Monthly Archives: February 2021

Mary Chenoweth’s “Choo Choo”

Look at this fantastic one-of-a-kind scroll-book by Mary Chenoweth that we just got as a gift from Eve Tilley!

Just look at it!

The pencil is there to show scale. The text of the scroll reads:

Toot all a bored 1997 coal more and more coal hemanaigs [?] trunk line heavy poof down-n-out short list slate pleez run on time oil books books ABC lift cracker barrels Xercise off hours without spectacles bug footloose accordion to Sante Fe NM lake of [eye]’s? well worn out past hurts rent a car only five more or maybe seven american eagle oops Rocky Mountains either way just decide cross country advertisers end

Reverse: Mary Chenoweth June 1997 for Trudie Gregory all aboard

Black newspapers digitized!

In honor of the Black Lives Matter movement, Special Collections digitized several Black newspapers in Colorado Springs, including The Colorado Springs Eagle (1912, ed. Julia Embry), The Voice of Colorado (1936-1937, ed. Tandy Stroud), and Colorado Springs Crusader (1982, ed. Dorothy Middleton). We also digitized two CC student publications, Black Literary Magazine 1978-1981, and Fight the Power 1991-1994. Searchable PDF files, and more, are linked from this page. Below are some excerpts.

Pandemic Projects

You may be wondering what CC Special Collections is doing while it’s closed for in-person research. The answer is: a lot! But different things than usual.

We are helping researchers remotely, mostly by email. We are using the focused attention that comes with uninterrupted time to process manuscript collections such as the Van Briggle Pottery and Tile Company Records, which started out like this:

and are now fully cataloged, with a finding aid available upon request. We can’t usually use our reading room tables for this kind of thing, so there are some benefits to being closed! We are also doing little projects that we always meant to do but somehow never quite had time for, like home-making a foam holder for our cuneiforms:

We’ve also been digitizing up a storm. More about that in the next post!