Report on San Francisco Main Library Tour

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SF History Center
Nine Institute members received an exclusive tour of the main San Francisco Public Library on January 31, 2015. Our guide, Susan Goldstein, has served as City Archivist since 1995. In her position, she works with all the city departments to preserve and make accessible their historical records. She also manages a robust program and exhibition schedule and is currently engaged in a number of digitization projects. At the moment, she is busy preparing for the 100^th anniversary celebration of the San Francisco City Hall, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the American Library Association Conference this coming June.

The library, designed by James Ingo Freed of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (New York) and Cathy Simon of Simon Martin-Vegue Winkelstein Moris (San Francisco), opened its doors in 1996. Our tour included all six floors. It is immediately apparent that the “new library” has become a vital part of the city’s fabric—dynamic and responsive to the community’s needs. Under construction is a state-of-the-art digital media center for teens. Already in place is a computer training center and an extensive adult literacy program. It was noted that the library also hosts a laudable outreach program for the homeless. A wide array of rotating exhibits ensures that a visit to the library is always fresh and interesting.

In addition to the general and dedicated collections, there are special centers on African-American and Gay and Lesbian social studies. Appropriately, a large room has been set aside just for Book Arts. All three centers are beautifully appointed contemplative spaces in which to study in quiet comfort. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find the library holds an improbable number of unique special collections. To cite just a sampling: calligraphy, wit and humor, and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The library also holds the photo morgue of the News-Call and over 40,000 digitized photos as part of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection.

The Art and Music Center on the 4^th floor boasts an extensive clippings file that includes arts and entertainment programs and an etchings and engravings collection, both of which date back to the 19^th century. You can check out music scores from their vast collection.

Some may be surprised to find that the library has been a federal depository since 1889. The library’s Government Information Center is your one-stop-shop for almost anything related to city, state and federal government. Particularly impressive are city police records dating back to the 1860s and mayoral records to the Mexican period.

The periodicals and newspapers collection (the Magazines and Newspapers Center) rivals or surpasses that of any Bay Area university.

Our tour culminated with a visit to the San Francisco History Center and the Book Arts Room on the 6^th floor. Whether you are working on city or county history, architecture, labor, landmarks education or vital statistics, you’re bound to find something of value in the 30,000 plus volumes or audio collection held by the center. The center still makes good use of its subject and biography card catalog and ephemera guides. All materials must be used in-place and cannot be checked out. You can learn a great deal about other available resources just from a visit to the History Center. For example, if you are into maps, there is the David Rumsey Map Collection.

From a historian’s perspective, there are two points worth emphasizing. (1) A conversation with the library staff is worth its weight in gold. There is a treasure trove of primary materials tucked away in the stacks, some of it uncatalogued within layers of larger collections, that the library staff know intimately well. (2) The library is growing its digital holdings in leaps and bounds and much of it is accessible from home. On the library website, by selecting the “eLibrary” tab at the top of the page you can search access “Articles and Databases” from home, IF you hold a library card. (Any California resident with identification can get a library card for free at the Main Library or any branch.) Through the “Articles and Databases” search, for example, you can search or browse Proquest’s historical copies of the Francisco Chronicle from 1869 through 1922. The library plans to add access to the remaining years (1923 to the present) later this year.

Goldstein would love to grow the library’s collections, but storage is a practical limitation. Even if items are digitized the originals are generally retained. There is a downside to items that are “born digitized,” says Goldstein, because author notes, which are key to a full understanding of the developmental process, are generally absent. Migrating to new formats is no less challenging.

After an informative and inspiring morning at the library, the participants gathered at the Café Asia in the Asian Art Museum for an opportunity to share their thoughts and get reacquainted.

