You've Got V-Mail

When a colleague encountered something unfamiliar while working on a collection of documents and asked me if I knew anything about "V-Mail," I thought she must be referring to some new and exotic form of electronic mail. I was unaware that the term “vmail” was currently used by some people as shorthand for voice mail. But rather than the present, her question led to the past and a form of mail devised in exceptional circumstances—World War II—and making use of technology, albeit of a non-electronic kind.

A little digging and a helpful web page turned up a wealth of details on the subject of V-Mail. It turned out that the V stood for Victory, a word ubiquitous in the discourse of the Allied war effort, which had already seen the promotion of Victory gardens (to grow vegetables on the home front) and the sale of Victory bonds (to raise money from the public). V-Mail referred to a process whereby correspondence being sent to troops overseas was microfilmed to reduce its physical volume so as to free up space on cargo planes for war material.

The basic V-Mail program was fairly simple. One used standardized stationery on which to write letters; the letters were then microfilmed, and the microfilm was then shipped overseas, where it was developed and then delivered. But behind this lay a formidable logistic undertaking. Processing centers had to established, both in the United States and abroad, requiring significant amounts of personnel and equipment. Eastman Kodak was awarded the contract for the microfilm machines, and V-Mail detachments were created in the postal units of the armed forces. Three regional centers were established in the United States (San Francisco, New York, and Chicago) to process V-Mail, along with numerous stations overseas.

The archives has a number of promotional posters that stress V-Mail’s reliability and speed and suggest that it was the “most patriotic” way to send mail to troops. One poster details the savings that V-Mail created in terms of cargo space. Its morale-boosting importance was another theme, captured in the slogan “You write, he’ll fight.” Of course, like other mail sent during wartime, V-Mail was subject to censorship.

The V-Mail program lasted from June 1942 until November 1945, but the mail itself has survived and thus remains available. The same may not hold true for e-mail, at least in its electronic form. As technology and formats change, files may not always remain recoverable, a challenge with which archivists are beginning to grapple.

A fuller description of the specifics of the V-Mail program can be found at the National Postal Museum section of the Smithsonian Institution’s web page.

Political Poster Collection, US 7299, Hoover Institution Archives

Political Poster Collection, US 7298, Hoover Institution Archives

Political Poster Collection, US 7297, Hoover Institution Archives

The Rhythm Road Ambassadors

It’s Sunday, June 20, 2010. It’s a beautiful day in San Francisco: the sun’s shining, birds are chirping, guys are in t-shirts and girls in sundresses, and I’m stuck in a laundromat on Oak Street. Life isn’t always glamorous in the City’s hipster neighborhoods, but I digress.

Catching up on the previous week’s human-interest news, I was surprised, amused, and happy to see an article on musical ambassadors in the June 17 edition of the Wall Street Journal. Immediately, my mind recalled our Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) collections and the slideshow my colleague Brandon Burke assembled. Fifty years ago, America sent musicians to Europe, and it’s great to see that, today, the same is happening in the near East. Though, as an ardent fan of rock and roll, I was bummed it wasn’t one of the mentioned genres.

The Journal article highlights some differences between the programs. Were one to visit the Archives, one could hear Dizzy Gillespie talk to RFE’s Bulgarian service about Jazz at Lincoln Center. Or hear interviews with British punk rock fans from 1977. Or—forgive me for the self-serving nod—Phil Woods blowing sax in an RFE exclusive recording. I would invite the listener to then contemplate how it compares to today’s world.

Sometimes history repeats, and during those times, it’s fascinating to look at what happened before.

British beat group the Creation in the studio with RFE disc jockeys Janos Havel (left) and Jan Tyszkiewicz (right). Box 117, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Broadcast Records, Hoover Institution Archives.

Bulk Freezing

Although it's not cryogenics, freezing is a tool for archival preservation. Collection materials that are damaged by water in a disaster such as a flood or burst water pipe can be frozen to retard further deterioration. The frozen materials can then be thawed in small batches and treated. This is a job for preservation professionals, as you'll see from these leaflets about salvaging wet papers and wet photographs.

