A book collector, doodler, and bibliographical expert, Sigfried Feller was the University Library’s Chief Bibliographer and oversaw the Library’s collection development from 1967 to 1991. Feller, who was born in Essen, Germany and moved to America when he was two, began his academic career in the humanities, earning a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan in 1950 and an M.A. in German from the same school in 1951. His contact with scholars in Germany and his interest in German bibliography would stay with him throughout his professional career. Feller earned a Masters in Library Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1960 and would remain a librarian until his retirement.

The Siegfried Feller Papers document Feller’s professional career at the University through Feller’s correspondence with colleagues and professional organization as well as book dealers and collectors, including Otto Harrasowitz and Martinus Nijhoff. Also included in the collection are published and unpublished writings by Feller and annual reports from his department in the Library.

Professor of English, adviser to student newspaper (The Collegian) and Jewish student organizations, University of Massachusetts, and founding member, College English Association.

The Goldberg Papers contain correspondence, speeches, published writings, papers written as a graduate student, biographical material, book reviews, subject files, newsclippings, and material from committees and projects with which he was involved, including the College English Association, College English Association Institute, Humanities Center for Liberal Education, and American Humanities Seminar.

The New Babylon Times was a politically-informed countercultural literary magazine produced by members of the Montague Farm commune during the fall 1969. Edited by John Wilton, the first issue featured writing by commune stalwarts such as Ray Mungo, Verandah Porche, and Jon Maslow and photographs by Peter Simon, among others. Renamed the Green Mountain Post, the magazine appeared on an irregular basis until issue five in 1977, with writing and artwork by a range of associates of the commune, including Harvey Wasserman, Tom Fels, and Steve Diamond. In 1994, Fels edited a single issue of Farm Notes, in some ways a successor to the Post.

The Famous Long Ago Archive contains a complete run of the magazine, which have been digitized and made available on the SCUA website.

Lester Grinspoon, Oct. 2010

Lester Grinspoon, the Harvard psychiatrist who became a celebrated advocate for reforming marijuana laws, was born June 24, 1928, in Newton, Massachusetts. A veteran of the Merchant Marines and a graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Medical School, he trained at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute but later turned away from psychoanalysis. Senior psychiatrist for 40 years at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Grinspoon is associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In the mid-1960s, struck by the rising popularity of marijuana and its reputed dangers, Grinspoon began to examine the medical and scientific literature about marijuana usage. To his surprise, he found no evidence to support claims of marijuana’s harmful effects, and his resulting 1969 Scientific American article drew wide attention. His research ultimately convinced him of marijuana’s benefits, including enhanced creativity and medicinal uses. His own young son, undergoing chemotherapy for the leukemia that eventually took his life, found his severe nausea greatly eased by marijuana. By his 40s, Grinspoon had gained renown as an outspoken proponent of responsible adult use and legalization.

The Lester Grinspoon Papers comprehensively document Grinspoon’s advocacy and activism, including his role as a board member of NORML; his research and writing of the books Marihuana Reconsidered and Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine, numerous articles, two web sites, and more; his position as an expert witness in criminal trials; and his relationships with friends, colleagues, and many others, such as Carl Sagan, John Lennon, Keith Stroup, and Melanie Dreher. The collection comprises correspondence, research material, drafts and publications, clinical accounts, clippings, ephemera, scrapbooks, and audiovisual materials: photographs, as well as videotapes and DVDs of Grinspoon’s appearances on television and in documentary films.

African American expatriate, stage and film actor, musician, director, producer, founder of the Studio Theater of Paris and co-owner of the nightclub L’Abbaye. Includes personal and professional correspondence, scrapbooks containing photos and clippings from assorted television and film productions in addition to songs, poetry, and reviews of plays or playbills from productions he attended.

The Papers also contain art work, sheet music, personal and production photographs, and drafts of his memoirs.

David R. Inglis at Argonne N.L., ca.1953

David R. Inglis enjoyed a distinguished career in nuclear physics that ranged from theoretical work on the structure of the nucleus in the 1930s to the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s and work on renewable energy in the 1960s and 1970s. A Professor of Physics at UMass from 1969-1975, Inglis was a founding member of the Federation of American Scientists and from the mid-1940s on, he dedicated himself to informing public policy on the dangers of nuclear technologies.

