Old Vault Letter, Michelle Godfrey-Sept 26, 2012

This afternoon I did two more letters from the collection-
MSS113-b01f01-08 and MSS113-b01f01-09.

The first letter was short and mostly legible. I find that sometimes the most troublesome words are the shorter ones when there are fewer letters that can give clues to what the whole word actually is. For example, the word after 'the Floyd' is a mystery to me.


the Floyd [??]

Most of the other trouble spots were due to not being able to make out people's names. Some of them, I could not even begin to guess. Here's a great one...

If you see [??]

Maybe the mystery will be solved once Elaine reviews these letters.

26 septembre

Today, continued work on the Barnstone collection, I came across a few sketches and drawings, perspective drawings, and a few floor plans of some of Howard's work in Laredo, Texas for private residences as well as an apartment block that I believe to be his Lovett St. apartment complex, from where he worked at one time.  I'm not sure though as the drawings weren't precisely named, they were just rough sketches of floor plans, and I had problems finding the original folder from which I put them last summer.  Perhaps they're in hiding or on vacation somewhere.  As I remember the rest of the project drawings being just as spectacular, I hope that they will surface up again soon.

meilleurs vœux

-ryan

Old Vault Letters, Elaine Patton, 9/24/12

Today's set of letters included:

• MSS113-b01f01-04
• MSS113-b01f02-01
• MSS113-b01f02-03
• MSS113-b01f03-02

 MSS113-b01f01-04 is a portion of a letter, I think, and what's in that file is choppy as well, so between that and the handwriting, it took me a little while to piece together what was being said. Some iffy words:

widow

deceased

This one I can't figure out. The only context for it is "Warren in the [that word] was Lydia Bins nee Warren..."

MSS113- b01f02-01fullrv and -b01f03-02full were both pretty clearly written (ahem, and neither are written by Houston himself). Yay! Uncertainties were related to unfamiliarity with a place's name and possible misspellings. E.g.,

I'm leaning towards "Indian Purposes," but there's definitely a few too many letters for that.

MSS113-b01f02-03 has the double difficulty of loopy, sprawling letters and pronounced bleed-through from the opposite side of the page. It also tends to address the recipient in abbreviations, i.e. Hon Secy of the Navy [I think]. For this one I copied Michelle's practice of making the lines in my document match the lines of the letter instead of writing out a normal paragraph. Actually, most of it isn't that bad, but when it is, it's very bad.

Interestingly, the lower-case Ts are distinctly formed, unlike his habits in last week's set, in which it shared space with the H.

the

The upper-case Ts are not quite as nice. Context suggests the word on the far left is "The." The second block is a name.I've decided that in the second block (a name), the given name is John, abbreviated as Jno., which is ridiculous but widely accepted, but I'm interpreting the surname as Tod, though that T looks nothing like the "The" T. Then again, Houston has demonstrated some idiosyncrasies in writing "th--" before, so... (Looking at "Texean" below, I think it really is just another "th" thing.)

The /// Jno. G. Tod

Then there was the matter of the Rs. The hypothetical Rs, anyway. I went back over my and Michelle's blog posts and the closest I saw to this shape in our screenshots was the random scribble in drink, here, so I'm going with R.

reporting | rate

But then, at the closing--

"I have the honor to be ___ ____"

R-o-h-h? L-e... R-[some-other-letter]-o...? Not R at all? I have no idea. You'd think a valediction would be something rather predictable.

Other thoughts:

I wonder whether this was a misspelling, a common misspelling, or an accepted alternate spelling of Texan:

Texean

Most of the very few references I can find online to that spelling refer to the "Texean and Emigrant's Guide." Not to mention "Tescas."

Howard Barnstone Project Monday 24th of September

After a prolonged weekend I am back at the Ideson library in the central business district of Houston re-digitising sheets that came out less than desirable from Howard Barnstone's wonderful collection of preliminary drawings, mechanical and electrical drawings, wonderful sketches, as well as correspondance letters from a wonderful mind of mid-century Modernism here in the Bayou city.

Most notable today, for me, was the rescanning of a apartment building on Vassar street, near the museum district, on a wonderfully curved site.  No two elevations from street level are the same.

Located a quick jaunt, bike ride, or train stop away from the museum district Vassar Place apartments are worth the effort of a quick visit.  Go see an interesting work of a mal-known Houstonian architect today.

Here is a google maps link via tinyurl.
http://tinyurl.com/c6ptx2r


à bientôt

-ryan

Elvie Jean Verhelle Scrapbook, Jennifer Nuzzo - September 20, 2012

I finished scanning the “Elvie Jean Verhelle" scrapbook. No problems although we might want to revisit a few of the pages to scan the details of some of the contents.

