Chocolate Bayou Theater Co.

Asking a non-Houstonian what comes to mind when they think of our fair city is likely to elicit the typical answers.  Oil.  Rodeo.  Theater.

Wait, theater?

Granted, those who may not know our city so well may not realize how vibrant a theater ecosystem we have carved out.  However, thanks to the generosity of our city’s patronage, combined with a bustling Theater District second only to New York, both established and upstart companies have made their home here, producing award-winning and critically successful dramas.

Leonard Wagner and Pat Miller, co-founders of Chocolate Bayou Theater Co.

Here at the University of Houston Special Collections, our Performing Arts collections serve to shed light on much of that history.  One example from this collection area, the Chocolate Bayou Theater Collection, illustrates what a determined, upstart theater company can accomplish in Houston.

In 1973 Leonard Wagner established a new theater company in conjunction with the Alvin Community College.  When Alvin withdrew from the project, Wagner remained undeterred.  He partnered with Pat Miller to create the non-profit, professional Chocolate Bayou Theater Company.  Enjoying critical success, the CBTC supported burgeoning playwrights through the establishment of the Preston Jones New Play Symposium.

Chocolate Bayou Theater Co. promotional mailer, 1984-85 season

Oil, of course, would remain a factor.  This is Houston, after all.  Financial troubles and the debilitating oil recession of the 1980s impacted a number of the arts in Houston, dependent on the benevolence of their benefactors.  Faced with financial difficulties, the CBTC would shutter their operations in 1987.  Scarce resources, however, would fail to diminish the legacy of two Rockefeller Foundation grants and over 100 productions through nearly a decade and a half of feverish creativity (The CBTC would produce seven premieres in its final year of operation).

If this type of window into the Houston performing arts community is of interest, do check out the finding aid for the CBTC or window shop some of the other collections of related materials.  When you are ready to visit, feel free to drop us a line or just drop in.

The following comes to us courtesy of Alison Clemens, exiting Houston and Texas Archives Fellow here at the University of Houston Special Collections.  This farewell is bittersweet as we will certainly miss Alison’s insight and expertise.  However, our loss is Yale University’s gain and we wish her all the best in her new position with the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

I joined the staff here in Special Collections in August 2012 as our Houston and Texas Archives Fellow. This was my first professional position as an archivist, as I’d graduated from the University of Texas’s School of Information (iSchool) in the summer of 2012. I was thrilled to join the staff here at UH, and I was excited to work with the outstanding materials in Special Collections and learn more about the vibrant history of Houston. My time here has been very rewarding, and before I leave UH to move on to my new, permanent archivist position, I wanted to have the opportunity to look back over my tenure and share and reflect upon some of my most memorable experiences.

I started my tenure by conducting a survey of our collections, which served two important purposes. First, such surveys allow us to figure out the best way to prioritize collections for projects like additional description and digitization. Second, the survey let me dive into our collections and get a real feel for the treasures we have here.

The focus of my fellowship has been “processing” archival collections, or organizing and describing them to make them available for use by the scholarly and local community. I love processing for a couple of reasons. First, I gain a deep satisfaction from handling primary source materials and seeing how history is embodied in artifactual remnants. Second, processing allows me to spend my time researching a broad variety of subject areas, depending on what collecting I’m working on.

I split my time at UH between processing materials in our Houston and Texas History Collections and our Houston Hip Hop Collections. This meant that I worked with materials ranging from early Texana, including land grants issued to the original Anglo settlers of Texas by Stephen F. Austin, to a gray tape created by DJ Screw. The end goal of this all of this work has been to properly care for the materials and ensure that they’re available for research and use for years to come.

Lightnin’ Hopkins from the Texas Music Collection

I also greatly enjoyed working on departmental outreach projects, like piloting our Brown Bag Presentation Series, for which I presented on our Texas Music Collection. This presentation allowed me to share the riches found in our collections with library staff members, as well as online viewers.

My fellowship also afforded me excellent support in developing my knowledge of evolutions and trends in the library and archives fields. I attended classes on working with digital materials at Rare Book School at University of Virginia and through the Society of American Archivists, and I was able to bring my newfound knowledge back to UH to assist with managing digital hip hop album artwork in our Pen & Pixel Graphics, Inc. Records. I also gave a presentation entitled “From Flows to Finding Aids: Processing the Houston Hip Hop Collections at the University of Houston Libraries” at the Society of Southwest Archivists Annual Meeting.

Master P, “The Last Don,” from the Houston Hip Hop Collection

Overall, my fellowship has been beneficial in numerous ways. It provided Special Collections with professional level staffing to facilitate completion of departmental priorities like processing, collection management, and increasing digital library collections. It has also helped to promote the collections at UH to a wide range of audiences. Finally, the fellowship has provided me with the professional development support to educate myself on the library and archives field and bring back the knowledge I’ve gleaned to help further Special Collections’ mission of preserving and providing access to our cultural history.

