pomian papers consist of twenty-two archival boxes. A significant portion of those materials are postwar newspaper clippings, newspapers, and magazines, often commemorating consecutive anniversaries of the Warsaw Uprising. Documents concerning the activities of the Bureau of Information and Propaganda and underground resistance are in the first six boxes.

This collection is now available to researchers. We plan to microfilm this collection and pass it on to the Central Archives of Modern Records, as we recently did with the microfilmed collection of Jan Karski.

I also wanted to share some scans from this collection. Here are examples of propaganda from Operation N. This cover suggests that it is an anti-Soviet brochure, but the text is devoted to the Nazi crimes in Poland. Several items from this collection, including this brochure, are showcased in an exhibition of World War II propaganda currently on display at the Hoover Institution.

"The Red Terror", Andrzej Pomian Papers, Hoover Institution Archives

Andrzej Pomian's later work is also well documented in the collection of the Polish station of Radio Free Europe The corporate and broadcast records of RFE/RL are housed at the Hoover Institution. Most of our collections on World War II were microfilmed, transferred to Poland, digitized, and made available online. The best guide to our Polish collections is the book by Professor (and Poland's director of the National Archives) Władyslaw Stępniak, Polish Archival Materials in the Collections of Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Thank you very much.

Warsaw, Poland October 24, 2012
__________________________________

Nicholas Siekierski, an assistant archivist, is the exhibits and outreach coordinator at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives

What’s in a File Name?

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Miller) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:53:00 +0000

Digital creators could take a page from expectant parents who carefully weigh names for their babies. File names can convey a great deal of meaning and are often the only clue to the contents of a digital file. A few collections of photographs at the Hoover Institution Archives show both missed opportunities and powerful names.

Douglas Smith, an American historian, was in Moscow during the attempted coup in August 1991. He took some photographs, which are part of the Douglas Smith miscellaneous papers, but their equipment-generated file names provide no information. Here’s an example:

DIA_0144.jpg

We know the photos depict the attempted coup because he told us, but a viewer must be familiar with both the place and the events to identify the content of each image. I’m reminded of the decades-old photos in a box in my mom’s closet; we assume they depict various ancestors but, because they don’t have captions, the people remain unnamed and unknown.

Giles Udy gave some thought to the file names for his photographs, which depict structures in the former gulag camps of Noril’sk in Russia. Some names are of the machine-generated variety, but he renamed others, as follows:

Admin block - ext (cell window far right) DSCN7527.pdf

This file name functions like a caption describing the image. Udy also retained the original file name, DSCN7527, which was smart because it connects the PDF version of the image that he gave to Hoover to the original image in its native format, which Udy chose to retain. Udy also arranged his photographs into digital folders so that all the images of the Alevrolitnaya penal camp are in one folder bearing the name of the camp.

John Bruning, who took thousands of photographs while embedded with a National Guard unit posted to Afghanistan in 2010, built on this descriptive naming by adding dates to many folder names in MMDDYY format:

Mission 02 090710 swing set

In addition, Bruning wrote accounts of the events that he photographed. This Mission 02 folder contains a Word document that describes the mission, which was intended to “pick up some U.S. Army engineers and a swing set. We would then air assault them into a landing zone next to Manny’s Bazaar so they could install the swing set at the local school.” Bruning’s story wraps his images in context and color.

But Bruning and Udy both failed in some technical aspects of file naming. First, they included many deprecated characters, such as spaces, parentheses, and other punctuation marks. In addition, some lengthy folder and file names exceeded the directory path limitations of our software system, causing the file names to be automatically truncated. For example, when copied, the file name

Unfinished building - piles in permafrost then bldg above 3558.JPG

became

UNFINI~1.JPG

All these small problems take time to locate and correct. Somewhat like expectant godparents, we’re still waiting for our first born-digital collection to arrive with perfect file names.

Data Recovery: To Delete or Not?

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Miller) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:35:00 +0000

By applying technology to works of art, historians are discovering previously unknown masterpieces. Beneath a Goya painting is a work that the artist painted over for political reasons. Van Gogh’s Patch of Grass hides an underlying masterpiece. Because so many artists painted over their canvases so as to reuse them, more discoveries will come. Turning to the world of manuscripts, digital imaging tools can reveal written-over text or words obliterated by stains. When the focus is the oeuvre of the Old Masters or the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, who would object? But what if the focus is modern writings--maybe even yours?

With born-digital materials, archivists have the opportunity to resurrect digital files deleted by their creators. One such route involves forensic tools and techniques, similar to those used by police, including analyzing computers that may hold evidence of criminal activity. Such forensic software is gaining currency among archivists. There’s an entire report called Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections, and our colleagues at Stanford University Libraries use a Forensic Recovery of Evidence Devices (FRED) setup to process incoming digital collections.

Hoover’s processing workflow for born-digital materials closely follows the steps outlined by OCLC Research in its latest publication; indeed, Hoover was one of the models for it. We omit the forensic software layer for a leaner workflow that maximizes resources. But even without forensic technology, while processing the Jude Wanniski papers, we found ourselves in the position of those art historians: Should we recover the e-mail messages we found in Wanniski’s digital trash bin? If Wanniski deleted them--much like an artist who paints over his own work--is it appropriate for us to preserve and reveal them to researchers?

The Rescuer and the Rescued: A Latvian Story of the Holocaust

noreply@blogger.com (David Jacobs) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 22:24:00 +0000

Riva Zivcon and her daughter Adinka

(photo courtesy of Ada Zivcon Israeli)

The collections in the Hoover Institution Archives provide a record of history both large and small. It is often the exceptional stories of individuals that make larger events come to life. Such human interest stories become doubly intriguing when both the tale and the researching tracking it are remarkable, as exemplified by a research project currently under way in the archives.

Edward Anders, a retired astrophysicist living in Burlingame, California, is sponsoring research into a story that is informed by his own life and the circumstances under which he survived the Holocaust in his native Latvia.

As a Jewish teenager living in the port city of Liepāja, Anders and his family were in extreme peril when the Nazis invaded Soviet-occupied Latvia in 1941. Other members of Anders’s family perished in the Holocaust, but he and his mother survived. This was initially due to the young Anders falsely claiming to the new authorities that his mother was really a German foundling raised by a Latvian Jewish couple. Two Latvian women vouched for this claim, at great risk to themselves.

After World War II, and time spent as a refugee in Germany, Anders came to the United States, where he became a noted scientist specializing in the study of meteorites. Since retiring from the University of Chicago, he has been active as an historian, with an emphasis on documenting the fate of Latvian Jews during the war. As part of this effort, he created a searchable database of about 7000 Jewish persons alive in Liepāja in June 1941, with information describing what happened to them subsequently. In October 2000, he took part in the first conference in post-Soviet Latvia on the Holocaust, and he has made important contributions to the work of the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, located in Rīga.