Old Vault Letters, MichelleGodfrey - Sept. 19, 2012

Today I worked on the same letters Elaine did last time which were
MSS113-b01f01-02

MSS113-b01f01-05 

MSS113-b01f01-06

I found that following Elaine's tip for reading the letter first before the Word doc worked really well for me. I did find it a little distracting the way the ink from the opposite side of the page could be seen through the paper. It was a challenge to decipher some of the handwriting because the content of the letter was unclear and the spelling may be a little different. In one letter, Houston was making a request for a couple of items to be sent to him. As best as I could make out, it was for some 'ammonia pulverised' but spelled with one 'm' and then some 'sinew', spelled with two n's.

amonia pulverised

sin new

Old Vault Collection: First Letter - Cecilia Williams

It's still an early draft, since I've only had time to tackle one letter today and it usually takes 10 - 15 items before I work out all the metadata kinks, but I wanted to share the following letter posted online to the Digital Archives. Michelle and Elaine - you  rock! We achieved over 90% transcription. That is phenomenal.

It's almost sort of funny that this is the first letter to be posted, since it's contains very little in content. Houston writes to ask why he hasn't heard from Bagby, sort of complains about being busy and people wasting his time, sends on his wife's request (for the third or fourth time) for cloth, and then asks how Bagby is getting along with a mutual female friend. It's a very normal letter. I will have to borrow the phrase "Anxiously, and in vain, have I looked for a letter from you" sometime soon. It's a great way to begin.

Letter from Sam Houston to Thomas M Bagby, July 20, 1843

Thank you for the hours you put into these, Elaine and Michelle. I know these will be 100% more valuable with full transcriptions.

Sheet Music Collection Sept. 18,2012 / Mary Sommerfeld

 

My work today was done from the collection housed on the 5th floor.
I added information to 30 data base entries (#754 to #784).
There were 3 items that were added to the data base.
Grand total of records for the day was 33.
The pattern of no bar codes on most of the items continues.

Housekeeping note, there was a wad of paper towels stuffed in the the women's toilet. I removed them, but maybe a notice should be posted about htis not being a good idea.

Some covers of interest. Even in 1923 New Yorkers had pocket doggies.





Here's one to make you either smile or cringe (depending on your tastes for bad movies.



 

Finally since tomorrow is "Talk Like A Pirate Day":

 

ARRRRRG MATEY!



Elaine Patton, Old Vault Letters, 9/17/12

This week Michelle and I switch off to to try to fill in gaps in each other's transcriptions, so I had:

•  MSS113-b01f01-01full
• MSS113-b01f01-03full

 In this case, at least for me, I think it's better to try reading the letters (maybe a line at a time) before looking at the Word doc or only looking for the gaps to interpret. It was definitely nice to have someone else's interpretation to compare to, though! Like having an answer key on hand while working math problems.

Can't figure out the top word in this portion, and I don't think it's 'relationship' as was suggested:

I included the lower "my happiness" in the screen shot to provide comparison to the ending of the mystery word. It looks to me like it ends in Houston's peculiar double-S and probably a -ness at that rate. Of course, it does also look like the Ps in 'happiness' there. I suppose that could be considered a kind of efficiency on his part. It also might be two words, but they are awfully close together. I suspect the middle area is a "th", with the crossbar misplaced to the previous letter (or maybe they're both Ts?) since the only times I've noticed his lower-case Hs getting that extra flourish on the front is when he's actually combining his h with a t. Definitely seems to be a d in the middle.

I at first thought this was "abstracted" but ultimately decided "distracted" made more sense and fits, if you accept that the first two forms are part of a badly mangled, disjointed d:

distracted

 Ws are a weak point:

When

Or pretty much any spiky, wavy letter, I guess.  Although it's rather pretty and flowing, it's not as immediately obvious as one would like that the first letters in both pictures are Ms for "Mr." and "Mrs." Come to think of it, those Rs, though resembling a print lower-case R, look more like cursive Vs (as I learned them).

Mr Bagby

Mrs Houston

 And here's the word 'elegance' by contrast, which looks like it begins with an M to me (thankfully Michelle had figured it out already):

I realized his capital Os look like capital As:

Our

As I side note, I wonder what it must feel like to refer to a city bearing your name (and named for you at that). "...since I left Houston"... Surreal? Proudful?

I also had MSS113-b01f23-05fullrv, which was typed in 1933 (i.e. not a Sam Houston letter, obviously) and had been OCR'd pretty accurately, aside from the messed-up header. Zero problems with it.

Howard Barnstone Imagery

My name is Ryan Arwood and I am a senior, undergraduate student at the University of Houston majoring in Architecture and French.  The summer of 2011 I commenced work on digitising many drawings of the mid-century Modern Houstonian architect Howard Barnstone, whose wonderful 'magical modern' buildings can still be seen in pockets throughout the Houston urban landscape as well as other well known projects for corporations such as Schlumberger and town homes for the Menil family.

