Family entertainment

Special entertainment was provided this week by sons Mark and Eric. On Thursday night, Margret and I, plus her husband Ed Goldman and Bruce Lippert, went to All Asia, a little club in Cambridge right near MIT, to hear Mark (Markaholic) in a debut performance of his songs, complete with dancing girls! He even included Eric playing cello in some songs. It was a small but supportive and enthusiastic crowd that cheered him on. He survived the test of public performance!

On Friday night the Calder Quartet played in Kresge Auditorium at MIT to an unexpectedly huge crowd of at least 600. Perhaps it was the result of an appearance earlier in the week on WGBH, or because two of the players come from Boston. They were received warmly and enthusiastically. So Eric and his performing group also survived the test of a Boston public performance.

Back to Boston: Shadowing at MIT

After my outing to Harvard, I spent two days at MIT. There I shadowed Margret Branschofsky (known to us at UC as Margret Lippert), who now works on the DSpace project. Her job is spreading the gospel to new institutions interested in using DSpace, and encouraging departments and other "communities" at MIT to join up. She gave me a brochure that lists all the wonderful reasons why people should use DSpace. I plan to use this type of information when stimulating interest at UC Engineering in an institutional repository.

Among the compelling reasons for DSpace are a larger audience, quick distribution of research, organized access to work of department, College, etc., stable URL for future access, long-term preservation of formats. Their content consists of preprints, working papers, tech reports, data sets, simulations, images, course materials, and more.

Also during my days at MIT I visited with Steve Gass to tell him our reactions to RefWorks, which they were considering. On the 23rd I visited the Institute Archives & Special Collections to see if they had any information on Joseph B. Strauss. That they didn't have, but they did print out a list from LC's NUCMC of other archives that do have material. Stanford was one of the locations.

Back to Boston: Trouble at Harvard

Tuesday I was on the plane headed from Chicago to Boston. First thing on my agenda was a Wednesday visit to Harvard, where the science librarians are using DSpace to create an institutional repository for their stuff. In case you are curious, you can see the list of science libraries at http://lib.harvard.edu/libraries/listings_sciencelib.html . Not an insignificant number.

I met with Connie Rinaldo in the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. They have field notes and other artifacts that they are digitizing, ever so slowly. The Physics Librarian Michael Leach has led the initiative to put DSpace on the physics department server and rely on the physics department IT staff to keep it running. Truthfully, there is not much to look at yet, but it was useful to hear about the process of setting things up, bringing in faculty, deciding on material, metadata, finding staff support, etc. This is definitely a shoe-string operation, with the OK of the administration but no funding....

Did you know they have a storage facility at Harvard? I believe our SWORD modules were modeled after the Harvard model. But there's one difference. Connie says they have to pay to get materials back, so no one wants to use it. Yikes!

A funny thing happened on my trek across Harvard Yard. I could hear chanting, mostly of female voices. It was a demonstration by students railing about the President's comments on females and science/math education during a faculty senate meeting. That hit the papers big time - nationwide. What was he thinking?

Intro to Chicago

There is a reason to visit Chicago. It is the city where Joseph B. Strauss, UC '92 (that's 1892) set up his Strauss Bascule Bridge Company of Chicago in 1902. When Peder, my "Norwegian brother" (from host family during my 1961-1962 year in Norway) said he was going to Chicago to research a musician from his home of Voss, I couldn't resist the temptation to join him and learn the ropes of doing research in Chicago.

Granted, most of our time during the last two days was researching Knute Finney, a violinist and teacher active in Chicago starting at the turn of the century. We visited music stores, instrument makers, music schools, the offices of the Chicago Symphony, and the old Norwegian section of town near Belmont (now mostly Hispanic). We talked to music librarians at Roosevelt, Northwestern, and other interesting places. Peder is an impressive researcher, with innumerable contacts and a 3-ring binder full of his sources. That on top of his real job as a physician and avocation playing bassoon in the Voss orchestra!

The key research spots for me - the Chicago Public Library and the Newberry Library - were alas closed for President's Day. Peder was able to visit them today, but I am on my way to Boston, for another adventure. I will have to learn via email whether those libraries have good material for me. If so, a return visit will be in order.

The Jewish connection

Strauss was of Jewish heritage, and thus the American Jewish Archive at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati also has files on Strauss. I spent a couple of days there this week, pouring over their files. Kevin Profitt was very helpful in connecting me with the material. He subsequently took vacation in San Francisco and was inspired to take a walk across the GGB!

The files contained pictures, articles, and many 1927 letters and telegrams attesting to Strauss' bridge-building skills addressed to the Port Authority NYC. Happily the AJA also had some photos, postcards of the Redwoods, about which Strauss wrote a poem dated October 2, 1932 and also sheet music for a setting of the poem by Oscar Rasbach. The AJA gave permission to use this material with acknowledgement. In fact Kevin even arranged for them to digitize it and provide it to me on a CD.

Strauss beginnings

Where to begin? At the beginning. Since Strauss was born in Cincinnati, our local resources seemed a logical place. I began at the Museum Center's Cincinnati Historical Society Library.

There I found references to Joseph B. Strauss (JBS) in the Victor Heintz collection. I believe from a note in the file (hand-written by Mary Ellen Heintz in the early 1970's) that JBS was Heintz' ΣAE pledge brokee at University of Cincinnati. Strauss in fact founded the chapter. Heintz became a lawyer and later an active figure in the Republican Party. He had considerable correspondence with Strauss in 1919 and 1920. Strauss sought Heintz' assistance in introducing Strauss by letter to people in decision-making positions when seeking to get contracts on bridges.

It took a couple of days to read through all the correspondence, which I then recommended to be digitized. The librarian indicated they wished to begin digitizing portions of their colletions and that this would make a good pilot.

Joseph B. Strauss

Joseph Baermann Strauss was Chief Engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge (GGB). He was born in Cincinnati in 1870 and graduated from UC in 1892 with a degree in Civil Engineering. Creating an archive about Strauss was mentioned as one of the ideas to pursue during this sabbatical, way back on Friday, October 8, 2004!

Why an archive about Strauss? It seems that he has received bad press lately, following the exposure of a conflict between him and his one-time company Vice President Charles A. Ellis. After Strauss dismissed Ellis, all traces of Ellis' contributions in calculating stresses for the GGB were eradicated. In their zeal to restore Ellis to his rightful place in history, his proponents went a bit overboard in denigrating Strauss, claiming for example that he did not even have an engineering degree. Some of these mis-facts were perpretrated and dramatized in a 2004 PBS American Experience program entitled "Golden Gate Bridge." UC engineering faculty member Mike Baseheart and I thought it would good to set the record straight, from the UC point of view. Hence the project.