In addition to publishing two volumes of memoirs (a full autobiography From Darkness to Light in 2008 and a condensed 2010 version Amidst Latvians during the Holocaust), Anders arranged for the translation and publication of the diary of another Latvian Holocaust survivor, Kalman Linkimer. In his diary, Linkimer not only wrote about his own experiences in wartime Latvia but also transcribed the accounts of other Latvian Jews hiding from the Nazis. In one of these transcriptions, Riva Zivcon describes how a Latvian policeman, a certain Corporal Avots, helped her and her 3-year-old daughter Adinka escape from the Rīga ghetto. Accompanied by Riva Zivcon and carrying Adinka on his arm, the policeman walked out one of the ghetto gates, brazenly telling the guards he encountered that the mother and daughter were his own wife and child.

Former site of one of the Rīga ghetto gates.

Holokausta izpētes problēmas Latvijā collection, Box 1, Hoover Institution Archives

Avots then took the Zivcons to the home of his girlfriend, telling her that the two were Russians. But when the girlfriend discovered that Adinka spoke only Yiddish, she became fearful of hiding the Zivcons in her place. Avots then took the Zivcons to the home of a prewar acquaintance, a violinist with whom the pair stayed for several weeks before returning to Liepāja, where separate hiding places were found for mother and daughter. Both Zivcons survived the war.

Adinka Zivcon (photo courtesy of Ada Zivcon Israeli)

Ada Zivcon is now a grandmother living in Israel. Both she and Professor Anders want the various Latvians who saved the Zivcons to be officially recognized as “righteous gentiles” by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem. So far, Ada Zivcon has succeeded in obtaining this honor for Otilija Šimelpfenigs, who hid her as a child for 16 months. In addition, Professor Anders succeeded in identifying the Latvian violinist as Kārlis Vestens (1899–1978) and in having Vestens recognized for his bravery.

However, in the case of Corporal Avots, the question of having recognition bestowed was complicated by the fact that Riva Zivcon did not learn the first name of the policeman who rescued her and her baby, and in the Linkimer diary he is referred to only by his surname. The ghetto guard of which Avots was part consisted of members of the 20th Latvian police battalion and selected members of the Rīga municipal police. No central roster of the ghetto guard has ever been discovered, but the most promising source for information on these police units are records contained in the Latviešu Centrālā Komiteja collection in the Hoover Institution Archives.

So far, Meldra Atteka and Una Veilande (Latvian researchers who have volunteered to work for Professor Anders) have found references in this collection to more than one Corporal Avots. Their latest find, which refers to a Corporal Fricis Avots, seems to be the most promising lead, and Professor Anders is optimistic that a solution is at hand to the nearly 75-year-old mystery of the exact identity of the Riga policeman who rescued the Zivcons. The researchers still have about 10 manuscript boxes of documents to go through, and they will continue to look for more documentation relating to the puzzle. Copies of the documents, should they turn out to be ones identifying the right Corporal Avots, will then be submitted to Yad Vashem. If Yad Vashem decides to recognize Avots as a rescuer of Jews, the Latvian government would honor him as well. A plaque at the entrance of a street where the Rīga ghetto was once located honors another “righteous gentile,” Zhan Lipke.

Plaque in Rīga honoring Zhan Lipke.

Holokausta izpētes problēmas Latvijā collection, Box 1, Hoover Institution Archives

The Latviešu Centrālā Komiteja collection is the single largest resource on Latvian history in the Hoover Institution Archives. It is very much a composite: a large part of the collection pertains to the life of Latvians in Displaced Persons’ Camps in Germany after World War II; another significant component consists of records relating to Latvian police and military units that were created under the German occupation of Latvia during World War II. The collection also contains demographic data about Latvia under the German occupation, materials relating to nationalist resistance groups in Latvia during the same period, and issuances of the government of independent Latvia before the country’s annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940.

The complexity of the situation in Latvia during World War II, and the dual tragedies of Latvian Jews in peril from the Nazis and other Latvians at risk of imprisonment and deportation by Soviet authorities, is captured in a recent documentary film entitled Controversial History (directed by Inara Kolmane and Uldis Neiburgs, Rīga, 2010). Edward Anders figures prominently in this film as one of three individuals who recount their experiences in Latvia during World War II. In the film, Anders revisits Liepāja and the site near that town where the Nazis murdered some 2739 Jews on December 15, 1941. The documentary is in the audiovisual collection of Green Library at Stanford University.

Related archival collection:
Holokausta izpētes problēmas Latvijā (Conference: 2000: Riga, Latvia)

Herbert Hoover's Grand Parade in Warsaw

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Siekierski) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 16:27:00 +0000

Children from General School No. 11, many of them barefoot, prepare for the parade in honor of Herbert Hoover, August 14, 1919. “American Friendship: Herbert Hoover and Poland” Exhibit Catalog

Today marks the 93rd anniversary of Herbert Hoover’s historic visit to Warsaw, Poland. It wasn’t his first visit, nor his last, but surely the most memorable and one of the most moving experiences of his life. At that time Herbert Hoover was chairman of the American Relief Administration (A.R.A.), which had begun to provide massive humanitarian aid to Eastern Europe, then recovering from the devastation of World War I.
Hoover took a particular interest in Poland when he learned of the serious shortages of food in the country and its effect on children. At Hoover’s initiative, shipments of condensed milk, flour, and wheat, totaling thousands of tons, began arriving in Poland in the spring of 1919. By the time of his visit in August, an extensive operation had been established through the cooperation of the A.R.A. and civic organizations, which established hundreds of kitchens that fed more than 500,000 children daily. Within a year the operation would feed as many as 1.5 million children and nursing mothers each day. The humanitarian aid for children was a precursor to massive shipments of clothing, shoes and medical supplies to establish inoculation centers against typhus and other diseases. Extensive technical assistance from American advisers also helped rebuild Poland’s railways and other industries. The Poles had much to be grateful for.

Vernon Kellogg, a close associate of Hoover’s who made the initial reports on the situation in Poland, was present in Warsaw at the Mokotow Field on August 14:

It was a great day for the children of Warsaw. It was a great day for their parents, too, and for all the people and for the Polish Government. But it was especially the great day of the children. The man whose name they all knew as well as their own, but whose face they had never seen, and whose voice they had never heard, had come to Warsaw. And they were all to see him and he was to see them.
He had not announced his coming, which was a strange and upsetting thing for the government and city officials whose business it is to arrange all the grand receptions and the brilliant parades for visiting guests to whom the Government and all the people wish to do honor. And there was no man in the world to whom the Poles could wish to do more honor than to this uncrowned simple American citizen whose name was for them the synonym of savior.

