Monthly Archives: November 2009

New Digital Collection

American University Library is pleased to announce its newest digital collection – The Photographic Materials and Other Art Work of Herbert E. Striner

Herbert E. Striner is an economist and the former Dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University.  He got his first camera when he was waiting to return home from the China-Burma-India Theater at the end of World War II.  Dr. Striner took his camera with him on his personal and professional travels depicting the people he met and the places he visited.  Dr. Striner switched to digital photography in 1999.    His collection consists of over 9,000 black & white negatives, color slides, and color negatives depicting a wide variety of subjects in the United States and abroad from the 1940s to 1998 including Washington, DC landmarks such as the National Cathedral and C&O Canal.  Some of the earliest photographs in this collection document life on a troop ship.   Digitization and cataloging of this collection is ongoing.  Please visit the site at http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/dl/collection/hdr?striner

New Acquisitions – Fall 2009

Jeremy J. Stone Papers (1956-2006)

Jeremy J. Stone served as President of the Federation of American Scientists from 1970 until 2000 when he founded a small non-profit, Catalytic Diplomacy. After earning his PhD in Mathematics from Stanford in 1960, Stone began working on issues of war and peace with an emphasis on arms control. Stone calls himself a “public interest activist.” His advocacy efforts covered a variety of topics including scientific exchange, the nuclear arms race, human rights, ethnic violence and civil conflict, and U.S. international relations. His papers include articles, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, and reports compiled for his two memoirs, “Every Man Should Try”: Adventures of a Public Interest Activist (1999) and Catalytic Diplomacy: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran (2009).

Political Study Club of the District of Columbia (1937-1957)

This collection consists of the annual breakfast programs and yearbooks from the Political Study Club of Washington, DC collected by member, Constance C. Truesdell. The Political Study Club was formed in 1899 as a suffrage club “to study and discuss politics and kindred subjects and endeavor to right the wrongs of women in the District of Columbia.” After the adoption of the 19th amendment, the Study Club changed its mission to the “study of the United States Government and its home and foreign relations.” Membership was capped at 400 members but was not limited to residents of Washington, D.C. The yearbooks include the annual membership roster including officers and committees, the list of speakers and topics for that year, and the club’s history, constitution & by-laws, and song.