From the Vault is a series highlighting recent projects, research, and interesting finds from the Special Collections & University Archives department at Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. This post features select collections recently digitized or cataloged and accessible for research and teaching.
The Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA) department aims to work with faculty, students, and staff to create unique learning opportunities and preserve the cultural memory of USF. We strive to put one of a kind and rare collections in the hands of students by arranging visits to the Donohue Rare Book Room and through our online digital collections.
New selections in our digital collections:
Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (1693-1700) (volume 1) & (volume 2). One of the earliest European manuals on perspective for artists and architects, compiled by Andrea Pozzo, an Italian Jesuit, Baroque painter, architect, and stage designer.
Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et métiers, par une sociéte de gens de lettres. Recueil de planches – M-S (1771). This volume contains copper engravings depicting tools and methods for wigmaking, decorative arts, net fishing, manufacturing, sculpture casting, and more.
Civitas veri sive morum Bartolomeo Del Bene (1609). A poetic meditation on the utopian ideal city based on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Known in English as City of Truth, Del Bene focuses inward and explores how to achieve an ideal character or soul.
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae Athanasius Kircher, SJ (1646). Also known as The Great Art of Light and Shadow, this book is the first published description in Europe of the illumination and projection of images, an illustration of Saturn, and many other aspects of light, the sun, moon, stars, comets, optical illusions, phosphorescence, sundials, and more. A massive work, organized into 10 parts, symbolically representing the ten stringed instrument in Psalm 143, as well as the ten emanations of the Sefirot in Kabbalah.
Marietta Stow Scrapbook. Marietta Louise Beers Stow (d.1902) was a fundraiser, journalist, and women’s rights reformer. In her writing and speeches, Stow promoted issues related to probate & labor reform, birth control, eugenics, woman suffrage, and dress reform. She ran for Governor of California in 1882 on a platform that promoted woman suffrage, probate reform, and anti-Chinese sentiment. In 1884, Marietta Stow was the first woman to run for Vice President of the US, joining attorney Belva A. Lockwood on the National Equal Rights Party ticket. Marietta Stow compiled this Scrapbook near the end of her life, using a letterbook which had belonged to her husband J.W. Stow. It consists mostly of newspaper clippings — she wrote on the cover: “Whoever has charge of my effects, during my life or after my death, I charge to keep this book sacred as a memoranda of noble work. Never let anyone see it alone, for fear of depleation [vandalism].”
Notes relating to the Catholic Missions in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Peru and Patagonia (1680). Draft of two letters written by Maria de Guadalupe de Lencastre, Duquesa de Aveiro, about Catholic missions and Spanish positions in and around the Straits of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego, the coast of Chile and the Island of Chiloé. From the Van Houten Collection of Spanish Manuscripts, 1679-1818.
St. Dominic’s Press ephemera collection (18 items). Poems & ephemera printed by St. Dominic’s Press in the Printing and Graphic Arts collection.
The book and art shop of Paul Elder & Company two-thirty-nine Grant Avenue San Francisco (Paul Elder & Co., between 1909 and 1921?). Advertising flyer that has images of the Book Room designed by B. R. Maybeck, as well as the art rooms, the basement book room, and the art gallery of Paul Elder & Company.
A selection of newly cataloged books, manuscripts, and ephemera:
Items printed at the Bancroft Library Press in Berkeley (12 titles)
The thunderbolt & the monk Nancy Stock-Allen (Book Club of California, 2022)
Woolgathering Patti Smith (Arion Press, 2022)
Morte de Smudgie Margaret Atwood (Arion Press, 2021)
The robot washes dishes on the eve of the end of the world (2022). A poem by Dean Rader, with drawing, illumination, calligraphy and binding by Thomas Ingmire.
Bone-black & vermilion : an elegy to the printing press (Peter Koch, 2021)
Exercitia spiritualia Ignatij de Loyola (Jean Bogard, 1586)
The strange case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson (Bodley Head, 1930)
Paper botanists : cultivators of artiface Barbara Hodgson & Claudia Cohen (2022)
March fifteenth, nineteen eighty-three Gloria Stuart (Laguna Verde Imprenta, 1985)
Bookbinding ephemera : paper Claudia Cohen (2006)
Van Houten Collection of Spanish Manuscripts, 1679-1818. The collection contains manuscripts in Spanish, including documents and correspondence (1784-1818) between the Duke d’Abrantes (1738-1827) and his representatives in Mexico concerning financial affairs and claims of being a descendant of Moctezuma, as well as correspondence (1679-1691) to Maria Guadalupe de Lencastre, duquesa de Aveiro, Arcos y Maqueda from missionaries in Mexico, South America, Philippines, Mariana Islands, and India. With some typed transcriptions and translations into English.
Recently cataloged archival collections:
San Francisco College for Women/Lone Mountain College collection, 1921-1978. Donated by San Francisco College for Women alumnae, this collection includes literary journals, newsletters, publicity files, photographs, student rosters, catalogs, yearbooks, correspondence, and financial reports documenting the history of the San Francisco College for Women, later named Lone Mountain College, from 1921 to 1978.
Monsignor Joseph M. Gleason papers, 1892 – 1941. This collection includes correspondence, diaries, sermon notes, photographs, publications, ephemera, and research files documenting the personal and professional life of Monsignor Joseph M. Gleason from 1892 to 1941.
Paulo Freire Lectures on Audio Cassette collection, 1984-01-17 – 1984-07-02. This collection includes 19 audio cassette tapes that contain the recorded lectures of Paulo Freire when he visited the University of San Francisco campus in 1984. Additional undated recorded lecture from Stanford University.
William McInnes, S.J. papers, 1973-1976. The collection includes journal and newspaper articles, correspondence, reports, and documents from the papers of William McInnes, S.J., president of USF (1972-1976).
President’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women records, 1997-2020. This collection includes two large binders, 14 file folders, and 1 digital folder (with sub folders) that contain paper and born-digital materials of bylaws, historical timelines, meeting agendas and minutes, correspondence, annual and budget reports, program and event planning documents (mentor program, USF Gender Justice Awards, grant proposals), fliers, member rosters, survey findings (2012), research files, Also included is 1 DVD, “GWRF 2011” video of the Global Women’s Rights Forum 10th anniversary reception on 2011-03-10 with PACSW’s inaugural USF Gender Justice Awards.
Additionally, we created a small exhibit featuring items from the KUSF archival collection in celebration of the 60th anniversary of KUSF’s first broadcast. Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA) staff and student assistants developed a corresponding digital exhibit entitled, 60th Anniversary of KUSF’s First Broadcast: KUSF from 1963 to 2023.
If you are a faculty or staff member and would like to learn more about our collections and how to use them in your courses, please contact our department at specialcollections@usfca.edu.
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