A group of children in Eastern Poland forming the letter “H” in honor of Herbert Hoover, 1921. “American Friendship: Herbert Hoover and Poland” Exhibit Catalog

For what was their new freedom worth if they could not be alive to enjoy it? And their being alive was to them all so plainly due to the heart and brain and energy and achievement of this extraordinary American, who sat always somewhere far away in Paris, and pulled the strings that moved the diplomats and the money and the ships and the men who helped him manage the details, and converted all of the activities of these men and all of these things into food for Warsaw---and for all Poland. It was food that the people of Warsaw and all Poland simply had to have to keep alive, and it was food that they simply could not get for themselves. They all knew that. The name of another great American (Woodrow Wilson) spelled freedom for them; the name Herbert Hoover spelled life to them.
So it was no wonder that the high officials of the Polish Government and capital city were in a state of great excitement when the news suddenly came that the man whom they had so often urged to come to Poland was really moving swiftly from Prague to Warsaw.
Ever since soon after Armistice Day he had sat in Paris, directing with unremitting effort and absolute devotion the task of getting food to the mouths of hungry people of all the newly liberated but helpless countries of Eastern Europe, and above all, to the children of these countries, so that the coming generation, on whom the future of these struggling peoples depended, should be kept alive and strong. And now he was preparing to return to his own country and his own children to take up again the course of his life as a simple American citizen at home.
But before going he wanted to see for himself, if only by the most fleeting of glimpses, that the people of Poland and Bohemia and Serbia and all the rest were really being fed. And especially did he want to see that the children were alive and strong.
When he came to Paris in November, 1918, at the request of the President of the United States to organize the relief of the newly liberated peoples of Eastern Europe, terrible tales were brought to him of the suffering and the wholesale deaths of the children of these ravaged lands. And when those of us who went to Poland for him in January, 1919, to find out the exact conditions and the actual food needs of the twenty-five million freed people there, made our report to him, a single unpremeditated sentence in this report seemed most to catch his eyes and hold his attention. It did more; it wetted his eyes and led to a special concentration of his efforts on behalf of the suffering children. This sentence was: “We see very few children playing in the streets of Warsaw.” Why were they not playing? The answer was simple and sufficient: The children of Warsaw were not strong enough to play in the streets. They could not run; many could not walk; some could not even stand. Their weak little bodies were bones clothed with skin, but not muscles. They simply could not play.
So in all the excitement of the few hours possible to the citizens of Warsaw and the Government Officials of Poland to make hurried preparation to honor their guest and show him their gratitude, one thing they decided to do, which was the best thing for the happiness of their guest they could possibly have done. They decided to show him that the children of Warsaw could now walk!
So seventy thousand boys and girls were summoned hastily from the schools. They came with the very tin cups and pannikins from which they had just had their special meal of the day, served at noon in all the schools and special children’s canteens, thanks to the charity of America, as organized and directed by Hoover, and they carried their little paper napkins, stamped with the flag of the United States, which they could wave over their heads. And on an old race-track of Warsaw, these thousands of restored children marched from mid-afternoon till dark in happy, never-ending files past the grandstand where sat the man who had saved them, surrounded by the heads of Government and the notables of Warsaw.

Herbert Hoover (no. 6) sits next to Prime Minister IgnacyPaderewski (no. 5), Commander-in-Chief Josef Piłsudski (no. 9), Ambassador HughGibson (no. 11) and Commander George Barr Baker (no. 4), in front of Belvedere Palace in Warsaw, August, 1919. “American Friendship: Herbert Hoover andPoland” Exhibit Catalog

They marched and marched and cheered and cheered, and waved their little hands and cups and napkins. And all went by as decorously and in as orderly a fashion as many thousands of happy cheering children could be expected to, until suddenly from the grass an astonished rabbit leaped out and started down the track. And then five thousands of these children broke from the ranks and dashed madly after him, shouting and laughing. And they caught him and brought him in triumph as a gift to their guest. But they were astonished to see as they gave him their gift, that this great strong man did just what you or I or any other human sort of human being could not have helped doing under like circumstances. They saw him cry. And they would not have understood, if he had tried to explain to them that he cried because they had proved to him that they could run and play. So he did not try. But the children of Warsaw had no need to be sorry for him. For he cried because he was glad.

(“Review of the Children of Warsaw”, Vernon Kellogg papers, Box 1, Folder 1, Hoover Institution Archives)

Tower of Peace

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Sam) — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Mary Wright, curator of the Chinese collection and C. Easton Rothwell, director of the Hoover Institution, examine a shipment of documents, with collection assistant Eugene Wu in the foreground, 1950s. Hoover Institution Records, Hoover Institution Archives

In his 1970s radio addresses, Ronald Reagan often featured a “desk-clearing day,” where he would tackle a few different, smaller issues in one sitting. In the same spirit, here’s a Hoover Archives’ desk-clearing blog.

One of the more pleasing features of the Hoover Tower is our excellent carillon. Last month, I made a recording of it as part of the Free to Choose Network’s tribute to Milton Friedman. If you’ve ever been on campus in the early evening, perhaps you’ve heard the chimes. If not, I suggest clicking that link.

Writing to the audiophiles, recordists, audiophile recordists, and other sound enthusiasts out there, it was really a great experience. I was shocked to learn how relatively quiet these bells are. Posts at a recording forum had me believe they could get as loud as a jet engine. Ours only gets up to around 115 dB! I had planned an elaborate rig where a handful of mics would stick out of windows on the 11th floor, but, no, I could mic the carillon right up in there on the platform (wearing ear plugs, of course) with just a simple X-Y pair. Moreover, the normally blusterous wind decided to stay away while I had microphones up that high, and I was able to get a surprisingly good representation.

For more information about the carillon, please see I Ring Only for Peace by Elena Danielson.

Speaking of the tower, back in 1957, the Hoover Institution produced a radio series entitled Tower of Peace. In it, a host interviewed several notable people from the Hoover and larger Stanford communities to highlight the collections of the Institution and the work done by those studying them. No surprise, lots of important research and many saw the collections as some of the best in the world, whether they be of European, African, Middle Eastern, or East Asian focus. What did surprise me, however, given that this dates from 1957, is how many women were featured, and how prominent of a role they played here at Hoover.

Who were these women? Ruth Perry, curator of the African collection; Mary Wright, curator of the Chinese collection; Agnes Peterson, area associate for Central and Western European collections; Christina Harris, curator of the Middle Eastern collection; Inez Richardson, coordinator for foreign visitors to Stanford University; and Hildegard Behringer, program officer in Stanford's office for foreign visitors.

Finally, working on this collection was not without irony, either. In the introductory program, Herbert Hoover himself spoke of the need to migrate the content of newspapers to microfilm before they deteriorated. I heard him say this from a structurally-deficient acetate tape being digitized before it becomes unplayable itself.

