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Syracuse University football reels from the 1930s. Pulp science fiction magazines. Portraits of Albert Einstein, W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes. The original writings, letters and manuscripts of activists, abolitionists and anti-fascists.

All of these one-of-a-kind artifacts are entrusted to the care of SU’s Special Collections Research Center, the vast archive of valuable materials the university stores largely on the sixth floor of Bird Library. And without immediate intervention, faculty familiar with the collections say many of these items will soon deteriorate to the point that their original content — and the history they preserve — will be lost.

“What we’re talking about is a rescue operation,” said Deborah Pellow, a member of the University Senate Committee on the Libraries. “It’s as simple as that.”

The university has long monitored the decay of materials in its special collections, but the damage to some of its most valuable items most recently came to light when Pellow’s committee presented a report on the deterioration in a Feb. 24 University Senate meeting.

During the meeting, Pellow and her colleagues laid out a stark scenario: the at-risk materials — which include “tens of thousands” of films, books, manuscripts, photographs, negatives and tape-based media — could decay beyond recognition if not moved to a climate-controlled storage facility. And SU, which has delayed construction of such a facility for several years, is running out of time to act.

“The issue is arresting the degradation of the collection,” Pellow, a professor of anthropology at SU, said in an interview. “We cannot save that which is degraded, but we can stop it from continuing.”

The types of deterioration in SU’s archives are nearly as varied as their contents. Paper records and manuscripts, such as the writings of abolitionist Gerrit Smith and old copies of The Daily Orange, are becoming brittle due to their acidic nature. Audio records, including tapes donated by Dick Clark, are facing damage from magnetic decay or, for some cylinders in the Belfer Audio Archives, graphite damage from a nearby elevator.

Photographic prints in SU’s collection on renowned photographer Margaret Bourke-White, which the report valued at $98 million, are taking on a bluish tint. Without intervention, the tint will advance over the images, obscuring their original content, the report states.

“The photographic materials, some of that has deteriorated beyond rescue,” Pellow said.

The solution to many of the deterioration concerns is the same, members of the committee said: the construction of a secure, climate-controlled addition to SU’s existing library storage building on Jamesville Avenue. According to the report, SU had designed, approved and planned to fund the facility — known as Module 2 — as far back as 2016, but the university halted the project for unclear reasons.

University Senate Committee on the Libraries Report, Feb. 2021 by The Daily Orange on Scribd

The committee’s report alleges that SU pushed the project aside to make room for other construction projects, including the renovation of the Carrier Dome roof and the National Veterans Resource Center. In a statement to The D.O., an SU spokesperson denied that funds were moved from the construction of Module 2 to the Dome roof renovation.

“It is true that there have been major capital projects that have occurred since 2016, and they have prioritized health or safety issues or the student experience,” Chancellor Kent Syverud said when pressed on the issue in the Senate meeting. He said the scope of the project has changed since it was first proposed.

Officials in SU’s Libraries recognize the need to act. David Seaman, dean of libraries, said in an email that the committee’s descriptions of deterioration in the special collections are accurate. A stable, secure, and controlled environment like Module 2 would prevent further degradation to the at-risk materials, he said.

SU originally planned for the module to consist of several climate-controlled areas, with the ability to closely monitor temperature and humidity in each space, said Jenny Doctor, former director of SU’s Belfer Audio Archives. A separate space would allow materials to slowly transition to warmer environments to avoid shock, she said.

Doctor, who left SU in 2016 and is now head of the Albino Gorno Memorial Music (CCM) Library at the University of Cincinnati, said humidity in SU’s libraries has been particularly damaging to archived materials.

“Almost more important than the temperature is the humidity,” she said. “We have to have completely constant humidity, and that’s the big problem in Bird and in Belfer. The humidity is all over the map, all the time, and that is what’s really terrible for the collection.”

Doctor, who praised the work of the staff in SU’s Special Collections whom she worked with during her time at SU, said it was around 2014 when SU first noticed the effects of the improper storage of photographic negatives, which kick-started a wider push to revamp its storage facilities.

