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Cyan Magenta Yellow Black TICC2585 Angle@23 Angle@83 Angle@8 Angle@53 Angle@53 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY footnotes 1 UMBER N 36 VOLUME 2011 SPRING INSIDE 2 Improv pioneer Viola Spolin: an archival adventure 12 Celebrating Chicago’s “L” 13 Donor profile: Robert and Ann Avery 126594BK_r1_1080-1-UL-footnotes spring 11.indd 1 3/25/11 1:54 AM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Angle@23 Angle@83 Angle@8 Angle@53 footnotes SPRING 2011, VOLUME 36, NUMBER 1 1 News 2 Finding Viola Spolin A landmark archive arrives at Northwestern —and what the Library does to make it usable 10 Hidden treasures Unfinished business 12 The colorful past and bullish future of Chicago’s “L” Fall event featured insights from two speakers 13 Donor spotlight: Robert and Ann Avery Footnotes is published three times a year by Northwestern University Library. www.library.northwestern.edu Dean of Libraries and Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian: Sarah M. Pritchard [email protected] Director of Development: Alex Herrera [email protected] Director of Library Public Relations: On the cover Viola Spolin in a 1972 photograph included in the Clare Roccaforte Library’s recently acquired Viola Spolin Papers. [email protected] Above Spolin’s notes scrawled on the reverse side of the Editor and Writer: cover photo. From the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Nina Barrett Special Collections. [email protected] Northwestern University is an equal opportunity , affirmative action educator and employer. © 2011 Northwestern University. Produced by University Relations. 4-11/12M/TF-GD/1080-1 b footnotes SPRING 2011 126594BK_r5_1080-1-UL-footnotes spring 11.indd 2 4/1/11 4:03 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black TICC2585 Angle@23 Angle@83 Angle@8 Angle@53 Angle@53 news NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Kaplan fellowship, grant for Hoek LIBRARY D. J. Hoek, head of the Music Library, has 1 BOARD OF GOVERNORS been named the 2010–11 Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Library Fellow. M. Julie McKinley, chair The fellowship allows him to pursue his Robert D. Avery interest in the intersections between jazz Suzanne S. Bettman Paul A. Bodine and contempo- Julie Meyers Brock rary classical John S. Burcher music by investi- Jane A. Burke gating the his- Thomas R. Butler tory of Dial Jean K. Carton, life member Records, which John T. Cunningham IV Sarah M. Pritchard. operated from Photo by Gerald E. Egan Andrew Campbell. Harve A. Ferrill 1946 to 1954. John S. Gates Jr. Best remem- Pritchard named dean of libraries Byron L. Gregory 2 bered for its Sarah M. Pritchard has been named dean Daniel S. Jones groundbreaking of libraries, a title she will hold in addition James A. Kaduk jazz recordings, to her endowed title of Charles Deering Victoria M. Kohn D. J. Hoek. Photo by especially those James R. Lancaster Jim Ziv. McCormick University Librarian. The Stephen C. Mack by virtuoso sax- announcement by University Provost Daniel Judith Paine McBrien ophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, Dial also Linzer in January acknowledged historical Howard M. McCue III issued an important series of recordings by participation by the University librarian Peter B. McKee composers often overlooked by classical on Northwestern’s Council of Deans and William W. McKittrick record companies, including Béla Bartók, recognized Pritchard’s “strong and thought- Rosemary Powell McLean Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and ful leadership.” He added that Pritchard has Marjorie I. Mitchell, life member John Cage. William C. Mitchell “worked to ensure that the Library provides William D. Paden Hoek has been awarded additional the types of scholarly resources and access to Sandi L. Riggs support for his project, titled “From Bird to these resources in ways that support fully the Gordon3 I. Segal 4 Cage: The Circumstances and Aesthetic University’s ambitions.”5 Alan H. Silberman Rationale behind the Dial Library of The honor, Pritchard notes, reflects the Eric B. Sloan Contemporar y Classics,” in the form of a stature of the entire Library system “and our John H. Stassen Faculty Research Grant, which will enable Stephen M. Strachan important role as partners and practitioners Jane Urban Taylor him to visit the Harry Ransom Center at in the research and instructional programs of Nancy McCormick Vella the Uni versity of Texas at Austin to examine the University. The Library system has an John C. Ver Steeg its archive of materials relating to Dial academic breadth comparable to an entire Records founder Ross Russell. In announc- school, especially with our recent leadership Alex Herrera, ex officio ing the research fellowships and grant, Jeff in establishing a new library in Qatar, a facil- Sarah M. Pritchard, ex officio Garrett, associate University librarian for ity soon to open in Waukegan, IL, and the special libraries and director of special col- inclusion of the University