the virginius h. chase special collections center

charles j. frey
special collections librarian
cullom-davis library
bradley university
peoria, illinois

Rare books and manuscripts have been a part of Bradley University since the institution was founded 87 years ago. Lydia Moss Bradiey herself donated items from her personal library and over the years a number of prominent local residents and other friends of the university followed her example. Until recently, however, the role played by such materials in the intellectual life of the university and the surrounding area was relatively limited. Under the administration of Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr. (1955-1975), the Abraham Lincoln collections received particular emphasis. His successor as library director, Robert A. Jones, began in 1975 to define, consolidate, and secure diverse special resources previously located in a variety of closed and open locations in the library building.

The momentum increased in 1976 when the university received a bequest exceeding $76,000 from the estate of Martha I. Grant, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to establish an endowment fund supporting the purchase of "rare and other special books." Efforts to establish a special collections facility received strong support from the university administration, particularly from Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs John C. Hitt. Final impetus came from the generosity of Peoria civic leader Mrs. J. Chase Scully. Jr., and, in 1979, the scope and functions of the special collections program at Bradley were significantly expanded with the opening of the Virginius H. Chase Special Collections Center.

Virginius H. Chase (1876-1966) was a nationally recognized authority on the botany and natural history of Illinois. During his career Chase discovered ten new species of plants and was selected by the Smithsonian Institution to check the manuscript for a revision of the standard book on grasses. His extensive collections of botanical specimens, totaling 60,000 items, continue to serve students and researchers in the Forest Park Nature Center in Peoria, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution, and Bradley's own department of biology. For his achievements, Chase received honorary degrees from both Bradley and Kenyon College, as well as recognition from the scientific community which named several midwestern plants for him.

The facility named in memory of Virginius H. Chase is located on the ground floor of the Cullom-Davis Library and includes a reading room, staff workroom, librarian's office, and storage vault. The area is protected with Halon fire extinguishers and specially filtered lighting to eliminate potentially damaging ultraviolet radiation. In 1980, the university demonstrated its continuing commitment by installing within the Special Collections Center one of the most sophisticated environmental control systems to be found in a central Illinois library. Capable of maintaining temperature ± 1°F and humidity within ± 2 1/2% RH, this system provides an optimal storage environment, free from the usual seasonal fluctuations which can take years away from the useful life of a book or document.

The center presently has a staff of three in addition to the special collections librarian who has been with the program since the facility opened, albeit always with additional responsibilities within the library. Initially the efforts of the special collections librarian were supplemented largely by specially trained student help. In 1981, however, funding was obtained for the temporary appointment of a full-time special collections assistant; that position subsequently became permanent. The scope of operations was further enlarged in 1982 when the university created the position of preservation bookbinder and was fortunate enough to secure the services of a European binder who had recently emigrated to the United States. The complement of staff is rounded out with a preservation technician who has specialized training in the techniques of paper repair.

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Holdings of the center include more than 13,000 books and pamphlets, 2,400 manuscript letters, and 12,000 photographic images. The majority of these materials fall into one of eight groupings.

Chase Collections. When the Special Collections Center was established, the library received a group of 1,260 manuscript letters, the correspondence of Philander Chase (1775-1852) first Episcopal bishop of Ohio and Illinois, and founder of Kenyon College and Jubilee College. This initial body of letters was preserved through the efforts of the bishop's great-grandson, Virginius H. Chase, and presented to the library by Mrs. J. Chase Scully, Jr. The continuing growth of the collection is the result of a broad based effort involving gifts from friends of the library, purchases made with funds from the Martha I. Grant Endowment, and deposit arrangements with local organizations. Perhaps the most significant of these deposits involves the archives of the Citizens Committee to Preserve Jubilee College which has been working with the Illinois Department of Conservation to restore the main building of Jubilee College.