To learn more about the collections we have, check out our website and search our finding aids database. Or, if you’d like to see some these archival materials in person, visit Special Collections!

The University of Houston has long had an ambitious and experimental thread running through its history.  Our University Archives are a wonderful resource for tracing that history, as they document both the victories won and the challenges overcome.

Of particular interest is the concept and experiment of the Open University program.  In the 1970s, the University of Houston and a small handful of other U.S. universities attempted to implement a concept being established in the U.K.  In an attempt to increase access to higher education, the British government sought to wed the resources of the BBC with a new university concept to target those interested in distance learning and pursuing higher education on a more flexible schedule.  The non-traditional student and students with disabilities became the natural fit for this new concept.

promotional photograph from the “Anyone for Tennyson?” class / program

The University of Houston, with its on-campus resources of KUHT and KUHF, as well as its long-time commitment to increasing access to higher education, seemed a fertile ground for this experiment to take root stateside.  The Open University Records contain correspondence, reports, program information, workbooks and classroom supplements that serve to document the implementation of this goal.

Trends in education have a tendency to ebb, flow, and often cycle back.  While the Open University is still going strong across the pond, it is not terribly common to hear the term “Open University” tossed about these hallowed halls of academia.  However, as evidenced by the recent announcement of the partnership with Coursera and the long-running success of UH’s Distance Education program, that legacy of delivering higher education via non-traditional means to non-traditional students has remained a constant.

promotional material for “Cinematic Eye” class / program

If studying trends in education is of interest to you, or if you simply want to look through the class materials for “Anyone for Tennyson?” and “Cinematic Eye,” browse the finding aid for the Open University Records or come visit us when you have a moment.

James E. Ferguson presidential candidate broadside, from the C.E. Texana Collection

Summertime, and the researchin’ is easy.

With apologies to George Gershwin, summer means research steps with a more urgent gait, attempting to make use of the dwindling days prior to the academic responsibilities of the fall semester.  Today we take a look at some of the popular archives thus far in the summer of 2013 and, in doing so, hopefully spark some renewal of research projects of your own.

Popular collections which we have highlighted here recently include the Cheryl Crawford Papers and the Alonso S. Perales Papers.  However, here are four collections with a little less limelight, yet brimming with potential, recently tapped by researchers:

1) Oral Histories – Houston History Project – Part of the Houston History Archives, this collection of interviews with history’s witnesses, produced in conjunction with the Center for Public History, documents the evolution of the greater Gulf Coast.  Interviews with Houstonians provide first-hand accounts of the city’s civil rights, cultural, and political past.

2) President’s Office Records – Maybe not as glamorous as some of our other collections, the President’s Office Records from the University Archives dates back to the University’s founding in 1927 and is the starting point for anyone interested in the history of this great experiment in higher education that is the University of Houston.

3) Claude Elliott Texana Collection – Assembled as part of the Houston and Texas History collecting area, the C.E. Texana Collection represents the accumulation of materials from a writer, historian, and scholar specializing in Texas history.

4) Donald Barthelme Literary Papers and the Donald Barthelme “Forum” Collection – A name that has become synonymous with the experimental, short fiction of postmodernism, Donald Barthelme was instrumental in the establishment and growth of one of the most prestigious creative writing programs in the nation here at UH.  Also of interest may be the Helen Moore Barthelme Papers and the Donald Barthelme, Sr. Architectural Papers in Architecture and Planning.

These collections and more are available for study in our Reading Room.  Be sure to comb through some of our finding aids and hurry down before autumn leaves have you chasing other interests and obligations.

a quick peak behind the curtain of the new UH Digital Library website

Mark your calendars fans of metadata and digitization!

The University of Houston Digital Library website is undergoing a redesign and will be unavailable beginning Thursday, July 18, 2013.  The site is scheduled for relaunch, with full functionality, on Monday, July 22, 2013.

It is difficult not to fall in love with the University of Houston Digital Library.  There are just not a whole slew of resources on this web of ours that offer the rich, deep selection of digitized materials to be found there.  From high resolution reproductions of historic photographs and maps, to personal correspondence of prominent figures, as well as digitized audio and video resources, the Digital Library offers all of this, 24/7, gratis, as it provides wider and broader access for research and scholarship related to the University of Houston, the city of Houston itself, as well as the state of Texas.

Besides, where else can one find a photograph of that collegiate ice hockey power that was the University of Houston?  The Digital Library is full of these hidden gems.

UH Men’s Ice Hockey Team, 1936, from the UH Photographs Collection, available for high resolution download in the Digital Library

As great as all of that is, it’s about to get better.

The redesign of the Digital Library has been ongoing, behind the scenes, for some time now (you can track the project’s arc and read more about it here).  When they pull back the curtain we will be treated to a number of improvements based directly on patron feedback.  Included in the redesign is a cleaner appearance, improved interface, and more flexibility in browsing and discovery of materials.

Want more information?  A schedule of the website’s downtime, as well as anticipated improvements to the site, can be found at the Digital Library’s announcement here.