The Battle for Hearts and Minds

noreply@blogger.com (George H. Nash) — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:11:00 +0000

From the introduction to the exhibit "The Battle for Hearts and Minds: World War II Propaganda" currently on display at the Hoover Institution, by Dr. George H. Nash

In an unpublished, autobiographical essay written around the time of World War I, Herbert Hoover declared: “There is little importance to men’s lives except the accomplishments they leave to posterity.” It is in “the origination or administration of tangible institutions or constructive works” that men’s contributions can best be measured. “When all is said and done,” he asserted, “accomplishment is all that counts.”
One of Hoover’s supreme accomplishments in his long and productive life was the creation and upbuilding of the “tangible institution” known today as the Hoover Institution. Founded in 1919 and housed at Stanford University, the Hoover War Collection (as it was initially called) grew quickly into what was known for years as the Hoover War Library: an immense and invaluable archive of historic manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, books, governmental records, and “fugitive documents” bearing upon the Great War of 1914–1918 and its aftermath. Under Hoover’s indefatigable, hands-on leadership, the repository became, in his words, “the most important [such] collection” in the world.
Hoover never wanted his war library to be a mere “packrat operation” or “dead storage of documents.” Instead, he envisaged it as the nucleus of a dynamic “research institution upon the most vital of all human questions—War, Revolution and Peace.”
Yet authoritative research cannot proceed without data. Scholars cannot definitively probe the past without access to every possible scrap of crucial evidence that the past leaves behind. Hoover recognized this, and—along with numerous associates and agents—went on amassing, from around the world, historical treasures that would shed light upon the often tragic course of the twentieth century.
Of special interest to Hoover were his institution’s extensive holdings of propaganda used by governments as instruments of modern warfare. During World War I, as an acclaimed humanitarian who saved millions of European civilians from starvation, he had watched as the belligerent nations of Europe attempted to manipulate American public opinion in their favor. For the first time in human history, he later wrote, war propaganda became a “major strategy of war.” Fascinated and appalled, he collected as much of this material as he could for his library on the campus of his alma mater.
On June 20, 1941, in ceremonies at Stanford University, Hoover dedicated the 285-foot-high tower that would hold his peerless cache of information on war, revolution, and peace. In his remarks he expressed hope that the “voice of experience” embedded in his vast trove would induce humankind to “stop, look and listen” and turn to the ways of peace.
Even as he spoke, another global conflagration was raging around him. Just a few months later, the United States was drawn in. In this war, too, propaganda would be a formidable weapon. During the remainder of World War II, Hoover gathered “fugitive material” on the new conflict and prepared for a monumental, postwar collecting drive that would take him and his allies to distant lands in search of precious documentation on the most stupendous war ever fought. As the guns fell silent, he resumed his worldwide quest for “living history”—and never stopped as long as he lived.
Today the Hoover Institution holds the fruits of Hoover’s prodigious labors—and of those of his colleagues and successors: thousands of manuscript collections and literally millions of documents and other historical artifacts. Among these irreplaceable treasures are the items on display in this exhibit. They are a small but superb selection of the more than 100,000 posters and other propaganda materials preserved in the Institution’s vaults.
The exhibit reminds us that modern wars are increasingly ideological struggles in which hearts and minds (as well as territory and natural resources) are targets. It reminds us also that the causes for which nations fight can be either noble or hideous.
This fine exhibit represents the work of many talented and devoted people. Ultimately, it was made possible by the vision, generosity, and resourcefulness, decades ago, of Herbert Hoover. The institution at Stanford that bears his name “is probably my major contribution to American life,” he wrote in 1959. Its existence is a testament to his unwavering faith in the importance of “constructive works”—to our lasting benefit.

Copyright © 2012 by George H. Nash

George H. Nash is a professional historian, lecturer, and author of several books about Herbert Hoover. Recently he edited the never-before-published memoir/history, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath
(Hoover Institution Press, 2011).

Max Gordon, US 6556, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives

Cinderella Story

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Miller) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:35:00 +0000

Letestan? This place name stopped me in my tracks as I was consulting our poster database. Although I have kept up with all the new countries of Central Asia, such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Letestan didn't ring any bells. I searched few standard sources, including the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, GeoNames, and the authority files of the Library of Congress, but found no mention of Letestan. I then searched the Internet, using Google and a few other search engines. Google produced about 1,770 results, very few for Google, only one of which was an exact match of "Letestan" and which turned out to be the Facebook page of someone with that surname. After my search seemed to have pushed the Internet beyond its limits, I tried a pre-Internet source, Webster's New Geographical Dictionary, which was standard issue at every desk at the National Geographic Society when I interned there long ago. No luck.

Some philatelists specialize in Cinderellas: postage-stamp-like labels produced by unrecognized countries. Some Cinderellas are playful fantasies; others represent serious political statements and secessionist movements. Was Letestan some sort of Cinderella country?

I then examined the poster, which was of World War I vintage, more closely. It bore a simple text message urging British men to join the Leicestershire Regiment: "If you want Honour and Glory, join the Regiment that has made History, the Regiment that has Gained the Honours." In the lower right corner was a small imprint: Willsons, Printers, Letestan. But why would Willsons, which was undoubtedly advertising its work, list a false location? Then I noticed the seal at the top of the poster, a tiger wrapped in the banner "Hindoostan/Leicestershire," which was the Royal Tiger Badge awarded the regiment for its service in India in the early 1800s. The name Hindustan has at times been applied to India and does share a "stan" with Letestan.

I then searched a rack of geographic and historical British databases available at Stanford's library, but none yielded any results for Letestan.

There's no neat ending to this puzzle, but it got me thinking about how libraries and archives view place names and the controlled vocabularies that govern their use. How do these rules accommodate fictional places? How are such places distinguished from real places? I'm left with more questions than answers. But the next time someone types "Letestan" in Google's search box, they will find a link to this blog--maybe in the coveted number one spot.

Leicestershire Regiment recruiting poster, UK 425, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives

Floppy Diskography

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Miller) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:26:00 +0000

Recently three researchers sought access to the contents of 3.5-inch floppy disks in three archival collections at Hoover. You might think that responding to these requests is routine, but, after activating the write-protection tab and scanning for viruses, the process can take many turns.

Three disks in the Roger Mansell collection were labeled as containing the unpublished memoir of Robert Bjoring, a prisoner of war in the Philippines during World War II. A number of the files on the three disks had the same file name and were the same size, a common occurrence when files are repeatedly backed up. For each file we always generate a checksum, a digital "fingerprint" that serves as a unique identifier. By comparing the checksums of all the files, we were able to confirm the existence of duplicate copies and eliminate the duplicates, saving time for researchers using the files and conserving space in our storage system.

The papers of A. L. Adamishin, a Soviet and Russian diplomat, contained eleven disks with dates written on the labels. We were able to open ten of them; the last one was corrupted and unreadable. Once we viewed the contents (diaries for 1990 and 1991), we found that they matched up to paper diaries in the collection. Evidently, someone printed out the contents of the disks and placed both the printouts and the disks in the boxes shipped to Hoover. Given the many hundreds--perhaps thousands--of computer media in our archival collections, we decided that the paper printouts were sufficient for research and preservation purposes and ceased work on the digital files.

