Then one afternoon the Office of Research told him that he had exhausted his research funds and indeed was overdrawn by 5%. What to do? He could not continue his research without money to buy benzene. So he decided that he would apply for a research grant and, armed with the application, he sat down one evening to fill in the blanks. List all papers published it said! But I have no papers published or even submitted or even written! In a panic he grabbed his lab books and set out to write a paper. Several days (or was it weeks?) later Joe sent his manuscript to the editor of a journal recommended by his colleague in the adjacent office.
Several weeks later (or was it months?) the comments of the referees and the editor arrived. Is the author not aware of the work of Wolfgang Werner, the well known expert on the anisotropy of the polarizability of benzene? How does the author reconcile his results with those of Harry Hanson which appear to be in complete disagreement with those in the present manuscript? Is the author not aware of the boiling point of benzene? its vapour pressure? The author should provide justification for carrying out this research when Frank Friendly, Gary Galoshes, and Wendy Weinstein have all reported work which overlaps strongly with the results reported here.
Now, Joe is a mythical character - in more ways than one. Fortunately most scientists (and I would expand this to include most people, regardless of their profession) are keenly interested in learning. Science is somewhat like an unfinished brick wall. We look at the work already done and we lay a brick in an appropriate place. In some cases even more than one brick. Some people are sufficiently lucky to lay one or more bricks in the bottom row. But even these must know about the other walls.
The library contains this record of research done: papers which provide the most recent results published, as well as those published decades earlier; reviews summarizing the work on a particular topic up to the time of writing; and textbooks.
Part of the fun of the library is found in the hunt - which in my opinion is almost as important as the laboratory research itself. Has anyone done this before? What have they found? How does this fit in with my plans? How do their results correlate with my results?
Technology has helped us in this hunt. Our Library has had abstracts for decades, current contents more recently, and even more recently CD-ROM which allows us to search by keyword(s) or name of an author. In spite of the budget restraints which have been forced upon our Library, the excellence of our Library remains. We are justifiably proud of both our facilities and our dedicated, friendly, and helpful library staff. To them we say keep up the good work, the budget worm will some day turn!
Choosing a suitable building at the right price has been a challenging task. We have been working on the project for over a year, negotiating and looking at sites in St. Jacobs, Elora, and Guelph. The three institutions had a list of requirements, the most important of which was that the facility had to be large enough to accommodate 25 years of growth at all three institutions.
Now that we have a building, staff members from the three libraries are working on preparing the facility, installing shelving, and moving the collections. Our Library will move approximately 240,000 volumes from a warehouse on Phillip Street to the new facility. We expect the Library Annex will be fully operational by mid-November.
The University Librarians of Guelph and Wilfrid Laurier and I view the Library Annex as a milestone achievement in the collaborative initiatives being undertaken by the three libraries. This is only the beginning!
Murray Shepherd
University Librarian
Dorothy Russell's enthusiasm and appreciation for the process of documenting and preserving local history - whether by her over 80 years as an avid photographer, through her oral reminiscences, or in her personal book collection and reading - is nowhere more evident than in her recent gift of several groups of family papers and books to the UW Library. Her sense of the importance of our local heritage is shared by her son Harold, a retired history teacher. Together they have arranged to transfer to the Doris Lewis Rare Book Room over 800 books and archival materials of interest to the local community. This collection includes correspondence, photographs, maps and plans dating from 1824 onwards, and other ephemeral materials ranging in date from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century.
Dorothy still resides in the family home built in 1888 by her maternal grandparents Tobias and Mary (nee Moyer) Schantz. This dwelling also has been home to several other family members whose papers and books now form the Schantz/Russell Family Papers. Among those collections is that of her maternal uncle, Frank Schantz, whose activities as Secretary-Treasurer of the K-W Orphanage from 1918 to 1942 are documented. He was also an early organizer of the Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists Club. Dorothy shared her uncle's enthusiasm and, in 1985, the Club made her a life member and presented her with a commemorative plaque. The collection includes this photo of Dorothy at age 10 with her Uncle Frank.
Photo: Kitchener-Waterloo Record
Other family collections include those of three more of Dorothy's uncles - Orpheus Schantz who moved to Chicago where he was a popular author and lecturer, and Arthur and Austin who left the Berlin/Kitchener area at the turn of the century to homestead in Alberta. Also transferred were two trunks belonging to her Aunt Florence containing scrapbooks, clippings, découpage cutouts, and music which give insight into a girl's life at that time. The cuttings already glued into the scrapbooks - or waiting to be glued - demonstrate the wide variety of reading materials available to the children of this late Victorian family. These materials include Canadian and American newspapers, illustrated papers, children's papers and magazines, women's periodicals, and religious newspapers.
Also of interest to those studying women's history will be a portion of the more than 1,000 letters in the collection. This group of over 100 letters provides a glimpse of family activities from the women's perspective and are between two of the Schantz sisters, Sophie and Etta White (Dorothy's mother), who both trained as teachers. Dorothy herself continued the family tradition of teaching. Trained at Toronto Normal School, she began teaching locally at Suddaby School in 1921 and continued with some interruptions until her retirement in 1965.
Dorothy's lifelong love of photography began in 1912 with the acquisition of an Eastman Kodak Number Two camera. As the family home is adjacent to Kitchener's Victoria Park, the Park environs soon became one of her favourite subjects. Her personal collection of slides and albums - which she has retained along with her diaries - were used as an important resource in the planning of the recent centenary celebrations of the founding of the Park. In a recent interview, Dorothy said of Victoria Park, "It was my backyard and it was always beautiful." The recent photo shows Dorothy, at age 96, in a turn-of-the century dress in Victoria Park.
The voluminous collections gathered, maintained, and donated by Dorothy Russell and her family add to the growing number of original materials which document local life. The national significance and importance of these research resources is further indicated by their certification as Canadian Cultural Property.
Queenston Heights, a rare illustration from one of the books, Raise the Flag and Other Patriotic Songs and Poems by Charles Mair (Toronto: Rose Publishing, 1891), can be seen on the front cover of the UW Library Annual Donor Report for 1995/96.
This charming photograph is part of a donation from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record by their Historian, Lynn Richardson. The donation includes a large collection of historical photographs and negatives, as well as archival material documenting the history of the Record.
Friends of the Library Newsletter is a publication of the University of Waterloo Library. It is scheduled to be published twice yearly and is supported by the University of Waterloo Friends of the Library association.
Editor: Sharon Lamont
Assistant Editor: Esther Millar
Contributors: Susan Bellingham, John Moffat, Murray Shepherd, Mary Stanley
Photography: (unless otherwise noted) Central Photographic University of Waterloo
Printed: Graphic Services University of Waterloo
ISSN: 1180-2480
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