I started back working at the HPL at the, finally, opened space of the Ideson building and the new digital lab.  The summer of 2011 I was working in a storage space with a wonderful librarian worker  named Laney and the distinguished Rice professer Stephen Fox and University of Houston professer Michelangelo Sabatino.  In the storage space in the basement of the main HPL library on Brazos Street I took photographs in a room with everchanging light and a wonderful Canon DSLR with wonderful training from Joel.

This fall 2012 work introduces me to the wonderful new scanner that the library as purchased allowing huge physical drawings, of which Barnstone's genius is trully on display, with the help of another wonderful HPL staff member, Cecilia Williams.

As with all things new and foreign to me from the beginnings I have encountered hair pulling situations, such as the scanner's refusal to accept the drawings I feed into it more often than it accepts them from me.  Hopefully soon we can learn to be good friends.  Perhaps I should buy it a drink first.

Looking forward to a great fall with the HPL staff and spending more time with the Howard Barnstone collection of drawings and other errata.  

Until next time,

-ryan arwood

C. F. Richardson Project, Jennifer Nuzzo - September 13, 2012

I finished metadata for the C. F. Richardson documents  in CONTENTdm.

Access to the cataloging department

Hi all!

After a recent incident at the library, we’ve closed the door to the cataloging department that is usually propped open. From now on this door will be shut and access will only be available through badge swipe. I am working on getting everyone cleared through security, but until the clearances go through, please knock on the door when you arrive and someone will be happy to open it for you.

Please make sure you wear your badges while you are in the building. If an HPL staff member asks you who you are, please identify yourself, show them your badge, and let them know that you work in Cataloging. And make sure that the HPL staff member is wearing their badge, as well. We all need to take care to know who is in the staff-only areas.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.  And thank you again for all the hard work you do each week.

Old Vault Letters, Michelle Godfrey - Sept 12, 2012

Today I finished two items from the Old Vault Letters, box 1- folder 1.  I had to get familiar with the writing style and the first letter took me longer than the second. The double S's look like the letter 'p', so this is how the words 'assured' and 'business' look...

assured

business

Combine the double S's with the letter 't' which was routinely crossed on the following letter and we get words like 'unless they' apearing like this...

unless they

Other problems that made it difficult to read the letters were due to a large dark stain on one page and tape across the seams on the paper.  To make it easier to find my place in some parts of the letter, I found it helpful to type each line of text separately as it appeared in the letter rather than running the sentences together.

Sheet Music Collection 09/11/2012 - Mary Sommerfeld

My work today was done from the collection housed on the 5th floor.
I added information to 47 data base entries (#706 to #753).
There were 5 items that were added to the data base.
Grand total of records for the day was 52.
Once again a large precentage of the items had no bar codes.

For those popular music buffs, can you recognize the this guy?
Photos taken long before he was hailed as a "Sir".

   

Old Vault Letters, Elaine Patton, 9/10/12

Today I worked on transcribing letters for Sam Houston: Correspondence, 1842-1858, MSS113-b01f01: -02, -05, & -06.

Difficulties
Ink bleed-through from the pages' reverse sides was not as big a distraction as I was afraid it would be. While I obviously don't have a 100% transcription, I did not seem to encounter (m)any abbreviations, misspellings, or 19th century shibboleths to make deciphering Houston's writing more difficult.

No, the difficulties all lie in the fact that (for example) Houston's lower case Ps tend to look like lower case hs with long tails, like so:

 This is what 'happy' looks like in his hand:

 And other handwriting idiosyncrasies: Capital Ds don't have the loop where I'd expect them to be, Ts tend to be sort of stunted, Ks in general are kind of hit-or-miss, lower case Es and Rs resemble each other, lower case Ys are formed the way Zs ought to be, and so on. It took me 3-4 read-throughs to eventually realize this was (...probably...) the word "drink":

It's very useful to try reading the letters both at ~100% and ~50-60% zooms. There's not a  huge difference between the viewing levels (it's not like you go from seeing only one word at a time to seeing a full paragraph or anything so dramatic), but it's enough to add a slightly different perspective on what you're looking at. Forest vs trees and all. Of course, when switching back and forth, I'd keep doubting what I was reading and changing my mind.

It's sort of like a Magic Eye puzzle (except I can interpret anything whatsoever in these letters) where you kind of read and re-read and re-read and, occasionally, inspiration strikes and suddenly that word that looks like "Satnfahases" is likely "Salutations." Typewritten correspondence: sooo much better.

Sheet music collection - Mary Sommerfeld 9/06/2012

 

 

 

 

Today was spent on the 5th floor working with the sheet music files.

I started with row #688 and went to row #705 (17).

I only added 1 item (#1199) not found in the catalog.

I also went back and completed the information for 27 earlier entries (#947 to 974).

The grand total today was 45 entries.

Along the way were some items of note.

First a Texana candidate:



 

 

 

Now a couple of big hair pictures, guy & gal :

 

 

     

  

 

Now a clean cut favorite Andy William :