The thirty-two disks in the David Fowler collection proved to be the most exotic. The curator who acquired the collection was told that the disks contained newswire stories, a rather vague description. The few disks with labels were handwritten in an incomprehensible scrawl. Our standard software could not read the disks and reported that they had not been formatted. We are still hoping to recover at least some data from the disks by using specialized software running in a Linux environment, which requires more staff time. Who knows what we'll find?

After activating the write-protection tab (at the tip of the pencil), files on the disk cannot be altered or deleted.

Is This Bit Rot?

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Miller) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000

The term "bit rot" gets batted around a lot, but its definition isn't so easy to nail down. ComputerUser's dictionary describes it as "gradual decay of storage media" while the Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing states that it is "a hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if 'nothing has changed.'" Some online technical dictionaries do not include the term. Meanwhile, Wikipedia's bit rot entry is surprisingly short and contains multiple definitions: decay of storage media, decay of data on storage media, and degradation of software programs. (The entry is flagged as needing citations to reliable sources.)

So maybe I'm not alone in wondering what bit rot looks like in a word-processing file. Some of our archival collections, such as the Marshall Green papers and Notgemeinschaft für eine freie Universität records, contain 5.25-inch floppy disks, which often present problems. Today I'm looking at a disk containing files that open on a PC. They suffer from some malady, as indicated by this sample from a letter dated January 21, 1986:

<<<<<>>>>

Thankó verù mucè foò á lovelù luncheoî anä somå splendiä views® Wå

imaginå yoõ no÷ iî Indiá anä wondeò iæ yoõ arå listeninç tï somå oæ thå

samå Indianó witè whoí wå talkeä yearó ago® Thå artistó anä economistó

werå quitå remarkable¬ buô thå politicaì scientistó useä tï talë abouô

atomiã bombó foò Indiá witè eager¬ burninç eyeó whilå beinç verù carefuì

noô tï kilì anù insects® (Severaì haä theiò beardó covereä iî whitå

silk so that no insect would get caught and be stifled there.)

<<<<<>>>>>

The file name, Enid, has no file extension, so it is difficult to determine what software was used to create it. The sample above is from the rendering in MS Word with Windows character encoding, but no matter what software I open the file in, I get some gibberish. But it isn't all gibberish--the last line is completely legible. Sometimes a letter displays correctly, like the "n" in "insect," but not in other cases, like the "n" that should end "luncheoî" in the first line. Is this bit rot?

Regardless of the diagnosis, the next question is what to do. Because we can infer what many of the corrupted characters should be, we can match them to their actual counterpart, as in this sample:

Corrupted version True character

ë k

ì l

í m

î n

ï o

ð p

Then we could use the find-and-replace feature to fix all the corrupted characters. But it is more difficult to infer the correct characters for corrupted numbers. In addition, I assume that matching corrupted to true characters also varies from one file to the next--after all, this decay probably doesn't occur in the same, predictable manner and at a steady rate. Furthermore, we've got to deal with thousands of corrupted files on hundreds of disks. Lastly, if we did restore all the files, how can we ensure that the researchers studying them understand our restoration process and its implications for the authenticity and reliability of the content?

If you have answers to any of the above problems, I think Wikipedia needs you to enhance its bit rot entry.

An example of bit rot. Hoover Institution Archives

A Note On Hoover History

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Sam) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:26:00 +0000

Recently, the Hoover Tower’s exterior was cleaned and thus brought closer to how it looked when it opened in 1941. The interior? Not even close. After all, we don’t have a radio room any more.

Radio room? Yes, the Hoover Tower was built with a radio room in the blueprints. Funnily enough, none of us was aware of this until a few years ago; when we were preparing an exhibit on the Institution’s 90th anniversary, I found a recording that mentioned it was produced in “the radio room of the Hoover Tower.”

Why did we have a radio room? Good question. From the records we’ve been able to search, the room was there, at least in part, because of World War II. It seems the room’s purpose was to listen to and record foreign broadcasts, in concert with the military. Over the years, its purpose began to change, with radio programs being produced in the room, including Wealth of the West, a McLaughlin-Group-like program of the day’s issues. This change prompted Stanford to build a production studio across the street in Memorial Hall. (Fun Archives fact: in the Wealth of the West recording on which the radio room was name-checked, one of the guests mentioned an event at the Commonwealth Club of California.)

Do we still have any of these recordings? Another good question. No, but we have something close.

When the room was spec’d out, the records indicate that the broadcasts were intended to be recorded onto cylinders. This doesn’t quite jive, though, because, by the late 1930s, cylinders were an obsolete format. The tower opened in 1941, and it seems odd they would use a format that can record only five minutes at a time when technology of that era (discs) got up to twenty minutes at a time. In any case, there are no cylinders in our stacks that I’m aware of.

We do, however, have a lot of lacquer discs cut in 1942 of English-language, American-audience-intended shortwave broadcasts from Tokyo, Chungking, Bangkok, and Australia. These discs were cut in San Francisco and accessioned by Hoover in 1958. As it happens, I’m currently working on preserving these discs.

So what happened to the radio room? Yet another good question. I don’t know except that the area in which the room used to be is now the wheelchair entrance to the Tower.

And so the mystery remains.

Original floor plan of the Hoover Tower, including the Radio Room. Hoover Records, Hoover Institution Archives.

A Note on Broadcasting History

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Sam) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 07:43:00 +0000

Recently, we featured some Crusade for Freedom programs on our YouTube channel. What you don’t know is this effort fits in nicely with my last blog post. You see, the disc both programs came from is a type that would only be transferred due to a research request. When you’re emailed a WorldCat record from a former Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) security director about a Crusade for Freedom program, however, things change.

So why did it take an inquiry by an external party for us to digitize and republish those programs?

Those programs were on a sixteen-inch-diameter vinyl disc. First, vinyl discs of any size are relatively stable because they’re generally a single piece of plastic and, due to a niche market that prefers listening to records instead of CDs and mp3s, turntable equipment is easily obtained. (Myself, I prefer SACDs, but that’s an even smaller niche.) Second, although labels tell us a lot, they don’t tell us everything; thus, this disc had to wait while we worked on less stable recordings. We have some hundred similar sixteen-inch vinyl discs, including speeches by Robert Taft in the America First Committee records and collections sporting great names.

If you’re wondering how these sixteen-inch-diameter discs relate to the LPs audiophiles are likely familiar, they’re directly related.

In the days before magnetic tape (1930s to early 1950s), radio syndication was done using these discs. The producer would cut a lacquer disc of the program, and moldings made from that disc would allow the pressing of vinyl copies. These discs also play at 33.3 revolutions per minute (RPM), which, combined with the sixteen-inch diameter, synchronizes with reels of film.

In 1948, when Columbia developed the LP record, it reused the vinyl material and the 33.3 RPM features. With advances in disc cutting over the decades, it was able to decrease the diameter of the disc down to twelve inches owing to a smaller groove width.

