RESEARCH VISIT BY TWO FIU GRADUATE STUDENTS RESEARCHERS

This Thursday two Florida International University students taking the same Ethnohistorical Methods class but working on very different projects came to our rare books and special collections library to gather information and do some research. This course benefitted from a Mellon grant which allowed the professor to integrate museum objects and artifacts into the curriculum. One of the goals of the course is to train students to make use of primary source materials for their research projects, but also to encourage them to investigate how and why such archives and collections were amassed by conducting interviews (where possible) with the persons responsible for gathering the materials.

Charles Heck arrived at the library with an interest in social and environmental considerations in the development of the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, as well as its notorious favelas. While our own collection trails off pretty quickly in the post-war period, we were able to direct the student to a large collection of architecture slides taken by one of the Wolfsonian’s former fellows, Eric Dluhosch. Professor Dluhosch, who retired a few years ago from teaching at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, traveled extensively across the globe and spent time in Brazil at architecture conferences that investigated various social housing experiments and documented the development of slums in that and other Latin American countries. His large collection of architectural slides was donated to Florida International University some years ago and is in the process of being digitized for use by the university’s School of Architecture. The student may have the opportunity to meet with and interview Dr. Dluhosch directly as he is escaping the snowiest and the coldest of the winter months down here in sunny Miami Beach. Of course, there were also items in our own collection that addressed some of the student’s research concerns as well including the brochure pictured above.

Later that afternoon, Professor Dennis Wiedman directed another of his students, Benjamin Augustyn, to our library to discover what materials might be available for researching his topic of colonial tourism. While the student had originally been focused on some of the colorful travel posters of the interwar period, (of which there are many in our museum), he soon learned that there was a wealth of related materials in other formats (brochures, advertisements, menus, postcards) available for direct consultation in our library, or else easily viewed on the internet via our web OPAC and virtual library displays: ( http://207.67.203.78/W10054 ; http://www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org ) As the Wolfsonian founder, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. happened to be in town, we were also able to set up an interview with the original collector of the materials. Here are a few samples of some of the colonial tourist trade materials to be found in our rare books library.

ONE GOOD DEED INSPIRES ANOTHER

This past Saturday, I received a visit from a Ruth Kruger, a Bay Harbor Island resident who had called the museum expressing interest in donating some ocean liner materials from the 1930s. Ms. Kruger arrived at the library around 4:00 PM, bringing with her a bag containing some memorabilia from several cruises her parents had taken in 1933 and 1934. Her collection, mostly in pristine condition, included such items as a complete set of unbound issues of the Resolute Observer, a periodical published for the passengers sailing aboard the S.S. Resolute at sea, running from January 8, 1933 through May 17, 1933. She also brought with her a partial photograph album for that same world cruise with an additional 10 loose professional black and white photographs; thirty shore excursion programs from the same; a schedule, and a price list; three rare certificates; and finally, a bound edition of The Polynesian, a periodical printed for the S.S. Lurline’s South Seas and Oriental cruise in 1934.

Naturally I was delighted by this unsolicited gift, and inquiring as to how she had come to think of us as a permanent home for her materials, she handed me a clipping of an article printed in The Miami Herald some months back. Entitled “Cruises Cached,” the article in the neighbors section had announced the donation by Laurence Miller of his incredible collection of promotional materials from the various cruise line companies in the post-war period. Added to our already extensive holdings of advertising brochures, menus, schedules of the interwar period, the Wolfsonian-FIU library is fast becoming one of the premier repositories of cruise ship memorabilia in the country. Pictured here are a few examples from Ms. Kruger’s most recent gift to our growing collection.

DR. LAURENCE MILLER HELPS PROCESS AND CATALOG HIS COLLECTION

A little more than a year ago, I was invited to the home of retired director of libraries at Florida International University, Dr. Laurence Miller, where associate librarian Nicholas Blaga and I were graciously entertained with a delicious lunch prepared by his wife Carole. Before sitting down to eat, we had the opportunity to look over the incredible collection of cruise line industry promotional materials that Dr. Miller had amassed over the last fifty years. The Wolfsonian library’s own holdings of ocean liner materials for the interwar period are quite substantial, but we could not help but be impressed by the scope and breadth of Dr. Miller’s collection of post-war cruise materials. You can imagine our delight when he expressed his intent to donate the more than 10,000 items to our rare books and special collections library.

Now as we have begun the overwhelming job of processing and cataloging this incredible gift, we must once again acknowledge Dr. Miller’s generosity—this time with his expertise and time. This summer and fall, Dr. Miller has been coming to the library three days a week helping us to organize, catalog, and make this invaluable collection available to the public via our Web Opac. “It has been fun seeing again the deck plans, brochures, and menus that I have not handled in years,” notes Dr. Miller, “and I am pleased to know that digital images of the same will bring to a new generation of aficionados details of ships they have likely never seen.”


While it will take us some time to get the entire collection cataloged, Dr. Miller and our small but committed cadre of interns and volunteers have created records for a substantial portion of the promotional materials. Additionally, our digital library technician, David Almeida has scanned a few sample items from each of the shipping companies thus far cataloged in order to whet the appetite of the public and interested scholars. These can be viewed on our online catalog:


http://207.67.203.78/W10054


To access the collection, simply type in the keywords: “Laurence Miller promotional”