— Neil Dukas

Fall 2020: Revealing San Francisco’s Hidden 19th-Century Black History: A Tour of California Historical Society Artifacts, lecture by Susan D. Anderson, SF History Days (video here)

Summer 2020: Harlem of the West: The Fillmore Jazz Era and Redevelopment, online lecture by Elizabeth Pepin Silva

Fall 2019: An event-filled two-day excursion to Sacramento

Fall 2019: Tour of Marin Civic Center and presentation by member Bonnie Portnoy on The Man Beneath the Paint: Tilden Daken

Summer 2019: Reading of Judith Offer's play, Scenes from the Life of Julia Morgan

Fall 2018: Public Program, "South Asians in the South Bay: The Privileged Immigrants"

Spring 2018: Excursion to Niles area of Fremont with historic train ride and silent film museum

Spring 2018: The California and the West study group initiated the two public programs on "The Future of the Past in the Digital Age" and Benjamin Madley's talk on An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873.

Fall 2017: Martinez Adobe Fandango; Public Program: “Siberia and California: Connections During the Russian Revolution and Civil War”

Fall 2016: Amador County

Summer 2016: San Francisco Presidio

Winter 2016: Berkeley History Center

Spring 2015: Sonoma Plaza

Winter 2015: San Francisco Public Library

Summer 2014: Red Oak Victory and World War II Homefront National Historic Park, Richmond

Spring 2014: Los Gatos History Museum, "American Bohemia: The Cats Estate in Los Gatos”

Winter 2014: Tour of California Historical Society exhibition on Juana Briones, January 25

Summer 2013: Green Gulch Farm Zen Center visit, August 15

Spring 2013: Visits to Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum and the McCune Collection at the Vallejo Public Library, April 13

Sunday, August 21, 2:00 pm, Public Program via Zoom.

Writing and Revising Narrative History

A Presentation by Megan Kate Nelson

Join the Mechanics' Institute and the Institute for Historical Study for this exciting talk about writing with historian Megan Kate Nelson who left academia in 2014 to become a full-time writer. During this Zoom event, she will offer advice for writers who want to publish trade history books and other pieces for general readers. Dr. Nelson will talk about how to make the transition from academic to narrative history writing, how to revise manuscripts for trade publication, and how to pitch articles and Op-eds to newspapers and magazines.

Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer, with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She is the author of four books: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America (Scribner 2022); The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (Scribner 2020; a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History); Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Georgia, 2012); and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, 2005). She writes about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and TIME. Before leaving academia to write full-time in 2014, she taught U.S. history and American Studies at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown. She grew up in Colorado but now lives in Boston with her husband and two cats.

Sunday, November 17, 2:00 pm, Monthly Program via Zoom.

Fire Rituals—Theory and Practice

A presentation by Jim Gasperini

In a ritual to protect against disease, horses have been raced through fire in a Spanish village each spring since the 17th century

We have long used fire in rituals: sacred and secular; solemn and silly; from solstice bonfires to the Olympic torch to candles on a birthday cake. We are entering a season of ubiquitous ceremonial flames: the Hannukah menorah, the Advent wreath, the Yule log, the Kwanz’aa Kinara, the Oniyo Ceremony (Japan), Quema del Diablo (Guatemala), Up Helly Aa (Shetland Islands), and many others. What is it about fire that makes it so central to ritual practice? Jim will reference the Von Gennep/Turner framework of three-stage ritual in addressing this question. He will explore how “eternal flames” and “new fire ceremonies,” common throughout the world, sacralize practices that go back to the days when early hominin predecessor species first learned to control fire. Fire rituals predate language and have developed in every culture in myriad ways. Jim Gasperini is the Institute's webmaster and a member of its Board. This presentation draws from his book, Fire in the Imagination—From the Burning Bush to Burning Man. See more about Jim’s background and this work in progress at jimgasperini.com.

You are welcome to invite friends and colleagues to attend.

We need a volunteer to write a short report on the presentation for the newsletter. If you would like to volunteer, please contact the program coordinator (Dan Kohanski).

The presentation will be recorded, and posted on YouTube. If you don’t want to be on the recording, just make sure your video is off. And please remember to mute your microphone!

