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Status Report: Mark Keller Papers

| By | News,Notable People,Publications,Resources

Passport photo

Mark Keller: Passport photo (China trip, 1980). Source: Mark Keller Papers.

An extraordinary collection documenting the many facets of alcohol studies since around 1940, the Mark Keller Papers have been hiding their secrets, first in the metal file cabinets in the CAS Library, and more recently, in boxes at the RUL Annex. In the summer of 2024, I had the chance to revisit the Keller Papers and start a project to process them, culminating in a Finding Aid and neatly arranged folders organized around series.

Halftime?

My preference working on any project is to alternate short, intensive phases with slower, doing-my-best, maintenance-type longish periods, and stepping back occasionally to assess and regroup. As we are changing pace to accommodate the academic cycle at the beginning of the Fall semester, early September seems to be the time to look back what has been accomplished so far, with a hope that we’re half way there.

Timeframe

The decision to start the project with an intensive period in July, and August was partly determined by pure logistics, namely, the hours of the Annex. The location, virtually closed for the public, is staffed 50%, from 11:30 till 3 PM during the semester. The earlier start of the summer hours, 9:30 to 1 PM, was a lot more user friendly.

Bins on book cartsOriginally, I scheduled ten days to dedicate to this project in the summer, cramming most of the work to the end of July and the beginning of August. The timeframe actually spread out a little bit, as sometimes only a half day was available for me to work on the Keller project due to my other responsibilities. (What was I thinking? Working on a single project for two weeks straight?)

All in all, summertime still qualifies for a rather intense phase of the Keller project with significant, albeit partial results.

Parallel worlds?

Although I had my doubts about bundling the two projects, that is, updating Keller’s bibliography and re-processing the archival boxes of the Keller collection, I can say that my original approach of running two parallel projects has proven to be a sound and successful decision. The two project turned out to be supporting each other tremendously, with those synergies that one usually reads only about in management handbooks coming to life.

A prime example: Compiling the updated Keller bibliography brought unprecedented challenges to locate many of his publications. Our very efficient interlibrary loan service often had to cancel my requests due to unavailability. My knowledgeable fellow SALIS librarians tried to help when it was possible, but I still have outstanding records to verify, full texts to obtain, and versions of publications to compare.

Meanwhile, while processing the folders, we simply stumbled upon quite a few of these rare, hard-to-locate itens were hiding right there, in plain sight, in one of the boxes!

Processing the boxes

First, the file folders in the seven Paige boxes had to be sorted into bins according to the prospective series of the collection. Changing the original arrangement was justified by the actual content, es explained in a previous post. Now we may need to add a new series, after so many of Keller’s publications resurfaced as reprints or originals, supporting the Keller bibliography update project.

With the help of SCUA archival assistant Morgan Kentsbeer, the assorted folders quickly found the way to the appropriate bin. She started with the biggest (and, I’d say, most straightforward) chunk: conferences and organizations, adding any information to a master spreadsheet for the prospective Finding Aid. Eventually, these two had to be separated into two subseries. She also started to organize them into alphabetical order and label the folders accordingly.

Folders with documents in two boxes

Updating the Keller Bibliography

Copies of Keller’s above mentioned publications unearthed from the boxes helped only verify bibliographic records of previous list, but add new items to the bibliography. As of today, the updated Mark Keller Bibliography has 369 items: 330 original publications and 39 republished items. The starting list, compiled by previous librarians, had 133 items. During our Keller research (2015 to date), we were able to add 236 additional records, both original publications and republished texts, often translated or written in other languages.

Spreading the word

This is not my first rodeo. With my two trusted co-authors, Bill Bejarano and Nick Allred, I compiled and published similar crtitical bibliographies of works by E. M. Jellinek, Howard Haggard, and Selden Bacon. Our article to introduce the new Keller bibliography needs its final touches, be submitted later this fall for publication.

For the benefit of other researchers who wish to embark on a similar journey, I have shared our experience and collective wisdom in three posts on how to conduct research of this kind to update author bibliographies.

Currently I’m working on an article to be published in the next issue of SALIS News, to inform my peers, Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists, about the findings.

Published author bibliographies (with introductory articles)