library - Archives & Special Collections in Louisville, Kentucky

The Humanities Building, completed in 1974, was constructed with brick and concrete block panels. It contains classrooms, two lecture halls, labs, and offices, and on November 5, 1979, was named for Barry and Mary Bingham. The Bingham family owned a local media company, including the Courier-Journal, and were well known arts enthusiasts and university benefactors. Buildings: Humanities Building, Bingham

Diane di Prima, a feminist writer, poet, and teacher closely associated with the writers of the Beat Generation, sadly passed away last week. Celebrated as a feminist voice among the Beats, di Prima worked alongside writers such as Le Roi Jones (Imanu Amari Baraka) (pictured with di Prima above), Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde, and Jack Kerouac. She spent many of her creative years living in Greenwich Village and various places in New York State, immersing herself in the Bohemia...n intellectual culture, co-founding the New York Poets Theatre and the Poets Press. In the late 1960s, she moved to San Francisco, where she took up the study of Zen Buddhism and the occult, helping to organize The San Francisco Institute of Magical and Healing Arts. She authored 29 books of poetry throughout her prolific career. Archives and Special Collections houses a large collection of di Prima's papers, including correspondence, diaries and journals, teaching materials, printed materials, legal documents, a scrapbook, photographs, and audiotapes. The collection also includes her poetry books and other published work, including the influential underground newspaper of Greenwich Village, The Floating Bear. ULPA Fine Prints Leroi Jones and Diane Di Prima at the Cedar Tavern, Fred W. McDarrah. 2007.015.01.

Walker Evans was born on this day in 1903. With a career spanning 50 years, Evans is one of the most influential American photographers to date, pioneering our current concept of documentary photography. The Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote an essay on Evans in 2004, detailing his early aspirations for writing and how that passion translated across mediums, into his eye for photography. "In 1927, after a year in Paris polishing his French and... writing short stories and nonfiction essays, Evans returned to New York intent on becoming a writer. However, he also took up the camera and gradually redirected his aesthetic impulses to bring the strategies of literaturelyricism, irony, incisive description, and narrative structureinto the medium of photography." ULPA Fine Prints Alabama Coca-Cola Shack. 1936. E92 464. Company houses, Scott's Run, West Virginia. 1936. E92 461.

If you find yourself in Ekstrom Library between now and November 13, please make your way to the lower level to check out the student LGBTQ Pride exhibit, "Proud Creative," displayed in our lobby! This show exhibits artwork from nine current University of Louisville studentstake a short break from your end-of-semester studies to show your support for them!

Fine Print Friday - From the Sequence, a part of Found Memories Transformed by Alisa Wells-Witteman. Active in the 1960s and 1970s, Wells-Witteman worked mostly with found glass-plate negatives to create multi-layered images. In 1962, she enrolled in a photography workshop directed by Nathan Lyons, who became her mentor and coworker at the George Eastman House. She worked there for roughly ten years, serving as Associate Curator of Extension Activities. In 1969, she created t...he series "Found Moments Transformed," in which she altered found glass-plate negatives using staining, solarization, and other technical processes. She said of her work, at an exhibition entitled Anyway You Look, For the product of work to be meaningful to me, it must represent what is happening in my life on as many visual and metaphorical levels as I am able to evoke. ULPA Fine Prints From the Sequence, Found Memories Transformed. 1972. 1982.16.21

Next up in our series of instructional videos is Exploring the Mysteries of Finding Aids. Finding aids - detailed descriptions of archival collections - are truly your best friend to help understand what our collections have to offer while conducting research. Check out the tutorial here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szjbqivde8k

Halloween costumes from 1928 feel far spookier than Halloween costumes today. This photograph is from the Caufield and Shook collection and was commissioned by Cornelia Anderson Atherton, wife of prominent financier, real estate developer, and distiller Peter Lee Atherton. This photograph of the Atherton's children and their friends was likely taken at their large estate in Glenview, a wealthy, sixth-class city of Kentucky located near River Road. ULPA CS_096552 https://digital.library.louisville.edu//c/cs/id/4237/rec/1

Fine Print Friday - David Graham's American Dream. Graham is a photographer and professor infatuated with capturing the essence of uniquely American freedom of expression. These photographs, a campground in Montreal and a backyard in Louisville, illustrate that Graham's concept of the American Dream doesn't necessarily align with country borders, but instead an idealized reality of the commonplace. ULPA Fine Prints Campground Outside Montreal, P.Q. 1983.18.02. Backyard with Potted Plants, Louisville, KY. 1983.18.04.

Oral History Center presents - Interview with Thelma Stovall by Sharon Hall and Janice Stieneker on October 31, 1977. Stovall was a trailblazing woman in Kentucky politics. In 1949, she was elected as state representative for Louisville and served three consecutive terms. Over the next two decades, she was elected as Kentucky State Treasurer twice and Secretary of State of Kentucky three times. From 1975 to 1979, she served as the Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky in the admini...stration of Governor Julian Carroll, and was the first woman in the country to be nominated for that position and to hold that office. A highlight of her career includes her executive injunction against the Assembly's attempt to repeal Kentucky's ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. This excerpt of the interview features Stovall explaining Governor Chandler's insistence on her candidacy for Secretary of State of Kentucky. A part of our Oral History Center, the full interview with Thelma Stovall can be found here: https://ohc.library.louisville.edu/ohms/viewer.php Photos: Courier Journal Historic Newspaper, December 10, 1978, page 26. Courier Journal Historic Newspaper, May 4, 1979, page 14. Courier Journal Historic Newspaper, January 30, 1972, page 119.

It is estimated that 100,000 Interstate 65 motorists per day sped past the double set of 10 concrete silos that sat adjacent to Belknap Campus until 2014. For more than 15 years, the 100-foot-high grain towers dacing the roadway were emblazoned with lettering spelling out "University of Louisville," one of the earliest efforts of a massive campus beautification project. Locals remember the site for the unappealing smells spewing from the Ralston Purina facility, byproducts of processing cereal, oil, and other goods. The facility was responsible for a massive sewer explosion in 1981.

Fine Print Friday Celebrating Paul Strand, who was born on this day in 1890. Strand, an accomplished modernist photographer and filmmaker, helped secure photography's position within the Fine Art world. His interest in photography solidified after visiting the 291 art gallery in New York City, operated by Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz, who later became Strand's mentor. Strand was one of the co-founders of the Photo League, a photography club that promoted the functio...n of photography as a tool for social justice. In the 1930s, Strand became committed to documentary filmmaking and remained active in that practice until his death in 1976. ULPA Fine Prints, Calvanio, Patzcuaro. 1933. S897 127. Church, Coapiaxtla. 1933. S897 117. Cristo with thorns, Huexotla. 1933. S897 132.

Next in our series of instructional videos is Searching the Archives Catalog. This tutorial walks you through specific tips for successful searches as well as an explanation of the search results. This is necessary for understanding which of our collections may be useful to your research. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXPHkfwD8mk

When the university came to campus, Ford Hall, a women's dormitory for the orphanage, became the Home Economics Building. For several years in the mid-1940s, a faculty/staff cafeteria operated on the lower level. In 1982, the building was named for A.Y. Ford, the university's first full-time, salaried president, who served from 1914 to 1926. Ford Hall is home to the political science department. ULPA CS_091030.