Members' Recent Activities:

After 31 years at the San Francisco Public Library, Liz Thacker-Estrada (Institute president) retired on June 29th. “The Chief of Branches and the Chief of Programs and Partnerships arranged for me to receive the ‘Certificate of Honor’ from Mayor London Breed. This recognition was a welcome and wonderful surprise. I appreciate the list of achievements during my career at the Library, including being ‘an in-house expert on US women's history.’ This certificate is especially meaningful to me as it is signed by the first African American woman mayor of San Francisco!”

John Hyde Barnard’s The Creole Incident: The Beginning of the End of Slavery (Coldwell & Hyde Publishing LLC, 2024) has just been published.
“Democracy is being assailed by a domestic threat, that actively seeks the take-over of the government. The year is 1836 and the United States of America is on the verge of losing its democracy. The Creole Incident recounts how the Constitution of the United States was saved by select members of the House of Representatives, a small group of radical abolitionists, and nineteen individuals—all of whom were enslaved. Their goal was to arrest the increasing power of Southern representation in Congress.
“At the heart of the story is a remarkable young man from Old Dominion named Madison Washington. He escaped slavery, made his way to Canada and freedom, yet, returned to Virginia to rescue his wife from thralldom. In the attempt, he is caught, put in chains, auctioned to the highest bidder and shipped South onboard the brig Creole, bound for New Orleans and the lethal sugar cane fields of Louisiana. The journey ends, however, in Nassau, Bahamas, where Washington and others are imprisoned on charges of mutiny and murder. Washington’s actions onboard the Creole set in motion a sequence of events that would culminate in a series of floor fights in the House of Representatives as the balance of power precariously hangs between North and South, between freedom and slavery. The conclusion of The Creole Incident will enlighten, educate, and give pause to consider the fragility of democracy and the enduring strength of love. It is an American story, for all Americans.” The book is available online at Barnes & Noble and Amazon and John’s local book store, Sausalito Books By The Bay.

“Here is an update on my journey to Ticino to celebrate the translation of my book [Miners, Milkers and Merchants: from the Swiss-Italian Alps to the Golden Hills of Australia and California] into Italian,” writes Marilyn Geary. “The event is/was to be held on August 16th at the International Center of Sculpture in Peccia. Unfortunately, heavy storms and floods ravaged the area at the end of June. At least six people have died, and many have had their homes destroyed. The director of the local sponsoring organization has suggested that the event still will take place, but the International Center of Sculpture has been closed due to the disaster and the July events cancelled. I have told the director that I totally understand if the event in August needs to be cancelled. I am on hold waiting to hear.”

Anne Maclachlan, compiler and editor of the collection of documents created for 150 years’ history of women on the Berkeley campus, reports that it is now available in the California Digital Library. See the Table of Contents .

From Alison Lingo: “I am giving papers for two panels at two different conferences to honor Natalie Zemon Davis who passed away last fall. I am giving more or less the same paper at both conferences: “‘Women on Top’:A Retrospective Perspective.” One of the conferences is specifically being convened to honor the historian at Princeton on November 15-16. The other is the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Toronto, also in November, where several panels will be honoring Natalie. “I am working on a collaborative project with Professor Cathy McClive at Florida State University on the gendering of tools in the birthing room and the regulations that surrounded the use of tools in 17th- and 18th-century France.

“I am also at the very earliest stages of writing an essay on the Nobel Prize-winning author, Annie Ernaux. Her novellas, published diaries, and social commentaries as well as meditations on her own evolution and trajectory from a rural area of northern France to becoming a member of the Paris intelligentsia make her a good subject for a historian of sex and gender. During her career she shocked and scandalized some while being the darling of others due to her candid and graphic portrayal of her romantic and often transgressive liaisons. She also presents poignant portrayals of her mother and father that pay homage to the sacrifices and tough realities of the working classes from which she came. How does the personal become political in France and what does that process mean for the history of women in France and beyond? My thoughts on Ernaux are still inchoate but I feel that her oeuvre is well worth commentary by a historian.”