So, no, the 33.3 RPM doesn’t come from 78 = 45+33. The audio world is full of myths. Some are harmless. Some are funny. That’s one of both.

Patriotic Posters on the Silver Screen

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Bauer) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Like all the other comic book geeks who could not get tickets to Comic-Con in San Diego, I took consolation in being able to see Captain America: The First Avenger (Dir., Joe Johnston, 2011) in theaters its opening weekend. Although I am sure historians will have some understandable frustrations with certain aspects of the period piece, I hope, like me, they will be thrilled by the reproductions of US World War II-era propaganda posters scattered throughout the film and its closing credits. I may be biased though, as part of my duties at the Hoover Institution Archives includes regular perusal of our Poster Collection.

After seeing Captain America, I realized that the red, white, and blue supersoldier and the propaganda posters contemporary to his creation were collaborating media of the WWII-era. Like the posters, Captain America originally appeared in a paper-based medium, comic books, to encourage support of the war effort. The image on the cover of his first comic book appearance, featuring Cap punching Adolph Hitler in the jaw, could have been used for a propaganda poster. The filmmakers, conscious of these cultural ties and his origins, incorporated Captain America as a poster boy of patriotism into the film’s narrative. Thus featuring the posters throughout the movie and credits not only conveys the era the film is set in but reinforces for the audience the nature of the character and what he stands for.

I have only seen the film once (so far) but recognized a number of posters that we have in our collection (see the accompanying slide show). In fact, Rok!t Studios, the company behind the closing credit sequence, ordered scans of a number of our posters earlier this summer, so we're confident that some of those in the film came from our collection of over 100,000 posters. For information on any of the posters in the slide show, search using their poster ID in our database. For more information on Captain America, consult your local comic shop.

US 1692, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives

Operation "Overboard"

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Miller) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:16:00 +0000

Diplomats were not the only ones to fall victim to the pen of an anonymous parodist in the mid-1940s. Military officials were casualties too. A mimeograph identified as draft 5432 and 1/2, found among the William Henry Baumer papers, telegraphs its jest with the national-security classification US Stupid/British Most Stupid.

The document, dated May 32, 1944, lays out the plan for Operation "Overboard." It establishes, in military precision, a series of logical impossibilities designed to prevent any action whatsoever. For starters, it states that "in the interests of security this operation should not be divulged to any person inside Norfolk House and should not be taken outside Norfolk House." Norfolk House, of course, is where the Allied military brass had their offices.

"Overboard" had many objectives, among them to "re-establish the N.A.A.F.I. firmly on the continent of Europe." N.A.A.F.I., the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, operated recreational facilities for the British Armed Forces. Another major object was "to assist the Russians and prevent the situation deteriorating so much that the Russians find themselves in Berlin unprotected by the Allies."

Paralysis cycles recursively through the plan. For example, the cardinal principle for the assault was "that any length of beach is too short to take the number of vehicles belonging to the number of divisions that will be necessary to assault such a length of beach," thus concluding, "Unless immediate steps are taken to construct sufficient beaches in this country which can be towed across the channel already assaulted no assault can take place."

The army, navy and air forces all take hits in the plan, which ultimately determines that the only suitable areas for assault are the Zuyder Zee, Lake Constance, or Holy Island. They meet the criteria of not including a port "to avoid any trouble over port capacities" and not having a hinterland to prevent "any trouble over subsequent deployment."

Annexure 6 to Appendix HHH of the document lists the planning data used, including a list of planners that could almost be sung to the tune "The Twelve Days of Christmas": "1 planner working, 2 planners chatting, 3 planners (2 Naval) arguing,” et cetera. It ends on a note that sounds amazingly modern, but undercuts the fundamental notion of war: "All data is subject to Naval, Military and Air Force advice and no references are made or harm meant to any living thing."

Hoover Wikipedians

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Miller) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:10:00 +0000

The archival community has been slow to embrace Wikipedia, whereas the Hoover Archives staff have been adding information about Hoover's archival collections to Wikipedia for more than two years. Usually a simple entry is made in the "External links" section, which refers readers to the Hoover Archives, such as the following example in Wikipedia's Firing Line entry: "The Firing Line collection (with a program list and RealVideo clips) from the Hoover Institution Archives." We've added a lot of these links, from the entry about Boris Pasternak to one about Chiang Kai-shek so as to connect Wikipedia users to our collections.

Adding such links makes sense. Wikipedia entries rise to the top of the results of most search engine queries, with Wikipedia referring a chunk of traffic to the Hoover website. In addition, college students are frequent users of Wikipedia, according to an article in First Monday, which says that a majority of students always or frequently consult it for course-related research, usually for background information about a topic and to get started with research. The article was based on a study of how college students seek information. To reach out to students, then, there's no better place for the Hoover Archive's presence than this go-to source for those commencing their research.

Excerpt from Wikipedia's Firing Line entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firing_Line)

What Rhymes with Hungry?

noreply@blogger.com (Samira Bozorgi) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 18:08:00 +0000

Too often, the experiences and accomplishments of women in wartime remain hidden between the lines of diaries and letters or behind the shining medals of decorated generals. I was fortunate to learn the story of one such amazing woman when I processed the Marie Adams papers.

Marie Adams arrived in Manila in 1941 as a field director for the American Red Cross. Soon afterward, the war reached the shores of the Philippines, meaning that Adams and thousands of civilians became prisoners of war of the Japanese at Santo Tomás Internment Camp.

According to the letters she received from friends and family, Adams was loved by many and dedicated to her work with the Red Cross. As an internee, she suffered from both hunger and disease; however, she bravely put her pain aside to tend to the physical and psychological wounds of her fellow internees.

With limited access to food or communication with the outside world, Adams used poetry to document her experiences at the internment camp and relieve her suffering. Her poems capture her resiliency and sense of humor, even in the face of starvation. In January 1945, Marie Adams wrote one of her final poems at Santo Tomás, not knowing she was only days away from liberation. Below is an excerpt from this poem, titled "Life Without Lipstick."

I've gone without lipstick,

I'm always un-rouged,

I've lacked every comfort

To which I've been used.

I've gone without beefsteak,

Without even beans,

There's no coffee, no sugar,

I know what it means

To go to bed hungry

To awake just the same,

With the old sense of humor,

In this internment game.

The poem ends with the following verse:

But when it's all over

And we're out once again

I hope I can smile and say--

"Remember back--when!"

Marie Adams's book of poems, Life Without Lipstick, is available at the Hoover Institution Library; her personal papers are in the Hoover Institution Archives.

Marie Adams in 1941, Life Without Lipstick, Hoover Institution Library

Herbert Hoover, the graduate: have Stanford degree, will travel

noreply@blogger.com (Brad) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 19:00:00 +0000

As Stanford University sends off another graduating class into the world, students are faced with a bewildering array of questions: Should they continue on to graduate studies or immediately look for a job? Can a new graduate even find a job in this difficult economy? And what does the future hold in store for someone with a newly minted degree as he or she leaves “The Farm”?

