By Chad King

The Truman Library acquires many of their documents and artifacts as gifts from individuals and organizations. Some donations have come in the form of scrapbooks that admirers of President Truman kept over the years. I have been assigned to preserve their contents and make them a part of the Truman Scrapbook collection. Newspaper clippings make up a large portion of all of the scrapbooks I have worked with so far. While newspaper articles are widely available, the scrapbooks can tell an unintended story to a researcher that goes well past its contents. For example: One scrapbook contained clippings reporting on the death of Franklin Roosevelt and articles retrospectively questioning his health. This could lead one to assume that the creator of this scrapbook was equally suspicious of FDR’s health leading up until his death. Due to their corrosive nature of newspaper, and its wide availability (microfilm, etc.), I had each clipping scanned for preservation, and if the clip wasn’t acid free I had to be disposed. If this isn’t done, it could risk damaging other items as seen below.

By Chad King

Speaking of Scrapbooks, I got to work with a new one today that was very interesting. To my surprise, I discovered that the museum has a large photo collection of his 1948 presidential campaign. I was assigned to scan and identify many images from this collection to make available online. Arguably one of the greatest upsets in electoral history, President Truman ended up defeating his opponent Governor Thomas Dewey against heavy odds. The photos in the scrapbook reveal in many ways how Truman made his victory possible. Truman traveled all across the United States and visited towns and cities that were not used to seeing a presidential candidate, and his appearances attracted large crowds. The constant traveling and campaigning enabled Truman to connect with the people and it assuredly helped seal their vote. Many of the photos were just pictures of ordinary people gathering to see the president. The photos assembled in this collection can let a person see what Truman saw with his own eyes as he was on the campaign trail.

By Chad King

Today I scanned a small portion of a larger collection of President Truman’s papers. This collection consisted of Truman’s speeches from his first senate campaign of 1934. At first glance, the collection seemed like a bunch of typed copies of his speeches, but as I glanced through the collection, I found that Truman edited many of them with his own hand. This showed that Truman was hands-on in the editing process and has a strong say in what information he felt was important to the electorate. At one point, Truman completely rewrote the conclusion to a speech before it was delivered to the public as seen below.

By Chad King

Now that I have learned how to catalog and preserve a collection, I have now moved on to a new project that I find quite exciting! Next year celebrates the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the beginning of Truman’s presidency. In accordance to this, the Library has begun organizing the Truman Map Room collection and making the documents available to researchers online. The collection is extraordinary, since the Map Room documents were top secret and detailed sensitive communication between the Big Three (Truman, Churchill, and Stalin) during the end of the war. Correspondence included military details, secret arrangements for meetings, and sensitive diplomatic communications over Stalin’s dealings with Eastern Europe. Most of the documents have been scanned, and I have been given the responsibility to identify and name them, to better assist researchers who might be looking for a specific item in the collection. There is still much more work to do with the Map Room documents, and I look forward to providing additional updates soon

By Chad King

I have now started the preservation process of Douglas G. Wright’s papers, and it has been great learning experience for me. The collection was donated by Wright in 1974 and was briefly organized and cataloged that same year. Now in 2014, I have been assigned to ensure the collection is preserved according to the standards set by the National Archives and the Library. First off, I had to remove all papers that were not acid free – untreated paper deteriorates over time, and could affect other items in the collection. Newspapers are usually untreated and present a challenge to any collection. Wright kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, so I meticulously scanned every item in his scrapbook so every item would still be accessible to researchers. Items that were untreated, or considered too fragile were moved to a separate file to be preserved and permanently stored away in the archive. Later, I will begin writing a new finding aid for the collection to replace the original that was created in 1974. This will better assist researchers who might be interested in Wright’s career.