At present the heart of the collection is a group of over 2,400 manuscript letters pertaining to Bishop Chase and his family. The collection also includes 36 linear feet of books, pamphlets, maps, images, and artifacts. Among these materials may be found a rare first edition of Bishop Chase's Reminiscences published serially in Peoria beginning in 1841; a unique copy of the second edition that originally belonged to its publisher, James Dow; a group of scarce mid-nineteenth century books and pamphlets relating to the ecclesiastical trial, presided over by Bishop Chase, of Benjamin T. Onderdonk, Episcopal bishop of New York; and a copy of the memorial sermon preached by Reverend Dudley Chase at Jubilee College after the bishop's death.

Until cataloging is completed, access to the collection is through an accession list and card file index. The library is also preparing for publication by the Citizens Committee a guide to both the collection and to the study of Philander Chase.

Peoria Historical Society Library. In June 1980, the Peoria Historical Society, founded in 1934, placed its research library on deposit at Bradley University. Established in the early years of the

The presence of these materials has fostered a close relationship between the two institutions with the Peoria Historical Society providing continuing support for its collection, and the library director serving as the society's vice-president for education and research.

Bradleyana Collection. As might be surmised from the name, this collection contains material relevant to the history of Bradley University and, in a broader sense, to the history of the surrounding community. Included in this collection are complete runs of student newspapers, yearbooks, and catalogs extending back to the founding of the school. In addition to a vertical file covering people and events of significance to Bradley, there are several complementary institutional histories compiled by former faculty, complete with the original notes of the authors. A portion of this collection consists of books at one time owned by Lydia Moss Bradley and artifacts pertaining to the Bradley family and the founding of the original Polytechnic Institute.

Bennett Collection. One of Bradley's original faculty members and a pioneer in the industrial arts education movement, Charles Alpheus Bennett, founded the Manual Arts Press, now the Bennett Publishing Company. In the late 1930s he donated to the university his private library of approximately 1,400 books and over 6,000 pamphlets. The collection can be roughly divided into four categories: (1) material purchased to complete research for his two books, History of Manual and Industrial Education Up to 1870 and History of Manual and Industrial Education, 1870 to 1917; (2) ephemeral material gathered during his forty years as editor of Industrial Education Magazine; (3) technical books and course outlines published during the early years of the Manual Training Movement in Sweden, England, France, Germany, and America; and (4) books on art instruction published prior to 1850. Within these categories, the collection also contains a great deal ol intormation about Bennett and his activities on the local and national levels. Fully cataloged and indexed, the library of Charles Alpheus Bennett represents one of the finest retrospective collections of its type in the midwest.

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Lincoln Collections. In the late 1940s another Bradley professor donated to the university his private library which became the nucleus of a substantial collection dealing with Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Known throughout the country as a Lincoln scholar, Martin L. Houser was also considered a leading authority on the books read by the self-educated sixteenth president. Houser collected duplicates of every book Lincoln was known to have read, always in the same editions; one book in the collection has been documented as being the actual copy owned by the president. Subsequent acquisitions have brought the holdings to some 2,500 titles, including 650 scarce items on microfilm. All materials are fully cataloged and there is a published guide to the collection. (Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr. The Lincoln Collections of Bradley University, 1962.)

Rare Books Collection. Of course not all collections the center can be readily defined in terms of asingle subject emphasis. Through gift, purchase, and transfer from the circulating collection, there hasdeveloped a body of over 3,000 volumes which might best be described as a general rare book collection. Materials range from the leaf of a Gutenberg Bibletofirst editions of works by Carl Sandburg, and a Vachel Lindsey manuscript. The Eugene Baldwin itollection of limited editions is included among the holdings, as are a 1698 account by Father Louis Hennepin of his travels in North America, a 1755 Santini map of North America, and a scarce serial of Dicken's Master Humphrey's Clock pub-bhedin 1840. Perhaps the choicest items in this collection are an 1833 folio edition of Choix des Plus Belles Fleurse renowned French flower painter Pierre Joseph Redoute and a complete run of Camera Work, the landmark photographic journal edited by Alfred StiegIitz in the early years of this century.