It can be comforting to know that previous generations of students faced those very same questions, including one of the university’s most famous alumni, Herbert Hoover, who graduated in the pioneer class at Stanford in 1895. We can gain an intriguing look at the young Stanford graduate as he sought work as a mining engineer in the late 1890s, just a couple of years removed from his studies under the tutelage of geology professor John C. Branner, in the Hoover Archives’ R.A.F. Penrose correspondence, which contains a number of early Hoover letters from such locales as Berkeley (yes, Hoover lived as a young Stanford graduate within a stone’s throw of that other university), Western Australia, and China.

R.A.F. Penrose (1863-1931) was a professor of geology and a mining engineer who, among other accomplishments, surveyed the Cripple Creek gold claims in Colorado in the 1890s and later cofounded the Utah Copper Company, which developed one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the United States, at Bingham Canyon, near Salt Lake City. He also mentored younger geologists, many of whom went on to attain prominence in the field, such as Herbert Hoover, whom he presumably met when Hoover was an undergraduate at Stanford.

In Hoover’s first letter to Penrose, written from Berkeley on February 7, 1897, he sought Penrose’s help in obtaining a position as a surveyor of mines, discussing various options in the district of Randsburg, in the Mojave Desert of California, or in Prescott, Arizona. Hoover suggested he team up with a colleague named Means in that the two of them could do excellent work, surveying a mine in half the time that an individual geologist could and noting that “we both have very fine instruments” and that “we have both had considerable experience in all kinds of mine surveying,” adding that he (Hoover) also “had three of four jobs involving legal issues of importance and can therefore attend to matters of title, etc.” In reading this letter, we can imagine Hoover in the position of many recent college graduates, sending out letters of application and networking with mentors in his search for a suitable position.

On March 17, Hoover wrote to Penrose regarding a promising position with a British mining firm, Bewick, Moreing and Company, whom he had been put in contact with by Louis Janin, a well-known mining engineer based in San Francisco whose reputation had been established through his work on the Comstock Lode in the 1860s. Hoover thanked Penrose for his letter of recommendation to Bewick, Moreing and explained that the firm had “asked Mr. Janin to nominate them a man and to my surprise he nominated me.” Hoover needed additional references, however, and noted that he could benefit from “some eastern influence” (Penrose was based in Philadelphia) because his sole recommendation until then had been from Janin. He was especially eager to win this job because it paid well ($6,000 a year, with fees and bonuses, potentially $10,000) and was with “a strong company in a confidential position in a new country.” As if Penrose hadn’t already understood Hoover’s strong desire to land the job, he added, “I am therefore anxious to secure it.”

By April 12, Hoover had found success: he had been offered the position with Bewick, Moreing, noting in a brief letter written that day that he was being sent to Coolgardie, in Western Australia, with a salary of $5,000 (roughly equivalent to $100,000 in today’s dollars). Hoover wrote to Penrose, “I desire to express my great obligations to you for the various kindnesses you have so freely extended and I hope I shall be able to vindicate your good opinions.” The rest, as they say, is history. Hoover’s position as a mining engineer in Western Australia led him to survey and discover several very profitable mines, such as the Sons of Gwalia, which in a few years earned Bewick, Moreing tens of millions of dollars and placed Hoover on the fast track to a successful career as the “doctor of sick mines,” and subsequently, as a well-known humanitarian, as the secretary of commerce, and, eventually, as the president of the United States.

As these letters demonstrate—even in reading between the lines—Hoover’s path began in a manner similar to that of many college graduates: humble requests to respected mentors, dogged determination, countless application letters, and a few lucky breaks. In some respects, the experiences of this Stanford graduate of 1895 may not be so different from those of today’s graduates.

Herbert Hoover poses for his portrait at a studio in Perth, Western Australia, after beginning his position with Bewick, Moreing, 1898, Herbert Hoover Subject Collection, photo file E, Hoover Institution Archives

Herbert Hoover (seated, lower left) with other Stanford geology students and their surveying equipment, 1893, Herbert Hoover Subject Collection, photo file D, Hoover Institution Archives

First two pages of a letter, dated March 17, 1897, from Hoover thanking Penrose for his letter of recommendation and giving him directions for sending it to Bewick, Moreing, R.A.F. Penrose miscellaneous correspondence, Box 1, folder 3, Hoover Institution Archives

The remaining pages of Hoover’s letter to Penrose of March 17, 1897, R.A.F. Penrose miscellaneous correspondence, Box 1, folder 3, Hoover Institution Archives

From reference request to preservation project

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Sam) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:40:00 +0000

Previous blog posts have covered our preservation queue for sound recordings: the delicate balance between the physical stability of the medium and importance of the content that dictates our usual operations. Meanwhile, patron requests, which always receive prompt attention, often interrupt this, sometimes happily. Let me explain.

A visual appraisal usually tells us what we need to know about a sound recording’s physical stability. However, one hidden benefit of patron requests is those cases where this usually doesn’t apply. In those cases, we monitor the tape during digitization and thus spot things originally not apparent that affect the sound quality: bad splices, slitting issues, odd track configurations, and so on. Because some collections were created at the same time with the same tape stocks, the issues on one or two tapes can tell us a lot about the rest of the collection.

What this means is that what we thought was a stable collection isn’t. We then reassess the collection and modify its place in the queue, with it possibly becoming a preservation project. Of course, I’m writing this inspired by recent examples. One is the sound recordings in the Mont Pelerin Society records, which had bad splices of acetate tape. A second was an inquiry from my alma matter leading me to poorly wound acetate tape recordings of Gamal Abdel Nasser. As you may recall, acetate tape is one of the more unstable formats, and acetate tapes with abnormal problems are worse. Thus the Mont Pelerin tapes became a project; the Nasser tapes, though moved forward in our queue, are still awaiting preservation.

On the lighter side, there’s another benefit: the content is sometimes humorous and timely. Within a week of the opening of the movie Atlas Shrugged, Part One, I hear Lawrence Fertig describe Ayn Rand’s book (Atlas Shrugged) as “one of the recent books that has caused a sensation.” He was extolling the virtues of the novel at the Mont Pelerin Society’s 1960 meeting, joking that Ayn Rand had called Ludwig von Mises “a left-wing deviationist.”

An offending splice point, Box 61, Mont Pelerin Society records, Hoover Institution Archives

Herbert Hoover and the Great Mississippi Flood

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Siekierski) — Thu, 19 May 2011 19:52:00 +0000

The Mississippi River is expected to crest at 57.5 feet at Vicksburg today, a foot above the record 1927 “Great Mississippi Flood.” In April that year the river broke through the levees, submerging vast expanses of farmland and destroying the homes of more than one million people.