Freezing can also be used to eliminate insects and other pests from newly acquired collections. That's just what we did in December with a collection that had been stored in a barn. All magnetic media--audiotapes, videotapes, floppy disks--had to be removed first because they can be damaged by freezing. Each box of papers also had to be bagged in plastic, with excess air eliminated and the bag tightly sealed. By eliminating as much air as possible and freezing the materials very quickly, few ice crystals form. When the materials are gradually returned to room temperature while remaining in the bag, moisture condenses on the outside of the bag but not on the materials inside. This prevents any water damage to the materials that are frozen.

What I like about this use of freezing is the mass-treatment approach. Five pallets of boxed papers received preservation treatment as a big group--that's a cost-effective process! This is the way archivists approach many aspects of our work. It's when we have to deal with items individually, be it applying intensive conservation treatments to each or describing every single document individually, that our systems break down and our backlog grows exponentially. In archival work, we're always looking for an aggregate approach.

Supplies were at the ready as we prepared an archival collection for freezing.

Antiques Roadshow at the Hoover Archives

What's it like hosting a camera crew from a major television show? At Hoover we've dealt with them before, including a team from Phoenix TV in China who taped the Stilwell diaries at Hoover for a documentary about Joseph Stilwell. Even so, we were excited when a crew from PBS's Antiques Roadshow was scheduled to tape a segment at Hoover. The show highlighted a few political posters chosen from the more than one hundred thousand in Hoover's poster collection. The segment is scheduled to air on Monday, May 24th 2010 as part of three hours of programming from San Jose; nearly ten million people watch each episode.

As you might expect, many hours of staff time were invested in what will be a clip lasting just a few minutes. That process began months in advance, when we were initially contacted by Roadshow staff, who already knew they wanted to focus on our posters. After the go-ahead was given, our reference staff assisted the Roadshow people. A production scout team visited during the week of the shoot. They looked at possible taping locations in the archives and provided the final list of three posters for the shoot. Their focus was the "pointing finger" motif in World War I recruitment posters.

The day of the shoot was a long one, with the production team at Hoover from 8:30 to 4:30. Much of the morning was spent setting up; the final footage was taped just before lunch. After lunch a smaller Roadshow crew remained to shoot B-roll footage in the stacks and other locations. Two of our staff members signed waivers before being taped in action shots such as typing at a keyboard and opening a poster drawer. We had to deal with some last-minute changes, such as moving the shoot location to a different room. (If Roadshow ever visits your facility, you'll need a room where the air conditioning can be turned off so that its noise does not affect the sound quality.)

Of course, what you're really interested in is the appraisal. The appraiser, Nicholas Lowry, specializes in posters. He said that our poster of Lord Kitchener pointing his finger is the earliest instance of this motif in a recruiting poster. In all Lowry's years of work, he had only seen reproductions of this poster; ours was his first original. Its appraised value? Watch on May 24th.

Political Poster Collection, Italy 17,
Hoover Institution Archives

How to Turn Eight Hours into Three Minutes over Nine Months

Last August, as part of their field trip segment, the crew from PBS’s Antiques Roadshow descended on the Hoover Archives to look at a few of the 120,000 posters we have in our Political Poster Collection. We’d spent time prepping the Roadshow’s advance team with descriptions of some of the most vivid and famous posters, their dimensions, and their histories. They narrowed their search to three.

A film crew of a dozen or so, including series host Mark L. Walberg and appraiser Nicholas Lowry, showed up at 8:30 on a Friday morning. The sound techs and camera operators checked out locations throughout the archives, looking for the right combination of lighting, acoustics, and authentic archival aura.

Then the fun began: as Mark and Nico discussed and appraised the three posters, the director repositioned the stars, the posters, and the cameras to achieve just the right camera angle. Simple, right? They shot film until 4:00 in the afternoon! Then we were cautioned not to get our hopes up—that the Hoover portion of the program would be edited down to about three minutes.

Nine months later, on Monday, May 24, 2010, the Antiques Roadshow episode containing the Hoover segment will air on most PBS stations at 8:00 P.M.

Be sure to watch and see this World War I poster (featuring British Lord Kitchener) and more next week on your local PBS station.