Almost half a decade later, how and when the university will move forward on the Module 2 construction project remains unclear. The university is looking at options to finance the project and set a target date for its completion “as soon as we can,” Seaman said.

A previous statement from an SU spokesperson said the university had already allocated funds for the project, including some funds committed by donors. During the Senate meeting, Syverud said “substantial money” had been raised for Module 2.

Regardless of how SU finances the project, Module 2’s construction will be costly, especially for a university cash-strapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The committee estimated the project would cost around $6 million.

Hosting special collections, and keeping up the facilities and staff that preserve them, is also a financial challenge for many universities, Doctor said. As a result, libraries often have to speak up to remind universities of their value.

“It’s expensive to take care of a special collection,” Doctor said. “Deterioration is costly.”

Paper records and manuscripts in SU’s archives are becoming brittle due to their acidic nature.Courtesy of SU Libraries

Several committee members acknowledged that SU is struggling financially during the pandemic, but they worry that the university can’t put off the construction of a new facility any longer. An inopportune time is better than no time at all, they said.

“We can hold two different truths at the same time, and one truth is that the university is in a critical condition financially due to COVID,” said Karina von Tippelskirch, another committee member. “At the same time, if I have a dying patient, I cannot say, ‘Okay, we wait until after this.’”

Letting materials such as those in SU’s special collections decay is not only a disservice to future generations of SU students and scholars, the committee members said — it would also harm the university’s international reputation. Researchers have come from all over the world to view the materials in SU’s archives, Tippelskirch said.

“The price of inaction is embarrassment among our peers,” said Mark Monmonier, another committee member, during the Senate meeting.

For some SU professors and students who have conducted research in SU’s Special Collections, the decaying materials have immense personal value.

Tippelskirch is one such professor. She published a biography on journalist Dorothy Thompson using documents in SU’s archives and, in the process, forged a connection with her source material.

Thompson, who graduated from SU in 1914, was one of the leading voices to speak out against the rise of fascism in Europe. As a foreign correspondent, she interviewed a young Adolf Hitler before his rise to power — and her scathing rebuke of the soon-to-be-dictator caused him to exile her from Germany, though she continued to speak out against fascism both in Europe and in the U.S.

Having access not only to Thompson’s published work but also to her personal writings has lent modern scholars who visit SU’s archives unparalleled insight into who she was, Tippelskirch said.

“You cannot get closer to a writer who is no longer alive than engaging with their papers and handwriting, their typescripts, what they left behind,” she said. “We often overlook these things because they’re right in front of us.”

Tippelskirch noted that the Thompson materials are not in the greatest danger of deteriorating compared to other items listed in the committee’s report. But some of Thompson’s photographs and manuscripts, especially those written on acidic paper, are beginning to show signs of decay and would benefit from storage in a cooler space.

While SU works to establish a concrete timetable for Module 2’s construction, the university is also exploring interim solutions to mitigate damages. The library may install smaller, free-standing storage units in existing facilities to house the most at-risk items until a permanent facility is in place.

But committee members expressed concern that whatever stopgaps SU implements to stall the deterioration could be written off as a permanent fix — which they are not.

In the meantime, they said, items in the collections will continue to wither.

“What we need is a sustainable solution that is not only taking care of the problem that we have at hand now but will take care of this for years to come,” Tippelskirch said. “We all understand that a building does not go up overnight.”

At the University Senate meeting, members of the committee outlined another option, should SU choose not to build Module 2: surrendering its valuable materials to another university that could better care for them. Seaman said SU hasn’t considered giving up its collections and affirmed that the university is committed to preserving them.

Seaman and the committee members agreed on the importance of maintaining SU’s collection, even as the future of Module 2 remains undecided. Their value — unlike their condition — will only grow with time, they said.

“We have always something new to discover when we have these materials,” Tippelskirch said. “They are not only about the past. They tell us something about the time we live in, where we have come from.”

Published on March 9, 2021 at 12:57 am

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu