Image courtesy The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens website
The Huntington Library invites you to join three panelists on Wednesday, January 13, for a behind-the-scenes look at a recent acquisition of American history materials.
Participants to this panel discussion, “Cataloging in the Time of COVID,” will have the opportunity to learn more about how the Huntington’s American history materials are made accessible by archival processing.
The panelists will guide you through the process of how The Huntington acquired the Shapiro collection from L.Dennis and Susan Shapiro, who donated some 340 rare documents focused primarily on American presidential administrations from the 18th to the early 20th centuries.
L. Dennis Shapiro is an electronics engineer and inventor credited with helping to pioneer the personal response industry that allows millions of elderly and disabled individuals to live independent lives. He was chair for 28 years and CEO for 10 years of Lifeline Systems Inc., later acquired by Royal Philips Electronics. His wife Susan is a retired partner at the law firm Ropes and Gray, LLP.
The Shapiros are also behind the establishment of the Shapiro Center at The Huntington in 2019, created to advance scholarship, knowledge, and understanding of American history and culture – especially of the early Republic and of the nation’s founders and leaders. It also promotes use of The Huntington’s premier library collections in this field, which are unique west of the Mississippi.
The Shapiro Collection will complement The Huntington’s hundreds of archival collections and over one million single manuscripts, rare books, prints, photographs, and ephemera that document the history of what is now the United States, as well as the Atlantic and Central regions of Canada, from the colonial era onward.
Wednesday’s event will also reveal how the foundational American collections have been accessed by researchers over time, and how all these materials are being made more accessible through the art of archival processing, a crucial element of collections care and stewardship.
The event is part of an ongoing webinar series presented by the Library’s Reader Services Department, the Multi-Storied Library.
The event will be held online via Zoom starting at 10 a.m.
To register, visit www.huntington.org/events/cataloging-time-covid and click the Reserve button.
A link to the Zoom will be sent to attendees in registration confirmation email.