Political Poster Collection, UK 473,
Hoover Institution Archives

Working at Hoover: An Intern's View

Our student interns, often from San Jose State's library program, bring fresh perspectives and energy to the Hoover Archives. Some interns process archival collections, and others catalog audio recordings. This year Oanh Tran, a capable
and enthusiastic cataloger, has been working with us. She wrote this guest entry:

"If I ever conduct a survey asking my friends and relatives what they know about archival institutions, I am sure their answers would be very simple and short. How do I know that? I know that because I was one of them. I also had an extremely limited knowledge of what an archive really was. I knew the definition of the term ‘archive’ and that archives were where historical materials were stored. I did not know how the work was done on those materials in order for them to be usable. I did not know how archival materials were stored, and neither did I know there were archival collections in different languages. There were so many things I did not know about archives.

"Luckily for me, I was accepted to do my internship at the Hoover Institution Archives. It has been an eye-opening experience for me to be able to learn so many things I did not know about. On the first day of my internship, I was taken on a tour to be introduced to the staff. As I listened to the title of each person, I realized the survival of this archive not only depended on the administration but also on many people with different skill sets and specialties. I realized that everyone at the archives worked well together to create its current success. Then I was even more amazed to have a tour in the basement, where I could see how the archival collections were stored. It was a pleasure for me to look at the types of collections available, the types of materials and how they were carefully taken care of by the staff at the archives. I felt very happy after that tour because it helped broaden my knowledge.

"My main task as an intern at the archives is to catalog the audio recordings in the Commonwealth Club of California records, something I have enjoyed doing very much. By reading the summaries of the recordings, I am actually learning about the issues that were important to our country back in the 1980s. In addition, I have become more experienced with cataloging. Sometimes I would encounter certain small problems such as choosing the appropriate Library of Congress subject headings. That is when I turn to my supervisor and the archives’ cataloger for guidance. They have been a great resource in helping me do my job more successfully.

"I am still doing my internship at the Hoover Institution Archives. Each day of my internship is still as exciting and another great learning experience for me. I am proud of having finished cataloging the last half of the Commonwealth Club's audio recordings for 1980. I am currently working on the recordings for 1981, and I have set as my goal cataloging all of them before my internship ends. I am looking forward to achieving that goal and making my experience at the archives a great asset for my future career.”

Accessing the Catalog of the Commonwealth Club of California Records, Hoover Institution Archives

The Good Librarian

Because of the collecting scope of the library and archives, the original impetus for which came from Herbert Hoover's determination to document World War I in hopes that future conflicts could be prevented, many of its materials relate to
episodes of collective violence: the mass deportations and executions under Stalin; the Holocaust; and various wars, large and small. One can't help being struck by the extent of the inhumanity that is recorded in such documents, bringing to mind a line spoken by one of the characters in James Joyce's Ulysses: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

Fortunately, one also encounters examples of individuals and groups who worked to alleviate suffering or help the victims of catastrophes. In preparing materials to show the ambassador of Lithuania on his visit to the archives, I had a chance to look again at a small collection pertaining to a woman who, at great risk to herself, rescued Jews in German-occupied Vilnius during World War II. That the woman, Ona Šimaitė, was also a university librarian made her story even more compelling; she was concerned with preserving not only the printed word but human life.

Using the cover of her profession to visit Jews in the Vilnius ghetto, Šimaitė brought them books and also food, medicine, and clothes. She was able to rescue a number of Jewish children, bringing them out of the ghetto hidden in potato sacks. She also acted as a courier for the underground resistance to the Nazis. Šimaitė paid a high price for her actions: arrested by the Gestapo, she was tortured and eventually sent to the Dachau concentration camp but somehow survived.

After the war, Šimaitė settled in France, where she continued to work as a librarian. Having adopted one of the Jewish children she had saved in Vilnius, she and her daughter eventually moved to Israel. Šimaitė was presented with a medal by the State of Israel in recognition of her rescue efforts. She died in France in 1970.

The Ona Šimaitė papers in the archives contain a small album of photos and clippings, as well as notes she made during the German occupation of Lithuania. It also contains correspondence, including letters written to her by Vytautas Landsbergis in 1968. A musicology student at the time, Landsbergis would later become famous as the leader of the independence movement in Lithuania, serving as the country's first president in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Although Šimaitė’s story was little known outside of Lithuania, a recently scholarly article on her, written by Julija Sukys, can be found in the summer 2008 ( 54, no. 2) issue of the journal, Lituanus.

Ona Šimaitė with Antanas Liutkus, 1969, Ona Šimaitė papers, Hoover Institution Archives.