The Inglis Papers offer a perspective on the life and career of a theoretical physicist who grew from an early involvement in the Manhattan Project to becoming a committed critic of nuclear weaponry and nuclear power. Although the collection is relatively sparse in unpublished scientific work, it includes valuable correspondence relating to Inglis’s efforts with the Federation of American Scientists and other organizations to influence public policy on issues relating to disarmament and nuclear power.

Lathe operator, Rodney Hunt co., 1974

Raised on Long Island, Ed Judice embarked on a path in photography at the age of 13 when he took a job sweeping floors in a local photo studio. After picking up work photographing locally and a stint in the army, he moved to New York city, Judice began doing commercial work for ad agencies and magazines and eventually with Polaroid. Through Polaroid, he began developing contacts in western Massachusetts, eventually moving to Wendell in the early 1970s. He maintains an active studio in Northampton.

The Judice collection consists of a series of 59 digital images relating to a photo documentation project at the Rodney Hunt factory in Orange, Mass., in 1973 and 1974; a series of photographs documenting the bicentennial of Wendell in 1981; and two video documentaries of the Three County Fair, Northampton, Mass., 2007, and “Benny and Joe: A friendship,” 2010.

Gertrude "Jean" Lewis, ca.1935

Overcoming a deeply impoverished childhood, Gertrude Lewis struggled to build a career in education, putting herself through college and graduate school. At the age of 32, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State, continuing on to a masters degree at New York University (1933), and finally, at age 51, a PhD from Yale (1947). For many years after receiving her doctorate, Lewis was employed as a Specialist for Upper Grades with the U.S. Office of Education in Washington. Among other career highlights, Lewis spent two years in Japan (1950-1951) as a Consultant in Elementary Education in the Education Section of the Allied Occupation government (SCAP). Lewis outlived her life partner, Ruth Totman, dying at home on December 10, 1996, a few months after her one hundredth birthday.

The Lewis Papers document the work and life of an educator of the masses, a traveler of the world, and a woman of the twentieth century. Documents pertaining to her work as an educator of both young students and veteran teachers show the changes within the theory and practice of pedagogy over time, over various geographic locales, and also highlight her role in that change. This collection also documents the numerous on-going side projects on which Lewis worked, including fostering creativity in schoolchildren, a biography of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, and her own poetry and prose.

Tent caterpillar

Arthur P. Mange taught in the Biology Department at University of Massachusetts Amherst for 31 years before retiring in 1995. A co-author of numerous works in human genetics, Mange served on the chair of the Conservation Committee in Amherst, and currently serves on the Burnett Gallery Committee. In 1983, his New England images were featured in Across the Valley (from Cummington to New Salem) held at the Burnett Gallery. This exhibition was followed at the Hitchcock Center in 1984 with Delight in Familiar Forms (celebrating some well-known plants and animals), with Ring Bell to Admit Bird at the Jones Library and Net Prophet at Cooley Dickinson Hospital. Architectural Sights — Big and Small, Mange’s most recent show (2002), appeared at the Burnett Gallery. In addition to exhibitions, Mange has also donated collections for fund-raising auctions at New York University, the Cooley Dickinson Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center, the Amherst Historical Society, Jones Library, and the Amherst Community Arts Center.

His photographic collection spans more than half a century of subjects reflecting his varied interests in animals, plants, our region, gravestones, what he calls “whimsical signs,” and attention-grabbing shadows.

Geishas,
from Benjamin Smith Lyman Papers

The Department of Special Collections and University Archives collects and preserves textual, visual, and auditory materials of enduring historical value and makes them available to researchers at no charge.

Du Bois Central

The collections held by SCUA are rich and deeply interrelated, documenting four areas of historic and cultural interest: social change, New England, the University of Massachusetts, and innovation and entrepreneurship. Among other significant collections are the papers of:

• W.E.B. Du Bois and Horace Mann Bond (African American intellectuals and activists)
• Kenneth R. Feinberg (attorney and public figure)
• Congressman Silvio E. Conte and John Olver, and Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (politicians)
• Benjamin Smith Lyman, William Smith Clark, and William Penn Brooks (natural scientists)
• Mark H. McCormack and Sidney Topol (innovators)
• William Lederer, Charles Whipple, Leonard Lewin, and Harvey Swados (writers)
• Carl Oglesby, Mary Wentworth, Randy Kehler, the Liberation News Service, and the Alternative Energy Alliance (activists)

Information about all of our manuscript and photographic collections is included in UMarmot. Use the search box and menus to the right to navigate our collections and to locate collections of interest.

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