Press in our lections and archives, said, “They recognize administration.” Northwestern University Library staff not only as custodians of the research of others but also as qualified researchers in their own 6 right.” SPRING 2011 footnotes 1 126594BK_r4_1080-1-UL-footnotes spring 11.indd 1 3/30/11 5:44 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Angle@23 Angle@83 Angle@8 Angle@53 2 footnotes SPRING 2011 126594BK_r8_1080-1-UL-footnotes spring 11.indd 2 4/6/11 8:30 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Angle@23 Angle@83 Angle@8 Angle@53 finding VIOLA SPOLIN ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ everal times a year, big brown newly acquired papers of the late improvisa- chaos. So we often won’t open an archive cartons full of undigested history tional theater trailblazer Viola Spolin, the for use until the processing is complete.” Sarrive in the specialized collections 50 cartons of letters, notes, manuscripts, old Manuscript librarian Benn Joseph, of North western University Library. They playbills and programs, and other memora- whose job it was to organize the Spolin come mostly from the attics and basements bilia had not yet been fully processed for use. papers and create what librarians call the and closets and filing cabinets and messy “Most archives arrive in roughly the “finding aid,” was only about 225 hours into desktops of people you may or may not same shape your own personal papers prob- a job that would ultimately require about have heard of, and they’re here because ably are in at home right now, which is to 300. “Preparing a finding aid,” he says, “can a curator expects that someday the right say, fairly disorganized,” says Scott Krafft, be a surprisingly complex and intellectually researcher will arrive on the doorstep curator of the Charles McCormick Library demanding process.” It’s a process with rules thrilled about discovering their existence. of Special Collections. “In a large and and guidelines librarians study in library But preferably not too soon. important archive like this, it would be a school, but there’s also an art to it, of getting Case in point: When postdoctoral waste of researchers’ time to go through 50 to know a subject through the elusive and researcher Kathryn Farley wanted to travel cartons of materials. And they still might often incoherent mass of paperwork that has from Georgia last October to consult the miss the thing they were looking for in the been left behind and shaping it into a Opposite, clockwise from upper left An early draft of the work that would become Spolin’s book Improvisation for the Theater; photos of Spolin, ca. 1940s; draft of an early brochure promoting the Second City; Northwestern University memo pads Spolin used to scrawl notes to herself; draft of a poem, ca. 1960s; announcement of Spolin’s first Second City workshops. Below, left Kathryn Farley appearing on the Chicago television show Check, Please! in 2006. Photo courtesy of Kathryn Farley. Below, right Benn Joseph unpacks a newly arrived box. Photo by Nina Barrett. SPRING 2011 footnotes 3 126594BK_r4_1080-1-UL-footnotes spring 11.indd 3 3/30/11 5:47 PM Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Angle@23 Angle@83 Angle@8 Angle@53 CONTRIBUTORS TO THE An early Second City program showing OBAMA COLLECTION* members of the original ensemble. coherent intellectual resource that isn’t actu- ally a biography but perhaps suggests one. And how well the librarian does this determines whether a busy researcher like Farley—who had only a week to spend in Evanston, though she would like to have spent a month—will find what she’s looking for in the archive or not. The “High Priestess of Improv” Northwestern University Press published the first edition of Spolin’s book Improv isa- tion for the Theater in 1963. Hundreds of thousands of copies and three editions later, “It’s without a doubt our best-selling book ever,” says Henry Carrigan, assistant director of the press. It’s also without a doubt the only Northwestern University Press book blurbed by Alan Alda, Valerie Harper, and Rob Reiner, whose endorsement says simply, “Her book is the bible.” The hidden costs of collections As the work of Benn Joseph on the Viola Spolin archive Increasingly, processing requires digitizing all or parts of shows, acquiring an archival collection is more than a one- collections, either to preserve materials from deterioration or time transaction. Jeff Garrett, associate University librarian to make them accessible to an international audience. “These for special libraries and director of special collections and steps are very expensive,” Garrett says. “Sometimes the archives, explains that making an archive into a truly usable work has to be done by specially hired project staff with resource for researchers “demands a large—and ongoing— expert knowledge—language skills, specific historical knowl- investment on our part. The kind of careful processing Benn edge, musical training, and often, of course, unique techno- Joseph performed with the Spolin papers took 300 hours.