Known for his monumental humanitarian relief work in Europe during and after World War I, then secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover (who's commerce department records are in the Hoover Archives) was called on to organize relief for the victims of the epic disaster. Hoover swung into action, assembling hundreds of ships to carry supplies, overseeing the creation of tent cities for refugees, and making radio and press appeals that helped raise millions of dollars for the Red Cross. “I suppose I could have called in the whole of the army, but what was the use? All I had to do was to call in Main Street itself,” Hoover said later. “No other Main Street in the world could have done what the American Main Street did in the Mississippi flood, and Europe may jeer as it likes at our mass production and our mass organization and our mass education. The safety of the United States is its multitudinous mass leadership.” Hoover did everything he could to provide the means for relief, but he knew then, as we know now, America’s greatest resource is its citizens and their boundless generosity, resilience, and hope.

Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover broadcasts a plea to the nation to donate funds for disaster relief for the victims of the Mississippi flood, April, 1927. Herbert Hoover Subject Collection, Photo File, Envelope V.

Resolved: That Firing Line Fans Want to Know Why All Episodes Aren't Available

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Bauer) — Wed, 11 May 2011 18:03:00 +0000

Without a doubt one of our most popular collections at the Hoover Institution Archives is the Firing Line Broadcast Collection; as a result we get a lot of comments about it through the website. Going through these comments has made the assistant archivist for visual collections and I (the administrative associate for AV services) realize that, aside from the collection having a vocal and enthusiastic fan base, most users have the same questions. We at Hoover have therefore resolved to explain the logic and methodology behind our seemingly cryptic treatment of Firing Line programs.

Let us begin with the core question that most fans ask in some way, shape, or form:

Why aren’t all the episodes available?

There’s a long answer and a short answer to this question. Because the short answer—“because not all of them have been preserved yet”—only leads to more questions, here’s the long answer:

As we explain on the Firing Line website, there are 1,505 episodes in the series. The general policy of the Hoover Institution Archives is to allow researchers only to access copies of audiovisual material so as to limit excessive handling of the originals. This policy especially applies to Firing Line where the archival master videotapes are in obsolete broadcast quality formats. Those tapes must be shipped to a laboratory specializing in archival media that reformats them to access and preservation copies on modern videotape stocks so that not just the general public but we archivists can actually view them.

The preservation treatment and reformatting costs are not inconsequential. Depending on the videotape format, its condition, and the duration of the program, creating the necessary preservation and access copies currently costs between $325 and $800 per episode. To do all 1,505 programs at once would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars!

Since funding is limited and we have numerous collections requiring preservation and digitization, we send the programs to the laboratory in batches of twenty to thirty at a time. Due to the physical toll shipping and lab work inflicts on videotapes, we only send unpreserved archival master videotapes to the laboratory if preservation work will be done on that trip. To date, approximately a third of the programs have been preserved.

The pace of preservation may not wholly satisfy every one; keep in mind, however, that “slow and steady wins the race” and the race to preserve all Firing Line programs in our collection is one we intend to finish.

William F. Buckley, Jr. meeting audience members Mrs. Fred Harris and her mother at the WETA studio, Washington, D.C., Sept. 14, 1971. Box 8, Firing Line Broadcast Collection, Hoover Institution Archives

Film or Video?

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Miller) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:21:00 +0000

Motion picture film enthusiasts can revel in more than a century of people and places, the artistry of Bergman or Hitchcock, the shimmering beauty of nitrate prints, all preserved on film, which boasted a golden age before videotape was born. Hollywood's film industry was an actor's dream and a tourist's destination before tape existed. Early TV shows were preserved not on tape but on film taken by pointing a motion picture camera at a television screen. Movies offered a brief escape from the Great Depression; television is now derided as the opiate of the masses. But if you associate video with television, videotape may win the numbers game with film because American homes hold so many TV sets. Yet it seems that film has the edge.

But I'm thinking labels (again). The archives relies on labels to identify the content of audiovisual materials. A vague or incorrect label--or even worse, no label at all--lowers the preservation priority of the item to which it is affixed. When we've got thousands of sound and moving-image materials identified with good labels, the poorly identified ones inevitably fall to the bottom of the work plan--unless we can play them back.

Playback can be problematic. We can only play an item if we've got the right equipment, which is often lacking. In addition, in our efforts to preserve the material, we play archival sound recordings and moving images only once, during the reformatting process.

That leaves the simplest operation: carefully unwinding the reel and eyeballing the content. Videotape is magnetic, existing as particles on a tape base. It looks black, undeveloped, opaque. You can't discern anything when it has been unwound. Film is optical, a sequence of photographs. Look at it with a light box, and you can see the images, overcoming the obstacle of a missing or damaged label. Score one for film!

Frames from film of German Day ceremonies held in Hindenburg Park, Los Angeles, 1936, Warren Olney motion picture film, Hoover Institution Archives

The King’s Speech Found in an Attic

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Bernard) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 18:17:00 +0000

By now many will have seen The King’s Speech, the excellent movie about the relationship between Britain’s King George VI and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue. And many will have watched the Academy Awards in February, when the movie won four Oscars, including for best picture. (By the way, weren’t the dresses fabulous? Except maybe…but I digress.)

For an archivist, however, most interesting of all was the February 20 episode of 60 Minutes, which had a segment on the movie’s production. CBS’s Scott Pelley interviewed David Seidler, the scriptwriter, who had received permission from the Queen Mother as early as 1977 to publicize the story. But he could only do so after her death, which came in 2002; Seidler proceeded with the project in earnest as soon as he heard the news.

To flesh out Logue’s character, researchers for the film needed photos. Fortunately, they were able to locate his grandson Mark, who not only had photos of his grandfather but also his diaries, and not just diaries! When rummaging through the family’s archive in the proverbial attic, Mark Logue and the movie team discovered documents that not even the family knew it had: more than hundred letters between Logue and the king, revealing how much their professional relationship had evolved into friendship; appointment cards showing hour-long sessions daily, including weekends; and…THE speech! Yes, the original version drafted by the king’s entourage and typed on Buckingham Palace stationery but annotated by Logue, with some words crossed out and replaced with ones easier for the king to pronounce and with vertical marks indicating the optimal moments for him to take a breath.

Of course, the movie producers did have at their disposal—and did use—the official audio recording of the king’s famous speech of September 3, 1939, in which he announces that Britain has declared war on Germany following Germany’s invasion of Poland, but it’s hard to imagine this crucial scene in the movie without this annotated version of the speech, with Logue guiding the king through it word by word, as the camera zooms in on those vertical lines.

Moral of the story: when doing research in our library and archives, don’t look for just one thing and don’t stop looking even if you find that one thing.

Postcard depicting the royal family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on Coronation Day, May 12, 1937, including Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth (sorry, Queen Elizabeth and King George VI). Mrs. Leland E. Cofer papers, envelope D, Hoover Institution Archives