Bothamley Collection. One of the most recent aquisitions by the library is the Merrill Bothamley Collection in Business History. The 1,500 volumes in (collection were amassed during many years of Heated, informed book collecting by Merrill

Bothamley, a prominent investment banker. The collection focuses primarily on American business and is especially strong in histories of specific firms as well as in biographies and autobiographies of business leaders. It encompasses a broad range of topics—including agribusiness, commerce, communication, construction, finance, insurance, manufacturing, mining, real estate, transportation, and a variety of service industries. All items are cataloged and many are shelved in the circulating collection; those titles of particular rarity, however, are housed in the Special Collections Center.

APCO Historical Library. In 1982 the center received on deposit the library of the Illinois Chapter of the Associated Public-Safety Communications Officers. APCO is the oldest and largest public safety radio users group in the country, and the Illinois chapter is one of the oldest and largest of the forty chapters within the organization. A number of the national APCO presidents and an early national secretary came from the Illinois chapter. The majority of their files and records are contained in the collection along with all of the records from thestate chapter, Proceedings of Annual Conferences from 1944 through 1952, and the most complete run of the APCO Bulletin magazine available for public use. The collection presently occupies thirty-six linear feet and is experiencing steady growth as the chapter adds new materials and seeks to locate and fill gaps in coverage.

To assist researchers in the use of materials in special collections, the center operates a reference service which responds not only to requests made through personal visits, but also to mail and telephone inquiries. As might be expected, many requests come from students, faculty, and administrators of the university, but a significant number are also received from the surrounding community. While the majority of requests have come from the state of Illinois, the center has responded to inquiries from thirty-six other states and the District of Columbia. In addition to local newspapers, television stations, businesses, and civic organizations, clients have included the Illinois State Museum, CBS News, Time-Life Books, NBC News, the American Museum of Folk Art, and the Library of Congress.

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Material from special collections has been incorporated into a number of masters theses and doctoral dissertations at colleges and universities across the country. During the past academic year thecenterassisted the local public radiostation with research for a grant-funded project which produced scripts for a series of twenty-six half-hour programs dealing with local history, provided information for an upcoming academic press book correcting a popular misconception about the work of a significant local architectural firm, assisted the Caterpillar Tractor Company in revising a dealer training presentation, provided data on early Peoria teachers for use in a book to be published by Yale University Press, and worked with a graduate class from the Department of English engaged in a semester-long project editing the manuscript journals of poet Daniel Smythe. The center's resources — particularly those of the Peoria Historical Society — will figure centrally in the preparation of a major history of Peoria to be published in 1985.

One of the strengths of special collections at Bradley, however, and perhaps the major reason for the growth of the program in recent years is that the emphasis is not solely on amassing material and answering reference requests. Since the Chase Special Collections Center first opened, there has been a strong commitment to preservation, evidenced first by installation of the environmental control system, and later by the hiring of a hand bookbinder. Subsequent training has allowed staff to employ a variety of specialized techniques which can prolong the useful life of a book or document by halting or, in some cases, even reversing the harmful effects of aging. Recently preservation activities were expanded to include a book repair program designed to identify and treat items in the circulating collection with minor structural damage before deterioration progresses to a point where complete rebinding is necessary. The commitment also extends beyond the campus of the university; the center has assisted the Illinois Valley Library System in hosting two regional preservation workshops conducted by the Illinois Cooperative Conservation Program.

The Virginius H. Chase Special Collections Center is open to both the university community and the public from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays with other times possible by advance arrangement. Inquiries can be directed to the staff by mail or telephone. Those intending to visit the facility are encouraged to telephone first and outline their interests to assure the best possible service. Materials do not circulate and may not be removed from the reading room, although photocopying and photographic duplication can be performed by the staff for a nominal fee. The only limit to such reproduction, apart from matters of copyright or donor restriction, is that the process must not harm the original in any way. Reference requests should be sent to the Special Collections Center, Cullom-Davis Library, Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois 61625. The telephone number is (309) 671-5945.

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