“Thank you to all,” Maria Sakovich writes. “The newsletter would not exist without member participation—summarizing monthly presentations, reviewing books, writing the Front Page article, sharing the latest news, and offering interesting pieces for publication. With each issue I wondered whether there would be enough material, but I’m grateful that I needn’t have worried. Despite my sometimes having to wrestle with words and wait for late articles, Institute members always came through. After 14 years I’m looking forward to spending a lot more time with my own writing, finally tackling a portrait of a Russian Orthodox priest in San Francisco, my grandfather, with his refugee emigrant parishioners who were trying to recreate new lives in California after the Bolshevik revolution and ensuing civil war turned their world upside down.”

Members’ New Books

Celeste MacLeod: After years of hard work and dedication, I am pleased to announce the release of my new book, A Woman of Unbearable Opinions: Fanny Trollope, Dynamic Satirist, now available on Amazon.*

Americans were furious in 1832 when English visitor Fanny Trollope’s satirical travel book Domestic Manners of the Americans made fun of their insistence that they lived in the most exceptional country in recorded human history. But when she went back to England and wrote novels advocating for social justice, British reviewers accused her of being a dangerous radical. And when she wrote novels about English women’s experiences in oppressive marriages, reviewers excoriated these books as crude and vulgar. By examining Trollope’s life and the controversies generated by her writing, A Woman of Unbearable Opinions invites readers to consider the enduring relevance of these issues and encourages reflection and discussion in the context of modern society. "Fanny Trollope’s writings remind us that many of the challenges and debates she confronted in the 19th century are still very much a part of our contemporary world. The book delves into the fascinating life of a dynamic woman whom I greatly admire, and I believe it will resonate with readers of varied backgrounds and interests. I would be honored if you would consider reading it and sharing your thoughts with me."

Bonnie Portnoy: My fully illustrated biography The Man Beneath the Paint: California Impressionist Tilden Daken has just been published. Institute member Rose Marie Cleese performed the final honing of my manuscript with great aplomb. About fifteen years ago, I joined the Institute and its Writers Group after launching my legacy project on artist Tilden Daken (1876-1935). Famous in his day, he was the grandfather I never knew. My 25-year research and writing journey began in 1999 while my mother was still living, the older of Daken’s two daughters, both born in Glen Ellen. I grew up hearing the stories from my mother of her father’s friendship with Jack London. Raised in Sacramento, Tilden Daken began to paint en plein air at the age of six, studied classical music, and mined for gold with his father in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Today he is considered one of the most prolific and adventurous painters in the American West. Historians claim he painted more than 4,000 works—landscapes in every California state park and national park in the West—from the redwood forests, to the High Sierra, to beneath the Pacific in a custom-built diving bell. The covers feature a beautiful tribute to Tilden’s legacy by Armando Quintero, director of California State Parks and a blurb by Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, the noted California art historian. The foreword is written by Matt Leffert, executive director of Jack London Park Partners. The book will be available in selected indie bookstores and museum shops, and online through the Nevada Museum of Art bookstore.

Mary Judith Robinson announced the publication of her Memoir of a Reluctant Debutante or When in Danger, Breathe. From the back cover: “She has had a career as a journalist, editorial writer, legislative assistant in the US Senate and House of Representatives. Adventures included exploring mind-expanding drugs that took her on unique journeys. Lessons learned were that ‘All things pass—a sunrise does not last all morning.’ She is the author of ten published biographies [five of which formed the basis of her Monthly Presentation in February–see page 4]. Her ancestors were colonial settlers of New England and New York, pioneers to the Midwest who settled Kansas City, Missouri, Lawrence and Wichita, Kansas, a founding professor of the University of Kansas, and the first Episcopal Bishop of California. The memoir can be ordered from Judith: Telegraph Hill Press, 562 B Lombard Street, San Francisco, CA 94133-7057.

Members: Please submit news of your history-related publications, lectures, awards, research finds, etc. to info@instituteforhistoricalstudy.org.

Report on San Francisco Main Library Tour

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